Work Text:
Black hissed, and slammed his finger down on the spray paint nozzle. A blast of orange paint burst out, but the damn huntsman spider was too big and too fast, and it scuttled away with awful movements, part of its legs leaving tiny orange trails. Black sprang backwards fast, nearly tripping over the concrete rubble this place was scattered with. Black didn’t fall, but he couldn’t quite catch himself without putting one hand to the ground. Then, in the long pause, he watched where the spider had disappeared.
After no movement, Black let out a sigh, and dropped his head, rubbing his eyes. He hated this. This stupid place, and his stupid body still uncoordinated and weak after the coma. This stupid situation, and the stupid need to hide away alone to recover and process. White thought he was being a lone wolf, but really he just needed to not see anyone for a week, and his apartment made him claustrophobic. Anyone could find him there.
He’d laid up supplies in a couple places like this, well hidden and quiet. Sean had called him dramatic for it, but Black insisted that you could never know when you’d need to go to ground. And it was good he had. Todd couldn’t find him here, and neither could anyone else.
The only problem was, the little concrete abandoned shed was crawling, literally, with bugs. And Black hated bugs.
Which was why when a car pulled up on the gravel outside, Black only went on a half alert, in case it wasn’t who he was expecting. But sure enough, a small figure with wavy hair and bright yellow sweats emerged from the old Suzuki, hoisting a bag over her shoulder. Black emerged from the building to show Eugene where to go.
He hadn’t spoken to her since that night he’d gone to see her, when his mind was still whirling with everything that had happened and his body felt like it was dying. He honestly hardly remembered what he’d said, just that he was sure Todd was going to kill him, and White was in danger, and he was desperate for some comfort. She’d given it to him, and he was grateful for that, but he was a little embarrassed at how she’d seen him then.
Black had called her earlier today for an equally embarrassing reason, but at least she already understood about this quirk of his.
She’d answered his call with surprise in her voice.
“Black? Where are you, your brother said you’d gone off somewhere.
Well, that answered that question, if White had talked to Eugene, and told her the story.
“Hi, ‘Gene, nice to talk to you too,” Black said, sarcasm mingling with fondness cause he actually wasn’t lying.
”Black,” Eugene sounded frustrated. She sighed. “I don’t even know where to start. Are you okay? Last time I saw you…”
“I know. Sorry about that,” Black had said. “I’m a lot better now.”
“Why are you hiding out alone, when you should be home? All of us are worried about you.” Eugene was angry, he could hear it. He wasn’t sure about ‘all of us’ but he was sure White and Eugene at least, were worried. Probably Gram too, if he wasn’t distracted.
“I’ll come back soon.”
“You’d better not be lying.” There was a little pause. “What are you calling for?”
It was a valid question. “I need a favor.”
Eugene made a questioning noise, and Black could actually picture her tilting her head in that way of hers. The image made him half smile, before he put a hand on his face, and rubbed.
“I’m gonna send you this location in your email. Don’t give it to anyone else, even White. Can you bring me some stuff?”
Eugene was quiet, before she let out a long sigh. “What stuff? Food?”
“No, I’ve got that. …Bug spray. And a sewing kit.”
Eugene’s voice transformed when she smiled, and now she was grinning. “Ohhh,” she said, and Black groaned.
“Shut up.”
“I see now,” she said in a teasing voice.
“You’re the worst. Nevermind, I don’t want you to come.”
“No no, I’ll come,” Eugene sang. “Do you need anything else? A fly swatter, maybe?”
“Gene.”
She laughed, trilling and musical. Black sighed.
“I’ll send you a list.”
“Alright, alright. I’ll come by after school.”
Black had thanked her and hung up, but the sound of her teasing laughter got him through the boring day — interspersed with hunting spiders with spray paint.
She flitted over to him now, a grin on her face, and Black glowered at her as she stopped and looked him up and down.
“Well, you do look better than last time,” she said, then, and Black let out a breath, now that she wasn’t gonna tease him.
“Did you bring everything?” he asked, and she nodded.
“I also did bring you some food, cause I can’t imagine you had much good stuff stored here.”
“How did you know I stored things here?”
She gave him a glance, raising her eyebrow. “Black, I’ve known you how long? You still have stuff stored at my place.”
Oops, Black had forgotten that. So maybe he was a bit paranoid, he’d been proved right too often. He rolled his eyes at her, and led her inside. It wasn’t much, a square concrete room, with broken windows and a rusted ladder up to the roof. The remains of his paint hunting was spread around in bursts and jagged lines of orange and blue, but they just added to the ambiance.
Eugene dropped her bag in the middle of the floor, and started rummaging around, before tossing him a small bag. He caught it, and unzipped it to find the sewing kit.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You get started on that, and I’ll tidy up,” Eugene said, by which she meant sweep out the corners and use the large can of bug spray she’d bought for him, the way she’d done in his apartment while they were together, whenever he’d spotted a spider, or a centipede and froze. She was utterly unafraid of anything aside from bees, which weirdly didn’t bother him too much. She waved him off, and started stalking towards the opposite wall, hunting down whatever bugs she could find. Black smiled a bit, and turned to his own task.
In the corner furthest from the door and windows, he had set up his bag, and a sleeping mat under a mosquito net, but what he hadn’t realized was that the net was full of so many holes that it was basically useless. Hence, the sewing kit. Settling down, Black pulled out a small needle and some dark blue thread and started searching the net for the worst of the holes.
The room wasn’t all that big, so Eugene called out to him while she swept, and he sewed.
“So, wanna tell me what actually happened to you?” she said, casually. Black did not, actually, but he figured she deserved it, especially after White made a mess of things.
“You talked to White,” he said, and she hummed.
“Yeah, he explained everything on his side, and the times we talked while I thought he was you." Her face grew somber. "He told me you were in the hospital, that that's why he was pretending. But I still don’t know what happened...”
She was quiet for a long minute, and Black concentrated on his stitches, making them small and even as he drew the tear in the net closed. He heard her move closer, and god, he just didn’t know what to say to her. It was all such a mess. When he’d broken up with Eugene back then, it had been with panic in his throat as he realized that what he was trying to do to Todd could actually get him killed. He didn’t want Eugene involved with that.
But turns out, Tawi had set his sights on everyone in the gang, and now the connection to Eugene wasn’t just through Black, but through Gram, Sean and Namo, and White. Eugene was involved in politics personally too, and she’d been at every protest that had happened, including the one that saved his brother’s life. Hiding everything that was happening would now make her less safe, not more.
It was the same damn thing as with White. Maybe this was just a lesson the universe wanted Black to learn.
Black looked up as Eugene crouched down in front of where he sat, folding her arms on her knee, and plopping her chin down on them, twisted in a way only a dancer could be comfortable in. She looked pensive, worried, and beautiful, even with a bit of cobweb in her hair.
Black breathed in, and met her gaze. “White decided to impersonate me because he found out I was in a coma. I was attacked by someone I knew had a lot of power. It was going after this person, knowing he'd retaliate, that made me decide to break up with you."
Eugene's eyes were lowered, but she nodded. "Who was it?"
Black sighed. "Someone I have known for a long time. I came from money; you probably know that by now, after talking to White.”
She nodded, giving no indication if such information had surprised her or not.
“My parents are high class. Powerful, politically. And I grew up with this kid, Todd, who was just the same. And after my por took White away, and I fell out with my mae, Todd and I still stayed together. Together, together,” he said, ears pricking with warmth, and she smiled, and nodded.
“I got that. Go on.”
Black looked again at his hands, holding the slim needle, the blue thread, the white mass of the netting he was trying to fix spread across his lap. Then, he looked back up at her warm brown eyes.
“After Todd’s father died, he inherited everything. Money, power, businesses upon businesses. And it changed him. Or it brought out things that had always been there, I don’t know. Before that, he talked about changing things, improving the world. I thought he meant the same things I did. But he didn’t.”
Eugene scooted forward, taking up the netting and settling it across her own lap as well, before taking the sewing kit and picking out another needle and thread. This one was yellow. When she started working on closing another rip, Black swallowed and continued.
“We fought, all the time. I kept thinking I needed to walk away, but I came back, even when we weren’t dating anymore. Even when I’d scream I hated him, I’d go back and do it again, trying to get him to see.”
“What changed?” Eugene asked, pulling her thread through with a sloppy loop, much larger than his neat stitches, but also exactly right.
“You did,” Black said, quietly. Eugene paused and looked at him, her eyes wide. Black shrugged a little. “I met someone who was honest, who listened and didn’t argue for fun but only when it was really important. Someone who really was kind, and happy, and not just in order to win a game or control people.”
Black was definitely feeling like he was oversharing, particularly remembering that Eugene was his ex and not current girlfriend, but he still felt like he had to say it. It was true, that had been the beginning of his true end with Todd. He’d ended their cycle, and left the game, and started genuinely trying to lessen Todd’s power and goals with the few ways he could fight. And as Black stopped arguing with Todd personally, but instead attacked his power, Todd had responded with non-personal force as well, by sending a group of men to beat him up and take him off the board.
Eugene was silent for a moment, her stitching slowed as she took that in, before she made another loop.
“So, he hurt you for leaving him?” she asked, and Black twisted his mouth to the side.
“You make it sound like he was just a jealous ex. I was fighting to take down his businesses; he was losing money and power.”
She hummed, and tied a knot on the outside of the net with yellow thread. Black closed his eyes, amusement and frustration tangling within him. Cause she was right. With Todd, it all was personal. And when Black had taken Gumpa’s gun and gone to kill (maybe, possibly, he hadn’t been thinking clearly) Todd that night, it had also been personal. Todd’s hands had both drowned him and pulled him out of the water, that was also personal. And then both of them cried on either sides of that same gun, unable to pull the trigger… personal.
Black sighed, and tied a knot of his own with the blue thread, properly on the inside of the netting, small and neat. He started brushing his fingers over the net again, searching for a new tear to close.
“What happened to him?” Eugene asked.
Black’s fingertip found a rip, and he started jabbed the needle through close to the edge of it.
“I did the same thing to him that he did to me.”
Eugene looked at him, her face scrunching sideways the way it did when she thought he said something “too cool” and needed to be teased for.
“You can’t put someone into a coma on purpose, Black. Comas don’t work like that.” Her voice was flat, sardonic.
Black’s shoulders slumped. “Ok, I hit him with the butt of a gun, and he dropped. I only found out he hadn't woken up later. Figured it was karma.”
She huffed. “Okay, maybe it was.”
“See.”
She giggled, and Black smirked, feeling looser than he had in a while. The conversation after that flowed to other things, easy, as it had always been with Eugene. He continued sewing up the little holes in the netting while Eugene got bored of sewing, and flopped backwards onto Black’s bedroll, sticking her feet in the air and doing the dancing stretches she fell into whenever she wasn’t thinking about it. Black tried not to watch the way she moved, as alluring as it was— she was not his girlfriend, after all.
“So, what happened with Gram?” Black asked a little while later, and Eugene let her legs fall to the ground with a thump as she huffed.
“Ugh, he got so annoying while you were gone. I don’t think White was giving him enough attention.”
Black smirked as he pulled the thread.
“You did kiss him. Twice, I heard.”
Eugene groaned even more, and threw her arms across her eyes.
“I know, I know, it was so stupid.”
“You confused him so much, poor thing,” Black said, a bit wickedly. Eugene sat up and pointed at him.
“Not as much as your brother did. Or you did, that night.” The silly tone and mood faded, and Eugene frowned, unhappy. “Was that the night you went to see Todd, then?”
Black nodded. Eugene pursed her lips, plucking at the mat she was sitting on.
“You thought he was gonna kill you, so you came to say goodbye to me?”
Something moved through Black’s body, an emotion that somewhat felt like fear and somewhat felt like anticipation. Like they’d been dancing around something all day that he hadn’t noticed.
“Yeah,” he admitted, and she looked pained at that, before she got up and came closer, kneeling down in front of him, and putting her hand on his cheek.
“Black,” she said, and Black could not look away. “Do you still love me?”
Black considered continuing to push her away, for her safety, because his life was dangerous, before he admitted to himself that he couldn’t do it again. Yes, keeping her out was worse, over all, because she’d get herself involved anyway. That was just who she was. But also, he just wanted her with him. They worked, and he knew it. And with everything after the coma, with White and the gang and all that had happened, he was lonely, and he wanted someone next to him.
“Yes,” Black responded, and she smiled big, before it faded again.
“I do too, Black. But no more secrets. It was too painful to not know, to get pushed away and have no idea why. I can’t be with you, if it’s like that. Can you accept that?”
Black lifted his hand, dropping the needle somewhere in the net which was gonna be annoying later, and pressed it to Eugene’s against his cheek.
“Gene,” he said. “Are you sure? Because of what I’m trying to do… my life will be dangerous. Even with Todd out of the picture.”
Eugene rubbed a thumb over his cheek and it sent waves of chills across his body — god how affection starved was he?
“Black. I believe in fighting for a better world, the same as you. I may not commit arson, but I know how to be safe, and keep my identity private, and how to fight back too. And working together can only help. Plus,” she tilted her head, and smiled. “I really missed you.”
Black had to smile back. “I missed you, too.”
Her smile grew mischievous and she flicked him on the forehead. “You were unconscious, you dork.”
“Still.”
Her gaze softened, and she leaned down and kissed him. Black felt the warmth of her lips, the soft press and her hair brushing his cheek, and all of it brought him back to months ago, before the hospital, before the fear and Todd’s attack, and everything that had changed. It was simple, it was right. Black kissed her back, and held her hand against his face, as they found a familiar rhythm, slow and sweet. He drew back, and then brushed her hair away from her face. Her eyes shone.
How did he get so lucky, to get her back?
The moment broke when a phone pinged, and they both startled. Eugene laughed a bit as she moved from her crouch to sitting cross legged and leaning against his side, sliding her phone out of her pocket to check the front. Black put his arm around her at the given opportunity, which appeared to be what Eugene had been going for as she snuggled closer.
“It’s my roommate, wondering if I want dinner with them.” There was half a question at the end of her sentence, and Black hummed.
“It’s that or cold cup noodles here…” and she wrinkled her nose cutely.
“Mm, no thanks. I’ll tell them to save me some.” She looked at him. “Or even better, you just come back with me, and we’ll get dinner.”
Black twisted his mouth to the side. It didn’t feel quite right to come back yet, not until he knew for sure that Todd didn’t have any other hidden surprises, and that Tawi and all of that the others got up to was settled better. He knew that White and the others had gone to ground as well, for now. And he was still tired.
Eugene smiled as she read his thoughts on his face, like she was uncannily good at, and then brushed her fingers through the hair above his ear.
“I did bring you some better food than cup noodles, at least,” she said, jerking her chin at the bag she’d left in the middle of the room. “Let me know if you need anything else, okay?”
Black nodded. “Alright. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. But come back soon, alright? I’m gonna tell White I saw you, too. He’s worried.”
“Fine.”
She breathed out, and left her chin on his shoulder, arms wrapped securely around him, and Black felt himself relax for the first time in what seemed like forever — before the coma, at least. They stayed like that for a while, just taking in the feel of each other again.
Eventually, as the sun started to set and turn the air golden, she pulled back in order to press a kiss to his cheek.
“I’ll do another sweep for bugs before I leave, kay? Make sure this place is nice and safe for my dum dum boyfriend.”
Black rolled his eyes, but he was grateful. She got up gracefully, and he busied himself finishing up what he thought was the last hole in the mosquito net, before standing to hang it up above the mat and sleeping bag. Then, he stood back and surveyed it while Eugene scooped up something he didn’t want to think about in her little dustpan and took it outside. He breathed in and out, thinking that he’d only stay here for a few more days. Things didn’t seem quite so overwhelming anymore.