Work Text:
Anomaly hadn’t known a lot of love in his life. His parents, sort of - they’d loved him, to a point, to the point that he was still a magician, still not normal, still a disappointment, still not human, not a saint, not an angel, still blasphemy.
He’d found comfort in his abilities. He could be praised and admired for them, charming anyone and everyone, conning them or helping them with his ever-changing moods and whether they brought the right stories in exchange. That worked, for a while. He could live through the couples he brought together, through the families he reunited, to the happiness he saw in the lives of people he’d changed.
What worked too, were the one night stands he brought home from clubs, or hooked up with in dark alleys outside bars, or whose beds he slunk out of before the sun rose, smelling of sex and cigarettes and cheap drinks. Because sex was just as good as attention, right? That was how that worked, in the world he made for himself of cards and glowing neon and sparkling magic and glitter, dazzling anyone who stepped into it. Glamour after glamour flickered over him like a chameleon shifting colors, and it was easy to blend in and pretend that he belonged wherever he found himself.
But even after all of that, here he was, with Jaing asleep under the blankets in his room behind new black-out curtains, and NJ smiling sleepily at him while drinking the tea that Anomaly had started keeping in the cabinet, and he felt loved .
They’d both found him and caught him off-guard, making their way through the shields he’d developed over years of being ripped open, and now they were his , they loved him - they loved him , not the glamours he put up, not the idea of what he was supposed to be - and he loved them, fiercely, brightly, painfully.
He knew what love was now, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.