Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time she sees it, she denies it.

They’ve been on the road for a few days, both having found resurrection, neither willing to admit the hows or the whys. She has no interest in discussing how the potion came to find its last ingredient, and he’s not asked yet, apparently willing to let it stand until she wants to tell him.

Which makes her think he knows perfectly well that his blood played a part, and is being either an asshole or incredibly patient and both make her angry enough she doesn’t want to talk to him.

But they’re still travelling together because they need to get to Salim to help with some minor scuffle over a relic (and when, exactly, that became either of their roles in life she's not sure but fucking to the rescue they go). 

When she'd first seen him walking along the side of the road, back straighter than she's used to, hands in his pockets and a whistle on his lips, she'd slammed on the brakes and felt her heart skip a beat. 

Given that it was once again pumping blood, the sensation had been jarring. So jarring it made her angry, furious even, because that gnawing in her chest and that ache in her veins had been inextricably connected to him NOT being here and apparently he now was. 

Which meant the gnawing suddenly turned into a different kind of ache, one she was much less well equipped to deal with. 

And now, there he was, larger than life and watching with wry amusement as she slammed the door closed and strode towards him.

The relief that flooded her system had been too much, and the anger was the easiest antidote to that out of control stimulation.

"Where the fuck...how are you fucking here?" 

For his part he hadn't looked surprised to see her, had shot her one of his rare real smiles, wide and wolfish, and her stomach had twisted fiercely.

He'd gestured to her. "You're here."

She'd waited, hands on her hips, glaring up at him and he had shrugged. 

"So, here I am."

She'd stared at him for a moment and told him to get the fuck in the car and he'd obeyed, chuckling to himself the whole time. 

Tonight she is sprawled stomach down on a cheap motel bed, comfortably flipping through an old national geographic complete with underlining and a crude scribble, relaxing while the shower runs. It's part of the routine, now, no more sleeping in the car, a motel for decent rest.

Her rule is he has to shower (despite his protestations about modern hygiene myths he's complied so far, and she'd dare say he's starting not to mind), she gets to watch whatever she wants while he sleeps in the chair, and she never, ever shares the bed. 

"Move." 

He is not the biggest fan of the last rule. 

Which is the main reason she has it. 

She doesn't bother looking up. He's clearly ready for a fight, fresh out of a shower and clad in his trousers, the air scented with cheap soap and clean water. Something tugs at her then, wants to make him a bit angry and leave bite marks against his neck, and she is comfortable admitting that she's had worse things stand at the foot of her bed. 

She flips her page. 

"No."

“Woman that there is a king bed there is enough room for-“

“Nope.”

“You wouldn’t even know I was-“

“You’re bigger than a Mack truck and make sounds like one in your sleep, so no.”

She can practically hear his eyebrow shoot up. 

“You been listening to me while I sleep, hey?”

She smiles sweetly. “More like trying to block you out.”

He gives her that grin that is equal parts shit eating and completely charming and she is acutely aware of his proximity. He steps closer and she looks up now, doesn't bother to hide her interest in seeing him wearing nothing but trousers and a grin. 

Since her re-life she's had a few encounters, mostly fast and occasionally bordering on satisfying, none of which have come close to scratching the itch inside her, the one that calls for big hands and wild eyes and a memory of connection she still refuses to consider, even post resurrection.

His voice is warmer, rougher, and she sees it then. The spark of interest they've both been playing on the edges at, dancing around, refusing to acknowledge. 

“Come on, ain’t like you haven’t shared a space with me before…”

She rolls onto her back like a cat, stretches on the bed as if thinking about it, decidedly pleased with her choice of tank top and boy shorts as his eyes darken.

It would be good. 

She knows that much. Knows that if in some Loa induced astral plane projection it was intense and gratifying in a way she’d never really felt while alive, then here with her nerve endings intact and her skin on fire would be nothing short of ecstacy. 

But if delayed gratification is a sign of maturity, then choosing to fuck with - rather than just fuck - Mad Sweeney must make her nearly enlightened.  

She shifts to the sit cross legged at the edge of the bed, gazing up at him thoughtfully, biting her lower lip and enjoying the way his pupils dilate. She lets her eyes run down over him, taking in broad shoulders, heavy muscle, flat stomach, before moving back up to meet his.

She inhales deeply. 

“Pass.”

She gives him her sweetest, brattiest smile and wonders if this is enough to push him over the edge – and perhaps she’s wondering just how much fun that could be, bruising and all -  but he’s apparently made of more stubborn stuff than she realises, nodding brusquely and leaving for a smoke.

She tries to stay awake until he comes back but fails, and her last thought before falling asleep was that she’s not used to it being so quiet (that’s a lie: her last thought is that she doesn’t like it so quiet, but let’s pretend for the sake of her pride, shall we?).

***

She dreams.

Well, that's not strictly true. 

The word dream is both a noun and a verb; one can dream, have dreams, be dreaming. But nightmares are not verbs, they are not actions; one does not nightmare, one is not nightmaring.

However, if the world were a bit of a different place, then Laura would be nightmaring.

As it happens she is currently only having a nightmare, but that’s not nearly as solid a way of considering it. That implies a degree of passivity, and this particular nightmare is anything but passive, forged instead in pain and memory.

She wasn’t prone to nightmares before; in life she was more likely to have a dreamless sleep or, worse, a night of insomnia. While dead she had not slept, and since her resurrection she has found herself enjoying rest in a way she never experienced the first time around. 

But now she nightmares. 

She’s standing in front of a mirror.

She sees herself, a slim body she now regards with less cool indifference than she used to, no longer viewing it as something to use and ignore but rather another testament to her journey. Now it’s here, smooth skin and warm blood, a tool for survival and pleasure and existence in general.

She watches the skin on her arms prickle as she strokes herself lightly, hums with pleasure and exhales, her eyes closing at the sensation.

She has missed sensation so much she now takes every opportunity to stroke, caress, pinch. She seeks out heat and cold and water and dry sand and spicy food and vodka harsh enough to burn and enjoys every moment of engagement and presence.  

As she strokes her fingers down her arm she feels smooth skin and then…something else.

A patch of inconsistency.

Wet and tacky.

She opens her eyes, seeing nothing untoward, but runs her finger over the spot again, and again, feeling that same tacky wetness of an exposed wound, an untreated infection.

She scratches at it lightly and the movement rips her entire arm open, skin slipping open to reveal putrid flesh barely connected to bone.

She gasps as skin pulls away like paper, and when she looks to her reflection she is met with milky eyes, greying flesh, her chest hanging open to expose ribs and muscle and rotting organs underneath.  

A dead thing, stagnation and gore personified, time slipping away from it.

A corpse, insects shifting her hair, her connective tissues slowly breaking down and the feeling of coming apart.

She wants to scream but no sound comes out.

She coughs, feeling something blocking her airways, spewing maggots and bile and coagulated blood into the sink. The maggots shift and rise and she feels them inside her, moving and feasting.

No, no…I am alive.

I’m alive now.

I am alive.

The words mean nothing to the maggots.

She wants to cry but can’t produce the liquid, can feel that insatiable thirst rising, and then all that can escape her damaged, putrefying throat is a scream.

The world closes in on her and then she’s back there in the grave, still feeling the decay rapidly reducing her, now barely able to move against the hard wood.

She’s screaming, whimpering, and this time there is no coin, no strength, no assistance coming. She cannot break through the coffin, claw her way out of the earth, escape this space.

She is trapped in this dark place, lost and nobody is searching for her.

Nobody.

“Hey.”

The voice that permeates her awareness is rasping and tired, a growl more than reassurance, and she feels herself being shifted.

She screams louder, hoping to be heard.

“Shhhhh, shhh lass. You’re not there. You’re here.”

Where is here? Where the fuck is here?

She struggles against a tight grip (arms or the coffin, she cannot tell), struggles to see in the blackness of the coffin (or a dimly lit room, she cannot tell). She lashes out wildly as she becomes aware of more room, more space to lash.

“It’s ok, love, it’s ok. Breathe. You can breathe. You can breathe.”

The voice says she can so she does, again and again, feeling her lungs fill, unrestricted by lack of use or maggots.

“Laura, breathe.”

She jerks into consciousness at the sound of her name, an unfamiliar sound on a familiar tongue, her brain trying to take in her surroundings and shed itself of the ghosts left by the dream, the feeling of writhing, the sight of her chest ripped open, the darkness and confinement of the coffin.

She becomes aware of another body, heat, of being held. Rough hair tickles her neck and she smells whisky, cigarettes, sweat, salt, someplace cold and far away.

The motel room spins a moment and then settles.

They’re on the floor, he’s got her clutched in his lap like a child, arms loose enough to let her lash and tight enough that she doesn’t hurt herself by knocking against anything.

She turns, pressing her face into his chest and letting herself dampen his skin with tears, silent sobs wracking her entire body.

He’s talking quietly in another language, something light and calm, reassuring, and she lets it settle against her skin as the tears slowly stop.

“You back?”

She nods, still pressing her face against his chest, and she hears his heart beat loud and clear.

“I dreamt I was…like before.”

He doesn’t ask and because of that she wants to tell him so she does. She talks quietly about the mirror, the tearing, the coffin. Recounting it is making her shake and his arms tighten a hint and she leans into him, solid and grounding. 

He doesn’t say anything, just stands, holding her to him easily, and walks to the bathroom.

At any other time she’d be squirming out of his arms, shifting away from this display of intimacy, of being carried bridal style and so damn high off the ground. But the nightmare has made her feel vulnerable, and the arms around her are strong and hard, and the chest against which she is being held has a heart beating well and loudly, and he is hers. Today being held close by someone bigger is not so much a risky thrill as it is being supported by a brick wall, something solid enough to handle her. 

Tonight she lets him, and he knows she lets him, and maybe his arms tighten a bit as a result of the thought. 

He switches the bathroom light on and sets her in front of the mirror, standing close enough behind her that she can lean against him to stay upright.

“There, see? You’re alive. You’re here. You’re whole.”

She peels away her shirt and stares, taking in the lack of autopsy lines, the colour of her skin, pale but flushed in parts.

She is whole, skin intact and blood warm and she can feel, really feel, the giant of a man behind her and his radiating heat. She can feel his hands on her forearms, feel the brush of her hair against her collarbones.

Her eyes are clear.

He keeps his hands on her, light but firm, enough to bring her back without intruding, and she sees it then, really sees it. It’s fleeting and she quashes it quickly but it's too late; she has seen the smallest, softest smile cross her lips, there and gone in an instant, and giving everything away.

She gives his reflection a watery smile that sharpens, needing to prick this bubble of something they’ve found themselves in before she turns around and does something she cannot deny later.

“Trying to be nice so I’ll let you sleep in the bed?”

He shakes his head, his eyes warm and the ghost of a smile on his lips and for a second she knows, really knows, that he sees her. Every part exposed and absorbed and she thinks maybe it would be okay to let him carry her more often, okay to lean into his strength and draw from it, okay to let him be the person who wakes her from her nightmares.

He bends down, hands skimming along her arms and then over her belly, warm and big, darker than her pale skin, and she shivers as he inhales against her neck, his voice husky and low.

“No, love…” he strokes upwards to her ribcage and she’s about to close her eyes when she catches the flash of mischief in his. “…just wanted to look at your tits is all."

She laughs, and he watches her laughing, and she feels very, very alive.

Chapter Text

The first time she feels it, she almost misses it.

It's such a little blip, tiny and unimportant in the scheme of things. 

The scheme of things, of course, being that he’s having a colossal fucking tantrum in the middle of them trying to dodge explosions in a mall that has somehow become a battle ground between two Mayan god sects who are not fucking around.

A shop window at the other end of the gallery blows out as Huracan, appearing as fire-manifest, destroys gas mains. Half the mall is already in ruins, the destruction leaving great craters and huge holes in the walls out to the carpark.

They need to get out of here, the building foundations are rapidly turning to soup, and he cannot fucking stop complaining.

“It was my favourite. Fucking. Jacket.”

He’s punctuating by throwing phone cases into the fountain and it’s so ridiculous that she wants very much to push him in because the only way this would be funnier is if he was soaking wet. Something makes itself known then, a little thumping shift along her skin, and she finds herself smiling as she shouts at him.

“It was your only fucking jacket!”

A thundering in the distance warns them of what’s to come and she swears as she ducks behind an information sign to avoid a spray of glass. He crowds next to her as another spray of glass rattles against the sign behind them, and she notices with some concern just how low he’s having to bend to get air into his lungs. She’s not yanking his unconscious hide through this place, not now that super strength is only an occasional reality when he flicks the coin to her to get them through something, which he’s not about to do when shit keeps blowing up and he’s at risk of losing it again.

“Dude you will get another jacket.”

There is a second of stillness so they run, bolting around several corners, unable to get out through the holes to the parking lot as they’re being rapidly covered by Chaac’s snakes. She grabs his arm as she slips in her socks, and decides to just pull them off before they need to move again.

They catch their breath for a moment, her heart pumping so hard she can feel it in her throat, and then he’s punching a wall like a teenager told they can’t keep gaming.

“Do you know how long I’ve had that fucking jacket?”

He slams his foot through a kiosk and swears as he comes away covered in glass and she laughs before returning their conversation to a more important topic; her.

“At least you have your shoes!”

He rolls his eyes and flinches when another boom sounds, reaching to yank her out of the way, and they make it around the corner as super-heated air sucks the oxygen from around them. She presses against him for a second to avoid the rush of air and that funny little feeling bubbles over her again, something that makes her dizzy and light-headed in a way she hasn’t felt since she was a child.

They have to crouch now, the air higher up no longer breathable, and he peeks around the corner as he growls at her.

“Well who the fuck plays dress ups when there’s a turf war and we’re meant to be begging a favour from Ix Chel?”

Dress ups? Those were classic Blahniks, how is she to blame here?

“WHO THE FUCK ATTACKS SOMEONE TRYING ON STILETTOS?”

She’d managed to pull her socks back on but he’d grabbed her from the store before she could pull on her beloved boots, just in time to avoid the first of the blasts.

She’s pissed about her shoes but that feeling is something else, something oddly bright that makes her wonder if oxygen deprivation is really getting to her. She’s really not sure what it is but it’s there, very briefly, a pang of knowledge that, mess and all, she is here, and that is good.

Another explosion rocks the building and they know it’s go time.

The entrance is visible, fresh air coming through in bursts as the broken automatic doors open and shut repeatedly, and she gulps the little oxygen to be found close to the ground as they crawl, managing to get themselves clear as the last of the battle takes place inside.

They lie on the concrete a moment, breathing heavily, covered in soot and ash and tiny cuts as they suck in fresh air. She remembers with relief the med kit she has in the car, a new acquisition that has become more and more useful as they’ve encountered gods, Fae, monsters, and the occasional papercut. She is militant now, wounds cleaned, cuts wrapped and bandaged.

In a different life she might consider it a hypervigilant trauma response; in this one it seems practical and she is yet to get an infection.

He doesn’t let her near him but has recently allowed the occasional sluicing of a wound with alcohol, if only because she lets him take the bottle afterwards.

They stand and look out over the carpark, covered in debris and broken glass, a sea of sharp objects and tetanus. They’re both silent for a minute as he lights a cigarette, before glancing down, his own heavy boots with their thick soles seeming to mock her bony, bare feet.

“Well, you’re fucked.”

“Give me your boots.”

“Nope, shoulda taken them when I was a corpse.”

“I’ll tell Salim.”

“What’s he gonna fucking do?”

“I’ll tell him.”

He doesn’t speak for a moment and she smiles, ready to have won, when he gestures down and she realises that the difference in size between their feet is almost comical.

“Besides, you’d barely be able to walk in them.”

She sighs. He’s right, she’s more likely to trip in those oversized boats and fall on something that kills or maims her anyway.

She looks at him again, really looks at him, and smiles. It’s an expression he’s wise not to trust, and he watches suspiciously as she climbs on the bench next to them and does a gesture universally accepted to mean 'stand here' .

It takes him a second before his eyes narrow.

“Woman, I am not a fucking pack donkey-“

“The glass will shred my feet; I actually have to worry about infection now. Come on.”

He doesn’t move and maybe if she didn’t have that bright feeling still humming around her blood things would have been different, but she does, and its making her silly so she goes with the least mature idea that comes into her head.

She leaps.

He catches her.

Just as she knew he would.

For a moment she considers staying here, remembering a few weeks ago when he took her to the bathroom post nightmare, but that odd feeling is really driving too many of her decisions so she decides her original plan is best.

Before he can drop her she swings herself from his arms to his back, and his resigned expression and not quite helpful but not actively unhelpful arms make her laugh as she settles against the broad expanse of him. She tightens her thighs.

“Giddy up.”

His hands shift as if to throw her off but she wraps herself as firmly around him, slinging skinny arms around his neck, and she feels him gripping her thighs to adjust her against him. She remembers those big hands around her thighs in a completely different situation and closes her eyes a second, the thought apparently making her lock her arms because his voice is rasping.

“Ease up, don’t need you choking me out.”

She grins, feeling oddly giddy, and can’t resist sassing him (not that she ever does).

“Please, you’d probably love that.”

She doesn’t see the ‘you might have a point’ quirk of his eyebrow but she sees his head tilt and that feeling comes back again, light and constricting, cutting off her oxygen a little and for a moment she lets it linger. She grins as he begins walking, her weight of little consequence against him, picking his way carefully through the debris and back to the car.

She rests her head against his shoulder and lets herself enjoy the motion and the height and that feeling she keeps feeling shifts and swells. She finally recognises it, or parts of it at least, and her brain supplies the name before she’s really ready to hear it.

Fun.

She is having fun.

She has had a lot of fun today.

She has had a lot of fun today meeting new gods and seeing incredible things and dodging explosions and listening to him bitch and bullying him into piggy backs and she has had a lot of fun today with-

She cuts the thought off hard, quickly, but the feeling is still there and it feels like she needs to let it out somehow or it’ll come out on its own and sure enough it apparently does as she presses her nose into the base of his neck and hums happily against his skin.

He freezes and so does she.

The feeling dissipates and leaves a rising, overwhelming panic in its wake and she acts on instinct, her voice harsh.

“Let’s go!”

He exhales, a resigned sort of sound, and she kicks against his thigh, hard.

“Fuck man, move it!”

When they clear the debris she pushes herself off his back so quickly she stumbles, and he doesn’t bother mocking her for it which makes her even angrier. He lights a cigarette and she doesn’t try to take it as he climbs into the passenger seat. She stares out over the debris for a minute before climbing in and starting the car.

He turns on the radio. She turns it off.

He stares at her for a moment pushing the seat back, before pulling his cap from somewhere in his shirt and pulling it over his face. Soon he’s sleeping in the passenger seat, and she deliberately hits speedbumps just to jostle him awake.

She pulls over at a camping store, marching in to ask for their sturdiest boots, glaring until the assistant refuses to look at her sooty face any more, and pulling them on immediately after paying.

When she comes back out to the car he’s gone, and she tells herself she’s relieved.

Chapter Text

The first time she knows it, they're at a cheap diner, sitting on the same side of the booth without any valid reason why. 

Well, she knows why.

When they’d arrived he'd sat himself in the booth and she'd plonked down next to him and neither had said anything because apparently there was now some unspoken agreement not to mention incongruous decisions and their underlying intentions. 

It’s the same reason why, two weeks after the mall explosion, she’d been unsurprised to find him in a bar in Kentucky where she happened to be going through. The same unspoken agreement that meant she didn’t mention that he’d already ordered her a drink, and he didn’t mention that she’d made a beeline for him when she’d found him.

When she’d arrived in Kentucky she’d skipped two other bars in favour of here, and refused to consider why. She’d already passed through several towns on her way here, stopping in local bars for a distraction along the way.

She’d brought one guy, tall and lean and smelling of cologne, back to her motel room only to find out he considered foreplay a one sided type of deal. She’d kicked him out quickly.

She’d kissed a woman in the bar, warm and heady, ready to go further when her partner was called away by her friends, leaving Laura with a phone number she would never bother to call.

In the last town she’d met a quiet man with sweet eyes and gentle hands who she decided to let stay for a full 40 minutes before sending him on his way, finding his gentleness too intense for her, unwilling to keep looking into those kind eyes.

Last night she’d stayed in, bringing herself over the edge when no one could hear what she called out into the dark.

Sweeney glanced down at her and for a second she’d wanted him to say something, anything, about the short leather skirt she was wearing, the tank top leaving her arms bare, the fact that she was actually wearing make-up for once (fuck knows why, she wishes she knew herself why she’d headed to the Drug Store to play with the samples).

Instead he looked at the heavy duty hiking boots she's now sporting. 

“New boots?”

She sees the tiniest smirk as he turns away and wants to hit him.

“New jacket?”

He’d laughed, and followed her out to the car and she’d felt relieved.

He's got two burgers in front of him now and she's unapologetically stealing fries from his plate rather than her own but he's not paying much attention. 

Instead, he's focused on the booth next to theirs, where a young woman is sitting with three small children, the oldest a girl around 7, the youngest two boys looking no bigger than 4 or 2 respectively. They're thin, with brown hair, and enough similarities to be family.

The woman has a bruise below her eye and her cheeks are hollow. She's talking on a cheap phone, something purchased with minutes on it rather than a contract, and her hand is digging around in her bag for coins.

"Yes, yes I know Mom. But we can't...look, he's locked the accounts, and you know Marty's friends with the Sheriff. We had to lea-...Mom this isn't about you at all, who cares what people will think...how can you...look, until I can find a base somewhere I just wanted to know if you could send some mone-...no, I don't think Daddy would have wanted us to go back...Mom, we're sleeping in the car just-..."

Laura stares as the woman's face goes from exhausted to steel, features settling into something fierce, something raw. 

"Fuck you."

She hangs up the phone and Laura can see the instant the adrenaline burns away, leaving an exhausted woman who buries her head in her hands. 

Her children give her the space, focusing on their food, and Laura wonders how long they've been doing this. They're sitting around one bowl of fries, each picking at them carefully, slowly, savouring each bite. Their meal is complemented by a single chocolate shake, which the children are passing around for sips in between. Laura isn’t sure she’s ever seen kids behave in such a controlled way, and the ramifications make her throat feel dry and scratchy.

The mother looks haunted, her face is pinched and the bags under her eyes speak of sleepless nights.

The youngest child is fidgeting, turning around, and sees them both. Laura tries to give him a big smile but he has no interest in her, staring instead at Sweeney. She can see why perhaps, between the height and the hair he’s a novelty, but the kid is watching for something so she turns to her tablemate.

He doesn't smile at the child, but holds up his hands.

He moves slowly, rotating his hands back and forth, fingers splayed. Empty.

He plucks a coin out of the air.

The child's eyes go wide and he tugs hard on his brother's sleeve to get him to turn around. 

The woman has stood to sift through her purse and the oldest child turns grave eyes to Sweeney pulls another coin from the air. Then another, and another. 

Laura has seen this trick on a small scale but there is something oddly hypnotic about watching it done as a performance, coins plucked from behind his ears, hair, through the table and dropped into a glass with a clink, clink, clink.

The children are smiling now, big and wide, eyes shining. When he spits a coin from his mouth they laugh, and their mother tips her head up briefly to catch sight of him pulling one from his ear. She smiles tiredly and gratefully at the distraction before returning to her bag.

He's in his element here, timing his moves carefully and twisting his hands so the surprise is even greater. The reverie of watching him is broken when he tilts his head in Laura's direction with a clear 'watch this' eyebrow raise for the children before reaching to pull a coin from her hair.

She shivers when his fingers brush her neck, then bursts into laughter when he pulls a coin from either ear. 

He takes advantage of her laugh, skimming a thumb over her bottom lip before plucking a coin from the air so close to her tongue she can almost taste the metal.

The children cheer.

His penultimate move is a cascade of coins landing in the glass, now full and glinting in the midday sun, the light cutting through the haze of the diner. He finally ends the performance by holding out one hand palm up and tipping the glass into it, the coins winking out of existence as they hit his skin. 

The youngest boy is gripping the metal milkshake cup as his sister and brother clap, eyes wide and smile so big and joyful she can feel it beating against her like the sun.

Or maybe that’s him, sitting next to her visibly pleased with himself and a tiny part of her can’t find fault in that, not when she's been watching too, enjoying the display, laughing along and feeling a spark in her chest that hadn’t been there since she was a child.

Sweeney returns the smile almost shyly, and then the little boy glances down to his drink and back up to his sister, who nods. 

He holds out the last of his milkshake solemnly and Sweeney accepts the offering, setting it beside him as if he's been handed the finest wine in the world served in a Fabergé egg. The two older children hold out some fries and Laura wants to hiss at him not to take their food but he whispers harshly, cutting her off.

"Don't insult their pride.”

She is so shocked for a moment she can’t speak, which he takes as a reason to continue.

“They're kids; they know what they're fucking doing."

She is ready to stand up and hit him until he pays for their lunch only to find she cannot move. He has carefully placed one very large boot over her foot, one hand over her wrist, and she is now effectively locked against the table.

Before she can unleash hell on him a waitperson approaches with several plates and a smile. She addresses the woman at the table with children. 

"Ma'am, the kitchen accidentally doubled an order, thought you could all use a bit extra."

The burgers and fries are set down without further comment, and the woman swallows thickly, a watery smile piercing the haunted look in her eyes. The kids watch her expectantly and she nods, giving herself a moment while they tuck into the food.

She feels his grip loosen cautiously and then he releases her entirely, refusing to meet her eyes. He gulps down the milkshake and eats the fries and an expression crosses his face, peaceful and then suddenly intense, and when he opens his eyes again they are bright and sharp. The metal milkshake container is slipped under the table and when his hand comes back up it's empty, metal vanished into thin air.

He finishes his burger without a glance at the table and then stands, moving to walk past the table only to find his way blocked by a toddler.

The little boy reaches for him, all big eyes and sweet smile, and with a quick glance at the mother he kneels down and accepts a hug. Laura is like 90% sure hugging other people's kids is a weird thing to do but the kid seems overjoyed and she's not really sure how to react. It’s genuinely one of the strangest things she’s ever seen and she has to remind herself that he’s been around a lot longer than she has.

Laura hangs back behind him, uncomfortable and unsure as she normally feels with children. She likes their honesty, prefers their frankness, but as a general rule she hasn’t had much contact. There's an ease to him now, as if something has strengthened, as if he is born for moments like this. 

He whispers something in the child's ear before straightening and looking at his siblings. 

"You look after your Ma, ok?"

The older two both nod seriously and he holds out his palm, plucking three coins and giving them one each.

The whole interaction is over in seconds and then she's following him out of the diner feeling dazed and dreamy. 

"You gave them gold?"

He nods his head as he lights a smoke and doesn’t look at her. "A coin each."

She watches him for a moment before shaking her head, feeling pissed off. 

"What good will that do? No one in their right mind would expect gold coins to be real these days!" 

He takes a deep drag and exhales slowly and when he speaks he watches her closely, as if trying to explain something to a toddler for the millionth time, exasperated but trying to stay calm.

“Do you honestly think its only value is in what you can get for it?”

She fights very hard against the urge to flick him in the eye because he’s trying, really trying, to get her to see something. A month ago she wouldn’t have seen it but now she thinks she might, a thought at the edge of her mind that she’s spent many years dampening down, something she knew when she was younger but couldn’t possibly know now.

Except now there’s that spark there, and maybe she does know.

Each kid got a coin. A coin from a man who plucked them from nowhere. A coin on a day when their mother was tired and their food was meagre and suddenly there was magic and coins and a chance extra meal.

Each of those kids will carry a coin plucked from the air, a memory of a moment of magic, something to cherish when cherished things were rare. 

A little golden sliver of hope.

There's more, she knows it, but he says nothing. 

She waits a moment before stealing his cigarette, ignoring his annoyed eye roll as he lights another. 

"So?"

"So what?"

"So, what happens to them now?"

The look he shoots her is shifty at best. "What do you mean?"

She huffs, speaking to him in the same you’re a toddler so I’m going to be nice voice he just gave her. "They gave you that fucking milkshake and fries; will their luck change now?"

He watches her for a moment, something like shock passing over his face, quickly covered by a smile that, in the right light, could be called pleased. Maybe even a little smug.

"Thought you didn't believe in luck."

She rolls her eyes, refuses to answer the statement that is really a question, and flounces off to the car. 

He is annoying and loud and practically fucking giddy the whole way back to the motel, and she slams the door in his face, telling him to find a bar. She shuts her eyes to block the memory of his surprised expression before she'd locked him out. 

She curls into a ball on the bed, unable to name why she feels so angry and strung out again, and eventually having a cold shower and falling into a fitful sleep.

He returns, hours later, loud and singing to himself. She pretends to be asleep as he stumbles to the bed, kneeling low enough that she can smell sickly sweet alcohol and cloying cigarettes. He's whispering loudly as if sharing a secret. 

“You asssked and it's good…good things. Maybe. Iffff-I-can. See ‘bout that, make it blow that way.”

In the dim light she peeks through her lashes and sees him turn, sitting on the floor by the bed and staring at the wall for a moment before slapping his knee.

“Annnd you knew, didn’tcha? ‘Bout – hiccup- bout milkshakes. Hah!”

He laughs, pokes at her one last time, and then heads to the bathroom where he promptly passes out on the floor. The sound of snoring drifts down the hall and into the small room, and she lets herself find the sound comforting.

The next morning they don't talk, but she feels her chest expand, something heavy and rich in her heart that feels too big to contain, and then she knows. 

Chapter Text

Now that she knows it, she hides it.

She's been hiding it since her nightmare, since she leaned into him and drew on his strength. She's been hiding since she realised she liked being with him, near him, even with explosions and him complaining. She's been hiding since she saw him produce coin after coin for children's amusement. 

Or maybe she's been hiding, or trying to hide, much longer than that. 

It’s OK to know something if nobody else knows it, and she’s very comfortable in that space. She has no desire to explore it, or think about it, or actually have anything to fucking do with it.

But it doesn’t necessarily feel the same way.

It is creeping like fingers brushing the back of her neck, arriving uninvited in her dreams, crawling into her psyche. It is pissing her off. She’s catching herself smiling or genuinely being interested in his ramblings about lore or pacts or why people are ridiculous not to have figured out Hozier’s true identity yet.

And she’s noticing things.

She is noticing when he hauls something into the car or steps out of the shower and while she has no issue appreciating what is an objectively attractive man – if you’re into oversized ginger meatheads – she isn’t experiencing the disconnect she used to.  

She is noticing his pissy attitude with certain gods and is deeply amused by it, likes the way he can’t quite bring himself to play their games. She’s noticing his genuine pleasure when they stumble on Fae ground or meets someone from his past with whom he doesn’t have foul dealings.

She’s noticing him introduce her without introducing her, always “and this is who I’m travelling with” or “ever seen a former zombie?”

She’d asked him about it, once, while she curled in the passenger seat and he kept the window open while he drove.

“Why don’t you tell them who I am?”

His response had been quick. “And who’s that?”

She was quiet for a minute and realised she’d heard him say her name exactly once, when pulling her from a nightmare, and never before or after. 

“Laura Moon.”

He had nodded as if pleased with that response, and a part of her was annoyed, wanted him to push her to be herself again, just use the name she was born with. Part of her wondered if she wished he was jealous at the claim the name implied, but he actually seemed relieved.

“So…why don’t you ever introduce me like that?”

He shook his head. “True or not, ain’t my name to give out.”

She pushed him on it and he sighed like he was genuinely exasperated by the conversation.

“Fucking humans…always wanting to tell everyone all about themselves. Just...hide a bit. Keep your true name to yourself.”

At times like that she wished there was someone else to ask about this stuff because she has no desire to keep asking for information he’s uncomfortable giving, especially when she gets the impression he doesn’t want to hear her reaction. 

The next time they were in a town she found a bookstore, telling him she doesn’t need a chaperone and to kindly fuck right off. She approached the clerk and awkwardly asked for a book of fairy stories, had spent some time reading and then decided to give in and purchase it for herself.

Never eat food they offer you.

Never stand in a faerie ring.

Never tell them your true name.

The next time he introduced her to someone, a Brownie with sharp eyes and a charming smile working as a motel cleaner in Texas, she had smiled and held out her hand.

“Hi, I’m Laura.”

And nothing more.

He had nodded in approval, and she had rolled her eyes.

That was a month ago.

She’s been hiding it well, she thinks. Avoiding physical contact as much as possible, refusing to snark back or be unnecessarily cruel. He hasn’t seemed bothered by any of it and she has felt relieved; this thing can pass, can leave her, if she lets it alone for long enough.

Then the bar happened.

After watching him drink what seemed to be an entire bottle of whisky in less than 20 minutes and seeing him eyeing off bar patrons as if begging for a fight to start, she’d decided she was tired and didn’t feel like babysitting.

She said it was time to leave.

He had disagreed.

She’d wound up dragging him out the bar by his beard, enjoying the howling and complaining accompanied by big, stumbling bootsteps. She enjoyed more the reality that he could probably have easily extricated himself from her grip, but either the alcohol or something else kept him playing along, and so she had her fun.

When she’d released him he hadn’t stepped back, instead slinging a big arm around her shoulders and listing against her as they walked back to the motel. When she glanced up he was somehow drinking from another bottle of whisky.

“How-“

“Hic- hoard.”

She managed to get the bottle off him and get him back in one piece, rolling her eyes as he hummed and grumbled to himself, heavy against her and occasionally mumbling into her hair.

She had managed to unlock the door, eventually just letting him slump against it and fall in rather than trying to hold him upright and get the key in at the same time. When he was upright again she’d angled him towards the bed, the entire frame creaking in distress as he flopped onto it. She swore as she pulled his boots off – and if that smell didn’t forever justify her demand that he shower – and jumped when he sat up and let out a shout of victory.

“HAH! Got the bed, didn’t I?” The room clearly span for him and he flopped back down, still mumbling happily. “Fuckin’ won.”

The surprise of it made her laugh and he gave her a lopsided grin as he stretched out.

“See…” She watched him find a cigarette behind his ear but no lighter, and was somewhat relieved that he couldn’t burn the place down, only for her hope to be dashed when he groped blindly and plucked one from the air. “Can’t resist me woman, gotta quit lyin’ to yerself.”

She froze, the smile dropping from her face.

Her heart began to beat very, very quickly and she felt like she couldn’t get enough air in because he was saying shit he shouldn’t have been saying, that he had no business saying, shit that would lead to things and questions and demands and restrictions or rejections or betrayals or all of the fucking above and she was so angry with him but more so with herself because he had seen.

He looked at her with bleary eyes that were seeing far more than she wanted them to. 

“S’ok, y’know…”

He paused.

It was very clearly a pause, the kind that comes before you say something serious or significant, and she had no interest in hearing what came next, drunken or otherwise.

She smiled kindly, took his cigarette and pushed him off the bed. His body had hit the floor with a satisfying thump and he grumbled as if to protest before immediately falling asleep with a snore that could have woken the properly dead.

The next morning he was quiet, and she made as much noise as possible while he clutched his throbbing head.

Ever since then he’s been quieter than usual, less inclined to snark or start on his meandering rambles with threads of connection that fascinate her. He's more inclined to disappear for long spells and wander his way back more slowly each time.

She has been ready to say they should go their separate ways – and why it’s taken this long for her to suggest it, she has no idea – until they had stumbled onto a seemingly minor disagreement between New Media and some of the Pantheon (still arguing loudly over the Disney adaptation of Hercules) and barely escaped with their lives.

Now they’re in need of a place to lay low and get some healing, and Laura thinks at first that his suggestion is a joke.

“No…no! Why would we go back there after…”

She leaves it hanging between them and he doesn’t speak for a moment, jaw clenching.

“Because that knife was tipped in ichor and if I don’t get somewhere soon my face won’t be nearly as pretty.”

“What the fuck is ichor?”

“God’s blood, Old school Greek shit. Festers like a motherfucker.”

The wound cuts from his eyebrow to chin, splitting his lips along the way, a deep slash that has missed his eye but is festering grotesquely. When he talks he holds his mouth awkwardly, the wound sizzling occasionally and spitting bubbled blood, and he has refused her offer to clean it in favour of telling her to start driving. 

He snapped out directions and now they’ve been heading as fast as she can drive somewhere known only to him.

Except now she knows too and it’s all she can do not to turn the car around.

“But…seriously, why New Orleans? It’s not like you need to be brought back to life. Again.”

He doesn’t bother responding and she’s so tired of him being quiet. 

She doesn't bother keeping the brat out of her tone. “I don’t want to fucking go there.”

He rolls his eyes and winces as it pulls the cut. “This might come as a fucking surprise – despite how often it gets pointed out – but everything ain’t about you.”

She wants him talking but is all too aware that when he’s like this he’ll start to pull shit out of her she doesn’t want to look at. A while back she would have argued, snarked, maybe had a joke with him but she’s still raw and refuses to pry further. She has no interest in him picking away at wounds or scabs right now.

He is quiet for a moment, taking a long draught from his flask and nearly dropping it with a curse when the alcohol seeps into his cuts, but breathes and then continues more calmly.

“Before she was the Baron’s consort, before the Haitian’s were fucking chained and brutalised and her myth got wrapped up in theirs, Brigitte was Brigid. One of my lot.”

“She was a leprechaun?”

He grits his teeth then and she jumps in before he can shut down because he hasn't told her anything in so long and it's nice to actually hear him share something. 

“Hey I’m trying ok, explain.”

“Brigid was…one of ours.” She gets the impression he doesn’t mean Fae but she leaves it, wanting him to continue. “Healing, spring, fertility, the usual lot.”

He smiles at a memory he doesn’t share and Laura suspects it’s something involving nudity. “Damn good at all of it.”

He stops smiling. “So, that’s where we go.”

She is quiet for a minute before responding, hearing the pissy attitude in her voice and frankly feeling fine with it. “Why would they even help you?”

He gives her a confused look for a moment before coming to some sort of realisation and shaking his head in disbelief. 

“We go way back.”

Laura is, for a split second, so fucking over gods and deities and long standing favours and debts and who knows what else and she spits and hisses her frustration into the car.

“Seriously. This is so stupid, especially after…I mean they fucked you over last time right?”

He laughs then, a short bark of a thing that knocks her off her warpath, makes her feel small and stupid and like she’s missed the point. She hates it, well aware that she would have previously not given a shit, and now she wants to know the point and be in on the damn joke because he clearly knows something.

“How’d last time work out for you?” She’s ready to launch into a rant and he cuts her off sharply. “Not the little romp or your delightfully ill-informed cuntery the next day, the former of which by the way is pretty fucking mild when it comes to death Loa.”

They haven’t spoken about this, not ever, and she feels that rising panic she’s had on and off since the explosions in the mall, what she felt after the bar recently, the feeling of being seen or watched too closely and being exposed entirely. She thinks of her smile the night of the nightmares and wants to open the car door and roll away.

He’s lighting a cigarette, all the more awkward around the wound bisecting his mouth, and she suppresses the urge to help as he continues.

“Quit only focusing on shit that pissed you off or felt unfair and tell me, what’d you get from them?”

Resurrection, life, a knowledge she didn’t even fucking want and now can’t make go away. She swallows, inhales, knows she can do both of those things because of that fucking potion and refuses to answer.

He looks back at the road and shakes his head.

“That’s what I thought…ungrateful bitch.”

She can’t really argue.

When they arrive in front of the Coq Noir and he throws his coin for entry she feels that anxiety heighten and wonders what breaking will look like. 

Before they enter he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a bottle of dark liquid with some strange shapes inside it, exhales, and heads inside.

***

It is quiet when they arrive, the bar home to a few early evening drinkers and no more.

The Baron, emerging from the back with a slow grin that makes Laura’s stomach twist far too pleasantly, strides out to meet them with arms out. 

He stops smiling when he sees Sweeney’s face, grips the other man’s chin, turning it to inspect the wound before calling out to the back of the bar.

“Maman, you got work to do.”

“Chere if you think I’m dealing with-“ she stops when she sees Sweeney, marching over and ignoring Laura completely to stroke at his cheek.

Her eyes narrow as it weeps and bubbles horribly. “You got ichor in you.”

“Aye, think I’ll be needing a bit of help.”

She quirks an eyebrow at him flirtatiously. “And for my trouble?”

He smiles, a grotesque look with the slash on him, and then holds out the bottle. He shakes it so the hot peppers suspended in rum hit the sides gently. Maman Brigitte grins, uncorking it and inhaling deeply before handing it to Samedi and clapping delightedly.

“Ohhh, Sweeney, mon chere…that’ll do nicely. You come with me.”

Laura is left to sit quietly at the table while Samedi sets the bar for the evening and deals with customers, feeling out of place and exposed all at once.

“So, you’re alive then.”

She nods. “Yes…" and then, because he doesn't look away from her and she has no idea how to speak to someone who gave her a potion for resurrection, who has been inside her, and who abandoned her on an astral plane to fuck a leprechaun, she adds. "...thank you.”

He watches her for a moment before laughing to himself and going to serve a customer.

***

Laura had not wanted to come here.

She had no idea how to behave around…people…who had seen her dead, seen her rotting, seen her completely naked, seen her exposed, seen her truth.

She has spent some time staring at the door through which Sweeney and Brigitte had disappeared.

Then stared at the bottles behind the bar.

Then she began to watch the people, the bar slowly filling.

“Come on, chere.”

She had blinked at Samedi curiously and he’d thrown her an apron.

“Got work to do.”

Now, hours later, when the bar is packed and she’s been dragged into helping serve drinks with Brigitte while Samedi laughs with Sweeney over whisky, she finds she is enjoying herself. 

Sweeney’s face is clear and healed again and he’s showing a surprising degree of proficiency in cocktail making as Samedi sets out plates of debris stuffed po’ boys on fresh baked rolls, oysters, fried plantains and fluffy beignets.

It’s fast and busy and Laura was never that great at hospitality to begin with, but the energy and movement are distracting, and she’s enjoying the snippets of conversation in between.

“So there he was,” Brigitte is returning to a story she’s halfway through telling while they both pick up drink orders. “And you’ve never seen a man so confused as to why he was naked before, but chere if he didn’t pick up that hub cap and march his way on down the street.”

Laura bursts into laughter at the thought of Sweeney buck naked in the middle of the Mardi Gras parade, and gratefully accepts another beignet from Samedi, who shoots her a wink before elbowing Sweeney.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Brigitte grins as Sweeney bellows over the bar. “Woman, you watch your words!”

It’s strange to see him in this light. When they were last here she’d got a glimpse of him actually connecting with people before he’d started going curt and edgy (worried? confused? whatever). She had been too focused back then on what she wanted, and then on accusations, but now she has time to watch.

This isn’t the semi-professional camaraderie he’s shared with other Fae or the favour driven wheedling he’s used along their way.

This is genuine.

He’s happy here, now, being mocked and sending it back just as fiercely, wolfing down food with appreciative grunts between shaking out hurricanes and martinis and something called a black goat that Laura can smell halfway across the bar. For their part the Loa seem happy too, sending him to work with the ease of long practice, and she wonders how often he’s stumbled his way in here and stayed a while.

Sweeney’s sliding drinks to patrons with a wink and slinging an arm over Samedi’s shoulder to laugh about something. He’s flirting with customers and sharing shots and Laura laughs when a woman wearing a ‘bride to be’ sash yanks him down by the collar for a kiss. He returns it with enough gusto that he comes away with a decent tip, raising the $20 bill with a waggle of his eyebrows.

She forgets that they haven’t been talking much for a moment, holding up her own bundle of tips with an expression of ‘nyah nyah nyahnyah nyah’ that sees him grin and shake his head.

When Brigitte talks Laura sometimes catches words she doesn’t quite understand, like Lugh, or Tuath Dé, and she occasionally slips into Old Irish, the words even stranger than his with a thick Louisana accent over the top.

Once or twice Sweeney or Samedi have shot Brigitte a look halfway through a story and she’s rolled her eyes but changed the topic.

It’s heady and strange and Laura finds herself feeling for a moment as if she belongs. The bar is dark and she can enjoy the energy and not worry so much about hiding with so many people around. 

Time passes. 

It’s well after midnight, the bar has been emptying for a while, and Samedi sets out the few unsold rolls and other snacks along with some gumbo and rice. Laura finds herself with her feet curled under her, a warm bowl in her hands and vodka cooling her throat.

She looks over at Sweeney, slouched comfortably and sipping at an excellent whisky and smiling as Brigitte lights her thick cigar.

His arm is around the back of Laura's chair and for the barest of moments her hair shifts as if stroked and she feels her eyes close because the content she’s feeling is foreign. She opens her eyes to see Samedi and Brigitte staring with sharp expressions and she freezes.

There it is again. 

She wants to run.

Laura excuses herself to the bathroom, pausing in the hallway before going back inside. From her position she can make out Sweeney, slouched comfortably on the chair with Brigitte perched on the arm, stroking at his face as if inspecting her work, or using any excuse to touch him.

“So…you started to remember.”

“Yup. Still plenty missing…but there’s enough there now. I see it.”

“You gettin’ any of the rest back?”

A pause.

“Bits and pieces, maybe. Strength for sure, some of the craft. Might even be able to find my spear in the horde.”

The Baron’s voice sounds from where he sits across from Sweeney, as if he’s leaning forward.

“And the girl?”

Another pause, the sound of new drinks being poured, and Laura sees Brigitte stand and move out of sight.

“There's nothing with the girl. Travel companion’s all.”

The words are delivered flatly and Laura tells herself that's a relief. 

Samedi's low voice is thoughtful. 

“Potion worked, that ain't for nothin’ mon ami. Ça c' est bon.”

Sweeney is shaking his head. 

"Don't matter, she's got too many walls up, can't see over 'em. Hell she doesn't even want to. "

She flinches, watches him light a cigarette.

"Didn't seem to mind some of them coming down last time y'all darkened this doorstep."

Sweeney's expression is tired. "Baron, you didn't see the aftermath."

The other man is quiet for a moment, though she can hear him puffing on a cigar. 

"You remember that time you blew up my kitchen?"

She can't make out what he says next, some sort of defensive cursing in Irish and Creole, but Samedi is laughing his bone vibrating laugh and the sound of glasses clinking is a happy one. “Sláinte.”

Laura leans against the wall and tries to remember how to breathe, feels tears and that clawing feeling in her throat and has no idea how to deal with either. 

She doesn't see her companion at first. 

“Eavesdroppin’ is such a low habit, chere.” Brigitte’s hand is quick, grabbing Laura’s chin. “Oh, but you’ve started to see. Started to know. Got your truth and can’t put it back in the box, can you?”

Laura feels that rising panic again and reaches for something, anything to hide behind. 

"Maybe I was hoping to run into company."

The Loa’s laugh is somehow kind and mocking all at once. “Oh cherie, any other time I’d be more than happy to see you move outside yourself, me and the Baron both.”

She leans forward and Laura closes her eyes in anticipation only to be met with air and a laugh. 

Her eyes narrow and Brigitte's usually warm voice is cold and firm. “But you’re running hard from a truth here, and we ain’t gonna help you play that game.”

Laura is stunned for a moment because if there’s one thing she thought she could count on it’s the Loa being up for a good time, but it looks like their good times include denial because Brigitte is clearly not budging.

She watches Laura with ancient eyes. 

"Not with him."

Laura sees that flash of protectiveness and something clicks. 

"You care about him." 

"We do."

"You...like when he's here."

"For the most part, in small doses."

"Does the Baron know you fu-" 

"Baron Samedi knows everything just fine, chere. You keep looking for bruises to poke and veils to lift. Keep looking for barbs and spears to throw."

Brigitte moves closer, something dark and mischievous glinting in her smile. "It ever occur to you that we like ourselves stripped bare?" 

Laura wants to crawl out of her skin, wants to not be seen like this, wants to run and hide hide hide.

Maman Brigitte watches her. “You ever wonder, child, what it costs you to keep all those things locked away? Not just him, all of it.”

“Fuck off.”

It's mild and makes the other woman chuckle. Laura wants to lash out but her newfound sense of survival says hitting a death Loa might not be a great move, and Brigitte’s smile has sharp edges. 

“Now chere, the Baron and me…we have business with Sweeney.”

It's a firm dismissal. 

Brigitte’s wink suggests only limited possibilities as to the nature of that business and Laura swallows because they want him here, clearly, and she has no doubt he wants to be here. He is a complete fucking lunatic and they want him here, seem to genuinely like him.

She tries very hard to think of someone in her life who would feel the same way about her. A friend. 

Laura turns without another word, leaves, striding a few doors down to a bar still with some patrons and intercepts a conversation. 

“You wanna get out of here?”

He's pale and the goatee makes her grit her teeth but he's tall, well built, and it's dark enough she doesn't care much either way. She lets him buy her a few shots and then pulls him out with her and into the night. 

***

The next day dawns clear and bright, and she finds herself once again at the Coq Noir in the early morning (this time less topless and not having fucked a leprechaun on the astral plane and she refuses to dissect how she feels about that).

The night before had yielded an encounter that was fine enough but left her cold. The vodka had left her too quickly, his hands covered too much of her, and when she shuddered on top of him the first time she just slipped off, pulling her dress back over her head and leaving to head to her motel room without another word. 

As she stands outside the Coq Noir she can see silhouettes through the window. She can make out his form, the smaller form of Brigitte with a hand on his chest. Samedi handing him a cup. 

It's easy and quiet and something loosens because she's here again, isn't she? What is she getting from kidding herself? 

She can't hide, she knows that now. 

She remembers the first time they were here, listening to his fucking terrible pick-up lines (honestly she’s never heard anything so goddamn lazy in her life). The woman at the bar had still been responsive, and he’d had an easy mark in front of him.

Laura had rolled her eyes and then seen the look he shot her across the bar and knew it was at least a little bit performative and that she was the intended audience.

She didn’t mind that.

This isn’t performative. He doesn’t even know she’s watching. 

The door to the bar opens and he squints in the sunlight, coffee in one hand. He looks tired but happy and Laura wonders, genuinely, why she keeps hiding. She's not tired but happy, she's tired and pissed and anxious and running or hiding from those things has done exactly fucking nothing for her.

She waves to him from her spot against the wall and if he's surprised he covers it well. He seems to brace himself and then takes his time wandering over, sipping coffee that perfumes the air with rich, buttery notes. 

She takes a deep breath and, with no reason at all, she says three words. 

"Laura Emily McCabe."

He stares at her for a moment with a mix of suspicion and awe before something possessive and pleased passes his expression and his grin becomes wolfish. 

She's not hiding any more.

Chapter Text

Now that she isn't hiding, she wants it. 

It's all she can think about. 

And yet somehow it's a full 24 hours later, 24 hours after giving him her name and stealing his coffee and she's still gotten...nowhere.

Well, not nowhere, but certainly not enough. 

She'd like to blame him. 

Would like to say he's being a complete asshole and she basically deserves compensation for not having him murdered in his sleep. Would like to say he'd fucked it up and it's all his fault (not hers, definitely not hers) and he owes her big time. 

But perhaps that wouldn’t be strictly true.

“Laura Emily McCabe.”

When his eyes shift from surprised, to pleased, to possessive, to hungry, she can feel it. Electricity, something heady and wild, crackling along her nerve endings and humming through her veins. The rising feeling of panic is replaced by heat and when he steps forward her breath becomes shallow because he’s invading her space and she wants him there. 

She wants it. 

This.

Them.

Something.

He steps closer, crowding her, and sips his coffee slowly, with relish, forcing her to tilt her head up, up, up to see him. 

She crosses her arms, cocks her hip. 

“Are you planning to share that?”

He's staring her down, down, down, and every word is a challenge. 

"Can't say that I am." 

She considers her options and decides on her favourite, keeping her arms crossed but lifting herself onto her toes, up towards him, and as his eyes dart down to her mouth she closes her eyes and parts her lips. 

Time slows, melting and warm, she can smell coffee and cigarettes and just as her lips are about to graze his, she grins. 

It's almost too easy to snag the coffee as he leans down, twisting under his arm and shooting him smile as she runs back down the alley. 

She knows he’ll follow, knows he’ll likely grab her arm, knows they’re both heading towards something bigger and scarier and hopfully with lot less clothing.

She hears his heavy steps behind her, fast. 

One would not be blamed for thinking that yes, here, finally, we will see.

See him reach for her, coffee dropping forgotten in the rush of adrenaline and the heady vulnerability of finally giving over to something. See her smile, mocking and sweet all at once, see how well she wears desire when it's honest and fierce and more than a little reckless. 

See him finally getting to wrap big hands around her ribcage, tangle in her soft hair, see his relief at finally getting to this, to her, to them. See his pleasure in the game as she nips and snaps at him, digging in her nails hard enough to mark him hers. See how much he wants to be marked. 

See the tearing of clothes and the heady rush of a first kiss and the wild joy of skin explored and licked and sucked and bitten and left wrecked so very pleasurably. 

Here, perhaps, is where we’d see what it means to stop hiding, what it means to admit and find joy in little moments even if you tend to walk in darkness, what it means to find someone whose particular brand of lunacy suits your own.

And yet…

She adjusts her wrists against the cuffs and can't help but think that perhaps it’s not entirely his fault that they’re in this situation, although she isn’t about to say it out loud.

Largely because of the gag blocking her mouth. 

He follows her and spins her around and the coffee spills and a car honks in the distance and he’s grinning, really grinning, and she sees fire in his eyes and knows her smile is overly soft and for once doesn’t fucking care…

…and then the bag is pulled over her head and the world goes dark and her last thought before being knocked unconscious is that this seems like the least fair cock block in the history of cock blocks. 

So here they are.

Don't worry, we'll still see a kiss. 

A first kiss. 

Now, as far as first kisses go, Laura is sure there have been worse ones, even if, all things considered, there have almost certainly been better.

Being captured by Mr Town and taken to some remote junk yard where they are chained up in a shipping container was one example of a situation that could have been better.

A second was the fact that her husband (former? ex? is it all null and avoid post death and resurrection and the parting of ways?) was thrown unceremoniously into the room and chained next to Sweeney. Past lovers tend to be a bit of a mood killer... 

Not that there's much of a mood to kill. 

Shadow’s hands are in some weird metal containers while Sweeney has been slung with more chains than seem strictly necessary, though when those chains seem to spark of their own volition she wonders if Mr Town knows something she doesn’t.

Exes and chains and kidnapping, oh my. 

All in all not a great situation for a first kiss, and some very good reasons why it may be entirely impossible.

Still, our girl is savvy, so let's see what happens. 

Mr Town's voice is raspy and mocking, accent thick as he circles her chair. 

“So tell me then, Laura fucking Moon, if you can’t tell me about Wednesday’s latest move then what use exactly do I have for a yet another random piece of shit mortal with a taste for adultery and cock?”

He knocks off the gag as if he actually wants a response. 

She smiles sweetly. “I’ve been called worse.”

His eyes are cold. “By who?”

He doesn’t wait for a response as he turns her chair slowly. “Him?”

She swallows.

Salim.

Salim chained to the wall and gagged.

Sweet Salim and his sad eyes and warm heart he can’t hide from a single fucking soul, not since it was set on fire, and he’s all trussed up against the wall.

No, not the wall.

A compactor.

Mr Town clicks his fingers and the machine whirrs to life, slowly but surely compressing. At first she can’t speak, staring in horrified shock as Salim begins to pray in Arabic and then, as his body is slowly compressed by the metal, his prayers turn to frightened cries.  

“No, no, NO PLEASE STOP!”

Her scream echoes through the chamber and she feels hot tears pouring over her cheeks as Salim’s cries of pain pierce her chest and then…

…stop.

The human cry is replaced by metal grinding and whirring and Salim’s face is suddenly a blank digital nightmare and she can’t quite process what she’s seeing.

That's not Salim. 

That's a bot. 

A lie.

A fake.

Something cruel.

She glances at Mr Town, her breathing ragged and her cheeks becoming sticky as the tears dry.

“What…why would…”

She lets it trail off because he’s smiling slightly and she knows. 

She sees it all then, exactly what they want her to be. What they need her to be. What they’re telling her to be. She’s heard the song, bought the t-shirt, listened and absorbed the fucking message. Look what we know, look what we can do, what we could do, what we will do; look and fear and tremble.

She knows what they want her to be.

Compliant.

An idea begins to take shape. 

She inhales slowly, letting the air fill her lungs, smelling metal and gas and rust.

“OK, OK...look, I don't know what he's planning but I know what he needs. His spear, right?"

Mr Town stares for a moment and she sees the flicker of interest before he can hide it. She can't see Shadow or Sweeney behind her but she can hear Shadow's low warning to shut up.

Some people never learn. 

"Look, I know where it is. That's gotta count for something, right? Let me out of here and we can talk."

Mr Town nods to two goons, one clearly a New Media influencer, the other a faceless Fred Astaire type, and she avoids the urge to roll her eyes at the dramatics as they yank her upright. 

Shadow's in hero mode. "Where are you taking her?" 

"Somewhere more private..."

She keeps her head up as they walk her past Sweeney and them Shadow, sees the former trying to test his chains as the latter protests her removal.

As they lead her out of the container she stops short.

“Wait. Please…please wait.”

She lays it on thick, a plea at the end of each word, high and sad and sweet. It really shouldn't be this easy but she's all too aware of the enduring power of the little girl lost, and for all that he's a deity, Mr Town has the same arrogance of all the gods she’s met; they think they know better. 

She turns to him, gives him her big eyes and long lashes, her most worried and melancholy expression. It’s a look she rarely bothers with any more, effective though it may be, because she prefers to snap her way through rather than rely on looking young and innocent at times. Having the coin cemented how much more enjoyable that was, and though she doesn't have it now, being followed by 6ft5 of Irish muscle can be just as effective sometimes. 

She does not like playing victim. 

Still, desperate times and all that.

Laura goes for painfully and pathetically human and he takes it all in.

She sees Town soften ever so slightly and avoids letting victory show on her face, turning to where her fellow prisoners are shackled to the wall with unnecessarily complicated and overly heavy chains. 

She is suddenly back in a life that seems too long ago as she sees Shadow watching her with pity and concern. The flashback is thankfully ended when she catches Sweeney’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, keeping an eye on her to catch her next play. 

It’s nice to be seen.

She swallows thickly. "Please, please just let me say goodbye?”

Mr Town nods once, gestures, and she walks towards them with little, shuffling steps. Shadow’s eyes widen as she approaches and she'd be mildly insulted by his genuine concern that she's about to kiss him but has no time for hand holding as she passes by. 

His soft "what the fuck" echoes around the shipping container.

She moves to where Sweeney is chained to the wall, stopping in front of him to look up and run her hand over his jaw. His eyes are still narrowed but when she raises her eyebrow in a ‘dude you gotta help me out here’ expression she sees his eyes shift and something connect, the ghost of a smile on his split lips, and he wastes no time lowering his mouth to hers.

The part of her brain connected firmly to other body parts lets out a howl of relief at finally getting what she wants. 

She kisses him deeply, like she’s been wanting to for days, let's herself absorb it all. She feels the coarse hair of his beard against her, tastes metal and cigarettes, nips at dry, soft lips tacky with blood. 

She indulges herself, wraps her arms around his neck to pull her body up and closer to him, hears him groan in the back of his throat he kisses her back hungrily, pulling against chains in an attempt to get closer.

The air shifts and the job is done. 

She pulls back with a smile on her lips, knowing she’s probably a bloodier sight now for all that he’s left on her face. His eyes are bright and he’s breathing heavily and she wishes then that they were alone, that he wasn’t in chains, that she could see what dark roads he could be tempted down and how fucking quickly he’d follow.

From the look he's shooting her he'd move so fast he'd trip. 

Town clicks his fingers and Mr World’s dapper goons drag her away with some help from New Media’s buff influencers, and as she is pushed towards the door she can hear Shadow’s shock and Sweeney’s rough response.

“Seriously what the fuck was-“

“Shut it, Moon Shadow, if you know what’s good for you.”

As she passes Shadow she smiles, bloody lips parting to show white teeth with the barest glint of gold between them. 

Realisation dawns on his face and she winks at him as they pull her from the room.

***

It’s been 12 hours since they escaped Mr Town, and she’s not worried so much as pissed.

She lets them drag her through the junk yard, shipping containers acting as make shift corridors, and she is finally lead to a small building with yet another chair in another room. 

Seriously who sets this shit up? 

The goons toss her inside and she tries to roll so her cuffed arms only bruise rather than break. From the still open door she can see that there's nothing around for miles, except old train tracks and scrap metal, and she gives herself a moment to stretch.

She can feel her skin beginning to hum, the coin's energy seeping into its host, and she tries to remain patient as she holds it on her tongue. Her body laps up the resources hungrily, she feels her blood thrum and her heart race and something sparkling in her veins.

"Mr Town will be here soon to continue your interrogation."

She ignores them. 

Five minutes after being dumped in the room she feels it, full and ready, and turns to her guards. 

She smiles and then the cuffs tear open like tissue paper. She spits the coin into her palm and then slips it into her boot, wedging it tightly in place  She cracks her neck, gives the security a cheeky wave and then moves. 

She sends her boot through one guard, whirling on another to throw him into a third, rolling out into the open car yard before lifting a car and throwing it through the door, blocking it.

She sprints back through the maze of containers and piles of cars and junk. She sees it up ahead, hears the dull thud of flesh hitting flesh. 

The door is locked so she wedges her fingers into the seam and grips hard, pulling it off its hinges. 

She quickly takes in Shadow still against the wall, Sweeney now chained to a chair and on the receiving end of yet another beating. 

Every fucking time. 

She moves before Town can react, pushing him away and into the compactor before slamming the green button beside it. The compactor lights up and they're all silent for a moment as the his screams die down. 

She turns and picks her way through the debris left from her entrance, taking in Shadow’s shocked expression and Sweeney’s grin. His eye is closing with a nasty bruise he’s just been dealt and his mouth is even more of a mess than before but she’s 80% sure that’s foreplay to him.

The look he shoots her confirms her suspicions.

Fucking lunatic. 

He spits blood on the floor. 

“Wondered where the fuck you’d got to.”

She breaks Shadow’s chains first, stepping back as he rubs at his wrists and moving to stand in front of Sweeney.

“Just you’re luck, I’m still here.”

“Aye,” his tired, bloodied grin as he looks up at her makes her smile. “Just my luck.”

She breaks his chains and he stands, testing his wrists and listing slightly. He only takes a moment to regain his balance and then he's staring her down and she's never felt quite as much like prey in that moment. 

He grabs her wrist, hauls her against him. 

The kiss he plants on her is messy, teeth clacking, his bloodied lip pulling and making him wince, but she smiles against his mouth and returns it with gusto. She lets him back her into the wall of the container, swamped by him and tugging him closer to her, when a throat being cleared drags them both out of the teenage pre-fuck haze in which they’ve found themselves.

Sweeney refuses to release her wrist, still breathing heavily and staring down at her, so she takes on the role of mature one. 

She turns to Shadow, who is still looking mildly confused. Or annoyed. Possibly both.

“So…you two planned that?”

Sweeney hits his head lightly against the wall and she stifles a laugh as she slips out from where he's trapped her. 

“Sure.” 

She lies comfortably, completely unaware that Sweeney’s expression behind her isn’t much of a back-up, and then they hear boot steps and suddenly they’re too busy fighting their way through digital militia and Town's goons to keep the conversation going. 

Everything is going fine until they pass the front office and are hit with a whole scare of Spooks ready to reap vengeance. Between her strength and the other two they manage to stave off the worst of it, though there's enough of them to really fill their dance cards. 

But they miss one. 

One they really, really shouldn't have missed. 

The one with the electrical cables and live wires grins, sprinting towards Sweeney and shorting himself out against Sweeney's chest. 

Sweeney is zapped, hard, and she sees him fall like a fucking red wood, hitting the deck with a sickening thump that sends a cloud of dust into the air. The shifting and thumping continues despite the lack of power source, and she wonders what electricity can do to a creature of myth. 

She gets to him before Shadow does, grabbing his arms and hauling him easily over her shoulders. A memory surfaces, his feet nearly skimming the road as she marches him away from Cairo.

Dead. 

She grits her teeth against the thought and ignores Shadow’s look of concern, gesturing towards a car model she’s seen Sweeney jack before.

“That one. Pop the hood.”

She opens the rear passenger door and throws Sweeney inside, making a quick note of his shallow breathing and slamming the door closed. A glance at the engine makes her nod and she runs back, rooting around in Sweeney’s pockets to dig out the little pry bar she’s seen him use before.

Shadow is looking at her curiously as she returns.

“You worried about people hearing the alarm?”

She turns so he can’t see her eye roll, unnecessarily contemptuous in the current climate, and gets to work as she speaks.

“No, I just don’t want it blaring the whole time we drive out of here.”

Weeks of watching the man himself work mean she knows this part, ripping out a few wires and slamming the hood closed. The next part is tricker, the wiring harness connector and starter wire bundle slipping between her blood-slicked fingers, but eventually she is grinning as the car roars to life.

Shadow is looking at her again with that mix of horror and surprise but she doesn’t really register as they both climb in.

"Looks like you've been learning some fun new stuff."

She shrugs. "It was that or knitting and we didn't have any needles."

When they’d been married she mainly let him drive, but now she enjoys the control, grins as she floors the gas and they screech out of the compound.

She turns to Shadow who is staring like she’s grown another head and fights the urge to sigh. 

“So, where to?”

He stares another moment before looking straight ahead. 

"Does he need -" 

"Honestly I'm pretty sure he's done worse to himself while partying."

"You're alive again."

She smiles. "Yep. Got my second chance."

He's quiet for too long, it's filling the car with a million words he's not saying, and she let's the pause stretch until he breaks it. 

"I had...I'd assumed you would try to find me if that happened."

She is quiet for a moment. "You made it pretty clear last time we talked that chapter was closed."

"Sure, but Laura we're still...I still care about you."

She looks at him, sees the gesture as genuine, but he doesn't get it. And she really needs to stop expecting him to, because she loves him, and he loves her, but neither of them ever really got who the other was, or spent so long trying to be what they needed that it was easy to get lost. 

"I know you do, that's a good reason to stay away. The next time you see me I'm going to be trying to kill your boss."

She glances at the still body in the back seat. 

"That didn't go so well for the last guy who tried, so I can't say I was running to find you."

It's not the only reason and they both know it. 

He is quiet for a moment but she can read him well enough. He's guilty and tired, he's thinking about that night in Cairo, he's giving off that same wants to help and make it right vibe that is completely unhelpful in the real world. 

He's not a creature of the real world, she thinks. That light in him, purpose or beauty or something else, is just slightly too pure for humanity. She feels a rush of protectiveness. 

She grabs his hand. "Look pup-... Shadow, I still don't get why you're on this journey with Wednesday. But if it's something you think you've got to do, just be safe, OK?" 

He's staring down at their clasped hands and she sees his jaw clench, sees him glance at the back seat. 

"So...that's a thing?" 

She doesn't know how to respond. Yes. No. Maybe. Possibly. She wants it to be. It was almost. She's scared it will be. 

She shrugs and says nothing. 

"You know he's a fucking nut job, right?" 

She laughs at that, surprised and bright, feels the coin rubbing in her sock and wipes at the dried blood on her face with a smile. 

"The name's kind of a giveaway."

She sees him frown at the affection in her voice and his words are accusatory. 

"And that's...thats more your speed?" 

She grits her teeth because she gets it, she really does, but this isn't a comparison or an alternative. 

This is her stumbling in the dark and somehow finding something she likes lurking there with, and it's so new she can't even be properly protective of it. 

Doesn't mean she won't be protective of herself though. 

"Fuck you."

"Fuck ME?" 

"Yeah, fuck you." 

It's building up and now the words are tumbling out. She is so fucking frustrated with being the bad guy and knowing that she is, so over being told how selfish or ungrateful she is, especially because it's true. 

And now...now she wants to be seen. 

"I get it, I'm the one who fucked up with Robbie, but Shadow...before prison and everthing else I tried so hard to be in that picture with you. Tried to be her for you."

She gulps in air to stop herself from crying because she want him to see and she knows she's not good but she's not evil. She's not. 

"I loved you so much, and I know you loved me too, so don't act like I was dying to step out at any given moment. You deserved better than that, than me, but I gave what I could."

He's quiet for a minute before placing his hand over hers. 

"You were there with me. Or you tried to be. I get that."

He does and doesn't, she can see that, can see him readjusting his picture of her in some way and knows as much as they know each other they still don't know, not really. 

But he is always looking for the light in her and that means something, even if he looks in the wrong places. 

She exhales. "I spent a long time trying to go a speed I thought I wanted, or that other people wanted. After everything that's happened I have no idea what my fucking speed is, OK?"

Shadow nods.

For a few moments she drives and they hold hands and things are quiet and she feels something warm and gentle and a little sad.

"He makes you happy?" 

How to answer that? What it happy? 

How is she to know if it's anything? Hell, 24 hours ago he was having a threesome with some death Loa while she fucked a stranger and now... 

They've never gotten through a single day without fighting about five different things at a minimum. Today is the first time she's even kissed the lunatic.

But he sees her. The light, yes, but more than that. He sees the broken bits and the bitchy bits and the bratty bits and says ok, fine, just own it. 

He demands accountability, self-honesty, and she's been about avoiding that but now... 

"He..." she glances to the back but he's just as still as ever. "He makes me not want to hide."

He releases her hand, she's not even sure he knows he's doing it, and she can see a wound in him opening. It's as if the poison and pus is draining, painful but leaving something that can bleed cleanly. Heal. 

They're quiet for a moment, not quite comfortable but also not at war. 

"Where can I take you?" 

As they continue down the road she feels something close and something new open and when she holds his hand again he doesn't pull away. 

***

After she and Shadow say their goodbyes (for now, because they both know they'll collide again) she stops to pick up food and a coffee and by the time midnight hits she’s pulling into a motel with a yawn. 

He still hasn't moved in the back seat. 

She briefly considers leaving him in the car but can't quite find the venom.

This time. 

The place she's found is reasonably well kept, clean and warm, and when she leaves him sprawled on the bed she decides to distract herself. 

The bath is hot and the bubbles from the cheap motel shampoo are surprisingly long lasting. She has finally scrubbed off the last of the dust, blood, and whatever organic matter comprised the gross bodies she’d obliterated. 

She lets the first bath drain and runs a new one, forgoing bubbles in favour of clear water. She sinks underneath, looking up at the ceiling and vaguely remembering a man standing over her and then police, and finds herself smiling. 

She let's herself soak and drift and when the water begins to cool she stretches. 

She steps out of the bath and stares at herself in the mirror. All motel bathrooms have started to look the same and she remembers him standing behind her to hold her upright, joking because she needed it more than she needed the reality of things.

Her clothes are covered in gore so she bins them with the same cavalier attitude she's developed for possessions in recent times. Only her boots are salvageable and she wipes them thoroughly in the sink before leaving them to dry. 

She fishes the coin from her socks before binning them, turning it in her fingers, around and around, and watches the ugly motel lights glint against it. 

She leaves the bathroom bare but for a few drops of water, and she isn’t surprised to find him sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees.

Sweeney looks tired but alert, examining the undershirt in his hands and running his fingers over the charred marks left by the shock wires. When he sees her he lets the shirt slip to the floor. 

He stares.

She stops in front of him and lets him look over her. Rather than reaching for her deep well of over confidence or her complete lack of shame as shield, she allows herself to feel the full weight of his stare.

He continues to stare.

She hands him back the coin and he looks at it, and then back at her, his expression strange. He sends it back to the hoard and then it's just them. 

He's in no rush, it seems, letting his eyes move over her lazily, hungrily. She briefly wonders how it’s possible to still be attracted to someone, as he so clearly is, whose gore and guts you have literally picked up from the road and forced back inside.

She tells herself not to question it.

It’s like he can tell her brain is going to strange places, grabbing her hand and pulling her close enough that she's standing between his legs. 

He touches her.

His fingers skim over her hips, slow and light at first, thumbs grazing her hipbones and fingers tracing against her waist. He traces over her stomach and back to her sides, running over her skin as if mapping it in his mind.

She shivers and he watches her, his voice rough. 

“That was some quick thinking back at Town’s.”

She keeps her arms at her sides and shrugs nonchalantly, as if the fingers he's tracing against her aren't making her heart beat faster, as if his hands aren't setting her on fire. He traces the outsides of her thighs, watching as a ticklish spot makes her spasm and then shiver, thumbs scanning back up the front of her legs and staying blessedly, cursedly, away from her centre.

 “We needed an out; it’s not like either of you were going to do it.”

He doesn't rise to the tartness of her voice, doesn’t take the bait, just nods sagely, skimming up to circle her ribcage and then back down again. He's not meeting her eyes, focused entirely on her arms, her chest, following the path his hands trace as if memorising it. 

When his fingers trace up her ribcage again they tighten minutely and a sigh slips from her throat before she can pull it back.

She's surprised at his restraint, given she's been ready to jump out of her skin, but apparently centuries will give you a little self-control, even if you don't normally use it. 

"Quite a day."

His tone is conversational, as if he's not watching her chest rise and fall, as if he's not leaning forward to press his nose against her throat and inhale her scent like she's dusted in cocaine. As if he’s not exploring every part of her he can find and sending sparks along her skin, her hands coming to rest lightly on his forearms as if to keep him there, there, there with her.

Her skin has broken out in goose flesh, the cold of the room and the heat of his hands making her breath quicken.

"Yes." 

The word comes out breathy and she sees his lips twitch before settling again into an expression of calm focus. 

He pushes her wet hair away from her face as he traces her cheekbones and she wonders if he's testing her, waiting to see if she'll bolt. 

"You two have a good chat?" 

Her eyes close without her realising as he brushes over her nipples and she flinches as the sensation pushes another quiet gasp from her throat. 

"You...heard that?" 

He shrugs, tracing her collarbones, thumbs moving down the edges of her breasts to stroke the underside before skimming over her nipples again as if to memorise the sound she makes. 

"Drifted in and out."

He’s not looking for more and she would be relieved if she wasn’t acutely aware of that painful tightening in her abdomen, his leisurely pace some kind of torture that she forces herself to stay in rather than pushing him to take her hard, rough, painfully.

Time for that later, she thinks, refusing to hide anymore.

He plucks at one nipple, studying her skin as her hands dart forward to steady against his shoulders, arching towards him as he repeats the movement again and again. He’s watching her reactions like a hawk, lapping up every sigh and whine as her breath picks up and becomes increasingly ragged.

The steady throb between her legs is making her thighs twitch and she's fighting very hard against the sounds that are trying to force their way out of her. His hands are getting rougher now, tracing the ridges of her spine and flaring over her hips as he lowers his mouth to her neck again.

One hand wraps fingers around the base of her throat, tilting her head towards him to get better access to her pulse, her collarbones, pressing dry kisses and then open mouthed bites against her skin as he slips the other hand over her stomach and down, down, way down.

When he finally touches her she can’t keep the low keen from escaping.

She swallows thickly as he strokes at her, thumb tracing her slit, circling her clit, and her breathing becomes ragged as he pulls her closer, rolling a nipple between his teeth and laving at her chest.

It’s not until she feels thick hair between her fingers that she realises she’s pulling him closer against her, shifting and writhing her hips in circles as he pulls her tighter and tighter to him and slides one and then another finger inside her.

She shifts against the stretch, finds his flat palm and pushes herself down.

She drops her head forward, pressing her forehead against his, eyes closed tight as she cries out. She pulls at his hair and digs her nails into his shoulders as she moves against him in tight, desperate movements, grinding herself into his palm as his fingers keep up that deep, slow stroking.

She braces a knee against his thigh, opening herself, and her legs begin to shake. She barely registers his fingers tangling in her hair, gripping the base of her neck, and her world begins to narrow, narrow, narrow, until that desperate throbbing becomes close to unbearable and her stomach tightens and then she comes apart with a hanging cry.

She’s vaguely aware of strong arms keeping her upright as she comes back to her body, nerves spent and alight all at once, aware of his mouth at her throat again. His hand is flat against her back, holding her against his chest as he murmurs into her skin.

"How'd you know I'd figure it out? The coin. How’d you know?" 

His voice is rough and he’s breathing heavily and her brain takes a moment to process his words. She feels weight behind them and she struggles past the heady languor in her limbs to process his question, feeling the open and raw emotion behind it.

When she finds it she feels something unfurling in her chest, and she edges closer, resting her hands on his shoulders as she slips into his lap, his hands spreading over her waist as she curls into his neck and rubs herself against him. 

She pulls back enough to look him in the eye and smiles. 

"I didn't."

It’s the truth; she’d hoped, obviously, but how could she have been sure? How could she know?

She wasn’t sure but had figured it was worth it anyway, because if the world had to end she wasn’t going out without that particular first under her belt, so to speak.

He's finally meeting her eyes, looking for something, and she grips his jaw and holds his gaze. She refuses to look away, lets him see her for everything she’s got, and she’s sees the moment he gets it.

She kisses him, giving him every buried ounce of sweetness and far more saltiness, wrapping herself around him and feeling him hard between her legs and knowing that here was where he was so here was she was and that was that.

And because she is who she is, she pulls back, hands on his shoulders and eyes open and innocent, her expression serious.

“We still have one problem.”

His pupils are blown and his mouth is open and she can feel him hard and heavy under her, twitching against her. She wonders if he actually has enough blood left to run both his brain and that thing at the same time (and knows, for sure, that he doesn’t).

He blinks as if he can clear the haze of lust he’s swimming in (and she's aware that he can't, not really) and she leans close as if delivering truly terrible, horrible, very bad news.

“No bed until you shower.”

He studies her another second before another grin splits his face and he stands, flinging her over his shoulder in one swift movement. The wind is knocked out of her and her ringing laughter fills the cheap motel room and by the time he’s throwing her into a cold shower and kissing her deep and wet before tasting her in every way possible, she knows where she stands with complete certainty.

She’s finally getting what she wants, and finds herself wanting more.

Chapter Text

The first time she fears it is because of another nightmare.

This time, it’s his.

It has been weeks since they escaped Town, and things have changed, and so when she sleeps it is against a broad chest and the sound of a beating heart. She sleeps well, vague or pleasant dreams only, and with the heavy languor that pours into ones limbs after a period of extended use, aching and lethargic, the smell of sex and whispered words in the air.

Their evening has been spent in a haze of sweat and salt.  

Literally.

There are old pizza boxes in the corner of the room and she has sent him, covered in bites and bruises and full of complaints, to the corner shop for candy, smokes, lube, and vodka multiple times. 

They're both naked, tangled in a mess of sheets and pillows, and the room is filled with heavy breathing and an occasional grunt. 

She chews a red vine, holding it between her teeth as she grins and moves her hand a little.

“Quit fucking cheating.”

“I don’t need to cheat!”

“Your hands are the size of a fucking doll there’s no way you should be winning this.”

“Not my fault you suck at thumb wars.”

"You're a fucking cheater."

He pulls her other arm away from his crotch where she's been distracting him and pins it against her stomach, still not quite managing to overpower her thumb, and she laughs at his angry growl. 

"Fuck it, this one's yours."

"Hah, two for three, your turn to get ice."

Sweeney lets out a long suffering sigh but she can see the smile underneath. She reaches for him but he rolls away from her, leaving her eyes narrowed and a frown on her face. 

He sits on the edge of the bed, reaching for his trousers and boots, and as she watches the muscles in his back shift with his movements an idea forms. She traces her hands up his spine and over his shoulders, pressing her nose into the base of his neck and inhaling with a happy hum.

He stands abruptly, the movement leaving her dangling from him and then falling back onto the bed.

“Hey!”

“No.”  

His voice is firm and he doesn’t turn as he marches to the door.

“But-“

“No.”

“Well why no-“

“Woman, I ain’t left this bed since you wanted those fucking red vines last night; you’re going to fucking kill me.”

Her voice is petulant.

“You wanted the red vines too.”  

The look he shoots her is disbelief and she rolls her eyes as he shakes his head and lights a cigarette.

She sits for a moment, watching as he smokes in the doorway. He’s wrecked, dark circles under his eyes, but he’s still watching her warily as if she’ll jump him at any moment.

Which, given the last few weeks, seems a bit unfair. He’s equally likely to jump. Maybe moreso.

Despite months of travelling with him on and off she's still surprised to find out just how much of his meathead is occupied with how much of her body he can map out with every inch of his. She has been interrupted mid-sentence in diners only to be dragged away to skeevy alley ways or back to their motels, reading a magazine at gas stations only to feel his eyes settling on her, found herself bent into so many shapes on and inside cars that she genuinely wonders if he gets hard when the wind changes.

Not that she's complaining. 

Maybe she hadn't realised before? Or maybe he'd just been better at dealing with it himself.

The last thought makes her sad for all those missed opportunities to interrupt and cock block him.

Still, she's hungry, and the red vines aren't cutting it, but the sight of him leaning against the doorway with a cigarette between his fingers and his flask at his mouth makes her lick her lips.

In fact… 

…she stretches up onto her knees on the bed, reaching her arms over her head.

She steps off carefully, walks towards him slowly. 

He's eyeing her with suspicion and more than a little interest and she wonders how stubborn he's planning on being tonight. 

The door is open and she sees a couple pass by, chatting quietly and then in shocked voices as they catch sight of her naked form in the doorway. 

She waves and he rolls his eyes, moving to the side to clear their view.

"Should see her bent over."

They hurry away, appalled, and for a second they both share in a grin over the mutual joy of being assholes.

She takes another step towards him and he crosses his arms, stepping back as she puts on a pout. 

He smirks, shaking his head.

“ Won’t work. I need rest. Fluids. Some form of fucking electrolyte.”

She shrugs.

"Fine."

He's right to be suspicious as she moves back to the bed, crawling onto it while holding his eyes, lowering herself down to her stomach and arching her back slightly as she rests her head on her crossed arms.

She closes her eyes.

She waits a minute and swears she can hear the moment he cracks.

She grins when she hears him swear under his breath, stamping out the cigarette and slamming the door shut behind him as he strides back to the bed.

Too easy. 

A good night, and when they finally fall asleep it is in a tangle of limbs and slight stickiness of sweat, lube, and fuck knows what else.

A sound pricks at the edge of her dreams. She’s under the moon, trees and wilderness, something vaguely familiar but largely dreamscape that is suddenly interrupted by a low moan, a plea. 

There’s a jostling then, a shifting, movement in the physical world as she slowly comes to consciousness, her slumber disturbed.

He’s not wrapped around her as he normally sleeps (gripping her to him like a favourite teddy, possessive and tight), nor is he sprawled on his back like when he's well and truly drunk, dead to the world and snoring so loudly she needs to struggle out of his iron grip and try to roll several hundred pounds of leprechaun over until the sound stops.

No, he's curled in on himself, fists clenching and legs shifting as if trying to pivot or run. 

She doesn’t precisely know what to make of the fearful muttering or the low pleas, the panicked, nonsensical cry that escapes him or the harried squirming as if he’s trying to flee.

She decides directness is the best option. She pushes him hard in the shoulder and speaks in a loud, clear tone with a smile.

"Sweeney, hey... GINGER MINGE! Wake up!" 

At her words he snaps upright with a roar of pain or anger or something in between, lashing out with a wide haymaker that misses her but send a lamp smashing into the wall. The suddenness of the movement makes her jump and gasp, and the sound draws his attention in her direction.

Directness is a mistake.

She figures that out pretty quickly. 

He's wild eyed; she can tell he's not seeing her, not processing her, and when massive hands grip her forearms she feels a rare moment of fear in his presence. 

He pulls her closer, his voice raw and desperate, horror and rage in his eyes and violence in his hands. 

"An féidir leat na cloigíní a chloisteáil? Ar mo thalamh!"

She doesn't wince when he shakes her, fights to hold herself still, tries to keep her voice calm and even. 

"No, no, Sweeney, hey it's me, it's Laura, you were having a nigh-" 

"Is mian leo mo chorp, mo thalamh!"

She can't understand him, shakes her head as his grip tightens and her silence makes him growl. It's an accusatory sound and he stands suddenly, pulling her up with him and slamming her into the wall hard enough that she winces.

"An raibh a fhios agat? AN RAIBH A FHIOS AGAT?" 

She feels tears slipping down her cheeks and her heart is hammering away, feeling his grip bruise and unable to move against the weight of him, the weight of all those ghosts behind his eyes.

She had never felt small in life, rarely felt frightened for her safety. She had sought risk, sought fear, sought opportunities for her heart to pound and her lungs to suck in extra oxygen. 

Since her resurrection she has felt differently, enjoying thrills when they are available but feeling hints of self-preservation, no bug spray needed. She hasn't thought too long on her mortality except to avoid death, has been too busy relishing and maintaining her life. Explosions, adventure, rough sex and wild nights against medical maintenance and the occasional plate of vegetables. 

Now, for the first time, she feels afraid. 

She feels like a tiny, skinny little woman with no leverage, no weight to throw around. 

She feels pinned by someone, something, large and terrifying and NOT HERE, not present and properly engaged with reality. He is not wryly amused or horny and handsy or angry and guilty or gleefully starting a fight.

He’s not hers.

She doesn't have the resources for this, doesn't know how to bring him out with words, so she falls back to a language they both speak fluently. 

She head-butts him, hard. 

He releases her to grip his nose, blood pouring like the cursing from his mouth, first in his mother tongue and then lapsing into English before clutching his head, dropping to his knees and keening.

It’s a broken, lost sound and she wants to make it stop. 

She thinks, for a moment, of leaving. Coming back in the morning and seeing if he’s slept it off, if he’s back in the world, if she can safely rail on him. She thinks about slipping away and spending the night in a diner somewhere nursing a coffee and trying not to think about the way her heart is hammering.

Instead she braces herself and reaches out with a shaking hand to brush his shoulder.

His head snaps up, nose leaking blood down over his mouth, and she flinches at the sudden movement. His eyes are starting to clear more with each passing second, and she makes another decision to be direct.

She steps towards him, cupping his jaw in her hands and forcing him to look at her.

There is no more fire in his eyes, only madness and grief, and she wonders what path his mind is dragging him down.

He speaks in hurried, confused tones. “Tá brón orm. Tá brón…I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She becomes aware of a quiet crooning, reassuring nonsense, and realises the sounds are coming from her.

She lets him wrap his arms around her midsection, pressing his face into her stomach and inhaling deeply, blood soaking into her shirt, his grip tight and possessive.

She finds her hands resting on his shoulders, then in his hair, gentle.

She lets him hold her, shifts them both back towards the bed and pulling him down to her so his face is buried in her neck. She runs light hands over his back and listens to his breathing begin to even out before falling into her own fitful slumber.

***

The next morning he is awake before she is, sitting far over on the other side of the bed, staring vacantly at the bruising on her forearm.

Not touching her.

The blank expression is giving way to guilt and she doesn’t want that. Doesn’t want to hear him apologise, or be reminded of her own weakness and susceptibility. She certainly doesn’t want to reassure him or tell him it’s ok, it was a nightmare, you were lost and in pain, and I doubt they have PTSD counselling that is cursed-former–deity-current-mythical creature appropriate.

She knows she should, knows she needs to, but she’s also shaken by last night, the feeling of helplessness making her angry and tense and something she wants to forget. She knows what she should say but the vulnerability required is just not available to her, not right now, not with last night stinging against her skin and pricking against her eyes.

She falls back on her own coping mechanisms, sex or isolation, whichever is easier.

Isolation isn’t easy, not really, she’s learned that by now, so she chooses sex.

She stands, hoping to distract him from wherever his brain wants to take them so she stands, stripping off her bloodied tank top and shooting him a look as she heads for the bathroom.

Normally he’d be seconds behind her, half stripped and reaching for her, but today she showers alone with plenty of space and a gnawing feeling in her chest. She checks her arms in the mirror, pale skin marred by mottled black and blue the shape of hands.

Hands skimming up her stomach, holding her gently, gripping her tightly while they fuck. That feeling of being stretched and twisted, the heady grip of his hands on her hips as he fucks her over the hood of whatever car they’ve stolen, the feeling of his fingers in her hair as she gags herself on him again and again, the way he holds her as she rides him, tight enough to bruise and loose enough to let her lash and writhe as she pleases.

The feeling of being held by someone strong enough that she can let go, someone who saw all of her.

The bruises are ugly, like blood pooling on a corpse.

She doesn’t want sex. She wants to hide.

She fears this; trying to stay in the open, stay honest when everything in her is telling her to run. When the risks she's facing might not be around heartbreak but genuine and physical as well, and how to reconcile that with what she wants, what she knows, what she feels is becoming a part of her far more quickly than it has any right to.

She fears this, them, him. 

She has spent so long running from admitting to fear, but she is trying so hard to stay.

When she comes back out he’s gone.

***

He doesn’t return all day, nor that night, and she pays for another two nights to be safe.

Normally she'd just leave but she can't bring herself to wait for chance this time.

The bruises are stark and slow to fade, and she distracts herself with television, with a trip to a local bar, with a trip to an oversized book store, with an afternoon spent wandering through a shoddy antique shop filled with things slightly too broken to be considered special any more. 

She has cold baths and resists the urge to see how long she can stay under the water and feels almost proud. 

After he stays away a full 36 hours she caves, finding a chipped bowl in the cupboard and leaving a bag of candy and miniature bottle of whisky from the motel mini bar under the window sill. She checks it three times before crawling into bed, feeling foolish and frustrated.

She wakes to the sound of the door opening, and as her eyes adjust in the gloom she is sure she's still dreaming because whatever is standing there is made of fire and light and so bright it's hard to look at, like staring at the sun.

She rubs her eyes and then the silhouette is dark, eyes still on fire, and she feels a genuine and horrifying bolt of fear in her gut.

What has she called?

She flicks on the light by the bed and then in the doorway it's just Sweeney, shadows on his face and exhausted, mad eyes trained on her like she's the only thing in the room.

They watch one another and neither is hiding and there are implications to that.

Hiding lets people pretend, to an extent, and isn't that a mercy sometimes? Isn't it a kindness to live in one space and leave parts of you in the dark, not denied but not fully acknowledged, if you can even remember and realise them at all.

There is no hiding here, not with the bruises still fading on her arms and his cries in her ears and the knowledge that she is just this, just Laura, painfully and wholly so.

She stares at him for a moment and knows she's being given some kind of choice and that if she were to turn out the light now he would go without question. She knows then that she hasn't been dreaming, that she saw what she saw, that she's glimpsed something she'll rarely see but from which she is, sadly, always going to be at risk. 

Perhaps if she were anyone else, she would shrink away. Excuse herself from this world of magic and nonsense and irrational danger. Perhaps she'd go back to a real life and seek out safety in the arms of a home, a husband, a family, and job, none of which would put her at risk. This is her out; she could take it and slip back into the world she'd always known, start anew with a clean slate. Somewhere she wasn't a cheater and a dead wife and a dead girl and a murderer many times over. Somewhere she wouldn't need to fear the person sharing her bed would succumb completely to madness or memory and splinter violently. 

He's waiting.

She rolls her eyes at the drama, pulls the blanket next to her back, a clear instruction. 

She doesn't bother to watch and wait, flicking out the lamp and lying down. She hears the door close and his heavy boot steps and then the weight of him makes the mattress screech. 

When he slips in he stays physically distant. She waits for a few minutes and then huffs, rolls over and wraps around his broad back, pressing her nose into his neck and humming sleepily into his skin. She feels him freeze and then start to relax, slowly, matching her breaths to his own as he drifts away. 

The next morning he hands her the coin, the one that had lived in her chest for so long, the one that now rests safely back in the hoard except for the occasional boost for her.

“Dude we're in bed not under attac-"

“It’s yours now.”

The words have power, she can feel it, feel the metal in her hand flare against her skin.

She can’t speak for a minute, mind flying back to him kicking open the door to a different motel room several lifetimes ago (for both of them) and demanding it back.

“I’m not the King of America.”

“Fuck off.”

He’s quiet for a moment, staring at the ceiling, and she lets him be, refuses to push, just this once.

“To balance it all out.”

It’s as close to an explanation he’s going to give.

He doesn’t look at her and she knows then that he's trying to give her something to level the playing field between them, something to set them on equal footing. She knows this is important to him, can feel in her bones how he needs her to be here on her terms, wholly and completely.

Until that night she hadn't known the ground would need levelling, that her terms were up for discussion, but the weight of the coin in her palm and the flush of strength against her skin makes her smile.

Her choice.

"Thank you."

She hands him back the coin.

“Keep it safe for me.”

She knows he will, knows she now has something in the hoard, and is warmed in a way she didn’t know she wanted to be warmed. Warmed in a way that she wants to share.

He stops talking then, reaching for her and taking her hungrily, kissing her with 3 days’ worth of frustration and then staring at her with wild eyes as she rides him. She is relieved that he holds back nothing, bruises, bites and all. She pushes aside the other night, letting herself feel every part of him, every part of her, and when she comes she knows he stares at her, drinking in everything she is and glutting himself on it.

He comes with her name on his lips like it's a promise. 

She slumps over him, sated and relieved as his heartbeat slows and his breathing evens out. She sits up, stroking a hand over his face and smiling as he twitches against her the unexpected tenderness.

She doesn't bother to keep the mockery from her voice. 

"You liiiiike me."

“Fuck off.”

She waits until he’s deeply asleep, showers and then pulls her book out from under the bed, sounding the words out in a careful, quiet whisper.

“Dúisigh. Teacht ar ais chugam. Tar ar ais.”

Chapter Text

“Because I fucking lov-“

And then she’s gone.

In her defence, she hadn’t meant to be gone.

And perhaps that’s why we should rewind a little bit.

So, a leprechaun and a former zombie walk into a bar.

Nope, further than that. 

She hasn't said it. 

She thinks she wants to say it.

Well…she’s thought about it so that probably means she wants to say it…right?

Laura is going mad…madder…maddest? No, not maddest (certainly not with him around). But she still feels at least a little bit mad because she doesn't think she needs to say it and is getting really pissed that it's not being said.

She’d said it before.

Not to him, obviously, fuck no.

But she’s said it.

Buck naked and lined in autopsy scars, fresh out of the bath and just warm enough that she might not feel dead if Shadow had wanted to touch her.

That has to count for something, right? She’s back from the dead, here in the flesh (rotting though it may be).

She had kissed him then, felt her heart thump away once, unaware that who and what he was outside of her was the reason more than some super special internal reaction to true love™.

“You know? I don’t really know much more now than I did while I was alive…” She had rambled, winding along a pathway trying to quantify what it was to start feeling after so long without feeling in a space where all your feeling seemed tied, irrevocably, to someone you had hurt so badly.

“But I do know that I love you.”

So she has said it since dying, and meant it, insofar as one can appropriately capture the feeling of coming back to life, watching your body decay, and seeing your former husband as a literal pillar of fucking light beacon that seems to call you into its wake.

As far as the stories go, that’s love, right?

Except it’s not, it isn’t, and only when you’re actually honest with yourself can you really get that through your head. Or, if you’re very lucky/unlucky, you might have a leprechaun who is apparently getting rapidly reacquainted with a long forgotten power to do it for you.

“Why do men like anal sex?” Fuck she misses sex. “Because woman don’t.”

She doesn’t bother to respond because she’s already pissed at being made aware of her cigarette and vomit mouth. The anger is warring with the absence of feeling anywhere else and the painful memory of feeling horny and wild and warm, which is a very weird combination.

He’s on a roll, and in hindsight it’s his weird, angry way of trying to be encouraging, and yet all she wants to do is put her cigarette out in his eye.

Slowly.

“But your kind of love, dead wife, is the grandest butt fuckin’ of ‘em all.”

Really slowly.

 “You can love somebody even when you know they don’t like it. Even when you know they don’t want it. That’s some profound knowledge for you right there.” He leans back, pleased with himself. “Wrapped up in a quaint sexual metaphor.”

“I don’t know. I really like anal sex.”

She hadn’t been lying (and had enjoyed, immensely, proving that since). But it had been a distraction, a way of deflecting from the broader reality that he was right, that her kind of love was dogged and unwanted, and in the end, non-existent.

Still, saying you love someone is generally meant to be a good thing, as far as she can tell.

She had said it lots while she was alive.

She had meant it less, but sometimes it was true.

When she had scratched Dummy behind the ears and received a purr in return and felt it echoing in her chest she had thought it and known it and meant it.

When Audrey had listened and laughed and called her on her shit, long before even knowing what all that shit was, she had told her she loved her and felt it.

When Shadow brought her a book his mother had loved she had said she loved him and meant it.

So maybe she hadn’t meant it when people needed her to mean it, but she meant it when she meant it, and in a world where she was living a narrative that wasn’t her own maybe that was as close to authenticity as she could come.

Or maybe that's bullshit. Who knows?

Since her fortuitous return to life, however, she has not said those words to anyone.

(That’s not entirely true; there was, of course, the double date she had forced him to attend with her, Salim, and the Jinn where she had drunkenly warned the Jinn to treat Salim like the prince he was because she loved his big dark eyes and they were too sad even when he was happy. It must have been relatively effective because, before Sweeney and the Jinn had turned the bar into a battle ground, the latter had nodded once, curtly but genuinely, and she had felt heard. But perhaps that’s a story for another day.)

Which is fine, of course. Not everyone wants to say it.

She certainly doesn't want to say it and have to deal with reverberations. Besides, does it even need to be said? After everything they've been through it can't need to be said. 

So she'd be fine with the whole not saying it... 

...but he hasn't said it either. 

People are meant to say it. She knows that. That’s a script older than old and she is pissed that it’s not being followed. It's one thing for her not to say it...what the fuck is his excuse? 

This is the thought that has been progressingly intensifying for some time now. 

Which brings us to here.

***

So, a leprechaun and a former zombie walk into a bar (stay with them, this will get weird). 

They are mid fight, as evidenced by the fact that the big one is waving his arms wildly and growling about mood swings, and the little one is rolling her eyes and striding to the bar to order only one drink.

Laura is willing to admit (in her head, at least) that she is behind the fight.

In fact, she's been behind most fights for the past week. 

It's never anything particularly useful or valid.

She's deliberately chosen food she knows he hates (hipster nonsense is always a winner), made him stop at tourist attractions so commercial he's looked ill, and once refused to pull over to visit a national park (that one had been hard, she wanted to see the Hot Springs).

It's not so far from her usual messing with him for funsies that she can't excuse it, but it's been repetitive, malicious, more than a little on the nose. 

In fact it's been cold, bitchy, and immature but she's on this path now and feels so angry about something that every opportunity to test his willingness to put up with her is fair game. 

Hell, after one particularly wild session, with her legs literally still shaking, she'd asked him if they could celebrate St Patrick's day. 

He'd left without a word and come back hours later, sober and silent. 

That had sucked. 

It's not his fault, she knows that. Knows she's pushing things hard and he hasn't exactly done anything to deserve it.

Maybe it's because sometimes she wakes up and finds herself tangled in him, or because he lets her nap on him however she pleases even though she falls asleep like a cat, half liquid and stretched at impossible angles. Maybe it's that feeling of security in knowing when he'll catch her and having it confirmed again, and again.

Maybe it was when they'd decided to make their own dinner for once and a grocery trip was in order. 

They'd wandered, plucking random foods, in no rush. 

She'd picked up random things just to hear his stupid views on them. 

"Why do you think they call it spam?" 

"Because salt pig doesn't have the same ring to it?" 

She'd laughed and then refused to let him put more than 3 bags of candy in the basket. 

When they'd got to the counter they'd been bickering over spiced ham or a super secret conspiracy name like Standardised Pork-like Amalgamated Meat. 

She'd pulled out his wallet from his jacket as he babbled.

"Spiced with fuckin' what? Hormen was a nutter, it's another attempt to make working class folks sick."

The cashier had smiled at them. 

Laura's stomach had dropped. 

She knew that smile. She used to get that smile sometimes when she was with Shadow, indulgent and knowing, the smile people give you when they think they've caught on to something special about the two of you and want to enjoy the fantasy. 

She'd felt guilty about it briefly back then before she'd started to take it as a good sign. 

"Well aren't you two just a picture."

She felt frozen for a moment because that's the last thing she thinks of them as. A picture? Not even a photograph. Maybe a messy finger painting. 

He studied the cashier and then Laura for a moment before excusing himself. 

"One sec."

The cashier kept talking and smiling that indulgent smile. 

"Can tell by the way you two were laughing dearie, there's a lot of love there. You married?" 

She'd felt that rising panic she doesn't feel any more because what kind of an insane person asks that? They weren't, or if they were it wasn't like a normal thing, and also they weren't so shut up. 

His return was a blessing and then the usual curse. 

He tossed several packs of lube on the pile and grins. 

"There, all good now."

Laura could breathe again. 

The cashier had looked satisfyingly horrified and they'd laughed as they'd headed back to the car.

Later that night she'd wondered what he thought of the whole thing and found herself unwilling to ask. 

Maybe it was the other day when they'd run into Salim and the Jinn in need of a car. 

Salim watched her root around in Sweeney’s pocket as he lights a cigarette, pulling out brochures and some random notes and an unopened packet of red vines. She paused at that to look at him curiously. 

He shrugged without looking back at her.

“You never know.”

She stared at him a moment longer before continuing her search, grinning when she pulled out a set of keys and turning to Salim. 

“Here, this one is about three blocks South. Nothing wrong with the engine but the radio is broken.”

If Salim didn't think that was enough of a reason to dump a perfectly good car he didn't say anything, but he'd been smiling.

"Thank you."

She knew that smile. And unlike the cashier, Salim was not insane. Or was the right type of crazy. Who knows. 

That night she'd refused to let Sweeney touch her and pretended to sleep early. 

Whatever the reason, the words are getting increasingly difficult to hold back and frankly she doesn’t like feeling pressured by her own throat.

And she wouldn't need to feel this fucking annoyed about it but for the fact that he hasn’t said it and even though obviously she doesn’t want or need him to…it’s still fucking unacceptable that he hasn’t.

And why hasn’t he?

She has spent the past week feeling increasingly irritated because honestly this is bullshit – you are meant to say you love someone.

She could ask him directly. He’ll answer anything, she knows that now, but her memory of relationships from her first time around says that you shouldn’t have to ask this shit, they should just say it, and while she doesn’t want to romantic moment, it’s something to which she feels entitled.

Maybe. Something like that at least.

She sips her vodka as he orders his own. 

“You gonna tell me what’s actually happening in that loopy brain of yours?”

She doesn’t look at him.

“You are literally the last person I want to talk to right now.”

He swigs his drink and moves away muttering to himself, plonking at a table and lighting a cigarette.

“You know, sweetheart, plenty of other men would be more than happy to show you a good time.”

The man addressing her is so average and boring looking he might as well be wallpaper, but he’s got that glint in his eye that says something to prove, and he’s not exactly unattractive.

Normally she wouldn't be bothered entertaining thing. Not that they don't step outside, but flirting with some random at a bar while they're fighting seems different somehow. Colder. 

She sighs, struggling with the reality of impulse control. She glances over at Sweeney and sees him staring and she feels herself take a giant step backwards because fuck it, it's not like there's anything set in stone. 

She smiles prettily (and she knows it's pretty) at the man. 

Turns out his name is Steve (of course), he's in accounts (great), and he likes Dave Matthews Band (sure). 

She lets him talk to her, pretends to find him interesting, lets him slide a hand up her thigh and refuses, point blank, to let her eyes stray to check if they're being watched. 

His eyes are red and he shoots her a sloppy smile (he's had three beers by her count). 

"Thought...thought you might've been with the tall guy." 

She stares at him for a moment because she has no response to that.

Yes, of course I am.

No, I mean kind of but when does that become a thing thing?

Maybe, this is literally just an attempt to piss him off, hope you can take a punch. 

He doesn't seem to notice or care about her lack of response and she's briefly reminded of 

"You wanna...you wanna get outta here?" 

She turns now to look at Sweeney, finishing his whisky and not bothering to pretend he hasn't been staring. There's an anger in his eyes but more than that, he looks disappointed somehow. 

Asshole. 

She turns to her companion and gives him another pretty smile to remember her by. 

"Actually, I gotta go. Thanks for the drink."

She finishes her glass and catches Sweeney’s eye before striding out, finding the vodka not helping her already foul mood.

The man from the bar moves to follow her outside, only to find himself pushed firmly into a wall, hard enough that he slumps down.

"Hey!" 

The big man moving past him doesn’t stop, doesn't even pretend he's relevant enough to address.

She hears Sweeney stride out behind her, bottle in one hand and anger in his eyes. 

“Will you just fuckin’ bail if that’s what you’re aiming for?”

She whirls around, shock on her face and her own anger compounding. 

"What?!" 

He gestures at her whole being and doesn't bother hiding how pissed off he is. 

“You’ve been jumpy for a fuckin’ week; I ain’t holding you here, you got somewhere else to be then go.”

“I’m not fucking jumpy! I'm...you think I'm looking to leave? Fuck y-“

He grabs her forearms and she glares up at him as he growls at her.

“Then why the fuck d’you keep pushing buttons?”

She says it. 

The words aren’t right, they don’t even want to come out at this moment, but she drags them up because she’s angry and needs to throw something to knock him off his stride and maybe if she throws them hard enough they’ll come back to her.

“Because I fucking lov-“

And then she’s gone.

She’s gone and he’s left standing there, arms outstretched and still holding on to someone who is no longer in front of him, and realising with a dawning horror that one thing has happened and another is about to happen.

Firstly, he’s sent her to the hoard.

Secondly, the man from earlier is back, and is swinging a bat so hard into his face that it knocks him out.

***

She can feel the atoms of her being trying to hold her body together against a vibration so intense it makes her scream. She swallows against the feeling of being pulled in a thousand different directions at once. It settles, somewhat, but the twilight space in which she finds herself is somehow both incredibly cramped and hugely vast at the same time.

She fights the urge to vomit.

She looks around.

It’s not a cavern, nothing quite so tangible, but she’s able to see around and make out some things. 

There’s gold.

She can’t really quantify it but every area of her vision is overwhelmed by gold, bright and shining and sparkling in the twilight space, so much more than could ever really be fathomed, so much more than anyone could really count.

She picks up a piece and sees the familiar marking and it all clicks.

The hoard.

He has sent her to the fucking hoard and when she finds her way out she is going to light him on fire. 

"Fuck!" 

She spins slowly. 

"I don't know if your can FUCKING HEAR ME! But when I get out of here I swear I'm going to tear out your spine and WEAR IT AS A BELLLT!" 

Her screams are unanswered and she huffs in exasperation before glancing around. 

Still, while she is here…she wanders.

There’s jewellery scattered about the various piles, some sleek and modern, but much more old and in various states of repair and decay. She picks up a crown, a braided band, rings and necklaces scattering over her hands.

She finds lighters, flasks with various levels of liquid sloshing around. She finds what has to be a pirate chest and what could be a magic lamp and what is definitely a very complicated looking pile of...autographs? She makes out a few musicians and finds books of poetry and art and enough erotic lithographs that she is fairly sure he has a problem.

She finds wood working tools, marvels over bits of sculpted pine and birch carved into delicate and complex animals and people, an entire avalanche of crowbars.

Scattered throughout are motel supplies, cheap shampoos and sewing kits. A taser that crackles at her threateningly, she finds a crack pipe and several hundred neon bracelets in a pile. 

She decides to make the most of her time.

There are books older than she thought books could be. Some she can understand, others are less words and more complex symbols and pictures.

She amuses herself trying on various pieces of gold jewellery, arm bands and vintage rings, some ancient necklaces beautifully wrought and carelessly piled.

She finds herself tidying occasionally, pulling random things out from under others. More bottles of alcohol than she can count, some cigarettes, what she thinks is candy bars but isn’t willing to risk herself on. She stacks books, orders tools, and lays out jewellery carefully.

She’s not sure how long she’s been here (currently picking her way through old cooking supplies, a collection of knives that make her eyes pop, and what looks like piles of clothing that she is really not willing to touch).

She finds glasses she can recognise from Coq Noir, several med kits, a motel card she recognises from escaping Town's last time. She finds brochures from places they've been and the ID for Ibrahim bin Irem's taxi, a tank top with blood on it left by a man having a nightmare. 

She picks up a familiar milkshake container, tacky inside with chocolate milk, and smiles.

That dragging pull is building again. She has barely begun to explore the space and considers fighting it but she also very much wants to harm him.

The pull builds and the pressure begins to mount and she feels her ears pop and a scream erupts from her throat and then.

She’s back.

It’s a motel room and he’s gripping her forearms. He’s got a fading bruise on his head and eyes wide with shock and relief. His expression changes as he takes in her anger.

“Fuck…”

She head butts him and he goes flying across the room. He groans as he sits up.

“There she is.”

She walks towards him very slowly.

“You. Sent. Me. To. The. Hoard.”

He nods. “Aye…thought you’d be a might pissed about that.” He squints at her. “Seem to have made yourself comfortable though.”

She reaches up and feels the crown on her head, some of the jewellery around her neck and the milkshake container in her hand, and shrugs.

“Had to pass the time somehow.”

He looks sheepish. “And…just how much time did you pass?”

She narrows her eyes because a question like that doesn’t line up with the few hours or less she felt she was there. She slowly takes off her random items and drops them on the bed where his eyes follow them like a bird wanting to return things to its nest.

“Why?”

“Well, time passes a bit differently there so…”

“…how long?”

He swallows. “Bout a week and a half.”

“WHAT?”

She picks up the heavy crown and throws it at him, hard. “I was gone a fucking fortnight?”

He grabs and sends it back to the hoard before it can hit him.

“Ain’t like I fuckin’ meant to, never sent anyone there and I couldn’t get you back because spent most of the week fuckin’ loopy because your bar beau introduced me to a fuckin’ bat!”

He points to the fading bruise and she shakes her head.

“This is insane how could you-“

She can see his sheepishness switching to anger.

“This is your fault!”

Her eyes pop wider and she rounds on him. “I beg your fucking pardon?”

He pulls himself up from the floor and his own anger is spilling out, almost knocking her off this lovely high horse she’s been enjoying.

“You act like you want me disappeared and then drop some shit on my like that? I was surprised! Don’t go fuckin' sayin' that to-“

“I was telling you a loved you!”

"I NEVER FUCKING ASKED YOU TO!"

She's thrown off her track by the volume and intensity he throws at the words. 

The pang of hurt hits her much harder than she thought possible, a squirming combination of embarrassment and pain, the sting of rejection and a battered ego and realising that someone isn’t in the same place that you are.

He seems to realise how loud he was and runs a hand over his face in exasperation. 

"I never...you don't need to say that shit."

She clutches her anger to her chest like a shield.

"WELL WHY NOT?"

He stares at her in disbelief and literally can't speak and she advances on him.

"Why wouldn't you want to fucking hear that? Aren't people meant to like hearing that? PEOPLE LIKE HEARING THAT!"

"Do you?"

The question is quiet and honest.

She stops dead because no she doesn't because when she hears it she knows it means responsibility and obligation and someone else’s emotions are now landed firmly in her lap.

She knows that saying it in the past has felt like filling the space with what's meant to go there. 

He does that “there you go” head tilt that makes her want to force his hat down his throat but she can’t argue.

He exhales heavily and he seems tired in a way he hasn’t for weeks now. She wonders what it cost him to send her there in shock, what it cost him to drag her back.

“Don’t do that shit because you think you’re meant to, or ‘cause you’re looking to win; that ain’t what this is.” He lights a cigarette. “Might seem like a big romantic moment in the books but that’s someone else’s story.”

She doesn’t bother to hide her frustration and her hurt and his expression isn’t unkind but he’s being his usual, far too honest self as he continues.

“I watched you, before all this. Before the failed heist, all of it. Saw you saying the lines in someone else’s play. I’m not up for that.”

She swallows and feels a tear on her cheek and wants to wipe it away but refuses.

“So, what…you don’t feel like that?”

He stares at her, squinting through smoke and speaking plainly, almost defensive. 

“You took that potion. You know where I stand.”

It’s one of the rare times he addresses her resurrection and the cause behind it and she lets that settle over her, throwing her off the anger and entitlement she’s felt the last week.

She picks up the milkshake container off the bed and smiles to herself before handing it back. He takes it carefully and sends it back, along with the jewellery she hands him.

There’s a strange feel to the room; like a storm that has passed but left something intangible in its wake, a fight unfinished but without anything to return to, adrenaline that hasn’t been used nor properly expelled.

It’s discomforting and she doesn’t like it. Neither does he, apparently, heading to the door.

“I’m getting’ food.”

He turns back.

“We ain’t made for that kinda story, love. Don’t write lines that won’t fit.”

He leaves without looking at her and she stares at the door for a long time, and wonders what happens next.

Chapter Text

Ever since her venture to the hoard, she has felt a settling against her.

She had wanted to say it in her fit of pique and he’d disavowed her of that notion rather effectively. He was right, she knows; she’s not so selfish she can’t see that saying something like that just to win or hurt or, worse, meet expectations wouldn’t be acceptable to him. When she’d said it in life it had so very often been as a result of need, or impulse, rather than something that wanted to be said.

But that was before.

Ever since he’d called her on it and pointed out that his own stance on the whole thing had been confirmed by the success of that potion, she finds herself with the words in her belly.

Not because she feels owed or wants a reaction, they’re just there.

After the hoard they’d spend a day in some sort of horrific non-fight, and she had no idea how to bring things out.

When it had grated on them too much she had suggested she meet him in Chicago in a week, and he’d been quick to take up the offer to let his ever moving feet wander away a while.

She wasn’t hurt. It had given her time to think.

She has spent the week meandering her way through the Little Rock hot springs, exploring parts of the park before moving up through St Louis and on to Illinois. She has spoken to as few people as possible and by the time she finds him in a department store she feels more grounded. He looks slightly worse for wear but she supposes being that far away from the coin will do that do him.

His expression is nervous and she feels a squirm in her belly, wonders how to find solid ground with him.

Before she can say anything, however, the mocking laughter of a thousand phones locking onto them makes their ears ache. New Media’s smiling face appears on TV screen in a shop window and her eyes pixelate and return hypnotically.

“Uh uh uh, you didn’t think I’d let you go without a goodbye, did you?”

Sweeney shifts from foot to foor and she glares at him, recognising the guilt.

"What did you do?”

He gears up quickly. “Hey, while you were on your little quest for peace I was fuckin’…” he trails off and she sees him trying to come up with something that makes it look less like he stumbled into and then exacerbated a turf war. “…busy.”

She shakes her head and wants very much to hit him but they can’t spare the time for him to whine about it.

The building foundations are shaking as everything from the ticket machine to CCTV cameras begin to malfunction and take the entire grid with them and as the windows blow she feels a genuine spark of fear. The phones are letting off an ear splitting siren and they clamp their hands over their ears. They’re surrounded and there are civilians everywhere and she can’t see a clear way out of this, not with the building coming down around them.

His hand grabs hers and before she can tell him it is not the fucking time she turns to him and her words die in her throat.

She sees the idea form behind his eyes and shakes her head, trying to get her hands away from his before he does something incredibly stupid. She shouts over the sounds.

"No, NO, don't you fucking dar-" 

And she's gone.

That horrible feeling of vibrating into pieces shakes her entire being and when she opens her eyes to find herself back in the hoard she screams.

Last time she’d plucked her way through relatively politely, nosey but tidying up at least. This time she rages and yells and gets a miniscule amount of satisfaction from knocking over pile after pile of gold coins. She generally tries to make a nuisance of herself because this is fucking bullshit. 

Of all the times for him to decide to play white knight and completely take a choice away from her he’s done it like this. She feels so angry she could murder him and on top of that…she’s afraid.

Afraid of him getting hurt and unable to retrieve her and having to find her way back through some fuckass crazy treasure dimension.

Afraid of him getting hurt and unable to retrieve her.

Afraid of him getting hurt.

She holds on to the anger but the fear makes it hard to breathe and she struggles to keep it together.

She shifts back into existence and he's there, holding her tightly against him. His face is bloodied up and she feels him flinch when she twists against his ribcage but she can’t see any other damage.

He grins at her and she slaps him, hard, before flicking him in the ribcage, expletives pouring from her in a furious stream.

“Fuck you you fucking lunatic don’t you ever fucking do that to me again I should fucking tear you in two you goddamn sonofa-“

“I fucking save your ass and this is-“

She keeps her voice calmer and more serious, refusing to let him turn this onto her and ignoring the fact that she’s now standing on the bed just to avoid him getting to tower over her.

"I am not the fucking princess here and you're no fucking hero so-" 

He’s staring at her with disbelief and he doesn’t fucking get it, she can see that.

“You ungratef-“

"-so that's not how this fucking works, OK? We get by. Us."

He freezes and she grips his jaw harder than necessary to make sure he hears every word she has to say, to make sure this is the last time he takes that choice from her.

“You don’t get to decide when I’m out of this. Until I decide that, we’re in it together. Understand?”

He stares at her a moment before nodding, and she's so surprised by the lack of argument she forgets her anger. She dismounts the bed and heads to the bathroom to shower and he stands in place for a moment watching her.

It’s enough that she can feel his eyes on the back of her neck and she turns, unable to read his expression and all too annoyed by the day’s events.

"What?" She flaps a hand at him. "Quit lurking over me."

He's quiet the rest of the day but unlike other times he goes quiet he seems to find every opportunity to be near her. He loiters in the bathroom while she brushes her teeth. He follows her silently to the counter while she orders food at a diner, keeps a hand on her thigh while eating and again when they drive back. 

When they get back to the motel he reaches for her and she lets him, kissing him back with fervour as he pulls her to the bed and spends hours on every inch of her.

By the time he’s on top of her, staring down as she crests against him and following her over the edge, she can feel the words in her bones, aching and glorious.

Tomorrow she’ll go back to only wanting contact when she’s in the mood and even then entirely on her terms.

But for now, as he buries his head in her neck and his too warm, way too large and frankly too heavy body swamps her, she strokes his hair and presses a kiss to his temple.

For now she lets him hold her close and the words are a lump in her throat. 

Whatever happened that night dispels entirely any leftover storm between them, but now she is struck with just how much the words seem to want to be said.

And, as most of us know, when a thing wants to be said it finds a way to be said.

She nearly says it the day they leave from New York, having done a favour for Nancy and curried one in return. She’s still not sure why the trickster had bargained for water from Urd’s Well but they had retrieved it and gotten a story for their troubles.

She is exhausted in a way she hasn’t experienced in a long time, sprawling in the passenger side and slipping immediately into sleep.

When she wakes she’s surrounded by blankets, warm and comfortable in yet another motel. She hears the shower running and she drifts back off to sleep feeling the words tickling over the back of her mind. 

She doesn't say it, but when he comes to the bed and drags her half asleep over to him, taking advantage of her exhaustion to overrule her usual desire for sprawling space, she finds herself smiling against his arm. 

She stops herself from silently mouthing the words against his skin by biting him hard enough that he yelps.

She almost says it one night when the starlight is too much to resist. 

The sweat is still cooling on the skin, the night air chilling her as she lays on the hood of a car, shirt pulled down to expose her chest and skirt pulled up around her thighs. She is tired and sated and the car is cool underneath her still heated body, grazing on her shoulders and a burning in her thighs from moments earlier.

She stretches languidly and admires the stars. 

They prick and sparkle against the inky blackness, a blanket of brightness over the car, and she feels illuminated and achy. 

He has walked away to relieve himself, humming something tuneless and comforting, and the air is warm enough that she doesn't rush to dress as she watches the sky. 

He returns and leans against the car, she hears him lighting a cigarette as it groans against his weight. 

"Ain't a bad view, that."

His voice is still slightly ragged and she smiles with her eyes closed. 

They are on the edge of cliff face with Grand Canyon below them and the night sky above is a riotous milky way. They're parked at a copse of trees, just off the main road, an interlude on the way to their next bit of mayhem.

She sits up and takes the cigarette he offers, elbows on her knees as she takes in the sight below them. She was never overly sentimental in life, not in the way others felt comfortable with, but there is something deeply stirring about the sheer size and depth of the canyon, something haunting and vast about the sky opened over it, as if she's looking into something not often shared.

A window into the imminent.

She feels small and huge all at once, a tiny part of something so massive she can't fathom it, comforting and haunting. He's right, it's a stunning view. 

"It's beautiful."

"Yep, that too."

She turns to pull the shoulders of her dress back up and pauses when she meets his eyes. 

He's staring. 

Things click into place and she feels warm, like if she was a different person she might blush. 

The words pool in her gut like hot chocolate, rich and warm and waiting, like they want her to open her mouth so they can send sentimental steam up her throat to perfume the night's sky. 

Instead she stands, dress pooling at her feet, enjoying the night's breeze against her skin and stretches out her arms towards the sky with the canyon behind her. 

(She can't know, of course, that the starlight has turned her onto something that glows, can't see the way her mocking eyes shine, can't see how much her face gives away. She can't see herself turned as close to Fae as possible, ethereal and otherworldly and all too ready for mischief. She can't...he can.). 

He doesn't stop staring, or bother to hide the desire, the warmth, in his tone.

“Could stare at it a while.”

She rolls her eyes and swallows the words down and calls him a loser. 

In return he steals her dress and holds it up high until she's laughing and threatening his balls with imminent danger and the words settle back down to the bottom of the canyon. 

She wants to say it when they’re in New Orleans, now a regular call through on their strange journey that does not appear to have an end.

The first time they came back was during Mardi Gras, and Laura had discovered what admitting your truth really got you in Loa territory.

When she’d woken up, Brigitte’s teeth marks on her thighs and an ache in her back (among other places) from being pinned between her wild eyed Irishman and Baron Samedi, she’d wondered how exactly you were meant to drink coffee across from people who had seen you falling and splintering.

Turns out it’s the same way you drink coffee with anyone else, but with slightly more sly grinning and much less small talk. 

Luckily he’s a creature of at least some habits, and the Loa have an unabashed soft spot for him and by extension, her (she’s not sure when she became an extension, or a part of a package deal, but apparently now she was, and she’s yet to find herself really minding). They stop in regularly, and are often wanted.

This time they’re back needing the name of a contact and while it’s a dead end, they are in no rush (she is never dealing with Tech Boy again, the little shit is too fucking annoying, but she owes Bilquis big time...plus she'd gotten to slap him hard enough that he teared up. Sweeney had spent the rest of the trip so handsy they’d nearly missed their mark, twice). 

They’ve been put to work again and Laura has found herself enjoying every second. She has missed the push and pull and din of laughter and the ribald jokes.

At one point she turns and meets Sweeney’s eyes as she picks up empty glasses. 

He cocks a brow and gives her a smile and she feels herself returning it without any challenge or mockery. His smile drops and he stares and she’s quick to give him the finger lest she need to deal with more sapping Irish songs when he got drunk later.

She loves it here.

She loves Samedi's flashing smile and Brigitte's sharp tongue and how Sweeney relaxes and grins, flicking bottles in the air with a showman's flare as he mixes drinks. 

She loves his eyes searching her out, loves getting to sass him in between serving, loves seeing him flirting and enjoying himself.

She loves realising that she’s wanted here as well, the Baron alternating between eye-fucking her into next week and teasing her for her terrible cooking, Maman showing her the heady drumming of the dead and then laughing as Laura chokes on rum with hot peppers.

When the bar quietens down and Brigitte produces a thick joint Laura smiles, the two of them laughing on an outside table while Sweeney and Samedi play cards inside. 

Laura is lying on the table top, enjoying the feel of Brigitte’s fingers winding lazily through her hair as her head swims and she feels settled and strung out all at once. Brigitte's hands are careful and patient, expertly twisting and braiding the brown waves, and Laura feels as if it’s a pattern long followed but partially forgotten.

“You let your truth spill out yet, petite?”

Laura is quiet for a moment.

“I like things the way they are.”

It’s true, and yet the words are winding their way around her lungs.

Brigitte’s hands don’t stop their careful ministrations and she hums a tune that makes Laura’s skin shiver.

When Samedi and Sweeney come outside Brigitte has long finished, Laura’s hair a halo in complex braids that intertwine and lace down her spine. She looks at her reflection in the glass of a window, turning her head and admiring the handiwork. 

Sweeney stops in place and shoots Brigitte a narrowed eyed glare.

“You got a fucking point to make?”

Brigitte sucks down the last of the joint and smiles. 

“P’rhaps.”

Sweeney's eyes are dark and his mouth is open and though Laura had thought they would all be chatting the evening away over the table he grabs her wrist and hauls her behind him without a word or goodbye.

Brigitte's mocking laughter follows them. 

Laura doesn’t bother asking why they’re not heading inside, feeling that familiar thrum of anticipation at his wild eyes and tight grip on her arm. They don’t get far, and she laughs as he hauls her into an alleyway, the sound swallowed as he kisses her hard and she lets him.

He fucks her against the wall of the alley and she grins and gasps against him as the stone bruises her shoulders and when his heartbeat slows he pulls back to stare at her some more.

She’s not sure how they make it back to the bar, sneaking inside and crashing against the bed in the back room. She’s exhausted but he has other plans, and though she howls her cries into the pillow, she’s fairly sure the entire French Quarter knows what’s happening.

The next morning she pulls out the braids in the bathroom mirror, her hair a wild mess, and when she comes out he's still staring, flask in hand. 

“Am I missing something here?”

He shakes his head as he takes a drink. 

“Everything. Nothing. You look good in braids. Fuck off."

The next time they fuck she sprawls on his chest and feels his fingers lazily pulling her hair, twining and twisting, bigger than Brigette's but following a memory just the same, movements hesitant and then more confident, and the words sparkle up like champagne bubbles ready to pop out. 

She stoppers them with force, choosing instead to bat his hands away and pretend to sleep. 

There are times when she has regretted not saying it, if only because theirs is not a life that comes with guarantees of tomorrow.

The blast sends them all flying and she lands hard on a table full of food.

Gross. She liked this dress.

Shadow is slumped after hitting a wall but she can see him starting to stir, but she cannot see Sweeney anywhere.

She finally spots him flung through a window, half in and half out, and very, very still.

Shadow is pulling himself up and they lock eyes, wordlessly confirming that an exit is definitely required. She runs to where Sweeney is still not moving.

He is hurt. Again.

She hauls him over her shoulders, feels something sharp at her back, and grits her teeth against the memory and follows after Shadow as quickly as she can. As they run she snaps at him.

“Still think Ostara has forgiven your idiot boss?”

“I said I was sorry!”

They finally come to a park that’s far enough away and she sets him down on the bench to tell him the piggyback ride is over and he needs to get the fuck on with it.

Shadow’s gasp makes her look twice. The words die in her throat and oxygen is a thing of the past.

The shard is as wide as a plate and long as her arm, and she stares at it. The glass is covered in dark red blood like a grotesque stained window, rivulets dripping onto the new fallen snow below in quantities that are not at all reassuring. It’s too big, lodged in his side, and she cannot look at it and identify any scenario where there is survival as an outcome.

He was felled by a spear, there is no way he is coming through this alive.

“Laura, I-“

“Leave us.”

Her voice is a clear command and Shadow doesn’t take it personally, stepping far enough away without properly leaving.

She stares at the man on the bench.

The snow is landing on him and she wants it to stop because in a while he’ll be covered and disappear entirely into the white landscape.

She feels something - grief or shock or anger, she cannot say – rising up through her chest and throat and wanting to spill agony all over the entire city.

She shakes her head.

 “You…you cannot do this to me. Not again.”

She runs trembling hands over his face and feels the tears building hot and sliding over her cheeks.

“You’re not allowed to fucking do this OK? Cut the shit. Wake up.”

She never said it.

“Wake up.”

She should have said it.

“WAKE UP.”

She needs to say it.

Instead she slaps him, hard.

“WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

He shoots upright with a yelp and for a second she doesn’t know if he’s really here or in another nightmare space but then he glares at her and hauls himself up with a groan. He reaches down, pulls, and the glass smashes against the ground. He holds a hand over a wound that should be much bigger.

He rubs his cheek with his other hand.

“Fuck was that for?”

She stares at him.

“You…how?”

He pulls out his flask and drinks deeply before tucking it away. When he sees she's waiting for an answer he shrugs, responding to Laura but shooting a shit eating grin at Shadow.

“Just a little prick.”

He gestures to the wound, now almost gone, still smirking at Shadow. 

Shadow doesn’t respond but continues to stare as Sweeney stretches and the wound seems somehow smaller still.

Laura, having swallowed down the grief and pushed it aside in favour of being furious that he’s got blood on another dress of hers, grits her teeth.

“A spear killed you…how the fuck are you alive now?”

He shrugs and lights a cigarette. “Came back a bit fancier, can we fuckin’ go? M’starvin’.”

The car ride is oddly silent as he puffs away and she and Shadow stare. Laura thinks of the figure in her doorway one night, too bright to look at, eyes full of fire. She makes a note to ask him what, precisely, ‘a bit fancier’ means once they’re alone.

Somehow he manages to distract her and she leaves it for another day.

She has been surprised at the times the words want to erupt from her. 

They’re waiting for coffee at another diner where she swears she sees Mama-Ji more than once. 

She's idly playing with a deck of cards he had inexplicably handed her.

She's used to this now, him handing things over with no context, absent mindedly passing her travel brochures, candy, random small statuettes that she has no idea what to do with. It has made more sense to her since her brief times in the hoard, but she still gets surprised.

One time he’d passed her a half finished child’s puzzle (she found herself hoping very much it was one he’d picked up because otherwise he was madder than she thought). Another time he’d passed her over a book and she’d caught part of the title (The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate-) before he’d snatched it hurriedly and sent it back before replacing it with a half completed journal he’d found in a gas station bathroom. 

She had left it there and forbad him from passing her anything else found in such locations, as for some reason it wasn’t obvious.

Frankly apart from the useful stuff in the hoard, the rare memento she doesn't acknowledge him holding, and a few priceless artefacts, most of what he picks up or keeps would be generously described as junk. 

The cards, however, she liked a lot.

While he orders at the counter she spreads the cards out, slowly letting her hands remember. Spread, close, shuffle, split. Cut and deal. 

She pulls the deck back together and goes through the motions a few more times before moving on to more difficult moves. She does a complex clock shuffle, fingers cutting the deck into multiple smaller piles that are spun around one another, pulling up her two of diamonds again and again despite seemingly sending it around.

It's coming back and she's smiling now. 

She spreads them and flips along the line, pulling out three cards, returning them, shuffling, and dealing three out again. They're the same cards and she feels the flare of success. 

She always loved doing this. 

She fans them out and snaps them shut before pulling out five, fanning them and closing, only for a different five to appear when she fans them. She flicks one over the other and pulls away a third before making it disappear. 

"Again."

Her reverie is broken and she looks up to see Sweeney standing next to the table staring down with a look of intense concentration she has rarely seen outside the bedroom. 

She does the move again and he sits down heavily and stares. She repeats it a third time, the card disappearing into the deck. 

"OK bring it back."

She wants to tell him to fuck off because she's not a performing monkey but he's looking genuinely amazed and she finds she's enjoying the glow of that expression. 

She repeats the move and adds in the clock shuffle and his eyes widen. 

She shakes her head in disbelief.

"You can literally make shit disappear."

He waves a hand dismissively. "That's different."

He's entirely indifferent, as if what he does is so boring comparatively, and she feels the flare of pleasure at surprising and impressing him. 

In a world of gods and magic he's utterly fixated on her dumb card tricks and she can’t help but smile smugly. 

They spend hours with her pulling out trick after trick, teaching him some and holding others close to her chest if only so she could be the one to do them for him in the future. She watches his big hands master the tricks quickly, and soon he's adding his own, building on hers and changing them, while others seem to remain her domain. 

She feels the words caught in her throat, given confidence by the realisation that she can impress him with something other than sass and survival, and when she tries to swallow them down it feels like choking.

The wait staff become increasingly irritated as they hold the table and drink cup after cup of bottomless coffee, and she doesn’t have anywhere else she wants to be. 

She has had plenty of warnings, and thus when it finally comes out, it isn’t a surprise.

Another foolish errand that became so much more.

Dragged through to the backstage, her mortal body surviving by the grace of her coin alone, and been left staring at what lay beneath his skin.

He has mentioned the backstage before but she hasn’t been able to fathom the reality of what lay beneath the everyday mortality so many deities maintained. Now she sees fire and blinding light and eyes that are so far removed from human concerns but somehow entirely focused on them.

She had been overwhelmed.

She had seen him – seen him.

Huge and terrifying, spinning a spear and refusing to back down.

She had been filled with a strange, heady glee and relief as he’d severed the ties Wednesday had on him and taken Grimnir’s eye as a trophy. She had savoured like a delicacy the pride with which he viewed her when she impaled Mr World on a branch of Yggdrasil.

And they had laughed and laughed and laughed as they’d found themselves alive and here and together and whole. They leave the backstage and return to their endless journey.

Later, much, much later, they are alone, and the words come out.

It’s another motel, another shitty room, another stop after an avoided armageddon.

He’s back to himself, asleep, his arm behind his head and breathing deeply. She slips naked from between the sheets and watches him for a moment before going to the bathroom.

“Can’t sleep?”

She watches him behind her in the mirror, eyes bleary and chest warm against her back. She doesn’t respond as he occupies himself distractedly, stroking at her hair, touching her just for the sake of touching her. When he realises she’s not batting him away he goes further.

He bends down, hands skimming along her arms and then over her belly, warm and big, darker than her pale skin, and she shivers as he inhales against her neck, his voice husky and low.

“Come back to bed.”

She can’t, not yet.

The words are there now and she doesn’t bother to stopper them because they’ve found their way to her throat and she’s been choking on this far longer than she’s willing to admit.

She stares at him and his hands still and his eyes shift as he becomes aware of something coming. She doesn’t turn away or bother to hide the softness she can feel bleeding out of herself.

When the three words finally come out, they’re poorly pronounced and possessive, but sincere.

“Is liomsa thú.”

He blinks, wide awake now, brain struggling to process multiple pieces of information all at once. She waits.

His surprise lessens and he stares at her like she’s hung the sun and wraps his arms around her waist. His voice is rough and raw as he breathes his words into her hair.

“Is leatsa mé.”

His arms tighten around her, swamping her, and he straightens to trace his hands over her waist and up to her chest. She feels that pang of awkwardness, wants to hide from the intimacy of the moment, despite how far gone it is.

He smiles and circles her ribcage, studies her in the cheap bathroom lighting.

"Moved by the moonlight, love?"

She shakes her head and stretches her arms skywards, the words no longer cloying in her throat and her soft smile turning mischievous.

"Nope...just wanted you to see my tits."

He laughs, and she watches him laughing, and she feels very, very alive.

Fin