Chapter Text
2021. FEBRUARY.
(ROM)
Hey, you. Yes, you. You, now—Rom. One thing you need to get through your thick skull is that you’re an idiot.
You’re an idiot so you didn’t go home, not right after. You’re an idiot so you climbed up here instead. You’re an idiot, so you sat your ass down on the flat metal roof of the convenient store, and waited a while, and slowed your breath, and stayed cupped in the skin-touch glow of the dying sun.
You’re an idiot so you closed your eyes.
You’re an idiot, so you mistook the warmth on your face for the warmth in your mind.
“I thought I’d find you here,” the sun says suddenly, making you JUMP
half out of your flesh.
“JESus fucking Christ—”
He’s here—suspended on the crimsoning sky like a gleaming pearl in a jeweled ear, and twice as sparkling. He meets your eyes with a grin golden-white.
“Please. Call me Herald.”
Not funny. You better keep that mouth untwitched.
“What do you want?” you bark dutifully.
That’s a win (not your thought), that’s a half-open door (still not your thought) you—he—he slides through. Too close, he lands as lightly as a dragonfly stepping on water, splashed iridescent with metal light.
“Nothing,” he says, holding out a peace offering. “Do you want this?”
You don’t look at him; you better not look at him, Rom. Every gaze locked is stolen from you, you know. Every joke, every smile, every shiver, every lull is a plunder, a pillage you’d never allow. You don’t look at him; you look at the bottle, and you clench your jaw.
In your head, he arches an eyebrow, a mental presence realer than a grapple.
Fine. You do grab it, but at least you don’t say thank you.
“How did you even know I’d be here?” you mutter, cracking the beer open.
“Steel was not in a good mood. Didn’t take much to put two and two together.”
He’s good—he melts into his sitting subtle as a breeze, the line of his thigh shifting from grace to tautness, and settles just so, just so—not close enough to touch, no no, just close enough to feel, to feel, to feel, scorching—to feel.
He’s such an asshole.
And he’s dodging.
“That’s not an answer, Barnaby.”
“I’ve seen you around here before.”
You don’t look at him.
“Because you’re a creep?”
He snorts. You don’t look at him.
“Because I’m a flier.”
You don’t look at him. In your mind he looks at you.
“It’s a big city, even for a flier, and I’m just a little grey silhouette among grey silhouettes.”
“Nobody is just a grey silhouette.”
You don’t look at him—but he telescopes his move, showing you in mind what he’ll do in truth, before he takes the neck of the bottle in his hand and pries it from you, just so, just slow. When he takes a swig you—you don’t—look at him.
Liquid-froth. Fresh-bubbling. Beer-splashing.
Is this your tongue?
In the curving arc of a moon-colored throat, a mouth opens, a mouth closes.
No. You weren’t looking at him.
“I used to live around here,” he explains, offering you the bottle again. “I still like to visit when I can.”
Oh, he’s a bad liar, and a dirty little spy to top it all off. Did Ortega put him on your trail, or the Marshal himself? When you wrench the bottle this time, you’re as hard as a glare.
“Of course. You used to live in the shittiest neighborhood downtown, and you like to visit from time to time. Makes sense.”
“You don’t believe me?”
The surprise feels real, but your hold on reality has never been the best, so how would you know, really? And then, it’s swallowed quickly by something much safer, much warmer: a savagery crimson-tinged, burning your mouth better than hard liquor. You can use this. Do you want to use this?
You use this.
“No, no,” you hold up a hand, looking up at last, meeting his gaze, unafraid, unfettered, cocooned now by the spasmic delight of the bite. “Let me guess, my prince, you’re a shelter benefactor? No—wait—I have to know—where do you keep your change for the homeless when you’re in your suit? Ass crack?”
Oh that jolt of righteous anger isn’t yours though it tastes just as red, just as red, red like a tongue gnawed on, not yours and just as yours, and when he gets to his feet the bass-boosted thump of his mind has turned frost-bite scalding—that feels good. That feels good.
“Why are you lashing out?” he grits out, tightly, leash it, he thinks, he thinks he should leash it—leash him, leash you, you is he—his thoughts a simmer, a brewing, a bubbling.
There. Now you can look at him.
“I’m not lashing out,” you say, sweet-venomed, whipped into balance because he’s losing his. “I’m showing you how ridiculously privileged you sound, and you don’t like it.”
Now, that’s the Rangers guarantee, of course. Probably a requirement to get onto the team. At least you dodged that bullet though you took all the others to the fucking chest.
“I said nothing,” he says, voice whetstone-like, sharpening an edge. “You heard what you wanted.”
“I heard the truth,” you parry, knocking on your temple, knock-knocking on your skull, your reading skull, your entire-world reading skull. Did he forget? You know everything. “You like to make yourself feel better about yourself by giving your dirty money to charity. I hope you don’t forget to leak the receipts to the press so you can get all the brownie points you can.”
Now you can look at him—and he is still looking at you. Maybe the silence stretches—you’re not sure. In this prismatic moment, you look at he looks at you look at he looks at youhe—
“I lived here when I was homeless,” he says.
The—his, his memory drops in the lake of your mind like a stone, rippling a wave, and two, and three. You shake it off, off, you shake it OFF.
“Right,” you shake it off, you shake it off. Don’t listen to the—bending of the truth, don’t. You know this. It’s not the same. You’re not the same and you never will be. “What was it? An internship at the poverty factory?”
“Are you shitting me right now?”
“I heard it can be edifying for men like you—”
“Men like me?” he cuts you off, and the bubbling boils, and the leashing snaPS. “Men like me? What do you know of me, Romare?”
“I know your mind, your Majesty.”
“You clearly don’t,” he snarls, and the grimace mars his perfect face, for a second, like a scar, like a wound. “Otherwise you’d already know I fled home without a damn dollar in my pocket. But you never ask the right questions, do you?”
Oh, bullshit. What is he expecting, a standing ovation? Even if he slept outside for weeks, for a month, for a year—he could never understand, he could never understand.
“And look at you now,” you don’t back down, “all the way back at the top. Penthouse and plastic surgery. I bet looking white and blond and pretty got you all the attention, even on the street.”
You don’t hear it—not in your mouth, not in your head—you don’t hear what your words mean, not exactly, not immediately, not until you see his face turn bloodless, and his mouth too.
His voice, though, bleeds through.
“And you think that’s a good thing?”
You bristle. The skin itches—it’s your, it’s your skin. Your skin, but don’t you dare looking away now, Rom. You look at him. You have to look at him. You’re not ashamed, you’re not, and you’re not wrong, he’s the one—he’s the one, he’s the one who’s always wrong, just like the others.
“I’m talking to you, Romare,” he doesn’t dodge either, and plants his feet, standing a high ground that should have been yours. “Do you think that was a good thing? Do you think I enjoyed that? Tell me.”
You never noticed before—how cold blue fire can be. He doesn’t blink.
“I’m through talking to you, Herald.”
“Why? No insult left? I thought the rule was never to run from the fight.”
You can feel it now—the corner he’s trapped you into, forcing you to yield—or jump—just a drop, a long drop down, no window.
No. No, instead you’d rather rip out his throat.
“You don’t understand anything,” you spit, advancing suddenly. “You act like you do, and you dare, you dare think we have things in common, but you don’t understand me and you can’t understand me and if you keep digging your hands into me I will tear you apart. Do I make myself clear?”
He doesn’t float. This close, with his feet grounded, with your chin raised, you are slightly taller than him, and so much harder—so much harder too. He should be folding. Why isn't he folding? On your face, his eyes remain, searching, gouging into your skull, pulling your mind out to him the same blood-soaked way he pushed his own mind in to you.
When he tilts his face, just slightly, so closely, the mounting moon limns him pearlescent.
“No,” he says, very simply.
He waits, for a long while, shackled to you eye to eye, his mouth quiet. He waits, and since you're struck silent he turns away first; he grabs the bottle on the ground, maybe to punish you off drowning your sorrows as well as your bitterness. He does give you his back, you know; he gives you his back, goading you on, full and open, standing at the edge of the roof, just a little too long before he takes flight, gifting you the opening you need to finish this.
But you’re an idiot, remember?
You’re an idiot, so you stay still, with the night on your face and the night in your mind.