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Barbatos doesn’t know how it started.
Well, alright, he knows when he first noticed it. But he has a feeling the feelings had been there, building, culminating, for a lot longer than that.
He first noticed his affection for you on a spring day, one of the warmest the year had seen so far. You’d shed your uniform jacket, rolled up the sleeves, and gone outside during lunch, claiming the quad as your own. Claiming the attention of everyone on the quad. And like moths to a flame, everyone had followed, as they always did. Him included.
“It feels so nice out,” you’d chirped, face turned up to the non-existent sun, and Barbatos had become aware of a buzz under his skin, a curious warmth that he’d never really felt before. It didn’t take a genius for him to place the feelings, and he accepted them a lot easier than he thought he would, with them clicking into place like the last piece of a previously hidden puzzle. He finally understood what everyone was talking about, finally understood why people were pushed to invent, to create, to conquer in the name of love.
Of course, while he was going through all of these realizations and acceptions, time had moved forward, and you were now surrounded by everyone, with him on the outside, like always, slightly distanced, the few feet like an uncrossable gorge. But you, you with your crooked half-smile and wonderful gleam in your eyes, had looked through, to him, smile somehow widening just for him, and that had made it all okay, made that gorge seem like nothing more than the few feet it actually was.
Now, he keeps his feelings close to his chest, aware that he’s not the only one who holds them for you. That knowledge should be souring, should bring him to his senses, but it doesn’t. Maybe it’s because of you, because of how you make time for him, make him feel like the only demon in the world when you look at him, make him believe, if only for a second, that impossibilities are possible. Okay, yeah, it’s definitely because of you.
So he holds his feelings, keeps them to himself, and it’s okay. He’s not prone to jealousy, or possessiveness, has learned over the many, many years to be satisfied with what he has, and what he has is more than enough. He has Diavolo and a place in a wonderful community filled with wonderful people, and your friendship, which is more than he could’ve dreamed of.
“What are you thinking so hard about?” you tease, poking him lightly with the blunt end of your pencil. He blinks, coming back to himself, coming back to the club meeting, and gives you a half smile. The club was one you both co-ran, some ‘community wellness’ thing that you were a lot more passionate about than he. But he put his everything in it, for you.
“I apologize, I must have been distracted. Remind me of our discussion,”
“Barbatos? Distracted?” Your face is bright, cheerful. “Who are you and what have you done with the real Barbatos?”
“Funny, really,” he returns, and the laugh he is gifted with is quickly saved, pressed into the scrapbook of his memories, to be taken out and admired every now and again, treasured close to his chest.
“Anyway…” you pull him back into the meeting with vigor, with enthusiasm, as with everything you do, and he lets himself be pulled willingly. What a fool he must be, to take the chains from your hand and wrap them around his wrist himself.
Once the meeting is over you check your D.D.D., cursing. He directs an inquisitive look at you, and you grin guiltily. The school is dark, and mostly empty, and it feels like the two of you are the only ones in the world.
“It’s a lot later than I thought it was,” you explain. “Is there any way I can beg a ride off of you? I’d be really thankful.”
“I suppose,” Barbatos replies, making a show of being long-suffering. You draw out his humor in a way no one else does, and he’s grateful, so immensely grateful, that you see his dry, deadpan remarks for what they are and don’t just think he’s dreadfully boring.
“Thank you so much!” You squeeze his side in a hug, apparently not feeling the staggering static that emanates from where the two of you touch, that sends shivers of electricity up and down his entire frame. “I owe you one.”
“You always say that,” he accuses lightly. “At this point, I believe you owe me a lot more than that.”
“Probably.” You shrug, unrepentant. He really shouldn’t find that shamelessness so charming.
Being in a car with you is like torture. Torture he can stand, revels in, delights in.
You’re close, within touching range. Not that he’d ever put his hands on you without your express and explicit permission, but the forced intimacy gets to him. You’re so comfortable in his car, shown by the way you commandeer the radio, the way you dig through his glovebox like it was yours for the taking.
(Everything of his is yours for the taking, for the having, for the keeping.)
“What’s this?” you ask, more to yourself than anything, but he looks over anyway. You’ve got a CD in your grip, reading the back.
“That,” he says, “is my favorite CD. So be careful with it, please.”
“It’s your favorite?”
He nods, and you give him that crooked smile, ejecting the CD that was in the player, exchanging it out.
“We don’t have to listen to it,” he tries, and you wave him off.
“Of course we do! It’s your favorite, and I want to hear it too!”
You pull pieces of him to the surface, almost by accident, and he stands there in front of you, exposed. But you’re always careful with the new parts of him that are revealed, treating them as preciously and as kindly as you’d treat an invaluable glass sculpture.
The first track starts and he keeps his gaze on the road, humming along. He can feel your eyes on him, and eventually, eventually gives into the urge to look over, meeting your eyes.
“I can see why you like it,” you murmur, quiet for once. “It’s very…” you hold the words in your mouth, tasting them, savoring them. “It’s very you.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
It’s quiet in the car, aside from the CD, of course, but he doesn’t mind the silence. Never has. Others feel it as a pressure, but he doesn’t, and knows, despite your propensity to talk and laugh and be in constant motion, don’t either. It’s a comfort, to be in silence with you.
The drive to the House of Lamentation takes forever. Isn’t nearly long enough.
When he pulls into the circle drive, past the immaculately pruned bushes and other ostentatious landscaping, he resists the urge to go slower, to coast at a snail’s pace. He’s better than that. Barely.
“Thanks for the ride,” you say as he pulls to a stop, lowering the volume of the music. “I really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” he says. “You know me. Barbatos: butler, glorified babysitter, and part-time chauffeur.”
He’s rewarded again with your laugh, but it fades into something thoughtful, something intimate.
“You’re so much more than that,” you say, and when he looks over at you in muted surprise, you’re not returning his gaze, instead focused somewhere in the far-off distance, maybe in the far-off past. Either way, you blink and come out of it quickly, but don’t take your words back. Instead, you do something, that even with all of his overthinking, his planning, his habit of examining every possibility, he’d never seen coming:
You lean over and kiss him on the cheek.
Your lips are warm, and dry, and un-lingering. He stares at you in shock as you pull away, heart pounding a mile a minute.
“Well,” you say with another laugh, much more high-pitched and nervous than the others he’d heard from you, “thanks again. I’ll be going in now.”
You slide out of his car quickly, crossing the distance between it and the door in seconds. He almost thinks you’re not going to look back, until you do, that damned crooked smile on your lips, fluttering your fingers in a wave, even as embarrassment and joy war in your eyes.
It takes a long time, too long, for him to pull himself together enough to pull away from the House of Lamentation, and he has to take the most convoluted way home he can think of to fully rid himself of his blush– a herculean task, considering that kiss plays on repeat in his head, the memory of your smile almost tangible. Who would have thought a simple kiss on the cheek would have been enough to bring the always-composed, always-distant Barbatos back down to the realm of unstoppable, human emotion?
Maybe you returning his feelings isn’t as far-fetched a possibility as he’d thought.