Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sunlight, lacerated by the leaves of old maples, didn't shine but poured like thick, warm honey, flooding the table in the corner of the summer veranda. Each ray was a living thing: it bathed in the cup of unfinished latte, cast glints on a silver spoon, gilded the delicate skin on Blue cop's wrist. The air, sweet with almond pastries and intoxicating from the scent of petunias in clay pots, seemed to ring with silence and peace.

Flame nova wasn't drawing patterns; he was tracing every cell, every tiny freckle on the back of Blue's hand with his fingertip. His touch was lighter than down, but after it, the skin burned, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

"The sunlight itself is living inside you today," Flame nova's voice, low with a velvety huskiness, broke the silence but didn't scare it away. His brown eyes, usually sharp and piercing like a scalpel, had softened, become deep like pools, and everything around seemed to drown in them. "It plays in your hair, drinks the azure from your eyes... I'll go blind."

Blue cop felt heat rise to the very tips of his ears. He buried his gaze in the creamy foam of his coffee, trying to hide the treacherous smile escaping his lips. Under that gaze, the world indeed lost its edges, shrinking to a small universe where there were only the two of them. "Stop it," he tried to move his hand away, but his fingers, as if with a will of their own, intertwined with Flame nova's, refusing to let go. "It's just... a good day. Because of you."

Flame nova's smile flashed like a burst—dazzling and shameless. He raised Blue cop's hand to his lips. He didn't kiss it, but first just felt its warmth, touching it with his skin, then pressed against the knuckles as if he wanted to leave an invisible mark on them. A jolt of pure, undiluted electricity ran up Blue cop's arm, from his fingertips straight to his heart.

Every day is a good day with you, baby,’ Flame breathed, his whisper warm against Blue cop’s skin. ‘Remember our first kiss? By the fountain? You were shaking like a leaf.’"

"I was afraid," the admission came out in a whisper. Blue cop looked up, and in his bottomless blue, the whole sky and a boundless, almost childlike trust were reflected. "Afraid that you... would be disappointed. That I wouldn't be the one you were waiting for."

"Hush," Flame nova leaned back in his chair, and the wicker furniture yielded with a sigh. But his gaze, heavy and concentrated, didn't release Blue for a second. Familiar sparks danced in its depths—scorching admiration and something else, dark, insatiable. "You were a perfect shard of a fallen star. And you remain one. Mine. Only mine."

He uttered the last words almost soundlessly, but they hung in the air, thick and viscous like resin. And through the warm afternoon, a chill, tiny and nimble, ran down Blue cop's spine. Sometimes this possessiveness—hard, absolute—frightened him. But he immediately chased the doubts away, drowning them in a sea of adoration for this man. Wasn't true love supposed to be all-consuming? As unrestrained and bright as Flame nova himself.

The path from the cafe deep into the park unfolded underfoot like a carpet of sunbeams and lace shadows. Flame's hand on his waist wasn't just a gesture; it was a reference point, an unshakable pole around which his world revolved. They were laughing at some joke, and suddenly Flame stopped sharply. His gaze, instantly shedding its languor, lightning-fast scanned the alley, searching for foreign silhouettes in the greenery. Assured of their seclusion, he turned Blue cop around with one smooth, yet unquestionable movement and pressed his back against the rough bark of an old oak.

The world narrowed to a point. To the scent of expensive perfume with bitter notes of patchouli and skin, to the warm breath on his face, to the darkness in the eyes he was now looking into.

"I..." Blue cop began, but his lips were already conquered.

It wasn't a kiss; it was a statement. Authoritative, deep, absolute. It held both tenderness and a force that swept away all obstacles. Blue cop responded with the same generosity, allowing the familiar fire to consume him utterly. His fingers dug into Flame's thick, dark hair, tangling in it like in a web.

"I love you," he exhaled as their lips parted briefly, and the words were more like a moan, a prayer addressed to his deity.

In response, Flame nova pulled him so close it became hard to breathe. His embrace was like steel hoops, leaving bruises as a memento. His lips touched Blue cop's temple, and the whisper that followed was stripped of all its former velvet. It held an ancient, primal growl.

"You are mine, Blue. A fingerprint on my soul. The blood of my blood. Let every cell of you remember it. Mine."

Chapter Text

The air in the apartment was cool and still after the day saturated with the park. It smelled of old book dust and expensive wood—a scent Blue had always associated with safety and home. Now, this smell was inextricably linked to Flame.

"Starving like a wolf," Flame announced, throwing his leather jacket onto the back of the couch. His movements were smooth, confident; he felt like the absolute master here. "Shall we order that truffle pizza you love? And wings. I want to watch you lick your fingers. It drives me crazy."

Blue smiled, feeling the remnants of tension melt away. This Flame—generous, attentive, seductive—was the one he had fallen in love with. He nodded: "Just no hot sauce, please." Flame placed the order, speaking on the phone in a low, commanding tone that made subordinates tremble, but Blue now heard only care in it. They dropped their jackets right by the doorstep,leaving traces of street dust on the perfectly polished parquet—two islands of chaos in the sterile order Flame loved so much. The order arrived quickly.The air in the apartment became thick and sweet, like syrup, and smelled of fried potatoes, barbecue sauce, and their shared excitement. They dined in the living room at a round,transparent table in front of a huge TV, and it seemed like the most exquisite feast. Blue, sprawled on the couch, laughed, wiping a drop of ketchup from Flame's chin with his finger. And Flame caught that finger with his lips, and in his eyes danced those very "sunshine shards"—warm, carefree, loving.

"You eat like a hungry puppy," Flame grinned, savoring a slice of pizza. "And you watch like a hungry wolf," Blue retorted, feeling heat spread through his body from that gaze.

They didn't finish their Coke. Flame reached for him, knocking over the box of fries. Its contents scattered on the floor, but no one cared. The world had narrowed again to a single point—to the space between their lips. This kiss was different, not like the one in the park. Not a commanding statement, but a slow, languid kindling of a fire. It held the taste of salt, pepper, and unconditional desire.

Flame's hands slid under the thin fabric of Blue's T-shirt, his palms, rough from constant training at the shooting range, leaving trails of fire on his skin. Blue threw his head back, allowing Flame's lips to explore the line of his neck, letting in this dizziness, this familiar, intoxicating drug of his touch.

"I want you," Flame whispered right into his skin, and the words were scorching. "Right now. Here."

"Only mine," Flame growled into his lips, tearing the buttons on his shirt. "Say you're only mine." "Yours..." Blue exhaled, completely surrendering to the oncoming wave. "Always yours..."

And at that very moment, when there was no boundary or thought left between them, a sharp, insolent doorbell rang.

They froze like two criminals caught in the act. Their breath tangled, hearts beating wildly in unison. The bell rang again—insistent, demanding.

Flame growled something unintelligible, full of such rage that Blue instinctively flinched away. Flame rose, his face distorted by a grimace of pure, unadulterated anger. He pulled on his pants as he moved and, barefoot, bare-chested, covered in scars and tattoos, headed for the door, like an awakened predator.

Blue, disheveled and trembling, pulled on his white robe and got to his knees, then approached his partner.

"Who is it?!" Flame growled through the peephole. "Courier! Delivery for Mr. Blue!" came a cheerful, unsuspecting voice.

Flame silently threw back the locks and swung the door open. In the doorway stood a courier in a special uniform. In his hands, he held a huge cardboard box, almost as tall as he was.

"Hello!" The courier was slightly frightened when he saw Flame, who stood there like a huge bear, but he forced a smile, peeking into the apartment and noticing the confused, flushed Blue standing near Flame. His smile widened for a moment, becoming friendlier. "Oh, hey there!... Oops, bad timing? I mean, they forgot to give this to you earlier. It's your model, I think. Heavy, I'm all sweaty."

Flame stood rooted to the spot. His gaze darted from the courier to Blue and back. He saw that smile directed at his Blue. He saw his disheveled hair, his flushed cheeks, and the embarrassment in his eyes. And all his anger, all his passion, instantly transformed into something cold and sharp.

"Give it," Flame snatched the box from the courier's hands so abruptly that the man recoiled in surprise. "Get out."

The door slammed shut with such a crash that the walls shook. Flame threw the huge box into the hallway. It hit the wall with a painful thud and lay there, an ugly foreign object that had invaded their evening.

He slowly turned to Blue. The passion in his eyes had died. It was replaced by an icy, suspicious gleam. "'Hey there!'," he repeated the courier's word with a vile, poisonous sneer. "Very... familiar. For a simple 'solution of where to put the box'."

He wasn't shouting. He was staring. And that look was a thousand times worse than any outburst of anger. It was the look of an investigator who had just found the first piece of evidence. The first dark stain on the perfect, as he thought, canvas of their love.

The evening was hopelessly ruined. The air died, and even the smell of the expensive pizza now seemed rancid.

. The silence of the spacious, loft-style kitchen was broken only by the steady trickle of water and the clinking of porcelain. Blue, immersed in the monotonous ritual of washing dishes, was enjoying this moment of peace. Outside the window, the lights of the metropolis were coming on, and their cold glow was reflected in the glass facades of the skyscrapers he had once designed.

He didn't hear the footsteps. Only a sudden shadow blocking the light and warmth surrounding him from behind. Flame's heavy, familiar hands wrapped around his waist, tightly, almost possessively. Lips moistly touched his bare shoulder, leaving behind not a kiss, but something like a brand. In the tense silence of their bodies, there was no tenderness—only a quiet accusation.

"That courier... For a long time and with a special look," Flame's voice was low, muffled, but a steel splinter showed through its velvet.

"What kind of 'special'?" Blue's voice held a note of weary exasperation for the first time. He carefully placed the plate on the drying rack and wiped his hands. "Flame, do you seriously think that everyone who glances at me immediately wants to drag me away with them?"

Flame tried to turn him around, to lean in for a kiss—a gesture that usually erased all questions. But this time, Blue gently but firmly pressed his palms against Flame's chest, creating inches of space between them that felt like a chasm.

"No, Flame, I'm talking to you," Blue's voice trembled, not from fear, but from accumulated bitterness. "Your jealousy... it's starting to scare me. And this... this isn't normal."

Something flickered in Flame's eyes. Not remorse, but rather a cold fury at the disobedience. His fingers dug into Blue's sides a little harder.

"'Not normal'?" He twisted his lips into a semblance of a smile. "Normal is when my boyfriend, my architect, allows some pizza delivery guy to look at him as if he's a dessert on a menu? I'm just protecting what's mine, Blue. Is that a crime?"

"I'm not a thing, Flame!" burst out of Blue, and the phrase made the air smell burnt. "I'm not your property that needs to be 'protected' from the whole world! I love you. Isn't that enough for you to just trust me?"

Flame took a step back, his face becoming the smooth, impenetrable mask of a police station chief accustomed to conducting interrogations. "Trust?" he uttered the word with poisonous sarcasm. "I trust you, baby. But I don't trust them. They see your softness, your bright vulnerability... They see prey. And I..." he took a step forward, and Blue instinctively retreated to the sink, "I am just the one who won't give up his prey to anyone. Remember that."

He didn't wait for an answer, turned around, and walked out of the kitchen, leaving Blue alone in the echoing silence, with a coldness inside that even the hot water couldn't chase away. It wasn't an argument. It was an ultimatum.

Chapter Text

Day One. A Game of Tenderness.

The morning light, thick and dusty, flooded the kitchen, picking out the chrome edges of the coffee machine from the gloom. Every glint on its surface was a cold, polished star. Flame, dressed in an impeccable, perfectly ironed uniform, performed his morning ritual with near-sacred precision. His movements were measured to the millimeter: a shot of espresso, two spoons of cane sugar, steamed milk laid down in a velvety foam—no more, no less. He was an alchemist, turning bitter beans into a sweet poison.

"For you, sunshine." His voice flowed like warm honey, enveloping, seeping into every crevice of consciousness. He handed the cup to Blue, and at the same instant, with his free hand, unfolded the morning newspaper. The rustle of paper sounded like a gunshot in the fragile morning silence. "Speaking of work... that new guy, Lian, right? You mentioned yesterday you'd be working late today to finish the project?" The question hung in the air, deliberately light, weightless. He didn't even look at Blue, engrossed in the police blotter, but his entire being was a tense radar, picking up the slightest vibration in response. "Don't overwork yourself, okay? You know how your head pounds afterward. I'll pick you up at seven on the dot."

The tone was flawless—warm, almost spousal concern, crafted from perfect phrases. But Blue felt it on his skin: the quick, targeted glance from under lowered eyelashes. The glance not of a lover, but of an investigator scanning a crime scene, searching for the smallest inconsistencies in the perfect world he had built for himself.

Day Two. A Whisper on the Verge of Rage.

Evening crept into the hallway along with the smell of cold asphalt and wet wool. Flame, who had returned slightly earlier, with ceremonial politeness, helped Blue take off his soaking wet coat. His fingers, strong and accustomed to rough uniform fabric, slid over the coarse collar of the work shirt and suddenly froze, digging into the material. Every tendon in his hand tensed.

"Strange," he leaned in so close that his lips, cold from the outside air, barely touched the skin of Blue's neck. His voice became quiet, hissing, like a snake preparing to constrict. "Where is this from? This isn't your scent. Wood... varnish... bitter and acrid, like despair. And something else." He inhaled, his nostrils flaring as if tracking invisible prey. "Cologne. Cheap. Bold. Male."

"We were assembling the mock-up in the workshop all day, Flame," Blue said wearily, tilting his head back and offering his face to the blinding light of the chandelier, seeking justification. "You know how it is, you breathe that air all day, it seeps into your pores."

"Yeah?" Flame unclenched his fingers as if letting go of something dirty and took a step back. His face was illuminated by a strained, lifeless smile—a mask under which rage pulsed. It didn't reach his eyes, which remained flat and steely. "Must have been my imagination. A nasty smell. I can't stand it when you smell of someone else's space. Someone else's labor. Someone else's hands."

He said it with murderous lightness, as if joking. But there wasn't a spark of humor in his eyes—only a blind, unseeing gleam.

Day Three. The Breaking Point.

A deaf, hopeless night that had absorbed all the city's noises. Flame crossed the threshold of the apartment, kicked off his heavy, mud-spattered boots. Silence greeted him with thick, motionless air that smelled of loneliness. "Baby? I'm home!" His voice rolled loudly through the empty, dark halls like a stone thrown down a dead well. In response—only the measured, mocking tick of the wall clock, counting the time of his absence. 'So, still at work...' flashed through his mind, the thought scaldingly sharp, like a blade.

He snatched the phone, his thumb trembling with rage, wiping the rain that had dripped from his jacket off the screen. 'Blue' in favorites. Call. Rings. Dry, monotonous, heartless. — "The subscriber you are calling is temporarily unavailable..." Second attempt. Third. The same icy, mechanical phrase. Each time, it echoed in his temples with a dull blow, striking sparks from the darkness gathering inside.

A quiet, animal growl escaped his chest. He didn't notice his fist slamming into the doorjamb; the dull thud of pain was feeble consolation. In the kitchen, he mechanically yanked open the refrigerator. Icy air, smelling of loneliness, washed over his heated face. A bottle of whiskey, half-empty. He grabbed it by the neck, without even looking, and moved into the living room. He didn't sit down. He stopped by the large dark window, behind which the city was crying, gripping the glass vessel so hard his knuckles turned white with tension. He would wait. He would count every second of this betrayal.

---

Meanwhile, Blue, in the dusty stone sack of the basement archive, buried under mounds of yellowed blueprints and the ghosts of unfinished mock-ups, rubbed his numb, tired neck with his palm. Nearby, on a wobbly stepladder, Lian was working, humming something carelessly under his breath. "The signal here is like in a gravitational tomb," Blue muttered, pulling out his phone. The signal bar flickered like a dying star. He hastily, almost pleadingly, tapped the chat icon with Flame: "Running late, in the basement, no signal. Be home soon. Love you." He reached out to press 'send,' when suddenly Lian called out to him, pointing at the mock-up structure threatening to collapse. Distracted, Blue shoved the phone into his pocket, never seeing the fateful, blood-red word "Undelivered" beneath his message.

---

The door clicked shut with a quiet, final sound. Blue dropped his keys into a porcelain dish; their clatter was deafeningly loud. His shoulders ached from the weight of the day. "Flame? Are you asleep?" The light turned on in the hallway pulled from the darkness of the living room a motionless,sculptural figure in an armchair. Flame sat with his head thrown back against the high back, dressed in his full uniform, as if he had just come from duty or was preparing for it. His hands lay on the armrests, fingers relaxed, but his entire posture was the embodiment of a spring compressed to its limit, ready to snap. On the floor, right by the leg of the chair, stood an empty, cut-glass tumbler. From it came a sweetish, nauseating smell of stale whiskey and madness.

"Where were you?" The voice was quiet,low, devoid of any intonation, burned out completely. Not threatening, but stating a fact. It made one feel vile and cold inside, as in a crypt. "At work, I... I texted you, I was in the basement, a meeting..."Blue's voice trembled, betraying his fear. "Your phone,"Flame interrupted him, his tone unchanged, not moving, as if his lips belonged to another being. "Was out of service for the last three hours and forty-two minutes. And I didn't receive your message. Where. Were. You."

Blue felt the floor fall away beneath his feet, shrinking into an icy, heavy lump in the pit of his stomach. This was no longer a conversation. This was an interrogation protocol being read before an execution. "In the archive! Flame, there's just no signal there, damn it! Listen to me..." "I'm tired of listening!"He exploded instantaneously, without warning. The armchair slammed backward with a crash, hitting the wall. Flame was before him in two steps, and waves of whiskey smell and uncontrolled, primal rage emanated from him. "I'm tired of these meetings! Of these 'we just talked'! I see the lie in your eyes every day! Do you think I'm blind? Do you think I don't see you slipping away, like a shadow?" He moved in close, his breath, hot and alcoholic, burning Blue's skin. "You... you're digging a grave with your own hands. For everything we had."

He wasn't shouting. He was speaking in a whisper, breaking into a hoarse rasp, but every sound dug into the consciousness like a poisoned blade. And Blue saw in his eyes not jealousy, but a real, animal panic, a paranoid horror of loss that had almost completely burned out the man he had once loved from the inside. And for the first time, Blue felt not just hurt or anger, but a genuine, soul-freezing fear. Not of a quarrel. Of the abyss that had opened right here, in their living room.

And everything inside snapped. The last, finest thread broke.

Flame moved forward, his motion sharp, precise, and devoid of all humanity. He grabbed Blue by the forearm with an iron grip, leaving a crimson mark under the skin—the promise of a future bruise—and yanked him along, toward the bedroom. "Let go! Flame, what are you doing?!" The resistance, weak and belated, only poured oil onto the fire raging inside him. Flame, with that same unnatural, terrifying strength, threw him onto the wide bed. Blue bounced on the resilient mattress, trying to get up, to crawl away.

Flame loomed over him, blocking the light from the lamp, his face twisted into a distorted, unfamiliar grimace that held nothing of the man he knew. The alcohol had clouded his mind but hadn't extinguished the rage; it had only turned it inside out in the darkest, most primitive way. "What am I planning?" His whisper was scorchingly quiet and terrifying. "I just want you to smell like me again. Only me. So no one ever doubts whose you are." His hand,rough and demanding, closed painfully around Blue's waist, and then slowly, with horrifying, almost tender gentleness, slid down to his thigh, shackling him in despair.