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It was bad enough that they’d had to wait twenty minutes to get a table, all of them rumpled and cranky and clearly out of place with the churchgoers in their Sunday best. Faraday in particular was garnering some distasteful glances where he was slumped miserably into Vasquez’s side with his face tucked into Vasquez’s neck, ball-cap flipped backwards and his stupid mirrored aviators askew on his face. That they wound up in one of the corner booths, pressed more tightly together than any of them preferred in their current states, was adding insult to hangover.

La
Mélange
was always busy, especially on Sunday mornings, but it seemed more crowded than usual today, all of the chatter bleeding together into a solid wall of white noise, pressing in on them from all angles.

“Just let me die,” Faraday moaned piteously, head down on the tabletop with one arm curled around his face.

He was on the end of the bench seat - because they all knew by now that denying Faraday a direct path to the nearest bathroom or wastebasket the morning after he’d been drinking was a Bad Idea - with Vasquez next to him, Emma huddled in the far corner and perusing a menu from behind an outrageous pair of sunglasses that covered half her face. Matt, who they’d adopted into their strange little family by virtue of his absolute, adoring devotion to their favorite journalism teacher, was seated across from her, sharing the bench with Goody and Billy, legs tangled up with Emma’s underneath the table. He had one hand over his eyes, and was breathing in loud, open-mouthed pants - the heavy, labored gasps of a man trying valiantly not to vomit into his own lap.

“Believe me, if I could, I would,” Goody muttered darkly. Across the table, Vasquez cut him a half-hearted look of warning and reached over to run his hand across Faraday’s shoulders.

“You’ll be fine, guero,” he assured gently.

“You don’t

know

that,” Faraday muttered miserably. That man didn’t deserve Vasquez’s affection, Billy thought meanly.

He would have rolled his eyes if he thought for even a half a second that the act wouldn’t send him into a terrible spiral of world-tilting vertigo. He settled for narrowing them instead, and murmured a few words in Korean that were not especially kind. Beside him, Goody huffed an amused snort.

The waitress, when she came bouncing up to the table, was another problem entirely.

She had a long, glossy ponytail swinging down her back and her teeth were white enough that Billy found them somewhat offensive. He didn’t need to interact with good humor like this when he felt like his entire body was trying to murder him from the inside out. Her name-tag was hand-written, white marker on chalkboard like all the signage at La
Mélange, and it read in cheerful, bubbly print ‘Ashleigh.’

She had dotted her ‘i’ with a heart. This, Billy thought murderously, was even more offensive than her teeth.

“Welcome to La Mélange this beautiful morning, y’all!” she greeted brightly, voice loud and syrupy sweet with a thick southern drawl. “Is this our first time here?”

Every single one of them flinched, excepting Faraday, who whimpered into his arm like somebody had physically wounded him. Billy dug sluggishly around in the breast pocket of his vest until he came up with his money clip.

“Listen,” he said slowly, tugging a slightly rumpled twenty-dollar bill free of its brethren and holding it out to the waitress. She blinked at it, a little confused. “We will tip you at

least

fifty percent if you dial it down to, I don’t know, a two.”

“One,” Faraday groaned pathetically. Billy sighed.

“A one,” he corrected. Ashleigh-the-Waitress glanced around their table, taking them all in, and then narrowed her eyes shrewdly at the twenty.

“Deal,” she said, a great deal more quietly and with a less pronounced drawl, plucking the bill out of Billy’s hand and tucking it into the pocket of her apron. “I’ll just get y’all some coffee to start, shall I?”

“Good woman,” Vasquez assured her, the only one of them capable of mustering a smile.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

5TH YEAR

There was a new student at the feast on the first day of fifth year, standing head and shoulders above the milling swarm of Firsties waiting to be Sorted, looking desperately nervous in a set of standard black Hogwarts robes with no identifying colors on them. He had big, dark eyes and floppy hair, and Faraday was instantly curious.

He leaned over and nudged his shoulder against Billy’s - the two of them a tiny pinprick of Slytherin green at the long table teeming with Hufflepuff yellow - and tilted his head toward the tall boy.

“Who’s that?”

Billy glanced over from where Goody was regaling a group of second years - all of them looking positively hypnotized with their eyes wide, mouths half-open in rapt attention - with fanciful tales of his summer in France. He flicked his gaze to the strange boy and then turned and narrowed his eyes at Faraday.

“Why would I know who that is?” he asked flatly.

“Hey!” Faraday hollered again, a little louder. “I said - ”

Vasquez whirled around suddenly, fast enough that Faraday stepped back on instinct and found himself being crowded gently into the little alcove behind the suit of armor.

“I heard you, guero,” Vasquez murmured, voice dark, eyes glittering amused over his smirk. Faraday stared at him, licked his lips, heart pounding in his chest.

“What are you gonna do about it?” he sneered meanly.

Vasquez studied him for a long moment, eyes narrow and thoughtful. He sighed, and brought his left hand up to curl tenderly around Faraday’s chin, tilting his face just so and leaning in. He hovered there for a moment, breath warm against Faraday’s parted lips, while Faraday’s pulse jumped up to an excited tattoo just beneath the surface of his skin. He took a little, desperate breath, and Vasquez moved to press their mouths together.

It was soft, and warm, and sweet, and Faraday leaned into the contact without thinking about it, reaching up to tangle one of his hands in the front of Vasquez’s sweater. Vasquez made a little pleased sound against his mouth and stepped in closer, thoroughly trapping Faraday between the long, hot line of his body and the wall at his back. He licked at the seam of Faraday’s mouth, cautious and searching, and Faraday sighed, opening up.
Vasquez kissed in long, languid strokes, lazy and confident in a way that made heat bloom low in Faraday’s belly, thumb dragging absently across Faraday’s jaw and setting his skin to tingling. He licked, hot and wet, against Faraday’s teeth and Faraday made a noise deep in his throat that sounded embarrassingly similar to a whimper.When Vasquez finally pulled back, he was grinning and breathing heavy, dark eyes hooded and gleaming, cheeks flushed. Faraday blinked up at him - he felt dizzy, groggy, mouth swollen and body hot all over. He was sure that his face had gone blisteringly pink but he couldn’t bring himself to be as embarrassed about it as he would have liked, reeling from the feel of Vasquez’s mouth on his.
“What - ” he tried, licked his lips and took a breath. “What the hell was that?”

Vasquez’s smile turned sharp at the corners and he leaned in again for another lingering kiss - mouth working gently over Faraday’s, soft pressure sending plumes of white heat out through his limbs.

“You’re smart, guero,” he murmured against Faraday’s mouth, dark and teasing. “I’m sure you can figure it out.” He brushed their noses together, smiling when Faraday tilted his head to meet him, and kissed him once more, hard and fast.
He stepped back, carefully untangling Faraday’s fingers from his clothes and straightening himself up. The bastard had the gall to wink as he turned and headed off down the hallway, calling cheerfully over his shoulder, “See you tomorrow!”
Faraday stood in the little alcove for a long moment, catching his breath and staring, confused, in the same direction in which Vasquez had disappeared. He blinked and sagged back against the wall, reaching up to tug at his hair as he asked, bewildered, “What just happened?”

There was a moment of contemplative silence and then a groaning, metallic voice supplied merrily, “Looked like a pretty decent snog to me.”

6TH YEAR

When Vasquez walked into Double Potions on Monday, Faraday was sitting at the very last station on the right, leaning back against the wall with his outrageous dragonhide boots propped up on the tabletop, perilously close to knocking his pewter cauldron to the floor. He had faint bruising across his cheek and a nasty split at the center of his lip, dark red and brutal. He was worrying the latter with his tongue the way he usually did
- little tentative presses he didn’t even seem aware of beyond the occasional wince when he dug in too hard - and his knuckles looked raw from what little of them Vasquez could see curled over his arms, which were folded across his chest in turn. He was paler than usual, his freckles standing out in stark relief against his skin, and his auburn hair was a floppy mess, haloing his face in a riot of bronze-edged waves. There were dark shadows under his eyes that suggested he hadn’t been sleeping.Despite everything, Vasquez’s chest twinged painfully at the sight of him.He stared for a long moment, until Faraday felt the weight of his gaze and tilted his face up, combative and glaring with his chin jutted out, mouth half-curled in a snarl. His eyes widened slightly when he realized who was looking at him, a flash of something breathtaking and hopeful flaring in those hooded green depths for just a beat before it hardened and faded.
Vasquez swallowed down the sudden, terrible lurch in his stomach and tore his gaze away, bracing himself for the split-second of hurt in Faraday’s face. It was like a knife to the gut every time, but Vasquez took a deep breath through his nose and set his shoulders against the sudden flare of pain.

So Faraday had been fighting. So what? All Faraday

ever

did was fight; with people he liked, with people he didn’t like, and most recently - until whatever altercation had left him looking the way he did this morning - with Vasquez. It wasn’t Vasquez’s responsibility anymore to make sure that he cleaned himself up afterward, and he doubted that Faraday would take kindly to a friendly reminder that he knew basic first aid spells from anyone, least of all Vasquez himself.

He sighed and sat down at the very first station on the left, all the way across the room and caddy-corner to where Faraday was seated. He poured all of his focus into unpacking his things - pewter cauldron, spoon made of rowan wood, fourteen inches on the appropriate brewing methods of Amortentia - and steeled himself to pretend he couldn’t feel Faraday’s eyes burning into his back throughout the entire period.
It didn’t wind up mattering much, anyway. Whatever idiot Slytherin Faraday wound up partnering with apparently wasn’t up to placating his temper, and Professor Malfoy ejected him from the class less than an hour in, docking thirty points from Slytherin for his trouble despite the fact that it meant setting his own House back in the eternal bid for the Cup.
Vasquez watched him go - the hard, angry line of his back as he shoved his way out the door, swearing under his breath - and tried to swallow down the knot of guilt that rose in his throat, cold and sharp.

“You know he’s fighting again?”

Vasquez glanced up from his research, head bowed over a dusty old tome where he was copying a handful of throwaway lines from a larger article about dragon fire into an essay on alternative brewing methods. It was technically extra credit, but it dovetailed nicely with Vasquez’s year-long independent study project for Care of Magical Creatures, and he liked writing, besides. Not to mention that he had recently found himself with a surplus of free time, and keeping busy with schoolwork was infinitely less pathetic than whiling away the hours by oscillating wildly between quivering rage and desperate pining.
Billy Rocks looked distinctly unimpressed, as always. He was stood in front of Vasquez’s table in a neat vest and jeans, school robes open and clasped loosely across his collar with an elegant but slightly ostentatious chain that Vasquez could tell without question had been a gift from Goodnight. He had his arms crossed over his chest, one eyebrow lifted slightly, an amiable quirk to the corners of his mouth.Admittedly, Vasquez was a little bit surprised to see him here - he’d expected that any Slytherin friends he and Faraday shared would rally around the other boy now that they’d parted ways, but then Billy had never seemed the type to bend to the whim of the status quo. Besides, Vasquez had been friends with Goodnight long before he and Faraday had started dating, and it was an irrefutable truth of the universe that Goodnight trumped everything, as far as Billy was concerned.“That’s not really any of my business,” Vasquez said, maybe a little waspishly. Billy snorted and put his hand on the back of one of the chairs across the table.
“You mind if I sit?”

Vasquez shook his head.

Nobody did scrutiny quite like Billy Rocks. It was the stillness, Vasquez thought, that made it so unnerving - the way he went coiled tight like a viper for a split second, eyes dark and ominous, that made Vasquez feel like so much prey cowering before him.

“We had to suspend him from the team,” Billy said placidly. Vasquez flinched.

“I heard,” he said tightly, voice hoarse. That had been two weeks ago - a passel of his Gryffindor peers coming in from the Hufflepuff-Slytherin bout with their teeth locked in uncomfortable grimaces, all of them milling around nervously and wringing their wrists until Vasquez started to worry that something had gone seriously wrong, that Faraday had been horribly injured when he hadn’t been there to prevent it. He hunched in on himself a little, unsure of where this conversation was headed and whether he wanted it to continue. Billy drummed his fingers thoughtfully against the tabletop.

“He broke McCann’s nose with a Beating club,” he continued easily, “knocked him off his broom ten feet up.”

“I know,” Vasquez frowned, brow furrowed with confusion. He’d seen the other Gryffindor himself, scowling mutinously and being escorted through the halls by Madame Pomfrey, blood leaking out between the fingers of the hand he had cupped over his face. “The whole school knows, by now. It’s not exactly news.”

“McCann,” Billy said slowly, casual as if he were discussing the weather, “welcomed Faraday back to the ‘land of the single,’ I think he called it, and expressed his joy at Faraday not having anything to chain him down anymore.”

Vasquez winced.

“Yeah,” Billy agreed intently. “I believe he referred to you as a ‘poindexter.’”

Vasquez scowled down at the table, stomach clenching unpleasantly. He sighed, hard, and scrubbed his hand over his face, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head.

“What am I supposed to do about it?” he asked. Billy shrugged.

“Talk to him?”

“I don’t think that will work,” Vasquez glowered darkly. He gestured to himself, seated alone at the library with Billy across the table lecturing him about the behavior of his ex-boyfriend. “This is what happened last time we talked.”

“Look,” Billy sighed, palms spread wide, placating, “you’re the only person I’ve ever seen talk Faraday down from the edge. That’s why I came to you.” He paused for a moment, and added, “Goody’s getting worried.”
Vasquez sighed, shaking his head and turning his attention back to his book. His heart felt sore and tender, had for weeks, and every word out of Billy’s mouth felt like somebody was digging their fingers into that raw wound. He didn’t want to talk about Faraday anymore.“Faraday will be fine,” he muttered, only half-convinced himself. “He just needs to punch it out of his system.”“I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave,” Billy said flatly. Vasquez glared down at his text.“Slytherins should know better than anyone that brave is usually synonymous with stupid, cabrón,” he snapped meanly.Billy hesitated for a long moment, silently weighing the merits of some internal thought. He pressed his lips into a thin line and drummed his fingers in a short, staccato burst, before leaning back in his chair and saying quietly, “He’s been hanging around with Bart Bogue.”Vasquez blinked, because he couldn't possibly have heard that right. He looked up, frowning and shaking his head in disbelief.
“What? Faraday? With

Bogue?

”
Billy nodded, raised an eyebrow at the face Vasquez made and muttered with feeling, “I know. But he is. I don’t know what Bogue wants with him but you can bet it isn’t good.”“No,” Vasquez agreed absently, mind reeling. He’d seen Faraday spiral before - hazard of being inseparable from another person for over a year - but it had never been this bad before; never got him kicked off the team he loved more than anything, never had him skulking around with monsters like Bogue. Then again, they’d never broken up with each other in the middle of a petty screaming match before, either, so this was fairly uncharted territory all around.A yawning pit opened up in Vasquez’s stomach, cold and gnawing. He glanced up at Billy and waved a hand at his own face.“You think that’s why he was all busted up this morning?”“It's the smart bet,” Billy replied, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.Vasquez chewed on his lip, stomach twisting. He sighed and reached up to scrub a hand over his face.“Fine,” he muttered, scowling over at Billy. “I’ll talk to him.”Billy tilted his head, flashed a small but sincere smile. “I appreciate it.”Vasquez huffed a bitter laugh and stared down at his essay.“Don’t thank me yet,” he warned darkly.After all, Faraday wasn't exactly reasonable even on the best of days and this, Vasquez considered - stomach twisting sourly, heart aching like an old wound - was far, far removed from that.

Vasquez had memorized Faraday’s class schedule as a matter of habit, and he knew that this afternoon Faraday had another Double session - Transfiguration with the Ravenclaws. Faraday liked Transfiguration, had a natural proclivity for it and enthused about the work in ways he didn't for most of the other subjects on offer. There was a chance he’d actually elected to attend, but Vasquez knew him well enough to bet against it.
Though he’d never quite experienced it at this magnitude before, Vasquez had pulled Faraday out of enough self-destructive spirals to guess that he’d be ducking out of any class he didn't absolutely have to be in. His intuition proved right when he turned the corner in the courtyard out back of the castle and found Faraday in the little shadowed alcove between two monstrously huge rose bushes. They were bare of blossoms at the moment, but Vasquez new from clandestine trips out here with Faraday himself that in the moonlight they came alive, roses in rich navy and royal purple and deepest red opening to the dark sky.Faraday had a lit cigarette dangling in his hand, knees up with his elbows atop them, arms out, staring despondently at the dirt. The bruising looked worse, out here against the backdrop of the crisp fall sunshine, and Vasquez’s heart clenched painfully at the sight of it. He stepped forward and Faraday looked up, gaze beckoned by the motion. His entire body pulled taut like a string, shoulders hunching around his ears, eyes narrow and hunted.
“What do

you

want?” he snarled immediately, and Vasquez did his best not to flinch.
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his robes and shrugged, glancing down at his feet for a second and toeing at the dirt. He swallowed, nervous in a way he’d never been around Faraday before, not even in those queasy days between their vitriolic first kiss and Vasquez carefully, hesitantly asking Faraday to stick around; Faraday huffing a laugh and rolling his eyes because he’d already decided he was going to.“Can we talk?”Faraday snorted, bitter and mean, and took a long drag off of his cigarette.“I’d rather not,” he said, thick curls of white smoke giving shape to his words. Vasquez fought the urge to roll his eyes, that sharp prickle of irritation that only Faraday knew how to coax out of him rising along his spine.“I heard you’ve been hanging around with Bogue,” Vasquez said flatly. Faraday’s gaze flickered away and his shoulders hunched a little higher.“That's none of your fucking business,” he snapped.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"Life is too short not to know exactly what you would and wouldn't let into your pussy at any given moment," Gina said with a shrug. "It definitely shouldn't take as long as it's taking you."
She arched a judgmental eyebrow and took a pointed sip of her mudslide.
"You don't need to be gross," Amy shot back, face flushing hot. She was definitely blaming it on the beer and absolutely refused to even consider that Gina had possibly embarrassed her.

"What, because I said pussy?" Gina snorted. She narrowed her eyes and smirked. "I bet you call it something sweet and romantic. Your 'flower' or your 'sacred place.'"

"I do not!" Amy insisted hotly, taking a very casual and practiced sip of her beer that in no way indicated an admission of guilt. "Besides, you called yours your 'velvet goldmine' like six times!"

"Because it's soft and full of treasures," Gina said, agreeably. "Anyway, Ames, sweet precious Ames, we of the sexually empowered female designation have a saying for situations like these."

"Oh?" Amy perked up a little, hopeful at the prospect of some real advice. Gina nodded, eyes wide and assuring. She leaned in and Amy mirrored the motion, the two of them gathered close toward the center of the table like they were sharing a secret.

"Shit," Gina said slowly, "or get off the pot." She settled back in her chair and kicked one ankle up onto the table, arms crossed over her chest. "Rosa's the total package. She's not gonna stay interested forever."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Fake Dating AU:
" -- please, Caitlin, it's just for a week!""Absolutely not!"Cisco paused, tugging an earbud out and cramming the tail end of a gas station breakfast burrito into his mouth. He peered through the lab window to discover that Barry was actually, literally on his knees in front of Caitlin.His hair was extra fluffy, like he’d been running his fingers through it, which he tended to do when he was stressed. He had his hands clasped together in front of his chest like he was praying and Caitlin was glaring at him with that narrow-eyed stare she usually only got when one of her experiments wasn't yielding the results she'd expected."You don't know what she's like!" Barry begged, scooting forward on his knees. Caitlin took a step back and crossed her arms in front of her chest, glaring harder. "Joe figured us out and she's ten times as perceptive as Joe is! She'll know something's up if she looks too closely, and trust me, if she knows I'm single, she will be cataloging my every move to try and match-make with anyone who wanders into my periphery.""Not my problem," Caitlin said, line of her spine rigid. Cisco whistled from his spot behind the computers, smugly satisfied at the way Caitlin jumped and Barry went from kneeling to the overly casual stance of someone trying too hard to play it cool in the space of a blink."Am I interrupting something?" he asked with a half-grin."Yes! Barry's lost his mind!" Caitlin hollered, making an expansive gesture at Barry at the same that Barry rocked back on his heels, flashed the weirdly charming grin that meant he was definitely lying about something, and said, "No! Nope! Nothing at all!"They whipped around to glare at each other and Cisco threw his hands up in the air."Whoa whoa whoa! Calm down, kiddos!"He took a furtive step around the computer table, wary of the way that Barry would go up on his toes, vibrating for a split second, and then settle back down while Caitlin's glower chilled to below-freezing.

Mercury Labs AU:

Cisco was elbow-deep in the guts of an unused prototype from his grad school days when his phone burst into an angry trill, buzzing so loudly that the vibrations sent it drifting toward the table edge.“Oh, shit!” Cisco jumped, narrowly managing not to destroy the small adjustments he’d spent the past forty minutes making. He carefully withdrew his arm from the half-assembled skeleton of machine pieces and caught his phone before it toppled to the floor.He tugged one of his working gloves off with his teeth and swiped the alarm, immediately relieved at the near-silence that settled over the room. Here in the lab there was always the subtle background hum of machinery, but Cisco found it soothing. He swore again when he saw the time and the twenty-four text messages from Dev, all demanding to know Cisco’s whereabouts with decreasingly polite verbiage.He paused for a second to tap out a quick, “OMW now sry,” and hurried through the lock-down procedure, tucking away all sensitive projects in storage areas appropriately equipped to protect them and dismantling the tools that were dangerous when left lying around unattended.Thankfully, he’d brought his blazer with him to work this morning. It only took a few minutes to shrug it on over his appropriately nerdy graphic tee and pull his hair back into a hasty knot at the back of his head – not quite black tie, but it would do. He gave himself a cursory glance in one of the hall’s tinted windows, and half-tripped his way down the stairs to the first floor.Mercury Labs had a policy of hosting a raucous celebration every time they completed a major project, and this was the first one they’d had since Cisco was bumped up from an intern to a full-time employee.His phone buzzed again and Cisco fished it out of his pocket, rolling his eyes when he saw that Dev had sent him the middle finger emoji repeated more times than Cisco cared to count.There was a middle-aged security guard stationed outside of Auxiliary Conference Room #3, who perked up as Cisco approached. Cisco flashed his employee badge and the guy waved him in with a nod.Cisco had seen the conference room just this morning, looking bland and grey and half-forgotten, but the decorating committee had really pulled out all the stops.Glittering swathes of silver fabric gathered in knots near the ceiling and coiled down the walls like creeping ivy; fairy lights twinkled, wound around tall columns, their glimmer reflected hazily in the marble floor; a huge silver basin held the position of honor on the small stage at the head of the room, thick plumes of white fog rolling steadily over its edge, a massive pair of wings, elegantly sculpted from ice, erupting out of the mist and straining toward the heavens.He searched the sea of carefully arranged tables and was unsurprised to find that his lab-mate had staked out one of the four situated nearest the impressive array of finger foods.Cisco strolled up, muttering, “Sorry, sorry,” while Dev shook his head and glowered.“I got caught up in a project,” Cisco explained, pulling a chair out and sliding into it. He grinned at Dev and Dev’s wife, Winnie, and waggled his fingers at a few other employees that he knew by face but not by name.“Of course you did.” Dev sighed and shot him an unimpressed look, adding mournfully, “Dude, this is so sad. You’re what, twenty-four? Way too young to be a workaholic.”Cisco rolled his eyes, because Dev was barely thirty and Winnie was a few years younger than that. The three employees he couldn’t name – a shy red-head with horn-rim glasses that Cisco thought worked in the botany department, and two interns from various theoretical science departments – didn’t seem to be any older.Winnie shot Dev a narrow-eyed glare – an expression that Cisco knew from a lifetime of proximity to his mother meant ‘be nice’ – and reached out to pat Cisco’s hand.“Thankfully, we have the power to fix you,” she assured with a grin. She had a soft face under a hard-edged bob with bangs in a line straight across her forehead, and if she weren’t already married to Dev, Cisco would totally have had the world’s biggest crush on her.“Oh yeah?” Cisco asked with a grin. “What power is that?”“The power of booze,” Winnie replied serenely, raising a narrow glass full of bubbling golden liquid.“Aw, for me?” Cisco wagged his eyebrows and Winnie snorted, flicking him in the arm.“No way, jailbait, get your own,” she said before taking a sip. On her other side, Dev made an appropriately besotted face and leaned in to press a kiss to her cheek.“You guys are disgusting,” Cisco groaned, rising to his feet. He glanced to the others seated at the table and asked, “Can I get anything for anyone while I’m up?”Everyone politely declined his offer, so Cisco ducked into the crowd, weaving his way toward one of the lazily meandering wait staff balancing a tray of champagne flutes. He sweet-talked his way into two glasses – let it never be said that Cisco wasn’t up for a good time – and took a sip from one, wondering absently if Dev had managed to convince Winnie to sneak a flask of vodka into the party in her clutch."Mr. Ramon,” came a pleasant baritone from somewhere on Cisco’s left. “Still glad you picked Mercury over S.T.A.R. Labs?"Cisco glanced up to find Dr. Subramanian, one of the theoretical physicists who did a lot of cooperative projects with the engineers, grinning at him over a small plate loaded with finger foods. Cisco tilted one of his drinks at the room around them - scientists and researchers decked to the nines, all of them brimming with goodwill - and smiled."How could I not be?" he asked. "Cutting edge research, all the best toys, and you cats sure know how to party."Dr. Subramanian chuckled and clapped a hand on Cisco's shoulder."Good man," he said approvingly. "We're happy to have you on the team, Cisco. We wouldn't be celebrating today without you.""I'm not sure about all that," Cisco ducked his head, smiling sheepishly."I am," Dr. Subramanian said confidently. He popped one of the tiny pastry wrapped sausages into his mouth before he continued, but Cisco didn't mind. He appreciated a man who prioritized his snack foods. "The relay wouldn't have made it past beta testing without your cooling system. We're lucky to have you.""Thank you, doctor. It means a lot to hear you say that."Dr. Subramanian had barely opened his mouth to respond when something over Cisco's shoulder caught his eye. Cisco turned to take a peek and saw a cloud of blonde hair hovering above a dated red women's suit, complete with shoulder pads - Gina, the PR woman. Her cherry red mouth was pulled down in a grimace and she was making anxious 'come hither' hand gestures.Dr. Subramanian rolled his eyes, sighed, and shoved a few mini quiches into his coat pocket before foisting his plate off on Cisco."Hang on to that for me?" he asked apologetically."Sure thing,” Cisco nodded. Dr. Subramanian smiled, straightening his bowtie, and took off at a jog toward the front of the room.As mentors went, he was definitely one of Cisco's favorites – he’d overseen Cisco’s team of engineers on a few projects and he never let his passion for his ideas overshadow the reality of creating workable tech. He was infinitely better than the preppy, spoiled douchebag of a team leader Cisco would have been working under if he’d accepted the internship position with S.T.A.R. Labs.Cisco hadn’t been positive that even the privilege of working with his scientific idol would have negated the piss poor attitude of Wells’s protégé. He still bristled when he thought about the way the boy-prodigy’s lip had curled at everything from Cisco’s wardrobe to his exemplary grasp of knowledge within his chosen field.With the particle accelerator explosion almost a year ago now and S.T.A.R. Labs an empty blight at the heart of Central City, it was kind of a moot point anyway, but even that disaster leant Cisco some vindication for the hard choice he’d made.Cisco slid back into his seat just as gray-haired man in a full-on cummerbund took the stage to scattered applause.
“Who’s that?” he murmured, leaning toward Dev. Even with a year at Mercury Labs under his belt, Cisco still hadn’t met most of the researchers outside of the departments he worked with directly.“Dr. Cahill,” Dev replied around a mouthful of puff pastry. “He’s one of the heads in Biochem.”Dr. Cahill launched into a rousing speech about teamwork and family, his clear tenor rising over the muted buzz of conversation. He was a charismatic and deeply passionate speaker, and Cisco found himself nodding along more than once to the sentiments that Dr. Cahill expressed. He was debating whether Dr. Subramanian would notice if a few of the Rangoon on his plate inexplicably disappeared when Dr. Cahill’s speech suddenly cut out.The doctor barely managed to murmur “What on Earth?” into the microphone before a shrill scream ripped across the room. Cisco whipped around to see what the hubbub was about, and then blinked and shook his head, because that…that couldn’t be right.

Iris POV fic:

Two days before Christmas, Barry Allen sits down in front of Iris West, in the house that they grew up in, and tells her that he loves her.

Not loves her in the way that she loves him - a soft, warm feeling that's as comfortable and familiar as slipping on a favorite coat - but in the way that she loves Eddie - something molten hot that bubbles up through her and leaves her feeling dazed and awed.

To Barry's credit, he doesn't ask anything of her, just looks at her with those sad-puppy eyes, says his piece, and goes. It's still unfair of him, and the parts of her heart that aren't breaking for him are shaking with rage, but at least she can cling to that small silver lining.

After the door shuts quietly behind him there is a moment of stillness. Iris can faintly make out the scuff of Barry's shoes on the pavement as they fade into the distance, but her world narrows down to the tightness in her chest and the memory of Barry's face. She bites her lip and takes a breath that breaks halfway through, rattling into a sob.

Iris sits on the sofa in her childhood home, surrounded by cheerfully twinkling strands of lights and jazzy, upbeat music, buries her face in her hands, and takes a breath. Dad and Eddie are both working a case, and if Barry even tried to show his face right now it's an even split that Iris would hug him or strangle him, so she knows she won't be interrupted.
She lets herself cry.

She takes a few shuddering gasps and bends forward, face shrouded in her hands and resting against her knees, whole body shivering when she thinks about the pain that Barry has been carrying all these years. Her tears are hot, some of them shed in empathy for the boy she considers her best friend, but most on her own behalf; a physical manifestation of the fury she feels burning down to her bones because how
dare
he?
How dare he do this to her? Tonight, of all nights. Now, of all times. She's confronted him again and again about the secret he's been dragging behind him like an impossible weight since he woke from that stupid coma and he chooses to reveal it when she's moving in with a man she loves, has loved for a year of
her life. How dare he tarnish that happiness, even for a moment?

No, the budding journalist in her whispers,
that can't be it. If he's loved you that long it's an old ache. The secret he's hiding is fresh, new.

Iris tells her suspicious reporter side to suck it, wipes the tears off her face and gulps a desperate mouthful of air. She rises to her feet, shaking her hair out over her shoulders, and strides purposefully into the kitchen to pour herself a generous helping of Grandma Esther's eggnog, with exactly as much bourbon as the recipe calls for, plus a little to grow on.

After her face has cooled and her heart doesn't feel like it's trying to claw its way up her throat, Iris settles down with the handful of decorations she hadn't gotten to before Barry decided to rattle her entire worldview and finishes trimming the tree. It's almost Christmas, after all, and Iris West may be a lot of things but she's not a Grinch.

If she downs another cup of eggnog and watches It's A Wonderful Life a few times as an excuse to cry a little more, that's between her and Grandma Esther.

*

"You look like shit," is the first thing Laney says to Iris when she gets to work the next morning.

Iris squints behind her sunglasses, presses her lips into a thin smile, and steps past Laney to unlock the door.

"Rough night," she supplies, shouldering her way in from the Central City chill.

"Boy troubles?" Laney asks, pouting sympathetically as she ducks into the storeroom, reappearing a few seconds later with two aprons.

"Kinda," Iris agrees absently, wincing at the loud buzzing hum as the industrial espresso machine kicks on. She takes the apron Laney offers her gratefully and tucks her coat, hat, and purse into one of the cubbyholes where employees stash their belongings.

"You wanna talk about it?" Laney asks gently. Iris shakes her head and immediately regrets it.

"Not even a little," she mutters. Laney just nods, digs a bottle of aspirin out of her purse, and hands it to Iris without a word. Not for the first time Iris is deeply grateful for the job she likes with people she loves.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Rose Creek was larger than Eduardo expected, considering that Emma Cullen had made her home out to be built of little more than spit, vinegar, and hard-edged pride. The buildings weren't extravagant, but they were plentiful - a post office, two boardinghouses, a handful of saloons and merchants. There was even a publishing office that ran a monthly newspaper, which was a degree of civilization Eduardo found fairly impressive for a mining outfit of barely a hundred people, half of them split off across the river panning for treasures in the hills. The people of Rose Creek were a jumbled medley – miners on leave, farmers, doe-eyed mothers and their children, the strange breed of slick-voiced entrepreneur that tended to crop up like weeds in little frontier settlements. They were all friendly enough, if understandably wary of the dirty, flint-eyed men who had come tromping into their town promising to release them from oppression. Despite their initial lukewarm welcome, the townsfolk put the ragtag team up at the Elysium, a hotel the likes of which Eduardo had rarely ever seen the inside of. It was a luxury he hadn't expected and likely wouldn't see again anytime soon, supposing he survived. The saloon nearest their lodging, which they elected to patronize largely out of convenience, was charmingly named the Rose & Thorn. It was the same as a hundred other saloons Eduardo had seen over the years - dingy in the way even the newest saloons always were, a fine layer of grit springing to life out of the ether and coating everything at hand. It had been constructed hastily enough not to have more than a set of swinging café doors separating the rowdy clientele from the streets, and music spilled out into the gutter until the wee hours of morning. Eduardo could hear the faint strains of a lively piano melody even now, from his position ensconced on the upper-story porch enjoying a cigarillo and a moment of solitary contemplation. He'd left his companions to their drinks and the card tables downstairs, a distant rumble of conversation and laughter. They were fine enough men, if a bit too bound by their ideals for Eduardo's taste. As far as he knew he was only one of their outfit with a bounty on his head, and there was only so much time he could spend alongside men of such upstanding merit before the rangy, wild parts in him started to stir. Of all of them he probably respected Chisolm most, and liked Faraday best. Despite his irreverence and his tendency toward crassness bordering on impunity, Faraday possessed within him some inherent magic that could have kindled affection even in the coldest of hearts, and Eduardo had always run just a little too hot as it was. They matched one another well in temperament too - not so wild and strange as Red Harvest or Horne, but neither did they share the genteel aura of danger that permeated Chisolm, Goodnight, and Billy. As it always did, like called to like, and despite Faraday's glib ignorance and slightly alarming affinity for explosives, they'd struck up something of a friendship. A burst of familiar raucous laughter broke through the window at Eduardo's back, shattering the calm and wending away into the night like so much smoke. Summoned like the Devil himself when you thought on him too long, Faraday followed shortly after, poking his head out over the windowsill and grinning delightedly when he saw the space was already occupied. "Well lookit what we got here!" He hefted himself over the window-frame with a grunt, landing so heavy that the planks rattled under his boots. He took a few wobbling steps to regain his balance and sauntered over to where Eduardo was posted up against the wooden rail ringing the length of the porch. “A real, honest to life Mexican! Hola amigo!” His pronunciation was horrible, as usual, but Eduardo had learned over the short span of their friendship that it was useless to correct him. “Hola,” Eduardo returned. Faraday
grinned and started digging around in his vest, presumably trying to excavate something from within one of his many hidden pockets. After a moment he glanced up expectantly. "Ain't we amigos?" he pressed. Eduardo considered this. He made a face and wiggled his hand back and forth in the air. Faraday laughed. "Now, y'see, that really hits me right in here," he said, clapping his hands over his heart, but he was grinning. Eduardo shrugged and leaned against the railing, taking a long drag off of his cigarillo. Faraday watched him, looking a little glazed, his quick, sure fingers slowing to a clumsy crawl. Eduardo raised an eyebrow. "You need help there, guero?” “Huh?” Faraday blinked and ducked his head, grinning. “Oh! No, I’m all right. Just, uh, lookin’ for my smokes.” He came up with his battered old railway bible and frowned. He gave the cards a cursory shuffle and tucked them back away with a deft hand, so fast that Eduardo caught barely a flash of garish faces grinning up into the night before they disappeared. “Well," he sighed, "that ain’t them.” It was like a magician's hat, that vest
of his. Faraday produced from within its confines in rapid succession: a half-eaten piece of salt jerky, four spent bullet casings, a well-loved drawing of a topless woman no bigger than a postcard, a folding knife, and a smooth-worn river rock, muttering to himself all the while. “Ay dios,” Eduardo muttered, and took pity on him. He fished his cigar tin from his pocket and offered Faraday its contents. “You’re making me embarrassed to watch you. Here.” Faraday accepted a cigarillo graciously, leaning in to the match that Eduardo provided and taking a quick, hard drag to set the end of it aglow. His face was pink with liquor and his long eyelashes cast shadows down his cheeks. It was, altogether, not a terrible sight. “Much obliged,” Faraday said grandiosely, tipping an imaginary hat to Eduardo. His actual hat was likely downstairs in the bar, hooked over the back of a chair where the rest of their assorted crew was still enjoying their victuals. Faraday crossed the short porch and leaned forward so that his elbows were on the railing, hands dangling out into the empty air. He squinted up at the half-full slice of moon hovering in the inky dark. “Nice night,” he said after a long moment. Eduardo arched a disbelieving eyebrow. Moon aside, a blanket of sticky heat had settled over Rose Creek the second they arrived and didn’t look to be leaving anytime soon. It was oppressive and wet and made the rough work they’d been doing that much more difficult to bear. Even the winds that picked up across the plains were unpleasantly warm, rolling through the little town like fetid breath from some distant, gaping maw. Eduardo had taken to leaving the top few buttons of his shirt undone in a desperate bid to cool off. Mostly that meant that he was as miserably hot as any of the others, only with more mosquito bites to show for it. “Well, nice as we’re liable to get, anyway,” Faraday conceded with a huff. “Bunch a’ heathens like us, come into a quaint little town intent to baptize it in blood and fire.” “I didn’t know you were such a poet,” Eduardo teased. Faraday swung woozily over to knock their shoulders together. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” “Oh? Like what?” Faraday cut Eduardo a glance out of the corner of his eye, sharp and surprisingly shrewd for a man who’d been soaking in booze for the better part of an evening. He shrugged. “Fella’s gotta have secrets." The aloofness in his tone was strained in a way that ran directly counterpoint to the loose and unconcerned exuberance he usually carried with great gusto. Eduardo studied him for a long moment – the stubble roughened edge of his jaw picked out in the silver light of the moon, the way his ginger tinged hair bowed into sweat-dark curls at the nape of his neck, the broad line of his shoulders underneath the soft worn cotton of his shirt. He was a pretty picture, Faraday, and he knew it, too, sauntering around with that animal swagger to his step and a confident, predatory gleam in his eye. “Y’know, you watch a man like that long enough, he’s liable to get ideas,” Faraday slurred suddenly, twisting so that his back was to the railing, legs falling open invitingly. His eyes shone impishly in the low yellow glow of the light through the window, mouth curled up around his half-smoked cigarillo. There was a shadow of intent, the echo of some hidden promise, in the corner of his smirk. During their brief companionship, it had become eminently clear that Faraday was a gambler in every way that counted – he upped the ante anytime he saw an opportunity regardless of the consequences. Possibly, he was doing that now, making a gambit he thought he was assured to win. Possibly, he was only playing chicken with that coiled promise in the lean line of his body, with no intention of following through on his implications. Possibly, he wasn’t. Eduardo weighed his options against the likelihood that they would both be dead in forty-eight hours, and took a deliberate step closer. If he was reading wrong, well, Faraday seemed the type of fellow to live and let live, though he may not be especially gracious about it. And if it turned out that he wasn’t, Eduardo had been on the lam for many long months already. It was nothing he wasn’t used to. As he sidled in closer, the toe of his boot scuffed against the inside edge of one of Faraday’s. Eduardo smirked as Faraday’s eyes widened, startled and caught out. He knocked their boots together again, deliberately this time. “What kind of ideas?” Faraday was frozen for a long second, pulled taut like a cornered rabbit, and then his whole body relaxed, melting like butter in a hot pan. He widened his stance just enough that it was a small matter of Eduardo shifting his weight to position himself between Faraday’s legs. He didn’t get close enough to touch, for a number of reasons – the most prevalent of which being that anyone could wander out onto the porch at any moment, and in Eduardo’s line of work the very first lesson he’d ever learned was the importance of plausible deniability. “Well,” Faraday drawled. His already flushed face bloomed hotter, eyes glassy and bright with something akin to excitement. He knocked his knee lightly, brazenly against Eduardo’s. “I can promise you that ain’t none of ‘em suitable for polite conversation.” Eduardo took one final drag off of his cigarillo and flicked it to the floor, crushing it with the toe of his boot and pretending that the way his leg dragged along Faraday’s thigh was happenstance. “What about impolite conversation?” Eduardo asked. Faraday canted his head and smiled, slow and slick, under his pretty green eyes. “Now that,” Faraday said, teeth clenched around his cigarillo, “they are much better suited to.” Eduardo took a deep, slow breath to settle the fire jumping up in his belly. “I’m heading back to the hotel in ten minutes,” he said, voice low. On a whim, he reached out and plucked the cigarillo out of Faraday’s mouth to take a long drag off of it. He was rewarded for his improvisation when Faraday sucked his bottom lip under his teeth, eyes darkening sweetly. “Yeah?” Faraday’s voice was husky with smoke, or maybe with something keener. “What’re you aimin’ to do until then?” Eduardo leaned in and a slow, sweeping lick of satisfaction uncurled low in his gut when Faraday tilted his face up, pliant and instinctual. They were close enough that Eduardo could feel the heat of Faraday’s breath against his cheek. “I’m going to have another drink,” he said. He tilted his head, let the weight of intention settle into his tone, and added, “You’re welcome to join me, if you like.” Faraday watched him for a long moment, eyes burning. He reached up and took the cigarillo back. There was a slight tremor in his fingers that made that same, smug heat unfurl in Eduardo’s chest. “Never was one to turn down such a friendly invitation,” Faraday said, aiming for casual but too stiff to really pull it off. He sucked on the cigarillo once, twice, and then tossed it over the railing and into the night. Ordinarily, Eduardo would have peered over the edge to be sure it had landed harmlessly in the dirt – towns as dry and hot as Rose Creek went up quick in the summer winds – but tonight he had more pressing things on his mind. “Well, then,” he said. “Shall we?” Faraday grinned and gestured to the open window. “After you.” Eduardo managed to climb back into the bar with something resembling grace, despite the adrenaline prickling along his spine. Faraday was a long line of heat at his back, following him through with considerably less success, though he managed by some virtue of luck and determination to keep his feet. They trundled down the stairs shoulder-to-shoulder, Faraday’s arm a bright point of heat where it brushed against Eduardo's. He was enthusiastically recounting one of his many tall tales, the places where their bodies touched burning into the forefront of Eduardo’s attention. He laughed and shook his head derisively in all the right places, the rhythm of Faraday’s story fairly easy to keep up with even though he could barely spare it a passing thought. As they wound their way through the fairly well crowded room to the bar, Faraday slung a companionable arm around his shoulders, the bastard. It was warm and heavy and solid. He must have been feeling especially bold because he risked letting his thumb glance deliberately off of the bare skin at Eduardo’s collar. Eduardo swallowed, tongue suddenly too thick for his mouth. He half-croaked to the bartender, “Bourbon. A double, for me and my friend.” He narrowed his eyes at Faraday, trying to convey that he knew exactly the game Faraday was playing. The other man just smirked, smug. The bartender filled their glasses and Eduardo slipped a coin across the table that probably made him out to be a more generous man than he really was. He didn’t much mind, as he was busy cocking his hip so that the line of his thigh pressed hotly against Faraday’s. The gambler tensed at the contact and sucked a tiny, telling breath through his teeth. As the bartender meandered away, drawn down to the other end of the counter by a boisterous trio of stringy-haired townsmen, Eduardo nudged one of the glasses toward Faraday. Faraday picked it up with the hand he didn’t have roped around Eduardo’s shoulders. Eduardo took extra care to be sure that their fingers brushed. Faraday licked his lips, eyes a little wild in the dim light, and said hoarsely, “Cheers.” “Salúd.” There would always be something grounding in the harsh blaze of liquor lighting a path down your gullet, Eduardo thought, though this went down smoother than most of the swill he’d had in the past. It was good bourbon – better than he’d normally order for himself, but Rose Creek was on the precipice of a reckoning and not many men under such circumstances had the willpower to deny themselves small pleasures. Eduardo sucked a breath through his nose, savoring the familiar prickling heat, and set his glass down on the countertop. He watched, enraptured, as Faraday licked his teeth, ran his tongue along his lower lip. He let his thumb drag over Eduardo’s bare skin again, hot and promising and stoking the ember of want buried low in Eduardo’s belly. Eduardo studied him for
long moment, tousle-haired and wild, like that damned demon horse of his. He smirked up at Eduardo and it burned worse than the bourbon. “I need to get my hat,” Faraday said quietly. He looked a little stunned, though Eduardo would bet he wasn’t much better off, himself. “Let’s go,” he said, nodding to where their companions were still huddled around a table in the middle of the room, laughing and carrying on. Faraday grinned and Eduardo allowed himself to be dragged along through the crowd by the familiar weight of Faraday’s arm.

The Elysium Hotel was one of the grander places Eduardo had ever battened down for the night. It was cozy, but expertly done up in the Atlantic style, with intricately patterned wallpaper, dark wooden fixtures, and gleaming brass wall-sconces lining the stairs. It was also blessedly, blissfully empty – the staff all gone home for the night, the proprietor likely down at the saloon with the rest of the cheerfully inebriated inhabitants of Rose Creek.“Mine’s up top,” Faraday offered, jerking his thumb toward the narrow staircase. He’d relinquished his hold on Eduardo’s shoulders at the door of the saloon, thankfully, happy to wander through the crowded streets at a perfectly respectable distance, not even close enough that their elbows brushed. It had been the most singularly maddening five minutes that Eduardo could conjure in recent memory. “I’m at the end of the hall.” “Well, then,” Faraday said slyly. He winked and turned on his heel, sauntering casually toward the back of the hotel. He had his thumbs tucked into his pockets, whistling some off-key tune as he went. Eduardo watched him walk, the lazy confidence of the motion, the easy way he carried himself. There was something to the way he moved that made Eduardo’s mouth water. It wasn’t particularly sensual, like the carefully calculated sway of the painted women that prowled the porch of the cathouse down the way, but there was power in it; a body sculpted by its history, through hard work and lean living. It was a struggle not to crowd up behind Faraday as he went, not to let his hands slide around Faraday’s hips and pull him back so that the whole long, sleek line of him was pressed up against Eduardo from head to toe. When Faraday reached the door – the only one along this hallway – he turned and posted up invitingly against it, hips cocked forward, eyes hooded and glittering dark. “You comin’?” he asked, and Eduardo stopped trying to hold himself back. He made a low, impatient noise and dug his key out of his pocket, eating up the distance with long, heavy strides until he was boxing Faraday in against the sturdy wood of the door. He probed around sightlessly for the lock, getting one thigh up between Faraday’s legs so that his breath came a little faster. This close, he smelled of sweat and bourbon. He was warm and solid everywhere they touched. After a charged second, he let his hands come to rest just a little hesitantly at Eduardo’s hips, each of his fingers a firebrand. He tilted his head, just barely, and the rough drag of his cheek on Eduardo’s sent a shock of white heat down Eduardo’s spine. “Someone’s all worked up,” Faraday teased breathlessly. “Shut up,” Eduardo said into the hard line of Faraday’s jaw, satisfied when Faraday shivered at the sudden warm burst of breath against his skin. The key sank into the lock and Eduardo turned it violently, growling, “Get inside,” as he pushed Faraday past the threshold with such force that he stumbled and almost lost his footing. “Bossy,” Faraday reprimanded, but he was laughing. Eduardo kicked the door shut with the heel of his boot and turned to lock it with extreme prejudice. When he turned back around, Faraday was half-laid across the bed, boots and gun belt and thick wool socks piled up on the rug. He looked ridiculous against the delicate floral pattern of the sheets, all hard planes and rough edges and trail dirt, propped up on his elbows and eyeing Eduardo with a look of open hunger. It had been a long time since Eduardo took a man to bed, and he gave himself a moment to enjoy the spectacle. They were of a height, though Faraday was a barrel-chested, carthorse type where Eduardo favored his mother’s long, dancer’s limbs. The narrow taper of Faraday’s waist was visible even through the many layers he wore, and the cotton of his shirt pulled tantalizingly across his broad shoulders. His dark hair and his unkempt scruff shone like copper where the light hit bright enough. Even covered in a thin-layer of grime from a long day of working, he was easily one of the better looking men Eduardo had ever bedded. “Well?” Faraday snapped, impatient and slightly tremulous. “We doing this or did you want to just stand there and gawk all night?” Eduardo smirked and tossed his hat onto the dresser, undoing his gun belt with a deft hand and slinging it over the back of the chair in front of the washbasin. He took a few slow, deliberate steps across the room and considered Faraday with his head to one side. “You ever done this before, guero?” Faraday swallowed, eyes flicking from Eduardo’s face down his body and back up again. “I’ve been around a time or two,” he said noncommittally. There was a jittery edge to him that Eduardo couldn’t quite decipher. In another man he might have chalked up to nerves, but Faraday didn’t seem the type. “Oh yeah?” Eduardo leaned down, raised a knee so that he was half-on the bed, body suspended just above Faraday’s. “Prove it.” He’d barely finished speaking before Faraday surged up, catching his mouth in a searing kiss. His beard was rough, and the friction of it sent sparks wheeling in Eduardo’s belly. They kissed for a few long moments, hard and wet, until Faraday licked at the seam of his mouth and Eduardo obligingly opened up. He shivered at the hot-slick sensation of Faraday’s tongue slipping past his teeth, swallowed down Faraday's pleased sigh like it was water in the desert. He tasted like liquor and spice, the woody dregs of smoke. Eduardo got a hand up underneath Faraday's shirt, pressed his palm over the smooth plane of Faraday's stomach. Faraday retaliated by fisting one hand in Eduardo's collar, tugging impatiently at his belt buckle with the other. Eduardo ground his hips down and Faraday arched up to meet him, the hard line of him apparent despite the layers between them. Eduardo let his hand slide downward, aiming to get a hand on Faraday’s belt. His arm grazed the bulge in Faraday’s trousers and Faraday keened into his mouth, his whole body shuddering sweetly. It wasn’t nerves, Eduardo realized amazedly, tugging the belt loose of its fastenings and rubbing his palm over the swell of Faraday's dick. Faraday whimpered and shook beneath him, hips rolling into the contact. It was want – hot and heady and all consuming. Faraday was positively drowning in it. Eduardo broke the kiss and Faraday fell back on his elbows, gasping, eyes closed. “Fuck,” he breathed, so quiet that Eduardo thought he probably didn’t realize he was speaking aloud. “Fuck, fuck.” Eduardo pushed himself up and shifted forward so that he was straddling Faraday's lap. He ran his thumb along the smooth skin of Faraday's belly, just past the hem of his pants, and rucked his shirt and vest up with the other. With visible effort Faraday managed to wrest himself back under control, setting to work on the buttons of Eduardo's vest with shaking fingers. “What do I call you?” he asked absently. “What?” Faraday glanced up at him, green eyes fever-bright. “Your name,” he explained. “What is it?” Eduardo frowned. “You already know it, guero.” Faraday managed to convey a truly impressive amount of derision with a simple eye-roll, pushing Eduardo's vest back off of his shoulders and tugging his shirt free of his slacks. “My mama raised a gentleman,” he said insistently, a playful little twist curling the corner of his mouth. “I ain’t callin’ you Vasquez while we’re cuttin' a slice.” Eduardo hesitated, deliberating while Faraday made quick work of his own upper layers, shrugging out of them both. His chest was broad and strong, scattered with ginger hair. He had a thick dusting of freckles on his shoulders. Eduardo couldn’t wait to feel them under the flat of his tongue. “For example,” Faraday continued when it became apparent that Eduardo wasn’t going to offer anything up, unknotting the kerchief around his neck, "my name is Joshua, though I expect Josh’ll suit our purposes just fine.” Eduardo sighed and pulled his shirt off over his head. His hair was darker and denser than Faraday’s, though with the way he was drinking in the sight, pupils gone big and dark, Faraday didn’t seem to mind. His tongue darted out along his lower lip, a flash of pink. “Eduardo.” Faraday’s – Josh’s eyebrows jumped toward his hairline, grin ticking up at the corners. “Ed-war-do?” he tried, and laughed when Eduardo cringed. “You got anything simpler?” “Lalo,” Eduardo offered, bending down to press his teeth against Josh’s collarbone. “Or Duarte.” Josh snorted, sliding the fingers of one hand into the short hair at the nape of Eduardo’s neck. “How about Eddie?” he asked breathlessly, while Eduardo laved his tongue across one tightly pebbled nipple. He did it again, setting his teeth gently into it, and Josh gasped. “You’re hopeless, guero,” Eduardo murmured into Josh’s sweat-slicked skin, and then set about sucking a line of sloppy marks across his chest. “Eddie it is,” Josh announced agreeably. He rocked his hips up, little bursts of delicious friction. Eduardo felt his dick twitch and rutted down. “Fuck,” Josh groaned again, head falling back against the mattress. He hooked the fingers of his free hand over the hem of Eduardo’s trousers. “We need these off.” “We’ll get them off,” Eduardo promised, dragging his tongue along the thick, corded muscle of Josh’s throat. Josh made a desperate little ‘ah’ noise and tilted his head back, presenting the entire, elegant column of his neck for Eduardo’s attentions. “Be patient.” “Not so good at that,” Josh admitted. He pushed himself up the bed, half-shimmying out of his pants as he went, until they were bunched around his thick thighs. He hadn't been wearing anything underneath them, so his cock was fully on display, flushed dark and thick and curving up toward his belly. Eduardo swallowed, throat dry, and shucked his remaining clothes with record speed. "Damn," Josh said appreciatively, kicking his slacks the rest of the way off and staring very flatteringly to where Eduardo was kneeling on the mattress. "They sure know how to make 'em in Mexico, don't they?" "I never had any complaints," Eduardo agreed with a smirk. Josh looked up at him, gaze bright and considering. He had a manic energy about him most of the time that Eduardo discovered was terribly flattering when condensed onto you with such pinhole focus. "Lie back," Josh instructed. Eduardo arched an eyebrow and settled back on his heels. Josh flapped a hand at him, exasperated. "Not like that," he grumbled, getting up onto his knees and gesturing to the length of the bed. "Really lie back." "It's strange," Eduardo said thoughtfully. "It almost seems like you think you are calling the shots here, guero." "Fine. Be difficult," Josh huffed, and then fell practically face-first onto Eduardo's dick, laving the length of it with his tongue and wrapping his calloused hand around the base. "Jesus!" Eduardo hissed. "I told you to lie back," Josh said benignly, trailing another searing stripe from root to tip. "You didn't want to listen." He closed his lips over the head and Eduardo bucked instinctually up into the slick heat. "Fuck," Josh coughed, pulling off. "Give me a second." He squeezed warningly and Eduardo groaned.

Dawn rose, gentle and still over Rose Creek and her rolling green plains. The world was silent and taut, holding its breath. The steady tattoo of hoofbeats drummed to life in the distance and everything spiraled into madness. Eduardo's mother raised him in the Catholic faith like any good Mexican woman would, but it had never really taken. In his youth, Eduardo hadn’t had time for humility or piety, and certainly not for prayer. He was a sinner many times over, slated for Hell no matter how you shook it. Whatever horrors waited for him on the other side, Eduardo wasn't sure they could be worse than the chaos that had descended here. The air was hazy with smoke and gunpowder, the stench of blood and death and metal thick on the wind, the animalistic screams of the dying echoing in a chorus while flame rose in jagged plumes around every corner. He saw Josh take a nasty graze to his side, watched Horne made into a pincushion in the street, caught a bullet high on his left arm, saw a hundred unprepared farmers fall, and thought to himself, Please God, let us live. He took a fawn-coated mercenary out at twenty yards, capped his fellow at ten, watched them stumble and bare their yellow teeth awhile before crumpling over into the dust, atop of a pile of bodies already slain. He reloaded and took aim again, grinning. Or if we die, let us earn it.

Joshua Faraday had undeniably been blessed with the Devil’s own luck. When Eduardo finally found him, no more than ten feet from the smoking wreckage of the Gatling gun, he was not only alive but laughing, babbling nonsensically about one-eyed Jacks. Eduardo jumped off his horse and dropped to his knees in the grass, reaching for Josh with shaking fingers. “Fuck,” Josh breathed. His teeth were red, lips slick with blood. “’d you die too, Eddie?” He grasped listlessly at Eduardo’s shirt. “We in Heaven?” “No, guero," Eduardo soothed, managing to unbutton Josh’s vest despite the violent tremors running through him every few seconds. “We’re alive.” “Bullshit,” Josh grunted, and then yelped when Eduardo jostled the wound on his shoulder. He made little, gasping, pained noises when Eduardo got an arm under him and pulled him up into a seated position, face gone sheet-white under all the grime and viscera. “Eddie,” he breathed desperately past his gritted teeth, fingers tightening in Eduardo’s shirt. “Hurts.” “I know,” Eduardo murmured, peeling the vest off of Josh as carefully as he was able and casting it aside into the dirt. It made a wet slap, soaked through with blood and sweat as it was. “I know, mijo, just let me get you patched up and we’ll get you back to town. Let the doctor work his magic, sí?" “Don’ think I’ll make it that far,” Josh wheezed. Eduardo swallowed the cold knot of fear that rose in his throat. “I bet you will,” he forced, shifting around so that Josh was half-sat in his lap and tearing strips off the bottom of his shirt. He trussed one up tight around the weeping red wound in Josh’s ribs, ignoring the little anguished noises that Josh made, the way his clumsy hands scrabbled against Eduardo’s thighs, looking for purchase. “That’s a - a lousy bet,” Josh gasped, while Eduardo affixed another strip of grimy cotton around the graze on his arm. “I was never a very good gambler,” Eduardo grumbled, tying off the wound in Josh’s thigh. He eased himself out from behind Josh, who moaned piteously at the motion. “I know,” Eduardo murmured, running his hand along Josh’s shoulders. “I know, guero, mijo, lo siento. Stay with me, okay? Just a little longer.” "Tryin'," Josh sighed - wet and labored. He swallowed and frowned, grabbing clumsily at Eduardo's hand. "Can' hear so good." Eduardo squeezed his fingers, so, so gently. "The doctor will help, mijo, just hold on." “You keep sayin’ that,” Josh mumbled, words slurring together, eyelids drooping, head dipping forward like he was about to drop off into a doze. “Dunno wha' means.” “Puta madre," Eduardo swore, shoving his arms under Josh’s armpits and hauling him up to his feet despite the agonizing twinge in his own shoulder and the animal yowl that Josh let loose. “Mijo, no te duermas! Quedarte conmigo, solo un poco más largo.” "Can'," Josh whimpered deliriously, "can' unnerstan' - wha' yer sayin'." Together they staggered the few steps to Eduardo’s horse. He heaved Josh up with all of his strength, and it was almost worse the way he stayed dead quiet, face screwed up in pain while Eduardo settled him in the saddle, jack-knifed over the horse’s shoulders. He looped a length of rope around Josh’s midsection - a haphazard stop-gap to keep him from slipping off the side - and swung himself up onto the saddle, murmuring apologies over Josh’s injured moans. He affixed the rope around his own waist and curled it once, twice, three times around the saddle-horn, and they were off with a swift kick to the horse’s ribs. Josh cried out every time the horse lurched beneath him and Eduardo grabbed onto the bloodied back of his shirt. “No te duermas, mijo, quedarte conmigo,” he chanted, over and over again like a prayer. “Quedarte conmigo, solo un poco más largo.” Josh subsided into inaudible murmurs and went mercifully silent just as they crossed the trenches, slumping boneless over the horse’s shoulders. Eduardo didn’t consider the possibility that he might have gone away gently into that good night, just dug into his horse’s ribs again, hard, and started hollering. “Doctor! We need a doctor!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The sock trick had been one of Jocelyn Faraday’s cleverer ideas.
It was amazing what a couple of scraps of balled-up wool could do when appropriately applied to one's person, and not for the first time she thanked whatever lucky stroke of madness or genius had led to that first pair of foot-warmers jammed down the front of her slacks at fifteen. Here, stumbling off the back of her poor-tempered horse, whiskey making the world tilt dangerously as she took in the brooding presence at Sam Chisolm’s shoulder, it worked just as well as it ever did.

It wasn’t the socks themselves that were the trick - as much as the fellows Faraday had met in her years enjoyed measuring their manhood against one another, it was very rarely a literal contest. There was something about the weight of them, the presence of them that made her stand a little broader, grin a little sharper, lent some wild edge to her that other men read as like, as kin.

The outlaw was no different, gaze narrowing for a split-second from beyond Chisolm’s shoulder before his suspicion caught on the rough timbre of her voice, the smug cock of her hip as she mimicked his accent back at him - very, very poorly, she would admit later, when there was a lesser measure of whiskey coloring her perception. All of the pieces came together into the whole to weave their spell, transforming her from what she actually was into precisely what she wanted him to see. The stiff line of his shoulders unspooled a little as she slotted neatly into place - just another uncultured, sun-drunk cowboy with a bad attitude. The same kind of ignoble bastard the vaquero had undoubtedly danced with any number of times, and nothing more.

The dismissal shot a little thrill through her, same as it always did, and Faraday let her smile sharpen as she took a few swaying, stalking steps toward him.

He was taller even than Faraday, who stood a head at least above most of the men she knew, though narrower of shoulder, lean in the rangy way of a coyote during seasons scarce of game, with dark eyes and darker hair tufting out from underneath his flat-brimmed hat. His irritation was almost palpable, rising up off of him so thick that Faraday thought she might be able to taste it if she opened her mouth. She grinned a little wider and grumbled, “Yippee yippee andále, muchacho!”

The outlaw glowered, jaw clenched and eyes positively scorching, and spat on the ground at her feet. It was far from the first time Faraday had been spat at, and certainly wouldn't be the last. She winked, broad and exaggerated, and the outlaw’s entire body pulled taut like a caught lasso, knuckles gone sharp where he clenched his fists at his sides.

Chisolm - who had a head for keeping peace but clearly lacked any sense of fun - strode up and towed the outlaw away before he could move, with a murmur that Faraday couldn’t quite make out. He released the man at a distance, extracting an affirmative little nod before ducking over with his head bent low to trade news and gossip with Goodnight Robicheaux, who Faraday couldn't quite make up her mind about.

Though their initial acquaintance had gone about as well as could be expected, there was a too-bright, too-loud flare to Robicheaux’s manner that set Faraday’s teeth on edge, which was to say nothing of the mysterious stalwartness of Robicheaux’s companion, whose silence was honed to a razor-fine point nearly as sharp as the pretty silver he carried at his belt.

They were a mystery, both of them, doubly confounding when taken together. As Faraday didn't care to play games when she didn't know what the stakes were, she had elected to remove herself from this hand through the careful misdirection of living down to expectation.

Robicheaux was smart, which necessitated a somewhat more nuanced approach than Faraday usually preferred to take in matters of performance. Luckily, the weakness of intelligent men was often their natural expectation that those around them were less so, and it was a particular talent of Faraday’s to seem less intelligent than most.

There was also the matter of Robicheaux’s genteel sensibilities, which were easier than his mind to manipulate, at the end of the day. Between the two, Robicheaux promised to be a simpler play than a hand of twenty-one.

Billy Rocks was smart, too - had to be to skewer a man with a hairpin in barely a blink at quite such a span - and probably familiar enough with the old gambit of making oneself appear lesser to recognize Faraday’s play for what it was when she started to slur and holler. Thankfully, Rocks’s weakness appeared to be Robicheaux, and where the latter went, the former followed, even in matters of opinion, and Robicheaux’s esteem proved remarkably easy to lose.

It was a small matter of carefully applying minor irritants - drinking a little too much, speaking a little too crassly, conducting herself a little too violently - and making too many purposefully clumsy references to a past that hollowed Robicehaux’s expression and made him flinch. The budding camaraderie that had grown up through the sand in Volcano Springs was stomped out beneath Faraday’s heel a spare few hours into their departure with barely an effort.

It was startlingly easy to convince her companions that she was nothing more than a simple-minded backwoods cuss of a fellow - which was a particularly effective lie because it was at least partway true. Teddy Q’s blatantly pisspoor estimation of her leant an exceptional measure of credence to her performance, and she made a special point to bark extra loud, wink especially lecherously whenever she caught his eye.

It was a lesson somebody probably ought to teach the poor kid before he was six feet under with a bellyful of lead - distance, be it physical or social, meant room to maneuver, and room to observe. In as little breath as it took to wail some of the less savory trail songs that she knew and swallow down a few more mouthfuls of whiskey than was probably acceptable in polite company, Faraday had handily swindled their traveling party into writing her off as an ill-mannered drunk. An ace up the sleeve, in that it set the bar of any expectations as to her everyday skills low enough to be easily manageable, and assured underestimation to her favor in the event of rising tensions.

It wasn't all in the socks, she supposed, but as she launched into an exceptionally filthy verse about Kitty Mane from Down the Lane and caught the unimpressed glances her companions exchanged, she sang a little louder for them, even so.

------

It was a minor blessing that Faraday had always been tall, for a girl, athletic and broad-shouldered like she assumed her father must have been, for her mother favored the slim countenance of any number of waifish maidens throughout the popular dramatic literature of the day. It might have been the consumption keeping her thin, of course, though from the memory of her slender wrists and elegant fingers Faraday was fairly certain even now that her figure had been more a symptom of breeding than illness.

She’d passed away shortly after Faraday’s fifteenth birthday, and there wasn't a whole lot for a young girl of no means and no prospects to fall back on in the backwater hamlet where Faraday had come up through the grass. Best-case scenario, she weaseled her way into a marriage proposal out of the baker’s son - a sweet-faced, dim-witted boy who probably would have made a fine father for all that he was forever condemned to middling status, without the ambition to hope for more and lacking the brains to lend his existence any true consideration. Worst-case, she fell on the mercy of the cathouse, opened up her legs to any passing patron who carried enough coin to appease the proprietor without much thought put to her comfort or preference in the matter.

Neither option was particularly appealing to Faraday, whose mother had always liked to tease that she’d been sewn together out of a corn sack and filled with vinegar and spite. She’d grown up reading the adventures of Battlin’ Pete Muldoon and Captain Wickpick, of the legendary Jack Horne, who was a real man, carving his name into the fabric of the world. It seemed mightily unfair that there was a sprawling map of excitement laid at the feet of every puppy-faced lad with the wherewithal to want for it while the best Faraday would ever do for herself was passably pleasant companionship with a man made of more bread than sense.

For all that her mother hadn’t been much in the way of womanly guidance, she’d taught Faraday how to play the odds. If there was no winning with the hand she’d been dealt, it was time to fold and deal again, and if Faraday was smart enough, sly enough to stack the deck in her favor when the next hand came around she didn't see how that was anybody’s business but her own.

She had a dingy, tarnished mirror, a pair of dull-edged sewing scissors, and a keen enough eye to mostly match the picture she’d torn out of a magazine ‘round back of the barber - short on the sides and very slightly longer on top. A few quick swipes of her fingers through a pilfered jar of pomade helped solidify the illusion, as did a pair of slacks she assumed had once belonged to her father, tucked away underneath all of Mama’s fancier gowns in the old mahogany trunk by the bedside. She belted them tight and kept her linen shirt loose, wore a vest over top of it as an added layer of confusion for any wandering eye that got too curious, peered too close. Though she wasn't especially well-endowed, it paid to be cautious. Faraday knew enough about the ways of the world to appreciate that all it often took was the tiniest seed of doubt to stay a suspicious tongue.

There was a dusty old Stetson of unidentifiable provenance underneath a pair of fine kidskin gloves that Mama had always said belonged to her grandmother, and Faraday plucked it up on a whim. It was just this side of too-big, falling down over her ears and making a few uneven curls stick out, but she liked the way it cut a shadow over her face, lending a mysterious cast to her sweetly freckled cheeks.

She pulled on the pair of boots she’d bought for a penny from Johnny Carroway down the creek. They were old and worn and too small for Johnny - who was the only fellow of an age with Faraday for twenty miles in any direction that had an inch of height on her - but they fit Faraday with a little room to grow. She tromped over to the mirror and set her hands on her hips, standing with her legs sprawled wide the way most of the men around town did. She stared her reflection down for a long moment, gnawing at her lip, mind spinning around the vague thought that something still just wasn't quite right.

She turned this way and that, studying the line of her body and sparing a moment to thank whatever deities might be within earshot for her slim hips and thick waist.

“What is it?” she muttered exasperatedly, drumming her fingers against her arm and chewing hard enough on her lip she almost drew blood. She turned and clomped back over to the mahogany chest, which had been so fruitful already, and dug around some more.

Five minutes later, with a rolled-up pair of socks tucked carefully behind the center seam of her pants at the front, Jocelyn Faraday grinned, broad and smug, into the mirror.

Joshua Faraday grinned back out.

Joshua Faraday - she discovered as the weeks stretched into months, as a farce originally shouldered out of necessity became a habit, and, eventually, a pleasure - enjoyed a multitude of activities to which Jocelyn Faraday had never been rightly welcomed.

He gambled and he drank and he made rude comments. He sang bawdy songs and he got into fights and he flirted with barmaids - and the occasional passing cowboy - though he rarely took any of them up on their offers of companionship. He left men dead for besmirching his honor - what little of it there was to be found in a man who took quite such hedonistic pleasure in cheating, lying, and boozing - and he somehow always managed to stumble back into his luck, even when it seemed by all measures to have dropped out of his pockets and been carried off down the river.

If nobody but the occasional delightedly surprised

nymph du pavé

noticed Jocelyn Faraday smirking a little sharper, a little meaner, out from underneath Joshua Faraday’s flint-edged grin, that was their own fault.

---

Miles and miles out in the untamed brush, huddled around a bonfire with the most mismatched crew of hired guns she’d ever set eyes on, Faraday brought her lucky six-shooter up to Teddy Q close enough to kiss. He wasn’t especially appreciative of the wisdom she’d tried to impart, and as he limped away under the cold light of the moon, pockets dry and pride smarting, Faraday helped herself to a generous swallow of the terrible rotgut the poor kid had dragged all the way from his podunk little farm plot.

Emma Cullen shot her a dark, knowing glare in the flickering light of the fire as Teddy settled himself at her side, and Faraday grinned, wolfish. Women were usually better at spotting her than men, and Emma had a sharp mind under those lush, pale features. Faraday winked at her, smug and daring, and victory flared in her belly like a tongue of flame when Emma’s gaze shuttered and dropped away, cheeks flushing pink in the golden glow of the blaze.

Socks, she thought gleefully, and helped herself to another slow-burning slug from the little bottle while she spared a moment to assess her traveling company.

They were a fresh-faced bunch for the most part, none of them wearing beards excepting Teddy with his month’s worth of thin scruff, attempting gamely to make himself older than he truly was with very little success. Of them all, Robicheaux was probably the most foppish, with his finely cut clothes, while Vasquez was easily the flashiest, even his irons gleaming silver in their holsters.

The whole lot of them were streaked with trail dirt and fine grit, which made Chisolm’s pristinely black ensemble all the more impressive considering that Faraday hadn't seen him so much as fuss at it once since they’d met up way back in Amador City.

Likelihood was that any road dust knew better than to run the risk of ruining the man’s dark livery and courting his wrath. Chisolm spoke with the straightforward ease of an amiable man, but there was a banked, controlled promise of violence in the rigid line of his shoulders and the calculating cut of his eyes. It had sparked Faraday’s attention immediately back in that shithole saloon and kept her curious enough to see this ridiculous errand through until they made it to Rose Creek, at least.

Chisolm and Robicheaux were sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the far side of the fire, engaged in an easy, casual conversation that Faraday was just too far away to make out - not that she thought either man fool enough to discuss anything worthwhile without the illusory security of walls around them. A spare few feet away, Rocks was methodically cleaning a set of impressively fine knives, gaze occasionally drifting over to Robicheaux when he laughed too loud or shifted on the flat stones they’d conscripted into service as seating. His face was watchful and warm, with a tender edge that Faraday was willing to call fondness from her vantage point several leagues into a bottle of swill.

Across the clearing, Vasquez was playing at sleep, his hat down over his face while his chest rose and fell in a steady, lazy rhythm. He had his arms crossed over his abdomen and those long, lean legs stretched out in front of him. Faraday might have believed the illusion if he hadn’t tapped his thumb against the buckle of his belt every so often, or the motion of his breath hadn’t stilled tellingly at the occasional skittering snap of wildlife scampering through the distant brush. In ordinary company, he might have gotten away with it - most folk weren’t wary enough of a bullet in their back to pay a man quite the attention that she was willing to part with, surrounded by strangers, with stranger still lurking out in the dark nowhere, past the flickering light of the campfire.

As it was, she considered tossing a rock at him, just to see what he would do, but she suspected she’d engaged in enough pigtail-pulling this evening. Chisolm was a patient man, but Faraday would put dollars down on his being so only in the sense that he was willing to wait if the payoff seemed worthwhile. She couldn’t begin to guess at what the payoff might be if she interrupted Vasquez’s supposed slumber, but she doubted that she and Chisolm would weigh its worth equivalently, and she didn’t trust her speed against his in a draw. Certainly not now, with more than her fair share of whiskey warming her belly and sleep starting to pull at the corners of her eyes.

Besides, if she upset the balance she already knew that Rocks and Robicheaux would fall in line like tin soldiers at Chisolm’s back. While she might take her chances against Robicheaux in close quarters, courting the kind of violence she’d seen Rocks dispense was a fool’s errand and Faraday only played at stupid.

She knocked another, final mouthful of liquor back, savoring the burn as it flared down her throat, and tilted her own hat forward, settling in against the rocks at her back. She mightn’t sleep tonight, belly-up to a passel of men she’d only just met - to say nothing of Emma Cullen, who was her own volatile breed of dangerous - but damned if she wouldn’t put Vasquez’s pisspoor chicanery to shame.

---

Rose Creek was everything that Faraday expected it to be, which was to say: not much, and infested with Blackstones like so many vermin of undoubtedly miserable aim, besides.

It was a matter of a little creative shooting to put them permanently in the dirt, or send them scuttling past city lines, which was hardly a chore. Faraday rode the adrenaline like a cresting wave, buzzing under her skin and coaxing her into the middle of the street, back to back with Vasquez of all people.

It was over in barely a beat, Robicheaux’s knuckles white around his rifle and Rocks assuring in a quiet, hoarse murmur that it was jammed, which was the more alarming measure of the day in Faraday’s estimation.

She watched them carefully as they walked away, Rocks cutting long, sure strides while Robicheaux bobbed gently in his slipstream, and made a note to keep her eye on whatever that sordid business might be. She stalked after them and buried her suspicion under the juvenile joy of poking a stick into Vasquez’s bear, as it were.

He moved like a big cat when he leaned in, long fingers curling over the butt of one of his pistols as he invited Faraday to name the time and place for what would surely amount to little more than a pissing contest if either of them bothered to get a shot off at all. Despite all the bark between them, Faraday didn’t think she was imagining the magnetic undercurrent pulling their orbits nearer and nearer in a way that promised either a beautiful brawl or a spectacular fuck. Possibly both, if Faraday had her way about it.

Unfortunately, Chisolm put a quick end to their moment - no sense of fun, as Faraday suspected - and after that it was a blur of sheriffs and townsfolk and Emma Cullen of all people delivering an admittedly brusque but startlingly inspirational speech to a crowd of what Faraday imagined would amount to little more than well-intentioned cannon fodder and rabbiting cowards once the gunfire started in earnest. Still, it was a nice moment, and she couldn’t begrudge the little town the buttery glow of hope that settled over the streets as the sunlight began to fade.

---

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"You could just invite her, you know."Josh glanced over from where he was definitely not making cow-eyes at the hot librarian to find Brody, his fraternity brother, best friend, and world’s greatest wingman giving him an intent, knowing look over the top of his o-chem book. His eyebrows were up so high they had nearly disappeared under his snapback, which was a plain, inoffensive heather gray with a neon pink snapping strap, turned backwards as it was. From this angle Brody almost looked like any other milquetoast student cramming for his midterms, though the fact that his cap had the words ‘King Kush’ emblazoned in neon yellow across the other side, where the equally eye-searing bill stuck out behind him like a rudder, did distort the illusion somewhat.Josh snorted and cut another quick glance at the hot librarian, who was patiently walking a freshman through how to use the digital catalogue. Her dark hair curtained her face in gleaming coils, shorn at the elegant line of her jaw and not quite dusting her shoulders. She was lean, with the build of a swimmer, and tall - taller than Josh, maybe, although the one time he’d been close enough to find out he’d been too busy trying to control his sudden, raging hard-on as she lit up like a firecracker and laid into him for disrupting the rest of the students on the floor to pay it much mind. Even stooping at the waist to peer over the dazed freshman’s shoulder she had a solid five or six inches on the poor kid. While Josh was watching, the freshman’s gaze drifted dreamily up to the librarian’s face, awed and terrified, as she frowned and reached past him to jab at the screen.I feel your pain, bro, Josh thought forlornly, sighing and lifting one shoulder in a shrug.“Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go well,” he said with a little, bitter huff of laughter. He made a slightly doofy, earnest expression and added in an exaggerated version of his own working-class twang, “Hey, library girl! Want to ditch class tomorrow to come hang with a bunch of random dudes? We’re going to the beach to celebrate that I can bask shirtless for the first time since I had my tits removed a year ago.”He shook his head, twisting his mouth and scowling down at his own textbook - basic chemistry, not the hyper-focused carbon-based bullshit that Brody was lashing himself to in the hopes that its momentum would drag him through med school - and drummed his fingers on the table they had jammed themselves into a few hours before. It was way too small for two dudes over six foot, but from the first day of freshman seminar when he and Brody had bonded by singing along to the Kesha jam pumping tinnily in over the piece of shit speaker system in the Student Activities Hall neither one of them had been particularly inclined to preserve traditional quotas of personal space.“You’re the one who keeps making noises about getting out of the incestuous GSA dating scene, baby boy,” Brody said, nudging Josh’s knee with his own until he looked up to Brody giving him a soft, sincere look. “You know I’ll kick her ass if she fucks with you, right? I don't care if she’s a lady.”Josh nudged Brody’s knee back, rolling his eyes even though Brody’s quiet pronouncement of loyalty had resurrected his grin.“You would not,” he replied. “Besides she seems cool as hell. If I asked her -” he wagged his pointer finger at Brody, sidestepping in his own train of thought to say intently, “- which I'm not so quit it with that face.”There was a moment’s pause while Brody dutifully rearranged his face from the shit-eating grin it had previously boasted to something further removed from a joyous leer.“If I asked her,” Josh continued, “I think the whole ‘strange dude I’ve only met once and yelled at for twenty minutes asking me out’ thing will definitely be the deciding factor before any casual discussions of junk come into play.”“She is cool,” Brody said easily, “which you would know if you asked her to come to the beach bash.”Josh rolled his eyes and sighed, returning his attention to the chapter on combustibles that he’d been perusing before Brody had interrupted to try and goad him into hitting on the girl he’d been distantly in awe of for the better of the year.“Maybe next time, bro,” he said. “I just want to get drunk and sunburned without worrying about anything else.”Brody nudged his knee again.“Whatever you say, dude,” he agreed without complaint.It wasn’t that Josh was lacking the confidence to dial the charm up to eleven and try to woo the hot librarian into sharing her number - by this point in his college career his dance card, as it were, was so full he’d have had to dig up another to keep track of every partner he’d taken for a spin around the floor. There was something magnetic about this girl, though. Some inherent gravity to her that seemed to be doing its damnedest to draw him into her orbit even at this distance.He’d had plenty of fun, casual flings in his day, but he got the distinctive feeling that if he tried anything with this girl, he would be in for something drastically different.He glanced up, almost on instinct, just in time to see her flash that dazzling smile at the poor lost freshman she’d been helping, waving him off in the direction of whatever mysterious reference volume he was trying to dig up for his midterm. She watched the kid walk for a second, making sure he was on the right path, and crossed her arms over her chest, obscuring the Henderson University logo on the well-loved sweatshirt she was wearing. After a few seconds, when she was apparently satisfied that the mystery kid wasn't going to get lost amongst the stacks, she turned back toward the main desk, and as she moved, the warm, burnished brown of her gaze caught on Josh’s eye.She seemed startled for a second to find someone looking directly at her, which Josh supposed he could understand. He was probably already smiling like an idiot - which tended to be his default expression whenever she wandered into his periphery, if Brody’s many, many vocal lamentations over the state of Josh’s love life were to be believed - but he let it sprawl a little wider, cheeks flushing slightly as he risked a wink.The librarian arched an eyebrow, high and elegant and just this side of condescending. She rolled her eyes as she turned away, but the startled moue of her mouth had tilted up into a half-amused smirk, and the luscious curve of it made something twist in Josh’s belly even as it disappeared. He watched as she walked away, eyes glued to the elegant taper of her waist and the easy sway in her steps, and didn't even notice that he was leaning in his chair to watch her retreat until he nearly fell out of it.Thankfully he caught the edge of the table before he embarrassed himself too badly, but that didn’t stop Brody from sighing a deeply judgmental, “Bro,” across the table even so.“Shut up,” Josh muttered, face hot.“Hate to see you leave,” Brody half-whispered in a thin, teasing tone, smirk sharp and fond, “but I love to watch you go.”Josh kicked him under the table for good measure but Brody still laughed so loud a gaggle of harried coeds swapping flash cards at a table nearby started hissing at them to keep it down.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Are you happy, my darling?” Westley asked one morning.He was leaning against the crude wooden table at the center of the room, sipping wine from a rough hewn pewter goblet. His brow was furrowed beneath his flaxen hair, mouth a dark slash between his thin mustache and his sharp-edged goatee – the one concession he had made to the current fashion en vogue in Guilder.Buttercup, crouched in front of the cast iron cauldron hung over the low fire and carefully scooping pottage onto a half-round of dry bread, considered her answer.Guilder, they had learned, mostly did business through its bustling port, despite the many land holdings and agrarian revenue streams for which Buttercup had nearly been murdered so many months ago.Though its ruling nobility inhabited a grand castle about an hour’s walk into the lush woods, most of Guilder’s population seemed to reside in the seaside district. It was comprised largely of alehouses and small dwellings, which were all stacked atop one another like teetering blocks, connected by way of rickety wooden staircases and narrow alleys. Nearer to the docks it smelled overwhelmingly of fish – the fresh, salty tang of the sea lost beneath the pungent odor of the day's catch. The distant roar of waves crashing to shore was nearly impossible to hear beneath the endless hollering of fishmongers during the day and the drunken caterwauling that lingered into the small hours of night.The residence that Westley and Buttercup shared was a single room, with barely enough space for a fire in the corner. Its thatched roof leaked during the rainy season, and the floors were hard-packed dirt.It had a solitary window with a shoddy wooden shutter that let heat out in the winter and was too small to do much good during the warmer months. The alley at its back led directly to an alehouse of highly questionable repute, and as such fairly reeked of piss and yeast when the breeze off the distant shore grew stagnant during the late summer.It was, simply put, a hovel.Buttercup loved it tremendously.It wasn’t altogether dissimilar from the farmhouse that she had grown up in, after all - though rats congregated in far greater numbers here in the city and fresh eggs were considerably more rare. Rodents and perishable foodstuffs aside, their tiny room was miles better than the accursed castle had been, largely on account of Westley’s continued presence within its thin and often drafty walls.“I am happy,” Buttercup answered with a smile, licking a stray smear of mush from her thumb.“Are you certain?” Westley asked, drawing up close to her and slinging an arm around her waist, his freshly emptied goblet cast aside onto the table and promptly forgotten. His eyes were dark and stormy and serious, but the playful quirk at the edges of his mouth belied the heavy sobriety of his gaze.“Desperately so,” Buttercup assured. She gamely attempted to match Westley’s somber tone. It required rather a lot of biting her own lip to keep from grinning too widely.“Well, then,” Westley murmured pleasantly, bringing their faces together so that their noses brushed. His breath was warm and familiar against her cheek.When they kissed, it tasted of bitter grapes.It was, overall, a very lovely moment on a very lovely morning, made considerably less romantic by the sudden hullabaloo that kicked up in the street just outside the open window.“What on earth could that be?" Buttercup wondered aloud. Westley drew himself up to frown curiously at the spectacle of a distant shape running up the narrow alley. It was a boy, Buttercup realized after a moment spent squinting determinedly. He was plodding along in a sort of awkward skip-step, with limbs that were just this side of too long to match his torso, a mop of dark hair flopping about atop his head.“Bugger," muttered Westley. "It's that damnable shop boy."“Oh, he's not so bad," Buttercup soothed, running her hand absently down Westley's arm. "Perhaps he has good news."At that very same moment a high, reedy wail began to echo down the filthy cobblestone lane.“Caspar! Caspar, come quick! There's pirates in the bay!"“Bugger," muttered Westley again, with feeling. He turned on his heel and stalked out into the road, the door rattling on its hinges in his wake.

In Florin, there was a story.Well, there were many stories, really, told around crowded hearths in the winter or bonfires in the early spring. Buttercup liked the bonfires best - great, heaving monstrosities built in celebration of the coming harvest, licking their orange tongues up toward the clouds and casting all the world in hues of molten gold, fed to bursting with bundles of lush herbs that made the smoke run thick and sweet.During the festival season, traveling troubadours, with their jewel-toned livery and their instruments and their funny, lilting voices, would weave tales of adventure and intrigue; of romance and love that ran deeper than the sea, reached further than the stars dotting the sky. Love that could not be bound nor broken.Buttercup was partial to several of these, though none so much as the tragic tale of Ottilie and Caspar.Their love was the standard by which all love was measured, or so the troubadours said. It was a love that tamed great and terrible beasts, and stole blessings from unsuspecting gods of the wood and field.“Someday, I shall know a man so brave," Buttercup sighed longingly to the farm boy.Her father had hired him on a few months ago, during the bitterly cold winter, his long-abused joints no longer up to the task of shouldering the brunt of the work alone. He was tall and lanky, the farm boy; not yet grown into his hands and feet. Despite his best efforts, he wasn't altogether good for much beyond running armfuls of grain from here to there or plucking tin pots from the higher shelves.Now, he smirked at Buttercup in that condescending way he had, his pink mouth a wry twist beneath his amused gaze. It made Buttercup's face run hot.“I shall," she said insistently. "He'll go on adventures to far-off lands and conquer the sprawling seas to win my affection. Just you wait and see."It was worth mentioning that Buttercup, at this point in her life, had been very young, and also possibly a bit silly.The farm boy didn't reply beyond smirking a little wider, and Buttercup snapped with a huff, "Fetch me some cider, farm boy!"He canted his head, that odd, knowing spark glinting in his eyes, and disappeared into the crowd with a deferential murmur of, "As you wish," that made Buttercup's stomach twist in a funny but not altogether unpleasant way.Years later, a few hundred yards from the border of Guilder, Westley, still mostly numb from the waist down, had turned to Buttercup and said, "We'll need new names."“I've just the ones," she replied without hesitation.“And surnames too?" Westley asked curiously.Before Buttercup could respond, the Spaniard, curled up like a child in the lap of the giant and gone hot with fever, had slurred shallowly, "Montoya. 's a v'ry fine name. Not much use f'r it where I'm heading."He turned his glassy-eyed gaze on Buttercup, cheeks ruddy and hot, palms slick with blood over the hastily-prepared poultice they'd sacrificed precious seconds to apply during their flight through the wood.“A very fine name indeed," Buttercup agreed, and the Spaniard, apparently satisfied, let his head fall back, body sprawling loosely as he succumbed to exhaustion. The giant looked like he might cry. In a moment of unspoken unity, the three party members still conscious spurred their horses forward with sharp heels to the ribs.“How's your Spanish?" Westley asked, when they got close enough to the see the lance-wielding guards posted at the gate.“Not good," Buttercup supplied.“Right, love." Westley flashed her a grin. "You'd best let me do the talking. You sit there, looking imperious and beautiful."As Buttercup had spent the better part of the last year cultivating a persona that was equal parts adorably helpless and coquettishly aloof, this was no great burden to bear. A few harrowing moments and some pointed sneering later, Caspar Montoya and his wife Ottilie were admitted entrance to Guilder with their wounded cousin and his startlingly overlarge, quietly weeping manservant.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Post-TFA hurt/comfort divergence:
General Organa found Poe in the Med-Bay. He was kicking his heels against the metal legs of an exam table while an orderly clucked and shined a light into his eyes to make sure there was no residual damage from what Poe had assured them multiple times was a very mild concussion with some light amnesia added for flavor."Commander Dameron," General Organa said. There was a telling quirk at the corner of her mouth that made Poe think she'd be laughing if some of the stuffed-shirts wouldn't find her amusement in the face of an injured subordinate unseemly."General," Poe greeted, turning to grin at her. The orderly clucked again and tilted Poe's chin so he was facing forward."Heard you ran into a spot of trouble on Jakku," General Organa said, stepping into the room. Poe shrugged and the orderly swatted him on the shoulder."I'd hardly call it trouble.""According to your debriefing you suffered some fairly major head trauma." General Organa was definitely smiling now."One tiny bump on the noggin and everyone's writing my eulogy," Poe lamented, reaching up to clasp his hands over his heart. The orderly made a frustrated noise under his breath, apparently giving it up as a bad job, and retreated to the other side of the room, where an injured soldier was groaning piteously on a dingy cot.General Organa bit back a laugh and settled a hand on Poe's shoulder. This close, her eyes were soft and suspiciously wet."Good to have you back," she said. Poe reached up to curl his fingers over hers, letting the silence settle for a second before hopping off the exam table in a sudden burst of motion."Well, I couldn't leave you in the lurch," he replied magnanimously. "What would you do without your best pilot?"He wagged his eyebrows and General Organa shook her head fondly, giving him a quick once over and narrowing her eyes."You're not wearing your jacket," she said slowly, eyebrows jumping up, surprised. Poe frowned, rocking back on his heels. The General was such a commanding presence that he tended to forget he was taller than her until they were standing side by side.“That's the real tragedy in all of this if you ask me," he said, face pulling down in exaggerated mock sorrow. "Is it against regs to hold a funeral for a jacket?"The General looped an arm through his and patted his hand sympathetically."I'm sure you could find a loophole even if it were," she assured,leading him down the hall at a lazy, ambling pace. "You mentioned in your report that a Stormtrooper helped you escape from the Destroyer?"Poe had to give her credit for her nonchalant delivery - as if she were simply checking up on a minor detail the same way she had hundreds of times before rather than pointing out how deeply unlikely it was that a Stormtrooper would go renegade. He swallowed past a knot of real sadness to croak, "Yeah."The General kept her eyes ahead, giving Poe a moment to compose himself before pressing gently, "That's highly unusual."There was nothing accusatory in it, for which Poe was more grateful than he could accurately express. The whole miserable experience still felt like a dream, Finn a hazy-edged savior that Poe wasn't totally convinced he didn't cook up in a moment of desperate madness."Designation FN-2187," Poe supplied quietly. "Finn, I call him. He collected me from the holding cell where - "Poe's voice broke. General Organa squeezed his hand and he took a deep breath. Where I was interrogated. The words sat heavy in his mind but Poe couldn't seem to push them past his teeth. He swallowed.“Well, you know," Poe gritted out, licking his dry lips. He could feel his hands shaking at the memory. General Organa very graciously didn't acknowledge it. "This Trooper walks in cool as you please, says I'm being summoned, and then halfway to the hangar he drags me into a supply closet, pulls his helmet off, and offers to help me escape."“Just like that?" General Organa asked, wondrous."Just like that," Poe promised with a snap of his fingers. "Only requirement was that I take him with me. He was planning a jailbreak for himself and uh," Poe shrugged, couldn't help but smirk a little, "apparently my reputation precedes me."“He was in the gunner's chair of the TIE Fighter you went down in?""Yeah," Poe nodded, thinking of bright, joyous laughter, the delighted whooping of a man who had never tasted true freedom before, and swallowed thickly. "I don't know if he made it. I looked for him, when I remembered, but." He pressed his lips into a tight line and shook his head. "Couldn't find him."They walked in silence for a few long moments, Poe envisioning the way Finn had looked when he'd yanked that hateful, anonymizing helmet off to reveal the person underneath. It wasn't the kind of thing you forgot, the face of the man who saved your life, and Poe could remember every curve and angle, every arch and plane. He remembered the sweat beaded on Finn's brow, the steady resolve in those dark eyes, the tremor running through his hands. He wished, not for the first time since he'd woken up on Jakku reeking of smoke and hot metal, that he'd been able to find Finn before fleeing off-planet. He hoped desperately that Finn made it out okay, though he knew just how unlikely that was.“Stormtroopers are raised by the First Order from infancy," General Organa said, considering. Her voice startled Poe out of his melancholy musings. "They used to use clones, back in my day, but why pay to create new beings when there are populated planets all across the Outer Rim ripe for the harvest? They're conditioned to believe that the First Order is infallible. To question a directive is treason; it results in painful reconditioning, or worse.""I know," Poe said, a little hysterically. "I know how it sounds. I know it's, it's impossible, but -"General Organa cut him off with a gentle nudge. She curled her palm over Poe's fingers and Poe realized distantly that he was clenching his hands into white-knuckled fists.“Commander," General Organa said, tone low like she was sharing a secret, "in my lifetime I have seen a thousand impossibilities come to pass. Impossible victories, impossible tragedies. Impossible losses and reunions. If I have learned anything in my time it's that the impossible is far more commonplace than we are led to believe."Poe's vision went a little blurry at the edges, and he had to take a long breath before he managed to dredge up a watery smile.“Your friend must be extraordinary," General Organa continued, "to retain his sense of empathy, his light, against such insurmountable odds."“He seemed to be," Poe said. General Organa smiled at him, a small, private thing, and Poe breathed a little easier. "Hell of a shot, too."The General lead him around a corner, into a connecting hallway that spilled out into the central briefing room at the opposite end."Wherever your friend is, he sounds exceedingly well equipped to deal with the impossible," she continued, squeezing Poe's fingers and stepping away. "I'm certain he'll pop up again when the moment is right.""Thank you," Poe nodded. General Organa took a few steps down the hall and then turned."Oh, and Dameron? Don't hesitate to ask if you need anything in the meantime.""Of course, General." He flashed a tight-lipped smile and General Organa inclined her head in a regal nod before continuing on her way.It was no secret that Poe had a habit of collecting strays. His loyalty to the Resistance was second only to his loyalty to those he called friends. He'd known Finn for barely an hour, but something about the renegade Trooper had worked its way under his skin - his determination, his easy smile, his infectious exuberance upon his first taste of freedom.Theirs was a vast and dangerous universe. Chances that Poe's path would cross with Finn's again were exceedingly slim. Still, part of him, small but bolstered by General Organa's insight, hoped that they would see each other again, impossible odds be damned.
*
He didn't mean like this.Finn was eerily still beneath the soft, gauzy glow of the Med-Bay lights, but for the gentle rise and fall of his chest. He could be sleeping, if his jaw weren't tensed in pain, if his brow didn't furrow and relax in a steady rhythm.Poe tucked his fingers beneath Finn's where they were twitching against the heavily starched sheets and Finn took a breath, his face falling slack.Poe ran his thumb carefully along the ridges of Finn's knuckles."I didn't mean like this," he murmured. Finn sighed contentedly and angled his face toward Poe. Poe rested his forehead against the edge of the mattress and closed his eyes, held Finn's hand desperately against his cheek.

Post-TFA where Finn learns to fit in:
When the dust had settled - after Rey had disappeared to parts unknown in search of the last great hope of the universe, after Finn had spent who knew how long marinating in bacta and dead to the world, after he'd come to in the infirmary, guided out of a medical coma by the careful, competent med droids to find the General herself and the Resistance's best pilot beaming at him like he'd hung any number of moons - the Resistance wasn't quite Finn had expected.In ways, it was better.The food was better, even though most of Poe's pilot friends liked to gripe good-naturedly about it. Finn, who would just as soon never have to look at another nutrient bar in his life, was thrilled at the opportunity to eat actual food. The real kind, comprised of interesting new flavors and colors and textures, even if maybe it wouldn't have stood up against a broader sampling. Besides, as Jessika Pava had taught him with a wink and a smirk, liberally dowsing his meal in seasonings from the array of little bottles on the tables in the mess was a surefire way to ensure that he could palate just about anything.“Your friend liked that one too, before she went to collect Skywalker," she offered one day, quiet and sincere, without the usual glib dryness to her tone, cutting a nod to the spice blend that Finn preferred. It had made Finn's eyes prickle, a little, which wasn't embarrassing no matter what Snap had to say about it because Rey was one of his favorite people and he'd damn well get emotional about it if he pleased, thanks.You could get emotional in the Resistance, which was better, too. You could painfully mourn losses and raucously celebrate victories and nobody would get sent off to reconditioning or be decommissioned for their weakness. He didn't begrudge Snap his affectionate teasing, of course, but Finn had the misfortune of intimately knowing the torture of existence within an emotionless void. He greatly preferred the alternative, even if it meant being gently ribbed for the way his breath caught at silly things like rain or sunsets or gifts, small and innocuous as they may seem.The people - and sentient beings who identified elsewise - were something of a mixed bag.There were Jess and Snap and BB-8, who liked to tease Finn, even though they were careful to make sure it never wandered into territory that made him uncomfortable. Besides, they were all always happy to stop and explain things when they stumbled across a gap in Finn’s knowledge that seemed fairly standard for everyone else on-base.There was the General, who was fierce and terrifying and stood so much taller than her stature might suggest at first glance. She always graced Finn with a smile when she saw him and took the time to ask how he was. She seemed sincere about it, too, which Finn had worried about until Poe clapped a hand to his shoulder one evening when he'd voiced this particular concern and assured easily, "Nah, she likes you, buddy. Trust me, I've known the General for a long time. I can always tell."He was pretty sure that Poe wouldn't lie to him. Not about anything, really, but especially not about this. So he took it as gospel and did his best not to swallow his tongue when the General spoke to him and worked extra hard at whatever task he'd been set to so that she knew that he liked her, too; that he believed, really believed in what she was trying to do here, like Poe did.Poe was something else entirely. Something new and strange and wonderful that Finn wasn't even going to bother to try unpacking until Rey got back from her mysterious Jedi adventure and could offer him her surly-edged advice in person instead of making confused faces at him while he babbled nonsensically about it into the holopad.(“I just, really like him,” he’d murmured late one night, curled pitifully around the secondhand holopad that Poe had scalped for him from requisitions, his voice so full of emotion it had gone soft at the edges.“I like him too,” Rey had agreed easily, smiling that sweet, startlingly open smile. Then she’d paused, little wrinkle creasing her proud brow, and amended, “I mean I don’t really know him very well. But what little I’ve seen of him, I like.”Which was nice, and boded well for Finn’s desire to see his two favorite people eventually become favorites of one another, though he didn’t think Rey had grasped his meaning, exactly.)There were other people - and various non-person identifying sentient beings - on the base, too, and unfortunately not all of them were as welcoming of ex-Storm Troopers as others.Of that subset, most were suspicious, which Finn could understand, though not outright hostile, which he appreciated. Despite the fact that his upbringing had interpreted the world through two fairly inflexible lenses - “they,” who were bad, evil, or other signifiers indicating their inherent wrongness, versus “we,” who were good, just, or other signifiers indicating their inherent rightness - Finn had learned pretty immediately that good and evil, right and wrong, kind and cruel operated on a sliding scale.Though he hadn’t really experienced the kind of vitriol that bubbled up between differing ideologies until now, Finn found that he could handle the occasional dark look or snide comment; the occasional curled lip when he stumbled across a gap in his knowledge or made an incorrect assumption based on what he was taught in his youth. He was less keen to endure the sudden, blunt ache of a shoulder digging into him when he passed someone in the hall; hot, hideous breath in his face while posturing jerks asked him if he wanted to “take this little disagreement off-base, bucketbrain?”There was a part of Finn that wanted to push his way into their space in retaliation, to spit out an affirmative and take a little time to show them exactly why the First Order had thought he had leadership potential, to give them ringside seats to just how many combat techniques they had made him drill endlessly, day after day after day, since he could remember. There was a bigger part of him that recognized that this kind of violent misstep was precisely the excuse these bullies were waiting for to justify their poor behavior, and more than anything he didn’t want to give them that satisfaction. So he defused when he could and occasionally took some minor licks in the name of all that was right and good, and their pokey little planet made its way around its anchoring star like always.
Besides, it was more than worth swallowing his pride for the way that Poe always came to his aid unfailingly, asking Finn with a sharp edge to his voice whether everything was okay here or if he needed to step in. While the pompous bigots were always eager to jump down Finn’s throat, their bravery tended to desert them when they were staring into the tightly set jaw of the best pilot in the Resistance.“Don’t give two bantha ticks about those assholes, Finn,” Poe would say, slinging an arm around Finn’s shoulders. “Whaddya say we go check the commissary and see if they’ve got any of that iced sweetmilk you like?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Matt and Foggy move in together:
"Flooded?" Matt repeats. It's not especially crowded in Josie's, considering it's a Tuesday night in December, but he can't shake the feeling that he somehow misheard. Foggy nods miserably, sinking further into his chair. "The whole building," he confirms, burying his face in his hands. "From the fifth floor down." "You live on the third floor," Matt says, immediately wincing when his brain catches up to his mouth. Matt's not great at dealing with problems that can't be punched into submission, and Foggy's obvious distress is distracting, to say the least. Karen - who has taken up a post standing beside Foggy to rub his back and make sympathetic noises - pauses her ministrations and rolls her eyes. Foggy drops his hands and shoots Matt a flat, severely unimpressed glare. "Yes, thank you Matthew, that's very helpful," he snaps. Matt hunches his shoulders and crosses his arms over his chest. "It's not my fault," he mutters and Foggy sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I know," he says. He sighs again and slumps forward, elbows splayed across the table. "I'm sorry, I just, most of my furniture is a total loss, my TV is fried, and I have nowhere to live for the three weeks it's going to take them to make the place habitable again." "Isn't your lease up in a month and a half anyway?" Karen asks, running her hand across Foggy's shoulders. "Maybe they'd let you break it early?" Foggy shakes his head, forlorn. "No dice," he sighs. "I already asked. They won't let me out of it and whoever drew their contract up for them knew what they were doing - it's airtight." "I'd offer to let you stay with me but the landlord is having the carpet redone," Karen says, only slightly too forced for her casual tone to be genuine. Matt thinks of blood-stains covered by cheap patterned IKEA rugs and takes a moment to be savagely, viciously grateful that he followed Karen home that night all those months ago. Foggy reaches up and catches her hand where it's resting on his shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "I appreciate the thought," he assures, and some of the tension in Karen's frame dissolves. "You know what we need?" She shakes her head, flipping her glossy hair, and straightens back up. "What's that?" Foggy ask. Karen grins wickedly. "A visit from our dear friend, Mr. Eel." Foggy tips his head back so it bumps against Karen's hip, and Matt can't help smiling. "You are an angel," Foggy says. Karen reaches down to pat his cheek. "I'll remind you of that in the morning," she promises with a wink, and winds her way to the bar. While they wait, Foggy starts listing all of the options he's already considered and dismissed, his pulse ratcheting up, faster and louder until it drowns out the background noise, buffeting Matt's senses. Matt's fingers twitch with the urge to reach out and touch Foggy, but he tamps down brutally on the desire, burying it. He and Foggy are better, now that Fisk is locked up, but they haven't yet circled back around to their easy camaraderie and Matt isn't willing to test the boundaries Foggy has set. He hates being in this position, helpless to take any immediate action to diffuse the problem. For a half-second Matt considers roughing up Foggy's landlord to convince him to let Foggy out of the lease, but he knows he could never really do it. The landlord isn't in the wrong, even if he is marginally responsible for making Foggy upset, and Matt really does have a code of honor, grey and amorphous as it may occasionally seem. There's no easy fix, Matt thinks, while Foggy bemoans his inability to afford a hotel for more than a night or two. Unless... "Stay with me." It takes Matt a second to recognize his own voice beyond the sudden skip-thump of Foggy's heart. "What?" Foggy asks. "Really?" Matt tries not to take the ripple of disbelief in Foggy's voice personally, but his smile feels brittle at the edges when he flashes it in Foggy's direction. "Of course," Matt lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "I have the space." "What you have is a giant LCD billboard in your living room," Foggy says pointedly. "I'd never be able to sleep with that thing shining in my face all night." Matt shrugs again. "So take the bed," he says, nonchalant. Foggy sighs. "Matt, I'm not kicking you out of your bed for a month." "You're not," Matt agrees placidly. "I'm offering you my bed for a month. The billboard won't bother me, Foggy, you know that." "I knew that," Foggy corrects, voice dropping low as he leans in. "I figured with your, you know," he wiggles his fingers around his ear, "it might be a different story." Matt swallows past the pang of sadness that bursts behind his sternum, the way it always does when he's forced to face Foggy's completely understandable distrust head on. "It won't bother me," Matt repeats, quiet. Foggy considers him for a long moment, both of them startling when Karen slams a bottle down on the table with a loud clink. "Sorry," she breathes, laughter in her voice. "I got waylaid by a stockbroker." "Very impressive," Foggy wags his eyebrows at her and Karen giggles. "Not impressive enough," she demurs, pouring a finger of what appears to be some kind of bathtub gin into a glass for each of them. "So what did you two come up with? Have we solved the riddle of the homeless lawyer?" "Not quite," Foggy mumbles to himself, liquid sloshing in his glass as he swirls it lazily. Matt raises his eyebrows and Foggy shakes his head once, sharp. Matt smiles sweetly and turns to Karen while Foggy kicks his foot under the table. "Actually, we did," he says, tilting his head in thanks when Karen slides his glass into his waiting hand, carefully curling his fingers around it. He ignores the heat of Foggy's glare. "Or, we will, if Foggy stops being stubborn long enough to accept the offer to stay at place." "Oh, hey!" Karen agrees enthusiastically, "That's a great idea!" She reaches over and taps the lip of her glass against Matt's. "Way to problem-solve, boss." "Thank you," Matt says with a grin. "So all we need to do is pack up anything salvageable," Karen continues, taking a thoughtful sip of her booze. "Furniture we can store at the office, since clients only really see the conference room anyway." Matt nods. "I can probably fit some of it into my place, too," he offers, thinking of the empty space where his coffee table used to be. "Don't I get a vote in this?" Foggy interjects mutinously. "Be quiet, grown ups are talking," Karen says sweetly, reaching out to pat the back of Foggy's hand. Her teasing grin fades when Foggy bristles at the contact. "I'm not going to inconvenience a blind man just because money is tight," Foggy says. He very carefully doesn't look at Matt, but he must know that Matt can hear the guilty jolt of his heart. "I'll figure it out." Something hot and bitter crawls up Matt's throat. "Like I already told you," he insists, low and mulish, "you wouldn't be inconveniencing me. I offered.”
Foggy sets his glass down and crosses his arms over his chest, chin jutting out defiantly. "Well I don't accept," he hisses. "It's clearly the best option!" Matt insists, dangerously close to outright yelling. "Where else are you going to go?" "My parents would probably -" "Your parents live in Middlesex! So, what, you're going to commute an hour both ways every day? With what car?" "Maybe I'll rent one!" Foggy snaps. "You'll pay for a car rental and gas for a month but you can't afford a hotel? Explain that math to me!" Matt is peripherally aware of Karen's attention leaping back and forth between the two of them, like she's watching a tennis match. "It's better than being forced into throwing myself on your pity!" Foggy hollers. Matt feels his jaw snap shut, the white noise of the bar fading beneath the sudden rushing in his ears. Foggy stares at him for a long moment, both of them breathing heavily. The screech of Foggy's chair screams through the oppressive silence as he scoots it back and stands. "I didn't -" he starts, voice small, and Matt flinches like he's been slapped. Foggy sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, and knocks back the remainder of his drink. "Just, give me a minute," he mutters, and slips away, out the front door. Karen and Matt sit in silence for a few long minutes, Karen tapping her fingers absently against the table. Matt gropes for his glass and empties it in one long swallow, exhaling shakily. "I thought you guys were doing better," Karen says quietly. She nudges her foot against Matt's below the table, uses it to guide their knees together. Matt appreciates the contact more than he could say. "I did too," he admits, voice hoarse. Karen doesn't say anything for a few seconds, takes a sip from her glass. "I don't know what went on with you two," Karen says slowly, "and I know it's not my business." She reaches out to squeeze Matt's fingers. "But you're going to be okay." She sounds so certain when she says it. Matt swallows around the tightness in his throat. "You can't know that," he says, though it comes out a whisper. Karen smiles. "Sure I can," she says easily. "You love each other." Matt licks his lips, pressing them together into a thin line. Karen must take it as encouragement, because she continues, "You keep saying it's your fault, and maybe that's true and maybe it's not. Either way, you can fix it." "How?" Matt hates how desperate he sounds. His fingers are shaking under the warmth of Karen's hand. She shrugs. "There are a lot of ways. I usually start with radical honesty." Matt lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and Karen lets go of his hand to pour a little bit more booze into the bottom of his glass. "Now, drink that," she instructs. Matt complies obediently and then gestures in the direction Foggy had gone. "I should -" he starts, rising. Karen nods. "Want me to come with?" Matt considers for a moment, but ultimately shakes his head. "No," he says, uneasily. "I think it'd be better if I went alone." He takes his time picking his way through the bar, running his hand along the backs of the empty chairs he passes and gripping his cane so hard his knuckles must be white. It's frigid outside, and Matt shudders with his whole body at the sudden burst of icy air. Foggy is standing a few feet away from the door, arms wrapped around himself, shivering miserably. He glances over warily when Matt walks up, but he doesn't shrink away which Matt will take as a small victory. They stand in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before Matt manages to screw up the courage to say, "I'll split a rental car with you." Foggy blinks at him. "What?" "The cost of a rental car for three weeks, or a month, or however long you need it," Matt elaborates. "I'll split it with you. Gas too. Or a hotel room. Whatever you want." Foggy sighs and rocks up onto his toes. "It's not about the money, Matt." "I just -" Matt starts. Foggy cuts him off. "You can't unilaterally make decisions about my life," he says, heated. Matt stops, swallows and twists his cane in his hands. He thinks of Karen's advice. Radical honesty. "I'm sorry," he says. Foggy opens his mouth, but this time it's Matt's turn to interrupt. "You're right, and I'm sorry," Matt says again, a little bolder this time. "I can't make decisions for you. I shouldn't have tried to force you into -" spending time with me. Matt swallows. "Into doing something you don't want to do. I wasn't trying to rob you of your autonomy, I just." He takes a deep breath and steps a little closer. Foggy turns, angling toward the heat of his body, and it soothes some of the raw pain in Matt's chest. "I miss you," he blurts, so fast that there's barely any distinction between the words. "I miss you a lot, and I'm," his eyes prickle, hot, at the corners and Matt ducks his head, swallows again. "I'm trying. I'm really, really trying, but I'll try harder if it's not enough. I want you to stay with me. I miss you, and I like having you around, but more than that I want you to be somewhere you feel safe. If that's not with me then just tell me what you want and we'll make it happen, I swear." There's the soft scuffle of dress shoes against concrete and then Foggy's fingers brush against Matt's arm, cold from being out in the winter chill. "Matt," Foggy breathes. His voice is gentle, but there's something deeply sad in his tone. Matt's face falls. "Hey, whoa," Foggy wraps his arms around Matt so fast that Matt stumbles, "none of that face, thank you. I can't handle that face right now." Matt carefully reaches up and grabs a fistful of Foggy's jacket. "Sorry," he murmurs into Foggy's shoulder. Foggy shakes his head. "It's okay," he soothes. "You don't have to apologize. Not for the face, anyway. I know you can't help it." "I could try," Matt offers, and Foggy chuckles. "Your poker face is terrible, Murdock, and everyone knows it." Matt can't suppress a slight grin at that, digging his fingers a little harder into the cloth of Foggy's jacket. "Thank you for apologizing," Foggy says quietly. His breath is warm against the side of Matt's neck. "I'm sorry, too." Matt frowns, honestly bewildered. "What for?" Foggy shrugs. "It's possible I might have overreacted a little bit." Matt shakes his head. "You have every right -" Foggy squeezes him tighter and says sharply, "Matt. Please just gracefully accept my apology." Matt nods and murmurs obediently,"Apology accepted." He can feel Foggy grinning when he says, "There, now, that wasn't so hard, was it?" They stand there for awhile longer, wrapped in each other, until Foggy shudders under the icy caress of a passing gust of wind. "Why don't we take this hug-fest back indoors?" He offers, shifting so that he has an arm around Matt's shoulders and guiding him toward the entryway to Josie's. "Good plan," Matt agrees jovially. He pauses just before Foggy reaches out and asks, quiet, "You know I'd do whatever it took to keep you safe, right? I would never hurt you." Foggy doesn't even hesitate, wrapping his cool palm around Matt's neck and running his thumb over the soft skin just below Matt's ear. "I know, buddy," Foggy says. "I've never been worried about that, not even for a second." Matt holds the door open as Foggy passes through, a giddy flush creeping into his face. Truth.

Demon!Foggy AU:
“This isn't what it looks like," Karen promises. Her voice is shrill, heartbeat pounding with alarm.
Matt barely notices it over the thick, crushing stench of sulfur and the slow, steady beat of a heart that wasn’t there seconds before, when Matt poked his head out of his office to see what Karen was doing scratching around on the floor. Matt has one arm flung protectively in front of Karen, his body angled toward the blazing point of heat in the center of the room.
Karen winces with her entire body and corrects, "Feels like. Smells like?""So what is it, then?" Matt asks, low and dangerous."I resent being called ‘it,’" the thing grumbles good-naturedly, edging in one direction, then another, sketching out the confines of its space.
It's humanoid, somewhere near Matt's height though a bit stockier, burning brighter than normal in the red fire of Matt's mind.Matt narrows his eyes at it, canting his head toward Karen, who lets out a frustrated puff of breath."You're not helping," she snaps over Matt's shoulder, and the creature holds its hands up."Sorry," it says, rocking back on its heels and miming twisting a key against its lips."Thank you," Karen replies graciously. Matt would turn to glare at her but he doesn't want to take his attention off the creature."I know how you feel about Summoning," Karen starts and Matt can't hold back a scoff.
“It’s not just me, it’s the entire New York legal system,” he points out.

Karen cuffs him on the shoulder and continues, "We are
drowning
in the Fisk case."
"We're not -"
"Elena's dead," Karen cuts in, voice like steel. "And now so is Ben, and." She swallows around the slight wobble in her tone. "And you look like you're skirting closer to the edge every time I see you. Between the casework and your, uh," she flicks her gaze toward the creature, "extracurricular activities,
I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose you next."Her words hang, miserable and thick in the air, for a long moment while the all too familiar sensation of guilt sinks its claws deeper into Matt's chest."I'm not going to die, Karen," Matt murmurs softly.
The thing in the middle of the room snorts.
Matt turns so he's facing it, asking acidly, "What?""Nothing man," the creature says. Its voice is surprisingly pleasant, low and affable. "Just, you know, everyone dies.""You -" Matt starts to step forward but Karen's hand in the crook of his elbow stops him."Careful of the circle," she says softly. Matt turns his face to the floor, even though he knows he won't be able to see anything.
Beneath the overwhelming reek of sulfur and, strangely, coconut, Matt can smell charcoal. Unfortunately, he has no way to discern the hard edge of the marks on the floor, no way to tell how far the Summoning circle extends into the room. He settles back, reluctantly."I meant to Summon an Angel," Karen admits. She turns to the creature, the Demon. "No offense.""I get you," the Demon says with a shrug, seemingly unconcerned. "Impressive, how much difference a few little curlicues make, right?""You're telling me," Karen agrees ruefully, and this time Matt does shoot her a glare. She makes a gesture at him that he recognizes to mean 'chill out,' but he just glares harder.
After all, he's not the one engaging in nigh-friendly conversation with the Demon he decided to Summon at five in the evening on a Friday in the middle of an admittedly understaffed law office.
"What's your name?" Matt demands.The Demon clicks its tongue.
"That's not very polite," it scolds, and Matt gets the disturbing feeling that it's grinning at him. "There's a lot of power in names where I come from. It's kind of gauche to just ask like that."Matt tilts his head and smiles sweetly."You'd rather I keep calling you 'that thing'?" He asks."Feisty, I like it," the Demon chuckles, a pleasant, gentle rumble. "Foggy will work, for now, and male pronouns are good."The name tickles at something in Matt’s memory. He could swear he’d heard it before, though where he would have come across a Demon ridiculous enough to title itself after moderately inclement weather he’s not sure. There are a lot of weirdos out in Hell's Kitchen after dark, and he should know, but none that immediately spring forth as the likely source of his vague suggestion of recognition.
"Male pronouns?" Matt echoes, arching an eyebrow. "Pretty progressive terminology, there." The Demon - Foggy - shrugs again."I like to stay abreast of the trends topside," he explains nonchalantly. His heartbeat stutters loudly for a bare second in the middle of his statement. In a human, Matt would assume the speaker wasn't being entirely truthful, but he's not sure how to quantify it in a Demon. "Now, how about you let me out of here so I can help you with this big case of yours?"Karen rolls her eyes."Please," she scoffs. "Just because I got a little dyslexic on the symbol for your name doesn't mean I'm stupid. We're not letting you out without Binding you.""Cute
and
smart," Foggy says, and he actually sounds pleased. Matt doesn't like it. In his experience the only people who are ever glad to be captured are people who know they can get loose any time they like, which doesn’t bode well.
“We’re not letting him out at all,” Matt insists.“Well you’re going to have to,” Foggy says, in the same jovial tone. “Even if it’s just to send me back, you have to get me out of this circle and into the next one. Unless you want to call the authorities, implicate yourselves in all kinds of crimes.”
Matt glares. Foggy shrugs.“No one's implicating anyone in anything," Karen promises easily, turning to Matt. "I think we should let him help.”Foggy practically purrs. “Oh, I like you.”"We’re not letting him do anything but go back where he came from," Matt growls, while Karen steps around her desk and starts digging in her topmost drawer, presumably for more charcoal.“Matt,” she sighs, “we need help. And okay, I admit that maybe I mistakenly Summoned a Demon instead of an Angel – ”
“That’s
exactly
what you did,” Matt grumbles, sulkily crossing his arms over his chest. Karen talks over him.
“ - but it could be a blessing in disguise! I mean, think about it,” she slams her top drawer shut and opens another. “Who could be better with contracts than a Demon!”
“She has a point,” Foggy says. “It is kind of what we’re known for down below.” Matt turns to glare and point his finger in Foggy’s direction.“You are not a part of this conversation,” Matt hisses. Foggy holds his hands up again and takes a half-step back. Matt turns his attention back to Karen and continues, “Children are a blessing, crying statues are a blessing! Accidentally inviting a Demon into our place of business is not a blessing!”“I
am
great with obscure legal precedent, though!” Foggy interjects before Karen can reply. “I did a stint at Harvard, helping out a kid who was pretty desperate to make summa cum laude.” There’s a pause before he adds smugly, “He graduated Valedictorian.”“See,” Karen says pointedly, gesturing to Foggy, “he went to Harvard.”“He didn’t
go there, he took advantage of some poor kid!” Matt hollers, a little hysterically. “He’s a
Demon, Karen! He probably just snapped his fingers and, boom, essay done.”“Excuse you, asshole!” Foggy snaps. It’s the first time he’s sounded anything but perfectly friendly since he crackled into existence, and Matt turns toward him, shoulders high and tight. “I wrote every single one of those papers
by hand, all four years of law school. No pulling a bunch of baloney out of the ether, just good old fashioned book-learning.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you,” Matt sneers, maybe louder than is strictly necessary. Foggy bristles, but before he can say anything Karen gasps, “Gotcha!” and circles back around to the front of her desk.
She has a small book in one hand – Matt can smell the musty leather of its binding and guesses that it has to be going on a hundred years old – and a stick of soft charcoal in the other. She holds the book out to Matt, who takes it gingerly from her, and starts rolling up the sleeve of her cardigan.“All I need to do is draw one quick symbol on my wrist,” she explains cheerily. “No muss, no fuss, he can’t do any harm to either of us and he can’t go further than six feet from me until I decide to let him return from whence he came.” She waggles her fingers in the air like she’s casting a spell. “Perfect office assistant!”“No,” Matt says immediately. Karen glances up at him.“No, what?” she asks.“No, you’re not doing that,” Matt says insistently. Karen sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose.“Look, Matt, I know it’s not ideal, but it’s our only choice. My great-grandma was a bit of a Summoning nut, so I grew up around this stuff. This is one of her old favorites, I promise it'll work."Matt juts his chin out mulishly and Karen crosses her arms over her chest.
"If you don’t trust him,” she snaps, jerking her thumb at Foggy, who waves when Matt turns to glance at him, "when he says that there’s no other way, then please trust me when I say a) he's right and b) I know what I'm doing."Matt considers her for a long moment. “You’re sure this Binding symbol will work?”“Tried and true,” Karen assures, and even if she’s wrong, she does believe it. The heart can’t lie. Matt frowns at her.
He doesn’t have many friends, and although Karen had rightfully given him a bit of grief after discovering his penchant for beating up crooks in alleys, she’s always been supportive. She’s never asked him to stop, not even once, although clearly the thought of losing him has been eating at her.
There’s also the troubling fact that she’s not wrong about them needing help on the Fisk case.
They’re so close to making the final connection they need to lock the bastard up for good that Matt can almost taste it, but it remains stubbornly out of reach. So, legally, a new pair of eyes might not be a bad thing, though Matt would much prefer that said eyes belong to someone who originated on this plane of existence.Not so legally, Matt knows that Fisk has Demons in his employ. He’s had a few scrapes recently that he only managed to get out of by dint of having the foresight to get his gloves blessed after Mass a few weeks ago, Father Lantom fondly exasperated but willing.
Foggy, despite the gregarious front he’s putting on, might be able to shed a bit of light on precisely what Matt is up against.Blessing in disguise,
Matt thinks, just a little resentfully. He sighs, nods decisively, and then starts shrugging out of his suit jacket.“What are you –” Karen starts as Matt tosses his jacket over her desk.“If you’re sure that it’s the only way to get rid of him, then fine, we’ll let him out,” Matt says agreeably. He takes a step forward and holds the little book back out to Karen. “On one condition.”“What’s that?” Karen asks, suspicious, and reaches out to snatch the book back. Matt grins.“Bind him to me, not to you.”“Matt –” Karen starts, but he shakes his head and holds up a hand.
“No,” he says, in the gruff, no-nonsense tone he usually saves for his nightly stints as a vigilante. "Either we do it this way, give our new friend a window of, let’s say twenty-four hours to fulfill his purpose, or I call my priest right now and he comes to exorcise our guest. Not ideal, I'll admit, but it solves the problem of needing to let him out to send him back."Matt hears Foggy swallow loudly and can’t help but turn toward him, adding pettily, “I’m told the whole process is extremely unpleasant.”Foggy makes a rude hand gesture while Karen taps her foot arrhythmically against the floor.

Clearly Matt's tone
doesn't work quite as well on his spirited secretary, as it does on the hardened criminal element of the city. He's honestly a bit surprised, though Karen has always had a surplus of backbone.She glares at him for a long, quiet moment, then sighs deeply and shakes her head."Fine," she says hotly, flipping rapidly through her book.
“Good.” Matt undoes the button on the cuff of his left shirtsleeve and starts rolling it up. Inside the Summoning circle, Foggy’s heartbeat skips up its pace.“Holy forearms, Batman,” he mutters, low enough that Matt wouldn’t have heard it were it not for his enhanced senses. Even so, he cuts a glare in Foggy’s direction. Foggy grins unabashedly.“For what it’s worth,” he says across the room, tone light and jolly, “I think you’re making the right call.”“I’m giving you one day and one night,” Matt says, turning to look over his shoulder in Foggy’s direction. He lets a little bit of the Devil’s darkness seep into the jagged edges of his smile. “Then I’m sending you straight back to Hell.”“Noted,” Foggy murmurs, voice low and a little breathless.Matt’s not one hundred percent certain that the sudden spike in Foggy’s heart rate is fear but he’ll take it, even so.“Here we go,” Karen says, setting her book down on her desk with a glass paperweight to keep it in place. She turns around and reaches out, lightning fast, to grab Matt's arm.
"I hate when you do this macho martyr bullshit, by the way," she mutters, but her fingers are soft and gentle where she wraps them around Matt’s wrist, guiding his arm forward.“Are you sure about this?" Karen pauses, charcoal poised just above the surface of Matt’s skin. Matt takes a deep breath through his nose – fading sulfur and coffee and aged wood pulp and again, coconut – and nods.“Do it.”The shape she draws over his wrist is smooth and swirling, with a few spiky protrusions. Matt isn’t familiar with the symbol itself, but he’s never been much for Demon lore outside of its direct relation to the Catholic Church. As Karen gets close to finishing, Matt can smell smoke rising from the ring on the floor, and the surface of his skin starts tingling, warm.“Almost,” Karen murmurs. She hesitates and looks up at him."This next part isn't going to feel good, but you can't touch the mark," she explains quietly. "If you smudge it, he's out," her eyes flick over to the Summoning circle and back to Matt, "and we're probably screwed."Matt nods. "Do it."Karen licks her lips, takes a breath, and drags a sharp line down the center of the symbol.
Matt hisses and pulls his hand back.It
burns
and his opposite hand twitches instinctively, but Karen murmurs, "Don't."Matt clenches both hands into fists, breathing shallowly through his mouth to avoid the odor of burning flesh. He’s not sure he would really smell it at all, if his skin is truly burning or if it's all in his mind. Even if it is real, Matt's not sure he
could pick it out above the rapid overwhelming rush of smoke and sulfur, but he prefers not to risk it.
The Summoning circle flares, white-hot, the brighter-than-human signature of Foggy’s mass swallowed up in the sudden glaring shine.There’s a hissing screech unlike anything Matt has heard before, and then the heat dies down just as suddenly as it arose, Matt’s skin cooling back to room temperature, any lingering pain fading away.When he glances over, Foggy is leaning down, bracing his hands on his knees. He’s breathing, loud and harsh in the sudden silence of the room, his whole body leaking the sharp, sour tang of a person in pain past the rapidly dissipating odors that accompany unholy magicks.Matt supposes it makes sense that Demons can feel pain, though he’s never really considered it before now. Foggy seems to be in quite a bit, and even though he knows it should give him a flash of petty satisfaction, Matt can’t help but feel a little bad at the tremor running through the Demon’s body.“That’s a pretty nasty one,” Foggy says through his belabored gasps, looking up at Karen. “I wasn’t expecting it from you.”Something in his tone makes him sound like a teacher who’s surprised but pleased at their student’s initiative. Karen shrugs and tucks some of her hair behind her ear.“Better safe than sorry,” she says quietly, reaching out to catch Matt’s wrist. She runs her thumb over the skin there and Matt shudders when he realizes that he can feel the mark she drew, raised like a brand. “It’ll go away once we send him back,” she assures him, voice low.
Matt nods, reaches out to catch her wrist with his own hand and return the gesture. “I trust you.”
Karen’s smile is small, but genuine.“Not that this isn’t a very touching moment,” Foggy interrupts, straightening up with a deep breath though his body is still shaking, “but I’d really appreciate the opportunity to sit down on something that isn't the floor, if it’s not too much trouble.”Matt follows the edge of the room around to the second-hand filing cabinet where they keep most of their case files, careful not to smear the Summoning circle, making a show of dragging his fingertips along the plaster as he goes. If there has ever been a time when the stakes of keeping his abilities under wraps have been higher, Matt can’t think of it.There are two cardboard filing boxes that they use for overflow on top of a rusted old lawn chair that Karen nabbed from a street corner a few months back. Matt moves them to the top of the filing cabinet and grabs the chair with one hand.
He takes a few steps forward toward Foggy, pausing when Karen's shoulders go taught across the room. Right at the edge of the circle then. His fingers tighten on the chair and he grits his teeth.
Karen had better be right, he thinks, and drags the toe of his shoe purposefully across the floor, taking a step forward.Almost immediately Foggy's shaking subsides, and something warm starts to hum in Matt’s chest.
He narrows his eyes, but before he can open his mouth to ask Foggy rubs his knuckles against his own sternum and supplies, “That’ll be the Bond your friend laid on us. It
really is pretty intense. Very good choice, as Bonds go. Definitely the one I would’ve picked if I were in your shoes.”
He shoots Karen a thumbs-up that she, thankfully, doesn't return.“Intense how?” Matt asks, setting the chair down about three feet from Foggy and using his heel to slide it the rest of the way. Foggy glances at it and pulls a face.“You’re really pulling out all the stops, aren’t you?” he grouses, but flops, boneless, onto the chair even so.“Intense how?” Matt repeats, barely managing to restrain himself from lashing out and kicking at Foggy’s shin. A flash of irritation rolls through him and Foggy shifts, rubs at his sternum again.“Calm down, Captain Anxiety,” Foggy mutters, dropping his head back so that it’s half-hanging over the back of the chair. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.” His hair is long, Matt realizes as some of it falls over the chair back in a soft rush, a familiar sweet scent curling up from it like smoke.“Coconut?” Matt asks, before he can stop himself. Foggy grins.“Oh yeah, man. Organix. It’s the best at keeping the locks luscious.” He closes his eyes and settles back a bit. “Their Moroccan Argan Oil is something else, I swear.”This time, Matt does kick out, but he rattles the leg of the chair rather than Foggy himself.“Hey!” Foggy yelps, jumping back up to a proper seated position instead of his comfortable slump.“Tell me about the Bond, now,” Matt orders, and Foggy glares mutinously at him. He presses his mouth into a thin, tight line for a few seconds, body twitching and struggling like he’s physically wrestling something for a few moments before he gasps a breath.“Fine,” Foggy mutters, “although your secretary over there could do just as good a job of explaining as I will. Maybe better, considering she literally has the book in front of her.” He settles back into the chair.“The Bond she used is old. Old enough that I haven’t seen one in action before now.
I can’t go further than six feet from you, as you've seen. The proximity tie is pretty standard for Demonic Bonds although the distance varies," Foggy explains.Matt thinks for a moment about the dimensions of the room, his careful path around the edges, and an unexpected wash of guilt rolls through him.“That’s why you were shaking, while I was outside of the circle,” he says. Foggy inclines his head.“More than six feet, and I get burning coals under my skin. Further than ten and I don’t know what happens.” He shrugs and crosses his arms over his chest, sullen.
"What else?" Matt asks.Foggy stares at him for a long moment, then smiles, wide and lackadaisical, and says past gritted teeth, "That's it."His heart stutters, like it did before and he grasps hard at his sternum while a flash of something like brittle static flares through the warmth in Matt’s chest. Matt nearly jumps.“What was that?” he asks. Foggy sighs, scrubs his face with the palms of his hands.“It's my nightmare," he mutters to himself before looking up at Matt. “Apparently, that’s what it feels like when I lie to you. I’m assuming, because I’ve never been Bound like this before. From what I know of it, I
can
lie, but it hurts.” He sounds venomous, clenching his jaw as he adds, “And you’ll always be able to tell.”Technically, Matt would have been able to tell anyway, but he supposes a little extra insurance doesn’t hurt. Foggy has lapsed into silence but he's drumming his fingers against his arm in a startlingly human tic.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” Matt presses.“Astute, aren’t we?” Foggy glares, then sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Technically you can also compel me to do things.”
"What kind of things?" Matt asks.
"Things," Foggy says. "The kinds of things one might Summon a Demon to do."His voice is quiet, dark. He waves a hand lazily in the air, as if that gives an indication of the kind of tasks Matt can command him to undertake. Matt thinks about the tone, the implications, and feels nauseous.
Foggy rubs distractedly at his chest and shoots him a curious glance, adding, “I wouldn’t recommend it. As a lawyer, you should know better than most that the more addendums you insert into a contract, the more potential arises for loopholes.”
Foggy settles back into the chair and
claps his hands together."That's about it, other than the low-level empathetic connection," he says, reaches up to tap his fingers against the spot on his sternum he's been rubbing sporadically over the past twenty minutes or so.Matt reaches up toward his own chest but at the last second lets his hand fall back to his side."Wonderful," Matt sighs.
"Hey, from where I'm sitting, you got the better end of the deal," Foggy says, shooting Matt a grin. "I'm generally a pretty happy guy."Karen muffles a giggle behind her hand, but not before Foggy hears it, and turns to wag his eyebrows at her."Don't encourage him," Matt snaps and Karen nods and ducks her head.

Karen meets the Avengers:

"Excuse me?" Karen asks, taken aback. One of her hands is floating in midair, forkful of chicken salad teetering perilously on the edge of the plastic tines.Across from her, Foggy is staring at Matt like he's afraid Matt's going to leap over the table and strangle him to death. Matt, glaring furiously in Foggy's general direction, looks like he might actually be considering it."Um," Foggy says helpfully. There's a loud thud as Matt shifts in his seat and Foggy yelps. "Ow! That hurt, dick!""Foggy!" Matt hisses. "Shut up!""I was going to apologize!" Foggy replies hotly, crossing his arms over his chest."I said, excuse me!" Karen shouts as Matt opens his mouth to reply. She learned early on in her tenure as the secretary at Nelson & Murdock that the only way to defuse these occasional arguments is to cut them off before they gain any traction.She sets her fork down in the plastic takeout container housing the remains of her lunch and points at Foggy."Now, correct me if I'm wrong," Karen says, "but I could swear I just heard you say that Matt - our Matt," she leans in and widens her eyes significantly at Foggy, "blind Matt
- is Daredevil."Matt is making the unattractive expression that means he's furious, chin jutting out, shoulders taught but sitting low in a pitiful facsimile of calm."That would be crazy," Matt says, his voice low and dangerous the way it sometimes gets after hearing clients weave tales of the grievous wrongs they've endured in Hell's Kitchen. Karen flaps a hand at him."I don't recall asking you," she says sweetly, without turning her attention away from Foggy.He swallows thickly, eyes flicking from Karen to Matt and back again."I..." he starts. "That is to say...if he
were, which I'm not saying he is, because that would be nuts, right? So nuts! But if he
were," he turns to stare intently at Matt, whose glower visibly darkens, "he should definitely tell you because you're
trustworthy
and keeping it a secret would put you in danger and
that's not fair.""If I
were," Matt retorts in that snotty tone that only Foggy can draw out, "it would be my decision who to tell about it.""If you were, I would remind you that you don't have a history of making good decisions where secret vigilantism is concerned," Foggy snaps back."If -" Matt starts to say, but Karen cuts him of by slamming her hands down on the surface of their second-hand conference table."Enough!" She takes a deep breath and says, as calmly as she can manage, "I need somebody to promise me, to my face,
right now, that the devoutly Catholic lawyer I work for is not moonlighting as a devil-themed superhero or so help me I will quit and leave the two of you to try and figure out my filing system on your own."Foggy glances uncertainly at Matt, who stubbornly continues glaring, gaze pinned to the wall somewhere behind Foggy's head.Karen smiles, a little desperately, at Matt."Matt, tell me. Tell me you're not Daredevil."Matt sighs and squeezes his eyes shut, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose."Well..." Foggy says.Karen's heart starts pounding, the pulse of it thundering in her ears. Shetakes a harsh breath through her nose, narrowing her eyes to flint-sharp slits."Explain."
*
As it turns out, the strangest part of being in the know about your boss's secret double life as a vigilante is not occasionally stitching him up after a bad night, but the company his alter-ego keeps."So you're an archer?" Karen asks, unimpressed.Normally, Karen would be thrilled at the chance to meet two mysterious strangers who are almost certainly part of the hero community - she automatically assigns anyone who comes by on Daredevil's recommendation to the "caped crusader" column - but it's been a long couple of days and not even the possibility of rubbing elbows with a legitimate superhero is enough to revitalize her spirit.It's late in the evening and she's alone in the office when the duo wanders in, Foggy off interviewing a character witness while Matt is doing some below-board research on the man they're angling to expose for human trafficking."A bit of an understatement, but yes." The blond man grins and winks at her. Karen makes a face. Maybe it would be less off-putting if he didn't also have a bandage around his head, but she seriously doubts it.The stoic redhead quirks an amused smirk from her spot leaning against Foggy's desk, where she's been quietly texting someone since they arrived.The man leans down to scratch behind the ears of his one-eyed golden retriever while Karen digs around in the top drawer of her desk for an intake form."And you need a lawyer because?" she asks. The only pen she can find is one of the metallic gel pens her teen nostalgia talked her into buying on her last office supply run. She's pretty sure there aren't any form restrictions when it comes to ink color, though she never did get around to asking about it. Right now, she's too tired to care.She waits for a few moments and gets nothing in response to her question but the heavy breaths of a happy dog."Sir?" she prompts, looking up expectantly. He's smiling down at the dog and doesn't give any indication of having heard her. Karen clears her throat. He starts humming the melody to 'Wild Thing.' Karen narrows her eyes.The redhead plucks a paperclip off of Foggy's desk and lobs it at the man's face, still texting with her other hand. It catches him neatly between the eyes and he jumps."Aww, paperclip, no," he whines, rubbing his face and glancing at the redhead."Pay attention, Barton," she instructs, once she sees that his eyes are on her. "You're embarrassing yourself."The man, Barton apparently, rolls his eyes at her and turns to Karen, grinning apologetically when he sees that she's been waiting for an answer."I'm a little deaf," he explains, wagging a hand absently at the bandage around his head. Karen flushes, embarrassed. "It's pretty new, so I forget sometimes.""Oh my God, I'm
so
sorry," she says. "I didn't realize." Barton's eyes drop down to her lips while she speaks and Karen burns with shame."Don't worry about it," Barton shrugs off her apology. "It just looks bad.""He's had worse," the redhead confirms.Karen presses her heated face into her hands for a second, laughing a little hysterically into her palms."I'm still sorry," she assures, letting her arms fall to her sides. She sighs and scrubs a hand over her face. "It's been a rough week."Barton considers the intake form for a moment, drumming his fingers on Karen's desk."I mean," he says slowly, glancing at the redhead, who shrugs and offers a barely perceptible nod, "there's no rule that we have to do this here, is there?"The redhead tucks her phone into her back pocket and crosses the room to Karen's desk."I hope you like tequila," she says, flashing that enigmatic smirk.Which is how Karen winds up getting drunk with 3/5 of the Avengers and landing Nelson & Murdock a property law consultation at the same time.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Faraday is two glasses deep into the familiar ebb and sway of whiskey by the time that Vasquez finally appears in the doorway to the saloon. It’s late enough that the sky has gone velvet dark over his shoulder, sun seeped down through the horizon and candles glittering like lanterns all down the thoroughfare. It’s not the smartest way to do this, probably - sending Faraday into unfamiliar territory first, with the agreement that Vasquez follow several hours after. Both of them operating under the assumption that either the ugly rumor of Vasquez’s past crimes hasn’t run along ahead of him, so there’s no need for Faraday to head back out of town, or that his reputation has indeed preceded them both and Faraday has accordingly been dispatched and is in need of rescue or burial. It leaves the both of them tense and irritated, but they haven’t sussed out anything better in the months since their little mercenary party put Rose Creek to their backs, and so they make do. It sits a little heavier tonight, ugly mood magnified under the silver glare of the moon, swollen gibbous and inching toward full, but the lurching knot that’s been heavy in Faraday’s belly all afternoon unravels at the sight of his companion.Vasquez looks fine at a glance, if a little worse for the wear of travel, shoulders tighter than is probably comfortable. Neither of them is very fond of being separated, this close to the moon. Especially when the rest of their ragtag pack has been dispatched to all manner of climes on their own errands. It’s always dangerous, pulling a pack apart like this. Doubly so at this time in the lunar cycle, with the three days of the shift so near at hand. Faraday suspects that Vasquez has been party to the same anxieties in the hours since Faraday rode in without him, if not a measure worse. Though neither of them has mustered the courage to say it out loud yet, they both know that Faraday is going off on his own when the time comes.For now, Faraday raises a hand to catch Vasquez’s attention, two fingers stuck out around the breadth of his tumbler and a warmth that he refuses to label fondness curling the corners of his mouth. It’s the largest scene he’ll allow himself to make in a place as public as this, but it’s enough. Vasquez inclines a little nod when their eyes catch, and Faraday lets his hand fall, can’t help mirroring the heavy-lidded grin that Vasquez flashes him.The man in question lets his gaze sweep curiously around the room as he cuts a casual path toward the table Faraday has claimed in the back corner. His eyes catch the guttering light of the lanterns as he moves, reflecting it in the sinister, animal way that marks him neatly as a Variant to anyone who’s bothering to look.Given the figure that Vasquez cuts nowadays - sturdier and steadier and standing taller than he ever managed back before Rose Creek, when he spent his days haunting the forests like a wraith - there are any number of folk altogether willing to make him the subject of appreciative study. Most are quick to turn their faces away when they realize what he is, survival instinct kicking in as their brains weigh all the little hints and balance the equation out to “predator” and “prey,” but a few of them straighten a little further when they recognize that flicker, the feline prowl that Vasquez can never quite shake off no matter how he tries.Despite possessing something of a unique position to appreciate the primal draw of bedding a creature that could kill you, Faraday doesn’t think it’ll ever stop being at least a little bit funny, the way folks either wilt into wallflowers or turn into red-faced, trembling idiots at Vasquez’s approach.Faraday snorts at one of the barmaids, who flushes from the bared arc of her throat to the roots of her fair hair when Vasquez lets his smirk curl flirtatiously in her direction. If the last few months have been anything to go by, it’s frankly a miracle that Vasquez managed as long as he did before Chisolm caught up with him - subtlety has never particularly suited him, too much a wild beast to play at tame with any great success.It’s a greater miracle still, Faraday will admit freely in the privacy of his own mind, that Faraday hasn’t given himself away yet. To anyone at all, let alone to Vasquez himself, lurking as he always in well within Faraday’s space and scenting him without so much as a thought, to say nothing of permission or consideration of Faraday’s right to privacy.“You’re late,” Faraday greets, knocking their boots together when Vasquez drops into the seat directly beside him. That garners them a couple of curious looks from the younger patrons, though everybody’s heard enough about Variants to know that they approach physical boundaries from a different and much narrower margin than the average, Steady human. Faraday can see a few of the folks who have paid him no mind all afternoon suddenly narrowing their eyes in his direction, suspicious of the unassuming roustabout by virtue of the company that has seated itself nearer than common decency should allow.
“No later than usual.” Vasquez turns his head, leaning into Faraday’s space, and, true to form, takes a deep breath through his nose. Faraday rolls his eyes again. Vasquez licks his lips - a slow, tantalizing display - and grins with feline satisfaction when Faraday colors and wrests his gaze away. “What’s the matter, guero?”
“We’re supposed to be keepin’ a low profile, you overgrown housecat,” Faraday supplies. Vasquez lifts one shoulder in a shrug, cants his head to the side and gives Faraday a long, lazy up-and-down with the kind of absent familiarity that Faraday knows is more out of habit, out of instinct, than Vasquez trying to be cruel or make some kind of point.He ignores the traitorous heat bleeding into his face, and mutters, “Might as well pin me right here if you’re gonna be that way about it.”Vasquez doesn’t quite growl, but he makes a low, warning sound and his eyes flash, dark and dangerous. Some part of Faraday comes immediately and startlingly alert. He empties the dregs of his glass, swallowing past the hammer of his heart against his ribs. The whole room seems a little sharper, a little brighter, awareness crawling in icy spikes up his spine and skin buzzing like the air before a thunderstorm, alive with the electric hum that promises lightning in short order.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Beacon Hills High looked much the same as Derek remembered. He wasn't sure what he'd expected to change in two years, but as far as he could tell it was as if the school had been in stasis since Derek graduated.

His mother had been surprised when Derek offered to pick his younger sister up from school, but Laura'd smirked at him knowingly. She'd done the same thing to him when she'd come back for the holidays.

He was leaning against the Camaro, in the leather jacket he'd found in the back of his closet and his older mirrored aviator sunglasses for maximum embarrassment factor. He hadn't worn either with much regularity since the second half of junior year, when he thought they made him seem cool, but Cora was sure to get a kick out of it.

Cora had already sent Derek a text letting him know she'd be a few minutes late and warning him not to embarrass her on pain of dismemberment - which he duly ignored. He checked the time on his phone to see if he ought to give up his feigned nonchalance and go look for her, when a thundering heartbeat entered his range of hearing.

There was some kind of commotion happening at the end of the parking lot reserved for teachers, and after a second Derek was able to pinpoint the source of the heartbeat.

A gangly brunette in a striped sweater and honest-to-god mint colored pants was tearing toward Derek, running at what was probably his top speed. He had a backpack on and a canvas bag slung over one shoulder.

Derek stepped away from the Camaro, half a mind to stop the kid and ask him where the fire was, when Cora's voice came from somewhere behind him.

"Der!"

Derek turned, putting up a hand to wave at her, and was almost knocked off-balance when the kid slammed into his shoulder.

"Oh, ow, sorry!" the kid said, stumbling to a halt. "Sorry, my bad. Totally wasn't looking where I was going."

"It's fine," Derek grumbled. The kid cast a wary glance over his shoulder and then turned and looked at Derek again, seeming to really see him for the first time.

"Oh, wow, I wish I had been, though." The kid gestured with his hand, sweeping down and then up to encompass Derek's whole body. "Because man, you are totally rocking that whole James Dean thing."

Cora's familiar gait drew up next to Derek and he heard her say, exasperated, "Stilinksi, stop creeping on my brother."

The kid - Stilinski apparently, and what kind of tragic name was that? - opened his mouth to protest but snapped it shut again when an adult hollered from the teacher's lot, "Who did this!?"

Stilinski grinned at Cora, winked at Derek, and shrugged the bag off his shoulder.

"Here, hold on to this for me, would you? Thanks."

He practically threw the bag straight at Derek's chest, and Derek caught it on instinct, glancing down at it. When he looked back up, Stilinski was gone, continuing his sprint toward the opposite end of the lot.

Cora rolled her eyes at his side.

"Don't ever take anything from Stilinski unless you want to be implicated in one of his crimes," she said mildly.

Across the parking lot, a voice Derek now recognized as belonging to Mr. Harris, roared, "Who egged my car!?"

Derek frowned at Cora and she raised her eyebrows, eyes flicking pointedly down to the bag that Derek was still clutching to his chest.

He opened it, only slightly surprised to find it full of empty egg cartons.

Harris was storming toward them when Derek looked back up. With a grimace, he opened the driver's side door, tossing the bag into the back seat, and told Cora grimly, "Get in."

She climbed inside, buckled her seat belt, and laughed for a solid eight minutes.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Don't freak out," said Lily Chen quite suddenly, from directly behind Magnus. He very heroically managed not to jump or even spill his drink. "I swear it's not as bad as it looks."

He blinked, turning slowly to peer at her, eyes widening when he saw that she had Alec half-draped over her petite shoulder. The two of them had wandered off not long ago in the interest of hunting down more booze, bickering amicably as they always did.
A thin coil of worry began to spool in Magnus's chest at the way Alec was slumped forward, boneless.

"I can't make any promises, but I'll do my best," he said absently to Lily, reaching out to cup Alec's arm, just above his elbow.

Alec raised his head at the touch, blinking blearily at Magnus's hand for a moment before looking up, elation spilling across his face. His pupils were blown wide, the tiniest sliver of blue visible beside the inky black, his cheeks flushed, a few unruly locks of hair falling into his face.

"Hello darling," Magnus murmured, affection fizzing brightly through his entire body, soothing the concern and settling Magnus's nerves.

Alec smiled at Magnus, slow and sweet, and said delightedly, "Magnus!" As though maybe he hadn't expected Magnus to be here, at the Solstice party they had arrived at together only a few short hours ago, arms linked and fingers laced.

Alec turned his face toward Lily and said in that same bright, slurred tone, "Look, Lily! It's Magnus!"

Lily sighed, making the exasperated expression of the incredibly put-upon.

"Yes, it is," she said to Alec, not unkindly. "I told you we'd find him."

Alec turned back to Magnus and said, low and gentle and painfully sincere, "I'm so glad you're here."

He had a look of such naked adoration on his face that it made Magnus's chest ache. He reached out and brushed a raven-dark lock off of Alec's forehead. Alec's eyes fluttered shut, lashes like smears of ink across his pale cheeks.

"Me too," Magnus agreed. He threw his drink over his shoulder, not really caring where it landed, and was rewarded with a distant yelp. He slipped an arm around Alec's back. "How about you come with me, now, love, and give Lily a break?"

Lily shot Magnus a grateful look and shifted Alec over.

"Lily's the best," Alec said, leaning his full weight into Magnus so suddenly that Magnus nearly stumbled. "She's a good friend." He leaned in and added in a loud, elated whisper, "We had an adventure."

"I can see that," Magnus cut a glance at Lily. She grinned, sheepishly.

"We didn't realize there was faerie fruit in the tarts," she admitted, reaching out to run a hand up and down Alec's shoulder in a surprisingly soothing gesture. "Did we buddy?"

Alec shook his head and made an exaggeratedly serious face.

"We did not," he confirmed, one arm around Magnus's back, the fingers of his other hand tucked over the waistband of Magnus's crushed velvet pants. He blinked up at Magnus and added guilelessly, "They were so good."

"I bet they were," Magnus chuckled, holding Alec tightly to him with an arm around Alec's waist. "How many did you eat?"

Alec considered this for a long moment, brow furrowing, nose wrinkling in that adorable way he had. He hummed thoughtfully.

"I think, maybe two?" he said, uncertainly. Behind him, Lily held up three fingers. Magnus nodded.

"Well, we'd better be getting you home then, you lush," he teased. Alec laughed, bright and uninhibited.

"I'm not drunk!" he said, eyes dancing in the shimmering lights woven through the dense canopy of trees.

"No, you're just stoned off your head on faerie fruit," Magnus said sweetly, dropping a kiss onto Alec's nose. Alec watched him do it, eyes nearly crossing, and then grinned up at Magnus again.

"Stoned is not drunk," Alec insisted. He turned toward Lily, who was watching them with her head canted, clearly trying not to laugh. "Lils, tell him we can stay at the party because I'm not drunk."

"I could do that," Lily agreed, stepping forward. She leaned in and murmured, just loud enough for Magnus to hear, "Or, you could use this as a golden opportunity to head home early and peel your boyfriend out of those insanely delicious velvet pants."

Alec's eyebrows climbed slowly toward his hairline as Lily spoke. His cheeks burned pink in the hazy glow of the party. He licked his lips and Magnus couldn't help but follow the motion with his eyes. Alec's mouth was very red.

"That's a better plan," Alec agreed, a little breathless. He leaned forward, dark curls brushing Magnus's cheek, and asked softly, "Take me home?"

Lily grinned and stepped back, wagging her eyebrows lasciviously and shooting Magnus two thumbs up.

"Tell Maia we had to go?" he asked. Lily waved him off, her dress sparking silver as she strode into the crowd.

"Already on it," she assured, waving them off.

"We're lucky," Alec sighed, as she disappeared, his breath warm against Magnus's throat. "We have good friends."

"That we do, darling," Magnus agreed, leaning to rest his cheek against Alec's soft hair for a moment. Alec hummed happily, absently dragging his thumb back and forth across the exposed skin of Magnus's hip. "Are you ready to go?"

Alec nodded, moving so that they stood face to face. He wrapped his arms around Magnus's neck, pressing his long warrior's body flush against Magnus.

"Hold on tight," Magnus instructed, voice husky and low. Alec looked up at him through his long lashes, smiling like Magnus had just confessed a deep and sordid secret.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Illya answers his phone the third time Gaby calls. He'd prefer not to speak to her at all, still smarting from the tongue-lashing his mother had given him when she retrieved him from the principal's office. If he doesn't answer, though, Gaby is liable to climb through his window as soon as she's home from school. Painful as this conversation is likely to be, Illya would rather not have it in person.

His temper is...unpredictable, and Gaby is his only friend. It wouldn't do to put her within striking range of Illya's severely underdeveloped impulse control.

"Da?" he grumbles miserably, yanking his comforter back over his head. There's something soothing about the darkness; it feels like nothing can touch him, like Illya has stepped out of the world for a moment.

“What the hell was that!?" Gaby hisses. She's speaking German, and that more than anything tells Illya how upset she is. She forgets to use English when she's angry, falling back on the comfort of her mother tongue. Thankfully it's one of the languages that Illya speaks more than passably.

"Nothing," he replies, also in German. There's a moment of loaded silence and Gaby makes a noise that sounds like she's being strangled.

"Bullshit
it was nothing!" she snaps. The guttural nature of the language makes the edges of her words sharp. Illya pinches the bridge of his nose and huffs an exasperated sigh.

"It was nothing, really," he insists, but Gaby cuts him off.

"Illya, you almost broke Alex Vinciguerra's nose! That's not nothing!"

Her voice is quiet, which means she probably snuck off to the ladies' room to phone him.

"I'll try not to do it again?" Illya offers. Gaby makes another frustrated noise, immediately followed by the staticky rush of water from a faucet and an unladylike slurping.

Illya can't suppress a smirk at the mental image of her, drinking from a cupped palm, bent over the sink. She is odd, his friend, but she also cares enough to yell at him when he steps out of line. As much as it irritates him, it can be nice to know that he has someone who will worry about him.

“What did he say to you, Illya?" she demands. Though her tone still carries a dangerous edge, she's at least speaking English now.

"He said nothing," Illya grumbles. "He was just
him."

It's not totally untrue - Alexander
Vinciguerra has had a bone to pick with Illya since Illya transferred to George Washington High School in the middle of the previous year. Illya is certain it has to do with Alex's lecherous and, frankly, creepy obsession with Gaby, but that doesn't excuse the kinds of things he was saying; mostly pointed comments about cowards running scared from their home countries and a few pointed theories about the reasons behind Illya's painfully obvious lack of relationships outside of his camaraderie with Gaby. Theories that skirted uncomfortably near Illya's recent realizations about his own sexual proclivities.

"He is always going to be him," Gaby chides.

"What am I supposed to do, then?" Illya frowns.

"Be
better
than him," Gaby snaps, as though it should be obvious.

Illya already felt bad about his poor behavior - his mother works as a translator for a local company and was none too pleased to have her day disrupted by the news that her son almost sent another boy to the hospital - but now he feels worse.

“I'm sorry," he murmurs, stumbling over the words. "I will try to be better, next time."

"You will be," Gaby assures him breezily. "But you will make this up to me."

“Make what up to you?" Illya asks, confused. "I didn't punch
you
in the face."

“No, but you made me miss ten minutes of auto shop, and you know it's my favorite," Gaby says. Illya starts to remind her that he didn't force her to skip class and call him from the toilet, but Gaby continues brightly, "So as payment you will be escorting me to a party tonight."

Illya groans and scrubs his palm over his face.

“Gaby -" he starts, but she clicks her tongue.

“None of that, now," she scolds. "What would your mother say if she knew you intended to let a poor young woman fend for herself against all the cads of the world?"

“You are hardly defenseless," Illya says, with a sigh. "Besides, my mother is not very happy with me. I doubt she will let me leave the house, let alone go to a party."

Gaby snorts.

"Please, your mother knows you hate parties. I'm sure she'll let you go if I ask her."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The short railway jaunt from San Jose to Rose Creek was not all so terrible. Even so, Thomas Paget clung to his ill humor like a drowning man to the nearest buoy until he stumbled out onto the bustling platform at the Rose Creek train station.

He was low on the totem at the Weekly Visitor, the largest local newspaper in San Jose, though he had not thought himself so low as to merit such paltry work as his current assignment. He was meant to be interviewing a mysterious author whose serial fiction had gained some minimal acclaim along the California coast. It was a bit kitschy for Thomas's taste - all rowdy adventurers and frontiersmen and gunfighters slogging their way through the California wilds where Thomas preferred fiction in the European fashion - but there was a certain undeniable rustic charm to it.

It ought to have been Stephen Quinn sent on this particular errand, really, as their newest hire, but Quinn was notorious for his Irish temper and was the editor's nephew besides. Mr. Byrne, who usually ran a fair if strict ship, had been insistent that Quinn was ill-suited to this particular story, and sent Thomas instead. Though he couldn't say for certain that their shared blood had curried Mr. Byrne's favor on Quinn's behalf, Thomas suspected it was largely to blame for his current predicament.

It was a small blessing that the Peninsula Commute was one of the more palatable passenger cars currently on the rails. The service had been subdued but attentive, and the refreshments thoroughly above par. Though his assignment rankled, the steady application of a decent whiskey had gone a long way to settle his temper over the last half-hour.

Rose Creek itself seemed pleasant enough, despite being blanketed in thick grey clouds, rain coming down in a fine mist. Thomas took a moment and tried to center himself.

After all, he reasoned silently, it wasn't as if the author, one Mr. J. Faraday, had done anything to earn his ire, aside from penning adventure tales that Thomas found passable at best. He'd read worse from senior reporters at the Visitor. Michael Abernathy in particular couldn't write a paragraph to save his life.

Less forgivable than his writing was Mr. Faraday's failure to appear at the train station in a timely fashion.

There were a few people sauntering about here and there - families bustling along on their way to visit relatives, merchants returning from trips abroad - but none of them seemed to be waiting on a - now slightly damp - news reporter from out of town. Thomas checked his watch once more, ensuring that he was neither egregiously early nor terribly late, and frowned when the little ticking hands confirmed that he was precisely on time.
With a sigh, he tucked his watch away into the pocket of his vest and made for the ticketing station. If Mr. Faraday couldn't be bothered to come collect him, perhaps somebody there would be able to give him directions.
He had progressed about halfway across the platform when a commotion at the Eastern entrance caught his attention.

There was a man in a burgundy jacket and a smart bowtie making his way up the short staircase, leaning heavily on a wooden cane for support. He looked slightly rumpled from the weather, and was swatting at a dark-haired man hovering worriedly behind him. The stream of comers and goers parted around them like rocks in a river, some of them casting amused glances at the spectacle as they passed by.

"Would you quit?" snapped the man with the cane, limping his way up onto the platform. "It's a couple a' damn stairs, not scaling Mount Everest."
"You fell down the stairs at the barn raising last week and there were only three of them," the other man said with a frown. His accent was thick, probably Spanish, close to Mexico as they were. He was dressed more casually, in a dark vest over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His goatee was edging into unkempt scruff and bright spots of silver at his temples faded away back into his dark hair.
The man with the cane snorted.
"I was stinking drunk at the barn raising last week," he corrected with a grin. Now that they had made it up onto the platform, the dark-haired man's posture had settled back a bit, though he stayed positioned at the other man's shoulder, ready to offer aid in case of a misstep. With the way the other man grimaced at every step, Thomas couldn't fault his sense.
They were probably of a height, the heavy lean of the man with the cane making him appear shorter, and both at least a decade older than Thomas. They had a ragged edge to them that suggested they'd seen hard living in their younger years, softening slightly now that they'd grown older but with an inherent solidness that suggested they still saw regular activity.

"You're stinking drunk much of the time," the dark-haired man agreed, "but you don't fall so much when you are stinking drunk in good weather."

The man with the cane hunched his shoulders a little, rolling his eyes.

"You better keep that shit to yourself in front of the reporter," he grumbled. "Last thing I need is a column in San Jose tellin' everyone I'm a cripple."

They were talking about him, Thomas realized with a start. The man with the cane must be Faraday, then. As to his foreign companion, Thomas had no idea.

The dark-haired man clicked his tongue and nudged Faraday's shoulder, subtly enough that Thomas wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't been studying the pair of them quite so closely.

"You're a hero, and a damn crazy bastard," he said easily. "Not a cripple." It had the well-worn cadence of an old argument. Faraday sighed.

"Maybe so," he grumbled. "Still doesn't mean I want all the world talking on it."

The dark-haired man mimed twisting a key over his mouth.

"My lips are sealed, guero."

They shared a fond glance and Thomas ducked his head, angling his body away and fishing his watch out of the pocket of his vest. He made a show of opening it up and checking the time as the pair tromped closer to him, pretending that he hadn't been watching their progress since the minute they'd appeared.

"Mr. Paget?" Faraday asked, and Thomas looked up, feigning surprise.

"You must be Mr. Faraday," he greeted with a smile, offering his hand. Faraday's grip when he shook was rough, but strong and sure. His hair was the muddled russet of someone who had once been a child with hair so orange it nearly glowed, peppered here and there with the beginnings of grey. His beard and mustache hinted further at Irish heritage, neatly trimmed and still undeniably copper-toned. His grin was open and friendly, green eyes glittering with good humor, no hint of the pain he'd been experiencing moments before to be found in his face.
"That I am," he agreed pleasantly. He jerked a thumb at the dark-haired man and added, "This here's my manservant, Felipe.""Guero," the man growled warningly, and Faraday's grin widened further.
"Well," he said, turning to flash a smirk at the dark-haired man, "introduce yourself then, if I ain't doing a good enough job."

Thomas couldn't help but grin.

The dark-haired man let out a fondly exasperated huff and shook Thomas's hand as well. Like Faraday, his palms were rough and calloused from years of hard labor.

"I am Eduardo," he said.

"My brother," Faraday provided. Eduardo pinched the bridge of his nose.

"

Guero

."

"Fine," Faraday sighed. He shot a little grin at Eduardo and amended slyly, "My cousin."

Eduardo threw his hands up in the air, saying something in rapid-fire Spanish that Thomas didn't understand. If Faraday did, he didn't acknowledge it, just grinned at Thomas and cocked his head to where he and Eduardo had come in.

"How about we take you back to the old homestead and get this over with?" he asked.

"You don't sound terribly excited," Thomas noted. Eduardo, surprisingly, turned and waved the sentiment away.

"Is not that," he said exasperatedly. "Is that when you are finished with the interview, we can go to the saloon."

"And that, friend, is where the fun truly begins," Faraday agreed pleasantly.