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Somehow, Robert’s crap hole apartment has become the designated party place. Sonar doesn't mind, really, but he doesn't understand how the others can willingly squeeze themselves into such a cramped space for hours on end and agree to do it again next week. Malevola thinks it's because his place, while small, is cozy and intimate. True. Visi says it's also because he was the least likely to make them all help clean up afterwards. Also true. However, he suspects Beef might also have a part to play, considering how the entire Z-Team practically lines up to rub his belly, himself included.
But now, the night is ending. Malevola’s portal home is closing, Flambae is a bright orange dot far into the night, and Beef is sound asleep, thoroughly spoiled by everyone. Robert has begun collecting empty beer bottles in a garbage bag, and Sonar is still here, watching him. He can't look away, for some reason. Something is buzzing under his skin, and it isn't a coke induced high, for once. He can't name the feeling. Not yet. But he thinks staring somewhat creepily at Robert might help him figure out what it is.
As if sensing his presence, Robert looks over his shoulder, mild shock flickering in his eyes upon seeing who was lingering. Maybe he was expecting Visi, or Blazer. Someone who would make sense. Not bum fuck bat boy. “Uh, sorry, thought you were going home with Mal,” he says, blinking dumbly at him. Unsure what to say.
Was he disappointed? Sonar couldn't tell. Maybe he really was hoping for some alone time with a pretty lady. Is he unwelcome? If that's the case, Sonar still isn't sure he could bring himself to leave. Something is keeping him here, and as this sinking feeling in his chest deepens, he thinks he knows what it is.
Sonar finally shakes his head, snout twitching slightly. He can’t confront that right now. “Nah, I’ll fly home on my own. I could use the air.”
“Careful, Blazer might revoke your flying license if she finds out you were flying drunk,” Robert jokes as he dumps the contents of half empty beer bottles into the sink.
Sonar huffs a laugh but doesn’t say anything more. Robert must be able to feel the way his eyes linger on his back, because he quickly glances over his shoulder again to catch him in the act. But Sonar doesn’t look embarrassed or surprised to be caught; he just keeps staring, expression unreadable. Robert raises a brow.
“Well if you’re just gonna stand there–”
“You wanna smoke, Robbie?”
Robert hesitates. “What?”
Plastic crinkles softly as Sonar pulls out a small baggie with a single joint inside. “I only have one but I can share. I’m nice like that.”
A smile tugs at Robert’s lips as he turns and leans against the kitchen counter. “Oh really?”
“Yeah, just, you know–” Sonar flicks his ear, not once looking away. He doesn’t want the night to end. Not yet. How does he communicate that without saying it? “Just for a little bit.”
Robert looks down, eyes flitting to the side. He nods, slowly, before meeting Sonar’s eyes once more. “Okay. Sure, what the hell. But we’re smoking that shit outside, I’m not trying to hot box my dog.”
In response, Beef snores like a rusty chainsaw and kicks his leg, still asleep. Sonar agrees instantly to his terms, already pulling out his lighter as the pair make their way to the balcony.
While Robert shuts the sliding door behind them, Sonar is already lighting the joint and bringing it to his lips. He pulls the smoke into his mouth and exhales, watching it feather out in front of him in disinterest. Robert appears beside him, waiting patiently. Sonar passes him the joint and watches as he takes a hit, coughing quietly as he does.
“Been a while, Bobertson?” Sonar asks, chuckling to himself as Robert’s cheeks go pink.
“Fuck off,” He groans, passing it back. Sonar holds it loosely between his fingers, dangling it over the ledge with his elbows resting on the concrete balcony wall.
“Eh, part of me is still surprised you agreed to smoke at all, so you’re alright,” he says with a shrug.
“Please, we’re in California, not Texas. You think I didn’t have my share of fun in college?” Robert smirks, mischief sparkling in his eyes.
After a hit, Sonar responds, “Well not the Harvard kind of college fun, no.”
The mention of Harvard earns him a swift elbow to the side as Robert snatches back the joint. “Ugh, I knew right when I said college you’d mention Harvard. Everyone knows you graduated from Harvard, you don’t need to brag about it all the time.”
“Mmmm, I kind of do, though.”
“Why? It’s just a school, not your whole personality,” Robert mutters, bringing the joint back to his lips.
This gives Sonar pause. He looks down at the street beneath them, at empty sidewalks and bright street lights. If he listens very closely, he can hear the TV in one neighbor’s apartment, a white noise machine in the other. Somewhere a few blocks away there are teenagers singing drunkenly along to a Youtopia song. He quickly tunes this all out.
“How many Harvard graduates do you think there are that look like me?” He finally asks, not looking at Robert.
“Sorry?”
Sonar quietly takes the joint, breathes in smoke, and continues. “Not many. A single digit number. The last hybrid before me graduated fifty-four years ago. Acceptance rates aren’t much better. I got in on a scholarship, did you know that?”
He looks at Robert, but he doesn’t say anything. He just tilts his head ever so slightly to the side, and Sonar keeps talking.
“It wasn’t a full ride or anything, but it made tuition more affordable. I worked so hard to get in, to stay in, that I just…I don’t know. I guess I just,” He takes a drag, wanting to be less sober for this next part so he can have plausible deniability in case this doesn’t pan out.
“I just want to remind people that it happened. That I made it. And no one can take that away from me.”
Robert stays quiet for a moment, taking it all in. Finally, he says, “I’m sorry, I hadn’t thought about that. I’m…proud of you, for whatever that’s worth now.”
Warmth sprawls from Sonar’s chest, a warmth he knows isn’t from the high. When he looks at Robert, something inside him squeezes, and he doesn’t know how to feel about it. He thinks he likes it. He wants more of it. He moves in closer.
“Quit being such a sincere jerk, Bobert,” Sonar chides, no bite behind his words.
Smiling, Robert takes the joint from him, saying, “Only when you stop giving me a reason to be one, Batboner.”
Sonar watches Robert smoke in silence, watches as the smoke curls around his face and wafts away. He wonders how he could deserve such an easy, simple moment like this, how he could tell Robert something he’s never even told Malevola. He wonders how Robert Robertson earned such a special place in his otherwise empty heart.
“Robert, I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest.”
The use of his actual name gives Robert pause. He looks up at Sonar through his lashes and asks, “What’s up?”
Sonar takes a deep breath. He exhales, and with it, asks, “Why did you keep me over Coop? Why didn’t you cut me?”
This question. This question has kept him up at night, this question has poisoned his mind with unrealistic fantasies. This question has given him a kind of hope he’d learned is dangerous.
It’s a question Robert wasn’t expecting. He looks to the joint for answers and finds it’s almost burnt out. He drops his hands over the side and leans his head against his own shoulder, appearing to be deep in thought. Finally, he breaks a smile, laughing quietly to himself like he just learned a truth too stupid to be entirely correct.
“I like you,” He says, making direct eye contact with Sonar when he says it.
“What?” Sonar whispers. Robert laughs again, his high seemingly kicking in, because there’s no way he’d say something like that with that kind of subtext while sober.
“I don’t know. I don’t know why. It doesn't even make any sense, I didn't think you were even my type. I mean, you’re…you’re arrogant, annoying, I’ve seen you eat people–”
“Okay that was– that was Red Ring, so–”
“You eat people,” Robert reiterates, laughing, then continues, “you’re a crypto scammer, you’re a perv, you're a cokehead–”
“Recovering,” Sonar corrects, ears pitching down slightly. Robert smiles wryly at him and leans into his space.
“You’re a walking red flag, basically. But I don’t know, I still…I see these little things. I see the way you actually put in effort with the team, how you want to get better, to prove you deserve your spot on the Z-Team. And fuck, you’re charming, too, don’t ask me why I think that, I just…do, and when I look at you sometimes I think…” Robert trails off, runs his free hand through his already messy hair, and looks out over the cityscape.
“I wonder if getting to know Victor would be different from knowing Sonar.” His eyes trace over the outlines of buildings and billboards, and he sighs, shyly looking down. “I think I’d like to find out.”
If not for the fur covering his face, Victor is sure he would be glowing red by now. No one has ever told him anything like that before. That couldn’t have been meant platonically, could it? Please, Victor thinks, please let him have this.
It’s not that Victor really saw himself as unlovable, it’s more that he never expected being loved to be something he would ever care about. And it's not like he doesn't already have some kind of love in his life. He knows he’s loved by the Z-Team in some strange familial way, and Malevola loves him like a brother. Before this moment, he had thought that was enough. It was enough, until he heard Robert Robertson III stumble through a confession like a blushing schoolboy.
Now, it’s like the floodgates are open. All these new feelings he’s never felt for anyone else before come pouring in. It’s overwhelming, and for a brief, horrifying second, he thinks he’s going to be sick from it. He feels like he did after his first line of coke, only this is more earnest, and without guilt or shame.
Suddenly, the only thing in the world he wants is Robert’s love, and he wants it bad. He wants to earn it, to be deserving of it, like some kind of idiot. He wants to take up space in Robert’s head, to live in his heartbeat, wants Robert to reach for him when he has no one else. He wants to simultaneously curl his wings around Robert so he can be the only one to look at him and to throw Robert on his back and fly him around Torrence so everyone can see this man is his.
These crazy feelings and desires swarm him like the butterflies in his stomach, unstoppable and unavoidable. Victor’s body feels like a livewire. He’s no longer buzzing, he’s sparking, he’s electrified. He wants to be whatever Robert needs and more. He wants to become that better person Robert sees inside of him. He wants so many things, he’s–
Taken too long to answer.
Once again, he’s just been quietly staring at Robert without saying a word.
Robert fidgets, the joint falling from his fingers, down to the sidewalk below. His face is flush with embarrassment, hands shaking slightly.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of that. That’s– so stupid. Fuck. I’m so sorry, just forget I said any of that, I’m gonna go clean up. I’m– fuck. I’m sorry.”
He only gets a few steps away before Victor’s hand lurches out like a snake, seizing his arm and pulling him back. Robert stumbles, suddenly pulled very close into Sonar’s personal bubble.
“Wait. I don’t wanna forget it,” he says. “I want this.”
“You…you do?”
“I really like you too. You make me feel things I’ve never…you’re right. About everything you said about me. I am…arrogant and annoying and a fuck up. But when you look at me it feels like I can beat it, like I…like I matter? In a completely different way that I’ve never considered before, and it’s– it’s really scary, for someone to see that in me when I can’t really see it in myself, but I want to try, because…” Victor is holding Robert by his shoulders now, firm grasp keeping him in place as he forces himself to maintain eye contact. He has to look Robert in the eyes when he says this, or else he’s worried it won’t mean anything at all.
His unfinished thought hangs in the air between them, and Victor doesn’t know what to say. So he tells the truth. “You make me want to be a better person, Robert.”
And it really is the truth. He’s inspired by Robert, and he can only hope to spend the rest of his life proving this to him. Victor wants to look back on this moment in ten years and to think god, what a mess. He wants Robert to tell him how much he’s grown, to understand it’s all because of him. But he needs Robert by his side to even begin to accomplish that, he needs that so bad, more than he’s needed anything. Victor can feel that this is the beginning, that if he takes this chance now and doesn't let go of Robert, some day that better person could be real. They could be real.
Robert looks pleasantly surprised, clarity shining in his big brown eyes. His lips part, wet from just the tip of his tongue, and god, Victor just wants to–
Apparently Robert does too, because suddenly he's being tugged by his tie into a clumsy kiss. Robert doesn't seem to know what to do with his lips, considering it’s probably the first time he’s kissed someone with a snout. Sonar does his best to lead him through it, guiding him against the balcony with one hand on his shoulder and the other now cupping his face. He minds his fangs as he searches for the perfect angle, one that won’t let either of them forget this beautiful moment they shared here tonight.
They pull apart, gasping, and Robert might be about to say something, but Victor can’t help being selfish and kisses him again. It’s so tender and genuine, completely unlike every other kiss he’s shared, yet he can’t seem to get enough. He feels warm hands comb through the fur of his cheeks, gently pulling him away so Robert can smile up at him, dopey and kind and real.
“Hey,” Robert says quietly, curling dark fur around his pointer finger. “You make me want to be better, too.”
Victor smiles back at him and leans into Robert’s hands on his face, his thumb rubbing carefully over Robert’s cheek.
“We’ll be better together, then?”
Robert grins, brow furrowed in fake annoyance. “Quit being a sincere jerk.”
Victor leans in again, but not before saying, “you first.”