Work Text:
Tango
Two months.
It had been two months since the initiative began.
Everything for these past nebulous weeks had been focused on rewiring the under-city to survive on its own. And survive it would…but for what?
For never seeing the sun.
Not that I ever would have.
For never gazing up into blue.
Not that I ever would have.
So why are you even sitting here?
The conference was called with all the heads and major labs' officers to discuss the next steps. Xisuma was giving a report about their remaining stores of over-city exclusive goods. Doc was sitting at the head of the table, fingers threaded, metal and flesh, giving him all his attention. Etho was down in the depths, trying to ensure no flame hit the powder keg that was the various gangs still active down there.
Clans, gangs, and assemblies of those with no better prospects despite all Doc and Etho had tried to do over the past twenty-odd years.
And Tango.
Tango was here, too. Sitting next to Doc, trying his damnedest to pay attention to Xisuma, but his mind was in favor of drifting.
To the beads like amethyst shards on his craft desk.
To the eyes that matched those shades.
To what he’d done, what had he done, because if he hadn’t then he would have a ray of sunshine right here with him.
Instead he was bleeding out. With every heartbeat that felt like a fracture. With every moment that felt like eternity rolled up into a breath.
Tango had been working like mad. Getting dragged back to Doc and Etho’s apartment most nights because he couldn’t be trusted to eat and sleep on his own, apparently.
Listening to the stories as if they were on the end of a tunnel, and thinking, thinking, thinking.
Bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.
I miss him.
And it’s your fault.
I had too.
You know you didn’t have too. You know you were afraid, afraid that he’d choose you, and he tried.
He tried, didn’t he?
Bleed.
Bleed.
Bleed.
Let the feelings stab through you, those blades to your bones that didn’t matter, it didn’t matter anymore.
Do you even matter anymore, without him?
“…Tango?”
Doc’s voice came in a lowered tone. He snapped his eyes up.
“H-Huh…? Sorry, sorry, X is still talking…”
“He finished a few minutes ago.”
Tango’s flares sputtered with a flash of embarrassment, and his tail lashed a bit from where it snaked behind his chair
“Oh.”
Doc made a low hum of a noise, and Tango had always struggled to place if that noise was anger or amusement.
“Sorry.” He said quietly, ruby red eyes lowering to the table as he squeezed his clawed hands together tight enough he felt the tips prick against his skin.
“…my mind wandered, I guess.”
Doc made that noise again. “That is ok. It was nothing concerning you directly. I want you to pay a bit more attention to the…”
RUMBLE
The lights flickered slightly, everyones eyes rose.
Tangos didn’t. He kept them down. He let them stay on clawed hands that had only ever hurt.
Hurt himself.
Hurt others.
Not physically, maybe, but since when was bleeding out restricted to that?
Maybe back before he knew what it felt like to be ready to tear his heart out for someone. The desperation, the sheer inescapable need of it, to want, to want so badly he’d bleed for it.
Bleed for him.
Pale blonde and amethyst eyes and sun-kissed skin that wasn’t his, that never had been…but he wore a necklace that let Tango tell that lie.
Liar.
Liar.
Liar.
“…so what if I am…?”
“Little spark, perhaps you should step out for a moment?”
Tango yanked his eyes up again.
Doc had been talking to him, hadn’t he?
He hadn’t even been paying it any attention. His thoughts weren’t centering, they were swirling a stopped up drain, never moving anywhere, just spiraling endlessly toward no conclusion, because what was the conclusion?
Bleeding out.
Ok, maybe not that. Maybe not really. Maybe just feeling that way, feeling broken open and cracked apart and utterly exhausted by every single…
RUMBLE
“It’s more frequent than usual, isn’t it?” Xisuma’s voice split the multiple conversations that had started up at the conference table. Keralis was sitting next to him, big eyes raised to look at his boyfriend.
Keralis, who had run to him.
Zed tried to run to me.
RUMBLE
RUMBLE
RUMBLE
Doc stood up, putting an arm out slightly as if to shield Tango, even if nothing was falling. “We might need to relocate. That sounds like it is coming from directly above us…unless I am crazy?”
“No, it definitely does.” Jevin lent, having managed to get himself just enough time away from the Medical Wing to come sit in on this, give his own numbers about what had been going on.
For two months. Two months of the…
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE
“Doesn’t it sound a little weird to anyone? Just to me?” Keralis asked, tensing his chair, his eyes sweeping away from Xisuma to run along the ceiling of the main Labs branch conference room.
Tango hadn’t really paid attention to the cadence. He’d been in his own head, claws within his chest swiping at him with reminders.
Liar.
Liar.
Liar.
PING!
Tango jumped when his phone went off in his pocket.
PING!
PING!
PING-PING-PING!
Doc’s expression turned slightly disappointed, and Tango winced. Forced his bleary tired eyes to focus as he dug his phone out of one of the pockets on his black vest.
“I-I-I swear I put it on silent, and I…!”
He looked at the screen.
“…I only have one emergency bypass contact…” He rasped.
Zed: I’m cold.
…(View 26 other missed messages)…
Tango opened and closed his mouth once, twice.
“D-Doc! Doc I just got…!” He started trying to get the words out of his mouth, and before he could.
There was another rumble.
Another desperate pump from a heart bleeding out.
BOOM!
The ceiling shook, several people screamed, the lights all went out for a heart-stopping instant. Tango felt Doc’s arm flying over his head, as he scrunched down in his chair and hugged his phone close like it was him.
Like it was his beloved.
Like he wasn’t bleeding.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Part of the ceiling caved in.
“AHHHHHH!”
And a voice came screaming through.
A tall frame hit the conference table flat on their back, Tango could only see by the flares flickering hot on his head, his trio of blaze-rods whirling fast with terror.
The lights came back on. Aside from that, the ones that were once where the hole now was.
And lying on the table in a pile of rubble, wearing his favorite patch-covered bomber jacket and pale jeans, a brown low-cut cardigan, and pale blonde hair in a ponytail…
Beloved.
Somewhere in his mind, that word got conjured up, but Tango stamped it out as fast as it rose, as he too rose, from his chair to watch with wide eyes, just like everyone else, as the figure let out a groan.
“Ah-ah-ah-ah-oooowww..!”
He sat up.
He’d landed on the table right in front of Tango. Sneakers toward him now, halfway pulling in, hair still full of rubble, and amethyst eyes weary, bloodshot, and dark-bagged.
Tango felt a tremor go from his toes all the way to the tip of his flares. They burst erratically, his tail lashing, his eyes growing wider and wider. His mouth, lined with sharp teeth, fell halfway open.
“…Zed…?” He breathed.
And amethyst eyes matched with his. They flew wide open from a pained wince, shoulders tightening hard and body scrambling to reposition, to face him fully.
All the emotions that rushed through those eyes were nearly impossible to pin down, darting and draining, and then finally flaring with a sense of white-hot frustration.
Zed struck the table with one hand, pointed with the other.
“YOU! You! Y-You you you you! TAAAANGS!”
He shouted, and it was that voice, that voice he loved, and it was shrieking and cracking right here before him.
“We need to have a talk about honesty and boundaries in our relationship, Tangs!” He roared as he scooted his way forward to the lip of the table, feet slipping over the edge, sneakers hitting the linoleum floors as he stood up, amethyst eyes alight with indignation.
Tango didn’t even back up to give him space, just watched this frame land in front of him after weeks of endlessly aching for it.
“Zed…! H-How…” His voice nearly broke as his clawed hands rose, visibly shaking, seeing the chest in front of him rising and falling with frustration and probably adrenaline considering that fall and the explosion, whatever that had been. Yearning to touch but terrified it would be unwelcome after what he’d done, what he’d done.
“…how did you get here…?” He asked softly, and Zed scoffed.
“Not important! We need to talk!”
“Actually it is very important.” Doc chipped in from the side, still looking shocked, and that’s when Zed’s tunnel vision on Tango seems to loosen enough for him to realize they were in a conference meeting.
The human looked around briefly, taking in where he’d landed, and then huffed. He dusted the rubble from his shoulders.
“Not as important as this! We’re talking, Tangs! Come on!” He seized Tango by the wrist.
Touched him.
Held him.
With eyes ablaze with so many feelings, squeezing tight as he stood there a moment, then pulled.
Pulled Tango into him for an instant, his other hand coming up to fist into the front of his vest, gripping so hard his fingers dug into the skin beneath. Tango swallowed hard, ruby red eyes lifting, seeking over that face, that face.
Was here.
Was holding him.
Was looking at him, seeing him, feeling him.
Was dragging him toward the doors with a vengeful storm to his step making Tango think he might end up bleeding out in very not metaphorical ways, even as Doc made a weak half step around the table as if to stop them and then seemingly thought better of it.
“Ah! Z-Zed, Zed, please, I-I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ll make it up to you, I swear, j-just…how did you get here!?”
“Not! Important!”
“Very! Important!”
“LATER!”
“ZEEEED!”
Tango got dragged from the room, the doors slamming behind him and his…boyfriend.
His boyfriend.
Who was here.
Who had broken through the literal unbreakable to get to him.
And kick my ass.
Which would be fair.
His heart was pounding. Pumping. Aching. Screaming for more than just this hand on his wrist.
But it wasn’t bleeding.
Maybe he wasn’t bleeding out.