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Edith huffed gently, stretching her legs out long and flexing her feet before tucking them in under herself to stand. Shaking her haunches and yawning, tail wagging lazily. She’d heard it too. The heavy snick. Thunk.
It was not the click of a bullet in the chamber.
Or. It didn’t have to be. It could be. Potential energy. All the potential in the world if it actually put its nose to the grindstone and focused.
Loaded and primed, safety thumbed off and pointed directly at. Not at the door, never at the door, not where Daniel was. Click of the key in the lock and a jingle. Aimed only at himself, the roof of his mouth. Ricardo had been quick enough. Not enough to stop the fall. But quick enough to stop the bullet. Faster than a speeding bullet. Charging in.
Focus. He was wringing his. Ow. Ow? Ouch. Ah, beans. Richard was torn out of the sound of Daniel unlocking the deadbolt by the sudden wrenching pain in his right hand. His left had twisted too hard and had triggered an alarm. Blaring up and down his arm, warning of an incoming attack, urging pain receptors to their battle stations. Had he? A quick glance down showed his fingers red. Hot to the touch.
Not broken.
There was a sound like the world’s smallest tea kettle, leaking thin steam. Nails clicking on the floor as an animal mind padded over and insinuated her face onto his lap like a. Well. Like a dog, nuzzling her nose against his thigh. Tail down between her legs and. He hadn’t scared her. But she was picking up on his energy and doing her best to console him. Gentle. Warm. Richard saw more than felt his left hand move to stroke over her head. Wiry hair poked up between his fingers before being smoothing down under his palm. Edith turned her head to give him a few parting licks to the back of his hand.
Breathe in. Hold it. Count to six.
Breathe out.
Content with a job well done, feeling him relaxing, Edith trotted her way back over to the door, excitement bleeding through and doing a considerable amount of work of finishing what she started with her little licks. He was alright. This would be. Not alright, but it would be dealt with.
They could deal with this.
Annoyed by the false alarm, something in him grumbled and smacked the control board for his left hand. Forcing it to loosen its tension. A gentler touch to stroke over the protruding, skeletal knuckle joints. Thumb pad rubbing over scars. Touches he could barely feel and react to even less. Deadened. The alarm was silenced and replaced by mounting, frigid judgement. Fear was seated primly in the back of a stretch limousine. It had time before it arrived at the party, the guest of honor. Allowed to arrive fashionably late.
Losing his right hand would be very bad. Not the end of the world, of course, but. He needed to make a physical therapy appointment.
A distant part of his brain perked up when Daniel entered, loyal, devoted beast that it was. The person it was bonded to had returned home. Bringing with his thoughts only surface level brightness. Something flittering on the breeze, warm and eager and. Edith woofed high in her chest and wiggled, a burst of adoration pouring out of her, sniffing at Daniel’s ankles and calves. And his hand as he bent over, mid air, to scritch behind her ears.
“Hey,” beaming. The headlights of oncoming traffic and all Richard had to do was let himself stay in the wrong lane. He didn’t have to do anything. He could let whatever Daniel had brought with him sideswipe his own plans, taking with it paint chips and profanity and nothing else other than a story of a drunk driver on the interstate. This didn’t have to be a collision. Didn’t.
His face had been left unattended and in the space between Daniel’s fell slightly.
“Richie?”
“Sorry,” out before he could finish buttoning its coat, running after the bus. “I was a million miles away,” raising up onto his feet as Daniel floated further in. A polite cough and stretched nerves told him that he was smiling, despite the way his fear was barreling towards. “How was work?” watching Danny come in close enough to. He hoped it wouldn’t get old. The way the edges of the world went slightly softer when Daniel’s mouth was pressed against his, even for the brief peck before he pulled back and grinned.
“Good,” not elaborating but his thoughts swirled. A dull day, all things considered. A minor fight that had been nothing more than a group of newly modded thugs, still getting accustomed to their bodies. Richard indulged in slipping a little deeper while he had Daniel in his arm, pausing the flurry of thoughts from moving on. In the physical world it earned a little snort. A slow sunrise of pink tinted Danny’s ears as Richard’s eye focused in on Daniel baiting their leader into charging into a wall. On not getting too ahead of himself and avoiding several tackles and ploys that Richard himself had.
“Oh, tricky,”
The blush had conquered Daniel’s cheeks now. Bashful. Twinkles of pride. “Well. I’ve had a good teacher,” shrugging slightly as he felt Richard pulling back, before rising a few inches. A cork in water, bobbing higher and higher until it broke the surface. “What did you think of the pictures I sent you?”
A fist reaching in to. No, not to clench around his heart. It cradled it in a steady palm. Rubbing along the wall to try and get the beating steady again. Richard swallowed quick, pulling back and sending a cough into his elbow, movement sharp enough to have Danny dart back.
“You still smell like gasoline,” not entirely true, but not a full lie either. Daniel went to protest that he’d showered at HQ but paused to sniff himself. Winced with guiltless guilt.
“Just my clothes, I think,” pulling at the fabric of his t shirt. As if to confirm it, Edith’s nose was working tirelessly over his shoes.
“Go change then and then we can talk about keeping your head in the game at work,” easy to send a wink over while Daniel crossed his arms, face stern. Mind playful. Hopeful. Hesitant? Ah. Worried Richard would say no because of the. Rooftops and heights and all. “Go on, the quicker you’re in your sweats, the quicker we can talk about tuxedos,”
A joke, but. But oh, Daniel was suddenly near the ceiling, Edith whining as he rose out of reach. “Sure!” and while he darted into the bedroom, the lingering thoughts of. He’d been looking. Not planning anything. There was a hint of. Of course there was. As exhausting as he found it, there was a bloom of affection. A hint of Ricardo leaving some of his personal mail around the office. Adverts and inserts from high fashion brand catalogues. Not wedding attire, but enough to give hints about colors and cuts.
Daniel had taken the bait like an unwary rabbit finding convenient carrots under a propped up cardboard box.
-
Richard sat himself back down on the couch to review the play by play. Managed to bench his left hand as well, if only to keep it from attacking the other players. It occupied itself by muttering and twisting into the fabric of his sweater.
Daniel wanted to talk wedding plans, which Richard had been just as evasive about discussing as Daniel had been about his nightmares. The same emotion from different directions, that nervy, toe tapping trepidation. Fear. Wearing very different make up for both of them, but fear all the same.
This was it. On both fronts, this was when it would happen. That the curtains would part, the covering shroud jerked back. Daniel would realize that marrying a man he was afraid of was thirty two flavors of fucked up and pull back. Pull away. Pull up out of the nosedive that was sending him careening towards lips. Lips? Oh. Those were lips against his forehead, a nudge of Daniel’s nose against his hairline.
“We’re gonna need to get you a map if you keep getting lost in thought like this,” Daniel tucked his legs in under himself and curled in close to Richard’s side, the left. The good side. Both of them rightfully wary of putting too much strain on the right. Richard didn’t have the strength to resist turning his head to press another kiss to Daniel’s mouth and was rewarded for his weakness in the small sound his partner made. His fiancé. Who pressed back just enough to leave a taste of his tongue dancing over Richard’s lips before sitting back and nestling in, cell phone in hand and photos already loaded up.
“Alright, so it’s this office building,” thumb already scrolling, showing an older building. Red brick and concrete that had somehow survived long enough to be refurbished. “The top level has an orthodontist’s office, but above that there’s a rooftop restaurant and bar,” from what he could tell, the whole affair looked to be five stories tall. “There’s a venue space at the back,” zooming in on a photo to show the layout from a bird’s eye view.
Richard’s stomach grew claws and dug into his spine. Trying to stay stable. To stay. To keep from dropping out of his body and going backpacking around Asia to find itself. Daniel’s free hand curled itself into Richard’s, threading between his fingers like whispers. Promises. Keeping the nails from scouring his own palm.
The question was bobbing around in Daniel’s skull, trying to avoid being pushed towards the entrance. Was it too high? It felt like it. From the pictures at least, it felt like fifty stories. Five hundred. Those fingers between his own promising that Danny would never let him fall again.
Richard wished it didn’t work so well.
But it did. He felt the tension leaving his legs and Daniel was flipping through more photos. He must have gone in to speak with someone because these next few were hastily snapped from a brochure, the light gleaming off of slick photo paper. Corporate parties, with lit braziers on the rooftop, long tables set up on either side with classy, beautiful stock models pretending to laugh at the cocktails in their hands. Private affairs. A slightly more personal but still professionally tinged photo of a bride and groom standing beneath a chuppah with the city skyline behind them, sun setting. There was a dog by both of their legs, wearing little white circles on their heads.
“We can have Edith be the ring-bearer,” Danny giggled, flicking to the next image that showed a different couple, two heavily pierced women in white suits, cutting into a startlingly traditional wedding cake—complete with the cake topper of an annoyed looking bride dragging a sour looking bride behind her. “And they’re uh. You know, welcoming,”
Richard snorted before he could stop it. “I can see that,” nodding though, squeezing the hand holding his and feeling Danny’s thoughts continue on, unhindered. Eager. “It’s nice. I’d. We should go there together, to check it out. Where is it at?” his eyes were trying to piece out the vague direction from the skyline. Which buildings he could see—the direction of the sunset meant the venue was western facing. More or less. And with buildings between, it would be on the Eastern side of.
“Over by Butherus and 14th,” another flick, showing the surrounding buildings. An apartment complex, a few more offices and storefronts. The lettering on several of the signs wasn’t in English. Ah. Richard’s mind slid a pin into a mental map. An older, well established, neighborhood. Trying to rise up from the tar pits out of crushing poverty without getting caught in the web of gentrification.
Not terribly far away from. From.
No, not far at all. Not far enough.
Hands reached from the shadows and began to gingerly lift up the protective sheet, revealing the. Deformations in the surface of the glass. Twisting and obscuring and. “Danny,” quieter. So much quieter than he wanted it to be. Lungs heavy enough to drag the bottom of the ocean floor, sending silt and whale fall up into his throat. Choking him and coating his tongue in waterlogged decay.
“We need to talk,”
Which. Ah, beans, could he be any more of a stereotype? Sliding Daniel’s fingers out from between his own felt like leaving a layer of his own skin behind. Exposing nerves and.
“Okay?” hesitant, glancing back down his phone before cautiously setting it on the table. Thoughts swirling about. Was this about the wedding? About the location? About how Richard said he wanted to propose again and do it right or was it about Richard deciding that he didn’t want to get married or. One of those thoughts, piercing and cold as a needle in a pinned butterfly, stabbed into ‘oh god, please don’t let it be about,’. Richard couldn’t hide the wince and suddenly every thought was moving too quickly to follow.
Scattering on gusts of wind that blew Richard’s attention back out, eyes focusing hard on Edith, who had flopped herself down by the side of the coffee table to chew on a toy.
Bitterness. A slight stitch of resentment, not all for himself. Not all for either of them. Angry at himself, that he wasn’t doing better. Wasn’t hiding it better, which stung even more than the thought that he wasn’t recovering quickly enough.
“I want this.” fully punching Richard in the back of the head. Never saw the strike coming, too distracted by. “I know what I want, and that’s to have a life with you. Nothing else matters,” the heat in it was scalding. Teetering towards the edge of too white hot to handle. Coals burning their way through both of their ribcages.
“It matters that you’re still afraid of me,” cold water on hot iron.
“I’m not,” very nearly a shout, drawn back only barely at the end by a tether pulling tight between Daniel’s teeth, looking sharply away. The scatter of steam and. The lie was pulling savagely at his lips, twisting them thin and pale. A steady breath in. “I’m not. Not of you,” a clear line in the sand, even if Daniel himself didn’t want to be the one drawing it. “Not of who you are now,”
Richard let the statement smolder. Left hand moving to stroke over the center plane of Daniel’s back. Not the worst place he could’ve touched. He felt the muscles between those shoulder blades release their tension, the line of his broad shoulders bowing. “I’ve seen the nightmares, lover boy,”
“I know,” dipping into a lower altitude, verging into misery, “I’m sorry--,”
A mental knee jerked hard. “Don’t you dare apologize for that,”
“Then what do you want me do to?” toeing that precipice again, the drop getting more and more severe each time Richard felt his way through the buffeting winds. “I can’t control what I dream about at night, even though I know you try to,” it could have been an accusation, but there was nothing hurting in it. Just a statement. Knowing that Richard had tried to soothe away the. A thinner sound as Daniel leaned back, head tilting up towards the ceiling.
Sorting through the thoughts, trying desperately to veer away from. From. “It,” stopped hard, swallowed back on hard. “When you came at me, at the Catastrofiend, it was like none of this had ever mattered,” a weak gesture between the two of them. Three. Daniel’s hand moving to include the dog. “It was,” he snapped his fingers, eyes hard on the ceiling, unwilling to look away. Like it would all fall down on him if he did. “I was back to being pinned and you were,” his voice died, the thought didn’t. Mad Dog was coming to kill him. Something resurrected itself. “And I know I need to be better about it, I know I need to just get it together and,” spiraling hard, curling back in on itself and Richard couldn’t even begin to stop himself from intervening.
As much instinct as anything he had ever done. Daniel made a half hysterical sound as Richard’s thoughts broke in like an ice pick, sudden and sharp and freezing, sending a chill through the marrow of his bones and curling back inwards. The fog of dry ice and a cold pack against feverish skin.
Hard to do with one arm, but Richard pulled him in close and Daniel let the shift happen, tucking his face in against Richard’s neck. Shivering slightly as the frost receded. Thawing delicate wings that began to flex and pulse again with the heat of life. Delayed anger. Shame.
“Danny, I will not let you place the blame for this on yourself,” whispered too harshly, too unsteadily. He could feel the dampness of Daniel’s cheeks against his neck and felt his own eyes watering in response. Vocal cords threatening to go on strike with how tight his throat was bearing down on them. “What happened, what’s happening, is not your fault. You’re not weak,”
A gust of resistance. “But if I could just,” just get over it. Just get on with it. Move past and beyond it and. “I forgave you,” halfway pleading. Halfway towards an accusation pointed inwards. He’d come to acidic terms with the fact that his forgiveness hadn’t done as much to help Richard as he wanted it to. It was a much more bitter pill to swallow that it hadn’t fixed his own fears, either. “I love you,” as if that was the answer. As if it was supposed to be a magic cure all. He wasn’t naïve enough to let himself acknowledge the thought, but it played through his head like a plastic bag being blown through a parking lot.
“I love you, too,” pushing the sincerity of it out like a seasoned sky diver plummeting towards earth. Knowing it would be picked up safely by a parachute before it hit the ground. Daniel’s short, wavering inhale confirmed that it had been. “I cannot begin to.” A hard stop. Because he could begin to. He needed to start doing it more. It wouldn’t fix things, but it might be able to start putting down support beams. To work on building a levee on either side of a river neither of them wanted to acknowledge. But it needed to be built before a flood could come and wash away the banks. Wash away everything they were working on building by the waterfront. “I don’t know that I could ever be as brave as you’ve been with me,”
There was a scalpel in the sound Daniel made.
Richard, quite used to the splitting edge, pushed himself against it. “I’m serious,” cold and unyielding, glacial ice in the dead of winter. “I was too much of a coward to,”
“You’re not a coward,” the edge was dulled, a baseball bat rather than a machete. Voice quieter with it as Daniel sucked in a deeper breath. Neither of them seemed to be able to raise their voice out of a whisper now. As though speaking too loudly would shatter something too delicate to replace.
“If I’m not, there’s no way in hell you could be one,” an easy volley to fire back. It slid through fluttering wings, grazing several thoughts but not striking into any of them. “If our roles had been reversed, I don’t…I don’t know how you did it. How you’re still doing it,” there was enough space as Daniel shifted to let Richard press a kiss to his temple. Daniel, damn him. Bless him, let the contact linger. Pressed a little more firmly into it. His hands were moving to wrap around Richard’s torso. “I don’t know why you did it, but I know there wasn’t any weakness in taking the risks you’ve taken with me,” a pause.
“If I’m so strong, then why can’t I get passed this?” absolutely an accusation there. Not aimed at anything besides everything.
“Because,” sticking hard in his throat, getting caught sideways in his esophagus. “Because what I did to you was so,” Richard cleared his throat and managed to get some of the blockage dislodged. This wasn’t about his guilt. This was about. “Because you shouldn’t have to do it alone. I know how messed up it is that I’m saying I’m here for you when I’m the one who caused all this, but I am here,” he felt a sigh puff out against his neck. A quick dip into. Daniel’s thoughts were still moving too quickly, but the air current had changed direction. Slight, but noticeable. “I want to…I never imagined I would have a life, Danny, and now the only thing I want is to build one with you. To keep building one with you. I want to be here for whatever you need,”
There was a brief point of light. A flash of heat that didn’t burn, the wind carrying away the spark before it could ignite anything. Instead it. Daniel leaned back enough to let his forehead press against Richard’s jaw. Taking in another slow breath.
“Sidestep always was my hero,” meant to be a softening joke. To try and press the encroaching abyss back at the edges. Candles in the dark. Richard felt himself folding. This was enough for now. Enough for. “I’ll try to…,” try to stop running, he didn’t say. Daniel had never been too proud to push away help, but being a victim still tore at him. Richard could relate.
“I’ll be here when you’re ready,” letting his good hand thread its way into Daniel’s hair.
The moment lasted, if only because neither of them seemed to know how to break away from it. It took much more strength than Richard wanted to admit to, to try and push out. “So.” A slight tension in the body beneath him. “I think nighttime would be nice. With the city lights behind us?” and that tension released, Daniel sniffling slightly before Richard felt the head nod.
“I think that sounds perfect,”