Chapter Text
Tango
It didn’t feel real.
But he’s here.
It couldn’t be possible.
But it is.
Because step by step, whine and mutter, Zed was dragging him by the wrist out of the Near-Surfaces Labs and onto the main street. Along the path they’d taken so many times together, and yet his boyfriend still had rubble dust in his hair.
He’s so beautiful.
What was that?
“Zed! Z-Zed, please, I…”
“We need to talk! We need to talk! I’m not doing anything else till we talk!” Zed snapped at him as he kept towing him along.
And Tango really didn’t have much ammunition to refute that.
So along they went, down the street, past Joel and Lizzie’s bakery where Tango was pretty sure he saw Joel do a double take through the window. Things were some forced facade of normalcy down here, still. Step by step, they moved along, into the tunnels.
“…Zed…”
Tango tried again, lower, more plaintively, and the response he got was something between a ‘shush’ and a bark.
They made it to the narrow gap, beyond which was Tango’s apartment cave. Zed let go of his wrist just long enough to climb through the gap, and looked back over his shoulder at Tango with amethyst eyes blazing.
Those eyes that had haunted his dreams for two months now, filled with tears and demanding about the insecurities, the lies, the audacity to pull such a stunt after what had nearly shattered them before.
What’s shattering us now?
Tango swallowed hard and followed Zed up through the gap.
They approached the apartment, and Zed knocked his fist against the stone to open the slabs. It was so practiced. So easy. As if two months, eight weeks, 56 days, however many minutes, how many minutes?
60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day…
Tango was mid mental math as if to escape his reckoning when the doors closed again and Zed turned around to look at him.
Looked him up and down. Up and down.
“Well?” He said in a low, tight tone, and Tango knew that tone, he knew it because stars above he’d caused it one to many times before.
It was the way Zed’s voice wobbled when he was trying not to cry.
Tango fisted his hands, gloves pressing in against his palms, and his mouth moved before he could stop it.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Because I…I couldn’t…Zed, I…I couldn’t let you…”
“That wasn’t your decision to make!”
There was the fire.
The anger he’d been expecting.
But it went a step further than anything he’d thought he’d receive, as Zed strode forward. One step, two steps, three, and grabbed Tango by the front of his vest, yanked forward hard, lifting up till his toes were barely touching the floor.
“You don’t get to decide if or not I love you, you idiot!”
Zed shouted into his face. Tango’s blaze-rods tumbled, fumbled.
Love me.
Love.
Love.
Love.
“You…y-you…you you you!” Zed was throttling him now. Not very hard, but enough Tango’s head was sent bobbling, but he didn’t fight it.
Least I deserve.
His ruby red eyes were open wide, staring into Zed’s face, that face, the face he’d fallen in love with over stuttering phone calls and text messages what felt like forever ago.
“You keep doing this! Keep j-just…just…!” Zed’s eyes welled in the corners with tears, but he kept it together. His fingers tightened harder into Tango’s vest till his knuckles went white.
“…stop it, Tangs! Stop acting like you’re some kind of martyr for me! I’m sick of it! I’m so so so sick of it and I swear to the stars you pull this again I am gonna lose my mind!”
“I-I…!” Tango didn’t know what to say.
Apparently Zed wasn’t done though.
“I don’t need you!”
Tango’s jaw clicked back shut at the finality of that statement, but Zed didn’t let him go.
“I want you! I want you you sorry little insecure awkward unconvincing pathetic idiotic stupid stupid stupid…!”
“Z-Zed…?”
“I LOVE YOU DAMMIT!”
Zed shrieked, the noise and pitch reverberating through the little cave home.
Zed’s eyes reflected Tango’s flares back at him. Showed aching hurt and anxiety and fear and so much stress.
He broke through.
Through the unbreakable just to get to him.
Zed’s fingers in his vest were shaking they were clutching him so hard. The tears finally started to slip down his cheeks as he sucked down a rattling breath.
“…you. It’s you, Tangs.”
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
And Tango could feel those breaths with such intense reality that somehow that seemed like the thing that could shatter him.
“It’s you. I want you. And so...I'll love you.”
Pale blonde fly-aways caught against burning tendrils and twirling blaze-rods as Zed pressed his forehead to Tango’s. For a moment, the blaze-born squeezed his eyes shut and yearned for more of that closeness, the realness of it all, craved it like he was starving, had been starved for two long months.
Zed’s shoulders sagged with exhaustion, and Tango let out a panicked cry.
“Hey! Hey hey hey, you’re still in shock, aren’t you!?” He got his feet back under him and his hands flew up to grip Zed’s shoulders.
“Easy, easy…” Tango helped him to sit down on the edge of the bed, all the while Zed refused to let go of his grip on the front of Tango’s vest.
“Well?” He said in a broken rasp of a voice, and Tango’s eyes snapped up to meet his.
They looked…so alive. Yet so tired.
“You gonna leave me hanging on all that I just said?” Zed pressed, and Tango shook his head faintly.
“Never.”
He pried Zed’s hands off his vest, dropped to his knees, and slammed his forehead into the smoothed stone right in front of his boyfriends sneakers.
“Tango!” Zed cried in shock.
And yeah, that had stung a little harder than in meant for it to, but he was kind of committed at this point, so he didn’t move.
“I’m sorry!” He shouted at the ground, his voice pitchy and bright and seconds from shattering.
They weren’t shattering.
He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve this but they weren’t shattering.
“I’m so sorry…I’m so so so sorry, Zed…there’s not…not even enough different ways for me to say sorry to make it right! I-I just…! I panicked!”
He kept on going, even as he remained with his forehead pressed to the ground and Zed making some kind of unfathomable expression above him, he was sure.
“I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, and I was so scared you’d come down here and be trapped with me, and who knew how the under-city would handle it, and you’re…”
Beautiful.
Sun-kissed.
Bright.
Everything. My everything.
“…I c-couldn’t risk anything happening to you.” He finished in what felt like an unacceptable whimper.
His fingers curled into fists against the stone where he’d ended up with them in front of his head.
“But you’re right. That wasn’t my choice. And I lied to you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Zed.”
One.
Two.
Three.
For those few seconds where nothing happened, Tango felt like every nerve in his body was trapped on razors edge. His forehead was starting to ache dully from how he’d whacked it into the stone floor, though it wasn’t any kind of real damage. His hands were shaking inside his gloves, his flares were crackling anxiously. His blaze-rods were tinking off the ground as they tried to complete their circuits, jittery and riled, and ended up hitting the stone.
Zed’s sneakered shuffled in front of him.
Tango squeezed his eyes shut against the burn of tears.
Then Zed’s voice came.
“So, what have we learned?”
Tango’s brain short-circuited. Stun-locked, maybe. Reboot? Processing?
Not sure.
“U-Uh…I-I…w-what?”
“I said…”
Tango made some stifled sort of noise he wasn’t proud of when Zed’s hand rested against the side of his head, worked it’s way under his chin and guided his head up. He raised up enough to rest on his elbows, on his knees bent forward, like he was at some kind of altar to all the screw-ups he’d made.
How fitting for him.
His eyes lifted to see Zed’s face, see the flashing of feeling through this eyes, and in the expression that he’d picked apart in so many hours where he hadn’t had enough of him, never enough of him.
And now he’s hear again.
Zed’s fingers tightened a touch against Tango’s chin.
“…what have we learned?”
Tango threaded his gloved fingers together, clutching them tight.
“Not to lie to you?”
“And?”
“To stop self-sabotaging?”
“And?”
Zed had started crying earlier. It had mostly subsided by now.
As for Tango, a sob finally punched up from his chest as he drew his clasped hands closer to the origin of the sound.
Ruby-red eyes locked into that purple hue.
“I love you..?” He tried, a half-hearted wobbly smile tugging up his lips and exposing pointed teeth.
Zed let out a broken hiccup of a chuckle, and his face broke into the most brilliant grin Tango swore he’d ever seen.
“Damn right you do.”
His hand slid down from Tango’s chin to grip the front of his vest, and the blaze-born didn’t need dragging this time. He flung himself up off the floor and into Zed’s chest. One arm circled around his chest, the other around his neck as gloved fingers tangled into a pale blonde ponytail that was messy from the fall through bedrock.
Through bedrock.
“Y-You’re insane…!” Tango rasped against Zed’s ear as he was squeezed around the middle hard, and Zed buried his face against Tango’s neck and inhaled as if to steady himself.
“…and what else is new?” Zed murmured against his throat.
“Jerk!”
Zed pushed him back far enough to yank him forward into a kiss. They clashed hard, and Tango’s hands scrambled along Zed’s back, seeking places to hold onto him.
They broke apart.
“I missed you so much.” Tango breathed, and more tears spilled down his face, hissing as they made impact with his cheeks as his temperature rose. Not hot enough to burn yet. He couldn’t do that, because that would mean letting go of Zed, and stars if he had to let go of Zed right now he was sure he’d shatter then.
Zed’s hands found their way up his frame, caught his face in them, thumbs brushed away the tears even as they kept falling.
“You’re alright, we’re alright…”
He leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together.
“As if I’d let a little bedrock keep me from you.”
Tango was actually glad he had his gloves on, even if he usually wouldn’t wear them with Zed, if only for the way his fingers dug in against Zed’s body at that, and he knew how much his boyfriend loved this bomber jacket.
After that, well, Zed’s lips were on his again, and there wasn’t a whole lot left to say.
So much more was left to do, of course. But right now Zed’s hands were on him and Tango really wasn’t able to think very hard about much else.
It wasn’t until later, when bomber jacket, skinny jeans, black vest and cropped red shirt were all tossed on the floor beside the bed, and Tango was floating somewhere between worship and exhaustion, that their focus was torn off each other by the whoosh of opening slabs.
“Tango!? Tango! Joel called us having a right fit and he said…”
Tango let out an incoherent wailing series of words.
“I’MFINEWE’REFINEIT’SFINE…!”
Before Zed picked up his head from his chest and looked over his shoulder.
“Whos’it…?” His words slurred together. His hair was a wreck, his hair-tie was gone somewhere. His throat and chest were all reddened or bruised with love bites and hickeys, lips kiss-swollen, his eyes were pleasure-hazed still, and the sheet slipped lower past his shoulders as he lifted himself up onto his elbows.
Tango immediately landed a hand to the back of his head, shoved him back down onto the mattress, and pulled the sheet up clear over him.
“..Taaangs…!” Zed let out a muffled cry of his name in protest but wasn’t much for struggling.
The avian trio were all crowded in the doorway that had opened. Pearl’s expression of preparation for battle crumpled to a delirious amusement. Grian, who’d been a listless mess the past two months, even cracked a small shocked bark of laughter, and Jimmy, the one who’d shouted, just stood there behind the two of them, dark bags prominent under his eyes from lack of sleep and heartache, mouth agape.
Grian slowly lifted a hand to point a finger.
“So that’s actually…?”
Tango looked up at the three of them with ruby red eyes massively wide and just squeaked out.
“Can we pretend this didn’t happen? Please?”
In response to that, Grian and Pearl busted out laughing, truly laughing, for the first time in two long months.
Jimmy turned to the side, smacked his forehead into the doorway, and groaned. His wings folded against his back, though and Tango could see the tugs of what might just be sheer relief on his features.
And Zed was squirming under the bedsheet.
“Can I come out, now…?”
“Where are your clothes…?”
“You tell me, mister, I dunno what you did with’em.”
“SHADDUP!”
Maybe.
Just maybe.
We’re actually gonna make it.
And Tango would never live this down. It wasn’t the worst price to pay.