Work Text
San Fransisco, springtime.
Zatanna opens her front door as slowly as possible, trying not to make a racket lest she disturb her companion. Her arms are full; brown bags stuffed to the brim from her farmer’s market visit. She bought more seasonal produce and flowers for the kitchen table, and a few jars of the marmalade John likes. She made sure to grab a jar of local buttermilk, too, so she can force him to make traditional English pastries with her. Pyewacket mews loudly, and Zee tells her beast of a siamese cat to shush.
John is still asleep upstairs.
Zee makes sure to creep up her old, creaky staircase quietly. He still wakes easy, even in his rather middle age. It makes her fond, to watch him settle into being forty. She’s gotten to love him for a majority of his adult life.
When she enters her bedroom, she stops to take in the scene before her. John is shirtless and tangled in the sheets. His dress shirt is crumpled by the bed, under her outfit from yesterday. There’s his books on his nightstand next to his box of cigarettes. On her side, because living together as fully-fledged adults means actually cohabitating as such, is her top hat which she haphazardly threw off during last night’s activities. An empty tea mug sits adjacent to it on the nightstand. The tea mug was a reminder that sometimes John still wakes to roam the house, so he always makes her tea when he’s ready to come back upstairs. It’s a small ritual she wants to keep tucked in her heart forever. It means they’re real- not just two ex lovers, but partners. |
It means he loves her.
John shifts a bit in his sleep. It’s not noon yet, so Zee thinks it wouldn’t be a sin to join him. She strips down and lays behind him, pressing a kiss to his bare, sweaty back. He sighs, and grabs her arm to sling it over him. She used to be someone that didn’t nap easily, too wired and full of energy. Too busy seeking distractions and work. But she slows down for him and savors these lazy afternoons.
It means she loves him.
****
John strolls the neighborhood, taking in the architecture on Zee’s street. He remembers strolling this spot when they first met, nearly twenty years ago. She hadn’t bought her current property yet.
Well,
their
current property. He’s lived with her for nearly three years now. It feels foreign, because when he usually reaches that point with a partner, it signifies the start of a new stage and the death of their relationship as a whole.
But not this time. Zatanna is milling about the place dusting because Tim is coming for his annual stay. So John, in typical John fashion, decided to let her have at it and went for a stroll, smoking a cigarette and whistling. He likes the sunshine on his face and her lipstick on his collar.
He’s gained weight. His cheeks aren’t sunken in. He remembers his meds. He gets dressed most days and keeps his stubble neat. He enjoys the California daylight. At nightime, he roams the streets if his expertise is needed, but truth be told he spends most of his time avoiding fires rather than starting them.
Above all, though, John is having sex with his girlfriend. (well-she prefers “partner”. They won’t get married, but she prefers the upgrade partner gives her. John hasn’t told her yet that there’s no such thing as an upgrade in his eyes. You can’t get any higher on the rungs of his heart than where Zee occupies.) They start their mornings seeking each other out and finish off in the shower. After lunch, he lays her down on the antique rug in the living room and eats her out till she sobs. They hit the bed at night in a tangle of limbs, sometimes rough and desperate but other times with her in his lap, head buried in his neck, as he rocks with her.
Yeah. It’s a good existence.
John is still himself. He still grips the bathroom sink and sees his father staring back at him. He still toys with the idea of escaping out the window as Zatanna sleeps.
Zee is also still herself. She just murmurs sweet things in his ear when he can’t wave away his father’s face. She calls him baby and sweetheart and doesn’t force him to face her when a tear runs down his nose. He says he doesn’t deserve it. She says she’ll still give it regardless.
***
Their kitchen is cluttered with chatter and bodies and the scent of penne in vodka sauce.
Tim brought Molly for this visit, cheekily claiming that they’ll only need one guest room this time, unlike the two they each occupied when they lived here years ago. Zee boxed his ears but relented. Tim was 19 now and wasn’t the lanky preteen she felt she needed to protect. He could share a room with his longterm girlfriend.
John had clapped a hand on Tim’s back and offered to give him his version of “the talk”, and Molly had told him to fuck off. John decided then and there that he liked Molly.
And John wasn’t the only one cracking jokes. Tim kept grinning at them in the kitchen, reminding them that he met them when they were broken up but that they really weren’t subtle for making out in an airport. John then reminded him that he could send him to hell and keep him there. Tim won the argument, when he stated that he was in regular contact with Death herself. That shut John up; he really didn’t mess with the Endless. Zee just shook her head and put them to work getting the garlic bread ready for the oven.
***
When the ‘kids’ are asleep, or the fuckwits as John affectinately calls them, John and Zatanna curl up on her couch and split a bottle of wine. She’s performing less shows and isn’t up for a world tour any time soon. She hasn’t slowed down since she was Tim’s age. Stillness feels good.
She’s semi-retired from the League, again. Maybe permanently. She had almost died during the Pariah incident and when she was restored to Earth, she found the fact that the endless cycle of missions and near-death experiences started up again almost immediately to be rather grotesque. Zee was tired. She wanted real rest, not a two week period where Batman wasn’t calling her.
So she lies here and leans on John as he sorts through a pile of records. Him and Tim had gone record shopping while Zee took Molly to a bookstore to get more information on her Fae heritage. He’s collecting again, for the first time since his teens. He settles on some 70s rock band Zee couldn’t give a fuck about, but promises he’ll play her Foxglove record next. After a beat of contented silence, she turns to grab his face and kiss him gently. She pulls away and gazes into his eyes, and decides to kiss him again. John grips her thigh and flips them both.
The only time they come up for air for the rest of the night is a brief moment where Zatanna enacts a silencing charm, because Tim will never let them live it down if they don’t.
***
John finishes getting ready for bed and watches Zee’s already-asleep form. She’s facing his side and wearing one of his shirts. He walks over and leans down, brushing her bangs from her forehead. They need a trim, but there’s time for that. Right now, John slips into bed next to her, and pulls her close. He has hope for tomorrow. He’s going to make sure Tim is on dish duty for breakfast and eat bread from a bakery Zee stopped at and feed Pyewacket’s old dusty ass some of his table scraps. He’s going to let Zee cut his hair and then he’s going to let the fuckwits coax him into a game of ‘soccer’ in the street and he’s going to cheat somehow.
Zatanna sort of wants a baby. He might give her one. He has a bit of hope for that.
He has a lot of hope, really. Hope for their tiny existence and his ability to keep it up.
It’s springtime, and his arms are full. His heart, too.