Chapter Text
Rooney doesn’t knock before entering Ace’s dressing room unannounced. He shuts the door behind him softly, immediately scanning the warmly lit interior. Dim, because shadows are easier on Ace’s sensitive eyes than lamplight.
He’s not in his chair, so Rooney checks the back room instead. Separated by only a curtain partition, Rooney doesn’t try for stealth, as he has nothing to hide. Peeking into the darkness earns a small grunt of greeting from the bed.
“Jesus. How do you see an inch in front of your nose back here?” Rooney huffs. He turns on the nightstand lamp, admittedly more for his comfort than Ace’s. He would like to see his partner.
When Ace doesn’t reply, however, Rooney’s narrow shoulders slump. His gaze softens.
Ace is curled in a ball facing the wall. Bed curtains half drawn, closing him off from the outside world. Ace isn’t hard to read if you know what you’re looking for. And after seven years of knowing him—five of which spent spectating from afar—Rooney certainly knows what to look for, and is just as eager to make up for the time they lost to tragedy.
Ace doesn’t speak, but his tail twitches, and curls around his shins. His ears pin back. Rooney itches to smooth them out.
“Hey.”
The bed springs creak. Rooney hoists himself up onto the mattress, legs dangling over the edge. He takes care to unzip his boots, letting them fall to the rug with soft thuds.
Ace is particular about his bedding. His nest, for the lack of a better term. And that’s what it is, sort of. A downy arrangement of pillows and blankets, organized to Ace’s liking for maximum security and comfort.
It’s like a hug, Ace had said. A habit he’d developed back when there was no one else around to do the hugging.
The memory surges. With a dagger of defiance twisting in Rooney’s gut, he turns and scoots up to the headboard, arranging himself at Ace’s back.
For a moment, all is still. Ace peeks over his shoulder, and Rooney gets his first look of the way his features are drawn taut; pained.
“Hey,” Rooney repeats more insistently. His hand slides soothingly up and down Ace’s bicep. He’s in nothing but sleepwear, obviously committed to hiding in his bed long before Rooney showed up. “Ace. Atty . Talk to me. I’m right here. All for you, baby. Look at me.”
Ace hugs himself more tightly. “I would like to avoid making even more of a fool of myself. If you don’t mind.”
“I do, actually.” Rooney’s palm flattens over the front of Ace’s shoulder, tugging gently in a bid to get him to turn onto his back. Unfortunately, the manhandling in their dynamic starts and ends with Ace’s brute strength. “I know you’re a fool, Ace. A big, beautiful idiot since the day we were powered on. That’s part of why I like you so much.”
Love is a special kind of affliction. One that cannot be programmed or removed—only felt. Like matter in different states, fluctuating in viscosity, unable to be created nor destroyed. Echoes in the darkness, ghosts of lost memories. Dreams they build together, sometimes overshadowed by the spoils of companionship.
Ace is Rooney’s best friend first. A partner second, and lover third. Precious moments intertwined with every facet of existence; grief and vulnerability, threads woven into the great web of existence they now share. It’s that easy.
Sometimes Ace forgets. Not for a lack of trying to remember. Digital neuroplasticity is similar to the human brain's marvelous ability to grow and change, but once an experience is lived, it’s difficult to forget. A pattern of behavior can form in the blink of an eye. Five years of disordered thinking cannot be overwritten in a few months.
Rooney tells him he loves him, Ace’s mind tricks him into thinking it’s conditional, the way it was with Rockefeller. With the audience, with everyone who has ever graced Ace’s life, no matter how briefly.
Rooney doesn’t want anything from him, Ace knows, besides his presence. Everything that he is, every miniature speck of stardust accumulating into a stream of consciousness capable of loving, and being loved. Rooney asks for nothing but effort, and that is one thing Ace can give.
“I feel scrambled,” Ace whispers honestly, because his thoughts are racing too fast to articulate them properly, despite how long he’d been here folded in on himself in the reliable sanctuary of his room. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with me.”
Though Ace still isn’t facing him, Rooney can hear the tears in his hoarse voice, so he nods sympathetically. He also gives Ace’s arm a squeeze, leaning over to rest his chin on Ace’s shoulder. To reach further, and rub soothingly across his chest. Rooney can hear the pitter-patter of his anxious pulse, and the feverish inclination to open Ace up and manually caress his synthetic heart into a state of calmness briefly graces Rooney’s thoughts.
“Did something in particular happen?” Rooney murmurs instead, rubbing his cheek against him affectionately. “Or a lot of little things?”
Ace is quiet for several seconds. “Little things.”
“Okay. Do you remember what any of them were?”
“...No,” Ace chokes. Rooney shushes him kindly.
“That’s fine. That’s perfectly alright, baby. Maybe it’ll come back to you later. For right now, just breathe. Can you do that?”
“I guess,” Ace rasps.
Rooney mentally cheers as Ace’s velvety finger pads slide to cup the back of Rooney’s hand, holding it in place over his sternum. That’s where it stays for a long time.
Ace is always slow to soothe. Fast to work himself up. Rooney does not think quite so highly of himself, but he would be negligent in refusing to acknowledge the fact his presence is the first thing Ace seeks out when he’s distressed about anything at all. To gripe or vent about amusing aggravations or gossip. Rooney would be hard pressed not to join in. Their unserious sessions of rehashing the same drama from different, unexplored perspectives are some of his favorites.
Rooney is also there inexorably present for moments when Ace is having trouble breathing. When a system error makes itself known, and the years of neglect and passive self-harm rear back to bite him. When he gets tremulous and hot, and needs to sit down and regroup, Rooney is there, without fail, to squeeze his hand and rub patiently between his shoulder blades.
It’s not because Ace would do the same for him in a heartbeat, if Rooney were quite so physically affected by the demons of his past. If he’d been through even a fraction of the torment Ace had endured during the five years they spent apart.
It’s because Rooney loves him.
Easy as pie.
—
“I still think you should have just–” Ace kicks out a leg, miming tripping the annoying customer Rooney had been complaining about for the better part of ten minutes.
Rooney laughs, head tipped back, sitting on the table below Ace’s elegant vanity. He leans his meager weight back on his palms. “You want me to get decommissioned, Mr. Playhouse?”
“Of course not,” Ace hums. He cups Rooney’s jaw, tapping the tip of his nose affectionately. “You’re so cute they wouldn’t suspect a thing from you.”
“Is it because I’m a mouse?” Rooney quips, playfully turning his head away. “Or because I like to dress pretty? A little stereotypical, don’t you think?”
“Biased,” Ace corrects, running the comb through his hair once more, squinting at his reflection in the glass. “Because I’m in love with you.”
Rooney huffs indignantly. Folds his arms, fights the instinctual urge to tousle Ace’s hair and make him squawk with incredulity.
To Rooney’s credit, he finds the heart to refrain. He would not have been so merciful if not for the state Ace had been in an hour ago.
“You think you’re so charming.” Rooney hands Ace his tie before he can ask for it. This is the comfortable rhythm they’ve begun to settle into. Rooney cannot say he’s ever been happier.
“I am.”
“Says who?”
“Anyone.” Ace smooths his thumbs below already creaseless lapels. Rooney’s sharp eyes follow the motion like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. An entomologist peeking through a microscope at a particularly fascinating insect. “Everyone. Ask them.”
Rooney rolls his eyes. He thinks they ought to bet on it, but he already knows it's one he would lose. “Have you picked out an outfit for the banquet yet? You never said.”
Ace’s ear twitches. Rooney feels obsessed, frenetic, noticing every tiny detail like it’s his job. With all the effort it took to keep from grabbing Ace by his stupid upturned collar and crushing their mouths together all hours of the day, it wasn’t a stretch to consider he ought to be compensated. It required an insidious level of dignity Rooney didn’t know he had in him until these past few months.
“Not yet,” Ace answers, and a bittersweet note of grief passes through his eyes. Rooney immediately feels guilty for ogling, knowing exactly what’s crossed his partner’s mind. “I’ve never… had to make those decisions on my own before.”
Rooney nods in understanding. Ace averts his gaze. Time and time again he has acknowledged what happened to him was never his fault, but that hasn’t expunged the shame. It lingers, sinking venomous talons deeper into the tender vestiges of his delicate psyche, refusing to let go.
Ace’s heart trusts that Rooney will catch him in the aftermath, but his mind does not. Knowing only hurt, lies and manipulation as a sickly substitute for what ought to be unconditional love. It’s not something Ace is familiar with. He wants to be, though. Ace clings to Rooney anyway. Because it feels good, and nice in his chest, and maybe he deserves the occasional nice thing to hold and cherish.
“I can help,” Rooney murmurs, gesturing for Ace to come closer.
Ace does. When he’s within arm’s reach, Rooney’s slender legs wind around his waist, tugging the lines of their bodies flush together. Ace’s hands settle on the edge of the table, on either side of Rooney’s hips.
Rooney straightens Ace’s tie like it’s second nature. He knows Ace leaves it crooked on purpose. Poor thing is a terrible sneak.
“I happen to know a thing or two about what looks good.” Rooney adds quietly, “especially on you.”
Their faces are close. Rooney can feel the damp heat of Ace’s breath on his face.
When he glances up from Ace’s throat, his partner is gazing at him. With a mix of fondness, reverence and gratitude. A mixture so potent it steals Rooney’s breath. It takes him longer than he would like to refill his stuttering lungs.
Rooney feels like Mercury, graced with the dangerous task of orbiting the sun and kissing its searing flames. Nothing has ever breached its atmosphere without getting burned—or in this case, cut to ribbons.
And yet Rooney is sitting in Ace’s space, amongst his things, like he belongs there. Because Ace has decided that he does. Maybe Rooney’s always belonged right here. Maybe Ace has been preserving this very spot in the dying hope that someday Rooney would be allowed home to fill it.
“I don’t know what I would do without you,” Ace whispers. It’s less of a statement and more of an exhale, a reverberation from the voice box set low in his chest. A purr, a growl, thick with contentment, sincerity. It’s cleaving his vessel down the center and baring his hidden intricacies to Rooney’s curious hands.
Rooney is putty. He scoots closer, beaming, Ace’s hands jumping to support the underside of his slender thighs so he wouldn’t fall.
Rooney falls in a different way. Plunging headfirst into the icy pools of Ace’s saucer eyes, half-lidded with pupils blown fat and black with love, full to overflowing. For Rooney, his partner, this life Ace has dreamed of sharing with him for years.
Inextricably bound.
Rooney’s arms wind around Ace’s neck, their mouths moving slow and languid against one another. He feels the sharp peaks of Ace’s fangs on his upper lip. He feels the sticky gel Ace excessively lathers in his hair between his fingers. Rooney cards up through the freshly styled strands, displacing them not moments after looking presentable again. Rooney feels Ace’s large hand cradle the small of his back, the width of his palm nearly spanning Rooney’s entire waist.
“I love you,” Ace pleads into the tender junction of his neck and shoulder. Rooney is gone. Absolutely smitten.