Work Text:
Zari’s at a vanity products expo in 2028, QBing on the ground--which is basically just doing nothing at an expo for useless trendy things instead of doing nothing on the ship--when she sees someone she knows in the crowd.
More to the point: she sees someone she doesn’t want to see in the crowd, and her mind goes blank. She forgets why she’s here and how she got here and who she’s with, and, in lieu of doing anything even a little productive, she just stops and stares at him. He’s tall, with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a perfect smile. In reality, he looks like a million other pretty men, but Zari recognizes him immediately. If he weren’t surrounded by adoring fans, she’d still be able to look away and convince herself she’s just seeing things, but he is surrounded by adoring fans, all of them looking for an autograph.
Of course they want an autograph from him. Back then, in 2028 (because it’s 2028 except Zari’s in her thirties and she never went to this expo), even Zari would’ve been looking for an autograph. Floriano XXI, SuperTubez star, funny and magnetic and big enough that just being in one of his videos could put you on the map. Big enough that being his girlfriend and regularly appearing in his videos would be a great leg up for a 20-year-old perfecting an empire.
Zari can feel her heart beating. It’s 2028, but actually it’s 2044, and she lives on a timeship now. She hasn’t seen him in years, and the funny thing is that in 2028, she hadn’t even met him yet. That’d be the next year. She’d shake his hand first, and he’d laugh at how formal she was, and then they’d go out to dinner and make sure the paparazzi could see, and he’d be so nice that she’d think that maybe this could be more than a PR stunt, and it’d all just go downhill from there.
But that hasn’t happened yet, so Zari’s just looking at him making some girl practically swoon, trying not to gag, looking for the man who usually included “but…” every time he said “I love you.” The man who pulled her hair so hard it’d come out. The man who’d grab her so tightly she’d bruise.
She looks for that man, and doesn’t see anything. Her eyes are swimming and her head feels like it’s stuffed with little foam make-up sponges and all she knows is that she’s not doing anything and she needs to go do something. She needs to go check her stats or make a tell-all CatChat post and then delete it or do anything but think about that man’s hands on her.
“Zari, mission’s over, Sara and Ava found the aberration, and I’ll tell you that in my expert opinion, that bloke’s not near handsome enough to push back getting on the ship,” someone says. Zari jumps and shudders at the same time as she looks over at John, who she just now remembers has been with her because it’s not actually 2028, or it doesn’t have to be. She’s lived 2028 and 2029 and 2030 already. She’s lived through him already.
John is standing next to her looking vaguely amused until she actually looks him in the eye, and then his expression turns into something taken aback. His eyes dart over to the guy he doesn’t know is going to be Zari’s ex, and they narrow before he nods in what Zari can’t believe is understanding.
“C’mon, love, let’s go. He ain’t worth the trouble.”
Zari’s body tenses at the words, and she grabs the time courier. “What do you know?” she snaps, and when they get back to the ship she doesn’t wait to debrief, just makes a beeline for her room, closes the door, and bursts into tears before she can even sit.
She slides down the door instead, hand over her mouth, and sobs.
When she’s done, she’s not sure if she feels better. What she does know is that she feels drained and also she should hydrate.
Instead, she just sits there, wrapping her right hand around her left wrist, her head as empty as Floriano fucking XXI said it was.
She doesn’t know how long she’s been there when someone knocks on the door. She swallows, uncomfortable, and waits.
“Zari?” John asks through the door, and Zari rolls her eyes, feeling a surge of pointless anger. She could just not answer, or she could tell him to back off, but for some reason, she doesn’t. She’s tired of sitting on the floor, and she wants a reason to stand up. She wants to see someone else’s face, wants to rant at them or fight with them or something, and John will do, so she gets to her feet and opens the door.
John’s got his hands in the pockets of his slacks and he raises his eyebrows at her when he sees her, but says nothing. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels like maybe he doesn’t know what to say. And yet he’s here.
Hasn’t had enough punishment for one day, huh?
“What do you want, John?” Zari snaps. There’s no reason to snap at him, especially after she snapped at him for no reason before, but she feels like the walls she’s put around herself are made of cardboard right now, easily crumpled and torn, so she kind of has more important things to worry about.
He doesn’t blink and doesn’t leave, and Zari wonders if it’s just that he’s used to people talking to him in nasty tones of voice or if he noticed that she didn’t tell him to go away. It’s more of a relief than it should be, given that Zari’s just getting out of a crying jag and looks like a total mess. She should be embarrassed, and she’s not not embarrassed, but at least it’s just John. He’s seen her naked and seen her vulnerable, and, maybe more importantly, she’s seen the same from him.
So she keeps her chin up and doesn’t tell him to leave.
John doesn’t answer her question about what he even wants from her, and he doesn’t ask her what’s wrong. He doesn’t ask her who it was that she saw, even though she knows he saw her see him. She suspects that he realized her Floriano sighting might’ve gotten to her for some reason. Zari is too on edge to really like anything right now, but she almost likes the idea that he might be willing to find out why.
She can’t stop thinking about the post she was gonna make, like a million before, baring her soul, and how she was gonna delete it, gonna bite the words back because it’s all between her and her therapist. The rest of the world doesn’t need to know her damage.
But John listened to her in the murder house, which means he already knows at least something about her damage, definitely knows that she has damage at all. So does everyone else on the ship.
And tonight Zari’s tired of holding back.
She still doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t blurt out what’s wrong, doesn’t rant. She just thinks she’s tired of holding back, and stays held back anyway, standing silent in the doorway.
“Your make-up’s running,” John says, gesturing in the general direction of Zari’s face, and she takes a step backwards. He grimaces and puts his hands in his pockets again. “Yeah, sorry,” he mutters, looking down at the floor. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” Zari says sharply, crossing her arms over her chest. “And I know it’s running.” She’s just exhausted, and there’s something unappetizing about baring her face, even of pain. Even to him.
John nods and wanders his way into her room, brushing past her. She doesn’t stop him as he pads his way across his floor in his sock feet until he reaches her vanity. He grabs some make-up and nail polish remover and holds it up to her. “I can do it,” he tells her, voice awkward.
“You want to help me take my make-up off,” Zari says. Floriano—and no, Floriano XXI wasn’t his real name, his real name was fricking Hugh or something—always complained about her make-up. He said she looked better natural and that she took too much time to put it on and take it off when it just made her look ugly and fake. The memory of back then makes Zari bristle now. “What, you think I look prettier without it?”
“That’s not what I said,” John tells her, tetchy. “Just thought it might get in your eyes. It’s all fucked anyway, I don’t see why you’d keep it on. Not exactly part of your look.”
The funny thing is that Floriano didn’t actually like her without make-up. He just liked her with make-up he didn’t notice. When she didn’t have any on, he’d say she looked tired and like she wasn’t taking care of herself. She’d just keep her mouth shut, because the one time she called him out on it, he pushed her and then back-handed her (or, as he called it, bitch-slapped). Unsurprisingly, after that she decided it wasn’t worth it to explain things he didn’t want to understand.
But John’s right. Running make-up isn’t part of her look and never has been.
“Fine,” she says in response to his offer, because she doesn’t want to be alone.
John gets on the bed, settling to sit cross-legged, and, taking the same position, she faces him.
She closes her eyes to let him apply the make-up remover. She can feel the tension in her shoulders, and she’s sure it’s so not good for her muscles, but she doesn’t try to relax. “I have dark circles,” she warns. “Like the darkest circles ever.”
“I can probably give you a run for your money, love,” John says. “Any of us can.”
He’s gentle with the very expensive towelettes he’s using, and Zari can’t help a smile, just a little upturn of her still-painted lips. “Where’d you learn how to remove make-up?”
John snorts. “Punk days,” he says. “Nat and I’d go to the store and buy half their eyeliner and eyeshadow and nail polish, all that shite, and we’d just cake the stuff on.”
“Sounds like it looked awful,” Zari says. “Are you done?”
“Yeah, with the eyes.”
Zari opens her eyes and looks at John, who’s taking out another cleansing wipe. There’s a dirty one discarded on the bed, but for once she doesn’t care about the stain potential.
John’s not actually that good at removing make-up—his skin must’ve looked awful when he was younger—and she’ll probably have to take off some of it herself, but for now she lets him do what he’s doing. She’s never had a boyfriend willing to help her with this. She’s pretty sure the idea of doing this never crossed any of their minds, though she can’t say that helping them with the little things ever crossed her mind either. Not after the first one.
Compared to what Zari’s had before, John’s head and shoulders above, which is kind of sad, since he’s a self-destructive asshole with obvious psychological issues and a drinking problem and a crazy fucked up past.
But at least he seems to actually appreciate her. At least he seems to get that the make-up and the glitz is part of her, not just something to look beyond to seem open and sensitive. At least he’s actually nice to her, and the first time she kissed him she didn’t think about her image even once, and she’s letting him do this right now and even wondering if she should just tell him what she’s sure he wants to know. Wondering if it’d make her feel better. She just doesn’t want to give that much away.
“Our make-up? It did look awful,” John agrees, pulling Zari out of her thoughts, which is probably a good thing, because she’s starting to have the kind of thoughts she’s pretty sure people have before falling in love, and she’s not here for that. Not yet. “And you should’ve seen the hair. I tried for a mohawk, but without cutting the sides, and tried to dye it black, but didn’t manage it. I ended up going blond instead, somehow.”
Zari laughs. “Wow. Sounds like me experimenting when I was twelve.”
John gives her a crooked smile, but it disappears as he starts taking off her lipstick and his brow furrows. “This stuff stays on better’n Nat’s did,” he mutters.
“It’s all my brand,” Zari offers when he’s done.
“Wish I’d had your brand when I was younger,” John says. “Then maybe Mucous Membrane wouldn’t’ve looked like a bunch of wankers.”
“You’re telling me you weren’t a bunch of wankers?”
John laughs, brief and bright. “Yeah, we were. But we had some fun.” He shrugs. “All my friends from back then. Mucous Membrane, the Newcastle Crew...”
“Newcastle Crew?”
“Simple explanation is that we did magic together,” John says. “I stuck with it longer’n most of the others, ‘cause no matter what I might’ve said, or what they might’ve said, I was always one of the fuck-ups. The one making choices, and they usually weren’t the right ones.” John shakes his head. “Right up to the people I got involved with. Not my friends.” John looks up at Zari. “You know.”
She thinks she might.
“At least by then I was long past able to do a glamour to hide the bruises.”
“Lucky,” Zari says. Her voice is thin, but John said you know and she does and he’s telling her all these things and Zari believes in giving as good as you get. “All I had was make-up.” She tries for a laugh. “Made my tutorials way harder.” She swallows. “His name was Floriano XXI.” She spells out the Roman numeral because that’s what he did. She used to wonder if he even knew the actual number that XXI represents, but was always too afraid to ask, worried that he’d think she was calling him dumb or something.
John knows, though, and he snorts loudly. “What, 21st in the proud line of Florianos?”
That actually makes Zari laugh, and she says, “Stupid, right? I was stupid.”
John gives her a look that she can only describe as unconvinced, and she tries for a casual shrug. “What? It’s true. That’s what happens when you date someone because you’re a star but he’s a bigger star than you and it’ll look amazing to be on his arm. We literally moved in together because it was good for our image and everyone thought we were so cute.” The words come out bitter. She remembers scrolling through all the comments on their pictures and seeing hundreds of people gushing about how great they were together, #goals after #goals.
She remembers being proud of herself for putting on such a great show.
John doesn’t say anything. Maybe he doesn’t actually know what to say. He takes her hand, and she shivers.
He’s moved on to nail polish remover, and she looks to the side and blinks back tears. She has no idea why. She wasn’t even planning to remove her nail polish today, but John’s hands on hers make her heart pound in a way she actually likes, so she doesn’t tell him that. Also, she’s afraid that if she does say anything, she’ll cry, but that’s actually secondary.
“Can’t say it’s any worse than the idiot who lived with a bloke known as Murder Dave for two months because he had central heating and was all right in bed,” John tells her. “Mostly the central heating bit, though.”
Zari lets out a surprised laugh, and then claps her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no, I shouldn’t laugh.”
John gives her—or her hand, at least, because he’s still removing the nail polish very, very slowly—a smile. “Why? Murder Dave was a shite name, and he probably wasn’t good enough in bed to put up with him. But he had plenty of whiskey, too, shouldn’t forget that, and we were both pissed most of the time. He was a mean drunk, just like Dad, and bigger’n me. He liked hitting things.” John snorts. “Liked hitting me.”
Zari swallows. “Floriano liked hitting me too. I think he got off on hitting a girl.” John grimaces, and Zari takes some shaky breaths before asking, “Wanna know the truth?”
(Something I’ve never told anyone before?
But she doesn’t say that part, because she doesn’t want him to know.)
“Sure,” John says. He moves onto the other hand. She knows he’s taking forever on purpose, but it’s not like she minds. It makes the whole thing easier, when she’s already baring so much of herself. She’s matching John confession for confession, but it’s not a competition. Maybe it’s commiseration.
“I still decided I loved him,” she says. “He was my first real relationship, y’know? I mean, PR was involved, but I really thought we had something, and he was handsome, and he was nice at first, and when he got violent I just...I thought, well, he’s good for my brand. I thought, well, I made my bed, I can lie in it. I thought, well, he’s nice most of the time. I thought, well, maybe I actually deserve it.”
“You didn’t,” John says, an edge to his voice, and Zari rolls her eyes.
“I know that now,” she says, and it’s not really a lie. “I got therapy.” Her voice softens. “But back then, I just thought that maybe what everyone else saw was realer than what I did. That I was actually my image. Floriano wanted me to be real, but he didn’t, he just wanted me to be fake, but for him, and I didn’t want to do that. But I did realize that it was easier and...safer to just be Dragon Girl, to just be that part of me and lock away everything else. After what happened with my agent, which, don’t ask, and then Floriano, I decided I was fine with PR stunts, but not with trying to love people or actually get with them or show them all of me. I decided I couldn’t and I wouldn’t.”
John looks up at her, now, with a gentle expression on his face. He’s done with the nail polish, but he still has her hand in his. She glances away, blinking up at the ceiling to keep up her not-crying-in-front-of-John streak.
“I’d tell myself Dave was nice enough too, for a violent wanker,” John says. “Astra was two, so it was well after I’d left Natalie and gone solo in the...dark magic business, and I didn’t have a high bar. I still saw my friends, after I started out on my own, but sometimes I’d fuck off for a bit, get…” John shrugs and knocks on his skull. “Scrambled in the head, decide to be the kind of person I knew I was. My friends were stupid, like you lot. They’d try to find me when I’d drop off the map, but I’d find someone to stay with. Dave was probably the worst of them.” He lets out a sigh. “Well. If there’s anyone who deserved it, it was me.”
Zari narrows her eyes at him and squeezes his hand. “Wait, are you really telling me you still think you deserved Murder Dave?”
John snorts. He doesn’t respond directly, but he gives her a bitter half-smile and says, “A learning experience, wasn’t it?”
Zari takes in a sharp breath, because she knows exactly what he’s talking about (she didn’t deserve it, but maybe it was for the best that it happened, right? Things don’t just happen, she didn’t go through that for nothing). There’s a charged silence for a few moments, and then John takes in his own shaky breath and says, “Sometimes I think I should’ve just stayed with Murder Dave, let him live up to his name. Everyone would’ve been better off.”
“Don’t say that,” Zari tells him. “Please.”
“Aye, love,” John says easily, and Zari locks the words away. She’s not sure yet if this is healing or too real. Maybe it’s both.
“How’d it end?” Zari asks.
“Bastard broke my jaw and I let a nurse call a friend to come get me while I was off my face on painkillers. He dragged me over to Nat’s place, and I crashed there for a bit, until my jaw wasn’t wired shut, and then I went back to the house. Settled down for a bit, did my job, buggered off a few more times, and then Nat died and the rest...” John shakes his head. “The rest is in the past.”
Zari doesn’t push. Neither of them are ready for that.
“How’d it end for you?” John asks.
“I didn’t get my jaw broken, at least,” Zari says.
“Aye, but how’d it end for you?”
Zari takes a deep breath and says, “He broke my wrist instead, and I went home. I mean, I literally went home, with a broken wrist. It’s like I forgot about the hospital, and...and worrying about my image. I just wanted my parents, even though I knew they’d be disappointed in me.”
“Were they?”
“I actually don’t know,” Zari admits. “I was in, like, a lot of pain. But my dad threatened a civil suit against Floriano if he ever even came near me again, and Floriano was all about money, so. I just lost him.”
“Good riddance, yeah?”
Zari swallows and nods. “Good riddance.” She likes to think that she felt that way at the time, but she’s not sure if she did. She remembers crying about how easy it was to keep Floriano away from her, how hurt she felt that she sacrificed so much and he wasn’t willing to fight for her, that he didn’t even give her the dignity of getting to tell him to fuck off.
For them, there was no ending. There was just a broken wrist and a fragile spirit and a girl who didn’t want to give an inch to anyone anymore because she knew they’d just take as many miles as they wanted, right up until they ran out of road.
She looks at John and he looks back at her, and she wonders if he’s picturing her like she’s picturing him. More insecure, more open to believing that someone who slept beside them wouldn’t be willing to break their bones in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
Younger and stupider, or younger and freer, or younger and too screwed up to understand how screwed up they were, or just younger.
Zari looks at the first man she’s ever been with who’s willing to give as good as he gets, and she says, “I’m better off with you. We all are.”
John clenches his jaw. He probably wants to protest, but, to his credit, he just nods. Seconds stretch into minutes, and Zari’s not sure if it’s awkward or not. The silence and John’s closeness and all the words they’ve spoken still in the air around them are almost meditative, so she guesses not. She’s not sure if things have changed or if she’s only noticed just now.
John speaks, and Zari’s only barely pulled out of her reverie to listen to him. They’ve been listening to each other, and it’s caught her off-guard. “I like you. All of you.”
Zari doesn’t even have to try to smile. A tear slips down her cheek, but at least this time her make-up doesn’t run. “Thanks.”
“Thanks,” John says back, and Zari moves to sit next to him, putting her head on his shoulder.
Neither of them elaborate.