Work Text:
“You’re approved.”
He thinks he got hair in his mouth and it feels really tickly and gross, but it would make sense considering how long it had been hanging open. And how suddenly dry it had become.
“What?”
“Yes, you’re approved. We thought we’d call you in to tell you in person.” The mauve haired woman in front of them was of short and plump stature, hand clasped happily in front of her and under her chin, studying the boy’s reactions. Which, truthfully, were not a whole lot right now. “If you’d like specifics regarding our approval process he can provide them in writing, or I can just say that a couple strings were pulled. Either way you’re secure.”
Gueira’s hand was strong and heavy on Meis’s knee, his emotion mixing in a sweet and bubbly concoction through him as a vessel.
A controlled giggle starts to form in Meis’s chest and the hand glued to him starts to grab and shake, a warning of an impending eruption. “Wh-which one?”
The woman slaps a stack of papers in front of them that have too many words. “1 bedroom, one bath. Well, no bath, just a shower, but I’m sure you understand. Standard heat and appliances. A dishwasher.”
Gueira makes a noise that sounds like he’s choking. “A dishwasher?“
She nods, leaning back now, finally reaping the consequences of her decision to hold this meeting with them in front of her.
“What? We weren’t just going to let you wash your own dishes in a brand new apartment.”
He turns his head slowly to his boyfriend, seeing only an eye hidden by a flowy indigo bang falling from where the rest is pulled in a high ponytail.
“I don’t think I even know how to use a dishwasher…” he whispers, Meis nodding in enthusiastic agreement.
“I don’t remember the last time I had dishes to wash.”
“Oh,” she pipes up as she grabs something from a file cabinet to her side, swishing in her swivel chair to move.
“You’re gonna want these.” In front of Meis and Gueira’s eyes hung a pair of small gold keys, held together and identical except for the small keychains that read “Navarro” and “Anderson” respectively. The last names were a new bittersweet trait to their daily lives, using them to sign waivers and court documents, remembering what they had sorely forgotten over the past decade.
Meis reaches with a hand characterised by chipped stolen nail polish, now freshly blue and acrylic, done by a generous young burnish woman who’d gotten her livelihood back as someone with a fairly recent awakening, a quaint salon not far from their shelter.
He holds them, pressing his thumb into the grooves with a smile growing wobbly as an evening sun reflects against them from the open window.
“Now, obviously, I don’t think anyone truly reads every last letter of all the forms you have to sign but I know by now that you understand the gist of your responsibilities, which if need be, you can refer to the readings I’ll send you home with tonight. You need to attend your support group every week, keep your criminal record completely- completely- clean, and if you choose to pick up work, notify someone with the BSRA so we can work through adjusting your monetary allowance every month. We’ve allotted you enough this month to give you leeway for new linens and kitchen supplies and the like, but after this month you’ll see a drop. Not a major one, of course, you’ll have more than enough to get by as a common law couple, I assure you.” She slides a small envelope across her desk towards them.
“If you want to work and you’re having trouble finding employment, we’re always free. Don’t be afraid to call.”
Gueira almost has to scrape him off the floor when he sees a 4 digit number stamped on the shiny print piece of paper.
_*_*_*_*_
The Burnish Settlement and Reconciliation Agency was only something their Boss had seen in their dreams. Lio, along with his two generals, had one solid plan that laid no room for failure, and that was freeing them from Foresight. After the fact, though? They weren’t being killed en masse, but would their lives be valued? Would they all go to regular prison anyway? Would they end up on the streets, prone to addiction just to get by? How long would it take society to accept them again, who would take in the Burnish that needed it most? They could take down Kray, but they couldn’t fix society.
It started slow, in between criminal charges most of which they were later acquitted for. Lio had never killed a person despite the damage he and done, so there was no maximum sentence that could be given and most of what he could be charged for was arson and property damage. All three of them were supposed placed on house arrest for a maximum of 5 years, which in the end, was actually a pretty good bargain.
The only issue was that someone without anywhere to call a house doesn’t really have anywhere to be put on house arrest. While some people saw that as an excuse to put them in a maximum security prison, In that moment, they had finally felt the majority of the greater public came through for them. Though he couldn’t partake in them, he heart would swell in hearing about the people that had taken to the streets, finally forcing the government to recognize and own up to the damage they had really done to those who would be completely innocent people had they not been criminalized and victimized by them from the moment of their involuntary awakening. The criminals didn’t just not have a house, they were risking death for their existence if they didn’t leave and try to defend themselves by the same people who were persecuting them and trying tooth and nail to hurt them.
So, it was probation and community service instead. And ankle monitors. Which was a pain, but one he was thankful for. If he, the leader of Mad Burnish, took nothing more than a hit off his initial geographical freedom, it would mean so, so much more for those he had fought so hard to keep safe. The ones he didn’t know.
Plus, the community service aspect wasn’t exactly a negative, more like a perk to the job requirements of being watched like the last hotdog and a block party. All three of them took jobs with the Burning Rescue, filing paperwork and helping with cleanup, and in return, got to stay in their dormitories. They were just rooms filled with bunk beds, but it was their first look at a space that was roofed in and theirs privately in… well, longer than they could count on from memory.
The growing bad taste in their mouths that loomed with them after that had very little to do with their somewhat gracious sleeping accommodations, but rather their colleagues. It was an uncomfortable reality that they were staying in the direct care of people who had no qualms about hurting them in the past. That doesn’t just go away. On nights where Gueira would shoot in an upright position, drenched in sweat and coughing to the point of hurting himself, Lio would jump straight from the top bunk to join him in holding him as tight as Meis was next to him, knowing that Gueira wouldn’t be able to look the Burning Rescue in the eye in the the next morning, but he would. He was thankful for what they had given him, but not forgiving. This was nothing more than a means to an end if he didn’t ask for more from them, for accountability and genuine respect that looked past the black contraption tight to his foot and instead, at the fact that they were a part of the construct that forced him into wearing it in the first place.
And then there was Galo. Meis and Gueira struggled to trust him; to them he was nothing more than a two-faced fox, claiming passion for the greater good until it came to the greater good. He was too loud and too touchy, and way too interested in Lio. It only became worse when it was apparent Lio was interested in him too.
Gueira tried to pretend it didn’t break his heart at first. He was completely happy with Meis, truly, but losing the concept of Lio to a firefighter was an itch he couldn’t find it in him to scratch. It had been just the three of them for ages now. In the time they had been together they had seen their best and their rock bottoms unashamedly, unabashedly, and that’s a privilege that needed to be earned, especially for someone such as their Boss. Did Galo deserve it? He saved the world with him through sheer coincidence, it could have been anyone. That doesn’t mean he should be able to get all touchy feely with the Boss, especially if he was directly under foresight. Especially if he would have sent them right into his hands with little to no remorse just weeks prior. Meis felt the same, but he just wasn’t so vocal about it when Lio had left with Galo at the end of his night shift in the wee hours of the morning as they led in bed together, Meis just nodding and brushing his hair back through his frustrations. Meis’s only concern was that he wasn’t being manipulated. And, if he wasn’t being manipulated, this was his first taste of freedom as a 26 year old, and they should just see how it goes and be there for him should anything go wrong. He reassured him that Lio was an extremely independent person who was intelligent enough to know when a firefighter of all people was pulling a fast one on him. If he was happy to be around him like he was, Galo must have been doing something right. Gueira just sniffed and rolled over, not disagreeing but sure as hell not agreeing with him either. He was going to be there for his Boss when Galo hurt him alright, and the big beefy idiot was going to get a piece of him, too, the same way he always dreamed of popping one of those obnoxious suckers in the nose.
It wasn’t until Galo called the boys in the dead of night, his voice panicked on Lio’s phone and the other end of theirs, just flip phones they’d all been provided to keep in contact with each other, that he began to change their minds.
“Gueira? Meis?” He had asked, his voice only a little hushed.
“Uh. Gueira. Yeah?” Gueira had replied, perching himself up on an elbow with a raspy grumble.
“It’s Galo.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I figured that.”
“It’s Lio- he-” There was a pause and rustling before he continued. “He had one of his night terrors and he, I don’t know, he thought he was suffocating, he says he feels like that alot when he sleeps, but I’ve never seen him react like this once he wakes up, I don’t-”
Meis, sensing Gueira’s impending insensitive outburst at the blue haired rooster for even trying when they were already here and they could have taken care of him but “oh no, you dragged him to your bed for the night again”, tapped his boyfriend’s shoulder and snatched the phone from him.
“Hey! I was kinda using that.”
“Yeah,” Meis said, voice collected. “And now I am.” He holds the phone between his ear and his shoulder but not before teething an elastic band from his wrist and putting his hair in a bun haphazardly, sensing that his bedhead will soon have to become presentable.
“What’s going on?”
“Um,” Galo sucks in a breath. Meis could hear cars in the distance, he must have been leaning on his balcony. Where was Lio? From where Gueira was sitting, he could only hear Galo’s voice rambling, like he was sitting inside the phone itself.
“He was heaving in his sleep. Like, trying to take in really deep breaths.”
“Yeah, that happens to all of us… Is- did you try to wake him up?”
“Yeah, he normally wakes on his own.”
Meis throws his hands in front of him, nodding. “Yep, that sounds about right. You don’t wake him up.”
“Wait, why?”
Meis deadpanned. “Galo, what did Lio do when you woke him up?”
He didn’t get a reply back, just the sound of a passersby tapping heavily down the street.
“Galo, I’m not gonna ask you twice. What-did-Lio-do?”
“...I may have a back eye.”
“Bet he deserved it, too,” Gueira grumbled, receiving a slap to the bare shoulder in response from the man sitting next to him in the dark.
“And now?”
“...He kicked me out of the room.” Galo paused. “Did I do something wrong?”
“It has nothing to do with what you have or haven’t done, probably. He’s probably humiliated. Doesn’t take that kinda stuff lightly. I’m going to come talk to him.”
“But-”
“Don’t tell me not to. I’m coming there, you’re not coming here, you’re not going to be able to get him out of the room with the state he’s in. And Gueira’s coming too. He’s gonna take you on a little walk.” He craned his head to an already tense Gueira, ready to pick a fight. “Ain't that right, Gueira?” He spat through grit teeth.
Meis hung up before the redhead could curse him out.
When they arrived after trekking the city sidewalks for no less than half an hour, it was truly a scene to be studied. Meis went straight to the bedroom, and after knocking on the door and identifying himself, he was let in to find a curled and shaking Lio in desperate need of emotional de-escalation. Galo, on the other hand, was leaned back on the couch with a far look in his eyes and his arms crossed. Gueira sat next to him on the edge of the cushions, not feeling bad for him but rather for Lio, who he wished he was allowed to see and provide comfort to, but instead was exiled into helping the firefighter “understand”, or some shit. He wasn’t ever going to understand. It was useless to bother.
When Gueira glanced over to him he saw the telltale path of recently dried tears down his face, and knew he wasn’t going to be able to be that cruel. A grown man just cried over his Boss, that had to count for something, he guessed. But it wasn’t like he was actually concerned for him or anything.
“I, Um. I don’t think it was your fault. You know that, right?”
Galo just shook his head. “No.”
He reached an arm over to the other, scratching it idly. “I’m not saying it wasn’t, don’t get your hopes up. I’m saying it probably wasn’t. We all have the same dream.”
“Wh...what happens in that dream?”
Gueira just shrugs. “We die.”
Galo shivered visibly though he tried to suppress it.
“Yup. Shitty, shitty, fucked up, shitty deaths from a shitty, shitty man who wanted us dead because he thought we were shitty. When you wake him up touching him he’s not going to be able to differentiate you from him. So stop doing that.”
Galo laughed coldly. “That was a part of the plan.”
They sat in silence then. Well, that was productive.
Until, that is, Galo spoke up a few minutes later, turning to him and grabbing a pillow he could hug into his chest.
“So it is my fault.”
Gueira chewed on his lip. “I gave you the half truth and you obviously aren’t going to sit with that like a normal person, so do you want the full one? It’s not as glamorous.”
“Please, anything. I need to fix this.”
“No, no, see, you aren’t going to fix this. It doesn’t matter how much you try, you can’t change him, or- or what he wanted for himself and what he tried to do for other people like him because…” He clenched his fists into the bottom of his own turquoise T-shirt. “Because he was trying to save people like him, and like us, from people like you! Don’t you get that? You’re a part of why we’re here in the first place! You didn’t start it but you sure as fuck perpatuated it! And now you’ve slithered into his life and he thinks he loves you but you can’t help him.”
Galo tried and failed at keeping the hot globs of tears from rolling down his cheeks, wiping them away silently.
“But I really love him,” he sniffs.
Gueira almost snorted. “And what does that look like, Thymos?”
Galo wanted so desperately to get angry at the gangly man caved in on himself next to him, but he knew he couldn't. He knew exactly where he was coming from.
He blinks away what’s still hanging on his eyelashes. “I,” he starts, sucking in a hot breath. “He got really embarrassed when he tried to load the dishwasher after I already showed him how to do it once and accidentally put Dawn liquid in the detergent spot. Soap went all over the floor and I found him trying to scrub it all away without me finding out. We sat in the bubbles for a bit because they made him smell like oranges and I showed him that you could actually reblow the bubbles if you stuck them in an “O” you make with your hands. We cleaned it up together and he wasn’t upset anymore by the time we were finished and I was able to make him breakfast. Did you know he loves pancakes?”
Gueira’s shoulders slumped. “Well, no-”
“loves them. I’m going to surprise him with really thick, fluffy pancakes I found a recipe for. Like, Huge ones. Massive ones. He won’t even know what hit him. He probably doesn’t even know they can get so honkin’ big.”
He smiles softly, wiping his eyes with both hands.
“His favourite song is Into you by Ariana Grande. I wouldn’t have expected that and I don’t know, maybe you wouldn’t have either, but if you give him a set of headphones or a speaker he’ll dance if he’s comfortable with you. He didn’t around me, not always, but he will now. I know he would have danced with you too, it’s not even a question.”
Gueira just looked at his booted feet, twiddling them in an emotion he couldn’t quite pick out.
“What I wanna say is... I know who he is as a person. Not what he was made out to be. I even love that part of him because I know what really went into it all! Not in the way you do, obviously. You guys have something that I won’t ever try to match or take away. Like, that’s yours and yours only. I’ll stay away from that. But… and I won’t say this to try and take accountability away from how I’ve hurt him. I’ve hurt him and I can’t change that. But I fell into the same trap as everyone else did in believing… you know. And I was just trying to do what made him happy. I- fuck, Gueira, I thought you guys were criminals. Nothing less, nothing more. I thought they did what they did to every criminal, you know? Gave you a fair trial and put you in prison if need be but the problem is that you didn’t even deserve that. You didn’t deserve to do stuff that would even consider you a criminal to survive. Nobody deserves that.”
“Well I don’t exactly deserve your pity, either.”
“It’s not “pity”, it’s the truth! It’s the truth. You should never have been forced to be criminals, you should have never have had to give up your entire life for something you couldn’t control and had the entire world against you because of one man, basically. You try to take that back and you become criminals. That’s fucked. And I saw you as one. I’m sorry.”
Gueira shook his head slowly, not looking at him but rather somewhere in the distance.
“What does apologizing to me have to do with Lio?”
“Well… I know who he is now. And when I say it’s not pity, I mean it. I didn’t take him in out of pity, and I didn't take him out to lunch and take him grocery shopping with me because of pity. I didn’t keep him from burning down a city because I think he’s a dirty crook and I needed to bring him to justice. It’s because he deserves a future after all this was done, and I wanted to finish it with him alive, and have him be comfortable and happy just because he deserved it, and I didn’t even know him yet, I just knew he was innocent. And good. He was angry and he had every right to be but I knew that anger wouldn’t be near as well understood as it’s been if he harmed another person. And that’s the kicker. Through all the pain and anguish he felt, he never wanted to hurt anyone back. And he was still almost pushed to that edge. I’m ashamed someone as strong willed and beautiful could have ever been seen as something less.”
“ You’re privileged to get to know him more than I ever will. I know he means the world to you. I want to take care of him because I love who he is, that’s what you do when you love someone. I owe him the world but I’d give it to him for fun. I’d really like it if you could let me care for him too?”
“...You’ll never be Burnish.”
“I don’t expect to be.”
“You know exactly what I mean by that. It’s the reason you’re out here and Meis is in there.” He pats at the pocket of his jacket, cursing when he finds it empty, feening for a smoke.
“He still loves you too, you know. I’ll never keep him from loving you.”
Gueira turned away from him to hide his face, hoping the crack in his voice wouldn’t give him away.
“It,” he swallows. “It was just the three of us forever. That's it. I can’t help but feel like it’s so backwards that suddenly he’s not with us as much anymore, on our hip, and it’s over a firefighter. I’so fuckin twisted.”
Before Galo could speak, he piped up again harshly, but it was hard to sound tough when there was water behind every word. “You wouldn’t be able to keep him from loving us. He does whatever the fuck he wants. Always has. And, he chose to take us in as those who could really understand him and support him. Really, he doesn’t need anybody else.”
He turned to him one more time before getting up and walking out the door on his own, sighing.
“So if he still chose you alongside us, you’re not as bad I thought.”
Galo didn’t hide how his lips turned up a little when he heard the door slam seconds later.
“I’m not as bad as he thought.”
_*_*_*_*_
The walk didn’t happen, but things were a little smoother from there. Not by much, but some progress is better than none at all.
Galo would make an extra plate of spaghetti when he could, piling on parmesan the way the Burnish seemed to like it and smiling when they would sit at the dining table in the Burning Rescue HQ and scarf it down until they were full, finding a bit of comfort in seeing weight form around their bones. He’d invite them out for drinks on the weekends and sometimes they would even accept the offer, realizing that shots hit a little differently as a Non-burnish and having to crash on the floor of Galo’s tiny apartment, knowing the HQ was just a little to far away for a couple of wobbly drunkards (and Ignis would kill him for bringing them into his sight while inebriated).
That got better. Unfortunately, other things took a little more time.
It took two years to bring Kray Foresight to justice and have Burnish displaced into old commercial buildings for shelter, and even longer than that for social services such as Burnish Trauma Centered Therapy to become a program even taught in social work curriculum, so they never really could heal until then. When they could, it would be a slow and rocky journey.
Only counting the casualties from Kray Foresight and his Freeze Force Alone, there would be at least 20,000 Burnish killed under him, and that was a small number taken mostly from the Parnassus and not counting the undocumented peoples that were killed without a trace, or those wiped of their personhood at the plight of their awakening.
Meis and Gueira and Lio knew them, though. They remembered their faces, and their smiles and what it looked like when they were as comfortable as they could get in the situation they were in. Babies they would take in and how Lio would hold them to let their mother sleep, and how, if they lived long enough, he’d watch them walk for the first time, seeing those milestones in a settlement miles off the grid and crumbling under their feet. That was the kind of thing you couldn’t kill.
When the memorial in the middle of the city went up, the boys were no longer wearing tattered leather but instead a fresh pair of bell bottom jeans, a red puff coat with a matching scarf and a white blouse that put the old one to shame. Lio had worked tirelessly with the city, reaching at that last dollar to have a statue erected, even after he had to beg tooth and nail for funding for the newly built Burnish housing. He thought he had lost hope when Burning Rescue had pulled through with a massive donation after about a year of offhanded fundraising. Galo had seen lio cry before, but not like that.
Meis and Gueira sandwiched him in between them as Lio spoke on the podium on that white and cold day, allowing him to use them as his composure. What stood before them was bittersweet:
It was a single burnish person, androgynous in nature, standing on a tall pedestal and holding up above their head a single burnish flare, solar powered and bright pink and blue. The idea he had commissioned the artist for was that they were untouchable now. They had risen above everything they once believed they couldn’t, and the burnish now had the chance to reach a point in society that allowed them to be raised as equals. The fire would burn even when it was dark, and it would represent every Burnish who’s fire went out before the Promare had left of their own accord. It was laid on the exact coordinates of the center of the late Parnassus, where Lio’s core would have been.
As they walk home with linked arms and the snow builds up in their already damp hair, they silently thank whatever god is out there that they no longer have to associate that place with ash getting stuck in their hair instead.
_*_*_*_*_
“Aye. How about this one?”
“Darlin’, that’s blue. We’re lookin’ for a navy.”
“Isn’t that all the same?”
“No. Get this one instead.” Meis reaches between the arms holding up two shower curtains to snatch the plaid navy ones from the rack that Gueira blocks.
Gueira grumbles, following the cart Meis pulls into the next aisle of their local Target.
“Well can we get the red towels?”
“But it doesn’t match. If we have guests over I can’t have em look at mismatchin’ towels, babe.”
“They’re forced to look at your mismatching… uh. Your mismatching face?”
Meis blinks, waiting for the droopy chuckle to escape his curly haired boyfriend, only to pat his cheeks a little too hard and pull the red towels into the cart with a soft thud.
“Yer lucky yer pretty.”
Later that night, after setting up an old box TV with a football game on the dresser near their closet door, Meis sat laid between Gueira’s legs, puffing a cigarette happily.
“Meisie,” he piped up, his hands thumbing a braid into his partner’s freshly washed hair. It smelled like micellar water and ginger, and castor oil and maple, a combination made from the big bottle of conditioner Gueira had always eyed in the drug store but never had the chance to buy.
“You’re gonna stink up the apartment like that. This isn’t a shack in bum fuck nowhere.”
“Hm,” he sighs, breathing a puff of smoke from his mouth, some trailing haphazardly from his nostrils, almost glowing in the deep orange light. “I’know. Habit. Sorry.” His voice is gruff as he reaches over momentarily to snuff it out in the ashtray, a silly looking clay contraption Lio had made for them when they stole air dry clay for the kids one night. It was amazing that he had managed to hold onto it.
“You done yet?” He asks, his chin tilted just so his eyes could reach to see Gueira’s face, less freckled now that they were inside more and more, but still red cheeked and warm.
“Just about. You need to be patient, you have a mop on your head the length of the freeway.” As he finishes he drops it and sighs, staring into the eyes that look up at him and running light hands to drape over his shoulders.
“It’s warm,” Meis whispers, having nothing else truly to say, trying to fill the silence that is otherwise occupied with gazing a little to intently at Gueira’s lips.
“Good thing you’re burnish. You can probably deal with it.”
He chortles a little, shaking his head. “Dealt with enough heat in our lifetimes, hm?”
He reaches now, calling Gueira to bend over him and peck his lips gingerly. “If this is all we have to deal with for now on, I think we’ll be okay.”
“I love you. And the air conditioning. You know that, right?”
“Which one more?”
“...I think that’s a discussion for another time.”
“You’re an asshole... Anyway, can you redo my braid? I like it when you play with my hair.”
Patience, in the end, knew how to become of them both, somehow. Some in smaller ways than others, but important all the same.
To them, anyway.