Chapter Text
Norman wakes to sunlight.
Sunlight—for all that he associates it with Gracefield House—is a good thing. There wasn’t any sunlight at Lambda, instead vitamins and artificial UV lamps programmed to the tee to the exact percentage of exposure for healthy growing in a boy. The same technology had been installed at Minerva’s tree base, after.
Norman likes sunlight. It’s warm, and that means he is alive.
The first thing he sees, blinking the sleep gunk out of his eyes, is a halo of auburn hair, glowing in the rising sun. Rosy cheeks dusted with gold and eyelashes gilded, cherry lips glossy with morning spit and whistling breath. Emma still drools in her sleep. She’s beautiful.
Supine and calm, he lies in their bed in a bath of sunlight; feeling the warmth flow into his body like his bones had become flimsy like a bird and they held this happiness in their hollows. The soft snores become irregular: a sign that Emma’s rousing.
In a few minutes, their alarm will ring, and Norman will lean over the petulant, groaning blob that is his fiance to kiss her forehead good morning and hit the snooze. He will get up, take a quick shower, and just as he steps out of the steam, he’ll hear the snoozed alarm beep again. By the time he finishes dressing, Emma will have finally rolled out of bed, and he will head downstairs.
“Morning, sweetheart,” he’ll say, when 10 minutes later a dressed but bleary-eyed Emma tumbles down the stairs to join him at their kitchen bar for a quick breakfast. He would have set the coffeemaker to percolate, first thing when he’d gotten downstairs, and now he’ll hand her a fresh mug, taken black. Like a switch flipped:
“Morning, Norman!” Emma will chirp. Then, right on cue—“Morning, Ray!”
And Ray will shuffle out of the door connecting his studio apartment to their main living room, already scowling at the light of day. Emma will likely tease him for it, and Ray will put off quipping “hypocrite” back to grab the full mug—also black, the two heathens—that Norman’ll offer, clapping them both on the shoulder in greeting as he passes.
They’ll finish breakfast amidst comfortable chatter while Ray nurses his second cup over the morning paper, while Norman looks over the same news on his tablet. Norman and Emma start work earlier than Ray, nowadays, so they’ll pack their bags while Ray rinses the breakfast dishes.
Before they head out, Norman will take a minute to duck into the living room and play a move on his and Ray’s standing chess game ( Knight to B4, today ) and by then Emma will be at the door, letting Buddy out for his morning walk. Ray, coffee mug back in hand, will see them off.
A perfect start to the day, one that’s been routine to them since settling into their new lives in the human world.
It’s been years since Emma rose with the sun; years of too many all-nighters and surprise attacks and constant vigilance have added up, and the weight of it all has settled into their bodies like stones. Emma and Ray compensate by waking later and too much caffeine; Norman compensates by keeping his promises, this time, to not go anywhere the two cannot follow (really, though, what path will not unfurl its carpet walkway to Emma’s relentless drive?).
Norman lies in bed, thinks about this, and smiles. Thinks about possibilities stretching out longer and warmer than the sun’s rays, about a warmth deeper than the sun itself, one more indelible than the cosmos. How it feels to be in the middle of something.
Thinks about something great.
The alarm rings. Norman kisses Emma’s forehead, and gets about starting his day.
📦📦📦
In the privacy of the fitting room, the attendant having left to find another shade of yellow for the heels (aureolin or daffodil? Ray had yet to read about colour combinations.), Emma gripes: “Why can’t we have it outdoors? Under the sun, and the sky, and clouds—“
“That’s the definition of outdoors, idiot mayor,” Ray drawls, not looking up from his book.
Emma powers on, ignoring Ray, having learnt the art of not picking every fight that tumbles into her sights somewhere during puberty. Diplomacy, Norman called it, politely, diplomatically, case-in-point. “And trees, Ray, with all of my family and I’m not in a stuffy corset and we can eat your cooking! Oh—and a giraffe piñata! That’d be the ideal wedding.” She huffs, but Ray does not have to tune her out because at that moment the attendant returns with yet another precarious stack of heels. Emma tries them on dutifully, already back to her sunny smile. Neither women look back at Ray for his opinion, which is just as well because he has yet to learn anything about shoes.
“Be less picky,” Ray replies to Emma, nodding at the mismatched heels she’s cradling in either hand as if she were god weighing the heart and the feather. Emma effortlessly catches on to what he’s really talking about, a continuation of their earlier conversation around liable ears. She doesn’t respond, but then again, Ray had actually meant, ideal? what’s not ideal about marrying your childhood love, who you have survived highs and hells for, together with, to be bound together forevermore and past that?, and he thinks maybe Emma caught his exasperated undertone and understood that too.
Scratch that—he glances up, expecting dazed eyes from staring at too many pairs of yellow pumps, but sees a different expression in the mirror altogether. Ray almost flinches; very carefully flips a page in his book to hide his twitch. Emma’s reflection smoulders at him with a dangerous glare Ray has been on the receiving end of thrice too often—albeit toned-down, but a dare and a promise , all the same.
She sees right through him, and Ray shrinks back into Fashion for Dummies: Bridal Styles for Women (1980’s and Beyond).
📦📦📦
[10 years earlier]
They were going to change the world, one day, they said. They had been kids then, and changing the world had meant surviving, protecting their own, and perhaps killing the occasional demon.
Then they had grown up, had clawed teeth and nail into a literal new world , and found that knowing how to fire an arrow through an apple 50 metres away and run real fast on silent feet did not protect them against anything, here. No, they had gotten here, and grown-ups had put them into nice pastel rooms and had hushed conversations around them that shut up immediately when they noticed Ray listening, like they thought that they were not mature enough, too sensitive, to hear the things being said. Like they wouldn’t understand.
That was what the lady said when she came in, flanked by big, burly men in black suits, and said they would have to be separated; that they would have to be shipped off into foster homes and orphanages (Real ones, this time, she was quick to reassure, with loving parents. Emma’d snarled.); that legally they couldn’t release any of them into the world; that 18, an arbitrary number, would be the difference between freedom and captivity. So long as they were in this country they had to abide by these laws, after all—what they did not say, Ray knew, from quiet corners and vents (the latter by proxy of Jemima), was that they were lucky to be—for now—considered under human laws, when some were quick to call them cattle .
Emma’d snarled, and Ray had been the one to grab her wrist and hold her back, because he didn’t trust Norman to. (She would win, anyways, even without the knife tucked under her skirt).
Changing the world, Ray concluded, didn’t mean punching things anymore. Survival dictated a new type of skill set, but when did that stop them? They’d learn it; he’d read law tomes and studied the loopholes. But while he started mentally categorising his reading order, Emma was the one who came up with the idea.
“The lady said that as long as we’re on this land we were obligated to follow their rules. But what if we had our own land?”
Norman hummed. “Like a self-governing settlement?”
“Yeah!” Emma said, pointing a finger. “If I’m the Mayor, I could make my own rules, right?”
Ray was quick to shut her down, saying they’d still have to deal with international affairs, but Norman interrupted with a thoughtful hum. “Minerva's records mentioned something about a property,” he said. “Up north. A safe haven, for the cattle children in the human world, if we ever made it over. I didn’t see it on their maps, in their territories. We don’t know if it’s still there, but.”
He trailed off, thinking. It’d be risky, but it certainly wasn’t impossible , and well—even the impossible had never stopped them. There was hope .
“But staying here isn’t really an option, either,” completed Emma. Reluctantly, Ray’d nodded.
“So we’ll head there,” she said; then, with a glance at their younger ones, looking safe and relaxed in their warm beds, engrossed in their shiny new tablets and toys: “Is that. Is that okay?”
And: “Emma,” Oliver said, speaking what Ray and Norman held intrinsic, written in their cores like starstuff and dust, “we’d all follow you anywhere.”
Ray had always tried to win the system. He looked for loopholes and he masterfully exploited them, dodging tripwires and finding cracks to slide through.
But Emma?
Emma shatters the entire system.
So that night, Emma said: “We’re leaving,” and the resounding cheer from the dorm surprised the four of them.
Violet and Zach had already started handing out their bug-out bags which they’d hidden in the ceiling vents, while Anna and Nat helped the younger ones do up their laces. “These tablet games are getting boring,” Thoma admitted, while Lani mock-whispered, not even bothering to hide his excitement: “Are we going to sneak out , again?”
They left to cheers of freedom, and family, and promises in the face of the rest of the world.
📦📦📦
So of course, Emma knows just as well as Ray the importance of her and Norman’s wedding being televised and treated with the same socio-political scale of the Treatise signing. They needed the worlds to see: this was them, these were the humans in the human cattle; in other words, Emma needed to shine bright as the most radiant girl in the world, and Norman needed to gaze into Emma’s eyes like they were the leads in the best romantic comedy film of history. Not that they needed to act , Ray knows.
But that was just the morale and sympathy aspect. Underneath that, they would be hosting guests of utmost importance from the worlds, the Gates; guests that Ray himself would take part in picking apart their motives and minds with nothing more than pleasantries and dances. They needed to host it in the Castle, to show signs of reverence; they needed to have the ceremony in the Town Hall, to show their prosperity and their people. They needed camera crews to catch their farms and mines in the background and advertise their worth to the other human settlements, needed to establish trade and connections.
They needed to make their town more than a tourist spot for people wanting to sightsee the reclusive “cattle humans” in real life, and what better joyous occasion than a wedding?
📦📦📦
It started, like most of their plans, over the dishes. Ray and Norman still do them together, more often than not, while Emma flits around in the living room entertaining whichever branch of their family had dropped by that night, and rough-housing with the younger children.
It reminded Ray of being back at the House, shoulder-to-shoulder in soapy suds and clinking china. The only difference now being the topics of conversation: Norman recounts his day at city hall, detailing budget meetings and Treatise negotiations, taking care to specify the look on Emma’s face when she found out she had been scheduled for another meeting with the agricultural ministers, and she had almost forgotten again, and how she had sprinted there in heels in record time. In turn, Ray tells Norman about Conrad’s ethical dilemma in Heart of Darkness , the betting pool on whether or not Phil was going to bring his new girlfriend home when he returned from uni for the summer (which he had already booked train tickets for), and the weird poodle he’d seen outside the library window that reminded him of Jemima’s hair.
It’s nice. It’s been a long time since they’ve had the privilege of talking of inconsequential things. The last had been, when they were, what, 10? and scrubbing dishes for 30 instead of 3. Maybe 5, or 15, because who was he kidding, they still had family over for dinner almost every day.
But some days, rare days, it is just the three of them at home having dinner. Ray watches his best friends flirt like lovesick teenagers from the other side of the table. Norman wipes a smudge of curry from Emma’s face with his thumb, Ray is so lost in the love-warm expression on his face he almost forgets to freeze his face in a smirk. Emma retaliates by licking the curry off of Norman’s finger, and then, ah, they’re kissing again.
Only, Emma breaks apart prematurely from the kiss and turns to Ray, spit-slicken lips parted in a wide grin. “This curry is so good!” she crows, and goes back to enthusiastically shoving mouthfuls into her face. “Than’ fer cooken’ Ray!”
Ray freezes on that grin, directed at him, and almost forgets to respond. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, dumbass,” Ray replies. “You say that like I don’t cook for you everyday.” Emma is too busy stuffing herself to notice the flush on his face, hopefully.
“I say this so you keep cooking for us every day, Ray!” Emma chirps, earnest. “I want to eat your cooking for the rest of my life .”
She says this like it’s not up for discussion. It’s not. Inwardly, Ray adds another reason to live into his ongoing mental tally of oaths to Emma and Norman and his family: cook for Emma.
On the outside, Ray rolls his eyes at that—and from the corner of his eye, he notices Norman’s placid smile directed at him. He’s ready to, he doesn’t know, apologise for looking at his fiancé? Except then he turns to Norman fully to do, he doesn’t know, something , and Ray realises: it’s not his normal polite smile, but instead, the same fond expression he had looking at Emma.
God.
“I’m going to finish this in my room,” Ray says, and excuses himself, ignoring Emma’s confused whine and Norman’s silence.
God , Ray prays spitefully, why couldn’t these two idiots just be happy together .
Once Emma has trooped upstairs to take a hot bath, Ray obediently slinks out of his rental room, dropping his dirty dish into the sink. He grumbles, but it’s easy to knock elbows with Norman, especially when he’s already pulled on neon yellow washing gloves up to his elbow, and fighting a futile war with his sleeve that keeps slipping down. Ray sighs and folds Norman’s sleeve up for him, making sure to tuck in the edges. The fringes have already started bleeding wet, and he scolds Norman absentmindedly.
“This wouldn’t happen if you just roll them properly, instead of just shoving them up like you always do,” Ray clucks his tongue and hip-checks him over. “I have to redo the other side, too.”
“Sorry, Ray,” Norman says with a cheery smile, not sounding very sorry at all, and then cajoles Ray into easy conversation about their day. If Norman has anything to say about Ray’s hasty exit from dinner, he keeps mum—at least till Ray’s finished washing his pots and has relaxed into their domestic, comfortable rhythm.
That’s when Norman strikes. He somehow segues from gossiping about Phil’s new girlfriend to the progression of the Treatise and the struggle with International Relations with Oliver’s physical absence from his board seat. Ray doesn’t think much of it at first; they often talk about work (though Ray’s is much less stakes and NDAs), and Norman keeps Ray updated on important government progressions. What he isn’t prepared for, is for Norman to ask: “What would you do to diffuse tensions? We could use your help at city hall.”
Ray scowls. “I was expecting this, but I didn’t think you’d be so direct about it.”
Norman’s smile doesn’t change. “Someone taught me it’s sometimes better to be blunt about things,” Norman says, and Ray knows he’s referencing how Emma and Norman got together, after dancing around each other for years. They’re good for each other, Ray thinks. They make each other happy. That makes him happy. It’s true.
Ray washes the last plate and hands it to Norman to dry. He watches Norman’s nimble fingers work; calloused but still frail, physical abilities overlooked in the gene sample to prioritize mental capabilities. They are so slender and careful with the dishes, and Ray’s eyes catch on the ring finger without meaning to. The answer clicks in his head; a puzzle he has been working on ever since Norman first talked about public appearances, and doubtful ambassadors, and slander from the Ratris.
“A wedding,” Ray announces, when Norman has put the dish down, so he does not break it when he inevitably jumps. He knows Norman has not considered this possibility, for all his tactical genius. The man remained a bit of an idiot, when it came to Emma. “Propose to Emma.”
Norman doesn’t meet his eyes for a good while. Ray knows he is turning over the options in his head. Trusts that he will come to the same conclusion as Ray.
(But whenever has Norman done that, and stopped there?)
Eventually, they hear footsteps on the stairs, coming down. Ray retires to his room, satisfied he has made his point, and but before he can close the door, he hears Norman calling out, “Emma, dear? Can we talk?”
📦💍📦
Over the years, Norman and Ray had taken to playing chess in their spare time.
They had cycled through a number of board games, but both found comfort in the game of their childhood. Emma sometimes played them, too, had even eked out a win, once or twice (mostly when Ray or Norman were feeling particularly charitable (the former), or under the weather that day (the latter)). For the most part, though, chess remained Ray’s and Norman’s field.
It didn’t take long for their schedules to fill up again; spare time once again becoming a commodity, bought with the toll of a hard day’s work. Games that lasted hours played in-person would stretch over months, played in stolen snatches of time before Norman headed out to the University in the morning or when Ray ducked home in between doing groceries and meeting Paula at the Town Hall to review amendments on the Treatise.
Ray had just gotten home from walking Buddy. The three-legged golden retriever bounded excitedly towards the door connecting Ray’s studio to Norman and Emma’s living room, scratching at it in her eagerness to get home home. Ray sighed, unlatching the door to let her through. Despite the years, and Norman and Emma’s frequent use of it, he remained hesitant to use their shared door, to overstep the boundaries he set. But Norman and Emma’s kitchen was much better than his own makeshift kitchenette—a power move on Don's part, done on purpose, he knew—and with the same, pointed deliberation, the chess set lived in Norman and Emma’s living room.
(He didn’t have enough room for a 4-dimensional artisan glass chess set, Norman argued, and Emma said that she wasn’t helping clean his room.). It was much like how Ray wasn’t allowed to take the basement, like he had originally wanted, when they persuaded him (without much difficulty) to move in with them, because the home gym and playroom would only work in their and Don’s vision if it were in the basement. Don, Ray argued, was not a visionary. But Don is the architect building the actual fucking house, so Ray just has to deal with it, Don shot back.)
Norman could plot against him all he wants. Ray could outplay him.
He moves his bishop to G-6 and sets up a 3-move-plan with only a .2% chance of failure to take Norman’s queen.
Starts the endgame.
📦💍📦
.2% is plenty for a guy like Norman. Yet, almost exactly a week later, Ray takes the white queen and sends a single text: “check.” For some reason, he doesn’t feel like he’s won.
He waits for Norman to capitulate at that, rather than foolishly prolong an unavoidable end, but Ray comes in the following evening to see the board still in play.
It makes Ray suspicious, and he overthinks his next move, which should've been obvious from both sides, for too long, before cautiously tipping his rook forwards.
Norman's queen is in Ray's possession. His king is only two sure moves away. What game is Norman trying to play here?
📦💍📦
After hearing the official announcement of Norman and Emma’s wedding, Ray’s instinct is to give his two best friends space. That didn’t work before when he initially got them together—that one took a lot of brute-forcing and spelling it out for the both of them—but they’ve settled now. It’s not like before, when they were still running from the adrenaline of surviving another day. They’ve grown, they’ve matured, they’re walking some days instead of running all the time. Most importantly, they’re walking side by side.
Norma and Emma are planning their wedding and the rest of their life together. It’s not that Ray won’t be in it—it’s already bad enough that he lives in their house. (This wasn’t his choice, but it felt like the whole family conspired against him to not let him reside with anyone else. The basement was his compromise; the living room studio was Norman and Emma’s rebuttal. For some reason, it had been a town debate. Pitifully, Ray lost.) They were a couple now, they were bound to want more time together, alone. A blissfully happy life that Ray could watch, and be part of, from a distance.
Because if Norman and Emma were happy, he would be happy too.
Unbeknownst to Ray, Norman and Emma are not happy with Ray’s solution. They each come up with their own:
Norman’s solution to getting married to only one half of his soulmates is keeping the other half as far away as possible, trust distance to hide secrets and masks. Emma’s solution is the exact opposite—make Ray attend all of the wedding preparations, so he understands how important he is to them. It is not their first fight, nor is it the first time Norman (unsurprisingly) capitulates to his fiery lover.
They tactfully do not explain any of this Ray. Instead, Emma descends upon Ray with the force of a hundred teenage summer romances and sweeps him into a whirlwind of shoe-shopping, veil-selection, dress-fittings, and other bridal stuff that neither of them have an eye for. Her excuse: he is the only one of them with a job with flexible hours, and well, Ray had never regretted becoming a librarian until that moment.
They are predictably a mess, Ray a tad better at Emma with styles, but having only studied historic fashion, his picks (when he’s bothered) are still touch-and-go. It bothers him enough he starts Fashion for Dummies, then when he finishes that, starts ordering wedding books for his library. He starts questioning why he still needs to be there, honestly, when Gilda or Anna “pop by” (even though it's a 1-hour horse ride, 2-hour train trip to the nearest city) after school ends or the last appointment at the salon is taken of, respectively, and pick out whatever napkin colour or broach or hat in possibly 10 seconds.
So, Ray does what he’s best at. He thinks.
📦📦📦
Ray remembers:
Those two years, the two years at the beginning of the After, when Emma had breached the 5cm gap between their bedrolls like it was nothing but that—nothing but a step to the left—and rolled into Ray’s arms and wrapped her wiry arms around his torso, and buried her face in his chest.
He let her stay, held her tight, and precious, like she were a water balloon and if he didn’t grip too hard she’d drop and burst but if he hugged too tight she’d burst. Either way she’d burst, and then he would burst; he promised her and the others he would live but would he really, with her gone?
She never cried, and he never kissed her, no matter how much he wanted to.
Emma didn’t do it often; perhaps 3 times in his memory (forget the perhaps), once in the woods, once in the first days of the shelter, and once after Goldy Pond, though that time he was the one who slipped into her infirmary bed at her insistence.
That time, she had whispered, “Norman” then she had leaned up and he’d jerked back so hard, she’d let him go.
“I’m not Norman,” he said, passing it off as a slip of the tongue. Letting her know. It could have been a mistake.
Emma had not taken the cue. She shook her head fiercely, as much as she could while half her body mass was wrapped in casts. Ray hissed at her to stop, but Emma yelled back, “No, you’re Ray!” with such intensity he froze. His reflexes kicked in, tossing her a “Yes, dumbass, did you hit your head somehow in your sleep?”
“No!” scowled Emma, Norman-less for too long to have retained any residue tact from overexposure (He can make that joke now, in hindsight. At the time he was probably panicking too hard inside, anyways.).
“Why not?” Emma kept going, now petulantly turned away from him. Ray had sat up in bed, and the 5cm of distance between them felt much, much larger.
Ray turned over his response in his head, like a smooth river rock. Sometimes his thoughts felt like that, like pebbles in a river; small and inconsequential in the tide. It was not his secret. He thought: Norman would’ve waited.
Then he thought: Norman is no longer here to tell her.
“Norman loved you,” he blurted out.
He doesn’t expect Emma’s spitfire response. “I know!” she yells. “And I love him! But he’s gone!”
“Then-” Ray starts,
“And I love you!” Ray’s heart stops—
Emma keeps going: “I love my family, Ray!”
—beats again.
“Emma,” he sighs, “Norman loved you. He told me so. I can’t, I can’t do that to him.” Because Norman told him, trusted him, and this would be Ray betraying Norman’s trust. And Ray would never do that because he loved Norman too much, too.
“I don’t get it,” Emma says, but the medicine Ray slipped into her syringe is taking effect. “I love everyone, including you, Ray. Ray,” she starts, annoyed, before the angry lines in her face slacken and soften out with sleep.
“Rest, Emma,” Ray said, and left her to her slumber.
Thinking back, perhaps Ray was the one who didn’t get it.
📦📦📦
Buddy is a three-legged stray that despite all odds, accidentally wandered through the hazardous plains, crossed the water passing at low tide, and into Neverland, and survived , so of course, Emma immediately adopted the golden retriever into her family. That is how Emma works, with her perennial optimism and her sunny disposition; that is how Emma becomes mayor of this town, because she loves, and loves, and loves, and the sun smiles warmly on all she opens her arms to.
They are only a small settlement at first, the outcast “cattle children”, in a new world, once again in search of a new home. They find an old town past its golden age, elderly occupants having laid to rest, and they rebuild and they grow and they thrive. Other escapees flock to them over the years and Emma calls them family, too. They raise their heads from her arms and look at her with utter devotion, look at her as if she were the sun, and their gazes say I’d follow you anywhere . Norman and Ray are by her side but are they any different?
But the gist of it is: Emma loves, a lot, loves everyone and everybody and her love grows, instead of stretching thin.
Love for Emma is not measured quantities to be doled out in scarcity like it is for him and Norman; love for Emma is a fact of life, like the air she breathes and the sun that warms her skin.
Ray doesn’t understand till later. That all that matters is that she chose him, anyways .
📦💍📦
The night before the wedding, Ray gets home late and walks straight into a trap he should’ve seen coming 12 moves ago. So lost in his own thoughts, of memories and chess moves and Ratri moles, he takes his eyes off Emma in present time for two seconds and gets paid back by a metaphoric punch to the gut.
“Surprise!” Emma says, ambushing Ray at the door. She takes his coat like a gentleman and links their arms, dragging him into their kitchen just as Norman places the last plates on the table. “We’re having dinner!”
Ray blinks at the lavish spread of food suspiciously. “You made this?”
“The bread!” Emma proclaims, looking way too proud about being able to put flour, yeast, and water into the oven. “And everything else is from Paula and Pepe’s cafe.”
Norman has a smudge of flour on his cheekbone. Ray absent-mindely wipes it off with his thumb, sighing. “When I told you guys to take the afternoon off, I meant for you to prepare for the wedding, not... this . Was making focaccia really the best use of your time?”
“Yes,” Norman says serenely;
“Yes,” Emma says confidently;
“Mmhmm,” Ray says doubtfully. “I’m serious guys, whatever this is… you really don’t have to.”
“And what is this, do you think,” Norman parries back.
Ray is a coward. “Let’s just eat before it gets cold,” he says, as he gives in to Emma’s tugging and sits down on his chair.
The food is delightful. Paula and Pepe's cooking always is, though seasoned less potently than Ray is used to with his own cooking based off Gracefield's pantry. The food had always been rather heavily salted, likely due to preservatives. The Goldy Pond kids had to make do with much less ingredients, and it reflects on the food now. All the same, they make it taste amazing (just not like home ), and Ray says as much.
"Your's is still my favourite," Emma agrees, like that's some kind of segue, and then makes eye contact with Norman, who nods. It's as subtle as a bazooka.
Ray does not want to have this conversation. In his panic, he lobs his own grenade:
“Sometimes I dream of them dying.”
Predictably, it makes Emma stiffen. Ray hasn’t talked about his nightmares, not in years—not since he started sleeping through the afternoon and she would wake him up by launching herself into his bed after she got home from a long day’s work. She’s never prodded, likely due to Norman’s interference. Norman, on the other hand, had given Ray space, like always. Norman knows Ray needs space to process, and trusts him to come back when he’s ready—so why is the bastard suddenly pushing now?
Norman pauses, fork halfway to his parted lips. He sets the silverware down on the table with a soft clink! and that jolts all of them back into action.
“That’s okay,” Norman starts, soft, honeyed, a reassurance given freely. “That’s okay, right, Ray?” A reassurance, phrased like a question.
Ray doesn’t mean to spill all his woes. This was only meant to be a distraction, a sacrificial pawn tipped forward. But Norman and Emma are looking at him with such soft, honest eyes, and Ray loses track of the chessboard in his head for a second.
“It’s not!” he snaps. Because the thing is, he tells them:
He doesn’t regret it.
And that makes Ray undeserving of their forgiveness.
Ray’s had a lot of time to think about their childhood, these past ten years. He knows he’s clinically depressed: it results in a lot of time for him to consider the million things he could've— should’ve— done differently. All the possibilities. The losses are like a mantra in his head. He knows he was 11, and stupid, executing a plan he dreamt up at 5, but if he were 11 again he would’ve done the same all over to save Norman and Emma.
There’s not a single path where he ends up deciding to save everyone, like Emma did— like Emma does; in too many of these possibilities everyone dies. His memory is too good. And Ray doesn’t make a habit of lying to himself.
It needs to be said that Ray was ready to lose it all. To sacrifice his life, his family , for Emma, for Norman. He didn’t, not in the end, but that wasn’t the point.
He thinks of Anna with her salon and med school plans, of Phil studying abroad, of Sonia’s baby girl and of Gillian’s bump. He loves them.
He loves them so, so much. He can’t believe he was willing to let them die.
But Ray is logical. Practical. He is able to think without letting his emotions cloud his judgement; a voice in his head says, you had no choice. He would’ve saved them, if he could, but he couldn’t, so he closed his heart and he cut his losses—
“You were only a kid,” Norman says, and Ray’s careful countenance fractures. His chair topples with a loud clack! as he springs up, feeling frenetic. Norman follows, slower.
“Don’t patronise me!” Ray sees Norman watching him, like a spooked animal, like he’s wondering if it’s safe to approach. Ray makes the decision for him, stepping forward, into Norman’s space, getting into his face. He grips the front of his shirt, twisting it so he can look Norman in the eye when he says, “ We were both 11, yet you still saved them, and I couldn’t save you .”
“No!” Emma interjects, physically shoving her body in between Ray and Norman. Ray doesn’t budge, but loosens his grip on Norman’s collar enough that Emma squishes between. Norman, typical of him, had gone limp, letting himself be pushed around. “You were 5! You were 5 and then you were 11 and we were all. Just. KIDS.” Her shoulders heave and she brings up her hands to grapple with his collar when she announces this, for what Ray doesn’t know. He doesn’t think he was trying to get away, but sometimes Emma knows what he’s about to do before he does.
Norman recovers and timidly rests a surprisingly steady hand on the hand Ray still has wrapped in his shirt. His fingers brush slow circles on Ray’s knuckles, soothingly. Emma relaxes her grip at that, till she’s just resting her palms on Ray’s chest. Even through the cardigan, the points of contact burn.
“We’ve had this conversation before, Ray,” Norman says, voice soft. Norman is actually patronizing Ray now, fuck. Ray rubs the bridge of his nose and waves a hand for them to give him space. There’s some sort of nonverbal agreement where they both back off, Emma returning to the table to hop up to sit on it. Norman hovers, looking like Ray might crumble, which to be fair, he had a track record of doing the first few years. Yeah. He knows, his insecurities, the depression, the martyr thing, yeah.
But that doesn’t change what he did. Doesn’t change the way he feels like he doesn’t have that right to them, after what he’s done.
“I let my family die, Emma,” Ray whispers, and he’s not 17 anymore but his voice still cracks. He’s never said this aloud before.
It has the intended effect. The confession hangs in the air.
“You wouldn’t do it again,” Emma says. She doesn’t even make him promise it. She states it like a fact—she states it like she could make it fact, simply by saying it aloud with such conviction. It baffles Ray, that he almost falls for it.
“But,” he inserts.
Emma shakes her head. “But nothing. I know you wouldn’t.”
And again, Ray’s composure cracks. All the binds holding him back feel silly, feel inconsequential, now, when Emma says it like that. “How?” he demands.
Emma smiles, then, as she answers: “You love us all too much”; and in that moment Ray maybe understands just a bit of what Emma means, when she says she loves all her family, irrevocably and wholly.
She grins, blinding: “We’re not losing anyone again, not on my watch.”
They have lived through a war and Emma still expects them all to survive. Ray scoffs. What a demanding idiot. Difficult to deal with, he remembers saying to Violet, ages ago. Had high expectations, he’d mused, to Yuugo.
Not letting up, Emma taunts, “You think you can’t do it?”
Despite himself, Ray lets out a startled laugh, and he hears so much undisguised fondness in his tone. “I can’t back down to a dumbass like you now, can I?”
“Nope!” Emma chirps. She hops off the table now, gravitating back to Ray’s side, Norman following, to drag him into a loose embrace. “Plus, you love us all too much, remember,” Emma sings, “You love us allllll so much, you’re not going to let anybody die because the whole family’s wormed into your big, big, biggggggg heart, right, Ray?”
Norman’s draped his lanky form over Ray’s back, and Emma’s squirmed onto his lap. Her flyaway hair tickles his nose, and it smells of Norman’s pine cologne. Two hands rest on Ray’s beating heart, and neither of them are his own. You love your family, Emma’d said, and Ray finds this true. But—
“It’s different, with you and Norman, you know?” The confession slips out of Ray unwittingly, a natural effect of him in his best friends’ space, all of his guards down. It takes a second, before he realises what he’s said. What he’s admitted to.
Emma and Norman seem to understand at the exact same time. Emma blinks, grins. Norman, when Ray cranes his head to look, is looking entirely too pleased with himself—which Ray can’t possibly allow. Somehow, they’ve come full circle to Norman's intended plan for the conversation tonight, and Ray knows Norman hadn’t foreseen Ray’s curveball. Jesus.
“It’s different for us too,” Emma answers brightly, instead of asking anything sane like: How? Why? or better yet: Ray, I love you too, but I’m getting married to the love of my life tomorrow.
Which means Ray has to be the one to say it. Gently pushing her off his lap, he reminds her, exhausted: “Emma, you’re getting married to Norman tomorrow.”
Emma looks ready to say something else, but Norman, merciful, cuts her off with a hand over hers. When they were younger, it would’ve taken nothing less but a hand over her mouth to get her to heed. This Emma bites her lip at the touch. They have a silent conversation with their eyes, and suddenly, watching them, Ray can’t take it anymore.
“Things are going to be different now,” Ray sighs.
“No, they’re not.”
“Then what’s this dinner for, Emma?” Wasn’t that what the dinner was for?
“To show you nothing’s going to be different!”
Ray sighs. “Emma...Norman...you’re tying the knot. To each other. Of course I expect things to be different now.”
“But we don’t want them to be!” Emma nearly shouts. “I want to keep having dinners with you and Norman. I want to play catch with you and Buddy and argue about who’s turn it is to give him a bath. I want to watch you drink Norman’s terrible, sugary coffee every morning by accident and spit it out. I want it all.”
“You just can’t have everything,” Ray splutters.
“Why not? I want everything,” Emma insists. Like it was that easy. “Don’t you?”
She looks at Norman, then turns back to Ray. “What do you want, Ray?”
And Ray could lie. Ray could say: I don’t want all that. I don’t want you. Doing so might kill him all the same, but it’d be worth it for their happiness, wouldn’t it? They’d get over him. He’d get over himself.
He’s not feeling like himself, still floaty from Emma’s absolvement. He doesn’t trust himself right now, not to be honest, and not to lie. He thinks they might know how close he is to giving in, on the precipice of this night, hours from what he’s worked for all his life.
The thought of the impending wedding sobers him again. Ray’s mind shut down like a lock— logical, practical. Follow the plan. Evaluate the results later. Wedding now, Ray after.
Norman cocks his head, sighing, like he can read Ray’s mind. Honestly, he probably is. Ray’s not doing a very good job of hiding any of his tells today. He murmurs, soft, like he’s trying to not spook him: “You can’t lie to us, Ray.” Because he knows— they know—they haven’t read any signs wrong.
“I’m not,” Ray tries, one futile denial. It’s not even enough to convince himself, and Ray knows he’s done for the night. Like Norman, Ray doesn’t play games he knows he can’t win. He retreats. Norman’s fingers drag a burning line down his arm, but he pulls away all the same. “I’m tired. Thank you for the food. Good night,” he bids, amidst their protests.
Before bed, but after Norman and Emma have retreated to their room to reconvene in hushed whispers Ray refuses to eavesdrop on, Ray checks the chess board.
Norman’s still losing, which is ridiculous to Ray since Norman is reading him and countering him perfectly in real life. On its own it makes no sense, but in the bigger picture, Ray belatedly realizes, that oh, Norman is countering him.
See: Ray, Norman and Emma—they haven’t been at odds for quite a long time now. They’ve never been his enemies, not even when their goals misaligned, not since they were children only old enough to know each other.
That’s why it puts Ray off-kilter, for this past season, for Norman and Emma to be actively plotting against him in some hidden way. Nevermind that it’s not malicious and never will be; nevermind that Ray has been subconsciously playing against his hand as well. They’re fighting.
Norman is reading his moves, and reacting in this way because Ray is doing something that misaligned his goals. Norman’s goal is a happy wedding...right? No. Ray tells himself to think bigger, think of the bigger picture, like Emma.
All at once a memory floats back, from when they were younger, and Emma still hadn’t learned how to strategize, only to dream. She’d never won at chess then, with her godawful poker face and reckless playing. Never wanted to sacrifice a pawn; cried over every loss (not even the match, but of her pieces).
Emma had asked: “What can I do to win?”
And Ray had answered, a piece of his advice he internalised long ago: “Think of the move you’d least want them to do.”
Ray sits and thinks. What would be the worst possible course of action that he could take for Norman?
What would surprise the enemy?
💍💍📦
Norman and Emma’s wedding feels like it comes out of a fairytale storybook. They host the ceremony in the church room of the castle, and gauzy sunbeams float from the stained glass windows to light the stands. Emma is gorgeous, dolled up to look every bit of the Princess of Neverland, the Wendy to Norman’s Pan, grown up in splendour and kindness. “She’s quite the sight,” Norman says from behind him, and Ray stiffens a little, suspicious.
“I know,” Ray treads carefully of a trap, before catching sight of Norman’s face.
Norman doesn’t look like he’s planning anything. He just looks like a boy in love, and Ray allows himself a genuine smile. He claps Norman on the back and pulls him into a sideways hug, watching his best friend watch his other best friend from afar.
Later, he takes a break from investigating one of the shady guests to watch their vows from one of the Church’s hidden alcoves. Norman, a sap, brings up the telephone cups, and hiccups his way through that sentence.
Emma doesn’t let him finish. She kisses him before the ring’s even on her finger, on his.
💍💍📦
Norman is not wearing his ring. This is not unusual; Norman and Emma have not worn their rings after the wedding, outside of photo ops and International Affairs meetings. Ray knows they’re in fucking love. He’s fed up with this charade.
He knows better than to fight a Norman-Emma tag-team by now—much less, a married Norman and Emma duo, after the two put him through all the wedding prep—so he catches the other man on his lunch break while Norman is leaving a meeting room. The castle has been working in overdrive, lately, with all the new info after the wedding, and Norman and Emma have refused to go on a honeymoon, insisting there was too much work to do.
(This is arguably true, but less true after Ray browbeats his way into helping out at the office. Ray is capable of holding down the fort. Norman and Emma graciously allow him to help, but still won’t take off on a honeymoon, even when Ray pettily stays up all night to get them at least a day’s ahead in work. Then the Ratris had tried to start another international scandal and they’re now behind again. Fuck you too, Mike.)
This was two weeks ago, yet Ray is still here, and, he guesses tiredly, he will continue to be here for the rest of his life. After he finishes with Norman he’s got a Zoom call with Oliver—who’d taken off a scant two days after the wedding—to discuss some of the new proposals for the Demon Treaties.
It’s sort of nice to be the one popping up to surprise his best friend’s in their workplace instead of the other way around. It’s satisfying to get one up on Norman, even if the bastard doesn’t let slip an outward reaction, other than the faint twitch of his right eyebrow.
“We need to talk,” Ray announces, and spins on his heel to start walking down the familiar halls to Norman’s office.
“Hello to you too, Ray,” Norman says, just the slight hint of droll in his pleasant tone, but follows anyways, always.
When the door to his office is fully closed, and Ray is reasonably sure no one is listening in, he grips Norman’s collar and hisses: “What the hell are you playing at?”
Norman doesn’t react; his eyebrow doesn't even do his tell anymore so he's figured out what Rays here for. His seaglass eyes sparkle pseudo-guilelessly. “I assure you, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re playing a losing game!” Ray shouts, letting his temper flare up.
Norman quirks an eyebrow. “Perhaps age is dulling my skills in chess,” he jokes; Ray calls, “bull.”
“Or,” Norman continues, “perhaps I’m playing to win something else.” And Ray snarls, because he knows that, but—
“How are you so sure you’re not losing that game, too?”
Norman has the audacity to laugh. “If I were, would you be here?”
Ray thinks he’s earned it to stomp out like a 15 year old.
“Remember, Ray!” Norman’s lilting laughter follows him out. “It just so happens that I’ve never failed to achieve what I’ve set out to do before!”
💍💍📦
See, Norman was easy enough to understand, if you were a tactical genius and had grown up with the boy and was thus far used to his tricks. In other words, if you were Ray.
Ray has spent the last few months thinking. He knows what the two are planning—has known, he supposes, for a long time. Even before they all but spelled it out to him that one dinner. Even before Emma dragged him unwillingly into her wedding preparations. Before the ridiculous town hall debate on his lease in their house, before the cute Bento boxes hand delivered and before the dog Ray is currently co-parenting with them. Buddy, seemingly alert to Ray's attention, whines at his feet and curls up closer for cuddles.
Ray has spent the last few years adamantly being willfully blind to their advances. They were happy without him, he was sure. Now? He thinks: happier is a concept. That it might not have been only his decision to make.
“Something great,” Ray mutters, and thinks about those two words and the two occasions Norman has outplayed him. There will not be a third, if he can help it, but to outplay Norman here would be to give Norman exactly what he wants. Ha.
And then there was Emma to consider — a natural force by the name of a girl, who was undoubtedly also a part of this plan (well. Perhaps not the chess part.). Ray doesn't understand why they're doing this. Did he really matter so much to them?—
Fuck , Ray thinks, and lets himself fall onto the loveseat in Norman and Emma's living room —his, all of theirs living room, honestly.
Ray looks at his checkmate, his stolen Queen, an offered King, and pours himself a glass of wine before laughing, laughing, laughing.