Chapter Text
Mick woke up with a warmth behind him. He didn’t need to open his eyes to recognize the shape of the physique and the patterns of scars and tattoos. He kept his eyes closed. He was terrified that his hallucinations had infected his tactile receptors.
“It’s really me this time, Sparky,” Len peppered the back of his neck with kisses. Mick squirmed, shivered, and shook his head tearfully. Len held him close when Mick began sobbing for the rest he hadn’t been getting ever since Len died. It was a voiceless cry. Speaking to the Legends was like sticking his arms into a den of lions and his legs into a lake of piranha. It was safer to not talk. Not that he felt safe on the Waverider anymore.
....He wasn’t on the Waverider.
He bolted up, ready to break out of wherever those Time Bastards had imprisoned him now. His internal alarms were both blaring and silent. He quivered. He snapped his gaze at Len and breathed shakily.
Len swung off their bed and took Mick’s hands in his. This was bad. Mick didn’t recognize safehouse #8: their fifth anniversary gift. It’d been a while since they’d last relaxed here. Len thought this would smooth the spikes in Mick’s armor, yet if Len couldn’t convince him that Mick wasn’t hallucinating, then it was time to introduce a threesome nobody could dream up.
Len kept at least one hand firmly latched onto Mick as they padded into their backyard beach. Mick seemed just as determined to stay in his grasp. Mick was a tactile person, sure, but he was being more so than usual today.
They found their guests nibbling sandwiches and potato chips, having set up baskets’ worth of goodies on a checkerboard blanket. Music Meister patted a pair of empty spaces. The kids were debating an important topic, so they didn’t notice the older duo’s entrance.
“My brother can beat up your brother,” Solnishko insisted.
“My brother cooks better than your brother.”
“My brother stole my favorite painting by my favorite artist for my birthday!”
“My brother got me painted by my favorite artist for my birthday!!!”
Solnishko lasered her with annoyance at her smugly closed eyes. Music Meister laughed, “How about we agree that both of your brothers are kind, caring folks and that neither of them is better than the other?”
Solnishko and Hermey looked at Music Meister like he’d proposed a ridiculous notion, so Hermey conspired with Solnishko, “Or we can agree that both of our brothers are superior to Lisa’s!” Solnishko nodded and hummed his agreement.
Len overplayed taking it personally, “You little shits!”
Hermey and Solnishko looked up at Mick excitedly and worriedly. Mick blinked. His eyebrow twitched. He looked to his husband.
“Music Meister, Hermey, and Solnishko,” Len informed. “Music Meister can see the entire multiverse, and he wasn’t happy with how the Legends were treating you; so he brought the others along to help him out.”
“They weren’t that bad, Lenny,” Mick broke his gaze.
“I used to say my moms weren’t that bad,” Hermey told him once she and Solnishko set their sandwiches down and approached him.
Mick eyed them warily, “What’s in it for you two?”
“Nothing!” they chirped before hugging him. “We love you! Our Earths’ version of you is our brother.”
Mick finally relaxed enough to bite into some sandwiches: roast beef, mayo, and more roast beef. He set it down and looked off in the distance before snapping back to reality, “If you’re my siblings, how’d y’all survive the fire???”
Solnishko and Hermey’s eyebrows knitted together with confusion until they sparked with alarm. Hermey assured him, “You adopted us after that.”
“The only thing of mine you ever burned was my prison,” Solnishko added adoringly. Mick frowned happily until a shadow of a smile flickered across his face. Solnishko handed him and Len each a cPhone, “If you ever wanna visit us or talk to us, these’ll let you do it!”
“We gotta go now; we’ve got plans!” Hermey beamed and rubbed her hands together.
“We’re gonna go to my Earth and—”
“No!” Hermey clasped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t tell them, or you’ll blurt it out to everybody else, and it’ll be all over Crookbook in five minutes flat! You’ll ruin the surprise!”
Hermey pushed him through a portal to Hawk Earth. They both waved “Byeeeeeee!” while Music Meister waltzed alongside them, leaving Len and Mick to their picnic.
“....That was really weird,” Mick admitted when the portal dissolved.
“Yep.”
The End!!!
I’m the Music Meister!
Ne’er-do-wells need ne’er rehearse!
I’m the Music Meister!
Beware, I guard the multiverse!