Work Text:
“You know it's dangerous out here.”
Some might have interpreted the words as having a threatening undertone to them, especially considering the roughness with which they were spoken. But Dai knew the scratchy Welsh accent well enough to recognise the genuine concern straight away.
He smiled, and to Morgan’s almost-frustration, simply replied, “Yes. I do.”
It wasn't the answer she had been hoping for, but she knew better than to expect common sense. This had become the case with the way she viewed reality, actually, owed to recent events, but it had always, always been the case with Dai.
Albeit after a moment's hesitation, she went to lie beside him. Though the grass had a light coating of condensation, it wasn't enough to be unpleasant. It was actually quite refreshing.
If it weren't for the incessant chittering of the faeries, endlessly droning in a way that greatly resembled an almighty swarm of hornets, and kept out only by a thin wooden fence and a flimsy enchantment, it would have been quite peaceful. And when Morgan turned her head to look at Dai, soft grass blades pressing into her cheek, and watched the way he stared up at the night sky with softened chocolate eyes and a relaxed brow, with the corners of his lips turned up, impossibly serene - she knew he had blocked them out.
She sometimes hated how he could be so.. okay. With all of it.
Hated the way he could just select what he chose to pay any mind to, like life was a fucking videogame. Because even though if you had told her a couple of years ago that this was what was going to happen, not just to them but to the world, she would have laughed..
This wasn't a videogame. It wasn't a TV show. It wasn't a book with a happy ending, and it wasn't some shitty fantasy roleplay game gone wrong.
This was real life.
Dai wrapped an arm around her, pulling her from her thoughts. He raised his other hand in the air, and did a gentle sweeping gesture that made Morgan think he was probably imagining that he could reach out and touch the stars. She had no doubt that he would try, too.
“We're so… small.”
The childlike wonder in his voice warmed Morgan's calloused heart, and she almost dared to venture into the realm of long ago memories, of sneaking out after dark, of coarse (but comfortable) picnic blankets, of rolling Welsh fields, of night skies that went on forever, and of pure, sweet innocence.
But she didn't voice any of this, instead sighing, “As if I needed reminding.” She spoke harshly without meaning to again, but it was alright, because Dai understood.
He looked at her, brown eyes turned to deep, black pools in the darkness and sparkling with the light of the stars. “Not just us. All of it. All of them,” - he did another sweeping gesture, this one holding evident contempt - “Arthur and his merry band of dickheads. The Phenomena. The whole fucking Cataclysm! It's all just..” He gazed up at the sky again, pressing his lips together and shaking his head. “We're only one planet. Just one, tiny speck in a number too high for us to even begin to comprehend. That's how insignificant we are. This all seems so massive for us, but how do we know the universe hasn't seen it all a thousand times before?”
A younger Morgan, maybe back in her university years, would have pushed him playfully and told him to shut up before her brain exploded. She had never liked philosophy.
But not now. Now, she wriggled close to him and tucked her head into his chest, and gazed up at the stars with him.
“Well, first of all, it should actually be ‘the Dickheads of the Round Table’, but…” ( - Dai snorted, and poked her in the arm - ) “I hope not. I hope no-one else has to go through this.”
She said it quietly. It was sad, and it was vulnerable, and it was the perfect truth.
Dai couldn't find any words that deserved to reply.
Instead, he enveloped her with his other arm and twisted where he lay to hold her in a big hug. He might not have been particularly tall, but Morgan was even shorter than him (it was something he loved to tease her about), so she was fully encompassed with warmth. She buried into him like some sort of mouse, chasing that comfort that she had gone so long without, that comfort that Dai never failed to offer her. He rested his chin atop her head.
The familiarity of it all made Morgan want to cry.
And they would stay there, intertwined, until Perry came out and bundled them back inside, undoubtedly prepared to give them a lecture on how sentiment was no excuse for being recklessly stupid.
But - just for a while - it would be just the two of them in the world, the faeries nothing but background noise, and they could pretend that there was a picnic blanket beneath them, and Morgan had secretly borrowed her dad's binoculars to see the stars more clearly, and that they had school tomorrow.