Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been around two months since Oliver was hired at his new position at Seraphim Industries. Calling it a job didn’t feel fair because, well, Oliver wasn’t sure anyone had ever been hired in the same way as he was.

For starters, there was no application process, nor was there any sort of official interview. In fact, the entire thing took place in a bar. Oliver was hired on the spot, a working contract happily shoved into his shaking grasp.

Oliver knew his standards for jobs were low, but he wasn’t completely out of his mind. He’d read the contract before he’d signed it, just to make sure Seraphim Industries didn’t have any sort of strange illegal clauses or the same working-conditions-accountability agreement that he’d purposefully ignored when signing at his last job. Something, anything that would justify someone wanting to hire ex-detective Beebo of all people.

He was astonished to find nothing of the sort. It seemed too good to be true. Dental, healthcare, an apartment of his choice, fully paid, within the vicinity of his workplace, and a truly unfair salary. He reread it when he got back to his shitty one-bedroom, and once again on the bus ride to the capital, where Seraphim Industries’ central office building was located. 

There must be something going on here , the logical part of his brain whispered. This is too suspicious, too sudden of a change. This must be a trick to hurt you. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is, and we’ve been hurt too long to survive one more go, it said.

And, by all means, he should’ve listened to that part of his brain. He always had. But there was something about it that made the quiet, emotional side of his brain take over for the second it took to take the pen offered and shakily sign his name on the dotted line. Well, at least it has benefits.

Upon arrival to the capital, he immediately sped off to the darkest and quietest alley near the public transit port. The extreme crowding in the capital was another large change he knew he was going to have trouble getting used to —another reason that he absolutely was not qualified for this job —but, then again, there were a lot of stupid things he was still getting used to. Between the nightmares, unexplainable phobias, and all the other dumb things his brain didn’t like, he guessed adding one more to the pile couldn’t possibly damage his psyche any more. 

He pulled out the small, torn bar napkin that had his new apartment’s address hastily but cleanly written on it in fancy-rich-guy-cursive. Oliver looked up the address on his phone and started shuffling further into the city. He was sure he looked like some deranged drug addict in the way he flinched whenever someone bumped into him and whipped his eyes around, looking for the monsters in every dark corner. 

He was given two weeks to settle into the apartment before he was expected to show up at the office. Even after a week of ‘settling in’, he still hadn’t used half the rooms in his apartment. It was massive. Oliver wasn’t even sure what some of these rooms were for. Why would he need a second bedroom? Who was going to visit him? The entire thing looked like it belonged in one of those housing TV shows that his mom sometimes had on in the background. 

Oliver felt out of place. 

This city was too big, full of too many important, rich, and famous people. This apartment was meant for successful and upstanding citizens, not some guy who froze up whenever he heard a clock tick. 

Despite this, Oliver couldn’t help admitting it was.. nice. All the lights in the apartment had dimmers, there was a record player next to the absurdly large TV, records lined some of the walls, and there were exclusively digital clocks, and when he checked one of the many, many closets, he found a collection of blankets, all, strangely enough, with entirely different textures. There were even a couple of jigsaw puzzles in one of the cabinets.

On the first day of Oliver’s new job, he tried his absolute best to look presentable. Being a detective required him to look somewhat put-together, but usually his nice coat and hat did him well enough. Mr. Coli taught him better, though. He always told Oliver how undignified he looked, how it looked like he didn’t even care enough to brush it in the morning.

He cut it short and shaved the next day. It was still pretty long, but not enough to tie it up or be able to twist his fingers in it like he used to. It felt weird. He spent well over an hour brushing it the morning of his first day.

Oliver wasn’t really sure there were any reasons someone would want to hire him, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to be giving them any more reasons not to. 

When he was offered the job, he expected it to have something to do with detective work. That was how his employer found him, after all. Maybe ‘Assistant Accountant’ was just a title to put him on the payroll without suspicion. 

That’s what he expected when he walked into the imposing building around midday on Monday. The secretary at the desk called down an intern who brought him to the elevator, which brought him to the 14th floor. Oliver was too nervous to ask for either of their names and sat in an awkward silence during the elevator ride.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Mr. Coli’s errands were better than this. 

The intern walked Oliver to what he assumes is going to be his workplace, a surprisingly large office. Across from the door is a window that consumes almost that entire wall, with blackout curtains hanging at the top. To the right of the door was a desk with a—you guessed it—big, expensive computer. There were also bean bags in the corner, for some reason. 

The intern quickly muttered something clearly meant for Oliver and then sped off. 

Turns out, ‘Assistant Accountant’ was a little bit like detective work. Maybe. Kind of. At the very least, it included a lot of math puzzles.

His jobs mostly included poring over spreadsheets and other documents about impossible sums of money looking for anything that looked suspicious. Oliver had been hired to investigate money laundering schemes before, and though he hadn’t found anything extremely criminal so far, he had a jumping-off point. Mostly, he just found small calculator mistakes and the occasional mispayment or ‘forgot to carry the one’s. 

His coworkers were all nice. The room’s lights were gentle and had a dimmer. He was pretty sure the office was soundproofed. The window didn’t trigger his acrophobia, like he was afraid it would; looking out to a roof garden he was told was for smoke breaks. He didn’t even have to wake up all that early.

No one said anything about how often he’d call in sick, nor did they ask what was wrong with him when he rushed outside before his work was done. Even when he came in the next day, someone would ask how he was doing, he would say he was fine, and that would be the end of it. Oliver didn’t know much about corporate work, but he knew he wasn’t getting nearly as much done as a normal employee should. 

Something was... wrong.

Oliver knows he’s bad at reading people. He knows he’s bad at a lot of things, actually. But, goddammit, he knows a mystery when he sees one.

If there’s one thing Oliver learned across his years of college and then his years as a detective, it's how to tell if someone is uncomfortable with him. It worked very well in interrogations and most social situations. 

His coworkers, as far as he could tell, are always uncomfortable with him. There weren’t many people he interacted with in his day-to-day—apparently this entire floor was exclusive to the employees that worked the closest with the boss himself—but the ones he did have small talk with were… strange. They handled him as if they were afraid of upsetting him. The way the intern always runs off as soon as he finishes his business, the way everyone always ignores it when he blurts out something strange or awkward, the way everyone is always asking if he’s comfortable or if he needs help. Like they know how useless he is by himself. Like they know how broken he is. 

Everything was just too suspicious. Even if he ignores the sudden hire as his reputation proceeding him, he still has far too many questions. 

Why the fancy apartment? Why the massive salary? How did the universe seem to account for almost all of his phobias and specifications? The textured blankets, the soundproof rooms, the dimmed lights, the puzzles and records, the rooftop garden—how did it know? And why did it care?  

Maybe he was ungrateful. Maybe he was taking all these amazing circumstances for granted. Maybe the nightmares and fears and pains had finally gotten to him, and he’s insane now. He sure feels like it. He felt like his entire mind was at war with itself.

Knock knock.

Ah. Someone is knocking on the door. 

He checked the time.

“Helloo?” Sang the muffled voice from behind the office door. 

It was him. 

Ángel Valdivia, CEO of Seraphim Industries, a multimillionaire, the man who hired Oliver, and the guy currently calling his name through the door.

He was a weird guy, if Oliver was being honest. He’d never say it to his face, but he was always just a bit… odd.. about certain things. It happened very occasionally. For a majority of the time Oliver knew him, he’d have a calm, collected, and suave demeanor that seemed totally uncaring of most of the world around him. But sometimes, something would just happen, and Ángel would get all sad.

Also, Oliver wasn’t an expert in boss-employee relationship laws, nor was he particularly adept at recognizing the differences in romantic and platonic affection, but he was pretty sure Ángel was breaking at least one law.

When he first met Ángel—because he insisted Oliver not call him Mr. Valdivia—in the bar, his first reaction was to run up to him and grab his shoulders. Ángel was speaking too quickly, and Oliver was too shaken, so he didn’t quite catch what Ángel was saying other than that he was looking for Oliver. 

As it turns out, Ángel was looking for his detective work. He looked really sad admitting it for some reason, but maybe his case was just a bummer? He still hasn’t told Oliver what he’s supposed to be investigating, but at the time he looked pretty desperate, so Oliver went along with it. Even if he was probably too much of a mess to actually investigate his case, that didn’t mean he couldn’t at least give him an explanation on why he couldn’t. 

And then Oliver told him who he was working for, and Ángel looked devastated. He looked like his entire world had just crumbled under his feet. He started to cry again, and Oliver didn’t know how to continue the conversation. And then, Ángel’s expression changed, and he offered Oliver the job. He went from true despair to a sort of manic desperation as he tried to convince him to take the offer.

Most of the following conversation took place at the bar. Ángel started explaining his idea for Oliver’s new position, rapidly drawing up a contract on the spot. Oliver isn’t quite sure of everything he said, too busy taking him in now that Ángel didn’t look one minor inconvenience away from snapping. Ángel stopped talking and looked Oliver in the eyes, smiling gently but with so much emotion it was indescribable.

He slid a drink over to Oliver while he was reading the contract and held up his own, looking far too excited at the little umbrella he’d placed on their respective glasses.

Even as their, admittedly one-sided, conversation petered out as Oliver continued to read, Ángel’s eyes didn’t leave him. On his hair, his eyes, his scarred hands, and bandaged, he never stopped. Once, Oliver dared to meet Ángel’s eyes, and he only smiled brighter. Oliver quickly looked back down. 

While he was ordering the drinks, Oliver managed to take in his face fully while Ángel wasn’t looking. He looked tired. Oliver wasn’t much for celebrities, but compared to the few pictures from news articles he did see, Ángel looked.. disheveled. His hair wasn’t combed, and he clearly hadn’t shaved in a while. The eye bags were new too. He looked tired. That shouldn’t have made Oliver as sad as it did. 

He shouldn’t have signed it. A strange man hugged him in a bar and offered a job he knew Oliver probably didn’t have the qualifications for and was basically going to pay for Oliver’s entire life. There was something strange about this. He shouldn’t trust this man.

But.. he did. 

Something about Ángel made Oliver feel safe. Comfortable. Oliver was sure Ángel would do anything for him, as irrational as it felt. He felt like Ángel and he were the only people in the world, and nothing else mattered as long as they were together. It didn’t make any sense. He didn’t like it.

Also, Ángel kept winking at him. That probably shouldn’t have been a factor, but Oliver felt it was worth mentioning. 

He asked Oliver where he wanted to live, and Oliver didn’t know, so he just responded, “Somewhere near wherever I’m working.” Ángel wrote down an address and promised Oliver it would be ready for him in the next couple of days. As they were leaving, Ángel gave him his professional email and what Oliver was pretty sure was his personal phone number. 

The next time he saw Ángel in person, it was his first day. 

Oliver’s supervisor had been with him for a large portion of the day, patiently explaining his responsibilities and how to use the programs on the computer, taking him through a basic case and how to report an issue to the right people. It was all stuff Oliver should’ve known already, considering he already had the job, but his supervisor didn’t seem to mind.

He knocked twice and then invited himself in. He looked a lot healthier than the last Oliver had seen him. He was wearing a sleek black top with a light white jacket. His beard had been trimmed, and his hair looked soft. He had a silver earring in his right ear. His eye bags were gone and were replaced with a healthy flush to his cheeks, and- was that mascara? No, don’t look at that; things are happening.

He nodded at Oliver’s supervisor, and apparently she understood what that meant because she left without another word. Then, his gaze turned back to Oliver, and there it was again.

Another strange thing: Oliver doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone who looks at something quite like Ángel looks at him.

If he were better at poetry, he might have some beautiful simile for it. He might equate it to someone looking at a beautiful jewel. He might say Ángel looks at him like he’s the most precious thing in the world. Like he’s something to be cherished, shown off, valued, wanted, stolen.

Cut. Broken. Polished. Worn. Dropped.

And there’s something else there. Something in the shine of his eyes. Something in the way his eyes can’t help but flick to every bandage and scar on the very few visible parts of his skin. It looks like guilt, but it couldn’t be, could it?

But Oliver doesn’t know much about poetry, or the arts in general, really, so he usually just calls it staring . 

“So, how is it? Did you like the apartment? Settle in okay?” Ángel asked over his shoulder, leaning on the side of Oliver’s desk. Why does he care? You should thank him. You’re being weird right now; you should be thanking him.

“Ah- yes! Yes. It’s very nice. Thank you. So much. You really didn’t need to do.. all this. I’m not sure I’ve done enough to deserve it,” Oliver responded, a little late. How does he talk to this guy? Oliver doesn’t think a simple ‘thank you’ is nearly enough. Even if he’s super rich, he’s paying for a majority of everything. . Everything. He doesn’t even deserve this job, much less all the other luxuries Ángel had been piling on him. 

Ángel’s shoulders drooped a little, and that nonchalance he was using dropped. “Nonsense. Of course you deserve it.” Then, suddenly, he turned away, and that casual nature returned once more. His hand caught on the doorframe. He seemed hesitant to leave the room for some incomprehensible reason. Maybe Oliver had gotten it wrong, and the conversation wasn’t over? It wouldn’t be the first time. He should be saying something, but what? 

“Oh!” Ángel said before Oliver could blurt out something stupid. “Almost forgot to give this to you. Here,” he handed him a little card. “That’s the company’s specialized therapist. You should contact them. Really, they’re amazing.” Then, he left. 

Hm. Therapy.

He’d gone for a while during his detective years. Being a private eye didn’t pay extraordinarily, but it paid enough, and when your job includes assassination attempts on the regular, it seems like a necessary financial burden.

Of course, once he’d started working for Mr. Coli, that all changed. Oliver had requested time off call to go to his bi-weekly sessions, but that only led to one of Mr. Coli’s rants about how Oliver didn’t actually need therapy, because Mr. Coli never got it, and he turned out just fine. 

Maybe he should go back to therapy. But.. what would he even talk about? It wasn’t like there was a specific event that led to all these sudden fears. It’d just be a waste of the therapist’s time.

Since then, every single day at 8 PM on the dot, Oliver would be at his office door. For the first couple of days, he’d just ask him a couple of questions and then run off to go do whatever CEOs of companies do all day. Nice, normal things, like “How was your day?”, “Any accommodations you needed?”, “Nothing wrong with the apartment?”, “What type of snacks do you like?”. Normal, average questions a boss concerned about their less-than-stable employee would ask. Question that should not have made Oliver feel as cared for as they did.

About a week in, Ángel started to give him puzzles. Knickknacks and block puzzles and an increasingly convoluted list of Rubik’s cubes. Most of the time, Ángel would watch with incredible fascination as he solved the puzzle, complimenting his intelligence in a way that didn’t make Oliver go a little lightheaded. Sometimes, he’d give him the puzzle on his way out, citing some important business he had to take care of. Two minutes later, Oliver would have the solved puzzle sitting on the edge of his desk. 

He also told him riddles from time to time. He’d flop into one of the beanbags in the corners of the room and say, “Hey, I heard a riddle recently. You like puzzles, right?” Most of them were ridiculous, more knock-knock joke punchlines than brain teasers, but then Ángel would listen to Oliver while he ranted about how, no, I couldn’t possibly have been the maid that killed the rich man; that doesn’t make any sense. And then Ángel would turn around and pull out a conspiracy about how it was actually the baby the whole time.

And then they’d both laugh. And everything would be okay, but only between the two of them.

That brought him to the next reason Ángel was suspicious; he seemed to know things about Oliver. Things he’d never told anyone. 

Oliver had entertained the thought that he might be some sort of stalker, but that didn’t explain a lot of the stuff he knew. Besides, who would want to stalk some burnt-out deadbeat ex-detective? He hadn’t had an assassination attempt in months, and even if Ángel wanted him dead, Oliver was pretty sure he had enough money to just do it.

Most of the things he knew about were trivial. He was pretty sure the puzzle to detective connect was obvious, and maybe his apartment used to belong to a music fanatic, and Ángel just hadn’t wanted to redecorate the parts that the old tenant had left behind. Maybe Ángel just had a bunch of puzzles lying around and wanted to look smart in front of those CEO buddies he definitely has. Those were the normal, rational conclusions to come to.

Maybe Ángel had just been paying attention when he told him he had a fear of loud sounds and heights, because he is a kind, good person. Maybe the office he gave Oliver just so happened to be one of the few that didn’t overview the large drop. Maybe it’s a coincidence that he has one of the only fully soundproofed offices in the building. Suspicious, yes, but logically it made sense.

Then there was his cat.

He was finally getting around to going through the endless storage rooms and supply closets and unopened cabinets in his apartment when he found cat food. Fancy cat food. 

He asked Ángel about it the next day. Ángel had been sitting on his beanbag with a computer in his lap. It wasn’t all that uncommon for Ángel to just decide to do his work in Oliver’s room. Whenever he asked, Ángel looked at him like he was a cat that had gotten stuck in the rain and quietly asked if Oliver wanted him to leave, so he dropped it.

The conversation slowly petered out as the two focused on work. The room was silent save for the light clacking on keys when Oliver remembered and abruptly asked, “Why was there cat food in my apartment?”

Ángel startled, but he didn’t stop typing. He raised his eyebrow a little bit, “For your cat?” The corner of his mouth lifted in a small grin. 

Oliver may have had some issues with his memory lately, but he knows he never mentioned even having a cat. In fact, he’d taken to writing down the things Ángel should and should not have not known about him ever since this suspicion started. He was sure about very little, his mind being as murky as it was, but for this he was sure.

And it’s not like he could’ve figured it out through context clues or other normal means, either. Oliver didn’t have much social media to post on, but he’d ensured anything that went to the public didn’t mention or picture him. Oliver was sure he didn’t have any cat fur on him either, not after Mr. Coli berated him for over an hour about looking presentable when he showed up in a black sweater that one time.

“I’ve never told you I had a cat,” Oliver said bluntly. He didn’t mean it as an accusation, just a statement of a fact. Still, the two of them seem to realize the implications of the statement at the same time. This time, Ángel sat all the way up. His face whipped towards Oliver’s, but then he started avoiding eye contact. “Hm? Oh, uh- Yes, you did. When we first met at the bar! He’s a little orange cat, isn’t he? You mentioned him.”

Ángel’s words were a little louder than necessary, and they filled the otherwise silent room. His first reaction was to argue with Ángel. He knew he hadn’t mentioned Mozilla, and he didn’t know why Ángel would try gaslighting him like that. Before he could, Oliver suddenly realized that not only was he talking to, quite honestly, his only friend, but Ángel was also his boss. Even if he didn’t like being called Mr. Valdivia, or Sir, or other honorifics, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be offended at Oliver’s plain bluntness. 

“Oh. Sorry. Guess I forgot.” Oliver went back to his work and made an attempt to ignore the slight shaking of his hands. His words seemed to upset Ángel more, but at least he was looking at him again. “No, no! I’m sorry. I.. shouldn’t have raised my voice. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Oliver mumbled quietly. He was hoping they could mutually move on from this conversation topic so Oliver could go back to things that made sense, like equations and numbers, but Ángel’s typing didn’t continue.

“Can I meet him? I never got to see your cat in person.”

“Oh, um.. no. I don’t have him anymore.” Oliver glanced over at Ángel, and, sure enough, he had that sad wet cat look about him once again. Even the curls in his hair looked like drooping cat ears. “You don’t?”

“I couldn’t exactly take care of him when I was working at Coli Industries,“ Ángel's eyebrows furrowed at his name, “my shifts usually lasted for most of the day, and by the time I got home I wasn’t really, um. Present?”

He paused to gauge Ángel’s reaction. He was looking away again, staring blankly at his computer. What did that mean? The silence was getting to him, and Ángel hadn’t told him to stop, so Oliver kept going. “It wasn’t good conditions to be taking care of a cat in. He lives with my mom now.”

Slowly, Ángel closed his laptop. Oliver wished, not for the first time, that he could tell what people were thinking. Was he annoyed? Was Oliver talking too much about sad things? Oh, man, he didn’t mean to upset him. He’d only known Ángel for a couple of weeks, and he was already dumping all his cat trauma onto him. And after he’d done so much. 

“I’m so sorry,” Ángel said. He had hunched his back and looked like he was trying to curl into himself. “That sounds awful. I’m sorry he did that to you. You deserve so much better.” 

Oliver didn’t say anything. He didn’t quite know what to say. 

He stood up, closed his laptop, and put it on the beanbag beside him. Oliver assumed he was just going to say goodbye and leave, but he walked straight over to Oliver. He leaned close and put a hand on Oliver’s shoulder. Whoa. That was. Something. He tried to suppress a flinch at the warm contact and tried even harder not to melt at it. “I promise you, that will never happen again while you’re with me, okay? I-“ He seemed to struggle with his words for a second. Oliver tried to stare at his eyes and only his eyes. Oh wow. He’s close.

“You’re safe with me. I promise.” His voice cracked a little at the words. “You’re doing great. Don’t overwork yourself.”

He stepped back, and Oliver had to remind himself how to breathe in the way normal humans were supposed to. When he looked back at him, Ángel’s hands were shaking. “Are you okay?” The question slipped out of Oliver’s mouth without thinking, like it was instinct. 

At the sound of his voice, Ángel calmed considerably. He sighed and his shoulders untensed. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, I’ll be good. Sorry, I’m just so sensitive to these sorts of things! Haha, my poor old maiden heart can’t take these tragedies.” His voice had returned to its usual light, casual cadence. “Also, I just fucking hate that guy.”

“Really, Beebs, take a break whenever you want. I know this is all a bit sudden, and you’re already doing great.” Ángel winked, and Oliver was at a loss for words. He stared just past Ángel’s eyes at the wall behind him. “I said I’d be there for all your needs, didn’t I? So don’t be afraid to ask for stuff. Seriously.” Oliver nodded numbly. As he walked to the door, he continued, “I need to go make a call; I’ll be back!”

And then he was alone.

He’d tossed the conversation about a million times in his brain by the time he got to his apartment. It didn’t take a detective to figure out something was up with Ángel. Clearly, if Oliver had figured it out. The real question was what.

Oliver knew, theoretically, that he should probably just leave it alone. He went from being sure his life was going to be contained to Mr. Coli errands and his one-bedroom until he dropped dead to having a life far more than he’d ever needed. If he chose to question it, if he chose to investigate, there was a chance the illusion would fade. He could always choose to simply stay. It made sense to stay.

But Oliver knew he could never live like that. It’s always there, in the back of his mind. Something is going on here. Something is wrong. He needed to know.

And now, there was a third knock at the door.

He was going to figure this one out. Even if it killed him.

Chapter Text

Ángel thought he’d handled the situation remarkably well, all things considered.

Unfortunately, ‘remarkably well’ doesn’t equate to ‘good enough.’.

The first week after learning Eugene had released everyone from the house, he was in shambles. After making sure Vivi was okay, sped off to the address on detective Beebo’s website. But he wasn’t there. And he wasn’t in any of the nearby restaurants, hotels, or apartment complexes either. A few hours later, his website went down, and Ángel’s only connection left him.

He almost can’t describe it. If Ángel hadn’t left a part of his soul in that house, he thinks he left it with Ollie. It feels like the detective’s presence was the only thing holding him together in that wretched place, and now that he wasn’t by his side, Ángel was slowly bleeding out. 

Ángel tried to convince himself he was doing it for Oliver’s sake, but he knew that not to be true. Deep down, he knew he needed Oliver like he needed oxygen, and the world was choking him out. 

And he tried. He really, really tried to find the detective. He’d gotten a hat and everything. Every waking moment was spent trying to figure out what he would do in Ángel’s place. How to lead with his brain and think rationally, instead of following the weak whims of his heart. But after a week of nothing, Ángel knew he wouldn’t last long. He just wasn’t good enough.

It only took Ángel a month to snap. 

Ángel had never done well on his own. He always had someone to balance him out and make sure he didn’t dig himself an early grave. Before Beebo, it was Vivi, even though she was fairly impulsive herself. They took care of each other, to put it simply. That’s why she was the first one he went to when he didn’t know where else to go.

Ángel knew he couldn’t lie to her anymore. She had been suspicious ever since Ángel ‘left’ her at the party, and he’s sure his accidental-on-purpose ignoring of her calls didn’t help his ‘I’m doing fine, actually’ case. Besides, he’d told Vivi he’d explain everything to her, and Ángel had broken enough promises for five lifetimes. 

The photo book would make this all so much easier. He should’ve thought to grab it before he left for the police. He wasn’t thinking. Idiot. Now, trying to get the photo book was basically impossible. Multiple times, Ángel had thought of just going back to the house and taking it. What was Eugene going to do about it? Kill him? Then, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Detective Beebo's would start whispering about how that was a good way to get himself murdered, or worse, arrested. Ángel wouldn’t be useful to anyone if he was bleeding out on the cold ground or stuck in a holding cell.

Besides, it wouldn’t be worth the risk until he’d found all of them. They deserved to remember if they wanted to.

So, he called her, made plans to have her over at his apartment with pizza, and added only one emoji, just to show he was being serious. 

They were both sitting on the floor against the couch, pizza box between them. He wasn’t sure how to start the conversation, so for the first 30 minutes, he didn’t. Thankfully, he didn't have to. Vivi had been eyeing him suspiciously ever since he opened the door, and she hadn’t always been the most straightforward out of the two. She began as bluntly as Ángel could’ve hoped for.

“Okay, I’m done. What’s happening with you?” She started, picking up another slice of pizza. 

“Huh?”

“You’ve been acting weird ever since that creepy party. You never explained why you dipped, either. Also, you’ve been ignoring the group chat! Also also, I’m literally a reporter. Don’t think I haven’t seen the articles about your recent departure from the public eye. So, out with it. What happened, and why are you acting stupid,” she monologued, gesturing at him.

Damn. He thought he’d been doing a little better at being normal than that. How was he even going to explain everything to her? She didn’t believe him while they were in the house, and it’s not like Eugene would just give him the photobook. She was going to think he was crazy. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, “I already think you’re crazy, Ángel. C’mon.”

“I know, I know, I just.. I swear I’m being serious. You have to believe me.”

This, she seemed to consider a little more. She narrowed her eyebrows and looked Ángel up and down. Ángel felt like he was being judged. He knew his eye bags were getting worse, and he probably smelled like smoke, but he didn’t look that bad, right? ..right? Then, Vivi settled. She looked back to his eyes and nodded, “Yeah, okay. I’ll believe you. No matter how crazy it sounds.”

Vivi paused for a moment before Ángel started talking and gently said, “You don’t look good, Ángel. What’s been going on?” She held his hand.

Then, he snapped. He told her everything. Beebo, the house, the other house, Eugene, the dark hallway, the bomb, the axe, the blood, how he failed everyone-  She held his hand all the while, but she never interrupted. God, maybe this communication thing did work. With each word, he felt pounds of weight on his heart. It was still heavy—God, was it heavy—but it was bearable. For now. 

Vivi was shocked, obviously, and Ángel was a little worried she might go back on her word and instead recommend him a therapist or something. After what seemed like a full minute of processing Ángel’s very uncool rant, she pulled out her laptop. “Let’s get this guy arrested. For real, this time.”

The next few months were different. He’d thought that by telling Vivi, she could just magically find him, but for all her contacts in just about every corner of the city, nobody had heard from, employed, or housed a man going by Oliver Beebo. It was like he just disappeared off the face of the Earth.

For the first time, Ángel had to confront the very real possibility that he did. Eugene had no reason not to lie to him. He very well could still be in that house. Or maybe something went wrong, and Eugene accidentally killed Ollie for good. If Oliver had tried running out of the house during one of the loops, Eugene might’ve decided it was better to risk killing him than let him out. 

Ángel dismissed the thought immediately. He can’t be dead. Ángel wouldn’t know what to do with himself. He can’t be. He’s out there.

While their investigation didn’t yield anything on the detective, they were able to find the other party attendants. Ángel didn’t meet any of them in person, but who would notice if Seraphim Industries decided to give a private anonymous donation to an elementary school, boarding school, and a couple of local museums? 

Several months into their investigation, Vivi told him he’d have to continue without him for a bit. She wanted to focus on compiling evidence against Eugene. After all, Vivi still had a job to do, and while she said she was still going to be there if he needed anything, she couldn’t follow him around anymore. She told him he should do the same, focus on his company for a bit. Just to have something to fall back on. 

She wasn’t wrong. The emails in his ‘unseen’ folder were piling up, and Ángel was starting to think his employees were going to start plotting to usurp him if he didn’t start responding. He lasted about a week of boring office work before he went straight back to being the worst detective in the world. Whatever. It didn’t matter. He’d done enough that his employees would survive a while without him. Probably. What mattered was finding him.

Nine months. It had been nine months since he’d seen him. Nine months since he’d been able to gaze into those shining, bright eyes, since he’d watched that brilliant mind solve a puzzle or crack a code. Nine months since that beautiful, kind, unbreakable man kissed him and held his hands and made him feel like everything was going to be okay. Nine months since Ángel failed him, because he wasn’t smart, or strong, or kind, and at this point he was pretty sure he didn’t look all that beautiful. Because he wasn’t good enough. 

All leads had run dry, and Ángel didn’t know where else to go. Maybe if he just had something to run towards, everything wouldn’t feel so hopeless. He must not be trying hard enough. 

Ángel was fervently drowning his sorrows at one of the bars he frequented, slumped over with his cheek pressed against the cold wooden countertop, when it happened. He’d heard the too-joyful ring of the bell that signaled someone walking through the front door, but he didn’t look up. No, he was too swirling his drink - that was probably mostly melted ice by now - lazily. 

Then he heard it.

His voice.

Ángel was so happy he couldn’t even process what was said, only that it was him! Ángel’s most precious jewel, his clean air, the love of his life, was standing only a couple of meters away. And God, he took the first real breath he had since that last night together. 

Suddenly, Ángel was on his feet and rushed over. He was half convinced he was a hallucination up until the moment he grabbed his shoulder and felt him. Ángel wanted nothing more than to latch onto Oliver and hold him until he didn’t feel like he was dying anymore.

And then, because Ángel wasn’t allowed nice things, it all came crumbling down. He’d been so caught up in the exhilaration he felt upon seeing Ollie, he’d forgotten that he didn’t know who he was. It felt like being stabbed and burned and brutally murdered all at once. 

Every new thing he learned about Oliver’s life since Eugene ‘released’ him made him angrier. Could it even have been called that? Hadn’t he been through enough? Eugene killed him— who knows how many times—and then took advantage of the fact that he was traumatized? He ruined Beebo’s life, took away the thing he loved doing, and then had the fucking gall to try and profit off of him. 

Ángel was going to kill that man. Over, and Over. and Over again, until he could be forgiven. Which is never.

But Ángel couldn’t think like that right now. First, he had to take care of Oliver.

It was easy to see all the ways in which Eugene had changed him, now that the shock of seeing Beebo wore off. His hair was shorter, he was relatively clean shaven, and, most concerningly, his gorgeous, wonderful eyes were hung down by dark purple eyebags. His clothes were relatively similar, but they looked indescribably more professional, less.. Inhabited. Ángel felt like ripping apart whoever made Oliver use whatever god awful ‘manly men shampoo’ he smelt like currently.

But it was more than the physical. Whatever hell Ollie had been burned by for the past few months had changed his personality as well. He walked differently, Ángel noticed. Gone were the pleasantly erratic, shuffling yet confident strides of a detective on the case. Instead, the detective walked like he was walking on eggshells to avoid stepping on glass. His posture was at constant war with itself, managing to keep his back straight while making himself as small as possible.

It felt hypocritical to judge the smoking–it was hypocritical, in fact–but Ángel couldn’t help but eye the butts like they were the devil itself. Ángel couldn’t understand it for a moment. Those were dangerous, did he not know? But of course he did, because he’d said those exact words to Ángel all those months ago. It’s different, he thinks, I could die, and the world would continue without me.

And– God. Ángel felt like he was being gutted everytime he looked in his eyes. 

Convincing him to sign a contract with Seraphim Industries was easy enough. He was sure his employment team wouldn’t mind; hell, they’d probably be happy he was involving himself at all. Dental and healthcare were already included in most of his employee contracts, so that wasn’t difficult to add either. 

Ángel had put a lot of care into the position he chose for the detective. The mere thought of sending him out on errands and not being sure where he was made Ángel irrationally scared. No, he should be safe in an office, where no one could hurt him, doing puzzles and eating snacks for the rest of eternity. 

It was a real tragedy that the two of them couldn’t stay in that bar for the rest of time. Being without Beebo for those long months was torture, but leaving him now felt worse, somehow. Every part of his mind and soul was willing Ángel’s feet to move to follow him, like a moth to a flame. He’d offered to walk Oliver home, but he’d politely declined and was out the door before Ángel could insist.

When he wasn’t thinking about Oliver hurt or dying, he was thinking about how to help him. Ángel tried his best to ignore the hurricane in his stomach every second he spent without the detective in his line of sight and funneled that energy into keeping him safe in the future. The job. Focus on the job.

If Ángel had his way, Ollie wouldn’t be working at all. Unfortunately, until he got that photobook back, he couldn’t be too forward. If Ángel came on too strong before Ollie got to know him, he might get spooked and run. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to find him again. For now, he had to take things slow. 

Ángel had ensured his office wouldn’t trigger any of Oliver’s phobias. He would’ve put him on the first floor, but Ángel wanted to be able to visit him often, so the roof garden was a good compromise. The 14th floor of the Seraphim Industries Central Office building was full of only Ángel’s most trusted employees, so he knew they’d treat Oliver well if they wanted to keep their jobs.

He was sure of that last part. It wasn’t very often an employee was added to such an important height of the company, so when it was announced offered to make the announcement himself, and took the opportunity to glare down each one of them. It felt like being useful, for once.

The apartment he picked out was perfect. It was still very low to the ground and within walking distance to Seraphim Industries. It was in one of the higher-end parts of the capital, which meant the security was high. No one could get into the apartment. He wouldn’t die. 

Ángel spent the better part of the next week setting up the apartment to fit Oliver’s needs. It was already moderately soundproofed, and adding dimmers to the lights didn’t take nearly as long as he’d thought it would. The puzzles were a no-brainer, and the records were his own little treat for himself for showing enough restraint as to add a bar. 

The first week of the detective’s work passed, and they were incredible . Distance made the heart grow fonder, and Ángel had been far too distant for far too long. 

The time passed too quickly and too slowly at the same time, and suddenly it was Friday night, and Ángel had to reconcile with the fact that he wouldn’t see Oliver at all the next two days. He couldn’t help the pain and fear he felt at that realization. It’d been getting harder and harder to leave that little office. Ángel’s only peace was found in those brief couple of minutes he spent with Ollie. It was the thing he woke up for and the thing he looked forward to for a majority of his day.

Ángel planned to invite Vivi over to hang out for the day. He still never thanked her enough for all she did for him during their investigation, and he’s sure they’d both like to discuss the ‘Ecoli Speedrun 2, Exploitation Edition’ document, as they started to call it. 

He should also start thinking of a way to get the photo book out of this. It belonged to Vivi, so didn’t that mean she had legal right over it if Eugene was arrested? Maybe. Ángel had never been very good at this whole law ordeal. 

Ángel was so consumed by his thoughts he hardly even noticed the small envelope tucked into the doorknob of his apartment. Who sends letters anymore?

Picking up the letter between two fingers, he couldn’t see any writing—nevermind a return address—other than his own name printed on the front. 

If the time loop murder house couldn’t do me in, what could this letter possibly do, he thought, unlocking his apartment and walking in. Ángel leaned on the counter as he ripped the top of the letter. A piece of paper fell out of the envelope and fluttered to the floor. The only other object in the envelope was a small bag of.. ashes? If this was supposed to be a glitter bomb, it was the worst one Ángel had ever seen.

Putting the bag off to the side, he leaned down to check if the piece of paper had any clue of what this was supposed to mean. He picked up the paper from the floor only to see

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

It was a shitty photo really. The room it was taken in was clearly dark, and it didn’t help that the main subject of the photo was on fire . The ashes were making a lot more sense now. Pictures and printed onto laminated paper was a familiar photo book, rapidly burning in an open flame. Printed in disgustingly corporate handwriting with a pen that didn’t quite work was, “Stay in your place. I’ll burn the whole thing next time.”

Safe to say, the letter didn’t need a return address. Ángel opened a window and lit a cigarette until he could think again. Fuck, fuck, fuck! What was he going to do? What’s the smart, rational, logical thing to do? 

Ángel knew what his heart was telling him to do. His heart wanted him to march all the way back to that forsaken house and burn the entire thing to the ground, including anyone inside. His heart wanted to dig through his closets and bring the return of Dominion, this time with violent murder included. 

Ángel called Vivi to update her on the situation once he felt stable enough. They made immediate plans to meet. She was pretty busy for the next couple weeks, but she said she penciled him in. She tried to comfort Ángel, but it only managed to heighten his anxiety.

“Besides, it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve been threatened by the subjects of my articles.”

Safe to say that argument didn’t exactly ease his fears.

Saturday… wasn’t great. Ángel spent most of it pacing around his apartment just thinking. About Beebo, about Vivi, about how he was going to stab Eugene the next time he saw him. He felt like he was going stir crazy, as if he was a caged animal or a housewife from the 1960s. Every second alone with his thoughts was another second closer to finding Oliver’s apartment and inviting himself in. No, Ángel, he wouldn’t want you there. The only benefit you’d be giving is to yourself.

So, on Sunday he bought puzzles. A lot of puzzles. One might even say too many puzzles. They had taken over an entire closet, and there were more coming. In the time he wasn’t finding new strange puzzles to buy, he was researching riddles and brainteasers. The detective liked those too, right? Yeah. This was a normal, practical way to use his time. Block puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, and Rubik’s cubes: none were safe from Ángel’s watchful eyes and endless pockets.

By the time Monday rolled around, the bag Ángel carried around was stuffed full of them, and it wasn’t even a fifth of what he had back at his apartment. He’d been careful to conceal them, but the secretary still looked suspiciously at his bulging cross-bag. 

It was all worth it when he handed one to the detective. The puzzle itself was simple enough: a hollowed wooden box with a T-shaped hole on one of its sides, along with six T-shaped pieces. 

Ángel checked the time on his wristwatch. 7:59:57 PM. He knocked on the door.

Upon entering, Ángel leaned on the doorframe and scanned Oliver immediately. He looked tired, but Ángel was slowly getting used to that. His eyes were so much emptier nowadays. Ángel tried acting like it didn’t hurt him as much as it did. He really wanted to hug him. “Hey, Beebo! How are you doing? Did your break go okay?” He asked instead.

“Uhm, yes. I was good, thank you.” He looked nervous. Comfort him. “How was yours?”

“Great.” He lied. “Actually, I got this puzzle box–” for you  “—and was thinking you might like it. I couldn’t figure it out, but I’m sure a man of your intelligence could do it easily,” Ángel winked and searched for the blush he knew he’d get at the compliment. It was paler than it was in the house, not the bright red flush he’d come to expect, but that didn’t stop Ángel from feeling rejuvenated.

Then he handed the box over, and— this man was going to be the death of him . His eyes that had seemed so distant and empty before widened as he gently held the box in scarred, shivering hands, and they seemed to sparkle in the natural light of the open window.

Then, turning the box over and inspecting the pieces, he smiled. It was small, so far from the bright, triumphant grins Ángel was used to, and yet still it warmed him to his core. Ángel knew Vivi would be making fun of him if she could hear him right about now, but that smile made Ángel feel like he was on top of the world like no amount of money or fame could. The most precious jewel. His.

For the first time since he spotted him in the bar, Ángel took a real breath of fresh air. He felt high in a way no cigarette could replace.

Ollie was still smiling while he did the puzzle. “Yes, I think I’ve seen something similar before. I can’t remember the exact solution, but I’m pretty sure…” He trailed off as he started working on solving the puzzle. Ángel’s eyes flicked from his hands to his face. He closed his mouth and furrowed his eyebrows slightly, a soft yet entirely serious focus that Ángel found adorable.

His facial expression loosened as he slid the last two pieces in, smiling wider in a show of excitement at another puzzle solved by detective Oliver Beebo. “Did you get all that?” He asked, handing over the finished puzzle. 

Like some stupid rom-com, their hands brushed as he took the puzzle from him. Ángel could’ve fallen in love all over again.

Their puzzle exchanges became a regular occurrence after that. Ángel had a gruesome number of Rubik’s cubes in his office, sure, but it was all made worth it when he saw the excited smile Oliver made when he got hold of a new one or heard the light rhythmic tapping of his foot under the table while he solved it.

Friday came far too fast. Ángel had just left Oliver’s office and retreated to his own. It was a grand, expensive thing. When he bought the building, Ángel had been excited at the grandeur of it all; the high ceilings and expensive rugs were a testament to his success and stature. Now its size only served to make it seem emptier.

Ángel rested his entire weight on the nearest wall. His heart was pounding so loud it felt like it was trying to rip itself out of Ángel’s chest to return to who it belonged to. Ángel wouldn’t have blamed it; every inch of his soul wanted the same thing.

The detective was probably on his way home by now. Ángel must have checked the crime rate in this part of the city hundreds of times at this point, but it didn’t stop the image of Oliver blacking out from blood loss, slowly dying on the cold street from appearing in his head every minute he wasn’t with him.

And all the fresh air and fluttery feelings Ángel had were left in that small room. Now he’d been gutted and left out to bleed dry until he could see Oliver again. His heart ached, and suddenly Ángel couldn’t stand, or breathe, or even keep his eyes open. Was this how Oliver and Vivi felt when they were bleeding out on the floor? He didn’t want to imagine it. How he failed them. How many times he failed them. Over and over and over—

Ángel tried to remember what little random snippets he’d heard secondhand from therapists through friends. He couldn’t remember the amount of seconds you were supposed to breathe for, so he settled for barely choking in oxygen through sobs.

How selfish could he be? Using all the knowledge he learned from lying and tricking Oliver, and using it to trick him into loving him once more. He didn’t deserve to have luxuries and precious gems, but he was selfish. So, he stole them, and told himself he was helping someone to make his rotting heart feel better about itself.

Eventually, Ángel dragged himself from his office and into a taxi to his apartment building. It seemed later than it should be; Ángel had been having trouble keeping track of most times recently anyway. He was thankful the few people left working didn’t comment on the smudged eyeliner or mascara tear tracks running down his face.

The next two days passed similarly. Unfortunately, Ángel hadn’t managed to pull himself together enough to resemble a person, so he was left strung around his apartment. 

By the time the weekend was over and Ángel was back at work, his resolve had been beaten to a bloody pulp. It stood no chance and against the raging stampede that was his need to be near Oliver at all times of the day. Eventually, the water had to start dripping through his fingers.

That Monday, Ángel stood outside Oliver’s office door. 7:59:55 PM. Close enough. He knocked on the door.

That day, instead of his usual random puzzle, Ángl had found a riddle. A classic whodunit murder mystery. To his surprise and utter delight, Ollie paused his work and seemed to consider the riddle as he would an actual murder investigation. He asked questions for clarification, and Ángel slowly strung together an entire story to the otherwise rather simple riddle. And, well, Ángel’s legs had never been the strongest, so if sitting in the bean bag chair incidentally meant he had an excuse to stay longer, who’s to say?

By the time Ángel told the detective who the actual murderer and answer to the riddle was, it seemed rather anticlimactic. Oliver fully turned away from his computer and, in a show of real aggression and passion, he ranted about all the ways that didn’t make sense and how that justification would never hold up in an actual court of law. It was the same indignant anger he’d shown once he’d found out Ángel was Dominion. He furrowed his eyebrows and puffed out his cheeks, his words becoming stilted and more professional than they already were.

“It just doesn’t make sense, ” he said.

“..Well, I think it was the baby. Those things are murderous, you know.”

And then Oliver broke and started laughing, and suddenly Ángel was considering a comedy career.

Oliver shook his head exasperatedly. He turned his attention back to his computer and, judging by the occasional clacks of the keyboard, kept working. So, Ángel stayed too. He silently pulled out his laptop and started shifting through emails he was supposed to answer a week ago.

Urgh. Ángel missed when he didn’t care about the work he did for his company. 

It became the new routine. Ángel would drop in, give Oliver a puzzle, or a riddle, or a pastry he knew the detective would like, and then he’d spend the next hour or so doing work until Oliver declared it was time for him to go home. 

The weekends without him were still especially rough.

Seeing Vivi in person helped, though. They sat in a secluded corner of a small cafe. Ángel ordered an iced coffee, and Vivi laughed at him for being a stereotype and then ordered one of her own. 

“Well, I’ve found a lot and not a lot at the same time,” Vivi starts. She pulls out a notepad from her coat pocket and flips through it. “Mostly workers’ rights violations. Paying below the minimum salary, illegal hours, unsafe working conditions—nothing new. Grounds to get him arrested, for sure, but without a good story the public won’t care much,” she continued. “Also, he’s a total hermit. Like, literally never leaves that house. I can infer why, but how is he keeping a whole company running? And without signal? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Closing her notebook, she turned to Ángel. “I wanted to get in contact with some of the other people at this party. You said he doesn’t pay child support, right? D’you think his kids would be up for an interview? Or his ex, maybe?”

“You aren’t thinking of continuing the investigation, are you?” He replied instead.

“Well, yeah, obviously,” she confirms nonchalantly. “Have you seen the kind of things they’re putting these workers through? It’s my job to report about these kinds of things.”

“But—the photo book—”

“Ángel.” She cut him off. “I know you only have eyes for your boytoy these days, but he killed me too. I still have to keep the lights on in my hallways all night so I don’t freak out. I may not remember everything, but I hate this guy just as much as you do.” She held eye contact with him. Ángel looked away first. He wrapped his arms around himself, nails digging into his jacket. Ángel had been so focused on the detective, he hadn’t even considered what it must feel like for Vivi. God, was he ever going to get this right? Selfish, Selfish, Selfish.

A couple of seconds passed, and Vivi sighed. She buried her face in her hands and rubbed at her forehead. “Jeez, I’m sorry, Ángel. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just.. it’s been hard for me too, y’know?” Vivi uncovered her face and brought her hands down to her lap. She looked tired. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. You’re not in a good spot either; I get it.”

“It’s my fault. I should’ve reached out to you and told you immediately, like I said I would. I should’ve been there for you. It’s all my fault. You deserve better. I’m sorry,” Ángel said. 

Vivi looked at him strangely. “Ángel, w—” she paused, scanning his face. Ángel sat up straight. Whatever she saw made her switch topics. She flipped through a couple of her notes again, exhaustion turning to steely determination. “Besides, I don’t think he knows about my investigation.”

“Really?”

“Yeah! Think about it. He’s been cooped up in that house for almost a year now. How would he even know we were working together? Or that you told me about the time thingy? Also, I happen to be very good at my job, thank you very much. I know my investigations haven’t been detected. Which means… ”

“ Which means…? ”

“Which means that, even if I get caught, it can’t be traced back to you. This guy still knows me as the one who outed him as a terrible speedrunner. Everything you’ve told me about this guy leads me to believe that he’s pretty stupid. For all he knows, I’m just getting my money’s worth out of him.”

“And, the thing is, I don’t think he’s actually planning on burning that notebook anytime soon. It’s.. pretty much the only leverage he has over you. He knows he can’t beat you in a fight, and if you break that clock of his, he’s pretty much dead. He’s not just going to burn it on a whim.”

See, this is why he needed Vivi.

“Thanks, Vivi. I couldn’t do this without you.” 

“You can say that again. Now, do you still have Marigold Margulius’s contact? I think she’d like to give an anonymous testimony. ”

From there, it was back to work.

There had been a couple, ahem, slipups, but two months in and Ángel thought he was finally getting there. Vivi was going to obliterate that little virus, and Ángel was going to get that photobook, and boom! Everything would be fine, and they’d all live happily ever after.

Sure, the weekends were still a struggle, but Ángel could handle that. It’d all be over as soon as Eugene was in jail. Then, Ollie would remember, and Ángel could spend every waking moment with him, and he’d never have to worry about him being in danger, or getting hurt, or his dead body in the snow ever again.

Friday. 7:59:58 PM.

Ángel knocked on the door. There was no response.

“Helloo?” He called through the door. What was happening? His employees always warned him if Oliver was out sick or had left early; why wasn’t he responding? Was he hurt? Was he unable to speak? Ángel knocked a third time. Could a human survive having their throat slit-

“Come in,” replied the voice from inside the room. Oh. He was probably fine then.

He heeded the love of his life’s instructions and stepped into the room. There he was, as beautiful and perfect as he always was. 

Ángel dropped off his gift for that day: medialunas from a local bakery, coated in powdered sugar. As usual, the detective quickly began devouring it. Unusually, however, he interrupted his ravenous consumption of the innocent pastry to speak, “These are always so good,” he’d say. “Where do you get them?”

He was initiating a conversation? Huh. Strange. Still, Ángel wasn’t complaining. “There’s a nice bakery across from the office building. It’s pretty small, but it’s one of the few in the city that opens late.” 

“Hm,” Beebo hummed, staring hungrily at the pastry. God I wish that were me. “It sounds nice. I want more,” he stated. 

“Oh! I could definitely buy more for you ne-“

“We should go. Get some. Tomorrow. Together, I mean.”

What.

Chapter Text

Now, typically, the beginning of any ordinary investigation begins with research.

It was an unfortunate and wholly unwanted aspect of his job, scrolling through entirely average people’s social media accounts, but it gave preliminary context on the main players in any case. Besides, it only took a couple of minutes of clicking through posts before Oliver was flying out the door and on the case.

As excited as Oliver was to start investigating, he’d soon found this aspect of his job proved much more difficult than he’d first anticipated. 

Most of the former detective’s cases began with something to investigate. In money laundering cases, there were tax forms and profit sheets. In murder cases, there were weapons, suspects, and evidence. Even in something as simple as suspected infidelity or a lost cat, there was something provided by the client to start with.

This case was one of the very few Oliver had taken on for himself. As such, he… wasn’t really sure what exactly he was looking for. He started with some semi-reliable news sites, looking for any scandals or allegations that had been raised against Ángel, especially during his time as CEO. 

Oliver felt a little bad misusing company time and the internet to research how evil his boss was. Ah, well, his coworkers didn’t seem to mind when he didn’t get work done at all, so he supposed they wouldn’t mind this, either. 

Most of what he found wasn’t helpful in the slightest. It seemed Ángel was more of a celebrity than a CEO in the eyes of the public. Oliver didn’t often find himself researching famous people, but were there supposed to be this many articles discussing his… attractiveness? Oliver understood that Ángel was, objectively speaking, attractive, and— that train of thought was not conducive to a proper investigation nor preliminary research. Oliver clicked off the articles he had open. That didn't stop the fact that they were a surprising majority of the discussion surrounding Ángel. They seemed to drown out the more informational articles. Huh.

There were a few scandals to be found, however. Once again, none of them seem to have much to do with economics, as Beebo might’ve expected from a man of his wealth. It seems that up until around a year ago, Ángel had a rather… exciting personal life. No articles depicting this lifestyle’s apparent recent departure, however. Hm.

In terms of actual personal information, there was… nothing. Prior to six years ago, it seemed a man named Ángel Valdivia simply did not exist, at least not online. It took a lot of research to even find the humble beginnings of Seraphim Enterprises. It took multiple trips to the Wayback Machine and many, many cookies before he finally found an old, now shut down news site talking about a semi-successful company that was having a brand overhaul after the death of its CEO. The CEO, despite having a living and rather wealthy spouse, was leaving his company and all of his assets to his—the article’s words, not his—bastard son, Ángel Valdivia.

From there, the company was completely rebranded with what is now known as the extremely successful corporate empire, Seraphim Enterprises. Seraphim Enterprises made a reputation for buying companies that were already dying out to bring more attention to its name: jewelers, fancy art galleries, private museums, and, most notably, Coli Industries.

Meanwhile, Ángel himself remained in the public’s good graces. He was young, handsome, charming, and, for those who enjoyed internet gossip, he had many romantic scandals to go around. Not in the last several months, however. 

Actually, the more he researched, the more Oliver was beginning to see how strange that was. One of the key features of Ángel’s online public presence, gone. It wasn’t just the scandals; Ángel seemed to have no internet appearances as of late: no interviews, no talk shows, no public announcements from him for his company, not even a social media post. In fact, the last announcement he made concerning his company was—ah. There it is. The purchasing of Coli Industries.

The clue. 

Ángel had said things about Mr. Coli before, hadn’t he? He mentioned hating him. A strange reaction considering his usually rather calm personality. And his reaction to finding out Oliver was working for the man—disgust, hatred, fear. Yes, yes! There was a connection between those two! Something more than the impersonal dislike of an unethical rich guy.

Oh, Oliver had forgotten how much he missed detective-ing. The rush he felt when he solved a puzzle, found a clue, followed a lead. He knew he was probably bouncing in his seat, but he was alone, so it was fine. 

Well—this was a clue, sure, but it wasn’t exactly a lead. There wasn’t a place to go, nor an object to investigate, just people. Two very specific people. One of which, Oliver really didn’t feel like talking to. 

Ángel was much easier to talk to than Mr. Coli, even as nerve-wracking as he was. He was scary, but in more of a butterflies-in-his-stomach way than… than.. He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about how being around Mr. Coli felt wrong . He didn’t want to remember the way that being around him and his massive, imposing mansion felt like death.

Oliver didn’t want to remember how familiar that specific wrongness was. He wanted to stop thinking about this now. He wanted to stop thinking about it. He wanted to stop thinking ab-

…Oliver needed a cigarette.

He stood up, wiping his search history as best he could and switching back to the spreadsheets he was supposed to be ‘solving’. His back cracked as he opened the office door. Ow.

It wasn’t that he hated the job he worked at. That would be selfish. He was lucky he had a job at all, considering his… specifications. And truly, Ángel did more for him than Oliver could’ve ever asked for.

But.. that didn’t mean Oliver didn’t miss his detective days.

Just him, his red string, and a little orange cat. Every day, he went out solving puzzles and crimes. He made people happy. He made people safe. Oliver was doing good. It was a little lonely at times, and he’d be lying if the subject matter of some of his cases hadn’t made his skin crawl at the sins of humanity, but Oliver could firmly say they were the best days of his life. His favorite, even.

Being in this office day after day, solving the same, simple puzzles, barely sleeping enough to not doze off on his feet with nightmares every night, and then getting up to do it all again… it was nice. But it wasn’t enough.

Even with Mr. Coli, as awful as it was, he was still doing things. Errands, mostly, but it was all different. He saw new people and new places every day. It was dangerous and terrifying and altogether too much for one person to handle, especially someone as fragile as Oliver Beebo. But it was different.

It didn’t help that all the corridors looked the same in this office. Oliver wasn’t sure he’d even notice for the first couple of minutes if the rooms changed before him. Stop. Stop thinking about it.

Oliver offered placid greetings to those who waved to him. He tore his eyes away from the ‘You are Here’ sign next to the door leading to the roof garden. He dragged his feet onto the stone steps, leaning on the part of the wall furthest from the edge of the building.

He checked the time. I wasn’t 8. It was 5:28.42. The days were getting shorter, and if he walked any closer to the edge of the building, Oliver was sure he’d see a beautiful sunset.

He lit a cigarette. In came the nicotine and various cancer-causing substances; out went all the other, even more dangerous substances. Soon, his brain would release dopamine as a response to the nicotine, and Oliver would be able to think straight again.

He breathed in again, held for one, two—and then started coughing his lungs out. Urgh. Stupid weak lungs. Oliver was at an extremely high risk of lung cancer and couldn’t even look cool doing it. He smelled the air once the coughing ceased. It was comforting.

Oliver didn’t know when he started to like the smell of cigarette smoke. It was a relatively common smell in his field of work, so he got used to it, but he still had a generally negative association to the stench.

The first time he noticed how comforting it was, he had just started to work for Mr. Coli. Mr. Coli was adamant about having all of their meetings on his property, but occasionally he compromised by hovering around the front door of his house. 

This was one of those times. Mr. Coli stood like he always did, with his back straight and a perfectly manicured look on his face. He’d look like a car salesman if it weren’t for the cigarette hanging in his mouth. Standing there, leaning against the dirtied walls just outside the door of Mr. Coli’s mansion, the smell of cigarette smoke felt like it belonged. “I feel under obligation as your employee to tell you cigarettes are the most common causations of lung disease, including cancer and other deadly ailments,” he said instead. If this guy died, he was out of a job. Probably forever.

Mr. Coli’s straight, all-business face turned into a grin that made Oliver’s skin crawl. It felt predatory. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I think I’ll be fine,” he laughed, canines showing. He pulled another cigarette out of his near-full pack and offered it to Oliver.

“Do you come out here to smoke often?” He asked. He didn’t take the cigarette yet. Those could kill him.

“No, not really,” Mr. Coli replied, lighting the cigarette in his mouth with his other hand. “Why?”

“I dunno, it’s just….” Here it was again. Crazy-lunatic failed-detective Oliver Beebo is back on the case with his insane intuition. “Just feels like someone smoked here. That’s all.” Feels like. He hates these new ‘feelings’ things. He wanted reasons.

“Well,” Mr. Coli began. He took a large breath in, covering the slight cough with that same predatory grin. “If not you, then who?” He breathed out, gesturing around at the isolated forests that surrounded them. “It’s just you and me now, Oliver.”

Well, thanks for the addiction, Mr. Coli.

He didn’t usually even smoke the cigarettes. He just liked the smell. Most of the time he just lit them and let them burn, like the worst incense in the world. He wasn’t even sure why the smell was so comforting. The only other person he knew personally who smoked was his dad, but his father was never the most comforting presence. Well, Ángel smoked too, but that didn’t count.

Speaking of, Oliver didn’t know where to go for this next part of his investigation. He supposed he could start with some of the assets Ángel gained from his business deal with Mr. Coli, but there were a lot of those, and there was no guarantee they’d even lead to anything.

It wasn’t solely the purchasing of Coli Industries that made Ángel hate him. Something must have happened after he bought it that caused this personality shift and hatred. He couldn’t very well talk about it to Mr. Coli himself, and…

Well. There was always the easy option. He could always just.. ask Ángel about it. Except.. No, no, he could literally just ask Ángel about it.

Oliver doubts Ángel would respond well to a direct interrogation, but he’d slipped things out during casual conversations before. Unfortunately, either Ángel was running out of secrets to spill, or he’d been getting better at hiding them. Asking about Mr. Coli in one of their daily meetings would likely only lead to him clamming up or, worse, suspicion. 

However, if Oliver was a trusted friend, someone on his level who he could confide in, that might change. He smiled. He knew how to do this part! This was just like that case with the police a couple of years ago. 

The sun had set. His cigarette had burned out, but the smell was still lingering in the air. For the first time in months, the feeling in Oliver’s gut wasn’t fear; well, the fear was still there, but so was something else: excitement. He was going to get such a good grade in part-time detective!

He checked the time. Oh, shit, it was already almost 7:30! He had to get back to his office before Ángel did. 

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------

It took Beebo a minute after Ángel walked into the room to remember what he was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t fair! Ángel was lowering his defenses by bringing food! Still, he managed to pull away from the temptation that the little pastry offered and start rationalizing what to say.

Still, the little pastries were at the forefront of his mind. He held one in both his hands as he thought and subconsciously took another bite. Quick! Ángel was walking away! He needed to initiate a conversation before it got too awkward and he lost his chance. He should just say anything.

He chose the first thing that came to mind, “These are always so good.” Okay, that was a normal thing humans said to each other; keep that thought train going. “Where do you get them?”

“There's a nice bakery across from the office building. It’s pretty small, but it’s one of the few that opens late.” He responded. He was smiling a little bit. Was that a smile? Did that mean he liked it? Well, unless he was being super passive-aggressive, he probably thought it was a good bakery since he gets something for Beebo from there so often. Oliver hummed, because that's a noise people made to indicate they heard you.

He wanted to take another bite from the pastry. Beebo cursed God for making him have to use his mouth to speak. If Ángel liked the place, Oliver should compliment it, showing that they were on the same page. “It sounds nice. I want more,” he stated.

Ángel smiled even brighter. That was probably a good sign. Unless it was a ‘I’m just putting up with you so you’ll stop talking to me’ smile. Ok, phase two: inviting Ángel to a secondary location so they could improve their relationship outside of work, establishing them as outside friends as well as work friends.

“Oh! I could definitely buy more for you ne-“ No. That’s not what I wanted!

“We should go. Get some. Tomorrow. Together, I mean.” Beebo blurted. That was too abrupt. Oh, no, what if Ángel finally sees how awkward and strange he is? That is not the kind of person you want to confide in with all your deepest, darkest secrets. 

“Ah–! Ahah, um, sure! Is, ah, is 1:00 good for you? I’ll pick you up.” Ángel decided after a moment. Success!

“Yes.” He replied intelligently. Oliver was about to pat himself on the back for getting a good grade in social interaction before he remembered that any functioning person would be able to do this without trouble. He chewed on the weird-but-delicious-not-a-croissant pastry again. It was still warm.

Ángel hadn’t moved back to the beanbag, nor had he left the room. He was just.. standing there. Oliver looked up. Ángel had that weird look on his face again. Was there something else he was supposed to say? Oliver looked back up from his computer and squinted at Ángel.

Ángel sq– did he just squeak? when he caught Oliver’s eyes and turned around to walk over to the beanbag. He looked redder than usual. Was he embarrassed getting caught zoning out? Probably. That made sense. Oliver zoned out looking at Ángel, too. Hm. Strange. Beebo discreetly pulled out a notebook and wrote the abnormal reaction down.

The rest of the day passed normally. He did the same spreadsheets, took the same bus back to his apartment, walked up the same stairs, and finally, collapsed into the same bed for 8 hours of exhaustion and nightmares. The cycle repeated, over and over and over again. Usually, he liked routines, but usually those routines were only for personal tasks. These weren’t habits; they were a cycle.

Usually during his weekends, Oliver wouldn’t do much. Especially in the first week or two. He wasn’t used to the free time. Mostly, he found things around the house to do. He’d play old dad rock on the record player and do one of the jigsaw puzzles he found in a cabinet. Or he’d spend a day reading one of the encyclopedia books he’d found buried in a dusty old box in one of the exhausting amounts of closets. Seriously. Who needed this many closets? He had found a new one last week. At least the bug encyclopedia book was fun.

This weekend was different. 

He tried his best to look even nicer than usual. To seem trustworthy and responsible, of course, not because of the person he was meeting. 

He wore the nice turtleneck sweater he bought with the gross amount of money he was paid. Overtop was, of course, his signature coat. Mr. Coli told him it was ratty and worn out, but he couldn’t imagine ever getting rid of it. He’d gone to hell and back with it! 

He debated wearing the hat. Mr. Coli always hated it when he wore it, telling him it was ‘impolite’ and that it was rude to not be able to make eye contact with the person you were speaking with. Usually, he just waited until he was out of eyesight before putting it back on. But the hat was comfortable.. it would be more stressful to go without it.

He put the hat back on the coat rack. This wasn’t about feeling comfortable. He was going to be stressed out anyway; what was the point of trying to accommodate for just one of his many stressors?

Finally, Oliver took the hour before Ángel knocked on the door trying to figure out his hair. No matter what he did, he could never figure out how to style the awkward length of it. 

Knock knock.

Alright. Time to be normal. Get close to him. Be a close and trusted companion so he tells Oliver all his deepest, darkest secrets.

He opened the front door. Ángel looked even more well put together than usual. He had a fancy rich guy jacket on and a worn black scarf. “Good afternoon, detective Beebo,” he greeted playfully. Oliver would have said he wasn’t a detective anymore, but he… kind of was? “I have arrived to escort you to the bakery for snack time.” He held out his arm for Oliver to take.

Normally, Oliver didn’t like contact with people he didn’t know well. Even before the years of being a detective caught up to him and he became… this, he’d still flinch and try to pull away whenever someone he didn’t know well tried touching him. Recently, it’s been even worse.

He stared at the offered arm. Ángel started to pull it away. “Haha, anyway—” he tried redirecting. No. Wait. Sensing the disappearing opportunity, Oliver latched onto the arm and hooked it on his own. “Good afternoon, Ángel.” The touch made him nervous. The feeling of vulnerability lingered as he held it, even if they had nearly four layers of clothing in between actually touching each other. 

“Lead the way.” Ángel smiled and raised an eyebrow but started pulling him towards the elevator. The nervous feelings eased eventually, and the touch started feeling more comfortable gradually. Ángel separated once they got to the elevator, and Oliver hadn’t realized how comfortable the touch had gotten until he stumbled once it left.

The cafe wasn’t far, so they decided to just walk there. They were in some of the nicer parts of the city that mostly had high-end apartment buildings and small bakeries. As it was a residential area, the streets weren’t very crowded. He had his headphones in his bag just in case, but for now they weren’t necessary. 

The conversation they held quickly went from polite small talk to their usual riddle discussion and banter. Thankfully, their usual talking points translated well out of work too. A couple of minutes into the stroll, Oliver realized it was snowing lightly. Hm. That wasn’t a good sign. 

“Are you okay? What happened?” Ángel asked. Ah. Shit. Of course Ángel would have noticed. 

“Nothing. I’m fine.” Ángel hadn’t moved on, however. He didn’t say anything, but he was glancing at Oliver every couple of seconds. Beebo was the one that was supposed to be interrogating him, not the other way around! He shouldn’t say anything. Ángel wasn’t going to trust a coward, but— ugh. “The snow,” he started. He was always acting stupid around pretty men.

“Even a small dusting like this could lead to a big storm later on.” 

“Ah,” Ángel looked at him sympathetically. It made Oliver feel sick and elated at the same time. “I get that. Don’t worry, though; it hardly ever snows in big cities like this. We haven’t gotten over a couple centimeters in a decade.”

“Besides,” he continued, getting a little closer, “I’ll be here to keep you warm,” he winked.

Ah. That. Hah. Hm. Oliver went to turn the brim of his hat down, but forgot it wasn’t there. His hand fumbled embarrassingly in the air for a couple moments before it found the collar of his coat and tugged it close. Ángel laughed at him and then continued talking about a recent riddle he’d heard. Oliver tried to stop thinking altogether.

They arrived at the cafe not long after. It was a nice, quiet place, only having a couple of customers. There were many wooden tables and chairs lined around the windows and walls. There was a menu off to the side and a glass display of different pastries.

“What do you usually get me?” He asked. 

“Here, I’ll order for you.” Ángel rushed forward to the counter. Damn, Oliver wanted to try paying this time. Unfortunately, by the time he realized what was happening, Ángel was already chatting with the person behind the counter, and.. was it normal to be that close to a customer when they’re ordering food? It made Oliver uncomfortable to watch. They clearly knew each other.

He returned with a small bag containing a couple of medialunas and a cup of coffee. “You knew that person.” Oliver stated. They both started walking towards one of the tables with two chairs, side by side.

“Don’t worry about it, they weren’t important” he replied, taking a sip of his coffee. And I am? Why?

Ángel handed Oliver the bag as soon as they sat down, and he was instantly reminded of the fact he hadn’t eaten breakfast. He tore through the first one and was halfway through a second before he remembered that this visit to the cafe wasn’t actually about the snacks, sadly.

He looked up at Ángel, but for once his eyes weren’t trained on Oliver. Instead, he was looking at the wall beside them. There was a watercolor and ink painting of a butterfly resting on a mock orange flower. There was no accredited artist.

Looking back at Ángel, he caught Oliver’s eye. “What do you think of this piece?” He asked.

“…I think they wanted some pretty art for the cafe. And I think they should be crediting the artists better.”

“No, no, I mean what do you make of it. What do you think the meaning of it is?”

He looked back at the mural. It still looked like an artsy watercolor painting of a butterfly and a flower. He looked around. There were many other paintings of butterflies around the cafe. “I think the person who painted it really liked butterflies.” Ángel laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Oliver ducked his head. “Sorry, I’m not good at… art things.”

“Ah, don’t be. You just think literally. It’s not a bad trait.” 

Uh-oh. Bring the conversation back around; he was getting comfortable. “What about you?”

“Hm?”

“What do you think it means?” Ángel seems like the kind of guy to have an opinion on art. He looked and acted like he belonged in an art gallery half the time. 

Ángel looked back at the painting, studying it. “Well, they say butterflies are supposed to be connected to the dead, right? And yet they get nectar from flowers, which represent life, among other things,” he began.

“Maybe it’s about how, despite being so far apart in most people’s minds, death is always closer to life. It feeds on it. It’s a monarch butterfly, right? So—“

“Actually, it’s a Viceroy.”

“What?” 

“It’s a Viceroy butterfly. The ends of the wings have an extra black stripe on them, see? You can’t tell because it’s a painting, but they’re also much smaller than Monarchs. They evolved to look almost identical to them because monarchs eat poisonous plants, stopping some predators from eating them. The Viceroys can’t eat poison, but they can look like they would.”

Ángel’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Oh. That’s very interesting.”

Did Ángel not know this? Oliver assumed it was basic knowledge. After all, every child has a period of their life obsessing over every book about bugs they could find. “Yes. Yes, it is. It’s called batesian mimicry! It exists in other insects, too, like how hoverflies look like wasps so birds avoid them!” 

“I didn’t know that.” He was leaning with his head propped up with his hand, elbow on the table. He didn’t look bored, so Oliver continued. 

“Although it’s most commonly found in insects, it also exists in reptiles and amphibians, like the—“ wait, wasn’t this conversation supposed to be about art? Oh, no. Oliver was turning the conversation away from something Ángel liked back towards him. 

“Sorry, sorry, you probably aren’t actually interested in this. I’m sorry for rambling.” He concluded. He didn’t understand why people wouldn’t just tell him they weren’t interested in the first place. 

“No! Keep going, really!” Ángel tried. He was very polite, but Oliver knew it was much more likely he lied so as to not seem rude than actually want to hear any more. He didn’t continue.

After a couple moments of silence, Ángel had gotten the message that he was free from Oliver’s dialogue. He started his own topic. “You know, I find it attractive. You know so much about.. pretty much everything. Combined with your intelligence, you’re like you came straight out of a movie.”

Well, he did graduate with honors in criminal investigation. Oliver straightened his posture and played with his fingers under the table. His face felt warm. “Uh— Thank you.” He replied politely. His compliments just sounded so genuine, Oliver had a hard time deflecting them. “But, of course, I’m not a detective anymore,” he reminded Ángel gently.

“Hm. Right.” His shoulders tensed, and that easy, pleased smile dropped in an instant. He mumbled something under his breath; Oliver swore he heard something about Mr. Coli. Right on track.

“I was going to ask about that. You harbor a lot of hatred against Mr. Coli; why is that?” Ángel crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. He huffed, “Of course I do.”

He stared at the floor for a couple of seconds, thinking about something. A bad experience with him, maybe? Ángel’s face paled a little, and his eyes started watering. Oh. Certainly a bad experience, then. He glanced up at Beebo, seeing he was still waiting for a proper response, and said, “I mean, who wouldn’t? With what he did to those workers in those factories? It’s pretty hard to like the guy. I think I heard he’s a neglectful father, too.”

Mr. Coli has kids? That wasn’t anywhere in the public information Oliver had heard. He wished he had his notebook; he needed to write this down. Unfortunately, that was considered ‘rude’ in most casual conversations.

“Your efforts were wasted on that man,” he spat. 

Realizing how emotional he was getting, Ángel sobered up. “Ah, well, I heard they’re trying to reinvestigate his new company, so all’s well that ends well. I have a friend in the journalism industry. Maybe they’ll finally be able to arrest him now that he’s practically bankrupt.” 

“Have you ever met him in person? When you were buying his company, I mean.” Oliver questioned. Ángel was pulling out of the conversation; he needed to get as much information as possible before the chance was lost.

Ángel raised an eyebrow, leaning his elbows on the table again. Dammit. “Is this an interrogation, detective?” He smirked. Ángel was too close. This was not conducive to a proper interrogation. 

“Ah—no! Of course not!” He lied. He’d been caught. “I apologize. You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to. I was just curious.”

Ángel softened again, “That’s okay. It’s in your nature to be curious. It’s part of what makes you such a good detective.” He sighed, “If you must know, yes, I have met the man in person. After I bought Coli Industries, though. I bought it from the co-owner, and we only spoke through emails.”

“I don’t know how you put up with him for so long. I only met him once, and it made me want to put a knife to his throat. Or mine.”

Concerning! Oliver needed his red string board.

“Anyway,” Ángel said, forcefully shifting the conversation. Despite what must be his best attempts to hide his anger, his fist is clenched, as if around the handle of a weapon. “Do you want more snacks? I want to show you more of my favourites from this cafe,” he continued, and, well, Beebo couldn’t say no to him, nor to the idea of more snacks.

The rest of the conversation was relatively meaningless, at least in terms of the investigation. Oliver had to restrain himself from asking more questions. After all, it wasn’t like Ángel was just going to up and disappear; he was always there.

Conversations with Ángel were easy, Oliver discovered. Ángel carefully sidestepped hard topics, knew exactly when he was getting uncomfortable, and knew exactly what to say to make Oliver cover his face and squirm. 

He just always seemed so… flippant. Not necessarily bored, but like he’d had this same conversation many times but still found the time to enjoy.

It didn’t hurt that he was, objectively speaking, very attractive. Oliver had seen enough articles to know that finding Ángel hot wasn’t a characteristic unique to him.

He also had an awful sense of humor. Ángel could go on incredibly long tangents as long as he had someone to bounce off of, which usually ended up being Oliver himself. These tangents spanned into truly ridiculous hypotheticals and many quotes that were probably supposed to be references Oliver didn’t get.

They once held a full discussion about the intricacies of a hypothetical future in which Oliver, Ángel, or the both of them suddenly transformed into worms. Oliver was happy his knowledge about worm anatomy and living conditions came to be useful in that conversation.

Eventually, they had to leave the cafe. As nice as being with Ángel was, Oliver wasn’t sure he’d been outside of his apartment or office building this long since before he moved in. The sounds of people talking and chewing had been grating on his brain. 

As if sensing his growing discomfort, Ángel stood up and offered his hand for them to leave. Oliver took it, and that shock of vague yet addicting discomfort-warmth took hold of him once more. Ángel let go before he could get used to it.

Oliver half expected the café door to open to a raging blizzard, but it wasn’t even snowing anymore. In fact, almost all the snow had melted. They walked back to his apartment in relative silence. Talking with Ángel was easy, but talking in general wasn’t. 

As they approached his apartment door, Ángel hesitated. “I had a lot of fun today!” He said. It was enthusiastic, but Ángel was still fidgeting with the ends of his scarf. Was he nervous?

Oliver unlocked his door and stood in the doorway. “I did, too.” 

“Good! That's good,” Ángel replied. He didn’t turn to leave. Was there something Oliver was missing? Ah, right. Typically, when showing their enjoyment of an activity, people will plan to do it again in the future. Perhaps he was waiting for Oliver to do so?

“We should go out again sometime,” he said. It was an entirely neutral statement, but Ángel shot up, smiling brightly.

“Yes! Yes, we should! Maybe next time we could go for drinks together? Don’t worry, I’ll pay.” Ángel seemed to have already made up his mind that they were going. 

“You always pay. I should be paying you back at some point.”

“What can I say? I’m a gentleman. Plus, I want to spoil you,” he winked again. Maybe he just had a twitchy eye?

“Okay. I’ll see you at work. Goodbye.” He closed the door. Oliver never knew how to end these types of interactions normally, but he was really hitting his limit with interactions.

To say Oliver had a lot on his mind was an understatement. There was a lot to think about. Oliver didn’t have a board to organize his thoughts with, so he shuffled straight to the notebook he keeps in the kitchen after he took his coat and hat off.

He pulled out a page he had already been writing in quite frequently, that being the “Things Ángel knows about that he definitely shouldn’t” page. Thus far, all the notes had been solely about Oliver himself. This time, he added a second section exclusively for Eugene Coli. There were already a few notes he could jot down.

Oliver had done a small bit of research into his old boss in tandem with his research of Ángel himself. Though it was public knowledge that he and Ms. Margulis were married, they had never admitted to having children publicly, and certainly never reported being neglectful in any way. As far as Oliver could tell, it wasn’t information one would give to someone who hates them, either.

It seems wherever Ángel found such worryingly in-depth information about Oliver might be the same place he found information on Mr. Coli. Considering Ángel’s sudden shift away from the public eye, it happened sometime in the past year, but before he met Oliver two months ago and sometimes after the company was firmly in Ángel’s hand.

A ten-month time frame for an event like this… wasn’t good. In fact, it was awful. Really? Oliver was a detective for ten years, and he couldn’t even do better than a ten-month timeframe? Normally, he could’ve gotten it down to at least a six-month firm timeline by now. Why couldn’t he just get this one?

Mr. Coli had gone on a monologue–well, he went on many monologues; it was either that or vague, mysterious one-liners–about how Oliver’s one redeeming quality was his intelligence. He wasn’t socially inept, could barely beat a twig in strength, and he would freak out at every gust of wind. “It’s truly an act of charity I gave you this job at all,” he preened. “But I’m a charitable man, and someone of your arguable talent can’t go to waste.”

He needed to be better than this. 

Maybe it was true that he just… wasn’t good anymore. Maybe this was truly the best he could do, and Oliver should go back to trying to accept what he had and leaving the dead to be buried. Oliver sighed, opening a window and lighting a cigarette. He didn’t smoke it, but he let it burn between his fingers.

Oliver didn’t know what he had done wrong. He just wanted his mind to make sense again. He had always known he wasn’t normal , but at least he was functional. He could still call himself successful, to some degree. Was it too much to ask to be just one?

He sniffed at the air. The smoke made his eyes and nose burn.

But he had to believe that he could get better than this. 

The smoke made thinking a little easier. It grounded Oliver. He practiced the breathing exercises he’d learned from his therapist back when he had one. Slowly, as was expected, Oliver’s mind cleared considerably. There wasn’t much nicotine entering his lungs this way, but the stress relief felt all the same. Better.

He marched straight back towards his notes. At some point, he’d apparently scattered them across the table, some fluttering towards the floor. Carefully, he picked them up, reorganizing them to fit his needs.

Ten months wasn’t great, but it was a jumping-off point. He’d only been investigating Ángel and his past for a few days now; it was to be expected he couldn't get much information out of him yet. I wasn’t like this investigation had any sort of deadline; Oliver could go at whatever deadline he found acceptable. Besides, he wasn’t against the thought of meeting with Ángel outside of work more often. He was nice.

He breathed in, out. The smoke smell was fading.

He also needed to investigate this reporter friend he mentioned having. It was possible that Ángel’s hatred of Mr. Coli wasn’t connected to his other suspicious behaviours at all, and that this reporter friend had just been feeding information to him about both Mr. Coli and himself. 

In, out. The smell was clinging onto his clothes.

He was going out for drinks with Ángel next week, where he would likely get the most information out of him. In the meantime, however, Beebo could try to slip questions into the casual conversations they had during his work hours. He couldn’t guarantee how subtle they’d be, but Oliver thought he’d been getting better with knowing when someone was annoyed by him from Mr. Coli.

In. The smell of smoke had almost completely drained from the room at that point. Out. 

Beebo placed his hat back atop his head. It felt nostalgic. 

Yes, this is a good thing, he decided. 

Chapter Text

Oliver was very very very wrong.

He should’ve known he couldn’t be a detective again; he knew why he stopped being one in the first place. It was uncharacteristically stupid of him to think if he was just brave enough that all his phobias would just up and disappear if he tried hard enough.

For all Oliver trusted Mr. Coli’s judgment on business and economy things, he knew that he was objectively wrong when it came to most social and mental issues. Even if he didn’t have a degree in psychology, he still researched it for a majority of his childhood and young adult life. Obviously, when Mr. Coli told him to just “get over it,” the proper response was to agree and then promptly not do so.

He couldn’t help the fact that it was frustrating.

Sadly, no amount of bad advice from Mr. Coli would mean he wasn’t staring down yet another eerie abandoned building with plans to break in.

And it was all going so well, too…

The drinks with Ángel were nice. Oliver would like to say neither of them got especially drunk, but he had to admit he was probably more tipsy than Ángel was. He still retained all of his memories the following day, but his lightweightness meant he didn’t have the investigative leverage over Ángel he’d hoped for.

Instead, they just talked. None of the information he gained from Ángel was particularly incriminating, and no information he gave about himself was particularly important either. 

They planned to meet again after work on Wednesday. Then, again on Saturday, then again on Tuesday, and on and on. Every time they’d go out, either for a drink or some coffee, Ángel would walk him home before it got too dark. At his door, he’d shuffle his feet and play with his scarf until Oliver would offer to meet again. They’d been going out for maybe two weeks.

Oliver didn’t think Ángel was some evil mastermind or something similar. To be honest, Oliver wasn’t sure where his investigation would go. He just figured the correct solution would fall into his lap. The closest thing to a logical solution he came to was that Ángel was some sort of stalker, but that didn’t hold any merit either. Ángel had everything; what would he hope to gain from stalking Oliver? And why would he just confront him suddenly?

But there had to be a logical solution to all of it. He just needed to find it. So, they talked.

“You have an accent.”

Ángel chuckled, “Damn, I thought I’d finally gotten rid of it. But, yes, I do.” He smiled, as if remembering something. “I was born in Buenos Aires, but I moved here with my mother.”

“To take over your father’s company,” Oliver filled in the blanks. 

Ángel flinched and looked taken aback. “...No, my mother came here for work.”

Oh. It appeared Oliver was mistaken. 

“Though, I am curious as to how you found that out, detective,” he continued. His eyes became lidded, and he leaned into Oliver’s personal space just enough to be noticeable, but not exactly uncomfortable. “Have you been doing some research on me? Why, you could’ve just asked.”

No, I couldn’t have. Talking to you makes me stupid.

And talked…

“You've encountered that Dominion guy a couple times, haven’t you? What d’you think of h– ahem, them?”

Oliver hadn’t thought about Dominion in so long. He expected the same mix of frustration, anger, and embarrassment to emerge at the sound of their name, but…

“Well, their outfit is still stupid,” Oliver began. “If you’re going to make a reference to something as niche as the hierarchy of angels, at least get it right.”

Ángel rolled his eyes, turning away from Oliver and taking a drink. He grinned and tried again, “I mean, have you seen the tricks they do, though? The ones where they jump on cars and stuff? Looked pretty difficult to me. Maybe they’re actually really hot and buff under their costume.”

Oliver deliberated on this concept for a couple seconds. “Do you think they like men?” Ángel choked. “I never got the chance to ask them…”

Coughing and laughing at the same time, Ángel commented, “Ack— yes. Yes, absolutely.”

…and talked.

“What was your cat’s name, again?”

“Mozilla Firefox.”

“That’s an incredibly silly name,” Ángel was smiling. Oliver couldn’t decide whether Ángel had meant for the comment to insult him or not. Oliver braced to feel a familiar sense of shame crawl up his neck. “When I get a cat, I’m giving it an equally silly name,” Ángel continued. Ah, not an insult then. Oliver felt a worrying amount of relief at this distinction.

Oliver turned back to his drink, playing with the paper umbrella that seemed to always end up in his drinks. He found one in his coffee mug once. “I think you’d be a pretty good cat dad,” he commented. Ángel was quiet for a couple moments. Oliver didn’t think what he said was all that strange, but what did he know? Oliver barely heard the little sniffle from the seat next to him.

Ángel was looking at him with watery eyes. He sniffed again and seemed to be on the verge of tears. “..you do? Even without the parenting books…?” Maybe Ángel had drunk more than he’d thought.

“Wha— are you crying?”

Sometimes, these discussions didn’t even take place after work. Though most of their daily interactions were spent in comfortable silence, they still spoke quite a bit. 

Oliver had gone out for a smoke. It was getting colder, and it was even worse with how high up they were. He shivered as he flicked the lighter. Whether it was the wind, the cold, or Oliver’s own frozen solid fingers, it wasn’t lighting. He needed to buy matches the next time he managed to drag himself to the store.

He was about to give it up and go back inside to sulk when his saving grace came out the door: Ángel, haloed by the sterile white and yellow lights on the inside.

Oliver checked the time. 8:04:26. Shit.

Ángel looked about as casual as he usually did; the only thing breaking the illusion was the slight tussle of his hair. He leaned against the wall of the building next to Oliver and tilted his head in greeting. Ángel took out his own cigarette and lit it in a smooth motion. He closed his eyes as he put it between his lips and breathed in. Oliver did not stare. 

He was struck by how.. correct the slight looked. Ángel, leaning against the building, cigarette in hand. Coolly uncaring with a small knowing smirk on his face. He knew Ángel smoked, but it only occurred to Oliver now that it was the first time he’d actually seen it.

Finally, he held out the lighter within reaching distance of Oliver and held his thumb against the trigger. Oliver sighed in relief and put his own cigarette where he assumed the flames would be. Ángel didn’t flick the trigger, however. If anything, he flinched back away from Oliver’s cigarette.

Oliver looked up at his face, but Ángel only had eyes for the cigarette in Oliver’s hand. Did he.. want another? Ángel was wasting his own cigarette out of his mouth, letting it burn in his tight hold. His hand was shaking. Was he cold, too?

The light from inside the door’s window reflected in Ángel’s eyes. His eyes looked shiny and so, so beautiful. He was practically the only thing Oliver could see in the pitch dark of the rest of the city. He felt many emotions at the sight; many of them would not bear repeating, but a majority of them boiled down to ‘man pretty.’

He finally turned back around to look Oliver in the eyes, giving him the smallest and somehow saddest smiles Oliver had ever seen. The wet cat allegations continued. He opened his mouth to speak, and Oliver expected something poetic, or vague, or some strange mix of the two.

Instead, Ángel said, “I’m morally obligated to tell you cigarettes will kill you.” 

Oliver blinked. He looked at Ángel, then his own cigarette, then Ángel’s still lit one, then the lighter, then Ángel himself. He raised an eyebrow.

Ángel only continued his preaching, “They say it’s like injecting cancer juice into your lungs. Bad stuff. Very dangerous. Deadly, even.”

This was not one of the days when the simple smell of cigarettes would appease Oliver. He was running on coffee and the adrenaline from his night terrors at this point. He snatched the lighter out of Ángel’s hand and was finally able to make more than a spark. 

“Something’s gotta stick,” he mumbled.

Ángel stilled. Oliver found himself mentally incapable of looking back at him. By the time Oliver turned to look at him, Ángel was gone. The only reminder of his presence was a crushed cigarette butt on the ground. There was an ashtray right there…

Oliver had a hard time remembering he was supposed to be investigating this guy half the time. Somewhere along the way, Ángel had assimilated from ‘suspicious pretty man’ to ‘my very good and only friend’. There were a few conversations that he managed to get some information from, however.

“How did you find me, anyway?”

“Well, I’d hardly call it ‘finding you,’” he mumbled. He seemed to upset himself with the statement. “If anything, you found me,” he continued. For some reason, this made him smile a little bit.

“You mean… At the bar?”

He jolted a little bit, “Yes! Of course. Like the bar.”

Oliver cleared his throat. “I meant, how did you find out about me? You said you wanted to hire me for my investigative skills, correct?” Oliver asked. He could never tell what Ángel was thinking, but he hoped he wasn’t making his interrogation obvious. If Ángel thought he was trying to get information out of him, he’d tease him, and suddenly the conversation would shift to something entirely different.

“Ah.. I mean.. You are—” were “—such an amazing detective! I heard many reports of your successful investigations,” he explained. Oliver squinted. That was definitely a lie. Back in his detective days, he kept newspaper clippings of all the times he was mentioned. It didn’t happen often, but he liked being recognized. 

There was no way Ángel could’ve found those articles unless he was specifically looking for his name. “Really? Those articles weren’t exactly front-page news. Especially in a city as large as this one,” he began, scanning for Ángel's reaction. He was… nervous? Confused, maybe? Dammit. He could never tell with this guy.

Oliver put his drink down with a light clink. “So, where specifically did you first hear my name, Ángel?” There was a hardness in his tone, an unintended aftereffect of interrogating criminals for over a decade. That was too accusatory—was Ángel mad?

It was a problem of Oliver’s. People were always asking him if he was angry with them because he seemed too quiet and too accusatory. He tried to explain to them he wasn’t trying to seem cross, that it was just how he talked, but it never ended in his favor. He tried making his tone as polite as possible, but it was exhausting.

Well, Ángel’s face was flushed, but he wasn’t sure if it was anger or not. His eyes had slightly widened, and his mouth was left open slightly for a couple seconds. Oh, goodness. Better backtrack now while he could still apologize—

“Ah—I—the ballerina case!” Ángel interjected before Oliver could speak, finally finding his words. The ballerina case?

“You mean the case about the ballet dancer?” The flush had mostly disappeared, but Ángel’s cheeks were still lightly colored. Maybe it was a trick of the light? 

Ángel paused, “…there’s a difference?” He tilted his head like a cat.

Disastrously, Ángel had once again managed to swindle the conversation away from Beebo’s careful eye. The rest of that conversation was spent talking about the hierarchy of ballerinas, then a riddle about ballerinas, then Ángel’s personal thoughts on the meaning of Swan Lake. By the time he realized the conversation had shifted, a couple hours had passed.

Still, with every conversation they had, Oliver became more and more certain Ángel had something to hide. His suspicions and intuitions were garnering evidence. The mark of a true detective.

With every new piece of information gathered, however, there were also… setbacks. Bad days. Wasted time.

It had been an average Sunday morning, and, like usual, Oliver had plans to meet up with Ángel for snacks. Apparently, he knew of a bakery that sold traditional Argentinean alfajores with dulce de leche, and he was shocked to find Oliver had never had that recipe. He seemed excited to show him. Oliver was excited too.

Really. He was. 

Lying in his bed, Oliver checked the time. 11:38:25. A little under an hour until Ángel knocked on his door, and a little over five hours since he’d accepted he wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep.

But instead of getting ready, or making breakfast, or even just leaving his bed to do something productive, he just stayed there.

All the blinds in his room were shut, but Oliver was still covering his eyes. The hard edges of his hair were irritating the skin of his arm as it lay over his eyes. An exhaustion that was impossible to justify hung heavy in his bones.

Well, probably not his bones, actually. The human body’s bones account for only around fourteen percent of the human body’s weight. The real heaviest part of the human body is its skin, accounting for around fifteen percent of the body’s weight.

Still, the real reason he couldn’t get out of his bed wasn’t physical. Oliver had never been the strongest, but he knew that his muscles had never atrophied to the point of immobilization. Unfortunately, he couldn’t pin this one on his noodle arms and had to confront the real reason: feelings.

Worse yet, feelings he had no rational explanation for.

Oliver didn’t understand why he wasn’t able to get out of his bed and do the same routine he’d done every day prior. There was no event or history to the dull ache of mind and body, only its presence.

He hated this.

At the very least, if there had been some causation, a trigger of his phobias or an especially gruesome nightmare, he’d have something to blame. Or, better yet, a rational explanation for those fears in the first place. Somehow, Oliver doubted phobias this sudden were from the years of built-up stress. But there was nothing. Instead, the only thing he had to blame was himself and his useless, fragmented mind.

Mr. Coli would probably tell him to just get up anyway. To push through and come out the other side a slightly more productive man. And when Oliver couldn’t, he’d tell him that the only reason he couldn’t was that he wasn’t trying hard enough. Strangely, the only movement these thoughts provoked was Oliver shutting his eyes tighter and covering his ears.

Oliver squinted his eyes to check the analog clock on the bedside table. 12:05:32. He wiped his sore eyes again. He should probably text Ángel to cancel their meetup, but then he remembered his phone was still in one of his many coat pockets hanging up by the door.

Hmmrrgggghh….

Oliver hardly noticed the time passing, but he knew it must’ve taken at least another couple minutes before he managed to sit up and another couple to actually stand.

He got up too fast and stumbled as black spots consumed his vision for a couple seconds. Shakily, Oliver shuffled through the too-big apartment, one hand tracing every wall, couch, and table it could reach to support him. As soon as he reached the coat rack, he sat on the floor and began searching through the coat pockets. 

Really, he should start having a designated pocket for his phone to go in. This could be really dangerous if he needed it in an emergency situation. Ah, there it was.

Knock knock.

The sudden, loud sound right by his ear made Oliver lose his grip on his phone. It clattered on the floor, but Beebo didn’t think he heard a crack. Oh, God, he’s here. He stood up to open the door but then all at once took stock of his situation. 

He was still in his dirty clothes from the night prior, having been too tired to change them. He hadn’t brushed his hair, nor his teeth, and was pretty sure he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

He couldn’t see Ángel like this.

Ángel couldn’t see him like this.

Oliver snatched his phone off the ground. Should he be calling through the door? Was it weird to text him now? Oliver couldn’t exactly tell Ángel that the reason he wasn’t dressed at half-past noon was because he just didn’t feel like it; that’d be so unprofessional! And embarrassing. 

But what should he say? Ángel probably heard his phone drop and hit the floor, so he couldn’t say he was out or something.

“Hello? Ollie?”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck—

Okay, calm down. Oliver has the phone in his hand; he just needed an excuse as to why he couldn’t go out. He opened Ángel’s contact and began typing as quickly as his shaking hands could manage.

YOU

> Sorry, I can’t come out.

> I’m dead.

The voice behind the door quieted, and Oliver could hear him pull out his phone.

Ángel, Seraphim Industries

What? <

Oh god, oh no, Oliver was getting such a bad grade in lying to his boss to avoid their date. This exchange was going to haunt him for another 30-40 years.

YOU

> I mean, I’m sick. Sorry

Ángel, Seraphim Industries

oh no :( <

are you okay? do you need help? <

YOU

> No.

> It’s very contagious. You cannot come in.

Think, Oliver, Think. What’s a highly contagious virus?

> Escherichia Coli, I think.

> It will probably be fine by tomorrow, though.

Ángel, Seraphim Industries

i… didn’t know thats how it worked <

lol <

He seemed to have believed the lie! That was very good. Oliver had never been all that good at lying, so he was glad to see he was improving.

Ángel, Seraphim Industries

it’s okay, we can always go again another time ;) <

we all have bad days <

have you eaten ? < 

YOU

> No.

Faintly, Oliver heard the tapping of Ángel’s expensive shoes getting further and further from the door. As they did, Oliver slumped onto it. The adrenaline and comfort of Ángel’s presence were beginning to wear off.

Suddenly, the empty apartment felt a lot quieter. Colder, too. Oliver shivered but was too tired to go back to bed or grab a blanket off the couch.

Instead, Oliver deigned to rest his head on his curled knees and cross his arms to block the light from the window. 

The time passed. It didn’t matter. It was all going to reset soon, anyway. It probably wasn’t even 9PM yet.

Oliver drifted in and out of sleep, hardly remembering his own train of thought, when it was finally broken by another knock on the door.

Knock knock.

It was gentler, softer, to the point where Oliver wasn’t even sure he would’ve been able to hear it had he been in his room. Following the knock was the quiet, muffled sound of footsteps retreating from the door. They sounded expensive.

Once the footsteps turned a corner, Oliver slowly, carefully opened the door. He’d been the victim of many attempted assassinations via package bomb, so he was always wary of suspicious knocks at the door.

There, at the base of the door, was what looked like a bowl with tinfoil wrapped lightly on the top of it and a spoon handle peeking from behind it. On top of the tinfoil was a note, written in fancy but somehow still messy print.

‘For any of your needs.’ With a small heart drawn at the bottom.

Picking up the bowl, it was warm to the touch. Oliver closed his door and lifted the tinfoil to reveal a steaming bowl of soup. It looked like a light, watery broth, with some of the tiniest noodles Oliver had ever seen. Tiny little circles, like if you cut penne into three pieces.

Ángel. Made him soup. Because he said he was sick.

He took a bite.

To be completely honest, it was perfectly average soup. In fact, Oliver was pretty sure he used this exact brand of stock cubes. It was a little lukewarm because it was still cold and windy outside. It was a little bland and watery, most likely because Ángel assumed he might not want a heavier soup.

Oliver was sure this was the best meal he’d had in months. He ate the entire thing and did not cry while doing so.

They ended up going out for those alfajores the following Tuesday. As it turns out, Oliver had had dulce de leche alfajores before; they were just called something different. That didn’t stop him from devouring most of them. Ángel seemed content to just watch him eat, but Oliver made sure to leave a couple for him.

Unfortunately, despite how nice talking to and being around and seeing and doing pretty much anything involving Ángel was, it didn't do much to quell Oliver’s suspicions. In fact, the only conclusion Oliver could come to was that Ángel was kind of the perfect man.

But it wasn’t enough. Something was still going on behind the scenes, and Oliver had spent too much time behind a desk to give up looking now. Questioning Ángel wouldn’t do him any good at this point; he needed to switch strategies. The only other person Beebo was sure was involved was Mr. Coli.

Which, devastatingly, lead Oliver to his current predicament: standing outside a likely non-actually-abandoned independent surgery clinic with a nondescript black hoodie and a face mask.

Back when he was still working for Mr. Coli, he had Oliver go on several strange errands of questionable ethics in his day-to-day life. One of such errands was making listings for Mr. Coli’s “science experiments.” Oliver hadn’t been involved in much of the actual work of whatever these science experiments were. In fact, the more he asked about what exactly these experiments were, the more cagey Mr. Coli got. At a certain point into his employment, he became too tired to particularly care. He’d never even been to the place these experiments took place; he just knew of the address.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, really. At this point, Mr. Coli doing unethical experiments in an abandoned laboratory didn’t seem too out of character for him.

It was in the middle of nowhere. Oliver had to drive more than a couple hours to get here in the first place. It was placed on the offshoot on a long stretch of road; many of the surrounding properties were either similarly abandoned or industrial farms. It was impressive, almost, how well-chosen the location was.

The building itself was dirty, but not quite decrepit—not yet, at least. The concrete walls had a couple notable cracks, one of the overhead lights had broken off, and the paper taped to the windows had started yellowing. Still, none of the windows were cracked, and the walls that were didn’t threaten the structural integrity.

Oliver came as prepared as he could, considering he had no idea what was in this building. The black face mask and hoodie ensured that, even if he was spotted, any description given of him couldn’t be traced back to Oliver Beebo. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d worn a basic black hoodie. Oliver may not be able to call himself rich, but he still liked to keep a certain aspect of formality.

In his hand was a hefty metal baseball bat, and in his pocket a knife. Tucked into his backpack was enough food to last him a day and enough bottled water to last him three. He had his phone to use as a camera and a small flashlight.

Oliver checked the time. 12:37:46. Just past midday. It was Saturday, and Oliver wasn’t expected at work until Monday.

He couldn’t take a step forward. Every second he spent looking at this house was another second his brain tried to convince him to run in the other direction. The rational and irrational parts of Oliver's brain agreed for once, and both were telling him he should’ve never come here in the first place. He knew it would be all the worse once he actually got into the house.

It was all too similar. Oliver had explored many abandoned buildings in his long years as a detective, but he tended to avoid them at all costs since..

since…

He couldn’t do this. He couldn't. Oliver was a coward, and he was far too paranoid to be in the immediate proximity of this building. His legs were shaking so much he had to grasp onto the tree to keep himself from falling. His breaths became short. Before he realized what was happening, he was already dizzy because of a lack of oxygen.

Summoning all the advanced research on anxiety and panic disorders he did when he was younger, Oliver managed to keep himself from passing out. He could still hear his heartbeat in his own ears and tried to recite the statistics of heart attacks for middle-aged men.

In a way not able to be described, the place felt unnatural. Abnormal. Oliver dreaded the use of the word, but it felt haunted. He recognized the feeling, and he recognized that it never meant good things for one Oliver Beebo. By all means, his body and mind were not being irrational when they tried to stop him from getting any closer to the building, as entering had a high probability of being dangerous.

There were people in that building. Oliver knew it. Whatever Mr. Coli was doing in the clinic, he was using humans to do it. People who were likely enduring a similar kind of torture to the kind that Oliver had experienced. He didn’t think Mr. Coli was the kind of person to trap anyone physically, but he certainly wouldn’t be opposed to financial coercion. 

With multiple well-practiced breaths, Oliver stood straight. His head was still dizzy with fear, and he was having trouble keeping himself from closing his eyes and bracing himself for an attack, but he knew he wasn’t going to let himself leave until he had gotten a look inside that building.

It took another couple minutes of hyping himself up before Oliver slipped into the side of the building. Hiding behind a nearby tree and scanning the outside, there didn’t seem to be any protection or cameras, but they could very well be hidden. Oliver wanted to get in and out with as little noise as possible, but he didn’t want to just open the front door.

It was dark, damp, and freezing around the side of the building. Tall, sharp trees protected the clinic from any warmth or sunlight that could be derived from the cloudy sky. There were dead vines creeping up the side of the building and rust stains around every corner. The building was far too small to contain a full surgery clinic; there must be a basement.

His entrance was found in a window just open enough to slip his gloved fingers into the crack. The window itself was so musty and weatherworn that Oliver couldn’t even see a silhouette through it.

Gripping the edge of the window, Oliver tried to instantly flinch away at the gritty texture it had. It took a full couple minutes of struggling before he heard a quiet snap and the window lifted.

He awkwardly climbed through the tight window space, getting his first real look at the room he was in. It was a basic white room, with water and mold stains in one of the top corners. There were various graffiti tags, but no marker drawings. Instantly, Beebo was glad he had brought his mask. Something smelt like rot.

Oliver almost choked as his feet hit the dusty wooden floor. He knew it would be bad, but the feeling of wrongness felt all-encompassing. His heart was beating so loud it sounded like it was reverberating through the room.

Forcing his shivering legs to move, Oliver walked silently through the clinic. If the dust on the floor was anything to go by, this room hadn’t been entered in a long time. He was safe in here.

The only exit was a plain, gray, wooden door opposite the window. He opened it only a little bit so he could peek out the other side, but the room it revealed seemed similarly abandoned.

The door creaked loudly, and Oliver winced. The building was eerily silent otherwise. No matter how softly he stepped, the sound seemed to echo off the walls. The room he stepped into seemed to be a receptionist's office of sorts, with a dusty front desk and a couple chairs that had been broken and thrown off to the side by vandals over the years. There were three other doors than the one he came through, one for each wall.

The smell of rot was stronger in this room. Looking at the floor, Oliver could see the finest smeared trail of blood lightly leading to the door to the right of the reception desk. The trail was too small to be a human’s, however. Likely an unlucky rodent or rabbit. Poor bunny.

Following the trail, Oliver discovered the next room to be even stranger than the last. It was a hallway, with three doors on either side and a stairs sign pointing to the third door to the left. The doors of the first two rooms on either side had succumbed to the rot and were inaccessible..

The strange parts were the bits of fur that cluttered the floor. They didn’t look like the remains of animals that had been eaten. Little bits of fur and animal skin clumped together, discarded in small piles in the corners of the room. Oliver couldn’t see any bones. The blood smears and stains were also more frequent in this room, still likely animals. He wasn’t sure they were killed by normal predators, however.

This is so bad. Oliver should leave. Right now.

Creeping as quietly as he could, Oliver headed straight for the stairs. If there was something here, it was likely going to be underground. As he tiptoed through the long hallway, he heard something coming from the second room on the right.

Beebo felt his throat tighten. Someone, or something, was in there. It sounded like they were handling metal and glass, and they didn’t seem to be doing so very quietly. There wasn’t any noise coming from the other doors. Leaning his ear against the door, he could hear mumbling and an occasional shutter. Was someone taking pictures in there?

It didn’t matter. Whoever was inside hadn’t heard him yet, and Oliver would prefer to keep it that way. He twisted on his heels and began inching closer to the third door on the left side when the second set of noises began, this time coming from the stairs themselves. 

Loud, imposing stomps were echoing through the building. Oliver’s companion in the second room to the right seemed to have heard them too, because there was no longer any noise coming from it. With each thunderous stomp, the footsteps were getting louder, likely because of the increasing proximity. 

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—

Oliver looked for somewhere to hide. He would’ve had time to make his way back to the window—STOMP—it was too far away. The—STOMP—other doors might be an option, but the first two were caved in, and—STOMP—the other he tried wouldn’t budge. Oliver struggled with the brass doorknobs—STOMP—fuck, they were locked. The only other door was the second to the right, where the person on the other side had gone quiet.

STOMP.

It was his only choice. If the person in the room didn’t kill him, whoever was coming up the stairs likely would. Based on the weight in each thud, the person might be well over double Oliver’s weight and definitely stronger.

Oliver practically launched himself at the door, heart hammering in his chest. He jerked the doorknob to the side and threw the door open, closing it behind him as soon as he was inside. 

He crouched with his back against the door and one hand still on the knob as he heard the door to the stairs creak open. He didn’t dare open his eyes yet to see who was waiting for him in this room. Instead, he waited with bated breath as the footsteps crossed the hallway.

As the footsteps reached his door, Oliver covered his mouth and tried not to sob. He wished he had never come here. He wished he was on a date with Ángel eating pastries or talking about poetry he couldn’t understand. Don’t you fucking cry.

It felt like hours, but eventually the footsteps passed. Oliver didn’t let his hand go until he heard a faraway door slam shut. 

He sunk fully onto the ground, sighing in pure, unadulterated relief. Then, all at once, he remembers he wasn’t alone.

Finally opening his eyes and looking up, the first thing he noticed about the person in front of him was the wooden plank they had raised above their head, poised to knock him out any moment.

She was wearing a black bomber jacket with a red sweater underneath, sweatpants, and black docs. They had little doodles on them. Oliver found he would much rather focus on the little drawings of dice on the shoes than the sharp spike of wood she was preparing to hit him with. It reminded him of an axe. 

Oliver raised his arms up instinctively. He had no time to reach for the bat on his back, nor the knife in his pocket. 

He didn’t know if there were any windows in this room, even if he was able to run. He couldn’t risk going outside, either; the commotion could attract whoever had just left. He was going to die here. Oh, God. This person was going to bash his skull in. Would she leave him awake while he bled out? Or would the sharp spike of wood damage his brain enough that he would die before he felt anything? How long would this death be? How painful?

“Hey..” the woman spoke. Her voice was much closer than it should have been. Oliver hadn’t realized when he closed his eyes, but once he opened them, he finally got a good look at her. “Are you… good?”

She had moved, kneeling down only a couple feet away from him, with the wooden spike off to her right side, keeping her balanced. There was a camera hanging from her neck. She had at least six bracelets of varying kinds and quality and tiny gold hoop earrings. 

Oliver slowly lowered his arms. “…what..?” He whispered.

“You’re just.. wait.” Her eyes widened, and she pointed straight between his eyes. “I recognize you!” Then, she paused, her eyes somehow widening even more. “..Holy shit. I recognized you. You’re Detective Oliver Beebo, aren’t you?” Her mouth was agape, and she sounded a little breathless.

Oliver didn’t know what to say. Was she going to try killing him again if he said yes? Why were so many people suddenly recognizing him? Oliver felt his throat was still too clogged up with fear and adrenaline to speak, so he nodded hesitantly.

She smiled and shoved a hand towards Oliver. “Vivi Villalobos, reporter, at Eugene Coli’s disservice!” He shook her hand.

Chapter Text

Vivi better be getting a massive fucking raise.

No, she has gotta go higher. After this, Ángel had better treat her to a bunch of fancy wine and shitty takeout, so help him. And dice. Lots and lots of dice. And! Vivi was picking the next song for karaoke night. Then, they were both going back to his apartment to raid his snack cupboards. Maybe hit that little bitch Eugene on the way there; who knows.

And then he could watch as she wins a bunch of journalism awards for the epic exposé she was going to write and is fully accredited for E.Coli’s arrest. Then, the universe would explode, and everybody would clap. Y’know, happily ever after and all that.

The point was: that is currently very much not happening. For now, Vivi was stuck in this freaky murder house that she was probably getting asbestos and black mold poisoning from. She briefly wondered if there were any of those brain-eating-amoeba in this shithole.

She had been tipped off about the place by a man who’d said he’d been reporting it to the police for a while, but they always told him there wasn’t enough evidence to investigate it.

The only company she had was her trusty camera, a brand-new photobook, the weird people in the basement, and Ángel’s weird little time-loop boyfriend. Speaking of, the man was currently sitting on the floor, lightly shaking her offered hand. He looked like he was about to start crying again. Uh oh. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

She hadn’t recognized him at first, not until she saw his eyes from behind his arms. He looked a lot different from when Vivi had last seen him, however briefly, at the house. For one, his hair was shorter, and his eye bags were deeper. Yeesh, same. Secondly, he was currently dressed like he was about to rob a gas station. That, or he was in a low-budget zombie apocalypse movie.

Not very detective-like of him.

His eyes were the same, though. Wide and shiny, like a bunny rabbit. Vivi did wish she could remember some stuff about the guy, though. Sure, Ángel talked her ears off about him, but Vivi wasn’t sure how much she could trust his totally unbiased thoughts about him.

“How do you know my name?” He asked.

”Hm? Oh!” Right, Beebo probably didn’t remember her from the party. Vivi had always just assumed he was released right after her, but… She definitely didn’t think about the implications of that when she responded, “Remember Eugene Coli’s freaky dinner party? We never actually met, but I heard you introduce yourself before he kicked me out.”

Beebo still looked unsure. Oh, wait, he was still sitting on the floor. Using the broken baseboard Vivi found, she pushed herself up and brought Beebo along with her. He stumbled for a second but regained his footing.

“Vivi Villalobos…” he muttered under his breath, putting his hand to his chin. Vivi wonders how many detective movies Beebo draws inspiration from for his day-to-day life. His eyes lit up in recognition, and he actually put up one finger in the air at his realization. Vivi was getting attached to this guy; he was so goofy.

“You’re the one who wrote that article on Mr. Coli! The one that got him arrested.” He pointed out.

“A fan of mine, I see,” she smirked. Dusting herself off—because this jacket was really nice, dammit—she continued, “Yup! Then, somebody got him out with bail, so I’m back for more!” She proudly displayed her camera.

“All I’ve found so far is weird surgery equipment and animal guts, though.”

She looked to Beebo. “What are you looking for?”

“Oh. Um. Same thing, really. I just know something bad is happening here. I think there are a lot of people Mr. Coli has coerced into coming here; he used to call them his.. ‘science experiments.’”

Oof. That didn’t sound good. Vivi wrote it down in a tiny notebook she keeps in the front pocket of her jacket. That sounded.. dangerous. She knew that whatever Coli was doing here, it would probably be harmful, but science experiments… that sounded like mad scientist evil.

Hey, wait.. “You aren’t a detective anymore, are you?” She asked.

Beebo deflated a little bit. Poor guy. Still, he answered, “No, I, uh—I quit a couple of months ago. Some things came up with my... mental health.”

Vivi knew the feeling. Luckily, she could usually turn down all the jobs that included dark places, and things like weapons or fire weren’t exactly par for the course in journalistic photography and interviews. Vivi could imagine how that might be a little more difficult for a private detective that works with criminals at all hours of the night.

“Ah! Good,” Vivi said. If he wasn’t a private detective anymore, he no longer had any obligations to clients or other messy workarounds Vivi would have to construct.

That did not seem to be where Beebo’s mind was going. He raised an eyebrow at her. “You think it’s good that I have mental problems?”

“No! I’m just glad we don’t have to be nemeses. Besides, who isn’t a little fucked up in the investigative industry.”

“Nemeses?”

“Yeah!” Fully abandoning her wooden spike, Vivi walked over and leaned on Beebo conspiratorially. “You see, my assistant—you’re my assistant now, by the way—private detectives like to keep secrets, and my job is for there to be no secrets at all. But now that you’re no longer part of the evil secret-keeping club, you can join my slightly less evil secret-revealing band!”

She leaned away from him for a second. “You are here to investigate E.Coli, right?“ Beebo nodded numbly. “So, let’s work together on this one.” Having a so-called-by-Ángel ‘genius’ detective on the team couldn’t hurt, and he might even have some insight Vivi doesn’t. Besides, Ángel might actually try to kill her if Beebo died in this musty hospital thing.

Vivi held her hand out for Beebo to shake once again, a sign of their eternal and probably half-unwilling partnership. Beebo still seemed mildly confused but still shook it. Good.

If Vivi was being honest, it wasn’t solely for the purposes of investigation that she was glad Beebo was here. For one, it was nice to have company in this damp, freezing cold building that was probably harboring some sort of torture facility. She’d tried to ask a couple of co-workers to go with her, and they’d all politely told Vivi that she was definitely trespassing. Cowards.

Vivi didn’t tell Ángel she was going at all. She wasn’t stupid; she had a timer set off for 24 hours that would send him a ping of her location unless she turned it off, just in case. Still, Vivi knew if she’d asked Ángel or, god forbid, asked him to come along, he’d do everything in his mother hen power to bar her from going. Whether he’d succeed was up for debate, but it’d still be difficult. Failing that, he’d try to tag along and only end up crying and holding onto Vivi’s sleeve the whole time.

And.. Ángel had been acting strangely lately. Vivi knew why, but it still felt out of character. Sure, he was always a little bit protective, but who wasn’t protective over their close friends? After what happened in the house, he’s been getting… worse. Less protective, more controlling. Vivi felt bad using that word to describe someone she’d been so close with for so long, but she’d never seen this part of Ángel before. He couldn't actually do anything to stop her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be overbearing. It’s like that house ramped his traits to a maximum. Vivi wasn’t sure what to do about it, so she usually just brushed it off.

Not that she blamed him. After what he’d witnessed in that house, anyone would be a little more protective. Still, it was.. concerning. Ángel had always been a danger magnet, throwing himself face-first at anything in his way. He said he was done with that lifestyle, but Vivi has a suspicion that that mentality hasn’t disappeared so much as it has shifted. Vivi didn’t like this new direction either.

Back on topic, it was also Beebo specifically. Vivi didn’t know exactly what he had done in those hours in the mansion when they were stuck in that death loop, but whatever it was, it made her feel safer around him. Protected isn’t the right word, but she knew that Beebo would help her in some way. Maybe they saved each other a couple of times in the loops?

“Well, I’m all done here. The only thing I could find was expired medicine and outdated medical equipment. Nothing electrical,” Vivi said, gazing at the worn white cabinets with miles of pill bottles scattered in them. Vivi could use some ibuprofen right about now. Though the temptation was high, she had not taken any expired medicine. Yet. She looked towards the wall to the left of the door, “and, well.. whatever that is.”

Vivi pointed to the wall. At first glance, it seemed normal. That was, until you noticed the thin incision lines cut directly into the wallpaper and sewn back together as if it were fabric. It was about 40 centimeters across, with a clean, straight line. It looked more like a surgery scar than anything else.

Beebo walked over to it, too. He examined the stitching closer, lightly poking at it. “This looks like medical thread,” he commented.

“Like, for skin?” Vivi questioned. Beebo nodded. Why would someone cut into a wall and then sew it? Vivi had already taken a picture of it, so she just looked away. It was a little.. weird-looking.

“We aren’t going to find anything more up here. I think the old man is keeping all his monsters somewhere else,” Vivi advised, walking towards the pale door Beebo had rushed through only a couple of minutes ago.

Beebo took another couple of minutes examining each corner of the room, scratching his chin and mumbling to himself. Vivi stood awkwardly by the door, commenting on something he found every once in a while.

She was getting a little impatient, but for what, she didn’t know. The next step of their investigation would be far more dangerous; she should be glad they were staying in this safe room for a little longer.

Then again, this entire house made Vivi want to gag. It felt worse than that fuckboy’s party, somehow. More claustrophobic.

Eventually, Beebo seemed to be content with his weird little investigation and met up with her at the door. She took a deep breath in and immediately regretted it as the stale and dusty air clogged her throat. Urgh.

“I’ve searched every room that is accessible on this floor. Most of them were empty with a couple bits and bobs and furniture. The only place left is..” Vivi braced. “…the creepy serial killer basement.”

Vivi had been putting it off. From the small glance she risked, she could tell it was dark in there. The only light in the staircase was a couple of dim ceiling lights, and those looked one tremor away from blowing out completely. There was nothing incriminating in the other rooms, though, and she wasn’t leaving until she found something. Something something, toughest battles, God, Jesus, whatever. Vivi really wasn’t feeling it today.

Beebo, her ever-agreeing assistant, reacted similarly to the statement. He winced and looked a bit disgusted. Vivi sighed again and slowly opened the exit door a crack to see if anyone was there. There wasn’t, so she gestured for Beebo to go out first.

The door to the stairs was the only door not covered in a layer of dust and grime. Whether that was a good sign or not, Vivi hadn’t decided. The stairs themselves were thin and crooked, stone brick walls encasing them. They looked straight out of some shitty horror movie Ángel would hate.

The staircase was thin enough that Beebo and Vivi couldn’t walk side by side. Vivi heroically took the front. She deserved an award for this bravery. A couple of steps down, and Vivi could no longer handle the dark. She was so focused on reminding herself who the footsteps behind her were that she almost tripped a couple of times.

She pulled out her tiny Spider-Man flashlight, but Beebo grabbed her arm before she could flick it on. Vivi whipped her wrist out of his—admittedly weak—grasp and turned to stare at him. “They could see the light,” he whispered.

What did Vivi do to deserve this. What the hell.

She tucked the flashlight back into her coat pocket and kept walking down. As she approached the second ceiling light, she could see some patterns graffitied onto the stone. Red and blue lines of various sizes, intersecting and branching off from one another.

She focused on tracing one of the bigger red lines with her finger instead of the invasive darkness. Her heart was beating so loud it felt like it was pulsing through her finger. Vivi tried to convince herself the eyes she felt on her were only her paranoia.

Why is this staircase so fucking long, she thought.

The further they got from the ceiling light, the harder it was to convince herself to take another step. It was getting harder to breathe, too. The staircase felt suffocating. Vivi paused to take a breath, and Beebo almost ran into her.

“Are you okay?” He was still whispering. Goddammit, she had to get over this. It was getting embarrassing.

“Yeah. I’m just splendid. ” Vivi went to keep walking, but her shaky legs tripped on the next step. Luckily, Beebo caught her before she started falling down the stairs. He didn’t let go of her hand.

They kept walking in silence and approached the third ceiling light. Vivi could see the end of the staircase now, at least. At some point, the stones had turned into drywall. She could already spot some of those weird surgery scar thingies in the approaching halls. At least wherever they were going seemed better lit.

The room they found themselves in was another dark hallway. Fan-fucking-tastic. This is just what Vivi wanted for Christmas, another murder hallway from Ole Saint Coli.

This place looked a lot more like a modern hospital, if the haunted house version of one. The floor was tiled, and the ceiling was made of those weird foam tiles that schools had. The hallway went on for a while, but Vivi couldn’t see anyone. There were offices on each side with lights on, but the windows were too foggy to see anything.

The floor was gross. Actually, everything was gross. There were massive splotches of blood just about everywhere, and a couple of dead rodents lined the hall like potted plants. The smell of rot and decay that had been faint upstairs was now putrid. Vivi held a hand over her nose. She took a couple of pictures, and Beebo flinched and looked around whenever her camera made a noise.

At least she had a choice. There was the hallway of offices and surgery rooms in front of her, or there was the left hallway with weak groans of pain. The sign above the stairs helpfully supplied that the left hallway was the patient recovery room. Thanks, helpful hospital sign!

Vivi heard footsteps in the hallway in front of her, and she quickly tugged Beebo to the left hallway. They hid within the indent of one of the recovery room doors and watched as a woman in a lab coat strode past, muttering and taking off her gloves.

She seemed to remember something as she took her first step into the staircase, turning heel and heading down the patient recovery hallway. Vivi dipped into the door behind her, dragging Beebo and shutting the door behind him.

She didn’t stop as she entered the room, running behind the nearest object with Beebo in tow. She had shut the door too loudly. As expected, the doctor opened the door just a couple of seconds later. The thing she’d hidden behind was some sort of curtain, so Vivi could only strain her ears past the pained moans of the people in this room to hear what she was doing.

The doctor was silent for a couple of moments. Vivi couldn’t hear any movement from her, and the door she came through hadn’t shut. Beebo had shoved his hand over his mouth to stop himself from making any noises, and Vivi did the same.

This room was awful. The rot smell had combined with antiseptic and blood, and it was overpowering. Vivi could hardly breathe. She squeezed Beebo’s hand. He returned it.

The door closed. Had the doctor left? Or was she waiting for them to come out on their own? The only ground factor Vivi had was Beebo’s hand tethered to hers.

It took Vivi another full minute before she convinced herself to risk a glance behind the curtain. She was gone.

Vivi slumped in relief. Holy shit. She could hear Beebo letting go of her hand to check for himself, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Second near-death experience in the last half hour! Maybe if she keeps this up, she’ll get a new record. Something above her groaned in pain, and Vivi shot up to look around the room.

The room was shaped like a wide hallway. Lined on the walls were hospital beds, most of them full. All the occupants were either in bed or in too much pain to open their eyes. God, she looked around the room; there must’ve been at least fifteen, and there were more rooms…

All of the inhabitants seemed to have had surgery done on them recently. Some had more visible injuries, like a missing leg or arm. Others just looked pale, probably from blood loss. And some… some were missing their skin.

Vivi felt awful as she took the pictures. What was Eugene doing to these people..? And why? She shoved the photos into her photobook as soon as they came out of her camera, not wanting to look at them any longer than she’d have to. The sight of blood alone made her feel like she was about to faint. She didn’t, though. She was just built different.

Beebo didn’t look like he was faring much better. He was standing next to the door to the room, rubbing circles into his eyes. Vivi saw some cleaning equipment next to him, and for a second she considered using it on her eyes. At least the injuries looked properly dressed. These people would live, but Vivi didn’t want to think about how.

She had enough. She wanted to leave. There were probably a million other shifty things that virus was doing; she could bring this to some sort of authority and leave it alone.

“Hey,” she whispered to Beebo. Still covering his eyes, he took a big breath in. When he opened them, they had a steely determination that didn’t match his shaking hands. He took one of his hands again and peeked out the door.

The coast seemed clear, but there were still footsteps in the stairwell. Someone was going to come into this room sooner or later, and there was still another hallway to explore. Hurrrggghh, screw her completionist mindset.

Vivi started towards the other hallway, but Beebo stopped her. “What are you doing?” He whispered.

She turned back to Beebo. “We can’t leave yet; she’s still in the staircase,” Vivi explained in a hushed voice. He glanced off towards the staircase and then back to her. “I’m going to explore the other hallway. D’you wanna stay here or come with me?”

Beebo glanced back toward the room of people screaming, sighed, dragged a hand across his face, and then nodded. “Let’s get this fucker jailed,” Vivi whispered.

Back at the crossroads, Vivi stared down the hallway. As quietly as she could, Vivi approached one of the surgery room doors and listened in. She could hear shuffling and what she was pretty sure was surgery equipment, but nothing specific and nothing she could use for a photo.

The two kept walking until Vivi spotted a door labeled the Gallery. It was unlocked, but they still both braced when it opened a crack, waiting for something to jump out at them.

Finally entering the room, it looked like a mini theater. To Vivi’s left was a grouping of chairs. They looked dusty and moldy, like everything else in this awful building. To Vivi’s right, however, was a one-way window showing an ongoing surgery.

The window stretched across an entire wall of the room. There was a surgeon on the other side and a person on an operating table with their chest opened for the world to see. The door closed behind them, but Vivi was too busy trying not to throw up at the sight of that much blood. Beebo looked faint and collapsed into one of the chairs.

Her photographer instincts kicked in, and Vivi pulled out her camera. She was sure it wasn’t going to be her best photo, but there was no way to stop the tremors in her hands. Finally ripping her eyes away from the surgery, Beebo looked as pale as a ghost. Something must’ve happened in the surgery room, because his eyes widened and he paled even more.

The surgeon began sewing the person back up, but Vivi’s eyes were focused on the jar next to his surgical equipment.

Holy shit. That’s a spleen in a jar.

Like, not a cheesy Halloween decoration, not an animal, not a piece of foam in water, but a whole ass human spleen in a jar. What the fuck?

No, no, no, hold on. Eugene Coli was an organ harvester? What? Vivi was expecting unsafe working conditions, sure. Financial coercion? Of course! Murder time loop? Been there, done that. But organ harvesting? As far as Vivi could tell, Coli wasn’t in any trouble financially, so what the fuck was he doing with organs?

Vivi stood stock still under the surgeon; he looked to be about done. He wiped the crusted bits of blood off the edges of the stitching and started wheeling the spleen jar out of the door.

Vivi, against all better judgment, opened the exit door enough to see where he went. If God hadn’t killed her yet, clearly she was some sort of main character who needed to be alive for now.

The surgeon didn’t go far, however. He walked up to the blank wall across the surgery room and started feeling around for something. Apparently, he found it because he took out one of the sharper tools from his cart and began cutting into the wall.

Then, shattering any ideas Vivi had about what was happening, the surgeon peeled back that layer of the wall and placed the spleen inside it.

Vivi closed the door. Okay, what the fuck? Realizing she’d definitely sound insane if she tried to explain that to anyone who hadn’t seen it, she reopened the door and fumbled with her camera.

She turned to Beebo once the door was firmly closed. “We need to get out of here. Now. ” He had been peeking around her head and had clearly seen the same thing. He nodded shakily.

The two waited for another couple of minutes until the squeaking of the tool tray faded further down the hall. Vivi held up three fingers. Beebo nodded, preparing to exit the safety of the room.

3…

2…

1...

There didn’t seem to be anyone in the hall, but that could change very quickly. They started tiptoeing, but then Vivi got impatient and rushed to the staircase.

By the time they got to the staircase, Vivi was more than ready to get out of this awful hospital. She practically ran up the stairs, going two at a time at some parts. Every second she spent here was another her brain had to convince itself it was going to die.

Finally, Vivi reached the top, and Beebo was right behind her. At the end of the hallway was just one more door. After that, there was a window she could bash open, and she’d be home free. She could go home to her warm, well-lit apartment and throw that asshole murderer in jail forever.

Her ankle caught on something, and Vivi came crashing towards the floor. Her chin slammed against the wooden floor. Ow. Ignoring the pain, she tried getting up, only to notice her ankle was still caught on whatever tripped her.

A hand was coming out of the wall. Stark white, the same color as the wallpaper behind it. The wallpaper seemed to stretch around it, like skin over muscle and bone. Vivi looked beside her, and the wall was looking back. Like ants, for every eye she noticed, five more would open beside it.

Vivi screamed.

The nails of the hand were digging into her ankle. She took out her pocket knife and stabbed it until it let go, and then some.

Scrambling back up, she rushed towards the door, only to see hundreds of fingers emerging from the doorframe to keep it in place. She took a step back.

“Vivi?!” She heard Beebo yell behind her. She looked back at him. More and more limbs came out of the walls the longer she stayed, hands and fingers and legs, reaching out and trying to grab at them.

Beebo had fallen, trying to tug his arm away from a hand that had grasped onto it. Vivi severed the hand within only two stabs and pulled him away from the wall.

She knew she wasn’t being claustrophobic anymore; the walls were closing in. She could barely see them anymore, with how many arms there were. They needed to get out of there.

Once again, Vivi grabbed onto Beebo’s hand and began dragging him towards the door to the stairs. They went one, two, three steps at a time. The stairway was pulsing to the rhythmic tone of a heartbeat.

They didn’t stop running as they got downstairs. They couldn’t see any scientists around, but the patients in the recovery room were screaming. The lights were flickering, and Vivi could hear crashes as the hands broke through windows and doors to try and reach them.

There were double doors at the end of the hall, and they were practically the only thing Vivi could see. She shouldered through them so fast she was pretty sure she sprained her shoulder, but at least she was through.

This room didn’t seem to have things coming to get Vivi, so she took the time to take a breather. Once she had enough energy, she looked around at the room she had found herself in.

This room had more of those surgery scars than any other Vivi had seen. Worse yet, it seemed sewing the walls back together wasn’t enough anymore, as some of them were patched over with… God, she hoped that wasn’t what she thought it was.

There were two doors on either side, thankfully skinless. There was no furniture in the room, presumably so whatever freaks came here could admire the selection of skin types. This place is so gross.

Then, in the middle of the wall opposite the door, were bones. Hundreds of bones. No skulls, but just about every other type of bone, human or not, available to a rich guy with no morals.

Vivi looked back to see how Beebo was doing. For a moment, she thought he just hadn’t caught his breath back, but as she kept watching, she realized he was hyperventilating.

He was pulling at his hair and seemed to be ripping some out. He was curled with his knees up to his forehead, which surely couldn’t be doing much for his lungs, and mumbling to himself.

“Woah, woah,” she hesitated, touching for a second but pulled his hands down from his head. “W-what’s happening?”

To be fair, this was a perfectly reasonable time to be having a panic attack. The only reason Vivi wasn’t is that she was still running on adrenaline. Still, getting someone to talk was usually a good thing, right? Ángel loved talking, so that’s what she always did with him, anyway.

“..why does this keep happening to me..? Am I cursed..?” He muttered. Again? Jeez, God must really hate this guy.

“You’ve been in one of these places before?” Vivi questioned. He seemed to be able to hear her, at the very least, because he nodded at her question. His eyes were still glazed over, though, and it didn’t quite look like he was seeing her.

She sat on the floor in front of him, still holding their hands between them. What was Ángel always saying this guy liked..? Puzzles? Detectives?

“So… Who’s your favorite fictional detective?”

Beebo flicked his eyes towards her for a moment before they sunk back down to her left shoulder. “...What?” He asked. His voice was a little raspy.

“I mean, c’mon, who was your inspiration as a kid? You’ve got to have some favorites. How accurate are detective movies, anyway? I’ve always wondered.” She’s just gotta keep talking until he talks back. Keep a voice in his ear other than his own.

Beebo still looked pale and a bit distant, but he had uncurled a little. “Well, Benoit Blanc and Colombo were the best fictional detectives,” he started. He tucked his head into his hoodie, embarrassed, and said, “...but I liked the Professor Layton games as a kid.”

This was a good sign, right? Vivi just kept rambling, “Those were the ones with the really hard puzzles, right? God, I sucked at those. Ángel tried to get me to play one once, but I quit halfway through ‘cause I couldn’t figure one out.”

“Hm..” he paused a couple of moments, and Vivi was struggling to find things to say to this guy. She’d only technically met him a couple of hours ago. Something she said made Beebo blink and come fully out of his headspace. “Wait, Ángel? You know Ángel?”

Ah, well, the cat is out of the bag, she guessed. Ha, cat. She hadn’t even realized the connotation of her words until she’d said them. Beebo seemed to be connecting some dots.

“You’re his reporter friend!”

“Damn, didn’t know I was reduced to Goatman’s reporter friend. Death to all women, I guess,” Vivi shrugged. Beebo immediately started shaking his head, and he held onto her hands a little tighter, stuttering his objections. Vivi only laughed at his peril.

“But, yeah, we’ve been friends since we were little kids. He was at the party, too, yknow,” Vivi continued.

“He was? ” How much has Ángel been keeping this guy in the dark? No wonder he was trying to investigate E.Coli for himself.

“Yup, but he was out smoking, so you probably wouldn’t have seen him.” Vivi didn’t like how Ángel was lying to Beebo about what happened at the party, but she understood a little bit. Besides, she didn’t think she should drop that kind of bomb on him while they were stuck in a secret organ harvesting hospital where hands come out of the walls.

Speaking of, “Glad he caught the bomb, at least.”

Beebo’s jaw dropped. “The bomb? ”

He continued in a much more interrogating tone and pulled out a notebook. “So there was a bomb at the party? Was there only one? Who else did Ángel tell? Why didn’t he attempt to evacuate the party before contacting the authorities?” He intoned.

“Glad to see you back in the land of the living, detective,” Vivi commented. Beebo had the pride to not seem embarrassed in the slightest but slowly started putting his notebook back in his bag.

“We should probably talk about getting out of here first, though.”

Beebo coughed in his sleeve, “Ah, right.”

The two processed their situation for a minute in silence. There they were, in the secret hospital basement of an abandoned building, and the rooms wanted to kill them. Oh, and the walls were meat. They were going to be so trauma bonded after this.

“You mentioned you’d been in a situation like this before,” Beebo seemed uncomfortable with this line of questioning, “How did you get out the first time?”

“I guess I just started... breaking things.”

Vivi grinned, “Well, I think I can manage that.”

“No, no,” Beebo said, “there was something specific… I can’t remember…” He grasped his head as if in pain, and Vivi took his hands again.

“So, you started breaking things, and then you broke the thing, and you got out?”

“In simple words, yes,” Beebo responded.

“Okay, so there’s probably a thing in here too, right?”

“It’s likely.”

“What is it, though?”

Beebo looked conflicted again. He didn’t know. Dammit. “It was an art gallery, and the thing was one of the pieces. I think it’s connected to whatever the building is,” he connected.

So, surgical equipment? A heart monitor? A hospital bed, maybe? “We could probably figure it out if we look around a little more. Let’s get off this gross floor.” She pulled Beebo up with her, and he looked a lot steadier than he had before.

Vivi walked back towards the pile of bones. 

They were in a specific shape, too. They looked like they had been glued or pasted together in four groups, going from the bottom of the ceiling to the top, almost like a giant “spine.”

Beebo looked at her. “It’s a spine,” she responded. Beebo looked back at it.

Beebo looked at it again and came to the same conclusion. Those marker drawings on the walls, they were blood vessels. Now that she was paying attention, she could hear the reverberating pulses of a heartbeat and the way the walls around her pulsed with them. “It’s.. it’s a body.”

“It’s the fucking monster house!” Vivi yelled. 

“..what..?” Beebo questioned.

“Like from the—oh, never mind. But, yeah, the entire building is like one massive body!”

“And we need to kill it to get out,” Beebo continued. He walked closer to the spine, thinking. “The easiest way to kill the body from the inside is to attack the brain.” He looked directly at the ceiling. “Or, to attack the heart,” he looked to the left of the spine.

Vivi looked at the door to the left. Through the grimy window, she could already see the shifting mass of limbs behind it. “Those hands really don’t want us to go that way,” Vivi said. Beebo nodded.

“Which means it’s probably the right way,” she finished. “If this building is a body, then we’re like, viruses, or something.” Vivi had never been all that good at biology. It was an impressive feat to drag Ángel and herself through that class.

“And those are the white blood vessels,” Beebo continued for her.

“Alright, gimme your bat.”

“What?”

“I’d do better with it anyway, noodle arms.” Beebo reluctantly gave up the bat, mourning its loss for a second. “Do you have another weapon on you?” Vivi asked. He nodded and pulled out a truly pitiful pocket knife.

“Here, mine's bigger,” she bragged. Vivi pulled out her own knife. It was still a bit sticky from when she’d severed that arm and nearly the size for Beebo’s forearm. She handed it over in exchange for the bat. He looked as if he would much rather not be holding the knife but took it regardless.

Vivi felt the metal bat in her arms for a minute. Oh, yeah. That’ll do. She held it at her side, the weight comforting.

“We’ll go together on three. If there’s anything in your way, stab it, okay? I’ll have your back. Keep running until we reach the heart.” Vivi held out her hand. She sounded so cool. She could hardly hear the fear in her own voice. 

Beebo nodded and took her hand. He squeezed it. He looked different than he had before. Angrier, more intense. He certainly looked about ready to stab something. They both looked towards the door.

“Three...”

“Two...”

“ One!”

Throwing open the door, the two began their mad dash across the hall. There was no door at the end, but a right turn.

Immediately, hands started emerging from the walls. Every time there was one in their way, Beebo would slash it until it was only holding on by a thread, and Vivi would smack it until it tore away from the wall and flew through the air. They were a victorious mess of broken drywall and flying hands and swinging weapons.

Reaching the end of the hall, Vivi drifted on her feet and completed a hairpin turn, narrowly avoiding a sweeping arm from the ceiling. Beebo stabbed a limb that clawed at her foot, and Vivi pulled him away from one grasping at his hair.

And— there! Hidden in the mess of arms and eyes and teeth was a perfectly average hospital door. She pushed Beebo towards it and began smacking anything that came close to him with the metal bat, feeling them crush under its weight.

Vivi checked behind her shoulder for only a moment. The door was locked, and Beebo was using the knife to pick it. Okay, okay, okay, she just needs to hold them off a little longer. They were back to back by now, appendages of all sides stretching themselves and slowly clawing their way forward.

Her arms were getting tired, and there were so many. She couldn’t hold them back much longer.

Vivi considered for real for the first time that she could very much die here, and there would be no coming back this time.

Another hand grabbed her arm. She tried to smack it off, but it only squeezed tighter. It started pulling her towards the other hands, and— fuck, fuck, fuck!

Someone from behind her took her other hand, then wrapped an arm around her torso and pulled. The hands scratched at her arms and legs, but they didn’t have nails. Vivi was still sure it would bruise.

Beebo ran up and locked the door once again, just as the hands started slamming themselves against it. The door was shaking, and Vivi wasn’t sure how long it would hold up.

Then, Vivi looked to the center of the room, and she found the heart.

It was a bloody, dark red mess of hundreds of different people’s organs, all tied and sewn together. It hung in the middle of the room, connected to the ceiling with bits of wiring and insulation foam. It was bigger than Vivi was, and it was beating.

Vivi looked over at Beebo. Then at her own arm, already bruised. Finally, at the bat. “Do you wanna do the honors, or shall I?” She sounded exhausted, even to her own ears.

“Ah..” Beebo looked at the convulsing red mass of gore. His face flattened in a simultaneously exhausted and completely neutral expression. Vivi felt about the same as he looked. “Together?” He asked.

“Oh, sure.”

Beebo tore into it as much as he could, targeting the parts that were holding it together, and then looked to Vivi.

She hit it.

once, 

twice, 

And on the third strike, the entire thing fell apart. The ‘heart’ was nothing but a rotting pile of organs once it fell to the floor.

She dropped the bat, took Beebo’s hand, and walked out the door.

It took half an hour of sitting in silence on the front porch of the surgery clinic before either of them said anything. It hadn’t felt like long, but in between the trees they could see the sun was setting.

Beebo was the first to speak. He took off his hoodie, sniffed it, and made a disgusted face. “I need a shower.”

Vivi looked at him dumbfounded and just laughed. The laugh was genuine, if a little manic. Beebo, to his credit, looked very confused by her reaction.

“You’re a silly little guy, Detective Oliver Beebo. D’you wanna join my D&D group?”

He smiled, “Oh! Um, sure.”

“Also, you, uh… probably shouldn’t tell Ángel about this.” Vivi advised.

Beebo looked at her and tilted his head in confusion. “Why not?”

“I mean, you could,” she corrected, “but leave me out of it. As much as I love the guy, he can be a bit… overbearing. Protective. I guess that’s fair in this case, but still.”

Beebo nodded and looked back to the sunset. “I won’t.”

“Alright, we should probably call someone.” Vivi stood, pulling out her phone. She anonymously called an ambulance, saying she’d found a bunch of people in possibly critical condition, and then looked to Beebo.

“You don’t happen to have a ride, do you?”

“No. I took the bus.”

“Damn.” Vivi was sure they both smelled like rot and stale air, and they both looked like they had been through the apocalypse.

“We should probably take the bus back,” he winced. Vivi sighed. 

She liked to think she was fairly fit, but Vivi still felt exhausted. The bus stop was another ten minutes walk away, but it felt like hell.

There were already two kids waiting at the bus stop. They had brightly colored hair, and Vivi wondered what two random teens were doing waiting for a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. Beebo looked so tired he hardly even noticed them.

They decided to go to Beebo’s apartment in the capital first because Vivi’s wasn’t that far away from it. She walked him up the stairs, and they finally, finally arrived at their destination.

Beebo stopped as he unlocked the door. “Do you… want coffee or something?”

Vivi grinned. Thank fuck for caffeine.

Oh, yeah. They were trauma bonded for life.

Chapter Text

Oliver had accomplished much in the last twenty-four-hour period.

Firstly, and perhaps most impressively, he had gained a new friend! Gaining friends as an adult was a difficult process with little to no opportunities. Even when these opportunities arose, he often failed before he realized they were present in the first place. People were often put off by his supposed blunt and extreme behavior, and they never seemed to tell him soon enough for him to do anything about it.

Vivi was kind, though.

Maybe kind wasn’t the right word. She was just as intense as Oliver was, in some ways. After she joined Oliver in his apartment, they mutually found themselves unable to rest. Oliver was sure the caffeine didn’t help, but it’s not like he would’ve been able to fall asleep regardless.

Instead, they somehow found themselves in front of Oliver’s red string board.

If it were anyone else, Oliver might’ve not wanted to share it. Typically, his notes were for himself and himself only. Especially since these specific notes had some more personal additions in them, especially in the section about Ángel. However, Oliver found himself comfortable around Vivi rather quickly. It was similar to the way he felt around Ángel, though in a very different way. It was like they had already been friends before, though Oliver didn’t have any memories of this. Maybe in college?

Vivi focused herself on the portion of Oliver’s notes concerning Eugene Coli, and Oliver found himself relieved she didn’t peer too hard at his personal thoughts concerning Ángel.

She brought out her own notes about Coli and added them to some parts of the board. Their mutual tendency to gravitate more towards physical evidence and notes made for an excellent evidence board. They were quite well organized, too. 

Vivi explained her involvement in Coli’s arrest and the current information she had on him. In return, Oliver began to clinically give a brief summary of his own experience with his former boss, leaving out his own more.. unusual experiences with the man.

Vivi compiled a list of all the things he’d done that could be considered actual crimes in the corner of the board, and Oliver began the arduous task of tying the thick red string around the things they already knew were connected. He peered over her shoulder while he did so. “So, you’re planning on taking him to court, then?” Beebo questioned.

Vivi snorted, “Ha! Oh, no. He’s already gone to jail; someone would just bail him out again.”

Beebo furrowed his eyebrow. “Then, what’s the point of compiling his crimes?”

“I need to know what words to use, and which ones to avoid,” Vivi explained. “Reporting can be difficult, especially when it comes to serious crimes, and doubly especially when it comes to serious crimes committed by rich people. I don’t really feel like going to court for defamation, but if I do, I need to make sure I know which crimes I’m accusing this guy of.”

“That, and people like stories more when they use fancy words! I need people to be angry if they’re ever gonna get rid of him. People need to be angry enough that dealing with public outrage is more of a hassle than just flat-out arresting the guy,” she finished.

Oliver found he liked working with Vivi. They were very similar in many ways. She shared his habit of getting too loud when she was excited, and every time they bounced off from each other, the volume only increased. Beebo had discovered this after a very disgruntled neighbor came to inform them of the time—1:17:42 in the morning—and to express their displeasure at their volume. 

Though they had very different ways of expressing it, they also had a very similar thinking process. Oliver found that, no matter how far-fetched or out of context his explanation was, he didn’t have to pause himself to explain his thought process, as Vivi had already connected the dots. When Vivi did the same, Oliver found himself able to follow along with just as much ease.

Vivi sounded as if she thought if she didn’t pronounce her words quickly enough, they would be cut short. Her words were intelligent, sarcastic, and often a bit egotistical, but always passionate and with full conviction. She spoke so quickly and so oddly eloquently that even Oliver had a hard time discussing each of her points. She must be very good in debates.

Vivi also didn’t hide herself in the way many people Oliver interacted with did. Though she said some… confusing things at times, she always said her thoughts aloud, even if they didn’t make much sense. Oliver didn’t have to pause and ask if she understood him or if she was bored or uninterested, because her intentions were always very clear.

In some ways, they were different, but Oliver didn’t think he minded. Vivi spoke strangely, throwing out references and expressions Oliver had only ever heard in passing before, and overall was very casual in her speech, where he was formal. Still, she laughed at his awkward attempts at jokes and didn’t mind if he asked if she understood them.

Oliver had never once, in all his years as a private detective, considered having a co-worker. Pay for being a private detective was alright, but there were only a select amount of cases Oliver was offered. Having to split that among two people… couldn’t be done.

However, as the hours passed in Oliver’s apartment with nothing but a clue board to discuss, Oliver was struck with the sudden desire for it. Had Oliver met Vivi a mere year or two ago, he is not entirely unconvinced they wouldn't have worked well together. 

It is an entertaining though entirely useless thought exercise.

Finally, Vivi was likely the first person Oliver had interacted with for the past year that he didn’t think was lying to him. Hiding things, sure, but Vivi made it very clear which topics she wouldn’t discuss with him. It made speaking to her easier, without all the suspicion.

“And Ángel was at the party, too? Was he—”

“Look,” she began. “I’m all for secret sharing, but those kinds of secrets aren’t really my trade. If you wanna know what’s up with Goatman, you have to ask him yourself.” There was that nickname again, Goatman…

Oliver asked her about the nickname, and she gave him a wicked grin. Oliver had trouble keeping his red face hidden at her explanation. It was… not helpful for his investigation. He did not write it in his notes.

As they spoke, the hours passed, and neither of them noticed. The only sign time was still ongoing was the steady disappearance of coffee from their cups and the weight of their eyelids. Oliver wasn’t quite sure when they fell asleep, but he did find himself waking up with less than an hour of sleep by morning. 

Vivi had passed out around the same time. She had starfished across the couch, an empty cup of coffee still clutched weakly in her hand, and muttering in her sleep. Oliver mourned his back and hers, but he found one of the many blankets in his apartment and laid it over her before he stumbled off to his own bed.

Oliver woke up in the late morning, images of hands and various kinds of gore painted behind his eyelids. He grimaced at the fact he’d fallen asleep in his clothes—stained clothes, no less. He felt gross, but strangely rested. It seems his lack of sleep had finally tipped over and crashed, as Oliver expected to have many more nightmares than he did.

Still, he felt jittery. Almost like he was still riding off the adrenaline high he had had a full twenty-four hours ago. He almost threw his own laptop across the room when he saw an ad for a local grocer that just happened to show raw meat. That was another one to add to the list, he supposed.

He had forgotten Vivi would still be on his couch until he saw her, cracking her back with her notebook and phone balanced in her lap.

Oliver took a couple of minutes writing down notes of important evidence from Vivi so she could take her work off the board and bring it home with her. He hadn’t even considered that she would simply give him her contacts when he explained what he was doing, giving the blanket offer to ask her about it whenever.

She had to leave eventually, but Oliver found that his apartment didn’t feel as cold or lonely as it had before. He knew he was alone, but that didn’t stop him from constantly checking over his shoulder. He knew there wasn’t going to be anyone behind him, nor were there serial killers hiding in the closets, shower curtains, and cupboards. 

Vivi had done much for the investigation into the mystery of Ángel, and Oliver’s sudden phobias, for that matter. Ángel’s connection to him, his hatred of Coli, and Oliver’s sudden change of demeanor—it all seemed to be connected to that party. And, whatever happened, it didn’t seem to be exclusive to Oliver.

Vivi had made it clear she hadn’t wanted him to pry, so he didn’t, but her specific and sudden request for the lights of the halls to be turned off didn't go unnoticed. It was a habit Oliver shared. She, too, seemed to have a strange aversion to strange things.

So, almost a year ago, Eugene Coli invited Oliver, Vivi Villalobos, Ángel Valdivia, and possibly others to an isolated mansion, where he currently still resides. Ángel, who was outside smoking, spotted and reported a bomb on the premises and called the bomb squad. At some point so far, something happens between Ángel and Eugene that causes Ángel to know much about his personal life but also hate him. Then, Ángel flees the property to go find the authorities by himself. Before the bomb squad arrived, Eugene asked Oliver and Vivi to leave, possibly followed by other guests. This was only a couple of minutes after the party started.

There were still unanswered questions about this explanation, however. For one, how and when were Vivi and Ángel asked to leave? Vivi was in a room behind Oliver, so he would’ve seen her as she left. She specifically mentioned that she was ushered out the front door. That means Oliver must’ve been asked to leave first, but how did Vivi manage to both see his face and acquire his name if he’d left before he talked to her?

Similar questions arose with Ángel. He must have left before Oliver did, since he didn’t see him when he exited the building. What could Coli have possibly said about Oliver that convinced Ángel to search for him for months on end? Ángel must have seen his face at this party, too, because Oliver didn’t have any social media where he posted anything other than his cat. The closest thing he had was his website, but that was deleted very soon after.

For now, he had to focus on his current places for investigative exploration: Eugene Coli, Ángel, and the party.

Any investigation into Eugene Coli directly would have to go on pause indefinitely. The events that took place at the hospital, while certainly incriminating and useful, were not ones Oliver was certain he’d survive if repeated. Besides, Oliver didn’t want to risk being spotted, both for his own sake and Vivi’s. Eugene Coli was… unstable, to say the least. Oliver had seen the limits to which he valued human life firsthand, and Oliver is sure Eugene Coli would not hesitate to dispose of loose ends should he be found out.

It wasn’t helping Oliver’s paranoia, that was for sure.

Ángel was… an ongoing investigation. Oliver had reached the limit of what little information Ángel would reveal in casual conversation. There were only so many times he could convince himself that going out for coffee or letting Ángel buy him snacks was in service of Oliver’s investigation and not to fulfill his own desires.

That being said, Oliver’s investigation of Ángel might also have to be put on hiatus for a considerable period regardless. Oliver’s mother had contacted him the week previous. Apparently, his father was having some health issues. Nothing serious or fatal, but it was getting lonely with just her and Mozilla in the house. She requested he take a couple of days, if not the week, off to visit her. Oliver missed his cat.

The point was, Oliver was likely not going to see Ángel for the next week or so. He had almost forgotten to update the man himself about this development until he finally checked his messages from him that Sunday night.

Ángel, Seraphim Industries

are you good to go out again on saturday? :D <

no worries if not :) <

haha <

we can get cinnamon buns this time <

YOU

> Sorry, I’m afraid I’m visiting family for much of next week. 

> I have already notified my supervisor about this. 

> I apologize for the short notice.

Ángel didn’t respond to his message, but Beebo saw him the next day at work regardless, and for the following four days after that. He seemed… strange.

He didn’t look physically changed in any way. His hair was still as perfectly manicured as it always was, shiny and combed and a little bit scruffy. He didn't look paler than usual or have deeper eye bags, and he still had a perfect thin line of eyeliner on. For all intents and purposes, he looked—fine. He looked fine and normal. And objectively attractive.

It was more his behavior that concerned him. For starters, he would take longer to process and respond to pretty much anything Oliver said. It was almost like he was falling asleep on his feet, though he never closed his eyes.

“But the Irish Elk’s antlers evolved to be so big that they ended up being debilitating,” Oliver ranted. He idly typed on his computer as he spoke. “They still died from climate change, but—“ Oliver looked up to check if Ángel was still listening.

He was staring blankly at his computer. Head empty. He hadn’t seemed to have noticed Oliver stopped talking, either. 

“Ángel?” He asked. Uh-oh. Ángel always told him he liked hearing Oliver talk about things, but he really should’ve asked before speaking so much. Mr— Eugene Coli always told Oliver he spoke far too much, lamenting his want to ‘skip’ his ‘dialogue.’.

Still, this seemed strange for Ángel. Oliver wasn’t sure when he’d started referring to him as if he’d known Ángel for years, but Oliver felt he should at least be entitled to the ‘friend’ status for his efforts.

He’d stopped typing at this point. Ángel almost looked like he was sleeping, but his eyes were open. “Ángel?” He asked again.

This time, he blinked, and seemed awake again. “Ah? Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize I zoned out there, haha,” he said. Hm. His expression was unreadable, but it made Oliver uncomfortable.

He also seemed to be more… affectionate, even more than he usually was. He brought multiple puzzles and snacks throughout the day, breaking his usual habit of only ever seeing Oliver at 8PM. Though, he came then, too.

He stood closer when he spoke, occasionally even forgoing his typical ‘cool guy lean’ to sit on the edge of Oliver’s desk. He’d tell Oliver how smart he was, talk about how good of a detective he would be, and, most embarrassingly, would often tell him of his attractiveness.

What could complimenting Oliver possibly accomplish? It’s not like he needed to get Oliver on his side with empty words; he was there already.

Their meetup on Thursday after work was much the same, but much more intense. Without the added filter of work Oliver was supposed to be working on, Oliver found their conversation was much more difficult to maintain.

This was confusing, even more so than Ángel usually was. Was he mad at him? The conversation had mostly petered out. It could just be Oliver, but this silence felt distinctly less comfortable than it usually did. Beebo avoided eye contact and bit into his pastry. 

“So… you’re visiting family?”

“Yes. My father is sick. My mother wanted me in the house.”

“Oh…” He looked conflicted, and I wasn’t looking Oliver in the eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s nothing fatal. I should be back to work by Monday at the latest.”

“That’s…” he paused. His fingers were gripping the sides of his arms. It looked painful. “That’s okay. I’m not… I can’t tell you what to do.” He gritted out the words as if they pained him.

For the first time, Oliver was glad for Ángel’s uncanny ability to suddenly change the subject. He was smiling and laughing again, so hopefully whatever was happening in his brain was resolved.

Speaking of resolved, Oliver found himself once again standing under his investigative board. The conversation he had with Vivi was incredibly helpful for his thought process. They never ended up finishing their conversation, however, as they both passed out before the sun rose.

Once again, Oliver found himself walking around and pinning red string and photographs to his massive cork board while Vivi sipped coffee on the couch, talking so quickly Beebo could hardly understand her.

They’d discussed a wide array of topics at that point. Oliver gave a more in-depth, while still professional, description of his conditions under Coli, and in exchange, Vivi gave her full explanation of the events she experienced at the party.

It was… strange, to say the least. Her story was very similar to Beebo’s: a mysterious party invite, a mansion in the middle of nowhere, 8PM, and then suddenly being asked to leave the party by its owner.

The first inconsistency Beebo noticed when she told her story was that it seemed to be early dawn once she’d left the house, while Oliver had gotten out around mid-morning. 

The most glaring inconsistency she described was meeting Oliver. She said that as she was being ushered to the two, she spotted him. He tried to introduce himself, but Vivi already was thrown out the door by the time he got his name out.

But… Oliver hadn’t seen anyone at that party. Except Eugene, of course. Either way, he certainly didn’t remember speaking with Vivi, nor introducing himself. She was steadfast, however, so Beebo added it to the disturbingly increasing list of impossibilities that occurred at that party.

For all their productive discussions, they still hadn’t talked about… it.

Oliver had been trying to ignore it, if he was honest. It would be so much easier if he did.

He would see flashes sometimes. Not hallucinations; he didn’t get hallucinations, but he’d think he’d see them sometimes. A silhouette coming from the wall, a heartbeat echoing across the room, rotting organs in his spice jars.

It felt like if he acknowledged them, they’d only get worse. Even if the person he told didn’t call him crazy, it still wouldn’t stop them from finding Oliver in his nightmares. There was nothing he could do to block the memories, so what was the point in bringing them back up? He was sure Vivi would agree with him on that point.

“So… are we just not gonna talk about it?” Perhaps he was wrong about that last point, because Vivi spoke up just as Oliver finished putting up the photo of the spleen in the jar. 

“I mean, I’m all for the regret and repress approach, if that’s what you want,” she continued. Oliver, with his expert psychological opinion, observed that it did not sound healthy when Vivi put it like that.

“No… no, you’re right. Ignoring it any longer would only do us more harm than good.” Oliver stepped to join Vivi on the opposite side of the couch, as was tradition for conversations about traumatic events.

Vivi hummed. Despite their agreement, they both immediately fell into an awkward, uncomfortable silence. Oliver still felt like he was going to faint just thinking about it. He knew communication was important, but did it have to be this difficult? It took an entire minute of sitting and waiting for either of them to speak up.

“Do you think there’s just a bunch of hands behind that wall, or do you think there’s only, like, 50 hands that just follow us around?” She had a small, almost devilish grin. “D’you think they have special secret handshakes with the doctors?”

“I don’t think they’re supposed to follow basic logic,” Oliver responded to the first question. “There is no way the wallpaper could’ve wrapped around the hands in the way it did.” Oliver kept his hands in his lap and his back straight. He stared straight at the floor.

“Ok, so that’s a firm no on coping with humor, fine,” Vivi huffed. Oliver heard her flop onto the armrest of the couch.

Oliver swallowed. He couldn’t understand why Vivi had chosen that specific aspect of the house to speak of, it wasn’t important enough to be efficient in a conversation neither of them wanted to have. Oliver just had to bite the bullet.

Not literally, mind you. Attempting to bite a bullet while it is aimed directly at you, even if timed and aimed correctly, would still have enough force to shatter your teeth. It likely would not stop the bullet, either. The best way Oliver had learned to stop a bullet from killing you is to either hide behind a sturdy object that absorbs force or to aim your body so that it does not hit any of your vital organs or muscles. The abdomen is typically a good area. 

“…you said you’ve been in a house before?” Vivi asked. Ah, right, Oliver had gotten distracted by his own thoughts again. He tended to do so. He sighed, mentally preparing for the conversation ahead.

“Yes.” He bit out. “It was an art gallery. It… wouldn’t… it wouldn’t let me leave.”

God, this was difficult. Why must Oliver be punished like this? “The rooms would… change. It was…” Vivi looked at him sympathetically.

“It’s fine. I don’t need to hear about your hell-house experience if you don’t want to tell.” Oliver nodded in gratitude, but Vivi wasn’t done. “I think I’ve had enough of them for a few lifetimes…” she muttered.

“If it helps, I think I’ve been through one before, too.” She said, flipping her nails front and back to check they were still painted.

“You have?”

“I think so.” She picked at her fingernails. Oliver noticed many had splotches of red, as if the skin had been picked off. “I can’t remember it, but I know it happened. Just… feelings. Like the world’s worst game of hotter, colder, but with things that freak me out.” She breathed in and out, then slumped.

“This fucking sucks.” Vivi had pulled her knees close to her chest and leaned her head against them. She caught eyes with Oliver but looked away.

“It does.” Oliver confirmed. It really did. A bad thing had happened, and nothing either of them could do could fix the ways it had damaged their brains. They were simply cursed to years of therapy with no instant gratification. He put a hand inside—up on the couch cushion between them. Without looking nor saying a word, Vivi took it.

He squeezed her hand lightly. She tightened her grip. It felt nice, Oliver decided. 

The silence lasted even longer this time, but Oliver found it wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it was last time. He was the one who broke the silence. “To answer your question, yes, I believe the hands give the doctors fist bumps. As a sign of goodwill.”

There was a gentle snickering from the other side of the room. Oliver felt light.

Unfortunately, time still passed, and two days later Oliver found himself on the bus ride to his hometown. It wasn’t that he was dreading it, just that the sudden change in schedule and location was sure to jostle him. He already knew he wouldn’t get much sleep. Then, six days after that, Oliver was on the way back, with an added piece of cargo.

The week he spent with his mom was nice, if a little strange. Seeing Mozilla was nice, and he spent practically the entire week rubbing at Oliver’s legs and biting his hand. Seeing his mother was nice, too. Oliver hadn’t realized how little time he’d spent with them in the last year or so. It felt like his entire life had been upheaved in a matter of months. 

They only visited Oliver’s father once over the week. He asked if Oliver had gotten a girlfriend yet; he replied that he was still gay, and his mother swooped in to change the topic. She was right; his condition wasn’t critical: he was just bedridden for a while and under hospital watch. 

As soon as he put on his shoes to leave after saying goodbye to his mother, Mozilla was scratching at his toes. He kicked and screamed and whined and meowed, even trying to block Oliver from leaving through the front door. His mom told him that the past few days were the best behaved Mozilla had been since he gave her up.

That was how Oliver ended up on a bus to the capital with one very noisy cat carrier in tow. He felt bad keeping her in the carrier, but there was literally no way to get him back otherwise, so he just had to suck it up for a little while.

…Is what he would say. Eventually, Oliver weighed the pros and cons enough and decided to open the door, just for a little bit. There was no one else in this bus other than him and the driver, who didn’t seem like he’d care. Mozilla made biscuits and curled up in his lap as he ran his fingers through his fur.

As he stared out the window, Oliver began to notice how.. calm he felt.

It was a feeling he’d only otherwise managed when he smoked, and even then the paranoia never ceased. Visiting his parents was stressful, but now that it was just him and Mozilla, he felt able to breathe again, if only for a few moments.

Oliver never noticed just how much his emotional stability was dependent on that little orange cat. He wasn’t sure how many days he would have rotted in bed if Mozilla hadn’t come to meow at him until he fed her. He wasn’t sure he would’ve made it as long as he had with Coli if he didn’t know he was waiting for him back at home.

Even if he could never go back to the way he was before he’d met Eugene Coli, maybe he could get better than he was. He liked going out with Ángel. He liked investigating with Vivi. Maybe he didn’t need to be beyond repair.

It only took about an hour of peace before Mozilla started being a bastard again and the bus picked up another person, so Oliver had to put her back into her crate.

Mozilla hid under a table as soon as they got into the apartment. It might take her a while to get used to the new smells and environment, so he left her alone and went to go find where the cat food was. He knew the feeling, after all.

When he came back, he found that Mozilla had managed to get himself out from under the couch and instead had found a piece of the apartment to direct her orange cat anger at. Specifically, she was hissing and meowing at one of the many closet doors.

Once he started scratching at it, Oliver decided enough was enough. He tried leading Mozilla away with some little bits of catnip he still kept in his coat pocket, but she was committed to being evil and couldn’t be tempted. Eventually, Oliver gave up and physically dragged her away from the door.

Mozilla hid under a couch and decided to continue his muffled hissing in that protected area. Meanwhile, Oliver busied himself with removing the cat food from the tin and putting it in a bowl without gagging at the texture. He was so focused on his work, he didn’t hear the closet door open behind him.

Oliver was in a very good mood, still. Maybe he could text Ángel and bring him somewhere this time? Oliver was still concerned about his foul mood at their meetup on Wednesday. Where would Ángel like to go, though? He seemed to like art; maybe a gallery? Or a particularly artsy restaurant? All Oliver knew was that he would be paying this time. Or maybe Ángel could just come to see his cat. He smiled at the idea of Mozilla scratching up Ángel’s ridiculously expensive coats, threads coming undone under the wrath of an orange cat.

The lights of the apartment flickered and went out. Hm. That… that wasn’t good. That was, in fact, a very bad sign. His apartment wasn’t pitch dark, but it was uncomfortable. Well, there goes his good mood. He tried to assure himself that it was probably just an apartment-wide thing.

Picking up Mozilla Firefox’s food bowl that his mother had given him, Oliver shifted his head just enough to get clipped in the ear by the bullet that came flying past him into a nearby wall.

Still with one foot in the closet stood a dark figure with something obscuring their face, gun cocked and in hand. The explosion of gunpowder from the weapon should’ve created a loud sound, but the only thing Oliver could hear was the sound the bullet made as it stuck to the wall behind him. 

Ok, definitely an assassin, then. If Oliver was being honest, he should’ve come to expect an assassin by now. In fact, he was surprised it had taken this long for one to show up. His body and muscle memory took over before his brain could fuck things up.

Oliver dashed over behind the wall of the kitchen. He hesitated just a tiny bit too much and felt another bullet pierce his lower abdomen. Damn. Ow. Oliver continued speed-limping across the kitchen, pushing off walls and pieces of furniture. His moves should be erratic enough that the assassin couldn’t shoot him again. Hurgh. Everything hurts. 

Fortunately, being as paranoid as Oliver had been for the past year had some upsides when some of those fears were rational. As such, Oliver had completely searched the apartment for a good hiding spot in case of this exact scenario. As he hobbled over, he tried to flick as much blood as he could in the opposite direction and clutched his bleeding side as much as he could.

Every step felt like agony. Oliver liked to think he had a pretty high pain tolerance. Especially since this wasn’t the first time someone decided he was a problem and decided to fix that problem with a gun. Still, you could never get used to walking around with a hole going through you.

Urgh, Dizzy. There was a lower cabinet that was completely devoid of shelves and objects near the end of the kitchen. Inside, Oliver had stocked his metal bat and knife. If he angled himself in the right position, he could fit his entire body inside without much trouble.

As Oliver shuffled to shove himself into the cabinet, he tried desperately to not make any noise at the burning pain from the bullet hole. He felt hot… no, cold. It seemed to have made an exit wound, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. He clutched the wound harder. For now, Beebo was deciding between putting his second hand in his mouth to stop it from making noise or gripping his knife in preparation.

This assassination attempt might be a little bit more difficult than the others Oliver had faced. Usually, if worse came to worst, he could just flee the building through the balcony or fire exit. Despite the fact he could still technically go out to the roof, he doubts he’d survive the drop to the surface.

There was no calling for help. He doubts how long Ángel would last in an active murder attempt, as stunning the visual of him coming to save Oliver would’ve been. He hasn’t known Vivi long enough, either.

The only way out was through. 

Oliver gripped the pocket knife at his side. It hurts; it hurts so bad. The pain was the only thing keeping Oliver awake, and even then he was starting to see black dots in his vision. He didn’t want to go out like this again. He heard the assassin enter the kitchen.

It was hard to think, but Oliver tried. If he stabbed their ankle, he could probably stall them long enough to disarm them or take out the bat. From there, he could knock them out. Oliver was pretty sure there was gauze in his med kit, and he could call an ambulance from there. He just needed to—

Knock knock.

Someone was knocking at the front door, in a distinctly rhythmic motion. It was very familiar.

Chapter Text

Ángel really wasn’t sure what he thought he was doing.

It had been a week since he had last seen his better half, and Ángel no longer feared hell. No amount of hot pokers or burning coals could compare to the pain and fear he’d courageously endured over the past days. He didn’t even text him once. 

He couldn’t sleep the night. Oliver messaged him that he was visiting family for the week and therefore wouldn’t be seeing Ángel.

He’d been out with Vivi at the time. She’d knocked on his door and announced he was treating her with alcohol before he even fully opened his front door. Ángel wasn’t sure what had happened, and Vivi refused to tell him, but she seemed stressed. Ángel knew from experience that once she got like this, the only thing he could do was wait for her to come to him. He let it go.

She told him he needed to get out more and practically dragged him out to their local bar. The lights in the bar were dim, and it was alive with laughter and conversation from the other patrons. 

Vivi was ordering another round for the two of them when he got a notification from his phone and instantly brightened. There were only two people in the world Ángel had his notifications on for, and one was currently downing a shot two feet away from him. Okay, maybe he should check in on her…?

His excitement disappeared once he actually read the message. 

YOU

> are you good to go out again on saturday? :D 

> no worries if not :) 

> haha 

> we can get cinnamon buns this time 

ollie <3 💖💞

Sorry, I’m afraid I’m visiting family for much of next <

week.

I have already notified my supervisor about this. <

I apologize for the short notice. <

Ángel felt like a vortex had opened beneath his bar stool at that moment. The text was miserably professional, as always. A slight disappointment entered his expression before the fear iced his veins. A week. A week? Oh god, oh no. No, no, no, no. Any number of things could happen to Oliver in a week's time. The lights, the laughter, Vivi—it all fell into the black hole, leaving only Ángel and his bright phone screen.

Back in the house, he’d been left alone for—what, two minutes?—and he was ax murdered!

A week. A whole week of never seeing his face or checking in to see if he was okay. A week where Ángel wouldn’t be able to do anything but imagine all the millions of ways Ollie could be slaughtered. A week of Schrödinger’s Detective. A week of half-death, just between the two of them.

Anything could happen, and Ángel couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t do anything. No, no, I need to help him I need to be near him—if I lose him I’d lose myself—

Ángel was—quite literally—shaken out of his thoughts by Vivi. It took a second for his mind to reappear from the depths it had spiraled into. Vivi had finished her shot at some point. She was holding another one in her hand, presumably for Ángel. “What’s going on with you, Goatman? I thought you said you were done crying in bars.”

Ángel groaned, rubbing at his face. He felt wet tear tracks running down his face. He must look like a mess at this point. How embarrassing; Vivi must think he’s pathetic. “I’ve told you this a million times, Vivi! That nickname no longer represents my perception of relationships. I’m a taken man, you know.” He tried to grin sarcastically.

“Hm, sure.” She grinned skeptically. “And by ‘taken,’ you mean by the man you are not currently dating, right?” She meant the tease in good faith, but Ángel couldn’t stop the way the reminder stabbed at his poor old heart. At least she wasn’t trying to pry. At least she hasn’t tried to peel back the thin veil of his self-confidence, revealing the horrid, weak monster underneath. 

He doesn’t know why she stuck around after he told her what happened at the house. He feels like he’s lying to her, but he’s only told the truth.

“We’re just taking it slow! There’s no rush.” Ángel defended. It’s not like what he does right now matters too much. Not when he doesn’t have the photobook. Ángel has pinned all his hopes on the distant fairytale where Ollie remembers and chooses to stay with him, safe.

And, oh god, isn’t that a terrible thought? What if the photobook makes things worse? What if Oliver hates him? Ángel wouldn’t give up his memories of Oliver for the world, but surely memories of Ángel weren’t that precious. Bleeding out with a man sobbing uselessly over your decaying body surely wasn’t photobook worthy. It isn’t a far-fetched thought, either. Oliver was the one who wanted everyone to forget in the first place. What if he never talks to him again? What if—

Vivi, once again, is the one to interrupt his spiral. Ángel has learned that she is very good at that over the years. When Vivi speaks, it’s like her voice is a swinging bat in a rage room. She had shattered many ‘bright idea’ light bulbs in their friendship, like Dominion’s plan to steal unnecessarily highly guarded famous paintings and then sell them back to the public for 1000 pesos. Instead, she suggested they take a trip to Europe and steal things back from the British museum as a summer road trip.

“I promise to stop when you stop changing the subject.” She handed him the shot, and Ángel took it without hesitation. It burned, just like the past hundred times he’d done it. Sadly, the fuzziness hadn’t quite clogged up Ángel’s head yet, so for now he had to be in physical and emotional pain.

“The detective is going away for the week. He’s visiting family.” Even to his own ears, the sentence sounded pathetically miserable. Ángel wasn’t looking at Vivi, swirling the drop of liquid left in the shot glass around, watching a small droplet go around and around. By the sixth circle, the liquid had dried out, and the droplet stayed firmly on one side of the glass.

“Ok…?” Vivi said, drawing out the second syllable and awaiting further explanation from him. Ángel is realizing that he is, perhaps, maybe, just a little bit overreacting to this information. Was it really overreacting if it’s happened before? Surely that was just reasoning. Ángel was being perfectly rational, actually.

“What do you mean ‘ok’? I’m not going to be able to see him for a week.” Now that he was repeating it aloud, Ángel was sure he wasn’t overreacting.

It’s not like the detective hadn’t lied to him before. ‘Visiting family’ could very well be another one. What if he was still in contact with Coli? Oliver was extremely prone to getting in just about the most danger he could if left alone. For all Ángel would be aware, Oliver would find another house to get himself killed in.

“And? You can’t seriously expect to be spending every second with this guy.” Vivi imposed. She glanced at him in the corner of her eye. “Right, Ángel?”

“Yeah!” He answered. It was a very obvious lie. “I was just disappointed. It’s fine.” If Vivi so chose to, she could interrogate him to hell and back. She had been in enough interviews to be able to smell a lie from miles away. 

Her gaze hardened, then slipped away. She had an unreadable look on her face. Usually, Vivi was extremely expressive with her emotions, but it seemed she herself didn’t quite know which ones to express.

She sighed, slumping and putting her head into her arms, lying on the table. Ángel reached out to ask if she was alright. Clearly whatever happened had been upsetting… but what? It couldn’t have been for the investigation into Coli, could it? Ángel had been constantly checking in on what she was doing to make sure it wasn’t too dangerous.

Before Ángel could say anything, she shot up. She shook her head and slapped at her cheeks, as if trying to ward off whatever she was just thinking. “No!” She exclaimed. “This is a fun night! Where I spend your shitty dad’s money to buy myself drinks! Fun!”

Not allowing what was supposed to be a good night of drinking to forget their problems to be wasted, Vivi ordered them both some colorful fruity drinks with far too much alcohol. They put an umbrella in Ángel’s, and he almost started crying again.

It was embarrassing how little it took to make Ángel spiral.

They called a ride home once Ángel saw Vivi start sizing up men across the bar. He really didn’t feel like dragging her out of a fight, verbal or physical.

As soon as he got home, Ángel knew there was no point in trying to get any sleep. He was drunk, sure, but now that the lights and Vivi had left, it wasn’t any fun anymore. 

He saw them every time he closed his eyes. Covered in their own blood, far too injured to be saved, even if medical attention arrived. Death was hardly ever as peaceful as Oliver’s was. Sometimes, when he looked at Vivi, he could still hear the choking gasps she’d made as she died, trying to get breaths in between the blood pumping into her throat. She’d tried to keep going.

There was nothing to do. Ángel knew just about every bakery in town and was pretty sure he would never run out of puzzles. They were stupid, meaningless pantomimes of affection, anyway.

Ángel could pretend he was helping all he wanted to. It wouldn’t make a difference. He could laugh and joke and go out with Oliver all he wanted, but what did it matter if he was going to die anyway?

Still, he hauled himself up the next morning. It was thoroughly past the time that a productive person should be getting ready, but what was time, really?

One of the upsides about being the uncontested owner of a company was that he didn’t actually have to do much. He’d set up the entire thing to be fully functional with or without his input. Most of the ‘work’ he did on his computer was optional, or it wasn’t actually work at all.

To say Ángel wasn’t a punctual person was an understatement. Recently, however, that had very much changed. Keeping track of the time had become difficult in the house, and nowadays he found himself glued to his wristwatch, trying to figure out if the sun was in the right position.

Unfortunately, the sun didn’t care that time was a construct, as it continued to rise anyway.

His head was pounding, and Ángel was sure he wouldn’t pass a breathalyzer test if he took one. The bus it was, then. Peering at his bathroom mirror, he looked just as bad as he felt. He dimmed the lights, took some ibuprofen, and began the careful process of removing the dark and unhealthy-looking eye bags dragging down his eyes.

Seeing Oliver felt like seeing a ghost. A dead man walking. For the following week, every time he saw Oliver, it felt like a clock was ticking down to his demise. Or, more realistically, Ollie’s. Ángel guessed he would never get used to the feeling.

Silences that could’ve once been stewed in a comfortable silence now needed to be filled. Any second passed felt like a second wasted, any word not said was a word forgotten.

Oliver could tell something was wrong. Every so often, Ángel would slip, and he would say or do something abnormal. The mess of lies and half-truths Ángel had been incidentally building over the past few months would show. Oliver furrowed his brow but would never say anything about it.

The dread was the worst thing, Ángel discovered. The fear of knowing what’s coming and not being able to do anything? It was a feeling Ángel was intimately familiar with. He could not rip the bandage off, he just had to wait and hope. There was nothing he could do to improve his chances of survival, at least no acceptable way.

But he wanted. Oh, he wanted. It was an awful, unacceptable side of himself that wanted Oliver and Vivi all to himself. It didn’t matter if they could never be fully happy; he could fix that. He could make them happy. They just needed to be safe. 

It was a disgusting voice. He refused to listen to it. 

Instead, his fear twisted into a strange sort of affection. The gifts Ángel was bringing weren’t enough. He needed to expel the butterflies in his stomach somehow, and Oliver’s focused eyes or giddy smile were surely bright enough to burn them away.

He was chasing an emotion that was only supposed to be made in moderation, however. As Friday approached, Ollie’s furrowed eyebrows or loud, excited voice were no longer enough to sate his anxiety. He didn’t just need him here now; he needed to make sure he was going to be here tomorrow. And the day after that, and again and again, forever. Because he couldn’t die. Even if there wasn’t a tomorrow to be had.

Even when his suspicions of Oliver lying to him were cleared, it only made him feel worse. When the facade of concern and horror cleared away, Ángel knew it would only uncover his greed.

He was selfish, truly. How could he think like that? To assume Oliver was lying to him instead of just genuinely caring for his parents? How could he wish to steal that? Oliver was a person; not every aspect of his life could revolve around Ángel. 

Ángel wanted Oliver to be safe, sure, but he also wanted him to be happy. Truly happy, not just what Ángel convinced himself would make him happy. Even if that required Oliver being away from Ángel for a little bit. He grit his teeth and smiled through his despair, making sure all Oliver could see was what he would like to.

The rest of that date had gone well, though the next day was still torture.

The first day Oliver was gone, Ángel spent it biting his nails and bouncing his knee to the rapid beat of his heart. It was strange; it was only the first day, and Ángel had spent longer than this without Oliver in the past, and it wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as this. Regardless, Ángel expended most of his energy resisting the urge to text Oliver about how he was doing, a habit that persisted throughout the week.

He was very similar to the way he was in those months before he had found Oliver, but this time he had no cause. He used to wake up as soon as he could stand and get back to work, only sleeping or eating when he needed to.

It was worse now. He remembered what he’d lost. He felt nauseous whenever he ate, and he couldn’t sleep. Apparently, he couldn’t do anything.

By the third day, his concern bled through to Vivi, too. Vivi would testify that he showed up unannounced, but the records showed he texted her that he was coming over a whole fifteen minutes before he got there.

He followed her around and became her assistant for the day. He said ‘for the day’ because that’s exactly how long it took for her assistance to go from bringing Vivi coffee to being glued to her back, like her shadow.

He thought he was doing a pretty good job, listening to her as she sped through an explanation of worker’s rights laws and medical malpractice, but most of it went in one ear and out the other. It certainly didn’t help the fact that Vivi had to cover half her work because it was ‘spoilers.’.

Thus, on the fourth day came the shopping spree. He ran around, researching tons of puzzles, riddles, and ‘experiences,’ which were like tame escape rooms. It wasn’t like there were very many, but there were certainly a lot more than Ángel had anticipated. Ollie might not like escape rooms, but there were surely other things…

Snacks, too. By the end of that day, Ángel had surely visited the website of every restaurant, bakery, café, and bar in the capital, even if he knew them all anyway. He couldn’t stop for one second.

Whenever he slowed down enough to think, the thoughts reemerged, like a parasitic memory. His hands may be covered in blood and gore, but oh, look! Pastries! As long as he was doing something, as long as these memories were being stored in his brain, he was helping. He wasn’t useless. 

The sixth day, he crashed. It could hardly be called sudden, nor unexpected. As it turned out, coffee and fear-fueled adrenaline could not replace sleep. God hated Ángel, specifically. He hadn’t spoken, seen, nor even so much as texted Beebo in almost a full week. It was a hurdle that would’ve been easily overcome for any person not as selfish as Ángel.

But he knew that already. He knew he was selfish and self-centered. He knew he would always want it, even as awful as it was.

A majority of the day was a blur, though the general consensus was that nothing was ever going to be okay. For all his planning and preparing and trying, the inevitable event was that Ángel could not keep Oliver safe.

It continued for much of the seventh day, too. Ángel had pushed through the worst of it, but the next two days were still going to be hellish. Still, he was headfast and did not consider putting his phone in a block of ice to stop the urge to ask how Oliver was doing. Instead, he just stared at it for hours on end, pulling out his hair and biting his nails to the skin and smoking until he couldn’t breathe. Like any normal person would do.

Vivi asked if he wanted to go out for drinks again. Ángel declined; he didn’t feel like enough of a person yet.

That letter from Coli hung heavy like a vice in Ángel’s mind. He found it suspicious that Eugene hadn’t even attempted to contact him. Ángel had half a mind to go find him, but the thought of even just seeing that mansion made him nauseous.

Vivi needed to finish that article immediately. He couldn’t resist the urge to try and take that photobook himself much longer. He had asked about her progress, and while she’d said she certainly found a lot of illegal stuff, there wasn’t much tying Eugene to it.

Oliver should be home by now. Ángel couldn't visit him yet because Oliver had already declined his invitation to meet Ángel for lunch last Sunday. He just had to wait a couple more days to see him at work. Just two more. He was probably fine.

Ángel opened a window, looking out at the city surrounding him. It was so strange seeing the same skyline he had for the past couple of years despite all that’s changed. 

If he looks close enough, he could spot the apartment building rooftop he first met Beebo on. And, if he looked further, he could see the first place he’d ever robbed. Ah, memories.

He lit a cigarette, breathing in and out.

Ángel heard the front door open behind him. He didn’t look back, even as the footsteps approached.

“Sorry to interrupt your brooding session, Batman.” Vivi said from behind him. He had given her the keys to his apartment and deeply regretted it ever since. It seemed like she had taken it as an open invitation to visit, unprompted, whenever she wanted. …He didn’t mind the company. Ángel didn’t know where he’d be without her.

“Don’t call me Batman. He fucks cops, and he’s a terrible father.” He said instead, because Ángel has never been vulnerable in his life. Totally.

“Don’t you also fuck cops?” She pointed out, incorrectly.

“Do not call him a cop. I’m pretty sure he’d actually kill you if you called him that one more time.” She snickered, and Ángel felt just a little better.

“Ok, I’ll make sure to tell him that as soon as I see him next.”

Ángel’s smile dropped again. He turned back to the window. Vivi was alive. Oliver was alive. They’re both fine. It’s fine. Everything’s going to be okay.

“Jeez, you look like shit.” Vivi commented kindly. 

“Thanks.” Ángel gritted out. 

Silence followed for a couple of seconds. “What happened? You’re not still worried about Beebo, are you?”

Ángel didn’t answer. 

“Oh my god, are you? Seriously?”

He still didn’t respond. 

“Ángel. He’s been gone for a week.” She cracked a teasing grin. “Oh man, you are not beating the wet cat allegations.”

Ángel huffed. “It’s just…” Vivi nodded at him, urging him to continue.

“What if something happens to him while I’m not there? What if—if he slips or hurts himself or—“

“He’s not senile!” Vivi said. “Ángel, he’s his own person. He can take care of himself.”

Ángel huffed. “Can he?” He muttered to himself, taking another puff from his cigarette.

“Yes, he can.” Vivi decided confidently. “I’d say right about now, he’s… doing a sudoku? Thinking about men? Probably one of those. Actually, both, at the same time. He’s doing a men sudoku.”

“He’s fine, Ángel.” She concluded, somehow. Ángel could hardly see her eyes under her bangs. “We’re not in that house anymore.” Though it didn’t feel like it sometimes, she was right. They’re not there anymore.

She looked out the window with him. She looked genuinely contemplative—a rare look for a person like Vivi. “Man, I can’t believe I died to a speedrunner.” Of course, she couldn’t be thinking about something normal.

Still, it made Ángel give a choked laugh, which Vivi took as a sign to continue. “He doesn’t even speedrun something cool! He speedruns Mario 64!” 

Ángel leaned down as he laughed, half-doubling over as Vivi continued her rant. She took him by the shoulders and started shaking him around. “Do you know many speedrun records I had to go through when I was researching him?! A whole week! Just of speedrun records!”

She shook him again, “And they weren’t even good!” She finally broke, laughing a bit to herself along with Ángel. “Ángel, you don’t understand… he’s not even good at speedrunning…” she complained.

Ángel wiped at the moisture behind his eyes. God, that guy sucked so bad. 

“You’re right,” he admitted, putting out his cigarette on a nearby ashtray. 

“I know, like, he made a time loop just to make Mario 64 speedruns, and he hasn’t even uploaded any—“

“No, Vivi—I meant about Beebo. You’re right. He’s… he’s going to be okay. I should stop worrying.” He smiled—a small, weak thing—but a smile nonetheless.

“Of course I am!” She affirmed. Nudging at his shoulder, she said, “You should invite me to some of your hangouts sometime! I’d love to actually meet the guy you’ve convinced yourself is your soulmate, or whatever.”

“Ha, I should! I think you two would get along.” He agreed. Ah, on second thought, Ángel thinks leaving those two alone for too long wouldn’t end well. Vivi’s lack of self-preservation skills combined with Ollie’s need to be in danger at all times.. maybe not the best idea.

“We’re out of that creepy old house now,” she commented, and Ángel was almost about to agree before she said, “And because we made it out, I am fully free to raid your snack cupboards!”

She rushed off to his kitchen before Ángel could yank her back, so he gave chase. “You—you gremlin! Let go of my snacks!” She managed to get into his fridge before he smacked her hands away from any goodies. It was a long and hard-won battle, but eventually Ángel relented and allowed her to steal his dried mangoes and granola bars.

“You don’t even have good snacks. What’s the point of being rich if you don’t have good snacks?”

Vivi left soon after, leaving Ángel alone with his thoughts. Still, he felt lighter after talking to her. It’s almost like talking about your fears helps alleviate them, who knew! Communication: 2, Ángel: 0.

He was going to be okay. Both of them. He just needed to keep going. He breathed in and out. She was right. They were out of the house.

He really doesn't know how it happened. He had finally forced himself to take a shower and go outside to get groceries—a herculean feat in and of itself—when he passed by a bakery with piononos in the window, and then he remembered that they were one of the first desserts Ollie would go for at the snack table each loop, and suddenly he was crying his eyes out outside some random bakery in the middle of the capitol.

Obviously he just had to buy one. They had both the sweet and savory versions, but Oliver always seemed to prefer the sweeter pastries. He wasn’t sure why that mattered, because Ángel would rather go through another loop than give Beebo a two-day-old pastry, but he bought a sweet one regardless.

And, well, he had already bought the pionono. Ángel could hardly stomach the thought of eating it himself, and it would be a shame to just throw out a fresh one. Surely, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he just so happened to have gotten his order wrong and came to give the extras to Oliver, right? That was a convincing lie.

He had planned on going home straight from the bakery, but his feet began walking in the opposite direction, and by the time he realized where he was going, he was two steps from the door to Oliver’s apartment. And, well, if he was already here, then he might as well—

He could practically feel his gravitational pull move his feet as he walked in the building.

It felt like the entire universe was trying to stop Ángel from seeing Oliver. 

The elevator up to the floor of Oliver’s apartment was down, a true travesty in Ángel’s valuable opinion. The person at the front desk had told him that it was currently being repaired and should be back up in another 30 minutes or so, but Ángel felt like he might die if he had to wait any longer. From there came the torturous and utterly inelegant task of climbing the stairs. Really, Ángel should start exercising. He has a treadmill in his building, for God’s sake. He had no one to blame but himself for how out of breath he was by the time he reached the top of the staircase.

He spent the entire journey up trying to convince himself that Oliver was okay. Ángel hadn’t gone to many therapists himself, but he learned from random people on the internet and osmosis through Vivi that one generally shouldn’t listen to the voice telling them the world’s about to end. He just kept the image of Ollie as he remembered him—happy and smiling about solving his newest puzzle or eating something delicious—in his mind, crowding out the pictures of his broken and bloodied body that were already there.

After finally reaching the top step, keeling over until he could breathe again, and then opening the door from the staircase, he was confused about what he saw on the other side. Or, rather, what he didn’t see. The lights had gone out in the hallway.

No, it's fine. It’s not like a power outage immediately meant something was wrong. It was… strange that it was happening in the capitol—one of the higher-end buildings, too—but these things were bound to happen sometime or another. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.

Ángel pulled out his phone flashlight and approached the door. His hands were shaking, gripping the small box containing the pionono with a little more force than necessary. He shouldn’t be here. Oliver probably didn’t want him here.

He knocked on the door.

And, truly, the worst part about paranoia is that sometimes you’re right. Sometimes, there is a monster under your closet. Sometimes, that person has been following you. Sometimes, the most important people in your life are in danger, and that little voice whispering in your ear isn’t the insecurity you convinced yourself it was. Sometimes, you should heed the false alarms.

He waited with bated breath for the door to open. It took a while, and Ángel had half a mind to check what time it was. It was dark when he walked in the building, but the sun had only recently set. Oliver shouldn’t be asleep. Though, maybe he went to bed early? Or maybe he was having a late dinner, and he was making sure nothing would burn the apartment down while he went to check the door. Yes. Those were all perfectly rational explanations for why someone would take longer than usual to open a door.

As the door opened, many things happened at once.

First, the person behind the door wasn’t his darling detective. Ángel was polite and gentlemanly, so he wasn’t pointing his phone flashlight at the door when he knocked. He couldn’t see their face as they opened it, though he suspected that was the intention of their dark clothing.

What he did see, however, was the shiny gun pointed between his eyes, reflecting the light in its barrel. 

He gasped, though only for a millisecond. There would’ve been no time to react. Ángel may not know much about biology, but he knew shrapnel and flesh and bone didn’t work well together. It wouldn’t matter if someone brought him to a hospital; it was much more likely he would have been dead where he stood.

But, of course, there was always Oliver. He was the outlier, the unanticipated factor, and Ángel's saving grace.

The gunshot didn’t make its mark, as you might’ve figured out. There was the sound of fabric against skin, then a grunt, then what was supposed to be the fatal shot, then a thud, like two bodies hitting the ground. The bullet still hit him, grazing past his chin and part of his neck. Nothing nearly enough to become dangerous, but still enough for the blood to leak through Ángel’s fingers as he winced and covered it. Oh—ow. Ow. Owie. 

Ángel hovered around his cheek, shaking. Ow! His brain was still trying to process everything that had happened in the last five or so seconds when it remembered the very convenient flashlight to see what was happening in the doorway.

The assassin—who seemed very bad at their job, by the way—was on the floor. They were struggling, with one hand still tightly holding onto their smoking gun tightly in their right hand. Their left one was gripping the arm wrapped tightly around their neck, struggling to get it off.

Following the arm around the terrible-no-good-assassin was Ángel’s better half. The light of his life, his soulmate, Oliver Beebo, is currently in the middle of tackling and strangling his own assassin to the floor. Ángel fell more in love with him every day.

Though his love never faded, it did become background noise as Ángel’s brain caught up to his heart. Oliver was on his back, underneath the person he was strangling. His face looked tense, desperate, and wild, as if he was acting purely on instinct. It might’ve just been his flashlight, but Oliver looked paler than usual. Oh! Wait, the gun! Shit, Ángel should probably stop gawking and help for once.

The shitty assassin was beginning to raise his right hand—the one with the gun, Ángel remembered—up, twisting it inward and behind him, towards—oh fuck no. Ángel put his knee to the person’s right arm, pushing the gun away from the three of them—a shot fired off, grazing the top of Ángel’s shoulder—and twisting their wrist until they let go. Oh, wow. Ángel was holding a gun now. He resisted the urge to hold it on the edge of two fingers, as if it was some dirty rag. 

Oliver seemed to be struggling to keep the man under control, limbs flying everywhere. Ángel put the gun to the man’s temple. Hatred bubbled up through his throat. It was not an entirely startling realization, but Ángel found himself entirely willing to shoot them. He did not feel guilt for the thought; they would’ve deserved it.

It would make a mess, though. The brains and stuff would’ve gone onto Oliver’s gorgeous face. Besides, he wasn’t sure how much Ollie would care to trust him if he shot someone in front of him. Ollie was sadly against the idea of murder, even if it was totally justified.

There were only means of penance. Much more satisfying ones, in fact.

Ángel’s heart was beating out of his chest as the hitman froze. Ángel hadn’t interacted with many assassins in his life, but there was no telling how dangerous they could be, even if disarmed.

The knock-off assassin slowly raised his hands. Oliver’s arm was still twisted around his neck, but it had gone slack. Okay, de-escalation. That was good, right?

The person started moving away from Ollie, and Ollie started pushing himself away from underneath him. His breathing was quick and short. He needed to be calm. He needed to stay level, and if he didn’t, something would happen, and he couldn’t go back anymore. Ángel kept the gun focused on the assassin, though he couldn’t help his eyes drifting over to his love. 

Oliver hadn’t stood up, like Ángel thought he would. He was still dragging himself, legs limp, with his hands towards the wall next to the door. He looked sluggish and was breathing strangely. He kept wincing. Trailing behind him was, oh no—

Seeing he was distracted, the hitman rushed forward and attempted to take the gun from Ángel. He was elbowed in the face, and his arm was stretched out in order to keep a hold on the weapon. 

Ripping his arm out of the killer’s grasp, he bashed the blunt end of it into their temple. They seemed dizzy at first, so Ángel took the opportunity to do it again. Blood splattered against the gun and Ángel’s arm. He did it again.

A threat. They were a threat. Oliver was hurt and hurting and dead he Ángel could fix him he could save him he could help he could hurt—

Fervent rage bubbled under Ángel’s skin. This person had hurt him. They’d hurt one or two of the most important people in his life. They dropped to the floor the third time he bashed the gun into their skull. They didn’t seem mobile. Ángel stood on their neck, watching them heave and gasp as he pressed harder—

And yet, all of Ángel's seething was cooled instantly at Oliver’s voice, like ice on a burn wound. “Ángel?” He croaked.

Stumbling through the dark, Ángel attached himself to his side. Oliver was breathing deeply and heavily through his teeth. His back was against the wall, legs straight out in front of him, and his hands were clutching his side. His expression was pinched and full of pain, but somehow he was still smiling. Ángel felt sick to his stomach.

Dark, red, red, red blood covered his side and parts of the wall. It seeped through the walls and the cracks of the wall, infecting the air and everything around it. Ángel could hardly breathe.

“Oh, god…” Ángel whispered. Behind Oliver's bloody hands was a hole, seeping blood. No, no, no! Please. “Oh god, please not again, I can’t—please I don’t know—“ he sobbed, hands hovering over the wound.

He had failed him again. He was useless, again. Oliver was going to die, and it was all his fault. He knew it was dangerous to leave him alone that long, but he just—he wanted—fuck. There wasn’t going to be one more chance. This was it. He was never going to go on vacation, or see the chickens, or…

“No, no… What do I do—I don’t—I’m sorry I can’t—I’m not—“ 

“Ángel.” Oliver cut into his rambling. “I—argh,“ he winced, “medkit. Kitchen.”

Ángel was on his feet in milliseconds. Right. Normal houses had medical supplies. He knew that he was the one you put it there. Just add one more to the ways Ángel had almost killed—or just killed—Oliver.

He desperately scoured the kitchen, shoving through random appliances and pushing things off counters. Where the FUCK was it?! There, there! Running back, he kneeled back down to Oliver. He doesn’t know how to use any of this. Fuck.

Oliver’s head had lolled back against the wall. His breathing looked more labored as the time passed, but he was still breathing. Ángel fumbled with shivering, blood-covered hands to open the med kit.

“I’m sorry I can’t do this—I don’t know how—I promise I’ll be better next time; just don’t leave me; I can’t—“

“Ángel—hrgh—you gotta, hah, you gotta pack the wound. Just get the gauze; I’ll tell you how…”

Ollie was remarkably good at instructing Ángel about how to pack a bullet hole, especially since he was actively bleeding out. His voice was slurred with exhaustion, and he had to take breaks to breathe every so often. Struggling with the assassin must have taken a lot out of him. 

For Ángel. He wouldn’t have been nearly this injured if it wasn’t for him. He hurt him. A sin that can never be forgiven. Ángel almost laughed at the irony of it all.

Ángel had taken off his jacket, and Oliver took its sleeve to bite on as Ángel worked. He could feel his heart breaking at every noise Oliver made. It was a struggle to not get any of his tears mixed with the blood.

And oh, god, the blood. It was everywhere. It crusted Ángel’s hands and clothing, but every time it dried, more came seeping out of Oliver’s wound. He surely couldn’t have bled this much. It was unbearable to think about. It was warm, dark, and so, so terrible. 

The sound Oliver made while Ángel clogged the wound with gauze was horrific. He could still be heard even through his makeshift gag. They echoed in his mind, a symphony in the background of Ángel's bloody hands and arms and body.

After stuffing the hole with gauze, it was time to bandage. His bandages were sloppy and not nearly tight enough, Ángel thought. He was on his own at that point; Oliver focused on breathing through the pain. Ángel could hardly see through his own tears, sobs and hiccups wracking his back as he knelt over his love.

“…Ollie? Are you still with me?” Ángel had already notified the paramedics, and they were on their way. For now, they just needed to survive. Just survive. Please.

“Yes.” He gritted out. 

“Good. That’s good. You just gotta stay awake, okay? Just pay attention to my voice.”

Ángel chatted mindlessly, asking Oliver questions about anything and everything. He seemed to be having trouble thinking, so Ángel began asking him yes or no only. He’d raise his voice when he seemed about to drift off.

Ángel heard someone shift behind him, and he was so fucking done with this guy. 

Ángel had never shot a gun before. He had always preferred to handle things non-violently as Dominion, finding it easier to simply disappear before violence was an option. He stayed just long enough to be spotted in a dramatic position with the moonlight illuminating him and then fled. To everyone’s utter shock, being a CEO didn’t require much gun violence either.

He had never killed anyone, either. Not directly, at least. Was he involved in deaths? Namely, one very specific unexpected death? Well, that was between him and his lawyer, and the allegations were dropped before they were even investigated.

And, well, if Ángel was barred from putting a bullet through Eugene Coli’s head, he figured this fucker would do for now.

He snatched the gun from the floor beside him, aimed at the person—who was still conscious, somehow—and pulled the trigger.

The kickback was what surprised Ángel the most. They always play it down in those spy movies he and Vivi would hate-watch. He almost dropped the gun at the shock that reverberated through his arms. He was blown onto his back. Even after putting the weapon down, his hands felt shaky and jittery.

He’d missed the head but caught the assassin in the top left of their chest. That was close to the heart, right? Good. As the gun clattered to the floor, he heard a quiet, heartbreaking gasp from Ollie. He had closed his eyes, and the sound woke him back up. “Anh-Ángel?”

There were more important things than the possible murder Ángel had just committed.

“Hey—hey,” Ángel said. Oliver’s hands had gone slack where they rested on his lower abdomen. “You’re doing great, just—don't fall asleep. Please. Please, just keep looking at me.”

“Mmh, sleepy…” he mumbled. His skin was far too pale. There was blood everywhere. Ángel didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t do anything to help. He had seen this happen before. 

Still keeping pressure with his other hand, Ángel put a hand on his cheek. He was holding his head too hard, his fingernails digging into the side of his face and eyelid. “I know.” He said.

“I know. I’m so, so sorry. But please. I’m so selfish, darling, and I can’t do this without you. Please. Please stay awake. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

To be completely honest, Ángel wasn’t actually a very religious man. He liked the hierarchy of angels because they were a cool bit of theming, and, of course, his name. He believed in God as a child, sure, but his faith slowly faded from a genuine belief to the way one might appreciate Greek or Norse mythology.

He hadn’t even prayed since he was in high school. He hardly remembered what most of them sounded like. And yet, sitting in his love’s living room, in the dark, covered in his blood, and waiting for the paramedics to come and save Oliver—and, to that extent, Ángel—‘s lives, he prayed.

“Lord, lend me your healing hands, for I believe that your will is for—is for him to be well in body and—please, I can’t do this without him.”

Tears rolled down his face in thin streams, dripping on the floor beneath them. It didn’t mix with the blood because it was already dry. 

It felt like an eternity until the paramedics arrived. He didn’t hear them come up the stairs, his eyes only for Oliver’s slowly dying form. When they clutched his shoulder, he thought the ghost of the assassin had come to kill him.

Ángel thrashed around even more once they started dragging him away from the detective. One paramedic stayed to calm Ángel down, while the others went to tend to Oliver and the—likely dead—assassin.

The flashlights they carried were bright and uncomfortable. He doesn’t know when he zoned out, watching the medical staff carefully maneuver his one and only onto a stretcher. Faintly, a siren blared from stories down the building.

As he sat there, he felt something soft nudge his hand. Looking down, he saw a small orange cat. Its fur was all standing up with fear. It sniffed at the blood on his hand and nudged his thigh. “Oh.” Ángel realized distantly. “You’re Mozilla Firefox.”

Despite everything, the name made him crack a weak smile. It was such a stupid name. He loved him so, so much.

Mozilla sniffed at the air, walking over to the stretcher Oliver was being put on. Ángel pulled him back, and the cat hissed but stayed in Ángel’s arms.

The next thing Ángel knew, he was standing outside with no jacket on and a meowing orange cat in his arms. He watched Oliver being loaded into an ambulance. They had to drag him away from getting in the ambulance with him, promising him they’d find a ride for him. 

They let him keep the cat, at least. Ángel ran his finger through its soft fur. The cat bit at his hair.

He was in the back of a medical car, staring out the window. He had no idea if Oliver was okay, never mind if he was going to be. The adrenaline had worn off, and Ángel felt exhausted.

I’m so sorry for not being enough, my love.

—————————————————————

They didn’t let him keep the cat once he got to the hospital. Apparently, there was a ‘pet zone’ sectioned off in the emergency room. 

Most of his own treatment was a blur. It was unnecessary, really. He wasn’t even hurt that bad, and Oliver was more important anyway. It was just a waste of time.

He winced when they cleaned and sanitized the injury on his arm and chin, but that didn’t matter. As he looked in the mirror, Ángel saw that all the makeup he had on had been wiped off. He looked awful. The doctor said he was okay to leave.

The blood had been washed off his hands and face, but it still looked like it stained his hands. He couldn’t bear to look at anything other than them. It was in his skin now, like a tattoo or a brand. A constant reminder of his limits, his failures.

Oliver still wasn’t allowed visitors. The doctors said it was because he was recovering. A nurse told Ángel that he should go get a change of clothes from his apartment and that they should nearly be finished with his stitches once he got back. 

The hospital wasn’t far from his apartment. Oliver’s apartment was farther, at least. An oversight on Ángel’s part, he should’ve found somewhere closer to medical attention. Stupid. 

Even once he got back, they still told him Oliver was too weak to receive visitors. Then, only immediate family were allowed.

“Please…” he said, desperate. It was embarrassing; he sounded so tired. Regardless, it worked. The man behind the counter’s eyes shined, and he said, “Ah, I get it. You can go through; he’s in room 156.”

Oliver had had much of the same treatment as Ángel. He looked cleaner, though still very pale. He was lying in the sterile white hospital bed, asleep. His face was no longer pinched in pain or frustration and he looked entirely peaceful. Ángel couldn’t see his abdomen under the thin hospital sheets, but he knew he probably had stitches. His breathing was deep, and perfectly normal.

He knew they probably wouldn’t be allowing visitors if he was in serious danger, but seeing the steady rise and fall of his chest made Ángel feel lighter anyway. He’s alive. He may not be okay, but he’s alive.

Softly, selfishly, Ángel reached to gently hold Oliver’s outstretched hand. His hands were warm and rough, calluses still etched into his fingertips. Ángel held him as gently as he could, not wanting to break his spell of rest and recovery. Slowly, gently, three of Oliver’s fingers twitched inward, lightly holding his hand back. Ángel was not too proud not to admit the shuddering, bordering on sobbing, breath he’d let out at that.

He sat on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs the hospital provided. His knees and spine were already feeling achy.

And, because Ángel was useless when he was alone, he called Vivi. 

She arrived far too quickly. Her apartment was considerably far from the hospital. She threw the hospital door open like she was about to object to a wedding, with at least one shout of “miss!” coming from the hallway behind her.

“Please don’t tell me I’m going to get a speeding ticket fine on my card,” he said.

She grinned. Vivi, at the very least, was consistent. “No promises! Only results.” Her eyes shot from Ángel to Oliver to their interlocked hands. 

“God, you two are insufferable.” Vivi rolled her eyes and gagged sarcastically, and Ángel huffed at her. She walked around to the other side of the hospital bed. Pulling up a stool, she took his other hand, albeit with much less flustered hesitation than Ángel did.

“You two met.” Ángel realized. He supposed it shouldn’t have been as big of a revelation as it was. For all the years Ángel had known her, she had never allowed a stone to be left unturned. Rather, she preferred to forcibly remove the stone from the ground, photograph all of the wriggling bugs hiding in the wet earth underneath, and then ruthlessly interrogate the stone until it cracked.

“Well, you weren’t going to introduce us. I just took matters into my own hands,” she defended flippantly. She narrowed her eyes and stared at Ángel accusatorily. 

“Vivi—I was going to; it’s just—“

“What, you thought our combined danger magnetivity would cause another apocalypse?” She pantomimed her hand expanding outwards and made an explosion noise. “Well, I guess you weren’t wrong,” she winced.

“What.” It was Ángel’s turn for accusatory glares. Vivi looked like she was struck beneath his stare, her back straightened, and her hand that had been moving along with her words sat obediently in her lap. 

She tucked some hair behind her ear and looked away. Ángel could hear her foot tapping underneath the hospital bed. “But that’s a story for another day. I mean, you look like you’re about to grow grey hairs—“

“Vivi.”

“…Fine, but you have to promise you won’t mother hen too much,” she sighed, giving in. Her entire body slumped with her words.

Ángel gawked, feeling terrified and offended at the same time. “I think I’ll reserve the right to mother hen until you’ve told me what happened.” It wasn’t uncommon for Vivi to complain about Ángel's more protective habits, though Ángel himself hardly ever took the complaints seriously. It had never been bad enough for her to try bracing for it. What could she possibly have gotten herself into?

Actually, looking back, she had been complaining a lot less lately…

Vivi groaned, “Ok, ok. So, I was researching Coli, right?” Immediately, Vivi went into summary mode. She did a similar thing when she was trying to explain the newest episode of a show or a recent case she was working on, but she knew she had a limited time before they were kicked out of whatever establishment they were in. 

“Right.” Ángel bit out. It was a terrible start to any conversation, really. It even topped “This is the police, put your hands in the air!” In Ángel’s humble opinion. 

“And, well, I know you told me not to look into his… properties, but there was some really obviously evil stuff happening there, like, shitty fantasy BBEG level evil—“

Ángel held his hand over his mouth. “Vivi—you didn’t—“

“I might’ve. Maybe. Just a little bit. But I only went to, like, three!” She held up her hand in defense. Ángel felt like he was spiraling for, what, the eleventh time today?

“Three?!” How does she keep making it worse with every new piece of information?

“Just let me finish! I haven’t even told you the bad part yet!”

Ángel sighed in utter defeat. He slumped over, dropping his face into his remaining hand, protecting his eyes from the harsh hospital light. He tried not to squeeze Oliver’s hand too hard, but he was practically Ángel’s only tether to reality.

“So, I get into this building—it was an old hospital clinic thing, I think—and then I hear some massive stomps coming from outside, and then in walks Mr. Detective himself.” She, apparently, began. “And then we go to investigate together, and… um. You know those weird houses you mentioned? Well, I think it was one of those, because suddenly the walls were meat and they started growing hands.”

“……You two are going to be the death of me.”

“Well, clearly we weren’t.” Her voice returned to its usual, more sarcastic cadence. Ángel poked an eye out to glare at her from behind his hand. “Too soon?” She asked, awkwardly trying to lighten the mood. She never did well when someone was upset, always trying to get them to laugh, or at the very least laugh at them.

Ángel knew she was just uncomfortable in somber situations. They didn’t fit her, really. It wasn’t a feeling Ángel shared, but he could accept it, at the very least. The problem is that she seemed to approach situations involving her safety with the same sarcastic, overconfident humor. 

He supposed it was minorly his fault. He used to be the exact same way, in fact, when they were younger and still thought death was a meaningless topic. It was harder to be so bold when you’ve seen how your friends look when they lose the light in their eyes, blood framing their torn body. 

“You two could’ve died in there,” Ángel croaked. And it would’ve been your fault. You could always have done more. Between the crying and hyperventilating and praying and screaming, his voice had been rubbed raw.

“Aww, Ángel, you know I would have survived! I’m just built different, y’know, it would simply bounce off—”

“And I couldn’t have done anything to stop it.” Vivi’s jaw snapped shut. Ángel was pretty sure he was dehydrated, because this is normally the part where he would start bawling his eyes out. “I love you both so much,” his voice cracked embarrassingly. “But I can’t protect you. No matter what I do.”

Vivi didn’t say anything. The silence hung heavy in the air.

The sound of a stool scraping across the floor cut through the silence like a knife. Ángel flinched at the noise but didn’t look up. He couldn’t bear to look at her face, knowing he’d failed to protect her again.

Footsteps came closer and closer until Vivi was practically hovering above him, but he still kept his head firmly away from her face. “Ángel.” She intones, lightly punching his shoulder. Finally, Ángel gathered the strength to look up at her.

She hugged him, and Ángel broke. He shakily wrapped his arms under hers and tucked his head into her shoulder. He forgot how physical touch was nice, actually. He held her tighter and hoped nothing would take her again. Vivi tightened her grip, too. If Ángel had any tears left, he would be crying. His eyes still felt wet.

She started talking in his ear. “I’m alive, and I’m here, ok? And, to be honest, I don’t hate you, even though you have the worst takes on soap operas I’ve ever seen.” 

“And since I’m alive, and no one can keep me dead forever—especially not some deadbeat dad—we’re going to keep living. We’re going to defenestrate that techbro boyfailure, I’m going to write the best article ever known, and then you and your loser boyfriend are going to have epic gay sex, and love will win.” 

Ángel choked, pushing his face further into her shoulder as his face heated. “Hubhh, Viviiii,” he whined. There were far too many things jam-packed into that one sentence; he could hardly process anything but the last he heard. The tension of the moment was broken, but the words remained. Vivi practically cackled from above him.

“Also, you should probably get therapy. Actually, we both should. And Beebo, too. Everyone else in the house should come with us. From what it should be like, Coli probably needs it too, but I’m not sure a therapist would accept his dead body as a patient.”

He nodded into her shoulder, but they didn’t move away yet. Eventually, they had to break, but for now Ángel just let himself be comforted.

Vivi still held her hands on his shoulder when she pushed him away. “Alright. I’m gonna go get some water for you. Do y’want food, too?”

Ángel's face squished like he had just eaten a lemon. Agh, hospital food. Vivi laughed at him and poked his stomach as she called him a child. She left the room, and he and Oliver were alone.

A nurse came by to check how Oliver was doing, and the two of them were kicked out to some of the uncomfortable chairs outside the room. He and Vivi ate some of the worst food Ángel had ever had and watched videos on her phone. He felt more hydrated now, but his eyes still felt crusty and heavy. Oliver remained asleep all the while.

Vivi said she was falling asleep and offered to drive Ángel home. She gave him a look when he told her he was going to stay. “You look awful. Just go home; he’ll still be here when you get back.”

But what if he isn’t. She gave up after pestering him for a full minute but promised to come back and get him at some point the next day. 

It didn’t matter. He tried his best to stay awake, but with nothing to entertain him he eventually fell asleep in the chair next to Oliver’s hospital bed. It was surprisingly easy to drift off in the squeaky, uncomfortable hospital chair, especially since he had been having trouble sleeping for so long before. 

He woke up to a soft, croaky voice. “…Ángel..?” It whispered, weak and rough. He didn’t register it at first, but as soon as he did, he shot up. Oliver’s eyes were just barely open a crack. He looked exhausted.

“Oliver!” Ángel practically yelled, voice croaky and rough, but he lowered his volume once soon after. “You—you’re awake! Are you okay? Do you feel okay? Are you in pain? Oh, I should get a doctor, hold on—“

“Ángel… I’m okay,” it mumbled.

Ángel still felt he should go grab a doctor or something, just to make sure. That was hospital protocol, probably. He stopped when the hand in his tugged at his arm a little bit.

Oliver was staring down at their interlocked fingers. He seemed to be considering it, with that same focused and confused expression he got when he first got his hands on a puzzle. He looked as if he was trying to figure out the mystery of the horrendously gay man, or something. 

If he had given even the slightest indication that he wanted him to stop, Ángel would’ve pulled his hand away. But he didn’t, and Ángel couldn’t bear the thought of letting go. He wasn’t kidding when he said Oliver was his tether to reality. If he let go, he might start to drift away, lost in the expanse of space and time.

“Ángel… how did we… meet?” He sounded like he was struggling to capture the words, each one taking a magnificent amount of effort to articulate. 

“Huh?”

“You know things about me. I haven’t told you. You act like you’ve known me long before we’ve ever met. How? Where did we meet, really?” He spoke clearly, evenly, but slowly, like his jaw was so tired it would hardly comply with his tongue.

“I—uh, I already told you! I saw you in the case of the—“

“Ángel.”

“I mean, well, we also met in college, so—“

“Ángel.”

“I… used to be a criminal?”

Oliver didn’t even grace that one with a response. 

“I… okay. Okay, I’ll tell you. Do you… how much do you remember from Eugene Coli’s party?” He asked. Oliver looked hesitant but relieved that he was telling the truth.

“I went in; there was no one there. Coli gave me his contact information and then proceeded to kick me out.”

“Yeah… yeah, okay.” God, how does he even start this conversation? And is he really going to tell him…? He…

He couldn’t. He couldn’t bear to tell him. Not yet. Ángel wasn’t ready for that yet. Oliver couldn’t… he couldn’t understand unless he remembered it himself. Oliver was looking at him expectantly. He looked as if he was almost daring him to try lying again. Ángel felt heated under his intense gaze.

“We… met… at the party. I bought you a drink, and we talked for a while.” He could feel himself smiling at the memory.

“But then… something happened, and you couldn’t remember me. I tried to remind you, but nobody else did either. And then, it happened again, and again, and…” Ángel huffed.

He realized he was still holding Oliver’s hand when he squeezed it a little. Ángel took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry… I can’t tell you everything just yet. I’m not ready.” Ángel used his other hand to wipe at his eyes. God, Oliver must think he was so pathetic.

Ángel looked him in the eyes. Oliver’s were focused but still half-closed in exhaustion. They widened at Ángel's steely determination. “But I promise, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything someday. Just…” Ángel’s eyes turn downcast. He sighed. “Just not yet.” He brought Oliver’s hand up to his forehead.

“..okay. I trust you.”

And, with only four words, Ángel broke down again. Guilt, self-loathing, selfishness, and fear—they all swirled in his stomach. It felt like they had created a deep weight in his lungs. Oliver trusted him. He didn’t deserve that.

In a way, Vivi had been right. They weren’t in that house anymore. No more second chances. No more coming back. If any of them got hurt, or worse… 

I’m never letting you go again, Ángel promised himself.

Chapter Text

It was the morning of the first day he’d been discharged from the hospital. He had only been there for just under a week, though it felt as if it was much longer. 

He had to be bedridden for a majority of the week. The doctors were very concerned about his stitches reopening, especially since he apparently tore the wound at some point before medical professionals arrived.

He had lost a lot of blood, so it was understandable. Still, sitting in bed and staring at the ceiling was decidedly not how Oliver wished to spend his week. Being bored was… not good for the mind. Not Oliver’s, at least. 

Actually, being bored was supposedly very good for the mind. Not for those in pain, however. Without stimulation or movement, there was something to draw attention away from what used to be a gaping hole in his abdomen or about how the walls of the hospital looked like they were breathing.

It was a week wasted, truly. He’d lost the TV remote at some point on his third day, so he was unable to change the channel. Oliver could write a dissertation on Big Brother at this point.

Being shot wasn’t his favorite thing, Oliver decided. It was rare that his encounters with his case specimens involved violence at all, much less guns. Most of the criminals he worked against weren’t very high profile, nor did many have connections who had access to guns. That didn’t mean Oliver hadn’t had his fair share of being shot at. Some people held very bad grudges.

He remembered, when he first got into the business, he wore his scars almost like a badge. A show of proof that his job wasn’t just mind-numbing stakeouts and cheating scandals. They were proof of survival. After long enough, assassination attempts, although rare, became almost trivial. He still remembers the look on his parent’s face when he accidentally almost shared a story that involved one.

He was so fearless back then. He took down cults and thieves and murderers left and right. That’s not to say he couldn’t consider the danger they posed to him, but just that he could do so without fearing for his life.

He doesn’t know what happened. He really, really wished he did. At least with the old art gallery, there was something to fear. Something to avoid, however broad ‘supernatural’ was.

See, this is why being alone with his thoughts was not a good idea.

Ángel, truly, was the only thing that made the hospital bearable.

He visited almost every day, which Oliver questioned on multiple occasions. Shouldn’t he have work? Or, at the very least, other responsibilities? It seems Ángel has undergone some character development since he was last asked a similar question, however. Instead of simply asking Oliver if he wanted Ángel to leave, he added that he was there because he wanted to be with Oliver. It made Oliver feel all sorts of tummy-hurty feelings, aside from the normal post-gunshot pain. He still didn’t answer the question, though.

Ángel typically came in around lunchtime, a minute after the nurse had already given Oliver his own food. Their meets were strangely not all that similar to their dates. Mostly, they exchanged the same conversation topics as usual.

He’d tried asking more about an hour after he’d woken up for the second time. He’d asked what had happened that night because Oliver couldn’t remember most of what happened after he’d tackled the intruder. 

Ángel shifted uncomfortably at his questions. Oliver asked what happened to the intruder, whether they had run or if they had ended up arresting them. Ángel said he was taken care of and nothing else. For all Oliver wanted to know more, Ángel seemed… upset, for lack of a better word.

He asked, timidly and unhopefully, if Ángel was ready to tell him more about the time he didn’t remember. It was, supposedly, everything he had been searching for for the past year of his life. Oliver felt he deserved at least a little more information… How had he forgotten? How much time had he forgotten? What had happened that warranted Oliver to have such vicious fears? Was Vivi there, too? Did she remember?

The look on Ángel's face quickly shut down his questions. For all he was curious, Ángel looked nauseous at his questioning. He had never seen him so… 

Ángel looked like he was torn between wanting to keep up the pleased and casual demeanor he usually had and trying to genuinely answer Oliver’s questions. Though he acted as if it pained him physically, Ángel said he wasn’t quite ready to tell him yet.

The main difference, besides circumstance and location, was a small shift in Ángel’s personality. Change wasn’t quite the right word. He was just a little more on all fronts.

Oliver had mentioned that the hospital could be boring once, and the next day Ángel had shown up practically drowning in puzzles. He had tried to pick one up, only to tip over and collapse under the weight of the others, lamenting his back. 

He pouted, looking flushed and sad. Oliver couldn’t help but laugh at the sight. When he reopened his eyes, it seemed Ángel had gotten over it, because he was beaming.

They played a lot of traditional board games, like chess, checkers, or gomoku. Ángel wasn’t very good at them. Oliver wasn’t sure if it was because Oliver reigned supreme over all board and card games or if Ángel was just letting him win.

It occurred to him, sometime in between games of mancala and another round of UNO, that this was probably against some boss-employee relationship laws. In fact, Oliver and Ángel’s relationship was… strange. Definitely not up to code.

Oliver wondered what kind of impression he must have made at that party that would make Ángel still want to find him, all those months later. He wondered, distantly, if he was disappointed with what he found.

He was more intense in other ways, too. The most noticeable was his displays of physical affection.

Oliver hadn’t rejected him the first time, and it seemed as if he’d accidentally opened some sort of floodgate. There was hardly ever a time the two were in the same room and weren’t holding hands, touching shoulders, or leaning on top of one another. Again, probably grounds to get Oliver or Ángel fired if he wasn’t the CEO of the company.

Not to say the touch wasn’t wanted. It was very much wanted. Craved, one could say. One being Oliver. Oliver craved. 

Ahem, back to being shot.

It was another scar amongst many, so Oliver didn’t particularly mind it. It may seem strange, but Oliver feels like he should have more scars than he does. He’d grown used to injuries over the years of being generally reckless with danger, so he already had quite a few.

It’s not that he wanted more scars, of course not. Just that, looking at his body, it feels like there should be more than there is. Had he truly never gotten a shoulder injury? He was sure he had dealt with fires and explosions at least a couple of times…

As soon as he’d had the thought, Oliver had pulled out a notepad from the bedside table. Oliver had stolen a notebook from the hospital. He felt awful.

Actually, he had gotten Ángel to steal it for him. As soon as he’d put in the request, Ángel had done a dramatic bow and promised to steal it with the utmost stealth and dexterity. And, well, perhaps ‘stolen’ was the wrong word. Oliver was pretty sure Ángel had just asked the lady at the front desk for one.

It was no longer plausible that everyone around Oliver was orchestrating and lying about seeing him at the party. Clearly, Oliver had forgotten what had happened, while Ángel remembered. And, when one is stuck with nothing but their thoughts, they tend to spiral out of control.

Ángel may not be ready to give him any more information quite yet, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still searching. If anything, the confirmation of something being abnormal was exhilarating enough in and of itself that it increased his need to search tenfold.

So, he wrote them down. Whenever he had a thought or a feeling—or even just déjà vu—that didn’t have a causation, it was written down in the notepad. It was almost like a dream journal. Maybe, if he could connect enough of the dots on his own, Ángel wouldn’t even have to relive the memories by telling him.

Once Oliver got out of this dreadful hospital and back into his own apartment, he could go through some of his old notes on ‘strange things Ángel does’ and cross-reference them.

At the very least, Oliver didn’t feel like he was slowly going insane. There was a logical, if a little bit nonsensical, explanation. As soon as Oliver got out of the hospital, he’d get to work researching every item, disease, and drug that had cognitive-related processes. 

Most things he wrote down weren’t likely to be connected, however. There are, sadly, many things about our minds that do not have a perceivable causation. Though, he’d been able to connect quite a lot.

Though it might be confirmation bias, this explanation would explain why he felt so strangely seeing Ángel for the first time. And, for the exact opposite reason, it also explained Ángel’s reaction to him in that bar all those months ago.

There were other, smaller things he could connect back, like how Ángel knew of his cat or his love of snacks. All of the small, suspicious details he knew. It suddenly occurred to Oliver one day that either Ángel had an incredible memory, or he had purposefully imprinted such small, useless details into his brain exclusively to use them for Oliver’s sake. He felt warm and a little bit dizzy at the notion that Ángel cared that much.

Though, he guessed patching up someone’s bullet hole was one surefire way of proving you cared about them. Were they trauma bonded now? He supposed if Ángel was to be believed with the whole memory thing, they already were.

There were side effects to Ángel being present during Oliver’s hospital visit, however.

In the months following the missing cat case, the memories weren’t difficult to avoid. He just turned down any suspicious cases and left the room whenever it was mentioned. Eventually, most people stopped mentioning it to him at all. Supernatural occurrences weren’t exactly commonplace in most casual conversations.

There was no leaving the hospital room. It wasn’t the most comforting thing to dream of being dragged into the walls of a hospital, only to wake to see the same sterile, white walls. He felt consumed by them.

There was nothing separating the nightmare and reality. His sleep-deprived eyes would see a hand in every corner, the walls pulsing and beating. If he looked hard enough, if he strained his eyes in the dark room, he thought he could see blood veins pulsing in the walls. 

He knew, logically, it wasn’t possible. He couldn’t back. The amount of effort someone would have to go through to get him there is incredible, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that the hospital was dead. Still, it was hard to make the distinction between the hands holding him down and the simple scratchy bedsheets doing the very same when it’s three in the morning.

It didn’t help that he became almost dizzy with pain if he so much as breathed too hard.

It had happened once with Ángel. 

It was late at night. Ángel had come around dinner, promising beef empanadas and medialunas. Oliver had not noticed when he started falling asleep. The combination of blood loss and sleep deprivation hadn’t been doing him many favors, and he often found himself dozing off for a small majority of the day. He found himself being shaken awake from a nightmare by Ángel, his hands on Oliver’s shoulders.

But—the walls! Ángel was looking in his eyes but behind him were the reaching hands and pulsing walls—he needed to protect him, he needed to warn—

“You’re okay! There’s nothing on the walls—we’re both fine!” 

There were hands grabbing his shoulders. They were trying to pull them in—he needed them off—he slapped them away and they came off with ease. 

“Ollie! Look at me!”

They were grabbing his legs torso and face—he couldn’t get out he was trapped he was going to die here he had taken too long Vivi couldn’t—

“Ollie, open your eyes!”

And when he did he couldn’t see the walls or the hands or the heart, just Ángel. The hands holding his face didn’t belong to the building but to Ángel himself, and the hands on his legs were hands at all.

His arms felt tired, and his side ached. There were tears flowing down his cheeks. It must’ve been a while since he fell asleep because his mouth tasted bad and his eyes were crusty.

Ángel was warm, grounding, and safe. And Oliver was so tired. ‘Real men don’t cry,’ Coli’s voice echoed through his mind as tears rolled down his face.

“‘You here with me? Good, good, just keep breathing like that, everything’s okay.” He said. His voice was calming and raspy; he must have fallen asleep at some point, too.

Oliver focused on breathing for a moment, shuddering through hiccups. He pulled away, wiping his tears. “Sorry, I’m sorry—I’m fine. It was just a nightmare, you didn’t have to help. I’m sorry for waking you up, you didn’t—“ he rambled, cutting himself off. He was talking too much and far too loud for how late it was.

“Ah, I was hardly asleep. Don’t worry. I told you, remember? For all your needs.” Ángel smiled kindly. He looked tired, even in the low light. Oliver checked the time on the bright digital clock to his right. 11:49, it blinked.

“It’s so late… you should go home.” Oliver needed to not be seen. He was being too much of a mess. The need to flick his hands and shake his head was intense, and the longer he wasn’t able to do so, the more he wanted to. It took an active effort to keep his hands firmly placed together. He would’ve looked strange if Ángel saw him flapping them around wildly like he longed to.

“Nonsense!” Ángel exclaimed. “I brought you food. You were asleep by the time I got here, so I just thought I’d let you rest.”

Oliver ate the food like a starving man, despite the fact he had eaten only a few hours ago. Ángel was actually a gift sent from heaven, he thought.

Ángel waited patiently while he ate his food. He was playing with his own fingers and seemed nervous. “…Do you have nightmares often?” He broke, asking what must have been on his mind. “Ones like that?”

Oliver wasn’t sure how to answer the question. He would feel bad for lying, especially since Ángel had already done so much for him. On the other hand, he didn’t want to worry Ángel with his problems. 

What would a lie like that even sound like? ‘No, I actually don’t have intense night terrors, and what you just saw didn’t happen. Actually, none of this is real, so you should go back to being happy and free from having a charity case to take care of.’

“Ollie,” Ángel said, quieter, gentler than he had heard him in a while. He had placed a hand, light and easy to push off if he wanted to, on the bed around his hip. He could hardly even feel him through his thin hospital sheets. “You don’t have to tell me if it bothers you. Don’t feel forced. But, please, you can tell me anything.”

Oliver paused. He could feel his own heartbeat and, for a second, was worried Ángel could feel how fast it was too, despite how stupid it was. “But… communication hard…”

Ángel laughed, his eyes wrinkling as if he leaned over slightly, as he always did when he found something funny. “Yeah, it is.”

“…I’ve been having a lot less recently. Or, well, I was.” He said, hoping Ángel would accept the answer as is and not go any deeper.

“Oh.” Ángel looked as if he had just remembered something. “…The hospital doesn’t help, I bet. Vivi told me what happened.”

Beebo looked at him in slight shock. Well, it was much easier to talk when he wasn’t trying to keep a secret, he guessed. “Yeah. But it’s okay. I’m fine.”

Ángel frowned. “It’s okay if you aren’t. I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“It’s only for another few days, so I’ll manage.” He fiddled with a bit of his sheet as he spoke. He didn’t want to inconvenience Ángel too much. He’d saved his life. 

Ángel moved his hand to Oliver’s own, flipping it over and intertwining their fingers. “Ok. But I’ll still be here for you whenever you need me.”

Oliver might die on the spot. He nodded shyly, looking away and trying to not pay too much attention to the way their hands were still together. 

It took another thirty minutes of reassurance before Ángel finally packed his things and left. It was well past two in the morning by the time he fell back asleep, replaying the scene in his head over and over.

Finally getting out of the hospital was probably the best Oliver had felt in a while. The sterile lights and uncomfortable, scratchy fabrics he’d been sleeping in and—oh, the smell—it had all been starting to get on his nerves. At a certain point, he’d figured he would rather sleep on the floor than try to ignore how he wanted to rip his skin off.

He felt childish for wanting to complain to Ángel—or, God forbid, the nurses—about something so trivial as the sheets, but Oliver truly thinks it’s some of the worst sleep he’d ever gotten. He was becoming quite close to asking Ángel to steal him away from the hospital as he had the notebook from the front desk.

In a way, he kind of had. Ángel was there on the day Oliver was discharged, holding a bag other than his usual messenger one. He was shifting on his feet, though Oliver wasn’t sure if it was from nerves or excitement. Oliver had to fight back his curiosity to check what was inside.

Oliver was no longer nearly as shaky on his feet as he could’ve been. He remembered having to relearn how to walk after his two-day visit to the hospital, his muscles achy from disuse. This time, the doctors had prepared him by advising him to walk around—under supervision—to get used to moving again. 

The doctor gave Oliver his discharge details—who was suddenly extremely thankful for those healthcare benefits that came with being employed under Seraphim Enterprises—and told him he was good to leave.

Oliver did not need Ángel’s help as he stood up. He stumbled—truly, just a misplacement of footing. It easily could’ve been self-corrected; he wasn’t even going to fall—but as he did Ángel’s entire body looked like it flinched.

Ángel’s face shifted within a second, going from a deep worry to a sarcastically chivalrous smirk. He held out his hand, winked, and said, “Need some help?”

Oliver is sure he was flushed, even more so when he felt a strong—oh, god, strong—arm carefully help him up. He should’ve expected the way Ángel lingered with their hands together. Maybe that was the normal amount of time to hold someone’s hand? It felt very long.

The doctor left to allow them to find their own way out. 

“Oh! Right!” Ángel said. He finally remembered he was holding a bag in his hand and brought it up for Oliver to inspect. For a moment Oliver thought he was going to pull out another puzzle. “I brought you some of your clothes!” They were fresh and folded neatly in the bag. Ángel reached in and pulled out a hat. Oliver’s hat.

He put it lightly onto Oliver’s head. “Can’t forget this!” Oliver touched its brim, fixing it from its skewed position. Looking up at Ángel, he was still smiling.

He hadn’t realized how much he missed the protection of his hat. Actually, that was a lie; he had very much missed having it on his head. Wearing it came with the comfort it gave, but it was usually accompanied with the disapproving glares of his previous employer. Even after he no longer worked for Coli, or was even in the vicinity of him, he was always self-conscious of the eyes it might draw.

He looked to Ángel once more. He was still smiling, looking fully content.

He pulled the brim further down, just low enough to still see his smile.

They left after Oliver had gotten changed in the washrooms. His skin no longer felt as if there were bugs crawling all over it, and his eyes were safely protected under his hat. The only thing he had to do now was go back to his apartment. It seemed that particular part was going to be more difficult than it should be.

“The police are investigating my apartment?!”

“Beebster, I really don’t see why this is so shocking to you. You almost got assassinated.” He said it as if it wasn’t a bi-monthly occurrence.

“Well, they didn’t come the other times!” He hadn’t called. Assassinations were often connected to cases, and Oliver wanted to keep a potential lead firmly away from the police’s prying hands. Still, should they have taken the concerned reports of loud banging noises and a struggle from his apartment seriously, which he knew his neighbors had been sending.

Ángel didn’t seem to register his statement. “Loo— wait, they didn’t? Y’know what? It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters! There are cops in my house! Right now!” Really? The only time they ever seem to be doing their jobs, and it's the one time Oliver didn't want them to. This was unfair and mean.

“What, you got a bunch of illegal drugs in there or something?” Ángel teased.

Oliver was agape in offense at the accusation. “Of course not! I just don’t want the cops dirtying my things.”

“Well, don’t worry. I have it handled. Though, I still think you should stay out of that apartment for a while...or forever.” He practically whispered the last part, looking away for a second. Oliver wasn’t sure if he was supposed to have heard it.

Oliver raised his eye in suspicion. What did that mean? “You have it handled?”

“I mean,” he began, holding a confident and smug tone but shifting it to be more so somehow. “Being a rich celebrity has its perks, especially in corrupt institutions like the police force.” Oliver grumbled, but it made sense. 

“It’s the same reason they haven’t come to interrogate you. I figured you would much prefer me at your bedside. Still. You probably shouldn’t go to your apartment for a while.” Ángel cautioned.

“Why not?” Oliver asked. Did this mean Ángel was… kicking him out? Where else would he stay? Housing in the city was extremely expensive, and if he couldn’t afford a place to stay in, he was going to lose his job and—

“Wha—Ollie, someone tried to kill you! Not even two weeks ago! You can’t just stay in that apartment!” Ángel exclaimed, eyes wide. Oh—did Oliver miss something? He seemed completely neutral a second ago; was he mad now?

“Ah—I mean, you don’t have to stay with me. Not that I wouldn’t like you to! I just—I assumed you wouldn’t want to be alone, ahem. You could go somewhere else if you wanted to.”

Ángel frowned, and for some reason it made Beebo feel like the world was ending, though the idea was scientifically implausible.

So, they lived together now. In a very platonic roommates kind of way. Roommates were known for being friends and nothing else, after all.

Which leads to the current circumstance: Beebo waking up in an apartment that was not his own to the smell of something burning. He shot out of his bed, tripping on blankets and sheets wrapped around his foot. Was there a fire? Was Ángel alright? The smell caused his heartbeat to grow louder as his breathing quickened, an incessant and nausea-inducing sound.

He haphazardly leaped across his room. His side ached at the motion, but that wasn’t important right now. He heard movement in the kitchen—had Ángel accidentally caused a fire? Grease fires were especially dangerous. Sprinting across the entryway and straight towards where the smell was coming from, he used the banister to turn himself and stumbled as he saw—

Well. It wasn’t a fire.

The entire room had dustings of flour coating its surface. Even the ceiling was not spared, one swipe of pale powder steak across it. The mess seemed to centralize on the stovetop and its surrounding counters. Ah, wait, it wasn’t only flour. Sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and dulce de leche had also accumulated on the kitchen counter. Fortunately, most of these ingredients seemed to be inside their containers.

The cause of the smell was immediately apparent, based on the smoke rising from a pan held by one Ángel Valdivia. He seemed surprised. “Ah, good morning, Ollie! Haha, I, ahm, didn’t expect you to be up so soon!” His voice cracked.

He put down the pan and turned off the stove as he took stock of Oliver. “Hey, is everything okay? Did you—”

“Were you trying to make pancakes?” Oliver asked instead. Ángel had been… upset? for the past couple of weeks, but he seemed better now. Oliver didn’t want to ruin his mood with something that couldn’t be helped. 

Ángel looked back at his pile of undercooked and burnt pancakes in the compost bin. They were hardly recognizable, more blobs of uncooked batter and black burn spots than concrete circles. “…Maybe.” Had he never made pancakes before?

Ángel sighed, defeated. “I wanted to make you breakfast! Like in the movies!”

“This is… so much batter. How did you burn this many pancakes?”

Ángel frowned, wrapping his arms around himself. Sheepishly, he admits, “I’ve just never made them before...”

There was still some batter left in the bowl Ángel had mixed, but it didn’t.. look very good. Oliver was pretty sure he could see at least one eggshell. Looking back at Ángel, he was giving him the same wet cat look he always did. Oliver sighed.

It took a good ten minutes for the both of them to clean the kitchen. Oliver was pretty sure there were some spots that they didn’t find and that Ángel would be finding bits of flour in random places for the next couple of months at least.

Not that it mattered, because flour somehow ended up everywhere as soon as Oliver opened the bag. That’s just how flour worked. Even Ángel—as languid as he usually was—seemed to stare at the bag with a kind of nervous trepidation, like it was a violent animal. He carefully instructed Ángel how much of each ingredient they needed. Ángel was having the worst time cracking the eggs, but Oliver showed him how to pick the shells out before mixing them in. They worked in tandem; Oliver poured the ingredients in while Ángel whisked.

Ángel was doing pretty well—even if he kept picking at his and Oliver’s hair, trying to get the flour out and only making it worse—but he still couldn’t be trusted with the pan. Not after the crimes of food waste he’d committed before.

Oliver can’t say he was the greatest cook, but he knew how to make basic meals. Having hot food that wasn’t take-out as an option was important when you can’t afford to eat out.

The pancakes came out thin and slightly crispy at the ends. Not his best work, but he was sure they’d taste good. His stomach rumbled, and Ángel laughed at him. Oliver pretended not to notice the way he ‘accidentally’ threw flour in Ángel's hair.

Ángel was, at least, good at rolling and putting the dulce de leche on the finished pancakes. Oliver opened one of Ángel’s cupboards, pushing through an egregious amount of herbs and spices—seriously, they took up the entire cabinet. Ángel doesn’t even cook!—before he finally found the powdered sugar.

Ángel practically ordered Oliver to sit down at the small circle-shaped table near the kitchen. Oliver watched Ángel meticulously powder the rolls and delicately stack them. Sunlight filtered in through the thin blinds of Ángel’s apartment. If Oliver ignored the scar on Ángel’s cheek and the pain in his side, he could almost imagine the scene as domestic.

“Your breakfast, good sir.” Ángel bowed as he placed the plate of pancakes on the placemat in front of Oliver. He had a dishcloth around his arm and was using his finger in place of a mustache. A very stupid sense of humor, indeed. 

It was more of a dessert than an actual breakfast, but Oliver wasn’t complaining.

He tried to ignore the pit of anxiety in his stomach as he ate. This situation was just so.. strange. It felt wrong, waking up in a bed that wasn’t his and wasn’t the hospital’s. The doctor had told him he shouldn’t go to work for the next couple of days, at least, so there wasn’t that routine either.

There were too many unknowns. How long would he be staying here? What was expected of him? What would be the normal, good way to act in this situation?

Ángel is oblivious to his fears. In fact, he seemed to be in a rather good mood. He hadn’t sat down after serving Oliver his food. Instead, he had opened the only cabinet that looked like it had been used recently and brought out a yerba mate powder packet. 

Eventually, he sat across from Oliver, cup and straw in hand. The pancakes were so good. Oliver wished he didn’t have to feel awful when he was eating good food.

“How’re the pancakes?” Ángel asked brightly. Oliver struggled to form a response. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what to say, but he understood Ángel would be concerned if he didn’t do it in the right tone or using the right facial expression.

It turns out it didn’t matter, because he had taken too long to respond regardless. Dammit. “Is everything okay?” He asked, bright eyes and chipper demeanor dimmed down. Oliver instantly felt worse. He was so happy. Why did he have to ruin that?

“Are they bad?! Did I miss an eggshell?” He exclaimed, as if an eggshell was enough for Oliver to drop dead from food poisoning. 

“No! No. The pancakes are good.” He responded quickly. Ángel didn’t say anything, but he was still staring at Oliver. He cleared his throat.

“How long am I… allowed to stay here? I don’t want to overstay.” Oliver asked, and then immediately shoved a bit of pancake in his mouth. He didn’t lie; they were really good. 

Of course, he had about thirty-four other questions he wanted to ask, but a little voice kept reminding him that he wasn’t a detective and shouldn’t be interrogating people in every conversation he was in. That was rude.

“As long as you want.” Ángel said it, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Oliver didn’t know how to respond. How could he communicate the concept of being selfish to someone like Ángel? Instead he just said, “Ok.”

After breakfast, Oliver actually got up to get ready. He may or may not have gotten lost in Ángel’s apartment once or twice, but if he did it wasn’t his fault! The place was somehow even bigger than Oliver’s own.

He couldn’t navigate the many, many bottles of different kinds of soap in Ángel’s shower, so he just picked one that didn’t smell too strongly and hoped it was good enough.

He felt clean and refreshed, and in his own clothes, and out of that horrible hospital. And there was a little orange cat meowing and rubbing at his legs. Ah, right.

The second time Oliver had woken up at the hospital, he had regained enough memory to actually think about the events of the night he got shot. He was restless at the thought that Mozilla was still there, so he practically pounced on Ángel the second he walked in the room. Not actually pounced, of course, because he was still immobile at the time.

As it turned out, Ángel had been taking care of him while Oliver was in the hospital. The thought of Ángel trying to take care of Oliver’s chaotic orange fuzzball was enough to make him scrunch his nose in an attempt not to laugh.

Over the course of the week, Ángel asked for a lot of advice. Mozilla was eating, but he would still try to bite at Ángel’s hand whenever he fed him and would run away whenever Ángel so much as dared to stroke him. Ángel looked miserable at the news that that was just how Mozilla was.

By the time Oliver arrived at Ángel’s apartment, it seemed the two had mostly made up. Mozilla no longer tried pouncing on Ángel, nor on his window curtains. Upon seeing Oliver open the door, he immediately began meowing and pawing at his legs.

Clothes, check. Shower, check. Cat, check. Work, hm.

He’d discussed work with Ángel on the ride to his apartment. Apparently, there was a moral question about allowing your employees to go back to work the day they got out of the hospital. Well, for Ángel at least. If he tried to miss a day of work for Coli, it doesn't matter if he had an excuse; he was just being lazy and ungrateful.

After much discussion, Ángel eventually relented on allowing him to work from home for the foreseeable future. 

Ángel didn’t seem to have a proper desk anywhere, so Oliver usually just found a flat surface and carried it to the couch as he began work. A couple of minutes later, Ángel would emerge from one of the other rooms and go to join him. He sat on the loveseat across from Oliver.

It was remarkable how similar it was to how they normally were. The familiarity allowed for an easy routine to form. They woke up in separate rooms; one or the other made breakfast, they got ready, and then did whatever activities the day required of them.

Oliver tried to do a lot of errands as a way to pay Ángel back for allowing him to stay at his apartment. Even after the doctor told him not to do anything physically taxing, Oliver was mostly intent on ignoring that. Ángel took the doctor a lot more seriously, forcibly taking over anything he deemed, “hard labor,” which seemed to be anything more than doing the dishes.

After a few days of this, Oliver started to understand what Vivi was talking about. Ángel eventually relented, though it took a full week to gather the courage to ask him to stop worrying. The issue was, as soon as Oliver even suggested leaving the apartment, Ángel would have already put on his coat and invited himself along.

It’s not that he was annoyed by Ángel being there! Quite the opposite, actually. Whenever they weren’t going back and forth with gentle banter, they were steeped in a comfortable silence. Oliver didn’t think he’d ever felt as comforted by a person as he did in Ángel’s presence by his side. … Should he write that down?

Still, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t mind not having the feeling of eyes on him at all times. Besides, the whole point of doing errands for him was that he was trying to pay Ángel back. If he always tagged along, it wasn’t like Oliver was doing him many favors.

There were other ways to try to help him, though. Oliver wasn’t the best at cooking, but it seemed Ángel was abysmal. He knew how to make pasta, but that was pretty much it. Some nights, the two would cook together, Oliver instructing Ángel while he relearned to make him meals himself as well. 

Oliver hardly noticed the first time he brought up Eugene Coli out loud. He equally hadn’t noticed he’d been avoiding mentioning him to Ángel up until that point. Ángel always got weird at the mention of his name. Oliver supposed he kind of knew why now. If the two of them had met at the party, it wasn’t a jump to conclusions to imagine had an altercation there. It had been an innocent remark, but the man glowered at his name nonetheless.

“Why don’t you wear your hat?” Ángel asked, somewhat randomly. They were discussing plans for where to go after lunch, as Ángel had mentioned he wanted to go out, and Oliver had done all the necessary work for that day. 

Oliver gave him a confused look. “I do, now. I just take it off once I get inside.”

“Why?” Ángel pressed.

“It's rude.” Ángel raised an eyebrow, and Oliver felt the need to further explain himself. “Mr. Coli always said hats were out of fashion. I just don’t want to seem unprofessional, as believable as it is.” He gestures down to the general disorder of his face and clothing. Now that he was thinking about it, maybe he shouldn’t wear the hat today.

“Well, Mister Coli—” He said the name mockingly, as if the mere mention of his name could elicit malicious laughs. “--clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Haha, well, he’s not wrong. I do look like a bit of a mess.” He laughed self-deprecatingly. His hair had always been a point of contention. It was too messy, too curly, and too long. Eugene had some very strict masculinity ideals, and he always said long hair was a sign he probably smoked weed. Coli was… he said a lot of strange things. He touched his hair absentmindedly.

Ángel furrowed his eyebrows, reevaluating Oliver’s hair. Oliver curled at his thorough analysis, feeling judged. “You don’t! You just haven’t been taking care of yourself.”

“I mean… I try…” Oliver said quietly. He could’ve tried harder. He hadn’t thought about it all that much until Mr. Coli came along and told him everything he was doing wrong with his life. And once he had pointed something out, it stuck. Oliver still constantly checked how his posture looked or if he seemed too meek or uncoordinated, like Eugene always said he was.

His hair was getting long again. It was almost reaching his shoulders at this point. Its weight was comfortable, familiar, but he was sure it didn’t look very nice. “It’s getting too long… I should cut it again.”

Ángel considered this, looking at his hair and inspecting it. Oliver wasn’t sure whether he should straighten up or draw back from the attention. “Do you want it short?” He asked.

Oliver considered his question. He didn’t really care much about his outward appearance, not really. It just didn’t seem all that important when there were other things to worry about, like the next case, or how the bakery closest to his house was closing, or the inevitability of a long, drawn-out, painful death.

“I don’t know, doesn’t it look better short? Like.. more professional?” He asked genuinely. Ángel always looked so nice. Surely a fashion man like him would know things.

Ángel squinted and proceeded to start dragging Oliver over to the door. He shoved Oliver’s hat into his chest. “C’mon. I know a good hairstylist.”

Oliver was going to get his hair cut short again, but—well, it wasn’t that Ángel didn’t let him, but rather he looked at Oliver with pleading eyes until he relented.

Beebo hadn’t been to too many professional hairstylists in his life. His mother cut Oliver’s hair for most of his childhood years, and part of being an adult was learning to cut it himself. It was part of the reason he’d let it grow out so long.

He expected to look in the mirror and see the same mess he always had. Instead, he saw… curls. Loose, big, and shiny. It was a shape his hair had only ever taken once or twice, and Oliver had never known how to replicate it. His hair was still slightly damp, but it looked nice. He looked nice.

Ángel and the hairdresser had a conversation above him, but he was hardly paying any attention. His hair was still long, just enough to be put in a ponytail. But it didn’t look messy, or scruffy, or… unprofessional. But it was still long. And nice. And comfortable. Oliver didn’t know he could look nice.

By the time they left the hairdresser’s shop, Ángel had already managed to buy a bag full of what he called “essentials.” Oliver spent most of the walk home touching and poking at the ends of his hair. It was nice. He stopped when he started tearing up.

Ángel would compliment Oliver at every opportunity after that. They were never just random compliments, either. He was brushing his hair? Ángel would tell him how nice it looked. Doing housework? Suddenly, Oliver was “a saint coming from heaven,” and Ángel “didn’t deserve” his kindness. Don’t get him started on when he made Ángel food.

Ángel had always been an affectionate person, but he only seemed to get more so as time went on. Oliver thought he’d tire of it eventually, but he never did.

For all Oliver felt better about his new haircut, it also made him feel… guiltier, somehow. Ángel had already been balancing Oliver’s bad social skills and mental health. That nightmare at the hospital wasn’t the last time a similar event happened. On top of that, he was housing him, giving him food, and now he was paying for haircuts, too? It all felt so selfish of him.

“Are you sure it’s okay that I'm staying here?” He asked a few days later, after he’d finally snapped. Oliver wasn’t having the best day. He had assigned blame to the particularly bad night terrors he’d had last night, but Oliver had also been nervous all week. Just small things, but they were equally exhausting.

He couldn’t quite describe why he felt he needed to pay Ángel back. He’d made it clear their relationship wasn’t at all transactional, though Oliver couldn’t help but try his best to see it so.

Oliver always had trouble showing appreciation. He was always grateful; he just didn’t know what face to make, or what tone to make, or whatever would make the other person know what he was feeling. That’s why he tried to make it up to them.

Used to do it in other ways; he spent more time with them, shared his interests, or just worked silently along with them. 

He remembered, months ago, he was heading from the bus stop and up the hill to Eugene Coli’s mansion. He was exhausted, though he couldn’t identify a reason. He hadn’t gotten much sleep the night previous—he was out doing errands for Mr. Coli—though that was pretty normal. So, then, why did he feel so tired?

He had only been working for Mr. Coli for a few weeks. He knew he might have to work hard, especially since he wasn’t used to working for an employer, but this was becoming too much to handle. He had almost forgotten to feed Mozilla last night!

He stepped up the last of the hill, knocking on the door. He had been working weekends, too… maybe he could take Sunday off? Oliver thought he needed to sit for a bit. 

“Oliver! Come in, the door is open.” He heard the cheerful, enigmatic voice sound from inside the building. Walking in, the house was distinctly messier than he remembered.

The tables that had once held some truly glorious snacks had been moved around and surrounded by chairs. Eugene was standing next to one. He and the table looked prim and clean, especially compared to their surroundings. Though Eugene’s hair wasn’t combed. Somehow, the table was already set.

“Come in! Sit.” Mr. Coli gestured to the chair he had pulled out. Oliver was immediately set on edge. He didn’t really feel like sitting; it made him feel vulnerable. Mr. Coli was still grinning, but his eye twitched, so Oliver quickly sat down.

“Why have you come to visit me, Oliver?” He sounded genuinely excited at Oliver’s presence, as if he were some friend visiting for some tea.

“You… you asked for me?” Oliver said, confused.

“Oh! Right, I forgot.” Mr. Coli’s grin dropped, though only for a split second before it was back up, plastered across his face. Mr. Coli sat across from him at the table. “How are you, Oliver? Have you been enjoying the job?”

Ah, so Mr. Coli was asking him how he felt! Oliver felt relieved. Clearly, he just hadn’t noticed how fatigued Oliver was feeling. He had felt a little bit, bringing it up out of nowhere, but now at least he could pretend as if he hadn’t thought about it before.

“Actually, I was thinking of taking the weekends off. Not that I don’t enjoy working for you! It’s just a little tiring.” He explained. 

Mr. Coli’s face tightened, and Oliver suddenly felt like he had made the wrong decision. Mr. Coli hadn’t even said anything, but Oliver could feel his entire body tense up. His instincts were all telling him to get out of the house, though Oliver wasn’t sure why. Mr. Coli’s grin grew wider.

“Oliver,” he tutted, with perfect posture and a tone like one might speak to a child. “You know, that really hurts me.”

”Uh—um, what?” Oliver stammered. Mr. Coli had stood up, and he was walking around the table over to Oliver slowly. Oliver wanted to back away the more he approached.

“I’ve been trying. Really! I have!” He put his hands up, as if Oliver had tried denying his point, which he hadn’t. “I mean, I don’t think you really understand what working with someone like you is like. Trying to remember all your phobias… your triggers…” Mr. Coli sighed.

“It’s exhausting! But I do it for you. If you took the weekend off even once, it would really mess up all those plans I had been making for so long.” He continued. Was it really that hard…? Oliver had no idea. He supposed it made sense; none of the errands he made Oliver run interacted with his fears in any way. Well, most of them, anyway. 

“And after I do all that, you’re still being ungrateful.” He sighed, and Oliver felt like the walls were about to collapse in on him. Was it always so claustrophobic here...?

“No one else would ever hire you in your condition. I mean, some of these accommodations are silly! You agree with me on that, don’t you?” He did. He had searched for a job for so long, but the longer he waited, the harder it got to find a place that would let him have an interview. He was already low on funds.

“Oliver. I’m saying this because I care about you. You know that, don’t you?” He said, gripping Oliver’s shoulder tightly. Oliver thought his gaze looked predatory, though he still felt guilt combining with the fear. Mr. Coli was right, in a way. Oliver knew, logically, that no one else would probably hire him. And a lot of his fears were pretty stupid.. 

“But! Don’t worry! I have another job for you, Saturday morning. You do this one favor for me, and we’ll forget this entire conversation ever happened, okay?” Mr. Coli gripped his shoulder tightly. He was right. 

Shakily, he nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

Mr. Coli grinned wider. “Of course you are. Saturday it is then.”

Ángel was sitting on the other side of the couch from him, doing what Oliver had always assumed was work, but he could now see was actually random computer games.

“What?” Ángel still looked confused, but now he looked concerned, too. Dammit. He had failed the communication thing again.

He thought Ángel had just not heard him, maybe, so he asked again, “It’s not—you’re sure you’re not bothered with me staying here?”

Ángel’s eyes widened. “Of course not! Why would you think that?”

“I know I'm not the easiest person to be friends with.” Even without the nightmares and the mental issues, he was still annoying. Too loud, too passionate, but still too absent and cold. He couldn’t pick up if people were upset or not, so he just apologized constantly.

Ángel was a kind person and had clearly known him before, so it made sense he’d want to help Oliver. He didn’t want Ángel to think it would be rude to drop Oliver now, especially since he must’ve realized how much work it is to talk to someone like him. It was a thing Coli said constantly, how exhausting it was to constantly have to deal with his mental problems.

“I get it if you’re just doing this to be nice, or if you think you owe me because we know each other, but you really don’t have to.” I don’t deserve it. I haven’t done anything to.

“Ollie.” Ángel stood up from his chair to look at Oliver. fully. “Beebo.” He took a step forward. “Beebster.” He reached up, and Oliver thought he was going to hold his face again, but his hand sputtered and went to his shoulder instead. “Ollivester.” That was a new one.

“You’ve done so much for me, I can’t believe you can’t see it.” 

“Is this about the time I can’t remember? At the party?” Oliver jumped at the chance, though he felt bad immediately after.

“A little bit,” Ángel said, sounding disconcerted. Oh, no, please don’t be upset, Oliver thought; that’s the last thing I wanted.

“Sorry.” Oliver slipped immediately. Apologizing hardly took any input from him at all at this point. “You don’t have to talk about it. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“It’s okay.” Thank God, Ángel was smiling again. Oliver let out a sigh of relief. “But it’s more than that,” Ángel continued.

“You’re more than that. You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met, I think. And you’re so, so smart. And you don’t try to hit me whenever I try to talk about art, like Vivi does.”

“You listen,” he continued, though Oliver already felt himself heating up. “You know so much, but you’ll still listen to my silly little rambles. Or you’ll talk to me, even when I can’t talk back.”

“You try so hard, all the time. You deserve the world, I think.”

Oliver slumped. It was late, and he was tired, and even if he’d regret it once he regained his mind, for now he just wanted to be held. To be comforted. Ángel wraps his arms around him, and Oliver feels like he should be pushing him away. Ángel was just doing this to be nice. You shouldn’t take advantage of his kindness. 

Oliver bumped his head against Ángel’s shoulder, wrapping his arms underneath Ángel’s own. He gripped his soft seater harder, tucking his face and eyes into his shoulder. Don’t cry into his probably super expensive sweater. That would be really bad.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He didn’t quite know what he was apologizing for. He hardly did. He just knew he must be doing something wrong because everything was falling apart.

“Don’t be.” He said, voice half muffled by Oliver’s shoulder. Then, he whispered, “I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m sorry I left in the first place.”

Ángel slowly and gently guided him to the couch, still holding onto each other's arms. He was sitting with his knees to his chin, leaning his body and head on Ángel’s. He put a movie on, and Oliver was instantly distracted.

It was a detective movie, which seemed intentional, but Oliver wasn’t complaining. Did Ángel… did Ángel think he only ever watched detective movies? He hadn’t seen this one yet. At least it wasn't supernatural. Or a murder mystery, for that matter. He was comfortable and warm, and Oliver found himself just about ready to fall asleep.

The movie was stupid, though. He knew it wouldn’t be accurate; that would just be boring. An accurate movie would require far too much sitting in a car and asking random people the same questions and not enough figuring things out to be accurate. This, however, was a stupid movie.

It attempted a misdirect, but that only led to the actual culprit having little to no evidence against them. He told Ángel as such, just in case he was actually buying into this mess of a detective case, but, strangely, Ángel only laughed at him.

Their moments weren’t always high intensity, either.

Oliver still remembers the first time it happened. He had woken up from a nightmare—the kind he could never remember by the time he woke up. They just instilled him with a deep-seated feeling of wrongness, like he wasn’t supposed to be there. He checked the time, wondering if it was late enough to excuse an early morning start.

3:26:02. Goddammit.

Still, he knew he wasn’t going to be falling asleep for a little while. Getting up and running at his eyes, he noticed the lights in the hallway were on. Had Ángel forgotten to turn them off last night? He was usually the last to sleep.

He opened the door quietly. He peered his head out, looking to his left, then to his—… Ángel?

He almost yelped when he saw him. Ángel was sitting on the floor next to Oliver’s bedroom door, back against the wall and feet played out in front of him. He was clutching something in one of his hands, though Oliver couldn’t see what it was between his fingers.

Ángel somehow didn’t notice him for a full second, and Oliver thought he might’ve been asleep. He had dark circles under his eyes, which Oliver was sure were not there the night previous. When Ángel saw him, he flinched, looking just as startled as Oliver felt.

They stood and stared at each other for a minute. Oliver wanted to ask what Ángel could possibly be doing outside his door at nearly four in the morning. Ángel spoke first, however.

“Hey, Ollie,” he rasped. He sounded tired but still managed to keep up a warm tone. “Rough night, huh? D’you want some water? Let’s go into the kitchen.” Ángel stood up before Oliver could say another word.

He thought he might grab a cup of water, or maybe even coffee, but he stalled when he saw the kitchen light was on. Inside was Ángel, staring at his reflection in a cup of water. “Ángel?” He whispered, his voice still a bit raspy from sleep. Ángel jumped at his voice.

He looked… Well, Ángel never looked bad, per se, but he certainly looked less perfect. His hair was tussled, his sleep clothes were crumpled, and he looked similar to how he had the week prior to Oliver leaving to visit his family.

Oliver nodded, silently and confusedly following him to the kitchen. Ángel grabbed a cup for Oliver and put a second glass on his side on the table and sat down across from him. Neither of the two said anything. Beebo was scared to break the silence.

He wondered what Ángel could be doing up so late. He didn’t seem the type to have nightmares—maybe he did? He supposed it would make sense, especially after the few things he’d told Oliver about his time at the party, or even just what he’d seen with Oliver. He’d never even conceived the possibility that Ángel would have nightmares. He always just seemed so—so okay.

And, for that matter, why was he outside Oliver’s door? How long had he been there? And what was he holding? Though he was keeping his hand under the table, Oliver could tell Ángel was still gripping the—whatever it was. Tightly, too. The most Oliver could make out was the tiniest glint on metal between his white-knuckled fingertips.

Oliver stewed in the silence, slowly sipping at his water. Ángel just stared into space, not moving or saying anything. When Oliver was done with his drink, Ángel quietly got up and whispered, “We should probably head back to bed,” with a small, tired smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

The routine continued a couple of times, getting more and more comfortable as time went on. There was no pressure to speak or act normally. They simply enjoyed the other’s company. Or, Oliver enjoyed Ángel’s company, at least.

Weeks passed with Oliver hardly noticing them fly by. 

It was hard to tell when, exactly, he first fell in love with Ángel.

Love had always been a difficult thing for Oliver. Many of the difficulties he had with finding and maintaining normal relationships became even more apparent when they were applied to romantic ones.

Beyond that, attraction was… hard. Complicated. He always knew when he was attracted to someone. But, rather than acting on these impulses, his brain went around in circles of anxiety until he eventually tricked himself into not talking to them at all.

Maybe it was the night Ángel had saved his life. Maybe it was long before that, during one of the many visits at work, or the conversations over pastries or drinks. Maybe it wasn’t a specific moment, but a gathering over time. 

Emotions were finicky like that. Difficult to identify and even more difficult to categorize. If Oliver were being honest with himself, maybe he would say that the love had always been there.

Unfortunately, the only certain fact was that he was, currently, stupidly, extremely in love with Ángel.

Oliver had always known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that the way Ángel treated him wasn’t normal. It’s what started his investigation in the first place. 

After he had the conversation in the hospital, he finally had a reason; they knew each other. Still, it didn’t feel quite right. Though compliments and affectionate touches and going out for drinks weren’t inherently romantic, it felt like it was.

The biggest reason Oliver had convinced himself it wasn’t real for so long was because he couldn’t believe it. Ángel was… well, he was incredible.

Fully confident, and he had every right to be. As much as he pretended to be aloof, he put so much of himself into every little thing he did. And it all worked out in his favor because he tried, and he cared.

He was smart, too. Not necessarily in the ways most people may deem intelligent—he had told Oliver before about how the only reason he graduated high school was because the teachers liked him enough to round up his grades—but in other ways. Ways Oliver couldn’t hope to ever achieve.

He knew about art and culture. He seemed to be able to talk to just about anyone and hold a conversation with them with ease. It was no accident that people liked him; he was incredibly charming. Oliver had once watched him slowly entertain and gain the favor of every single denizen of a bar. 

He was funny, too. In an awful, strange way. And dramatic, every minor inconvenience spelling the end of the world. He went on long tangents and could come up with just about the most creative insult Oliver had ever heard on the spot.

They were at a bar when it happened, as they always were. It had been a fairly uneventful evening, especially since Vivi hadn’t come to join them this time. Oliver didn’t feel like having too many drinks.

Ángel had had a few more than he had. He was tipsy, but not enough to actually inhibit him all too much. The only difference in his behavior was the slight looseness of his lips and more languid movements.

Oliver hadn’t needed to smoke in a while, but he had been feeling an itch all night. The bar was on the second floor of a restaurant, and there was a balcony where he could light a smoke without issue.

Oliver felt worried for leaving Ángel in the bar all alone, but his concern wavered as Ángel immediately opted himself to come along.

The cold winter air had slowly faded to a nice spring breeze. The light pollution was far too much to see any stars, but if Oliver squinted enough, he thought he could see one—no, that was a plane.

The only light was coming from inside the window, blanketing them both in a warm yellow. The muffled sound of the bar and the wind was all Oliver could hear. He lit a cigarette for himself, but Ángel said he didn’t want one.

He closed his eyes briefly as he took a puff, letting the bright lights and loud noises fade from his mind. He was leaning on the banister of the balcony, looking out over the capitol with his arms crossed on the bar. 

Ángel placed a hand on his, looking out to the city. He was clearly thinking about something, a small smile on his face. It was only a small touch, and one that Ángel did often, in fact. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

But, as the peace left his mind, Oliver got to thinking.

Ángel was a socially intelligent person. There was no way he wasn’t aware of what he was doing when he complimented him. There was no way he would linger on touches that weren’t intentional, or the way he would stare when he thought Oliver wasn’t paying attention was just him zoning out.

Oliver was an intelligent person, too. He had graduated with honors, after all. And, in his professional opinion, the only reason he would do these things in succession and without proper reason was because—

Oh. He was flirting. 

Ah. Well. Oliver understood the concept. He wasn’t very.. good at it, but he understood what it was and what it meant. Oliver was always too direct to flirt.

He looked over at Ángel, who noticed his gaze and turned to look back. He smiled.

Hm.

Oliver put out his cigarette and slinked his hand out from Ángel’s hand, which he looked briefly disappointed about. Any disappointment was immediately disregarded once Oliver placed his hands on either of Ángel’s cheeks, holding his face. It was an action Ángel himself had performed multiple times on Oliver.

Still, it seemed like Ángel found it rather surprising, as he widened his eyes and his face flushed. It was difficult to see in the low light, but still visible. Oliver wasn’t quite sure where to go from here, so he decided to be as direct as possible.

“Ángel,” he began. Yes, his name, that was a good start. The wind light blew his and Ángel’s hair dramatically. Oliver fought the urge to sneeze. It was very romantic. “Do you like men?” No, that wasn’t what he meant to ask—

Ángel gave a broken laugh, but Oliver wasn’t sure what he found funny. Much of his confidence immediately faded, only to be brought back as Ángel placed one of his hands on top of Oliver’s. He smiled warmly, his eyes squinting. “Yes, I do.” He replied. Oliver looked to his lips as he did, eyes flickering up and down.

Ok, he could go with this.

“Do you want to kiss me? Right now?”

Ángel let out a heavy breath, and it suddenly occurred to Oliver that he was flustered. It was better than any compliment Oliver could receive.

“Yes. I—ah, I would very much like that.”

Oliver didn’t need any more confirmation. He pulled Ángel’s face down slightly so he could reach.

He hadn’t expected it to be as gentle as it was. Their lips touched, and it felt as if something had locked into place. It felt right, and not just because the sensation of kissing Ángel was enamoring in and of itself. 

Ángel tilted his chin so it was more comfortable, and Oliver let him. It was more than a simple peck, but it felt nice, unhurried. There was no rush. He felt like they could stay there, heads pressed together, for hours.

The calm silence was broken by Ángel kissing him again and again, and then peppering light kisses across his cheeks, quicker and lighter. It made him feel almost giddy.

The two went home soon after. Oliver instinctually went into his own bedroom, tilting his head in confusion when Ángel followed him in.

Ángel spent the better part of the night tracing patterns into their interlocked hands while Oliver fell in and out of sleep. It was the best rest he’d had in a while.

Chapter Text

Oliver was looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. It didn’t feel quite right to call it his bathroom, but it wasn't Ángel’s anymore, either.

He’d been living there for long enough that the lines were blurred between Oliver’s and ours and Ángel’s. The amount of clothes exchanged between the two of them was truly astounding given that Oliver only owned so many. Half the clothes Ángel ‘stole’ were those he bought for Oliver in the first place, so it wasn’t as much of a theft as it was a sudden return of his rental.

That was besides the point. The point was: Oliver had been living with his boyfriend for a while now, and he was very much still having heart attacks every time Ángel so much as looked at him.

It must be fatal, Oliver thought, to love something this much.

It certainly felt fatal, but at the same time it filled him with a giddy joy. Oliver had had relationships before, sure, but that was when he was a stupid teenager with a silly crush. Now, he was an adult with a silly crush. 

It didn’t help matters that Ángel had decided to be the most caring and kind person ever, on top of the whole being hot thing. 

Last week Oliver had taken to snooping around in his apartment, trying to memorize where all the rooms were. Just like his old apartment, there were far too many closets in places where storage was absolutely not necessary. Oliver had been using the central few rooms for so long that it seemed strange that he hadn’t explored the entire apartment yet. 

Ángel followed behind him, explaining what each room was as he walked in. Or, he tried—but most of the time Ángel’s description of a storage space was something along the lines of, ‘Oh, I just put random stuff in there.’ He sounded amused with himself, though Oliver couldn’t tell if that was because he was making fun of him or not.

As Oliver approached another closet, Ángel was a little bit late in giving him an explanation. By the time he heard the man exclaim, “Wait, not that one—!” He had already cracked the door open, and some of the contents stuffed inside spilled out.

“Ah-! Wait, I can explain-!” Ángel was saying, but Oliver was far too engrossed in the contents of the closet. Puzzles. Tons of them. They lined the shelves, which seemed to harbor everything from handmade wooden pieces to sudoku books to a family of Rubik’s cubes on the bottom right. Some had piled to the point of overspilling. 

One in particular had managed to fall all the way down and clatter to Oliver’s foot. He was almost too entranced to do anything other than gawk at the piles and piles of puzzles. Ángel shut himself up, and Beebo leaned down to pick up the fallen wooden block. It was a simple design, a simple box with a T-shaped piece that accompanied it. As Oliver turned it over in his hand, he could see the other five T-shaped pieces had begun to come loose.

“You kept this?” He asked Ángel, who was still frozen still. 

“Yes, ahm. I did.” He stammered, crossing his arms and hunching his shoulders. “It’s still solved…” Oliver mumbled.

Oliver turned back to the closet, gazing at the endless pieces like he had found a table of free samples at a bakery. “I didn’t know you liked puzzles this much. You never even tried the ones I gave back for you to solve.”

“I don’t.” Ángel admitted. Oliver turned back to look at him. “I bought them. For you. Um.”

Oliver gaped, looking between the overflowing piles of puzzles and Ángel. He had searched up some of these in the past—weren’t they really expensive?! And, taking a second look, there were so many… how did he even find half of these? Oliver had been given his first not that long into their—at the time, work—relationship. He must’ve been hoarding these since…

“I’m sorry—I know it seems a little, ah, creepy. Now that I’m thinking about it? I just wanted—I mean, I thought you might like something a little more comfortable, and you always looked so happy whenever I gave one to you, so—” as Ángel ranted, Oliver stepped closer.

Oliver was pretty sure he was actually having heart palpitations this time. He felt like crying, a little bit. Ángel had somehow—probably through the party, now that he thought about it—found out he liked puzzles and then proceeded to hoard tons and tons of puzzles. Over months to give to Oliver, just because he seemed a little upset. That was so sweet; it was a little bit disgusting.

He placed his hands on either side of Ángel’s face, knowing it always seemed to stop him from talking. It did. Ángel looked entranced. “Ángel, that’s adorable.” He kissed Ángel on the nose, unable to resist the urge to give his boyfriend kissies. 

Oliver’s hair had grown even longer now. It was just barely long enough that he had managed to pull the wavy strands into a small braid. Lightly placing his hat over his head, just low enough to hide his eyes without making him too overheated, he considered himself in the mirror.

It was comfortable. Typically, that was a sign that whatever he was doing was wrong, but…

He looked nice! He hoped Ángel would think so too.

And Ángel did. As soon as he came to the door, Ángel’s eyes darted to his messy, mangled braid. Ángel kissed at the corner of his eye. “Hello, beautiful.” He remarked, his voice dipping a bit.

His outfit was practical, too. Though the summer hadn’t quite hit yet, the air was bone dry and uncomfortably hot. The breeze across the nape of his neck was his only comfort in these trying times. 

“It’s not even that bad!” Ángel had exclaimed, once they got outside. Of course he never had any issue. He looked glamorously perfect, as always. Oliver grumbled. It wasn’t fair.

It had been a while since they had last gone out on a date. Not that they hadn’t tried, but something always seemed to come up. 

Actually, going out at all had become rarer and rarer. Ángel had insisted that he didn’t want Oliver to be doing grocery shopping or other errands, all of which involved leaving the apartment. He always said it was because he was being chivalrous—his words, not Beebo’s—but Oliver had begun to suspect he just didn’t trust Oliver to do them correctly. He kept forgetting how rich his boyfriend was, always picking the least expensive option by default.

Any time he was outside, whether just because he wanted to go on a walk or visit somewhere specific, Ángel was always there to accompany him. It was almost as if he had a Pavlovian response to the sound of Oliver opening the front door.

Just last week they were planning on going to a museum for a date—something Oliver had taken great pains to ensure Ángel was actually interested in—when the museum suddenly closed down for the week the morning they were planning on going.

Apparently, there had been an issue with security at the museum. It was a fairly high-class museum, so if anything was stolen, it would have been worth billions of pesos. So, when Dominion of all criminals was spotted after years of inaction scoping the area, the museum had decided to take a few days to heighten their security, just in case.

“That rat bastard… First they cuff me to a rooftop; now they ruin my dates?!” Oliver huffed to himself. And he didn’t even end up stealing anything!

“Ollie? Are you coming?” Ángel had called from the living room. Oliver thought he must always have a backup plan prepared, because he seemed remarkably able to come up with an alternative date idea from the comfort of their living room. He never even seemed too disappointed, either.

“Are you alright?” Ángel had asked, coming into the kitchen, where Oliver was still staring at the closed status of the museum, willing it to change back.

“I was excited to show you the microraptors…” Oliver said glumly," He hoped he wasn’t being too annoying but also knew that Ángel never seemed to mind him. “You still can!” Ángel comforted. “I’m sure we could find stuff online! You can talk about them as much as you’d like!”

Oliver nodded silently. He really shouldn’t be this upset, but he didn’t like that their plan had been interrupted. He’d spent the entire morning mentally preparing to go outside with the big crowds and loud places, and now he wasn’t even allowed to go see the dinosaurs.

“I… I’m really sorry we couldn’t go to the museum today. But, hey! That means we can stay in, right?” Ángel tried. Maybe Ángel was more upset about not getting to see the microraptors than he’d first thought? He looked a bit ill.

“I’m okay.” Oliver said, forcibly vanishing the disappointment from his voice. Even if they couldn’t visit the museum, there was always another time. He could still hang out with his super hot boyfriend, at least. “It’s not your fault we couldn’t go out. Staying in sounds nice.”

Ángel didn’t look any happier. Oliver wondered if he’d ever be able to comfort him in the way Ángel had done for him.

They had ended up staying in and watching some movie on the couch and having cheap box wine with dinner. Oliver was originally planning on actually paying attention—the premise had seemed interesting, a completely average guy who accidentally became a spy for his old boss after he quit his job—but Ángel had quickly become distracting.

It was a nice day, but not all that different from what they normally did. Vivi had even stopped by halfway through to grab something, completely uncaring of whatever Ángel and Oliver were up to.

So, to say Oliver was excited for that day was an understatement. They were going to go on a real date, outside, and nothing was going to go wrong. In fact, if the date was canceled, Oliver was pretty sure he was going to hit the person responsible over the head with the nearest blunt object.

“But, if it’s too hot, we don’t have to go!” Ángel said, nervously. He had pulled out his phone, and Oliver could see he was looking up the conditions necessary for heat stroke. “Now that you mention it, maybe it is a little hot. I’m sure it won’t be so hot to—” Oliver grabbed his wrist.

“No!” He exclaimed, just a little bit too aggressively and maybe a little loud. He quickly tried smoothing out his tone as he spoke again. “I want to go out today. You’re right, it’s not that hot.” It was a lie, but he couldn’t let Ángel know that. 

He practically dragged Ángel out of the door, not giving him any time to reconsider his decision. They were going to the museum, for real this time, Dominion be damned.

The walk there was nice, at least. Any later in the year, and the heat would’ve been suffocating, but there was still a light breeze going through the city, and the sun didn’t seem like it wanted Oliver specifically to die on the spot. Yet.

They were lucky they lived in the capital, so they could hold hands without getting too many strange looks. Oliver smiled to himself; thirty-minute walk and zero slurs! A new record, he was sure.

Ángel must’ve had a crick in his neck because he was whipping his head around, especially at sudden loud noises and people. Actually, maybe he didn’t like the crowds? Oliver could relate. He squeezed his hand, hoping to remind Ángel that he had familiar people around.

He usually tried to spend as little time in the main parts of the city as possible. As the summer approached, there were more and more people in the city. Everyone was practically walking shoulder to shoulder with the strangers walking opposite to them. Strangely, people seemed to be giving him and Ángel a slightly wider berth. Maybe Oliver was wrong, and the Capitol isn’t as accepting as he thought.

A man walking side-by-side with three of his friends bumped into Oliver’s shoulder, and Oliver saw him actually jerk away from Ángel as he walked past. When Oliver looked at his boyfriend’s face, he just smiled.

The museum itself was a large, grand building. Oliver wondered how much the city spent on the marble buildings alone.

The inside was much nicer. The rooms were dim, there were far fewer people, and Oliver could’ve stayed there if only for the cool, chilly air conditioning the space provided.

He dragged Ángel around, pulling him by their intertwined hands. Oliver had been to the museum once before, but only when he was much younger, and back then he wasn’t allowed to talk as loud. His mother would shush him and tell him to hold his hands together so he wouldn’t be tempted to flap them around.

Oliver hardly noticed his volume when he was speaking to Ángel, but he didn’t tell him to stop. It was a very nice date, better than most of the ones Oliver had been on in his life. The sounds and sights of the large crowds were completely forgotten in favor of the epic highs and lows of the megaraptor fossil.

Oliver tried to check in to make sure Ángel was having as much fun as he was. He always told him that he liked hearing Oliver talk, but he wanted to make sure he liked the date, too. Though Ángel didn’t seem to mind, he still felt bad for dragging Ángel around like this. And every so often Ángel would say something stupid or wink or kiss his face, and Oliver would be forced to hide his blush under his hat, like a teenager with a crush. The idea of finding a private space became more tempting every time Ángel offered.

Ángel, to his credit, seemed a lot more interested in the security of the museum than its contents. He had been particularly eyeing the security guards and attendants whenever one popped up.

“Woah,” Ángel whistled, tilting his head upwards and away from the tiny model of a segisaurus and towards some corner of the high ceilings. “They really did improve their security. Those are some very expensive security cameras.”

He nudged Oliver, as if he was letting him in on some inside joke. He cleared his throat and looked away when Oliver tilted his head in confusion.

As they went further into the museum, into the darker and more secluded spaces, Ángel slowly started responding to Oliver less and less. His hand remained tight around Oliver’s, growing tighter. Oliver didn’t want to say anything, but it was beginning to become uncomfortable.

But! Nothing will ruin this date! Oliver simply tightened his hold a little more in response, hoping that’s what he wanted.

They had looked at a map before going through the museum, strategically planning their trip so they could see as much as possible and still have time for food, which was a required part of the trip. The last section they were going to go into was the marine section.

If Oliver was being honest, he was starting to get on edge about the dimly lit corridors. He was able to see the exhibitions just fine, but the other museumgoers were difficult to see, dark silhouettes against the harsh lights of the animal displays. 

He couldn’t see their faces. If he looked, he couldn’t see Ángel either. When the light reflected off of them just right, he could only see their eyes. Oliver walked a little faster through the tunnels. Still, he found that the dark didn’t bother him as much as it used to. Ángel’s hand was still holding his.

Speaking of, Oliver felt Ángel stop suddenly. He lurched slightly at the sudden stop in movement and turned back to see what was going on. Ángel wasn’t looking back at him, however. He was looking at the other people around them.

“Ángel? Are you okay?”

He turned at the sound of Oliver’s voice, but his eyes kept darting around. Specifically, he was looking at a man with blond hair who was pointing at an exhibition next to his young son. They two looked perfectly average. The older man was patiently explaining something about the fish they were looking at while his son listened intently, enamored.

As he spoke, there was a smile on his face, but it felt wrong, somehow. “Yeah, of course I’m good! Just a bit hungry. How about we skip this part of the museum and go straight for food?”

Oliver wanted to protest but thought better of it. As much as the dark was unnerving, he really was having a good time. Ángel wasn’t, though, and that was enough of a reason for Oliver to let himself be dragged out.

Ángel seemed to calm down a bit as they got out of the dark, and Oliver did, too. Unfortunately, there was a large crowd gathered around the small food court in the museum. They were loud, and the sudden bright lights were assaulting Oliver’s senses.

They quickly ordered their food, and Ángel thankfully seemed to choose one of the quieter corners of the food court. It was midday in the middle of the week, so it wasn’t as crowded as it could’ve been.

Unfortunately, Oliver could not focus on his food. He really wanted to, but snackies were not at the top of his mind. Instead, he kept sneaking glances at Ángel.

He was being weird. Now, Oliver had known from the moment they met at that bar that Ángel was a bit strange. It was part of his charm. This wasn’t his normal weirdness, though; it felt wrong.

He hadn’t eaten anything, even though he was the one who said he was hungry. He ordered food, but Oliver wasn’t sure he had plans to actually have any, and it was slowly cooling on his plate. Ángel kept his eyes still on the crowd around them, occasionally looking back at Oliver and smiling when he noticed his eyes on him. 

He hadn’t disconnected their hands. Even when Oliver tried tugging him away to grab his tray with both hands, Ángel had only started holding it tighter. He was leaning his chin against his hand in a mimicry of a casual pose, but his stance was rigid and tense.

Oliver wasn’t sure whether or not to bring it up. Ignoring it felt wrong, but so did bothering him about it again. He had already asked if he was okay, and Ángel had told him he was fine. Even if he was lying, he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. He shouldn’t be forced.

Doing nothing at all was still a non-option. Oliver opted for a third choice: figure out what exactly is bothering Ángel and figure it out from there. He didn’t have enough information to decide what to do yet.

First of all, Ángel didn’t like the crowds. He had avoided the people on the street, brought Oliver away from the areas with the highest concentration of people, and was currently glaring down at anyone that came near them. Oliver could relate, somewhat, but for very different reasons. Ángel had never expressed an aversion to loud sounds or sudden touch before. In fact, if the stories Vivi told were to be believed, it seemed he rather liked those things.

Secondly, Ángel didn’t like the dark. Again, something Oliver understood. He seemed especially agitated in the marine section, though that wasn’t the only dark room in the museum. He held Oliver's hand tighter through those rooms and seemed eager to leave as soon as Oliver was done looking at the exhibits. 

The third clue as to Ángel’s strangeness was, well. Oliver felt Ángel’s hand, still holding his own under the table.

Ángel had always seemed to like physical affection. Even before they were dating—back when they were still in that strange limbo of being far too close despite not knowing each other—he always seemed to find a reason to grab his shoulder, or boop his nose, or hold onto something he was passing just a little bit too long.

He did it even more once they started living together. Hugs, sitting just a little too close on the couch while working, the normal stuff. Normal for him and Ángel, at least. Oliver only recognized these in retrospect, but the more he thought about it, the more memories arose. 

This, however, was not normal. Even for Ángel.

He was always… well, soft. Even if he was always a bit brazen with his affection, Oliver never felt forced. It was comfortable, he had decided. Even when Ángel seemed annoyed or even angry—though never at Oliver—he was still always gentle. 

The tips of Oliver’s fingers were beginning to have pins and needles. What was wrong? How does he even find out? Ángel was much better at this whole thing—he always seemed to know exactly what to say. Oliver wasn’t sure he knew what to say ever in his life. He usually just said the first thing that came to mind, and that was usually the wrong thing.

“You’re doing bad.” He said, dumbly. He needed to say something.

Ángel looked back at him with his eyes widened slightly. He still kept flickering his eyes around them as he spoke, not yet fully engaged in the conversation. “Huh? What do you mean, I’m great!” Ángel smiled, and Oliver tried not to fall for it.

It was a lie. Oliver knew that. Ángel was acting strangely and seemed distressed. Oliver wanted very much to be able to just know what. More than that, he wanted to help. “Are you sure?” He tried to sound concerned rather than accusatory, though he wasn’t sure if he succeeded. Ángel flinched at his question, batting his eyes for a moment. 

“You seem distracted. Tense.” Oliver blurted, losing nerve after Ángel took too long to respond. His eyes flicked down to their hands involuntarily. Ángel followed his eyes, tearing his hand away in a sudden jerk before forcing it into a casual position by his side.

“Ah, well, you could say I was a little distracted.” He looked Oliver up and down and winked, ever the flirt. Oliver felt himself blush, though not as much as he once might’ve. “But,” he sighed overdramatically, “I guess if you just wanted to wait till we got home, I’ll survive.” Wait! No! Go back! He wasn’t done being worried! 

Ángel was, unfortunately, terribly, horribly good at distracting Oliver. He made it far too easy to keep moving, to just ignore that he was upset. “What do we have next? There’s that section with all the antiques, right? You’re done with your food; let’s go.” He continued before Oliver could put in another word. His hand reappeared around Oliver’s—though much gentler this time—and he was pulled to his feet. 

He searched his face, looking for any of the nervous, erratic fear he saw before. Either there wasn’t any, or Oliver just couldn’t see it. Ángel cracked a stupid joke and then asked a question about something Oliver liked, and he hardly noticed as the conversation slipped into their normal banter. 

By the time they had walked to the final section of the museum, he could barely even tell Ángel had been acting strange at all. He was hovering just a little too close, which was nerve-wracking. He didn’t like the feeling of someone that close to his back, but if Oliver concentrated, it wasn’t even noticeable. 

They walked around a little longer, but eventually the crowds started to become too much for Oliver. He tried to fight it, just like he always did, but Ángel had annoyingly noticed his growing discomfort and made the decision to call it a day for the both of them. He didn’t even ask. It almost seemed like he wanted to get home far more than Oliver did, if the speed of his pace was anything to go by.

Back to the stuffed, claustrophobic streets they went. It took them nearly fifteen minutes of pushing past people and trying not to bump into each other's shoulders to get out of the busiest section. Ángel, helpful as ever, had taken the side with the most people, shielding Oliver from the brunt of it.

By the time they had escaped the bustling crowds—and he meant escaped—Oliver felt about ready to shrivel up in the dry heat. He missed the museum’s nice, cool air conditioning already.

The last minutes of the walk were much more pleasant, at least in terms of heat. As they approached the more residential areas, the streets became less crowded and—thank God—shaded. 

There was a cool breeze flowing through the street. Oliver took it as a small blessing until it decided to be evil and blow his hat straight off his head. “The wind! Steals!” He shouted, reaching for it.

Luckily, Ángel caught it before it could hit the ground and become all dusty and gross. Unluckily, his boyfriend had also decided to be evil today. Oliver reached for the hat in Ángel’s hand, only to stumble as he swished it away from Oliver’s grasp, placing it delicately on top of his own. Like a thief.

“Boyfriend! Steals!” He yelled, with much more vigor this time. Ángel laughed at him, slyly twisting out of the way before Oliver could grab it back. He was surprisingly deft on his feet. 

He kept ducking out of the way just as Oliver tried to snatch his hat back. The two of them were slowly moving further and further backwards, and suddenly they were almost chasing each other. Ángel, the rat bastard, would rub his chin and put on a posh ‘detective voice’—his words, not Beebo’s—and start muttering buzzwords like ‘deducing’ and ‘investigation.’

He almost felt bad for the number of times he almost slapped Ángel in the face because he missed his hat, but then Ángel would laugh again, and Oliver would feel reinvigorated. Whatever had been happening to him earlier in the day, it seemed to disappear now that they were alone and closer to the apartment. He looked happy.

Oliver took another step forward as Ángel took one back. He was getting a little tired; he thought he might have to give up after this one. Suddenly, he bumps into Ángel harder than he expected when Ángel stops still. Oliver looked at him in confusion.

In their struggle, Oliver had hardly noticed they’d bumped into the corner of a street. Behind Ángel was a large display window that took up a majority of the wall. It was a shop, some sort of antiques store by the look of it. In the display window, there were different pieces of jewelry, vases, and other seemingly random trinkets.

Most prominently, however, there were clocks. They were all of various shapes, sizes, and colors, clearly from different owners and eras. They ranged from a few small pocket watches scattered across the table to brightly painted cuckoo clocks and creepy cat clocks to a large grandfather clock off to the side. They were all ticking in sync, the cat’s eyes moving back and forth in beat with the seconds. If Oliver focused, he even thought he could hear the sound through the glass.

The sound chimed in his head, back and forth and back and forth. He thought he was going to be ill, but it was only a passing sensation. Oliver felt his breathing shudder, and he felt the sudden, intense urge to smash through the display window and burn down the entire place.

Violent and arsonistic thoughts put away for later, Oliver focused on his breathing. He quickly looked around, just to calm the instinctive reaction that there might be someone behind him. There was no one.

Oliver had been having thoughts like that for months. He had never quite grown accustomed to them, but he thought he could handle them better. He reminded himself that it was okay to take a moment and closed his eyes.

He breathed in, focusing on the way his heartbeat quickened slightly, then out, feeling the rhythm slow down as the circulation continued. His heartbeat was changing speed and rhythm constantly and never exactly matched the tempo of the clocks in front of him.

Ángel was still frozen beside him. Oliver hovered for a moment, unsure of how to help him. Clearly, Ángel was getting a bad grade at disassociation. Oliver’s hat seemed forgotten, left limply in his hand. He was just staring at the clocks blankly.

Oliver wanted to help him so bad. He hated when Ángel was upset. How did he help? What should he say? People had different ways of wanting comfort—but Ángel never told him those kinds of things.

Alright, alright—focus. Beebo. You took psychology in university. You’re an honors student. You can do this.

First, he put himself between the antique shop and Ángel. Then, calmly and quietly, he said, “Ángel. Look at me.” He shouldn’t touch him yet; that might be too much of a shock. If he didn’t respond, Oliver could try gently leading him somewhere else.

Ángel’s episode didn’t look like Oliver’s did. There were no quick, sharp intakes of breath. Rather, Ángel didn’t look like he was breathing at all. His eyes flickered to Oliver and locked onto him. That was a good sign; now he just needed to—

Sound exploded from across the street. There was a group of young people, all laughing and joking with each other—loudly. One of them had dropped a metal water bottle, and the sound cracked and echoed across the buildings.

Ángel flinched at the sound, jerking and snatching Oliver’s hand down, so they were both forced to duck. Ángel seemed to be trying to shield Oliver’s body from the noise. He looked around, but Oliver suspected he wasn’t actually seeing anything. Ángel heaved, holding Oliver’s hand hard enough he was worried it would start bruising. He started moving, pulling Oliver with him as he sped towards their apartment.

“Ángel, it’s okay; it was just—” Oliver tried, but he wasn’t listening. He was lucky their apartment was only a minute or so away, or else Ángel might’ve taken his hand off. 

By the time Ángel had gotten into the apartment, he was panting and out of breath. They both were, to be fair, but Ángel wasn’t calming down.

“Ángel?”

“Ha,” he breathed a laugh, “really shouldn’t have been skipping leg day, should I?” He started chuckling to himself, but it looked more like he was still trying to catch his breath. Oliver didn’t laugh, and Ángel’s face dropped.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“Yes, I’m okay.” Oliver responded, careful. 

“Right.” Ángel said, clipped. He hardly ever looked awkward, but he was shifting and seemed not to know what to do with his hands. “I’m sorry.” He apologized, rushed. “I don’t know what happened there. I’m fine—“

Oliver stepped closer, and Ángel’s head snapped up. That can’t be good for his neck. Gently, Oliver held his arm and guided Ángel to the couch. They sank into the cushions. Ángel was avoiding eye contact, sitting curled and playing with his fingers. Oliver sat next to him but didn’t try to catch his eye. He tensed at the proximity, leaning on Oliver slightly. If he had the pads in his vocal cords, Oliver thought he might start purring. 

Ángel sniffed, and Oliver finally noticed he was crying. Oliver tensed. Oh god. How do you comfort people? Fuck. Should he say something? Maybe Ángel just wanted to be quiet for a bit? He was getting such a bad grade in boyfriend.

What did crying people need? Comfort? No, the problem was that he didn’t know how to do that. At least not intentionally. Snacks? Ángel didn’t seem to like snacks as much as Oliver did, though. Ángel always gave him his snacks. Water? Wait, yes, water! If he was crying, he might be dehydrated!

He grabbed Ángel’s face, turning it towards him and looking just past his eyes. “Are you thirsty?!” He asked, with an amount of force that was probably a little bit unnecessary. The panic and concern had seeped into his voice a bit. Just a bit, though. “I mean. Water. Do you want it.” Oliver tried to save it.

Ángel gave a surprised, coughing laugh. “God, you’re good at that,” he said, but Beebo wasn’t sure what he was referring to. Ángel sat up a bit, staying just close enough that they were still touching. He looked back at Oliver: “Yeah, sure.” He sounded exhausted.

Ángel stayed by his side for the entire walk to the kitchen, not that Oliver minded. 

Water acquired! He handed the cup to Ángel.

They sat in silence for a few more moments. Should Oliver be saying something? This seemed like an important moment. Was Ángel waiting for him to speak, or was it the other way around? Maybe he should just ask if he wanted more water—

Just as Oliver was about to open his mouth, Ángel practically fell on him, enveloping Oliver in a hug. Ángel was tucking his face into Oliver's shoulder and neck.

Oliver hugged him back silently, deciding that he didn’t need to speak for now. They stood in their kitchen, basking in each other's warmth for what must have been another few minutes. Oliver’s legs were starting to tire, but he decided this felt nicer than sitting down. Tucking his chin over Ángel’s head, he rediscovered how soft his hair was.

“Sorry.” Ángel mumbled. “It’s just… party stuff.”

Oliver’s mouth formed a silent ‘oh.’ That made sense why he had been acting strangely all day. Oliver understood; he had ‘days,’ too.

“That’s okay.” Oliver soothed, lightly drawing circles into the back of Ángel’s neck. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Ángel hugged tighter, though not uncomfortably so. “Yeah,” he breathed. “I need a cigarette. Balcony?” He asked, and Oliver nodded. 

Quietly, they moved to the balcony. They had to untuck from the hug to walk about, but Oliver made no attempt to detach himself from Ángel. He seemed like he needed it.

It was nearly dark outside. If they turned to the right, they could’ve seen the sunset, but Oliver stared straight ahead. The sky was colored with oranges, blues, pinks, and reds. Ángel stood shoulder to shoulder with him, intertwining their arms when he finished lighting his cigarette. He didn’t even offer Oliver one, though Oliver was fine with the smell alone.

“Oh, alright. I know you’re just brimming with questions, detective.” Ah. Oliver had been caught. He didn’t want to start a conversation Ángel wasn’t ready for, but this seemed like blanket approval to go ahead. “I can’t say I’ll answer all of them, but I’ll try my best. For you.” 

Ok. Questions. Oliver was good at these. Very good; in fact, it was kind of his whole job. Uh—ahem, back when he was a detective, that is.

He looked at Ángel. He seemed to be bracing himself. Oliver frowned; he didn’t want to upset him with the questions. Oliver shut down the more eccentric parts of his curiosity. Start with something small, he thought. “How did we first meet? Before I forgot, I mean,

“You wanted to interrogate me, so I asked you to the bar.”

“Why did I want to interrogate you? Were you a suspicious figure?” Oliver raised his eyebrow.

“Maybe I was.” Ángel was smirking now, in that way he did when he was about to say something stupid. Or attractive. Usually both, actually.

“Mmm.” He squinted at Ángel’s face, getting slightly closer. “I can see it. You have those kinds of faces.”

“Oh, you wound me so, my love.” Ángel rolled his eyes.

“It’s not a bad thing!” Oliver clarified. “You just look like you have secrets.”

“Sinister secrets?”

“No, just normal secrets.”

“Well, as long as you think so, darling.” Ángel took another drag from his cigarette. 

“Then what happened?”

Ángel grinned at the memory, and Oliver was suddenly a bit worried about what he was about to say. “You asked me one question before you ran out. Then, you asked me if I was into men.”

“I didn’t.” Oh. That was incredibly embarrassing. Oh God. 

“You did.”

“Stupid gay brain… stupid pretty man…” Oliver slumped, putting his head in his hands and pushing his fingers through his hair. Ángel laughed at Oliver from somewhere above him, and Oliver only sank further. He knew for a fact that it was true, too, because he’d had the urge to ask the exact same thing only a few months ago.

“Pretty?” Ángel gawked. “I always thought I was more handsome than anything. Beautiful, even.” He had put out his cigarette and was now focusing on Oliver fully.

“Mmh...” Oliver peered at him, raising his head enough to get a good look. If he were being honest, he was all three. “No, you’re pretty.” He said instead because he’d embarrassed himself enough during this conversation.

“Oh.” “Well, I mostly followed you and Vivi around after that. You were investigating… something. The paintings, I think.”

“You weren’t paying attention?” Oliver felt almost offended.

“You can be a little distracting.” He winked.

Oliver scowled at Ángel, realizing he’d fallen for another one of his traps. “I lied. Maybe you are sinister.”

“No! Wait! I’m sorry!” Ángel tried, laughing slightly and raising his hands in surrender. Not good enough.

“I don’t forgive you. Evil boyfriend.” Oliver scoffed, crossing his arms and trying to ignore the pleading eyes Ángel was giving him. “What happened after? Did Vivi and I find what we were looking for?”

“Well, you went upstairs—apparently there was some puzzle you had to do—and then…” All the joy and pleasant laughter faded from the air as Ángel spoke. He seemed to be trying to avoid Oliver’s eye. There was a small, shaky intake of breath before he continued, “And then..” “You forgot.”

“Just like that? Was it instant?” That certainly narrowed down the potential causes for the memory loss. If there was no identifiable cause… hm. Theoretically, it could’ve been a previously ingested poison that had taken time to come into effect, but there should have been at least a minute of confusion even then.

“No.” Ángel said. “It… it took a few minutes. I don’t know how many.” Oh! Well, that made more sense. “It was slow.” He spoke the last word as if it hurt him to say. Once again, Ángel’s eyes got that galaxy, distant look to them that Oliver had decided to avoid at all costs.

“You don’t have to tell me any more. I’m okay. Thank you.”

Ángel gave him an appreciative smile and untensed slightly. Oliver felt bad for noticing it before, but Ángel seemed upset at the act of talking about the party at all, even if he offered. Not for the first time, Oliver felt bad for questioning him at all.

Was it always going to be like this? Oliver wanted answers, of course, but it felt unfair to force Ángel to describe and relive what was clearly a traumatic experience. Oliver knew there was always a chance that the memories would come back on their own, but it didn’t seem very likely. No matter how much Ángel described a scene from the party, Oliver only ever got vague feelings—his least favorite kind of feelings.

“I wish I could just remember.” He mumbled almost despite himself.

“You do?”

“Yeah. Of course I do.”

“Even if...” Ángel bit his lip. “It wasn’t all… nice.” Ángel ducked his head. He was looking at his cigarette, watching a piece of ash burn off and fall into the wind on the city below. “Would you still want to remember? Even if it means you have to remember the bad stuff, too?”

Oliver thought about this for a couple of moments. It was impossible to answer the question fully truthfully, because he didn’t know what he’d be remembering. That created a paradox in and of itself. Still…

“I think I have to.” He started, looking away from Ángel. It was hard to think properly when he was looking at Ángel, and Oliver felt if he didn’t answer this question properly, he might never get to.

“In order to move on from it, I’d have to remember. If I didn’t, well… I’d still be there, wouldn’t I? Just a piece of me.” Oliver had always had a need to know. A morbid curiosity that forced him to figure things out. He liked it when he could look at a problem, but he liked it even more if he could understand it. Unfortunately, repeated onset memory loss puts a bit of a wrench in those plans. 

“Besides, I think I’d like to remember a little more of you.” The thought that there were other, unlocked memories of Ángel hiding somewhere in his brain… Really, what could he have done in less than 12 hours that made Ángel pursue him for over 12 months? He needed to take notes from his pre-memory loss self.

Ángel laughed, his cheeks a bit flushed, but when he opened his eyes they were watery. “When did you get so poetic, detective? I might have to step up my game. I might lose my title as ‘art snob’.”

Vivi came into their apartment unannounced the following morning. They had heard something rummaging around in the kitchen, both stumbling out of bed to go see what kind of raccoon had managed to climb 30-40 stories.

The raccoon turned out to be Vivi. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen; half the cupboards surrounding her were open wide in no particular order. 

“Vivi, what the hell are you doing in my kitchen at this ungodly hour.” Ángel had not wanted to get up, lamenting his beauty sleep as he did so. They had been up late last night. Oliver offered to just go see whatever was in the kitchen alone, but Ángel immediately dismissed the idea, latching onto Oliver’s shirt sleeve. 

“Oh, hey Beebo,” Vivi said as she turned around, still mostly searching the cupboards. “Ángel, where the fuck do you keep your coffee? And why do you have so many spices? This is insanity,” she continued without so much as looking at them.

Vivi had come over multiple times since Oliver had gotten out of the hospital. She was loud, obtrusive, and almost never invited. She had the keys to Ángel’s apartment and mostly just… invited herself in. She seemed to be doing relatively well since Oliver had last seen her at the abandoned clinic and seemed to have gained a personal beef with Mozilla.

“I'm not really a cat person. They’re evil and don’t like me,” she had said one morning, sipping a highly caffeinated iced beverage that could no longer be considered coffee. The three of them had all gone to the local café together. Well, more like he and Ángel had already been planning to go, and she happened to show up right as they were leaving.

“Really? You aren’t?” Beebo asked, feeling a little offended on behalf of cats in general.

Vivi raised an eyebrow at him. “Is that so surprising?”

“I mean, a little bit. I guess I just assumed…” Oliver didn’t realize his gaze over to Ángel until Vivi followed it and snickered.

Ángel straightened up at the two pairs of eyes aimed toward him. “Hey!” He exclaimed. “What—“

“Heheh, well, I guess there are exceptions!” She leaned over and stole his medialuna from his plate. Ángel tried to get it back but only ended up ripping the pastry in half. They went back and forth trying to rip off pieces of each other’s half and slapping at their hands before they could put the pieces in their mouths.

It was oddly charming, the way they fought. Very.. aggressive, but they seemed fully comfortable around each other. Ángel had powdered sugar on his face, and Vivi was attempting to mess with his hair for probably the third time. Oliver tried to laugh as quietly as he could, not wanting to interrupt their… moment.

It seemed he didn’t laugh quietly enough, because Ángel immediately turned at the sound. “Betrayal! By my own–I trusted you!” He placed a hand on his chest in offense, and Vivi took the opportunity to steal a piece off his plate. Ángel noticed the stolen pastry and hardly noticed when Oliver stole some for himself while he was distracted.

Ángel gasped, crossing his arms and glaring at the wall between the two of them. “This is bullying. Everyone is so mean to me. What did I do to deserve this.”

Oliver thought he was joking, but his brows were furrowed, and Oliver couldn’t identify his tone. Meanwhile, Vivi swiped the final piece of medialuna. ”Guess you’re off your game, thiefboy!” She mumbled through the food in her mouth. Gross!

Oliver thought he might start yelling at her, but he burst into laughter halfway through. “St–! Stoppit! Pfthaha!”

Oh, so he wasn’t mad; that was good. Oliver had made a joke, like his close friend would, and he reacted well. Oliver quieted down, watching Vivi and Ángel bicker for another couple of minutes.

Though he and Vivi interacted often, Oliver could never seem to get just the two of them alone. It's not that he particularly minded Ángel's presence, but there were some things he wasn’t sure were best to discuss in front of him. Thing that he preferred not to speak about over texts.

He locked eyes with Vivi, who had given up rifling through the cupboards in favor of taking out coffee grains. He just kind of started thinking very hard at her, hoping it got the message across. Miraculously, it seemed he succeeded.

“Ángel, do you have any batteries? My big flashlight ran out.”

Ángel did what could only be described as a pout. “Can’t you just go out and buy some?” 

“I don’t feel like it. You probably have some somewhere here, right? Annnnd, it’d help with my investigation a whole bunch if I didn’t have to go to the store!”

Ángel huffed but ultimately left them alone. Oliver could still hear him rummaging around in another room, so they’d have to be quiet. He turned to Vivi; he—

“I told him.” She admitted, leaning towards him with the kitchen counters behind her. Huh? “About the hospital thing.” Oh. Oh.