Work Text:
Angel is deep in thought when Geordi claims their attention by clearing his throat.
The two were eating lunch together in the breakroom. They took their lunch together often, and agreed to take it later in the day to ensure they could chat without nosy coworkers overhearing their conversations.
“So how are things going with David?”
A loaded question. Not that Geordi knew that.
They look at him for a moment before taking a bite of food out of avoidance.
He winces. “Not good then?”
Angel shakes their head and swallows their food before saying, “I mean… it’s not bad?”
Geordi gives them a sympathetic look.
“Okay, don’t look at me like that. Things are good,” they assure.
He raises his eyebrows, not quite believing them.
They sigh and cross their arms over their chest. “I just… I feel like there’s something off. Don’t get me wrong, he treats me well, I feel great when I’m around him, but…”
“But…?” he prompts after a minute of Angel trying to find the right words to say.
“He’s just so guarded!”
He cocks his head. “That’s it?”
“Yes,” they lean over the table to accentuate their point. “He barely talks to me about his life. His parents are dead and he doesn’t have siblings, so there’s no family to meet or anything. But he barely mentions his friends at all. Hell, his best friend is his roommate and I don’t even know the guy’s name! Let alone been over to their place. I’ve asked to come over too, and there’s always some kind of excuse.” Geordi’s eyebrows creep upwards in shock at each statement.
“He doesn’t even talk about work. And it’s not like I don’t ask! I ask all the fucking time but all he gives me are these bullshit non-answers.” They lean back in their chair and throw their hands up. “It’s been months and we see each other all the time and I feel like I barely know him.”
“Wow,” he remarks. “Yeah, that is a bit of a red flag.”
Angel sighs and takes another defeated bite of their food.
“Wait, you said he worked in private security, right?”
Angel nods. “That’s the only thing I’ve managed to get out of him about work.”
Geordi’s eyes widened. “Angel,” he says, “what if he’s a secret agent or something?”
They stop moving to give him a deadpan look. “Like in the FBI?”
“Or the CIA,” he says confidently. “Could be either.” Angel snorts at the thought.
“Likely story.” They briefly entertain the thought before moving through other possibilities. Then they think of something that makes their demeanor drop completely.
“Geordi, what if he’s cheating?” Their eyes dart around, reflecting their scattered thoughts on the matter. “Like, what if I’m his side piece or something? That’s why I haven’t been over to his place; he’s in a relationship with his fucking roommate!”
Geordi’s face paled. He tried to think of a reason why that wouldn’t be the case. It seemed like a catastrophic leap, or maybe he just wanted it to be for Angel’s sake.
“Hold on, you said you’re seeing him tonight?”
Angel nods, worry planting itself firmly inside of them.
“So ask him about it then.”
Angel narrows their eyes. “See, that would be the best thing to do but…” they trail off. They didn’t like confrontation, as forward as they were.
“Do it, Angel,” he encourages. “It’ll be better to find out now than further down the line.”
They roll their eyes because he was right and they knew it, but that didn’t mean they had to like it.
~
The worry inside of them took root and grew gnarled limbs, reaching ever up and out. It was blossoming by the time David was sitting next to them on their couch, watching some TV show they put on without thinking.
Their stomach was churning at the anxiety of possibly having to break up with him tonight. And then do they just tell his roommate— no, his boyfriend that he cheated with them? Perhaps this is what they get for dating the guy who accused them of stalking before even knowing their name.
Maybe he was just a really private guy after all. They supposed there was only one way to really find out.
“So why haven’t I met your roommate yet?” There was probably a more delicate way to go about it. Not that it mattered now that the words escaped from their mouth, sometimes they were about as graceful as a bull in a china shop.
“This again?” he sighed.
“Yeah,” they insisted. “With how little you actually tell me, it’s starting to feel like you’re hiding something.”
He stiffens and looks them square in the eye. “And what the hell would I be hiding?”
Did he seem taken aback because nobody likes to be accused of keeping secrets? Or were they actually right about the roommate? Maybe he was a secret agent after all. Geordi made them promise to text him after the night was over, demanding they owed him lunch if David actually ended up being a secret agent of some kind. Angel didn’t bother pointing out that they probably wouldn’t be able to reveal that kind of thing to Geordi even if it was true.
“I don’t know, David,” they exclaim. “You tell me!”
He scoffs and turns away from them, refusing to play into whatever confession they were trying to drag out of him.
“Are you dating your roommate?”
He blanches and turns back to them, a horrified look on his face. “Asher? ”
“That’s his name?” A momentary distraction.
While David reels from the thought of them believing he was dating Asher of all people, Angel waits for his explicit denial.
Shaking his head, David says, “I— No, I’m not dating my roommate.”
They stare at him fiercely, waiting for more.
“You’re the only person I’m dating, Angel,” he assures more gently. “I swear to it.”
Angel doesn’t allow this information to comfort them.
“Okay, then what the fuck is your problem? I hardly know anything about you. I want to know about your life, David! Your friends, your job, the things you care about! It’s been months and I feel like I hardly know you.” The look in Angel’s eyes while they let out their feelings makes David shrink. They sigh and sink back into the couch. “If this isn’t— if you’re not as serious as I thought you were about us, and that’s all it is, I’d understand,” they said quietly.
“No, no that’s not it at all. I’m serious, Angel, I care about you a lot, I want you in my life. I just…” his face twists like he tasted something sour. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Oh shit.
“I just can’t tell you yet.”
Fucking hell.
They throw their hands up and suddenly stand up from the couch.
“Then what the hell are we doing? What the fuck is this?” they gesture to the space between them. “When are you going to to tell me whatever the fuck you’re keeping from me?”
There was no way he was actually a secret agent.
Right?
David swears in frustration. “I mean, hopefully any day now,” he starts mumbling to himself and the only phrase they catch is, “—fucking Department—”
Department? They were not going to be buying Geordi lunch, he couldn’t be right about this, there was no way.
“Can I just check my email really quickly?”
Angel’s jaw drops. “Are you fucking serious?”
David winces but nods.
“I guess!” they scoff. Who the hell would be checking their email right now?
David swears again, apparently not finding whatever he was looking for.
“Apparently they’re still processing the papers to allow me to share this with you, but fuck it, I want— need to tell you this now.” They silently curse Geordi and make a bet with themselves on whether he was FBI or CIA. Maybe he was a foreign agent. That would make things interesting. “Will you sit back down, please?”
Angel complies, although hesitantly. They glare at David as he takes their hands in his and says, “Magic is real.”
Well that’s definitely not what they were expecting.
They scrutinize him for a moment. “That’s not a good joke. You’ve never really been one for humor so I don’t know why you're trying now —“
“I’m completely serious.”
“Shut up,” they tell him while he rubs circles on the backs of their hands with his thumbs.
“I can if you want, but you’re not going to find out more that way.”
“I don’t know who told you that you’re funny but they were wrong.”
“Angel,” he says, staring intently at them.
“What? Prove it then,” they challenge.
“Well, there’s different types of magic. I am a shifter. I can shift into a wolf.”
They gawk at the man sitting before them. “Like a werewolf?” There’s no way this wasn’t an elaborate prank.
“Kind of, there are some very distinct differences.”
“Do you howl at the moon,” they say sardonically.
Nearly turning up his nose at the idea he says, “No. And we don’t change with the full moon either.”
“Then what’s the point?” They roll their eyes and take their hands back from his.
“I’m being serious, Angel.”
“Sure,” they retort.
“Do you really think this would be my idea of some kind of joke? You think I would make this up to tell you as some kind of prank?”
Well when he put it like that, they really didn’t know what to think. They rub their temples, trying to actually process what he was saying.
“I really wish you told me you were a secret agent or something instead.”
“Like in the FBI?”
They perk up. “Yes, exactly!”
“ What? ”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Angel says smugly, satisfied with the retribution this conversation afforded them over Geordi.
“I don’t think you’re taking this as seriously as you need to.”
“You just told me you’re a goddamn werewolf, I’m being about as serious as that kind of conversation calls for.”
“I prefer ‘shifter' to ‘werewolf.’”
Angel takes a deep breath. This isn’t something David would lie about, even for a joke. He was kind of a hardass, really not one for pranks, and especially not like this. David’s idea of a prank was like moving your keys to a slightly different area than they normally are.
“Can you just… explain what the hell you’re talking about?”
And as David explains the complexities and intricacies of what being a shifter meant and how magic as a whole had existed just outside of their line of sight for their whole life, Angel found themselves believing him. Maybe it was his passion that filled the room when he talked about what it was like to be a wolf, maybe it was him finally talking about his family, his pack and what being an alpha meant to him, or maybe it was when he explained the concept of mates and how his eyes shifted around but his hand found theirs again and how the unsaid question that hung between them of Angel being David’s mate.
(David wanted nothing more than to ask Angel if they wanted to be his mate. He was already theirs, wholly and completely, whether they wanted him or not. And David had already prepared for if this conversation went south and they’d break things off. He doesn’t know what he’d do without them, but he also doesn’t let himself think that far ahead into whatever twisted timeline Angel broke up with him in. He’d cross that bridge if he got to it. And hopefully he’d never even come close enough to see it.
But dropping the mate conversation in the same one as the magic one was too much. So he held that question back, kept it set aside for a later date.)
“...do you have any questions?” he finished after going into everything he could possibly think of.
They slowly considered everything he said.
“I… I don’t think so.” At the look of shock on David’s face they continue, “Well not at the moment. I might have some later, and I still expect you to answer those too.”
“Of course.”
They sat together, processing what this information meant for their relationship moving forward. David thought they took everything surprisingly well, all things considered. Although he still wasn’t sure what the ‘secret agent’ comment was about.
“Wait, how does this relate to me not meeting your roommate yet?”
David snorts. “Ash would have somehow let the whole shifter thing slip to you, I just know it.”
Angel swallows the small piece of information about, arguably, one of the most important people in David’s life.
“I mean he didn’t even go through the proper procedure of telling his own ma— partner,” he trips over the word.
“Proper procedure?” Angel prompts.
“Yeah you have to take this mind-numbing, dumbass class about breaking covert. It’s totally stupid, but it’s also the legal way of going about it, and he never took it.”
“And didn’t you just say the paperwork hadn’t been approved yet for you to break covert?”
A dark look passes over David’s face. “You can’t ever tell Ash. Do you understand?”
At the realization of the new leverage Angel had, a grin overtakes their face. “What are you going to do to stop me, Davey?”
Raucous laughter fills the room as David lunges at them and pins them to the couch, hands skating up and down their body, poking at all of their ticklish spots.
~
They were just laying down in bed for the night when a new text grabs their attention.
GEORDI: fbi or cia??????
ANGEL: neither <3
GEORDI: so whats his deal then??
ANGEL: just a really private guy i guess
ANGEL: we talked about it tho, im meeting his roommate next weekend :)
GEORDI: if hes cute u have to give him my number
ANGEL: lmao hes not single
GEORDI: i hate this city