Work Text:
People often romanticize what it’s like to sleep next to their partner, imagining how peaceful their lover looks, so content and happy and beautiful when veiled in the cloak of sleep.
A beautiful sleeper Taako certainly was not.
Taako is a sloppy sleeper. While he may have started the night gently tucked into Kravitz’s arms, now his limbs are twisted around his body in a dozen different directions. It looked terribly uncomfortable. His glamour spell wore off in his sleep, and now instead of the pristine complexion he usually shows, the scars and marks of over a hundred years of adventuring and dying - so much dying - are splayed across his face. His cheek is squashed against his pillow, his mouth hanging open, displaying his gapped teeth and - is he drooling?
It’s a face that wouldn’t be endearing to those who didn’t know him, but Kravitz does, and he feels a pang of love for his husband clench in his chest.
Taako doesn’t let his guard down often, and certainly not just for anyone. Sleeping is a vulnerable, intimate thing. Kravitz knows how fond Taako is of naps - he’s often found him snoozing in a pile of limbs with his former crewmates or Bureau members - but Kravitz is one of only two people Taako will sleep alone with. He knows it’s a huge sign of trust that Taako had expanded that circle from one to two in order to include him.
Kravitz was awake now because Taako had been talking in his sleep. It wasn’t uncommon - Taako was prone to dreams. Most of the time the dreams passed without waking him, and he woke with no memory of them at all. Other nights, the terror was too much to sleep through.
Tonight was one of the other nights.
Taako started awake with a shout, sitting abruptly upright in their bed. His breathing was heavy and his nightshirt stuck to his back with sweat. He sat a moment, staring into the darkness, as if still shaking off the dream that had awakened him. Kravitz sat up with him and took his hand.
“I’m here, love, you’re alright,” Kravitz assured him quietly.
“I’m...yeah. Are you?” Taako let his eyes meet Kravitz’s, panic still lingering in them and...perhaps guilt as well.
“I’m fine, Taako. You don’t have to worry about waking me, I was already up.”
Taako looked away and gnawed on his lip, his breath slowly evening. Like flipping a fantasy light switch he turned his glamour spell back on and his scarred skin and baggy eyes were pristine once again. “I’m gonna go make breakfast,” he said abruptly, detaching his hand from Kravitz’s and climbing out of bed.
“Taako, it’s four in the morning-”
“Breakfast,” Taako repeated curtly, grabbing a cardigan off the chair by the door as he left the room. He didn’t bother with pants. Kravitz sighed and pulled himself out of bed to follow.
Taako had already lit the burners on the stove and had pans warming on them by the time Kravitz got to the kitchen. He was moving with a brisk energy that was clearly forced.
“Taako, come back to bed, it’s too early,” Kravitz said, rubbing his eyes. He may not need sleep, but he had recently learned he enjoyed it, and he was distressed that his husband had cut their time in bed together so short.
“Early to bed, early to rise and all that!” Taako replied with a stiff cheeriness as he cracked an egg into his already hot pan. “That’s a Taako Original™ my dude!”
Kravitz could see he wasn’t going to be persuaded, so he sat down on one of the barstools at the island and resigned himself to an ungodly-early breakfast. Queen help him, he hoped he didn’t get called in on an assignment today - he could already tell he would be wanting a nap this afternoon.
“Taako, do you remember the dream you had this morning?” he asked. Taako grunted.
“Feeling nosy, are you?” His ears were pressed flat against his neck.
“Was it Glamour Springs again?” Kravitz pressed, undeterred.
“What? No!” Taako tried to brush the question off with a laugh. “Nah, you know I don’t cook after that one. Cha’boy’s too fucked up for all that!” He nonchalantly flipped the spatula in his hand but didn’t turn to look at his husband.
“Lup then?”
Taako snorted. “Nah!”
“...was it Wonderland?”
Taako didn’t answer this time, and his silence was long enough that Kravitz could tell he had hit a sore spot.
“Shit! Aw dunk,” Taako exclaimed suddenly, slapping his spatula on the counter. “Fuck!”
“What is it?”
“Oh, I broke the yolk,” Taako grumbled, already carrying the steaming pan towards the trash. “I know how you like your eggs runny but I’ve gone and fucked this one up.”
Kravitz stood up to intercept him. “You don’t have to throw it out! It’s fine, Taako, I’ll still eat it.”
“Nah, dude!” Taako protested, pushing past him. “You deserve the best, and this-! Well this ain’t it, my man!”
Kravitz put a cool hand on Taako’s arm, stopping the egg from falling into the garbage just in time. Taako turned to him and for the first time since he had woken up their gaze met. His eyes were red, as if he’d been fighting back tears that even the glamour couldn’t hide, and Kravitz recognized his husband’s self loathing when he saw it.
“This isn’t about the eggs, is it?” Kravitz said quietly. It wasn’t particularly a question.
“Don’t know what you mean!” Taako lied unconvincingly.
“Taako,” Kravitz said slowly and with care, “I still think you’re beautiful, even after what happened in Wonderland. You know that, don’t you?”
Taako huffed. “That’s not - I mean, yeah, of course, you say so every day - but Krav, I - is that what you think this is about?” He pulled his arm away. “I mean, yeah, cha’boy’s a little fucked up, it’s true, but you picked the wrong insecurity of mine to try to fix this morning, babe.”
It was the first genuine thing Taako had said all morning, and Kravitz was taken aback. Not by the sudden honesty, but by the realization that he had been wrong. He could read his husband’s emotions well, but he had managed to misinterpret the signs. He was embarrassed.
“I - I’m sorry, Taako,” he stammered. “I thought you had dreamed about Wonderland - I made an assumption, and I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, a lot of fucked up things happened in Wonderland,” Taako grumbled, finally flipping the egg into the trash. “Gonna give that egg another go. Only the best for my man. You deserve better than...this.” Taako waved the spatula noncommittally at the trash, but Kravitz still wasn’t convinced he was talking about the eggs.
He gently took the pan and spatula from Taako’s hands and set them on the counter. “First, tell me what your dream was about this time. Help me understand.” His voice was caring but firm.
“Ain’t gonna let this one go, are ya?” Taako muttered, and Kravitz shook his head. “Fine. It was...only tangentially about Wonderland this time.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes a moment, forcing the words to escape his lips. His hand gestured vaguely as he tried to express himself. “When I was pulling Magnus’s soul back to this plane, we saw you. You were trapped in that Hunger-oil-stuff.”
Kravitz stiffened. He remembered, of course. If a man who was already dead could experience drowning, he had, and for a long time. But most people don’t drown in a substance which physically latched onto you and kept you there. And most people die or at least lose consciousness fairly quickly after the beginning of the experience - Kravitz, on the other hand, had been trapped in that oil for longer than he could calculate - several days at least. It had gripped at him, pulling him unceasingly back down into its impenetrable darkness, with no sign of ending. He had been afraid it would be the end of his soul. It was the most terrifying thing he’d ever experienced, and he dreamed about it sometimes, too.
“Yes, I remember. I saw you, too,” he said quietly.
“I saw you, and I left you there,” Taako went on. “You were drowning in the Hunger and I left you behind. You didn’t deserve that. You don’t deserve...this.”
Kravitz sighed and took his husband’s hands in his own. “You know, I’ve never been upset about that. Is that what you think? Is that what you’re afraid of, Taako?” He breathed deeply, searching for the right thing to say to convince his husband that he was telling the truth. “Taako, your...your priority in that moment was Magnus’s wellbeing, and frankly, what you did in that moment was amazing. Saving Magnus was your concern, and you did that! I don’t hold that against you.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should,” Taako said quietly.
“There’s nothing you could’ve done, Taako.”
“You don’t know that!” Taako protested, his eyes wide and damp. “I saw you there in that moment, and you were so...afraid, Kravitz, and I left you there! I didn’t even try! I didn’t even have a chance to think about you after that, because so much happened so fast. I saw you there, and I left you behind, and I didn’t think twice about it. Well, I’ve thought about it since then, and there’s so many things I could’ve done to try to save you, and I didn’t attempt one of them.” He took a ragged breath as he looked down at their linked hands, trying to compose himself. “But, you know, hindsight’s twenty-twenty or whatever.” He glanced back up at Kravitz quickly. “That’s another Taako Original™. You can look it up, check my book.”
Kravitz couldn’t help but chuckle. “Taako, you know I know that book is full of stolen quips.”
“You can’t prove anything.” A glimmer of a smile touched Taako’s eyes.
“Lup’s already found a way to revisit the planes you traveled through. I totally could.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Kravitz was grinning openly now. “Taako, look...I know you think I should be upset or love you less or something, but I’m not, and I don’t. You’re my husband and I adore you. And even the things you insist on seeing as your flaws or mistakes...I don’t see them that way. You may not be perfect, but you’re perfect for me, and that’s what matters.”
Taako sighed and dropped his head to rest on Kravitz’s chest. “You can’t fix me, Kravitz.”
Kravitz pressed his nose into Taako’s hair. “You’re right, I can’t. I can’t snap my fingers and make all your anxieties go away, as much as I wish I could. But I can still try to help you through them.”
They stood like that for several minutes, both breathing deeply of each other’s scent and taking comfort in each other’s touch. Kravitz could feel his heart beating slowly in his chest, gradually picking up its pace, and he knew that Taako noticed the warmth spreading through his body.
As they stood together, a thought quietly planted itself in Kravitz’s mind and he pulled back from his husband with a frown. “Taako...couldn’t you have just transmuted the egg yolk?”
Taako raised his head, the moment of realization played clearly across his face. “Aw, beans,” he mumbled, rubbing a thumb across his wet eyes. Then he laughed, a short but genuine sound, taking Kravitz by surprise. “Hindsight,” he said with a grin. Kravitz laughed too and placed a kiss on his husband’s forehead.
“If you really insist on staying up, why don’t you give those eggs another shot. I can start on coffee.”
“You’re terrible at making coffee,” Taako teased. “Honestly can’t understand why, it’s the simplest thing. What are you possibly doing wrong?”
“Would you rather I take over the eggs, then?” Kravitz asked in mock seriousness.
“Gods, no,” Taako gasped. “Even my strongest spell can’t save your cooking. No, you stick to coffee.”
Taako’s second attempt at the eggs turned out perfectly, and Kravitz’s coffee was, well, drinkable - at least after adding plenty of sugar. They sat at the island together for a long time, long after their food was gone and even until the sunlight began to break through the curtains. Taako’s ears gradually began to point back up, and though Kravitz knew he could never fix all the hurts in his husband’s soul, he seemed happier now that night was passing, and Kravitz felt warmer than usual.