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For someone as meticulous and organised as Mathias, he sure couldn’t keep his personal effects in any kind of order. Flynn sifted through the piles of what surely was clothes, bundled up in no particular sequence, in search of a shirt. How the man always looked so immaculate while treating his wardrobe like this remained a mystery that he didn’t have the will to crack. Perhaps he’d just ask Mathias directly. It’d be fun watching him trying to squirm his way into an excuse for why that one aspect of his life was anything but orderly.
Flynn finally pulled out a shirt. It was light blue, probably a good colour. Mathias liked blue. But as the captain unrolled it to see if it was in a salvageable state, something else dropped into his hand. A piece of fabric – long, worn, and in a faded colour that must’ve once been red at some point in time.
“Mattie?” He went back to what passed for a living room in that small apartment, where the man was sitting on a chair, topless. His previous shirt laid discarded and wine-stained on the floor beside him. Flynn tossed him the new one, and held up the red strip. “What’s this?”
Shaw paused, narrowing his eyes. “Where did you find that?”
“It was in your closet. Which is an even worse mess than mine, by the way.”
He put the new shirt on; it looked neat enough, despite a few wrinkles. His gaze travelled back to the fabric Flynn was holding, and lingered there as the captain sat back by in his chair, by the table.
“You look upset,” Flynn raised an eyebrow, putting the thing down. “What is it?”
Shaw took a large gulp of what little wine remained in his glass after he spilled half on himself. “It’s a bandana.”
“I’ve never seen you wearing bandanas.”
There was a pause. “It’s not mine.”
“I mean… if it’s from an ex or something, I won’t be angry, it’s not like I have a right to demand you just forget your past or anything-”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Mathias shook his head, avoiding the other man’s gaze.
Flynn put his hand on the spy’s. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Another moment of silence. “You heard about Edwin VanCleef, right?”
He gave a slow nod. “In the files… he was with those thug people, whatstheirname…”
“We grew up together. He and this other boy, Baros, were my only friends back then. We did everything together, or at least as much as we could with me busy with my training.”
Shaw drank the rest of his wine, and then another sip as soon as his glass was refilled. “I’m not sure when love came into the picture. But I was the one who started it.”
Just like with the two of them, the captain thought, but instead said: “And something went wrong.”
“Not for a while.” A sigh. “Things were great at first. I even… hoped he’d work with me, one day. I trained him.” The spy picked up the bandana, running his thumb over the worn fabric. “It turned on me, and the kingdom…”
“It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t control what he used the training on.”
“If I had known, I’d never have started it.”
“But you couldn’t have known. Hindsight is always a bitch.”
Shaw’s lips curled up for a second. “I don’t think that’s how the saying goes…”
“Eh, details.”
“Well… that wasn’t everything. Before the whole Defias fiasco… I found out he’d been seeing a woman.”
Flynn moved his chair to be on the same side as the other man, but said nothing. He just wrapped an arm around his partner’s shoulder, pulling him a little closer and letting him get as comfortable as he wanted, or needed.
Mathias shook his head. “I didn’t know he had a child by her until years later, but it didn’t matter. The breakup… wasn’t civil,” he sighed. “It’s been haunting me ever since-”
“That if you hadn’t left him, he’d still be alive?”
Silence.
“You’re not responsible for what he’s done.”
Mathias turned to Flynn, eyes shining with tears he struggled to keep at bay. “I taught him how to kill people. I pushed him away.”
“Which he deserved,” the captain said, gently wiping one of his lover’s eyes. “If you stayed, he might’ve dragged you down with him.”
“I still failed him. I couldn’t find and eliminate the corruption that drove him to crime.”
It was Flynn’s time to sigh. He pulled their chairs even closer together until the two of them were all but forced into an awkward yet tight hug. Separate seating wasn’t the most comfortable for something like this, though at the time he couldn’t care. Shaw needed affection whether he admitted to it or not, or whether he asked for it. “Mattie. Sweetheart. Love of my life. None of that was your fault and you can’t keep blaming yourself. You don’t know how things would’ve turned out if you made different choices.” He kissed the copper hair gently. “We like to think we know what would’ve happened, but we really don’t.”
“But surely there’s something you wish you could’ve done differently.”
Flynn laughed, and it was mirthless. “Half of my life, love. But I can’t, so worrying about it won’t change anything. Will just make me miserable.”
Shaw looked at the red bandana.
“And it’s making you miserable.”
“It has been for years,” he said quietly.
“Then isn’t it time we made it stop?”
He pressed himself a little further into Flynn’s embrace, curling up ever so slightly in his chair and pretending his eyes weren’t wet. The cloth in his hand felt heavy, weighed down by something intangible. After a longer moment he looked up at the captain. “We?” Something akin to a smile crossed his face. “Because I’m the love of your life?”
Flynn blinked, and then returned that smile with his own, wide and soft and warm. “That’s what I said.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Of course I do. I love you.”
Shaw shifted in his seat yet again, so that he could face the other man properly. Words were superfluous. Finally, after all those years of pain and regret, of being afraid to open his heart up, he felt like there truly was hope for a better tomorrow. Side by side with someone who wouldn’t betray him.
He claimed the other man’s lips in a kiss, gentle and affectionate, tossing the bandana aside. It was time to heal.