Honey, I'm Home [Neph]

[Lion]

“What a super weird and shit dream that was,” Grisham mused to himself. Except he knew the aching in his head wasn’t because of a long restless sleep. No Pilot wanted to be carted to the Axis Point, get mindfucked without so much as a “how d’ya do,” beforehand. Granted the nap before that was sorely needed and what little he could remember was only vague glimpses before leaving from Cancer Station.

His friend was there. The big burly dude with a lot of tattoos. He remembered punching his face in and the faces of a lot of other assholes in that fighting pit. That’s where the rest of his hair went too, now that he thought about it.

When his hand reached up and rubbed at the shaved head, a frown curled in the corner of his mouth, grunt following where his temples still throbbed. Grisham blinked hard, scrunching his eyelids tightly. His head was still foggy and his vision was a little fuzzy around the dges but goddammit he just wanted to be on his way home already. The long absence from any sense of comfort ebbed it’s way into the meager excuse he called sanity and ate away at it like a brain parasite.

He’d been checked out for medical and cleared. Now only if the rail to Amristah was not dead set on taking another year to come into station before he turned 41. That would be great. All of his instincts might have pointed more north if things had been different.  They might have directed him to Adstreia where he still lived technically speaking, still worked, still had people he cared about there.

Grisham had been a lot of places. Made a shelter where he could find an excuse to do so. He had a lot of places he belonged, but only one home. Somehow in the last year and or so Amristah had become it. The destination where he could lay his head down against a strong chest and a beating heart, feel embraced in a comfort he didn’t even know he missed until he’d gone without it.

The feeling like he’d been in trapped in a void, had lost time, been stuck while everything else advanced around him, made him stagnant - frozen in a cryochamber and waiting to be brought back to life once more. Grisham blinked and just when he thought his restlessness was going to make him change cars again, he heard the sound of the rail finally coming to a halt and the vague lurch as it into station. The hiss and opening of the doors as he meandered out, feeling drunk, the dizziness swirling his vision until the blearing led lights flashed the directions back home, back to the apartment.

He checked his wrist, he still had the code for it. One beep of his wrist and he could flop on that couch and go to sleep. Did he really want to sleep again? Not really, but the ache in his body, the sensation of real gravity was something to get used to and feeling connected to his dragon again soothed him enough to relax. That he was home now and he could rest at last. A week at most and then it would be back to work. He missed his marbles, his friends, his squad, his yote.

Yote…  Grisham had poked into chat and to say that his stomach didn’t flip when he saw Yavul’s name appear across the screen of the Pilot Chat was like saying he could breath underwater. Grisham’s gut lurched hard and he raised a hand up cover his mouth, trying to fight back the tears that were welling up when he was walking back, ignoring the gasps and sounds of people who recognized him on the street. He was almost home Yote Man. 

“I’m coming home to you. I’ll be at the apartment,” he texted back on his returned com, the familiar feel of cold metal and glass over hands that had been roughened and cleansed time and again from blood in that awful pit. The fear of never coming home again had been real, and even just being thankful of having someone to come home to, while enough, didn’t really set in until now. To think that just a year ago, he would have been content to go out in a fiery blast and called that a sound end. And how easily it could have been if not for the ‘kindness’ of strangers. Kindness that had went as far as someone else selling him into a Pit fighting ring and Grisham would have stayed there if he hadn’t gotten lucky. Goddamn was that luck.

Like a drone, oblivious to the outside world, Grisham blinked and he was in front of his door, taking in a deep breath and waved his wrist in front of the lock. Once it beeped, he reached for that door knob…and paused.  His eyes scowled down at his hand, the way it trembled with his fingers outstretched. The fear still lingered, of losing everything he’d fought so hard to come back to and his breath hitched. Funny he didn’t remember his eye balls growing hot, and the sensation of a tear slipping down his warm cheek startled him.  Grisham swallowed down the hard lump in his throat forcing his hand to reach for that knob and push the door open, closing it quietly behind him.

He dropped his bag by the door and stepped softly onto that familiar hardwood flooring. The tear disappeared into his beard and he removed his jacket it, throwing it on the hook next to the door and dove for the couch, hugging that pillow tucked in the corner of it and took in a deep breath, his gut flipping at the smell of minerals and earth and Yavul, another tear rolling down his cheek.

[nephero]

   Yavul was going to be covered in bruises by the time he reached Amristah. Already his skin was splotched red on the backs of his hands, shaking as they were, but that didn’t stop him from taking bits of skin between his fingers and just pinching the ever loving crap out of it.

   Everything felt unreal. His suit didn’t feel real. The headband keeping his hair tamed back didn’t feel real. The cloth-covered seat didn’t feel real. The gentle rock and sway of the rail didn’t feel real. He’d dreamed of this, hoped for this, remembered this for so long that the idea that it was actually happening, the knowledge that Grisham was actually—

   He was home. He was safe and he was home. He was alive, and Yavul pinched himself just a little harder, tears pricking at his eyes as full, shaking relief rolled over him like a sandstorm. Grisham was alive and this wasn’t just another dream. Slowly, Yavul brought his hands up to his face, curled over his knees with his elbows resting atop. He took deep breaths, feeling each one hitch and pull as his ribs shuddered, and he sniffed hard against his hands as he fought and failed to find some kind of control.

   Grisham was alive and he was home. Not just home, but their home, and it hadn’t taken much more than that assurance to have Yavul bolting right out of the simulation rooms with barely an explanation, break meal utterly forgotten in the process. Not that his squad needed an explanation— they were good, they were so good, and even if it weren’t for the shared link they all maintained, all it would require was one look at the pilot chat Yavul had been hunched over.

   Had he dropped his com? He had dropped it at first sight of Grisham’s name there. Cool as you please. “I’m coming home to you”. So amazingly, painfully Grisham that Yavul couldn’t ever suspect cruelty and impersonation behind it. But in the flurry of throwing his barely eaten sandwich in the nearest trash can, in his hurry to get out and to the rails, had he remembered—

   There it was. A quick pat found the com he hadn’t remembered shoving in one of the utility pouches of his suit, and he flicked open the screen. Nearly wept in another wave of relief when he scrolled up to see that no, he hadn’t gone crazy. His mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. This was real, this was so real, and for the second time in Yavul’s life he felt like the luckiest man alive.

   The rest of the trip was a blur, both literally and figuratively. It felt like time warped, entire minutes passing along like several hours, and then an hour disappearing in the flash of an instant. He could barely keep focus, his vision swimming and face rubbed raw for all his attempts to keep his tears in check. It was a thankful thing to have the car to himself, able to slip out to the bathroom and douse his face in water.

   It was okay. It was okay. Grisham was home and Yavul would be able to see him, to hear him, to bring him close and hold him and never let go again. They were both tall guys. They could figure out how to shuffle from place to place like some unholy fusion of limbs, right? Yavul laughed wetly, sniffed hard again, and dried his face with a wad of paper towels. He held them to his face for a moment, still shaking in raw, giddy laughter, until that fit too passed and he was left leaning back against the rail bathroom’s wall.

   An unholy fusion of limbs. Straight out of a horror movie. But gods both, if it didn’t sound like the best thing in the world. Yavul bit his lip, tossed the damp paper into the provided bin, and then took two more sheets out into the car with him.

   He sat, for a time, hunched over the task of folding them, the rocking of the rails and his own shaking, pinch-heavy hands making the job more difficult. But still, he managed, and he was sure any fault in the folding would be forgiven. He shifted a bit, sliding from his seat and onto the car floor, the thin carpet doing nothing for his knees even through the padding of his suit.

   He set the twin paper pyramids down, then, one to the east and one to the west. Took a breath, long and deep and not nearly so shaky as it had been before— and bowed low, his forehead to the scratchy green carpeting and without a care for whatever foul substances might have been spilled on it over the years.

   In his grief, he had thought the world cruel. In his terror, he had believed, for half of a moment, that this was just another in a long line of his curse. In the long, empty, lonely nights that followed, he had begun to wonder if this wasn’t just how it was meant to be. But luck and fortune, fate and blessings, they weren’t for him to parse and understand and lay heavy claims on. The world happened as it would happen, and that wasn’t nearly so important as what was done for it.

   Yavul had failed that, miserably. He had fallen apart, barely patched back together with tape and drywall, held up only by virtue of all the others he’d been so lucky to have in his life. And he’d been so, so lucky. He’d been lucky in his friends, in Blu, who despite her own horrors and sorrows had still saw fit to reach out for him. In Harley, who in his own weird, toddly way had made sure Yavul never spent his time alone.

   In his squad, in Raz who despite being overwhelmingly hasty to throw himself into dangerous situations, had his heart so firmly in the right place that Yavul couldn’t really find fault in it. In Chouchou, who was now expecting so many little squadmembers of her own, a thought that never failed to make Yavul grin from ear to ear.

   In Adele, their resident oddity, who had pushed through all the old hates as if they were tissue paper and had taken so much time out of their lives just to make sure Yavul didn’t starve to death on the really bad days. In Hannibal, who Yavul suspected but couldn’t quite confirm had been the one to make sure Addie themself had been well taken care of. Which had been a very huge change from the initial meeting. In Mia, who had kept the world from turning completely grey, even if that meant turning it glittery instead.

   Yavul had been so lucky, and luckier still, because the universe had seen fit to grant him the best of it all, and when the rail car gave one final shudder before stopping, Yavul rose up from where he had been kneeling, and regarded the two paper pyramids with a shuddering laugh.

   “Merci de rester avec lui,” he said, pushing back fresh tears of gratitude and relief. He lifted the pyramids from the floor, and carried them outside onto the station platform, where they found a new home under the awning and on a tall wall of painted glass welcoming Yavul to the city of the Angels.

   But it wasn’t angels he was so excited to see. It wasn’t angels that had him running at full pace out of the station, and it wasn’t angels that had him taking stairs two at a time to get into the apartment building. For Yavul, all he wanted was a devil, and it was a devil that he ran through his front door for, nearly tripping over the strap of Grisham’s bag and all the more giddy for it.

   He didn’t have more than a few moments to look at the Hellion, his Hellion, noting the cropped short hair and the much fuller beard. It didn’t matter, not right then, not when Yavul’s time was so much better spent dropping to his knees by the couch and crushing his mouth to Grisham’s own, messy as it was with the fresh stream of tears pouring out of him.

   For a good few moments Yavul didn’t even breathe beyond the necessary gasps in between kiss after kiss, fingers pressed against the stubble of Grisham’s scalp as he pushed to touch as much as he could. Because this was real— this was really real, and for the third time in Yavul’s life he was the luckiest man alive.

   “You,” he said, shaky and full of as many tears as it was open laughter. He was an utter mess, blotchy skin and rubbed-raw eyes and now a fresh stream of salt to make it all complete. “Are late. Mon trésor au-delà des trésors.”

[Lion]

Home at last.

Grisham thought he'd cried his last when his son died. He could have been okay with that knowledge, but he was still human no matter what happened to him, and the ache of being on solid ground away from anything that floated was a deep set relief. That familiar sense of gravity pulling him down, keeping him grounded was just as important as the scents that filled his senses.

This was home. Warm, earthy, and Grisham's eyes stayed closed. So much so that he could have drifted off to that halfway place between sleep and wake and stayed there, comforted in the knowledge that there was no way in hell he was going anywhere any time soon.

And while the tears found ways to drift out the ducts no matter how tightly he held them together, he just didn't care.  Nothing could make this any better. That couch was home.  And his heart thu-thumped so loudly in his ears, anxiety making his hands shake as he brought one up to rub away the wet, he almost didn't hear the click of the lock from the door, nor when it swung open and the thud of knees dropping beside him.

His breath caught in his throat, gasping for breath and his heart leaping into his throat the second lips came crashing into his. Grisham whimpered, his arms instinctively wrapping around that familiar form, those broad shoulders and their curvature even underneath the padding of that suit.

He fell into that kiss, waking from that half asleep state. Knowing like hell this was better than any dream he'd had when out in the blackness. "Yavvy," he managed to croak out and pressed his forehead against the old Yote's. He couldn't hold back the tears, more rushing down his cheeks. Yet he smiled, unable to hold back a relieved laugh.

"Gods, it's so good to see you again," he choked back a sob and kept his hands solidly around Yavul's neck, not daring to let the other man pull away even if he wanted to.  His heart throbbed so heavily in his throat, full to bursting, voice ebbing with tinges of disbelief. "I ain't too late am I? Dinner ain't too cold is it?"  He tilted his head and pulled Yavul's head down back against his head, kissing him slower this time, sweeter.

"Fuck I missed you so much. It almost doesn't seem real. Are you real? Or am I just crazy?" he whispered, parting his lips enough to breath, but keeping them as close to Yavul's as he could, brushing them and not wanting to pull any farther away than he had to.

That momentary fear was always there, no matter how much he tried to reassure himself. That he was just as delusional as the projections he made in battle.