Work Text:
“Hey, can you come with me to go…” Fabian trails off. The grass is damp with morning dew, Adaine can see it from her wizards tower. He’s in amongst it, jacket slung over his shoulder and the Hangman propped in the road behind him like the hero from one of the old movies that Sandra Lynn likes to watch with them.
She messages him back, knowing if she yells she’ll wake Aelwyn who in turn will wake Ragh and it will tumble into a whole household thing, rather than just her and Fabian and the slight shake in his voice.
I’ll be down in a minute.
He doesn’t send the spell back, just smiles at her and nods.
She knows what he’s like on these mornings, and more generally what it’s like overall. The sick and twisting crash of guilt that comes with being the one to survive. In the end, she didn’t love her father, not really, which she thinks probably makes it hurt less. She knows that he did though, he was his fathers son and then he killed him and peeled back each layer of what that meant one by one, until he was an exposed nerve in place of a person. She thinks she might be the lucky one, because her father always meant to hurt her.
It’s his birthday soon, she thinks as she makes her way down the steps. It’s his birthday soon, the second of July and his third since prom, and for a second a vision comes to her like a whisper. She tries not to see it, like always, the rest of her friends deserve their secrets too, but for a second as she steps out onto the grass of the lawn she is lost in the feeling of blood running down her face and down her arms. Then she’s back in her body and he’s looking at her and she knows from all the times this has happened before that he can’t smell the smoke.
His smile wavers a little when he sees her, his hands are wrapped like a boxers and his sword hangs by his side despite the early hour. She can’t quite bring herself to smile back.
“My papa has left me a gift.” He speaks first, the explanation bursting from him like a splitting seam and she sees a flash of a dream of the nine hells.
“Your birthday’s not for eleven days.” Her words sound harsh in her ears, but she can’t bring herself to soften them. She watches as his shoulders stiffen and his expression falls and she can’t help but feel like a bit of a dick. They are the same and they aren’t all at once. “Sorry.”
“No it’s - You’re right, but the gift is there now, I wanted to get it before my mother woke up.”
When she thinks of her own mother, an unimaginable gulf stretches between them so she doesn’t. She pictures a cold look on Halariel’s face instead, one that she knew from freshman year and how even in their separation Fabian’s parents still care about each other in their own specific ways.
Rather than speaking again she moves to get on the back of the Hangman, ignoring the way it shakes a little and murmurs something only partially intelligible to her. She doesn’t know what the bike says really, but she’s glad that it brings a smile and a choked laugh to Fabian. He swats at one of the handlebars as takes his place on the front of the seat in a flare of previously hidden battlesheet.
The Hangman makes short work of the journey and for a second all thoughts of vision, of forests or of fire, or loaded parental relationships are left behind in favour of the wind rushing through her hair and the warmth coming from him. She keeps her hands carefully placed on the sides of his ribcage, in a formation familiar to all of them, and heat comes off him in waves, more than the breeze cool May morning.
They stop at the wrought iron gates of Cravencroft Cemetery, the lock already discarded for the early morning mourner. She hops off the back of the bike to pull them open so he can drive through almost without stopping, it almost feels routine. He pulls the Hangman to a stop in front of a pirate ship mausoleum, twice the size of any of the rest around it and fully rigged as if ready to set off. Today the sales are up, and there are no flowers twisted in the rigging.
Adaine finds herself wanting to reach for his hand, but he is moving towards the monument before she can.
She occupies herself with watching him perform the steps of gift retrieval instead. As he turns away from her, she can see the rigid stretch of his shoulders. The tension he holds in his movements as he climbs onto the false deck. She thinks she might hate Bill Seacaster, not in the calm, complacent the way she hates her own father but in something closer to the venom of true anger. Bill Seacaster doesn’t know Fabian, not like the Bad Kids do and it's a tragedy and an insult all at once, that he still has the power to cause the crease in her friend's brow.
She smells smoke again as he climbs back down, but this time it seems to be coming from the shining gold parcel that he holds in his hands. He looks tired as he does, in the heat of the early morning sun. She sees him slumping down against the side of the ship a second before he does, moves to follow him crossing her legs so she can feel the morning dew on the grass in the space of skin between her jeans and her socks.
For a second they just sit in silence and she thinks of blood dripping down his fingertips, a vision so familiar to her it could be a scene from her own life. He leans into her shoulder and even in the shade he is still so warm.
“Are you going to open it?”
He lets out a breath of a laugh and she feels like she’d missed the joke. “My birthday’s not for eleven days.”
She makes a small noise of agreement from her throat.
“Do you ever feel guilty?”
It’s her turn to avoid his gaze. She pauses and it feels like a betrayal, to him and to Aelwyn’s cold body on the forest floor. “All the fucking time.”
Her fingers twist in the wet grass and even with him against her side, she can’t stop a chill from running through her. For a second she’s so cold she can’t feel her fingertips or remember if she took her anxiety meds, but then his hand is on her knee and she’s back in her body, the pretend ship solid against her back.
“We shouldn’t have had to do it.” And she doesn’t mean for it to but the words come out small and wet and miserable.
He gets up from beside her and for a second she is keenly aware of the absence of his body, until he reaches out a hand to pull her up with him.
This time when he speaks his voice is solid again. “We shouldn’t have had to do it.”
For the moment that can be enough for her she decides, as they make their way back to the Hangman, the bike trying to act as a guard but mostly just making divots in the soft earth.
They get back to Mordred and in their absence the house has come alive, they can hear it even from the gate. He lingers for a second on the threshold, turning the parcel over in his hands even as his expression doesn’t change. He seems almost happy and she knows that feeling herself, easy as falling into a trance after a long day.
“Ragh and Lydia said they were making waffles this morning.” She reaches her arm out towards him and he takes it, disappearing the present back into the pocket of his trousers. The door to the house is a portal to a vision of family life that neither of them quite recognise, but as they enter into it the smile that fixes to his face is radiant, all traces of the lost boy she saw in the cemetery left far behind. The house is full of laughter and sweetness and fresh cut fruit, and together they step into it and for a while she doesn’t think of anything else.