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A call comes right as Wyatt’s closing the door to their apartment, hands full with his work bag, gym kit, lunch box, and his key, just as he’s about to lock up behind himself. He doesn’t have a chance to pull his phone out from his scrubs until well after the ding of his voicemail notification goes off. He sees that it’s from the hospital and shoves his phone back into his pocket without bothering to listen to the message, figuring that it must be the duty nurse calling to remind him that he’s due in earlier than his usual shift today.
Jokes on her, because he remembered. When he passes through the automatic doors of the hospital, Wyatt’s actually early for the first time in his life.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Wanda,” Wyatt says, smiling wide. He makes a show of glancing at the clock on the wall behind her. “Or should I say, top of the mornin!”
“Oh crap, Plank.” Wanda stands up from behind her desk in the middle of the admittance ward. She looks worried. “Didn’t you get my message?”
Wyatt starts to feel worried too. “No.” It comes out sounding like a question. “Did my shift get shifted?”
She waves Jimmy over with another indecipherable look before he grabs Wyatt by the arm and leads him deeper into the hospital-proper, away from all the people waiting to be seen. “Dude,” Jimmy says, “your boyfriend got brought in!”
“Oh my gosh,” Wyatt breathes the words out in a rush. “Louis! Is he alright? Oh my gosh!”
Jimmy stops them in the middle of the hallway and takes Wyatt by the shoulders, shaking some sense back into him. “It looks like a concussion. The scan didn’t show anything bad, but he’s still out of it.”
Wyatt nods, only half-comprehending, mind focusing on not much else beyond Louis and concussion and bad. “Okay,” he says, feeling pretty concussed himself. “What room?”
Jimmy tells him that Louis is in Room 405; Wyatt’s off like a shot.
When he gets there he finds Joe and Ali both hovering around the edge of Louis’ bed. Louis looks so tiny and frail, his skin a pallor that would have him gasping in disgust at himself. He hovers in the doorway, unsure of what to do.
“Oh,” Joe says, noticing Wyatt standing there. “Hey, buddy.”
Something inside Wyatt cracks. He takes a few hurried steps into the room and then stops about an arm’s length from Joe. “I don’t,” he tries to say, but words leave him. He reaches out for Joe and pulls him into his chest, squeezing him tight, his eyes clenching shut. If he focuses hard enough, he can pretend Joe is Louis, and that everything is alright. When he tries to speak again, it’s into Joe’s hair. “What happened?”
Ali’s hand drops down onto his back, rubbing. “Oh, honey. It’ll be okay.” Joe says something in addition to that, but Wyatt can’t hear him, the words lost somewhere in the fabric of the scrubs at Wyatt’s chest. “They said that Louis slipped trying to fight for the last sweater in his size at the Abercrombie sale. You know how competitive he gets when it comes to shopping,” she adds.
Joe does some complicated wiggling and manages to break free of Wyatt’s hold, gasping for breath once he does.
“Oh my,” Wyatt says. “I’m sorry, Joe. It’s just — you’re Louis-sized, and I don’t wanna risk moving him while he’s injured. I didn’t mean to get so upset.”
Waving his hand between them, Joe shakes his head. He bends in half, gasping a few more times before he pops up to stand tall again. “It’s alright. I don’t know how I feel about being called Louis-sized, but I figure I’ve got plenty of years worth of therapy ahead of me to come to terms with it.”
“Were you with him when it happened?” Wyatt asks.
“Nah.” Joe shakes his head. “They called me when they couldn’t reach you and we rushed over.”
Wyatt blinks. “They called me,” he says, sounding out the words, “first?”
“Of course they did!” Joe slaps him on the arm, shaking out his hand in front of him after he does. Wyatt doesn’t see why; he barely felt it at all. “He and I had to update our medical forms a couple months ago. Louis moved you up to his number one, and I did the same for Ali.”
“Really?” Ali says, and Wyatt feels as shocked as she sounds.
He makes his way to Louis’ bedside, sitting down in the chair and gently taking up his hand. “Is it true, Louis?” he asks, his voice quiet and gentle. Then it hits him. “Oh gosh, they called me first and I didn’t even pick up!” He turns to look at Joe, can practically feel himself getting ready to cry, even though his eyes are dry. “Joe! What would’ve happened to him if you hadn’t answered? He would have been in here all alone!”
“I mean, we were only here for like five minutes before you, bud. And this is your hospital.” Joe shrugs. “Anyway, he’s out cold, he doesn’t even know we’re here now.”
Wyatt shakes his head. “He knows.”
He leans across the bed to press a kiss to Louis’ forehead before he placing his hand right in the same spot, stroking Louis’ hair back. “I’m sorry, Louis. I promise I’ll stay right here until you wake up.”
Dear Lord, Wyatt prays, I know that Louis is wonderful, and I’m sure you miss his soul every single day, but please, let him stay here with me. I know we’ll have Eternity together with you when everything is said and done, but I’d like to have now with him too. Thank you, Amen.
“So, uh,” Joe says from behind him. “Does that mean that we can dip out? I did plan on getting some work done today.”
“Me too,” Ali agrees, although she hastens to add, “Although I’m totally willing to wait here with you as moral support if you need it, Wyatt!”
“It’s alright,” Wyatt says. “I’ve got this. Besides, you guys shouldn’t have to watch me lose it like this. I’m so embarrassed.”
Fifteen minutes later, Louis starts groaning and shifting on the bed.
“Louis!” Wyatt stands up quickly, the chair making a harsh noise as it’s pushed back by the force of his movement. The sound makes Louis wince, even though his eyes are still closed. “I’m sorry,” Wyatt whispers. “I’m just so excited that you’re waking up.”
It takes another five minutes for Louis to do just that, his eyes finally peaking open against the harsh hospital lighting. He blinks a few times before casting his eyes around the room, his gaze zeroing in on Wyatt.
“Oh my god,” Louis says. His voice is rough.
Wyatt doesn’t even have it in him to give Louis grief for taking the Lord’s name in vain. As far as Wyatt is concerned, this is exactly the type of situation to evoke God in. He rushes to get Louis the cup of water he poured not long after Ali and Joe had left. He drinks when Wyatt offers it to him, but turns his head away when he’s ready to speak again. “Are you my doctor?” The way he delivers it is decidedly flirty.
“Oh, Louis.” Wyatt leans forward, forgetting himself for a moment, and kisses Louis with all the emotion bubbling up in him, the relief. When they part he doesn’t bother to pull back much, practically speaking into Louis’ mouth. “I’m so glad that you’re well enough to joke. I was so worried.”
Louis looks a bit dazed from the kiss. Of course, it could be the concussion too.
“Joking?” Louis asks. “Who’s joking? Am I in heaven?”
Wyatt can’t help but feel pleased. For all the teasing and blasphemous jokes Louis’ prone to make, he’s turned to God in his hour of need, just like Wyatt always knew he would. “No silly,” Wyatt explains. “You’re at my hospital. You took a fall and they had to bring you in.”
“So you are a doctor.”
Wyatt frowns. “No, Louis, I’m a nurse, we’ve been over this.” And then, because he figures he’s burying the lede here, “And I’m not here as your nurse, I’m here as your boyfriend.”
“You’re my what?!” Louis makes to spring out of the bed and Wyatt has to act quickly to stop him, planting his hand in the middle of Louis’ chest to keep him from moving. Louis sucks in a breath that stutters out of his chest on the exhale.
“Oh,” he says, looking a bit faint. “You’re so strong.”
Louis stays in the hospital for the remainder of Wyatt’s shift. Eventually Wyatt does have to get back to his actual job, but every spare minute that he has sees him ducking back into Louis’ room and checking in on him.
One of those check-ins almost has him walking in on Louis on a call with Joe, but he manages to stop from interrupting them just in the nick of time. He’s ashamed of himself, but he stays close to the door and listens to Louis as he brags to Joe about the hot doctor boyfriend that he managed to score. He has Joe on speaker, so Wyatt can hear Joe reply that he’s well aware of how far Wyatt is out of Louis’ league, and that Joe did alright for himself in that department too, though Louis doesn’t believe Ali exists no matter how much Joe insists she does.
Dr. White is assigned to be Louis’ doctor, and he does his best to reassure Wyatt that Louis will probably be fine. Wyatt knows that much himself, but it’s hard not to worry. “He seems to remember everything but me, Perry,” Wyatt says. They’re both waiting for their turn at the coffee machine of the fourth-floor staff room. “What if this is some kind of sign from God? Am I being punished?”
“Didn’t you say he forgot his friend’s fiance too? Seems like he’s lost the last handful of years to me.”
“Perry, I think I’m entitled to be a little self-centered and dramatic in this situation,” Wyatt says. Then what he’s just done dawns on him. “I am so, so sorry for blowing up on you like that. I was out of line. There’s no excuse for turning into this into something about me when it’s Louis that’s hurting, and you’re only trying to help.”
Dr. White pats him on the shoulder, “I know it’s hard on you, Plank. Just hang in there. I bet that boyfriend of yours will be back to normal by the time you clock out.”
Louis isn’t.
Wyatt signs him out into his care. Louis stayed up all of the day, so he’s pretty much out of the danger zone as far as his concussion is concerned, but Wyatt will still need to wake up him every couple of hours while they sleep, just to be sure. He’s dead tired himself, but Louis always comes first.
When Wyatt lets them into the apartment, Elphaba is right there, as if she’s been just as worried as Wyatt had been. Wyatt isn’t surprised; Louis and she have always had such a strong connection.
“Well, hello!” Louis lowers himself down onto his knees carefully, scratching behind her ears. “And who are you?”
Wyatt’s heart sinks. “That’s Elphaba,” he says.
“What a perfect name for such a good girl,” Louis says to her.
With a smile, Wyatt says, “Thanks.”
Louis stops his petting. He looks up at Wyatt from his place on the floor. “What?!”
He tries to stand and Wyatt extends his hand out to him, not wanting him to over-exert himself. Louis uses it to propel himself into Wyatt’s chest, practically climbing him so that their faces are level. “Oh my god, you’re gay.”
“Louis, please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. It really bothers me,” he says, and then, taking care to stress his next few words, suddenly even more unsure of how far his boyfriend's confusion as to their situation runs, “Also, I am gay.”
“I know that,” Louis says it like he thinks Wyatt is slow. “I meant — you’re culturally gay, not just, y’know, a practicing homosexual.” He flicks his wrist off to the sides of their heads, as if the gesture means something.
Wyatt places both his hands on Louis’ hips to steady him, trying to get him to calm down. “I got her for you a couple months after we got together,” he explains. “Because you always used to use all these schemes to get me to stay over, but I didn’t feel ready. Or worthy, I guess. I didn’t want you to feel lonely when I couldn’t be around.”
Louis awws and presses a kiss to Wyatt’s jaw, which makes him smile. “And since you always call me —,” Wyatt’s voice gets caught in his throat, and it takes a few tries for him to clear it. “Well, I figured you’d appreciate a puppy, and you did.”
“I always call you what?” Louis asks, not missing a beat.
“It isn’t important,” Wyatt insists. “I’m sure you’ll remember soon anyway.”
He presses a firm kiss to Louis’ lips and then taps him on his hip a few times. “Now, let’s get you fed and into bed.”
Louis doesn’t look impressed. “Wyatt, my love,” he says, and Wyatt’s heart jumps up to his throat, even though Louis doesn’t seem to have noticed anything, “you’re a warrior poet.”
Louis is grumpy each time Wyatt has to wake him, and it takes a handful of kisses to get him to smile and forgive Wyatt every time that happens.
“Wyatt, what’s our sex life like?” Louis asks, after Wyatt’s most recent consciousness check.
He feels his face heating up, even though he really should be past this by now. Especially with his past. It’s just — hard hearing Louis talk like that, sometimes.
Louis is basically Wyatt’s guardian angel, and Wyatt was raised not to think of Angels that way, even though most of his later childhood and teenage years were spent repenting for onanism brought about by how gosh darn good Michael and Gabriel looked. And, on one especially shameful occasion, thanks to an unfairly sexy painting that still haunts Wyatt to this day, even Lucifer himself.
“I haven’t got any complaints,” Wyatt answers. Even when he’s half-embarrassed to death, it’s important to be honest.
“Good, good,” Louis says, though it sounds like he couldn’t care less. “I just mean, who does what? And how often? And in what positions?”
“Louis!” Wyatt places a hand on his shirtless chest, and then rushes to bring it back down to his side so that Louis won’t tease him for being a shrinking violet.
“Wyatt!” Louis echoes, in a much more offended tone than the one Wyatt himself used, although the sentiment behind it is the same. “I’m just saying, maybe muscle-memory is needed to jog my mind? That’s a thing, right?”
“I mean, it doesn’t sound totally implausible?” Wyatt allows.
“Exactly, so,” he claps his hands together and then rolls onto his back. “Give me the ol’ usual.”
“I’m not sure that your body is up to this, Louis,” Wyatt warns. But he’s sitting up and pushing the sheets down to the foot of the bed anyway, helpless in the face of Louis’ demands, as always. “Your brain took such a shock that you forgot me!”
Louis voice turns husky, but there’s a tremor of something real there, behind it all, when he says, “So remind me.”
It goes a long way to get Wyatt’s blood pumping, that’s for sure.
Wyatt climbs on top of him, crawling up the bed on his hands and knees until he’s close enough to kiss Louis, deep and slow. Louis’ hands cup his jaw, but they don’t stay there for long, sliding down Wyatt’s neck to his shoulders, his pecks, along the sides of his flank and then into the divot of his waist, teasing at the waistband of Wyatt’s pajamas.
They kiss for a long time, before Wyatt pulls back a little to ask, “Remember anything yet?”
Louis shakes his head. “Let’s keep trying.”
Wyatt’s only got a partial shift the next day. He escorts Louis to work, still unsure that Louis should be going back at all, with his brain scrambled and all.
“What if you design something that kills people?” Wyatt asks.
Louis waves a hand in disinterest. “We’re insured to the hilt, it’s fine.”
Wyatt isn’t sure he likes the sound of that, but he knows he’s already played all his fussing cards and there’s only so much Louis can take before Wyatt starts to get annoying. He’s unused to caring about that these days, but it was a major concern of his when he and Louis first got together, and that familiar is stress nipping at his heels.
Ro-Ro and the Blevins and their secretaries are all in the break room with Joe when Wyatt and Louis step out of the elevator, with a big sign strung up welcoming Louis back.
“Oh you guys,” Louis says, clearly loving the attention. “I was only gone for a day, stop it!”
“You’re the boss,” Ro-Ro says, grabbing her plate of cake and making like she’s about to head back for her desk.
“Well I mean,” Louis hastens to add, before she clears the doorway, “Go on if you must!”
Louis is already back by the time Wyatt lets himself in through the door. Wyatt feels a little out of sorts. It only dawned on him the ride home from the hospital that he’s been neglecting to update his blog. It’s a small consolation that the show’s on its mid-season hiatus. He’s been recapping his favorite episodes to keep his readership engaged, and it hurts his soul a little to fall behind on his posting schedule, but in the grand scheme of his recent reshuffling of priorities, it can come last. Still, he wishes that Louis remembered that the show existed at all, just so that he can probably console Wyatt like he usually does.
“Wyatt? Honey?” Louis calls from the living room. “That you?”
Wyatt shouts back that it is, even though he hates yelling. Louis knows this — or, he used to, anyway. Wyatt can’t expect him to suddenly know seven years worth quirks without seven years worth of memories. So even though he hates being loud, he does it for Louis, because he knows that Louis had never hesitated for a moment to become quieter for Wyatt, once he’d learned that it was what Wyatt needed.
He drops his things off in the kitchen and draws himself a glass of water from the tap before joining Louis on the couch. He manages to get a couple sips before Louis goes, “aw, thanks, honey,” and steals it off him for himself.
“What are we watching?” Wyatt asks.
“Some local program on PBS,” Louis says, clearly engrossed with it. “Did you know we have a masked vigilante running around?” He sounds scandalous, which is bad. And aroused, which is worse. “Nobody knows who he is, but I can tell you one thing: his ass is so tight you can bounce a fucking quarter off it. Look at those spanks!”
Oh no, Wyatt thinks. Because somehow with all the drama of the past few days, he’s completely blanked that this would be something Louis would have forgotten too.
Oh no. Because he’s confronted with the reality that Louis has now made him insanely jealous of himself, and that can’t be healthy at all.
Louis and Wyatt met as a result of Wyatt saving him.
Back in those days, right around the time he was starting out in the hero business, Wyatt didn’t bother much with a costume. He’s so grateful that the press hadn’t taken much notice of him back then; that there’s no pictures floating around the internet of him running around half-drunk in his go-go boy bootie shorts and mesh tank, a Zorro mask from Party City on his face
He’d just gotten off work, his time at the club only meant to be supplementing what financial aid didn’t cover towards his tuition and living expenses. Only, that was getting harder and harder the more time he had spent working and drinking there, instead of going to his classes.
The whole vigilante thing was his way of dealing with putting off his degree one quarter at a time, his way of still helping people, even if it wasn’t as legitimate as practicing medicine. A small way that he could control his life, even as everything else was spinning out of control.
Louis had been cornered in an alleyway by some thugs, slightly drunk and in no position to defend himself besides.
Wyatt usually tried to keep his crime fighting to the early hours of the day. For some reason it was always when he felt his most strong. There was someone in trouble though, and Wyatt couldn’t stand by.
“Hey,” he’d called out, his voice clear and deep. It got their attention off Louis and onto Wyatt, and that was all he needed to spring into action, punching one of the guys in the face. His partner tried to jump Wyatt from behind while he was busy with the other. Wyatt hardly broke a sweat as he flipped the guy off of him and into the dumpster nearby, trying not to feel bad at the pained whimper the man let out as he’d landed on the damp and disgusting asphalt.
Louis had looked at Wyatt the same way Wyatt had always imagined he would look at Jesus when He finally came back for them all. It was a blasphemous thought, but that didn’t make it any less true.
“My hero,” Louis had practically breathed it, the words barely audible. But Wyatt had always had better hearing than most.
Wyatt scuffed his boots, dropping his eyes to the floor. He was embarrassed, suddenly, sober in a way he hadn’t felt in a very long while, aware of just how ridiculous he must have seemed in that moment. It had him wanting to go running off to the nearest bottle, but something about Louis had Wyatt rooted in place. “I don’t know anything about hero”, Wyatt had said, eventually, after the silence had probably verged on stretching out too long. “I just like to think of myself as a Good Samaritan.”
Louis had shaken his head. “No,” he insisted. “You’re my hero, and I’ve got to repay you for saving my life.”
And so Louis had taken Wyatt back to his, and proved his gratitude to Wyatt thoroughly a good three times that night before the sun had finally risen and they’d succumbed to sleep at last. When they’d woken up that afternoon, Louis had offered him lunch. Wyatt had fallen in love with him a little right there, eating Louis’ delicious cooking in the kitchen of his well-decorated but absolutely microscopic studio apartment.
Louis had been the only guy that hadn’t gone running for the hills when Wyatt hinted at his vigilante side-hustle, nevermind the drinking and his more eccentric Mennonite past, and that was because he met the Samaritan before he had really gotten to know Wyatt.
It had been Louis that had made Wyatt want more than the drunken haze that his life had become in the first place.
Louis had seen Wyatt at his most weird, at rock bottom, and had stayed with him through it all. Wyatt has no idea if Louis would still make the same choices today, or if he’d go running straight for the hills the moment Wyatt came out to him in the proper order this time, without all the memories between them, good and bad, giving Louis a reason to stay.
The next day, after he drops Louis off at the office with a healthy meal in his lunchbox and a kiss on his lips, Wyatt pulls out his cell phone and calls Joe the minute he’s back on the ground floor.
“Hello?” Joe answers.
“Don’t let it show that it’s me,” Wyatt begs, already feeling guilty for asking Joe to lie.
“Good to hear from you,” Joe says, tacking on, “Brandon,” a beat too late for it to sound natural, but he keeps going. “What can I do for you?”
“Meet me downstairs really quick. I’ve got to ask you something but I don’t want Louis to know.”
“You want to repay me for that coffee I got you the other day, you say? Why, sure thing, ol’ chap! I’ll see you in a bit,” Joe says, and then hangs up.
Wyatt walks down to the coffee shop at the end of the block and orders Joe’s usual to-go, then Louis’ as well. And then, because it’s mean to leave others out, he places orders for Ro-Ro and the Blevins and their secretaries, too, collecting them in a caddy so that it won’t be too much trouble for Joe to take them back with him.
Joe doesn't look surprised when he shows up to a table full of cups. “I’m taking credit for this,” he says.
Wyatt nods, because it seems fair.
He cuts right to the chase. “Has Louis ever mentioned anything to you,” he asks, “about me and my, uh, side job?” He widens his eyes purposefully, hoping that Joe will pick up his hint. If anyone would have an idea of how Louis would react to learning about Wyatt for the second-first time, it would be Joe.
“Wyatt,” Joe says, “I have no fuckin’ clue what you’re talking about. You have a side job? Is that even legal for nurses?”
Wyatt has to bite his lip to keep the smile off his face. “Heckin’,” he corrects.
Louis hadn’t told Joe about Wyatt’s heroics.
He’d sworn up and down to Wyatt that he hadn’t, but Wyatt had never believed him. He knew Joe and Louis never kept secrets from one another, and it wasn’t fair to ask Louis to lie for him, especially not to his best friend. His heart feels twenty times too big for his chest, even though it means that Joe won’t be any help in this current predicament Wyatt has found himself in.
“Oh,” Wyatt says. “Never mind then.”
Joe narrows his eyes, but it’s the I’m suspicious but don’t actually give a darn look, not the I’m nosey and need to know everything there is about this look, like he’d had for the ten or so hours Louis had actually managed to keep Wyatt’s penis size to himself, even though it was clear even to Wyatt, who had been three sheets to wind, that Joe was dying to know, and they’d only just met.
“Sweet.” Joe nods at him as he stands and takes the drink carriers into his hands. Wyatt opens his mouth to offer to help him carry it back, but Joe waves him off before he can get the words out. “Back to the grind. Have yourself a good day, pal.”
Realizing that Louis knows nothing about the Good Samaritan reminds Wyatt that he hasn’t performed any heroics in the past few days, too caught up in the whirlwind of Louis’ amnesia. It was bad enough that he’d forgotten about his blog, but this isn’t something he can put off in similar good conscious.
He can’t go out in the early morning before work, because Louis would be awake and get suspicious, so he has to sneak out of their apartment in the middle of the night, feeling guilty. He promises to himself that he’ll tell Louis about the Samaritan if his memories aren’t back by the end of the week, and tries to ignore how it feels like a making a deal with the devil.
He helps three drunk young women back to their apartments, stops a mugging, and helps a few homeless people with their paperwork for emergency shelters, getting them off the streets for at least a couple nights.
He feels a little bit better about himself when he returns home, the weight of his guilt off his shoulders while he works in the service of others. He fishes his keys out from the fanny pack he uses as a utility belt and opens the door.
Except it doesn’t open fully, because sometime during the night Louis must have gotten up to get some water and put the security chain on. Louis is so out of it most nights that he shouldn’t realize Wyatt wasn’t in bed with him. Wyatt hates that he might have to lie again, but he wasn’t gone all that long, and he should be able to pass off having gone for a late night, insomnia-prompted run that won’t have Louis too suspicious.
Wyatt sighs and heads to the window at the end of their hallway. He crawls back out of it and onto the ledge around their floor of the building, scaling it until he can hop onto the fire escape just outside their bedroom window.
This, at least, is unlocked, and Wyatt jimmies it open and steps inside.
The light comes on in an instant, blinding Wyatt for a moment.
“Oh my god,” Louis shrieks. “What the fuck? Why are you — Oh fuck me, have I been having an affair with the Samaritan!?”
Wyatt opens his mouth to deny it, but Louis carries on. “No!” He springs from the bed and almost brains himself on the floor, his feet tangled in the sheets. “No, Wyatt is too good to be true, I’m not about to let my other-self ruin this for me, not even for my spandex kink. Begone, homewrecker!”
Louis endeavors to shut the window, even though Wyatt is more than halfway through it.
“Louis,” Wyatt tries to say, before he topples down onto the bedroom floor in a bit of a heap. He rights himself and tries again, “Louis, you aren’t cheating.”
“I don’t want to hear your disgusting excuses,” Louis practically spits out the words. He sucks in a breath, and then another, each one coming faster than the one previous. “Oh god,” he says. “I knew I couldn’t have lucked into something so good! I finally thought that I’d gotten my shit together, but no, I’m just as awful as I’ve always been!”
Wyatt stands and grabs hold of Louis’ arms, pulls him into a tight hug. He can’t stand it when Louis beats himself up like this. He’s been nothing but good to Wyatt, and doesn’t deserve a word of it. It’s bad just for how rare an occurrence it is; it’s rare for Louis to own up to any mistake, big or small, even the ones that really are his fault.
Louis tries to struggle away from him, still cursing up a storm. Wyatt lets him. Once there’s some distance between their chests, Wyatt’s able to lean down and kiss him, so he does. Kissing Louis has always been just about the only way to get him to shut up.
When they part, Louis is dazed, looking mildly drunk off of it.
“Are you calm now?” Wyatt asks. He’s not above leaning back in and giving Louis another dose if he needs it.
Louis nods. He licks his lips and says, “I remember now.”
Wyatt blinks. “What?”
“It’s all coming back to me,” Louis repeats. “Must have been the shock jolting some sense back into me. Gosh, I can’t believe I thought I was cheating on you! As if.”
It’s the gosh that does it for Wyatt. His Louis knows that all the swearing and blasphemy hurts Wyatt, and hasn’t slipped up on that kind of stuff around him for years now.
“Louis,” and it doesn’t feel remotely like blasphemy when he says Louis’ name like a prayer, because that’s what it is for Wyatt, most days. “Hey,” he smiles, and doesn’t mind that it probably looks a little dopey. “Welcome back.”
Louis smiles back at him, rushing forward to use the grip he’s already got around Wyatt’s middle from when they were kissing to squeeze him in a tight hug.
Wyatt hugs him back just as tightly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the Samaritan stuff,” Wyatt confesses in a rush. “I was worried that it would scare you off, but that’s no excuse for lying. I hope you aren’t cross with me.”
“Oh, hush puppy,” Louis says. Wyatt’s throat closes up, and he has to blink hard, just the once, to keep himself from tearing up. “How could I ever not love that side of you, no matter what I remember!”
He pulls back and then stands on his tiptoes to kiss Wyatt again.
At some point during the kiss, Wyatt closes his eyes. When he opens them again, all the stress and anxiety of the past few days finally drop from his shoulders. The sun has started to rise, and he feels like himself again in the warmth of it.
“Besides,” Louis says, “Superhero beats out being a doctor every day of the week, you know that.”