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“I’m hungry,” Bard spoke to the ceiling, more stating a fact than intending to do anything about it.
“And whose fault is that?” Thranduil curled to wrap himself around Bard’s side, tucking his leg over Bard’s and nuzzling his nose against his neck.
“Yours,” Bard laughed. “Definitely yours.” His stomach made the most appalling noise then, loud in the dark quiet of his bedroom. “Okay, I’m really hungry.”
“Good luck with that. You’ve got exactly half a stale bagel in the pantry. I know because I ate the other half while you were in the shower.”
Bard groaned as his stomach churned again, hollow and insistent. This was the first time he’d spent any length of time in his flat for months. He had promptly claimed the empty side of Thranduil’s bed, grateful to relinquish his lumpy hospital armchair in favour of a good, soft mattress. He hadn’t spent a night away since.
Things were better now, though. More free. They’d ended up at Bard’s more for a change of scenery than any real need, but now Bard was beginning to regret it. “We could get take out.”
“It’s after midnight. The only thing open is going to be fast food.” Even as he spoke, Thranduil’s own stomach gurgled and groaned
“It’s that or drive cross town.” Bard frowned, the mere prospect of such a journey seeming insurmountable.
“Ugh,” Thranduil whined, squeezing Bard tighter before he let his arms go slack. He sighed. “Fine. Let’s go.”
They were up and out of the house within minutes, both rushing to find shoes and jackets and jeans in the dim light of the bedroom. The streets were nearly empty, the tarmac slick with rain, the lamplights casting rotating shadows across the rivulets on the windows.
Though this was a small city, though it was nearing one in the morning, they were not alone in their sudden hunger. The queue was already three cars deep when they joined it.
“I think I might die before we get anything to eat,” Thranduil whined. “Maybe it would be best just to make the drive to mine.”
“There’s already another car behind us,” Bard sighed. And so they settled in to wait. After two minutes he shifted the car into park and reached out to grasp his soulmate’s hand. He never tired of the way his heart surged, the way his skin tingled at the contact or the way Thranduil’s eyes grew warm when they found his.
“D’you know what I think about sometimes?” His words settled into the empty spaces of the car, among the spare change in the cupholder and between the CDs that had made their way there from Bard’s living room. It was Thranduil’s car, but Bard had been driving it since… since the hospital, really.
“What’s that?” Thranduil turned to face him, his head lolling lazily against the seat.
“How unlikely this all is.”
Thranduil laughed and the sound seeming to float, light and expanding, filling up the air around their heads until Bard was giddy with it. “What do you mean? Us?”
“I mean everything. The earth, the stars, the universe. The absurd wait for shitty fast food after midnight. All of it. Something had to go right— everything had to be just so for all of this to become reality.” Bard’s attention was out the window, taking in the drab parking lot and the empty black sky, the stars blotched out and hidden by street lamps. “It’s incredible.”
Thranduil tugged at his hand then, pulled him away from the window to face him. His smile was small but his eyes were infinite as Bard turned away from the world outside and let himself be drawn further in. Thranduil pulled until he could reach across the centre console, across the spoken words that had settled there and through the heady glee of their small bubble.
He took Bard’s cheek in his palm and he pressed a kiss to his smiling lips. Bard was overcome again with the rarity of this life, with the unlikeliness of his soulmate, of this love they’d found against all odds. His hand fell from the steering wheel to seek out the silk strands of Thranduil’s hair, the satin ridges of the scars wrapping around the smooth curve of his cheekbone and his jaw.
The car behind them blew their horn, snapping Bard from his fancies and back to the queue for the drive-in— or rather, the empty space where the queue had been. He laughed and pulled forward, suddenly remembering that he was still rather violently hungry.