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Coming back is… Strange.
For one, Crow’s never done it before. Not like this. Not by choice.
For another, things are different. The air is hotter, drier, scorching against his cheekbones. Those flowers weren’t there the last time he was here – at least, not like they are now. They were pink then instead of yellow, blooming instead of brittle. The trees were greener too, and all the cicadas in droves among the branches – that’s new.
Crow’s changed too. He’s got a new piercing, extra bling on the apex of one ear. He’s also a little more tan than he was when he left, hard earned from spending so long working by the seaside. His hair, funnily enough, has opted to go the other way, bleached paler by the sun; it whips around behind him, bundled up with a loose tie at the nape of his neck. It’s growing out. He’s going to have to cut it soon.
He slows as he gets closer to the centre of town. A gaggle of students pass by him in their summer uniform, chattering amongst themselves. They’re from another class, one Crow’s spent less time with. One of them gasps. Maybe they recognise him. He doesn’t stop long enough to find out.
It wouldn’t surprise him, not really – because he might be different in some ways but he’s still Crow in most. Besides: the sky's still blue, isn’t it? The universe is still vast; that’s true too. His bike still thrums beneath him, blending everything that blurs by into a hazy film of seasonal watercolour – and, when he pulls up to the school to find Rean already waiting at the entrance of the main building, looking just a little out of breath as the door swings shut behind him…
Crow dares to hope.
He idles to a halt. Rean’s just staring, mouth soft and eyes wide, and Crow doesn’t know what that means but he wants to believe that it’s good. Rean said it would be fine, that he would wait, that they’d have time when it was all said and done, but… Well, three months is a long while, even for people who’ve lived it dozens of times over.
Crow’s hands clam up. He’s not the praying type, not like how the rest of them are. His hands haven’t properly touched palms, his own or otherwise, in years.
Still, as he kicks the stand of his bike out, swinging off one side, there’s only one thought in his mind: Aidios, please don’t let it have been too long.
“Hey, Rean.” He tucks one hand into a pocket, the other coming to a stop against the handlebars of his bike. “Long time no see.” He dredges up a smile, one that’s too honest to be cavalier. “Think you’ve got space to take in one more stray?”
Rean’s answering grin is so wide is just about splits his face in half, and Crow only makes it halfway through the gate before he’s got two arms full of the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him. The impact dislodges nerves and laughter alike, so giddy it makes him breathless, and Crow allows himself the luxury of being held – one which Rean takes full advantage of, burrowing his face into Crow’s shoulder and the collar of his shirt. He’s breathing so deep, inhaling laundry detergent and sunshine-baked dust, exhaling like these are the first proper breaths he’s taken in all the months Crow’s been gone.
He winds careful hands around Rean’s waist. They’re standing in the middle of the walkway. Rean’s belt buckle is jabbing into his stomach, Rean’s hair is at least a little in his mouth, and someone is absolutely going to give them shit for this later, but all Crow can think to do in that moment is hold Rean all the closer.
“Tell me if I’m reading things wrong here,” he says, and Rean pulls back with an abashed laugh of his own, “but I’m tempted to take that as a yes.”
“Welcome back, Crow.” Rean kisses him once, twice. It’s gentle, the first blossoms of spring, the first love of a lifetime; it’s barely enough considering how much they’ve missed but it’s a start. “Welcome home.”
Crow doesn’t ask to move in. He does joke about it, though, a mere one and a half boxes more than enough to carry all the worldly possessions he’s scraped together from being properly alive again. “Man,” he says, pushing through the doorway to dump them in one corner of the room, “I was basically the worst student in the history of ever and you’re telling me I’m gonna be living at school now?” He sighs. “Aidios sure has a sense of humour.”
Rean follows him in with an armful of sheets. “Guess she’s making you make up for lost time.” He works on spreading them out on the new bed, the bigger bed, while Crow crouches down and starts rooting through his belongings; Crow has his own room in theory but they both know the chances of it seeing any use are next to none. Rean starts with the pillows, then the quilt, then spends the better part of half a minute grappling with the mattress before Crow joins him at the bedside to help heave it upright.
Crow catches one corner of the bedsheet, tucking it down behind. “I dunno, Rean.” He folds his forearms over the top edge to pillow his chin there while Rean works on the other. “Maybe if I had someone like you as my Instructor way back when I would’ve paid a little more attention.”
He winks, a play-by-play mockery of flirtation. They do this now, back and forth, the sort of push and pull that gets far too much good-natured ribbing from anyone who witnesses it to be anything but embarrassing. Rean smacks him with a pillow for his efforts, the mattress topples flat once more, and they both go down laughing like they’re young again as Crow hefts up the other to get him back.
It takes less time than Rean expects for Crow to get comfortable.
In fact, in the lesser part of a month, he’s already well on the way to making space for himself in what feels like every nook of the campus, fitting all his bony bits back into the closest thing he had to a second home.
By the time Rean makes it downstairs, some unplaceable week or two in, it’s to find Crow already commandeering the kitchen.
He smooths his hands over his pants, sliding into the free seat on the right side of the table; they’d worked out one meal in that eating around bumping elbows is more awkward than one might think. “You don’t have to cook, you know. This is a dining hall for a reason.” One that’s often repurposed by half the student populace for whatever it is they’re craving – and, at the present moment, by one Crow Armbrust on the culinary warpath – but it’s a functioning dining hall nonetheless. “Gina always cooks enough for there to be left-overs for anyone who’s eating late, so you really don’t need to go to all the trouble.”
Crow tuts at him, tightening the neon pink ‘KISS THE COOK’ apron Ash had gotten him as a ‘housewarming gift’. It’s well-loved by Crow, hysterically hyena-cackled at by Ash, and well-hated by just about everyone else. “Yeah,” he says, digging through the drawer for a spatula, “but I like to, Rean. There’s a difference. Can’t be a good househusband if I’m not honing my skills.” He winks over a shoulder, turning back to whatever’s grilling over the stove. It certainly smells delicious, a complex mix of herbs and spices that Rean can’t even begin to parse out with his nose alone. “Now sit tight – chicken and salad a la Crow, coming right up.”
Time moves forward. Some might even say it does so relentlessly.
(Ugh. Did Crow really think that sounded cool back then? What was he doing all those years ago?)
Turns out the world doesn’t end once you save it. That’s kind of, sort of, mostly, the point. It keeps going, it keeps moving, and things keep on keeping on as you unlearn how to be afraid and you relearn what it means to be happy.
It was inevitable, loving Rean Schwarzer. Crow isn’t sure when he fell or when he realised he was playing victim to gravity – only that he’s been falling for months and years and his panic turned to adrenaline turned to enjoyment somewhere along the way. He’s in love, the world spins on, and that’s that.
Being with Rean is… It’s so easy. It’s terrifying how easy it is, almost like they’ve been building up to this for years. That might just be what happens when you burn yourself at both ends trying to know someone on purpose, or an inevitable consequence of Rean scooping out half of himself to make space for all of Crow’s problems.
A lifetime seems like hardly enough to do it in, not with how much he’s going to have to compensate for – but maybe, if Crow’s real lucky, he’ll be able to make that choice worth it.
New Class VII adopts him as quickly as the old one had.
It’s wonderfully familiar, fitting himself in among them. Not only are they a cast of literal colourful characters, but it’s beyond obvious just how much they care for each other. For Rean as well, who’s folded another five misfits into the hallowed halls of his too-big heart. He’s probably gone as far as to make them metaphorical sandwiches.
(That part’s familiar too.)
Crow’s content to hang back, catching his breath after leading the charge on a combat drill. Ash is nearby, tuning up his switchaxe, and Altina drifts away on Claimh Solais’ arm after casting a quick heal on them both.
Rean already has his hands full. He deftly dodges yet another quip from Musse, pulls Juna’s eagerness back into a much more moderate enthusiasm, and politely accepts Kurt’s praise while simultaneously providing some pointers. It’s endlessly amusing to watch – and, frankly speaking, seems like the kind of thing right up Ash’s alley, the sort of situation which would be ripe to razz their instruction about.
“Not joining in?” Crow’s no Rean when it comes to leashing up Ash’s particular brand of abrasiveness and corralling it into almost-affection, but he’d be lying through his teeth if he said that he didn’t see some of the boy he used to be in that closed off philosophy. Ash has softened miles since they first met, a finer grit to his sandpaper snark. While Rean attacks any emotional doors with a battering ram, Crow’s far more likely to try his hand at picking the lock – something which Ash seems to appreciate, laying his switchaxe across his lap as he wipes his fingers down with a rag.
“With those clowns?” He snorts. “I’d rather die.”
Crow barks out a laugh. “Aw, you don’t need to act so lone wolf about it.” He passes Ash a water bottle, one he takes without a word. “We all know you care.”
“Drop dead, Armbrust.”
“Tried that. Didn’t stick,” Crow fires back, and Ash grins something savage as he lifts the bottle to his lips. That’s the thing with guys like them – if they don’t joke about the fucked-up choices they’ve made, then nobody else will dare to. Rean’s pulled out notes now, jotted references for things he wanted to mention. He’s out of earshot but he’ll probably come over if he needs them.
Crow promptly does what he does best – he slacks off a little. “Man,” he muses, leaning back on his hands. “I really don’t know how he does it.”
Ash pulls a face. “Dude, if you’re going to get gross over Schwarzer can you do it someplace else?”
“I don’t mean it like that, you punk,” and he earns himself a snicker for his troubles, “get your head out of the gutter. He’s just so… Good at this, y’know? At leading, at dragging the rest of us along after him, at helping people out without them even noticing. I don’t think any of us would’ve made it this far without him,” he says, pointedly ignoring Ash’s dry-heaving to one side. Brat. “Look, all I’m saying is that you guys lucked out big time when you got him captaining your ship. Guess you’ve got Towa to thank for that – she must’ve really done a number on him back when she was Pres and he was her helper.”
He looks over expecting agreement; to his surprise, Ash is already staring with what can only be described as a metric ton of disbelief. “No fucking way.”
Crow blinks. “Scuse me?”
The bottle hovers halfway between Ash’s mouth and the floor. “You’re kidding me. Towa? You’re actually serious?” Crow shrugs and Ash only glares harder. “Do you have shit for brains or are all those tactics just for show?”
Crow frowns. “Alright, don’t get too smart with me. You going to keep being cryptic or are you going to share with the class?”
Ash is about five seconds away from an act of violence. “Aidios alive—You’re telling me you really don’t get it? Instructor Towa,” which: hey, why does only she get the title, “is great, sure, but she’s way too soft on Schwarzer to get him to do anything he doesn’t already want to. They’re like—basically the same when it comes to that type of ‘being good’-slash-‘kill ‘em with kindness’ schtick. As nice as that is, that’s not leader material. Instructor Towa’s got her smarts and her own hard work to fall back on. Schwarzer,” which: again, wow, there is a clear difference in respect here, “relies on little more than pipe-dreams and a dumbass, stupid, reckless refusal to know when he’s beat and throw in the fucking towel.” He gets up, propping his axe up against the wall, and it takes Crow a second to process that Rean has indeed called him over. Ash shoots him one last look. “You’re supposed to be his upperclassman, aren’t you? Use your brain, man. Where the fuck else do you think he got it from?”
Crow watches him leave. He watches Rean talk, leaning over so Ash can read his notes, and then watches Rean pat Altina on the head with an indulgent smile—
He swallows.
Nah, that’s… There’s no way.
Ash doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Rean’s ARCUS goes off early one day, lighting up with a thrum of vibration. Then another. Then another.
Crow grumbles, rolling onto his stomach and burrowing deeper into the pillows. “Wh’sat.” He’s not nearly awake enough for this.
The blankets shift, a rush of cold air down one side, and Rean sits half-up to grope blindly for the bedside table. “Sorry, sorry, I’ll,” he muffles a yawn into his shoulder, “that’s mine. I’ll get it.” He’s husky with sleep, squinting at the harsh white light of his ARCUS screen when he flips it open, and Crow pulls a face as the brightness illuminates a good quarter of a metre around it.
Ugh. Technology.
“Whatever it is, you can deal with it later. I need my beauty sleep.” Crow squirms back into bed, nose scrunching, and works on getting himself comfortably situated again between sheets that have gotten tangled between his calves somewhere along the way.
The seconds tick by. Rean still hasn’t moved. He’s just staring at his ARCUS, the sterility of the glare and the sharp shadows it pulls out of his cheekbones aging him years and years.
Crow frowns. “Rean?”
Rean startles, blinking furiously, and looks down to where Crow’s staring up. “Ah, sorry, what,” he runs a hand across his face, “what were you saying?”
“I was saying that you should get back to resting.” Crow’s awake now too, properly awake, nerves lighting up the instant he contacted Rean’s concern. “Something happen?”
“No, no, nothing happened, it’s just…” Rean sighs, eyes drifting back to his ARCUS. “I… Set reminders. It’s a really useful feature and I use it a lot for all kinds of things – birthdays, assignments, even shopping lists. I guess with everything that happened, I… Forgot to get rid of a few.”
“Yeah?” Crow shuffles around, bunching the pillow up under his chin so he can get a better look. “What’s it for?”
Rean chews on his lower lip. “Here. It might just be easier to show you.” He turns the ARCUS around: 1ST SEPTEMBER, it reads across the top in tiny scrolling text, IT’S OVER.
It takes Crow a second to process what he’s looking at, brow furrowing as the words slide by – and when he does, it doesn’t make it any easier to believe.
“You track that?”
Rean runs the tip of his index nail back and forth against metal casing. “Of course I do.”
Crow blinks at him. “Why? I’m sure it’s basically a national holiday by now.”
“You’re not wrong, but it’s different. This is my way of remembering all the things we went through. All the things we survived. All the choices we made, the battles we fought, and… And the people,” he says, voice getting a whole lot quieter, “we lost along the way.”
Ah.
By that, he must mean…
It makes sense. It’s kind of hard to grieve a dad you barely got to know when he technically, theoretically, died long before that. People grow out of and into each other. They grow older and different, closer and apart. That doesn’t mean you ever stop missing the spaces they leave behind.
It’s complicated.
Crow gets it.
“Hard to believe that it’s already been a year.” Rean’s eyes have gone a little hollow and a lot far away; he’s still staring at that reminder, memories and sentiment all wrapped up in a neat hypothetical bow of possibilities. “A whole year, and it’s still so…”
Crow scoots closer. He closes his hand around the bend of Rean’s elbow, running his thumb against the little divot between bone and softness there.
“What about me?” He leans his cheek against his pillow, watching Rean under the sweep of his fringe. “Aren’t I enough to help you remember?”
Rean hesitates, finds Crow’s eyes in the morning dim, and the moment breaks with the crest of his amusement. He snaps his ARCUS shut with a definitive click, tossing it back onto the nightstand. “No, Crow,” and Crow barely has half a second to mime sleepy offense before Rean’s leaning down to brush his hair back and kiss his cheek. “You being here helps me forget.”
Rean still looks at him, sometimes, like he’s expecting him to disappear. Like Crow’s whole existence is little more than sand through his fingers, a beach-side name that vanishes with the next wash of saltwater. Maybe he doesn’t expect Crow to notice, but it’s kind of hard to miss the way he holds Crow’s hand a little too tight, stands a little too close, seeks him out when he leaves the room for a little too long.
Some nights, too, Rean wakes up choking on tears and gasping for air as Crow’s name fades on his lips, always looking like he’s about to shake out of his skin and fall apart into seashell bones.
Crow holds him tight and close through that, too.
He breathes slow and steady, helps them through the growing pains of living again. It’s messy and it’s broken and it’s far from pretty, far from the strength that Rean digs up and holds out to everyone else – but it’s Rean, still Rean, just another little bit that makes up the fabric of his being.
Put simply, Crow loves.
“Do you think about it?” Shuffling papers, a lamp turned up then down then up again. “About us. About what would’ve happened if things were just a little bit different.”
Rean does. Rean has, he’s had to, met another self that learned as much as lived what that would be like. Seen his own best and worst qualities reflected back at him in a physical mirror, learned just how inseparable those bits of him are, discovered that the lines between good and selfish and self-sacrificial never really existed in the first place when they’ve only ever been drawn in the shifting inkblood of Rean’s own heartache.
Crow could lie. He could say he hasn’t spent way too much time thinking about what it would’ve been like if he’d died. That part’s familiar.
The living, now, is so much more new.
Crow winds their hands together, runs his thumb over Rean’s knuckle. Man. He knew telling the truth could be scary. Who knew that wanting to would be even scarier? “Of course I do.” A confession, a concession; honesty for the one person who looked past all his lies and jagged glass edges decided to love him anyway. “But it didn’t. That’s gotta count for something.”
Rean exhales, shaky, and lifts their hands to his mouth. “Yeah,” he says, lips brushing the back of Crow’s knuckles. It runs through him something molten. “It really, really does.”
Shifting fabric, hands finding hands in the dark: “You think they’re proud of us?”
Rean turns his attention from his thoughts to the man lying next to him. “You mean…”
“Yeah.” Crow’s staring at the ceiling, his other hand busy playing with the ends of his own hair where his arm is curled around his head. “Our partners. The originals, at least. Ordine… Man, he really put up with a lot, being chained to me.”
Crow thinks about it. Of course he does; Ordine was the one safe space he had for the better part of five straight years. Once someone’s in there, so inherently a part of you – it’s kind of difficult to have them ever really leave.
In another world, they’re still there – but it’s not them, not like they are now. Rean has his own heart and didn’t face death in single digits; Crow has his own family and didn’t feel death in doubles. Maybe they meet each other, maybe they don’t. Maybe they still become the centre of a different universe’s different story because that’s what they were always destined for – or maybe they do something far more ordinary and far more average like merely being happy. But they’re here and not there, they’re living life for life’s sake and not for an ideal, and they have to look at the people they’ve become and decide if they’re alright with that.
Rean knows this, intimately, just like he knows that he wouldn’t have it any other way, and so he chooses his next works carefully. He picks through concepts, shifts through consolations, and filters out truth the only way he knows how: “We’re living how we want to. I think that’s all they wished for in the end.”
“Mm… Guess so.” Crow might be looking at him but he’s clearly seeing something else, a half-smile on his lips. “Just hope I’m living it well.”
Rean rolls closer, tucks himself in under Crow’s chin. Crow sighs, more air than noise, and his hand moves to Rean’s hair instead.
Rean hums. “We’ll work it out.”
“Together?”
“Always.”
Rean rubs at his left eye.
“You alright?” Crow’s face is shuttered concern, like he’s trying to hide just how much he cares.
Rean nods, exhaling through a tense jaw. “It’s nothing. Just… My eye, giving me trouble again.” He inspects his fingers, one side of his face still squinted shut as the worst of the pain fades as quickly as it had come. There’s no blood this time. That’s a relief.
It’s a tide-over, Emma had said. Maybe some residual consequence of almost losing himself, a little bit of a different life that he’ll never unlive. Phantom pain from an eye that wasn’t his; phantom agony for a loss that wasn’t either.
(It could’ve been. It so easily could’ve.)
Crow cups his cheek with a hand. It’s warm, callouses across the top of his palm, and he’s achingly gentle as he tilts Rean’s chin up. “Let me have a look.” He turns Rean’s face this way and that. Rean goes along with it, keeping his eyes trained on Crow’s face the whole time – because, as he’s come to learn, if he doesn’t, Crow will hover and fret about it in his own flippant way. The easiest way to soothe the quiet, insidious worry that he’ll never admit to himself is to just let him see.
Crow hums, thumb tapping at the apple of Rean’s cheeks. “Yep. Afraid it’s grave, Rean – you’ve got a terminal case of being perfectly fine. Heard it’s bad. Lucky for you, the usual treatment involves a whole lot of kissing it better.” He’s back to grinning now, trying his best to act serious but failing horribly. He seems so proud of himself too, warm joy and relief baked into the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
Rean groans. Goddess, that’s so cheesy – but he still leans into it and still closes his eyes, fighting back his own smile. He’ll be forgiven this, he thinks, because he is twenty something and in love and that’s as good an explanation as any for everything he’s done. “Alright. I’ll be in your care. Look after me well.”
“I always do,” Crow says, and if that’s not the truth of it then Rean doesn’t know what is.
Crow hisses as soon as Rean opens the curtains. Aidios, he doesn’t mean to go full vampire about it but even through his eyelids it’s bright. Too bright, too blinding, a flashbang snapshot of daylight—
Rean immediately shuts them again in a flurry of motion, a swish of fabric that wraps them both back up in blessed dim, but it’s too little too late. Crow groans, muffled, as the throbbing behind his eyes sharpens to a pinpoint stab.
Well. That’s one hell of a way to wake up.
“Crow?” Rean’s voice is far away but too loud all at once, an afterimage of a face above water, and Crow manages little more than a grunt as he drags the blankets up to disappear behind.
The sound of footsteps, slippered feet on wood. “Crow,” Rean tries again, peeling the quilt back just a fraction. ”You alright?” Crow can feel his eyes roaming about but just can’t bring himself to open his own.
It takes more effort than he cares to admit to get his tongue to cooperate. It’s heavy in his mouth, and he feels more than tastes the back of his teeth. “Head hurts.”
“Oh.” Gentle fingers, carding through the hair at his temple and smoothing over his scalp. “Is it bad?”
Crow nods, smooshing his face deeper into the pillow as words escape him once more. He gets like this sometimes. Headaches, pounding like a drum behind his eyes and halfway into his sinuses. Gelica does too – though hers aren’t nearly as bad, nor do they last as long. No surprises there; after all, Crow’s memories did rip their way back out of his subconscious all on their own. He's never been subtle about that kind of thing. They asked George about it once, whether there was anything to be done beyond toughing it out, but he looked so heartbrokenly guilty about it that they just let it be.
Crow will be fine in a bit – he’s had enough of them to know that by now. The pain doubles, a squeezing wring of brain matter. Ugh. Doesn’t change the fact that they hurt like a bitch.
Rean, angel he is, keeps his voice as soft as his hands. “Okay. I’ll get you painkillers and water, maybe see if Towa can cover your first class. You just focus on resting.”
Crow nods, again, and takes Rean’s brief absence as a chance to work on unclenching his jaw while simultaneously working out just what he’s supposed to do with feeling so looked after. How strange, being cared for. How strange, how much he likes it. How strange, how much he wants to promise it in return.
He rolls onto his back, palms to his eyes as he blots out the world.
Shit. He’s really never going to pay off all that interest.
The ride up to Ymir isn’t exactly known for its speed on a good day. Based off the way Crow’s clutching the handrails, you really wouldn’t guess it. His eyes are jittery, his knee more so; he looks, faintly, like he might be physically ill.
“Crow.” Rean knocks their shoulders together. “You alright? You’re looking kind of pale.”
Crow flinches, hand shooting up to his chin. “Me? I’m fine. A-okay. Peachy, even.”
Rean’s brows go up. Crow’s eyes drop down. Neither of them speak.
Crow wilts in record time. “Fine, you got me. I’m just. Worried.” His knee bounces faster in time with his clipped sentences. Rean sets a hand on it to give it a reassuring squeeze and Crow makes this funny little noise in the back of his throat as he stops moving altogether.
“About?”
Crow’s far knee starts bouncing instead, a Mexican wave of motion sweeping across to his other side. He folds his arms at his chest, then seems to think better of it as he untangles them again. “Meeting your family, obviously.”
It’s… Not obvious. If anything, it’s perplexing. “Why? This isn’t the first time I’ve brought people to see my hometown. New Class VII was here barely a handful of months ago.” Based off how they keep asking for another hot springs trip, they’ll probably be back here sooner rather than later.
Crow stares at him like he’s grown a second head. Only for a second, though, because apparently he can’t manage any more than that without combusting on the spot. “I meant as a partner, Rean.” His tone is chiselled out of incredulity. “You’ve never brought someone who you were—together with. I’m gonna meet your parents and have to look them in the eye while knowing that they know that their precious Rean has me whipped halfway to Sunday.”
Oh.
Oh, that’s…
“Crow.” Rean somehow wins out against laughter but he loses to the smile that spills across his face. “Are you nervous?”
“Rean, c’mon.” Given that Crow’s likely one breakdown away from climbing out the cable car window, that’s an understatement. “What if they don’t like me?”
Rean tries not to think about all the years and visits and calls he’s spent being sappy and disgusting. It doesn’t work. All he can do is hope that his ears aren’t too pink, his heart overflowing with all of the love he’s always had too much of to contain. “They’ll love you,” he says, leaning forward to find Crow’s eyes and dialling the earnestness up to eleven. It’s apparently quite effective even when he’s not aware of it; he can only hope that it’s just as devastating when he’s doing it by choice.
Crow scoffs, a quick side glance, but the tense line of his shoulders softens a hair. “Easy for you to say. They adore you. They would even if you weren’t their son because that’s just what you do to people. Besides, you’re not the one who’s an ex-terrorist-turned-dead-guy-turned-terrorist-again.” He drums the fingers of his left hand against panelling, chewing at the inside of his cheek. “I’m messed up, Rean. I don’t want to mess this up too.” He sounds so very small, almost skittish, and Crow Armbrust rarely seems scared of anything but it’s becoming abundantly clear that he’s downright terrified of this.
Rean shakes his head. “You won’t. I promise.” Crow opens his mouth as if to argue but his eyes betray just how much he wants to believe. Rean curls his left hand over Crow’s right one where it rests between them against the seat. “My parents have always talked about wanting me to be happy. I am when I’m with you,” and Crow’s eyes go wide and his cheeks flush coral, “so I think that basically guarantees that they’ll care about you too.”
Crow stares for another second or two, speechless, before he thunks his head against the window behind them with a huff of defeat. “You’re hopeless.”
Rean cracks a smile. “Actually, I’ve been told that I just don’t know when to quit.”
Crow’s grin turns genuine, Rean’s happiness is too, and the tension melts away like snow in springtime.
The cable car rumbles to a stop. Rean glances over a shoulder, getting to his feet. “Ready?” He holds out a hand – one that Crow shakes his head at but takes nonetheless, allowing himself to be pulled up.
“As I’ll ever be,” he says, and he doesn’t let go.
Jurai’s kind to Rean.
The sun and the sea breeze does wonders for his complexion, tousling his hair up like wave-peaks and roughing up his usual perfect image. It makes him all the more vibrant, something brilliantly beautiful under cloudless sunshine.
Apparently it makes him more approachable too. People stop and ask for autographs, Rean signing them away with a vaguely embarrassed smile, because even all the way out here word gets around when you help unbreak the world.
That’s not to say Jurai’s unkind to Crow either. It’s home, whether he likes it or not, and some boyish blue part of him will never outgrow the beaches and brine.
The older folk have gotten over staring at him like he’s a ghost, and the younger ones don’t seem to mind having him around so much anymore. They greet him by name, offer him smiles and waves as he passes by. Some of the kiddos dart up to him to badger him about another game, something he quickly tucks away from Rean’s curious eyes with promises to get back to them later.
Crow put them on the map in the worst way possible because he was thirteen and hurting and thought he knew better. It’s the least he can do to make up for it.
They visit the graveyard on their third day there. Tucked behind a church, fenced in on three sides by greenery, it’s far enough inland that the wind bites a little less and the roar of the waves fades to more of a gentle lull. That’s where it’s always been for generations and generations.
His grandfather is buried at the furthest fringe, under a big tree, out overlooking the city he loved so very much.
When Crow came back the first time, the grave was well-kept. There weren’t any flowers, sure, but there weren’t any weeds either, and the stone itself was clean of any salt-damage. They looked after him for all the years Crow couldn’t bear to. He doesn’t think he can ask for much more than that. He sat until the sun went down, talked until his throat was hoarse, cried until he felt a little bit less hollow inside.
That’s the worst part about loving people, isn’t it? The fact that it ends half-finished. No-one’s ever ready for that part; the bit where it goes from ‘friends’ to ‘family’, ‘loving’ to ‘loved’, ‘going’ to ‘gone’.
He doesn’t have as much to say this time but Rean still hangs back, gives Crow space as he makes his way up to the base of the tree. He didn’t come with flowers. It seems a waste, to lay something that used to be living over someone that used to be too. Instead, he brings a fresh pack of cards, sets it atop the smooth stone with careful hands. The old one’s faded now, the box more peeling paper than anything closer to constructed, so he picks it up and pockets it to gift the plastic-wrapped deck inside to one of the kiddos in town.
“Hey Gramps,” he starts, staring down at stone. “How’ve you been?” The granite says nothing back. That’s fine – it would be weirder and a whole lot freakier if it did.
He talks about Jurai. How things’re faring after the War, whether or not the independence talks went anywhere. They didn’t in the end, which is kind of funny to think about – way back when, Crow would’ve fought tooth and nail to see them go through. Now, though, with some perspective and some more years under his belt, he’s able to take enough of a step back to understand what he thought he never would when he was fifteen and living on nothing but vengeance. Thinking you’re right and being so are two very different things. The latter has never belonged to him, but the idea doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it used to. You are more than your past, people tell him. You are worthy of this, whatever ‘this’ is, whatever you choose to make of it.
Sometimes, when he runs a little low on self-loathing, he can feel himself almost starting to believe it.
So what if it’s patchwork? So what if it’s a work in progress? So what if it might not be finished in this life, or the next, or even the one after that? The people are happy here. Maybe it’s not what he would’ve chosen, and maybe it’s not what his Gramps would’ve picked either, but maybe, just maybe, it’s still good enough.
It’s one hell of a place, this Erebonia of theirs.
Funny how it took death shoving its rigor mortis hands up under his shirt for him to realise he didn’t want it nearly as much as he thought he did – funny how it took all that and more for him to see it.
He breathes, slow. The grass ripples behind him. It tastes and feels like sunlight.
He clears his throat. “By the way,” he starts, glancing over his shoulder.
Crow gestures Rean over from where he’s been staring off into the ocean and trying very hard not to listen in. Rean’s smile is a little shy but no less sure, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than right here. It should be studied, how he can say so very much without saying anything at all; maybe Crow can lodge it in next to his own ability to understand.
He takes Rean’s hand up like it’s something precious. “Gramps,” he says, holding on for dear life and dear love, “there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Crow doesn’t know if he wants to get married.
It’s kind of a big deal. It’ll be a big deal to Rean, a final shot at stability in a life that’s already fragmented way too many times for a guy that’s barely twenty-something, but Crow is…
Well. ‘Til death do us part’ is a nice sentiment, but he’s not sure it still applies when it technically already has.
But Rean smiles at him, blood running warm and alive in his cheeks. Rean kisses him like it’s as natural as breathing, leans against him like he’s made to fit, and Rean is so wonderful and perfect and so very beautiful—
Crow thinks, just for a moment, that he’d be okay with it if it was Rean.
He’s still got that ring, too; the old silver wolf one that Rean gave him all that time ago, back in Mishelam when they looked up at the black-blue sky with its white-white stars and both thought it might’ve been their last night alive. He found it tossed in a drawer somewhere, buried under mismatched socks and single remnants of past pairs. Frankly speaking, it’s a damn miracle he hasn’t lost it somewhere along the way.
They were young and stupid then. They’re still young and stupid now, especially if Crow has anything to say about it, but it’s already been long enough that when he looks back on the ‘before’ it seems like it somehow wasn’t all that silly to begin with.
He thumbs open the black box, inspects the band of tarnished metal.
Eh. What’s one more to add to the list?
He gets it polished. He starts wearing it, surreptitiously, on days when he doesn’t need to wear his gloves, and Rean flushes so red when he sees it that Crow gets seriously worried for his health.
“You kept that?” His voice has gone all funny, high and wispy with disbelief and embarrassment and something else.
Crow scoffs. “Uh, of course I did.” He flashes his left hand, waggling his fingers so the metal reflects Rean’s wide-eyed wonder. “You gave it to me.”
Rean swallows. He goes even redder somehow, all the way down to the collar of his shirt. “Well, yes,” he manages, “but it’s so… I mean… It’s a little,” he clears his throat, “young, don’t you think?”
Crow grins. He’ll never get tired of this, tripping into Rean’s space and being so very sure that someone will catch him. “Better get me another one to replace it then.”
Rean seems to take that as a personal challenge. He pops the question properly a scant two weeks later, a matching pair of better, wolf-less rings in hand and an all too victorious glimmer in his eyes.
Crow, naturally, says yes. He says yes to a wedding, agrees to his own happiness, gives voice to a future that’s shockingly his.
They keep the ceremony small, limit it to just friends and family. They’re heroes, sure, but they technically sparked just as many fires as they put out. No point making it a bigger thing than it is.
This isn’t battle. It isn’t the hands of fate against them, all odds and cards falling out of their favour. They’ve turned the tables this time around – it’s them against the world, it’s them against it all, and it’s victory.
Crow keeps the wolf ring. He proudly adds both to his necklace, silver and gold clinking against each other just over his heart. Rean cringes at it but comes around eventually; faster once Crow starts referring to the former as his engagement ring.
Rean rolls his eyes at the theatrics but he’s smiling, his eyes flickering down every now and then to follow the chain where it disappears under the collar of Crow’s shirt.
And they say romance is dead. A shame, really, that they don’t all have Crow’s talent for coming right back.
They probably won’t have kids.
Rean would be a great father, Crow just knows it – but there’re some scars that aren’t healed by love alone, even if Teo and Lucia did nothing short of a brilliant job raising Rean into a brilliant man. As for Crow: he cut the word ‘family’ out of his vocabulary with a sharp scalpel and sharper severity before he turned ten years old.
It’s not a house that makes a home. It’s not the bookshelf, or the bed frame, or the bowl of midnight cereal that they haven’t taken out to be washed. Without them, it’s just another building, but with them in it, it suddenly belongs.
They’ve got Altina, who calls them every week even after she stops referring to Rean as ‘Instructor’ and starts calling him Rean instead. There’s poetry in there somewhere; Rean finding his family and Altina following in his shining footsteps. They’ve got the rest of New Class VII and all the other students that come after, and they’ve also got Old Class VII and all that came before. Their ex-classmates battle it out for the privilege and honour of their respective little ones spending time with Uncle Rean – which, by proxy, makes Crow the cooler, suaver, and way more fun Uncle to a whole gaggle of bright-eyed dreamers.
So yeah, they probably won’t have kids – but, as Crow watches Rean scoop up Gaius’ daughter to her delighted giggles, propping her up on one hip with nothing short of adoration lighting up his face, he can’t help feeling like they’re probably not missing out on all that much.
“Rean.” Crow knocks twice, a rap-rap of knuckles on the open door. Rean looks up, blinking to force focus, and sets down his pen with a glance at the clock.
“Crow.” He lifts his glasses off his nose, rubbing at his eyes. “You’re still here?”
“Course I am,” says Crow, shoulder against the door frame. “Someone’s gotta wait for you.”
“Sorry, sorry, I’m almost done – I just need to make sure all these reports have comments on them so I can hand them back tomorrow. Five more minutes?”
Crow whistles. “Tough deal. How’s about you throw in a kiss and I’ll think about it.”
Rean rises to the challenge. “Dinner too? We can get those noodles you like.”
“Woah now, is that a bribe I hear? You’re spoiling me,” Crow says, and he moves into the room and around the table to come up behind.
Rean chuckles, indulgent, and leans up when Crow drapes arms around his shoulders and presses a kiss to the top of his head. “Someone has to.”
The fact of the matter is this: All stories come to an end. Rean’s will probably be more famous than Crow’s, last longer and rise to legend, but that doesn’t spare it from the same fate. It’s not a sad thing. It’s just what it means to be read, to be written, to be loved. Crow doesn’t know when it’ll happen to them, how it’ll go when it does. Hopefully quietly. Peacefully. They’ve both earned it.
Until then, though, until time stops trickling and the days stop dripping by, he’ll give and share and heal everything until he deserves it. Through the days with twice as much sun, through the nights with three times as many stars, he’ll peel away rotting wood, bury his nails in among the moss and the rot until he cleans out enough to grow something new.
How lucky, that he’s been given the privilege of growing up, that he’s been handed the chance to love something worth it along the way.
Aidios be damned if he’s going to let himself waste it.