Archive of Our Own

There was a plan. There was always a careful plan. Clark held his subject in his peripheral vision and cut a wide swathe around the club chairs in the center of the room, where Daniel was talking to a Division 3 psychiatrist, as he had been for days. Days Clark spent knowing second-hand about his husband’s memory loss but unable to get from the ship he was on to where the man was being held. Tested. Probed as a security risk.  Clark took an observational seat on the sofa at the edge of the room - in Daniel’s eyeline, but indirectly.

This was well-practiced work, what he was best at, but impossible under these circumstances. How was he stilling his face? How was he not leaping from his seat to embrace the love of his life? To absorb him? To subsume him?

The doctor continued from where they’d briefly paused at Clark’s entry. “You were telling me about the earliest thing you could remember.” He gave Daniel a moment, while he performatively referenced the tablet on his lap. “Driving your son to school? Can you hear anything in this memory?” The psychiatrist probed.

“Oh... yes... laughter? I think my son was laughing.” Daniel stuttered his answer. “Buster?” He looked down at a picture, strewn among many on the coffee table between the two men. Clark’s jaw and throat grew unbearably tight, and he swallowed the sound forcing itself from his depths. “We were on the phone... with... I don’t know, he must have been funny...” Daniel trailed off.

“You said ‘he.’ ‘He must have been funny.’ Do you hear a man’s voice?”

“I must have. I don’t know. It’s right there, on the tip of my... that’s not right.” Daniel sputtered, eyes searching the room.  They landed on the man on the sofa - maybe he could help. 

“Oh.” Daniel’s mouth was frozen in an O, which he repeated: “oh...oh...oh....I know you...”

Clark inhaled deeply. “Good.” He offered the slight reassuring smile he’d offered this man countless times across countless rooms: cocktail parties, parent-teacher nights, work meetings, crowded bars. “I know you, too.”

Daniel’s eyes roamed the man frantically: the cane, his chest, his eyes, his lap, his hand on the head of the cane. Flashing through his mind: the cane leaning on a wall, that chest bare, those eyes opening slowly, his thighs touching this man’s, that hand touching him.

“I know you...” Daniel’s eyes brimming with tears, the tense squint of frustrated effort giving way to eyes wide with wonder. 

Clark could not continue as the detached observer and rose to close the distance between him and his partner with a few long strides.  “Specialist Debussy,” the psychiatrist called out sternly, attempting to maintain control of the delicate session. If Clark heard, he gave no indication. He took a seat on the coffee table, knee to knee with Daniel and searched his face, searched his eyes, attempting to read the emotions flitting across his face so rapidly: confusion, relief, awe, recognition.

He deliberately reached into the man’s personal space to lean his cane against the arm of his chair, and then offered his hands, upturned on his own knees.

Daniel tracked every movement carefully. Who was this? He searched his mind, where he had reliably been able to find nothing for days now. He squinted again, as if that might help something in the tall man’s eyes come into focus. He looked down at the upturned palms and put his hands in them, watching with curiosity this not-a-stranger’s thumbs draw circles over his knuckles.

His gaze shifted a few inches to the photographs strewn across the table. The same man, unrecognizable in two dimensions but so familiar here in the flesh.

“You’re Clark.” Clark nodded slightly as Daniel searched his face again. “We’re together?”

“Even when we’re apart.”

Daniel sighed and melted forward, hot tears dripping on their hands. 

Clark’s instinct was to gather Daniel in his arms. He knew the precise way to soothe the man. But this man? How could he offer any solace to someone who didn’t know him? Didn’t know their son? What if any attempt to close the distance widened the gulf?

He erred on the side of incaution and shifted both of Daniel’s hands into one of his much larger ones, using his free hand to rub Daniel’s back as the confused man sobbed uncontrollably.

It had been days of uncertainty and questioning on Daniel’s part. He knew the mission. Sort of. He understood his office on the bus. He knew that his colleagues had been killed. He knew that he’d met an old college friend who wanted to know something about the airship. 

It had been days of uncertainty and anger on Clark’s part. David had taunted him on the airship with knowledge of Daniel’s memory loss and treason but had let him live, while others died. He knew that his husband was suffering. He knew that he should have killed the man who caused it long ago. 

Daniel was now almost in this man’s lap. A deep hiccuppy inhale, and he was hit with the smell of cedar - the same smell that wafted from his own clothes - mixed with a medicinal balm smell. “Oh!” He straightened up and searched his husband’s eyes again as flashes of a bed and bandages flitted through his mind. A hospital bedside holding a man’s - this man’s - hand while connected to wires, that smell rising from the heat of his burns.

“Oh. You know me.”

“Yes.” Clark smiled softly. “Very well. And you know me very well.”

Daniel shifted forward to get closer to this smell. These memories. He interlaced their knees with no shame as this man’s long thigh reached a physical stopping point. And he dropped his forehead against Clark’s chest, inhaling deeply. Drinking in scents and flashes of memory.

Clark let his chin drop on Daniel’s head, rubbing his back, his hands, humming reassurances. “It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.” An endless string, but when Clark came to “I love you,” he felt Daniel tense. Clark stilled his movements. Held his breath. Had he pushed too far? He hadn’t meant to - saying “I love you” to Daniel was like breathing.

Daniel gripped Clark’s hand desperately, curling forward, now fully on his side in his husband’s lap, openly sobbing.

“I....love....you.” He hiccupped desperately, struggling for breath. “I... doh...doh...don’t.... know... whoyouare... but... I... love... you....too.” 

The last syllable so plaintive, striking Clark electrically deep in his abdomen, and he folded forward too, covering his partner. The tears which had been welling in his eyes began to roll hot and slow over his cheeks.  Daniel took deep, ragged breaths and stilled. 

Clark had been right: Daniel needed to be held, tightly.

After some minutes, Clark guided Daniel upright. “Would you like to come home with me?”

The long-forgotten psychiatrist cleared his throat. If Daniel heard, he gave no indication.

“Yes, please. Will you tell me about who I am?”

“I like nothing more than talking about you.” Clark smirked, before correcting himself. “Other than being with you.”

Daniel handed Clark his cane, the gesture feeling soothingly natural, and they walked out of holding hand in hand, daring anyone to stop them.