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1. Livio
“There’s another flu going around.”
Livio’s brother, heartless ruthless icon of seed funding, plonks Rollo down from his shoulder. “No shit,” Nico says, giving Rollo a little nudge with his foot that makes Rollo giggle and scamper off. “Let me know when they aren’t sick.”
Livio sighs. “What I mean is, you’ll be in trouble if you catch it. Don’t you have that dinner thing tonight?”
“ We have that dinner thing tonight, comrade.”
“Aw, c’mon, Nico. You know I’m no good at those things.”
Nicholas eyes him with disdain, which, fair. People at fundraising events tended to step around Nico like he was a rabid dog off a chain, and he always, inevitably, ended up sulking in a corner and topping off his scary lizard boss’s champagne glass with whiskey from time to time. He had arguably the worst disposition to be in a nice suit for four hours.
“Well, if we both get sick it’s out of the question anyway.”
Nico suddenly gets very preoccupied with looking at his phone. He mumbles something, and Livio, with his keen sense for his brother’s embarrassment, smells blood.
“Oh, that’s right,” Livio says, delighted. “You can’t call off sick when you’re dating the guest of honor.”
Nico glares at him, and wow, his cheeks are colored almost violently. Livio is about to comment on it when he gets cuffed upside the head and put in a headlock.
“Smartass,” Nico growls as Livio flails. A few of the kids spot them and run to cheer them on. “You try sitting at a table with Rem Saverem and see how much you like it.”
Before Livio can gasp out a reply, a voice yells, “HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT.” Zazie delivers a flying kick to Nico’s head and they both tumble to the ground.
“She’s a nice lady,” Livio says, after he catches his breath.
Nico’s holding Zazie up by the collar. “Yes, but she took over that company while she was raising those twins. I don’t even technically raise these hellhounds and my life is in shambles.”
Livio grins and allows his brother the lie. Nico’s too used to being the gritty underdog, and the dissonance of having a high-paying job (even though most of it just goes straight to the orphanage) and a loving partner (even though it’s Vash Saverem, who, by even Livio’s generous standards, is a little odd) comes as whiplash every time he thinks about it.
He watches as Zazie frees themselves from Nico’s grip and takes off at a run, Nico swearing and chasing after them.
When they’re out of sight, Livio watches the clouds instead. Sometimes he has dreams of sand and blood and misery, trudging towards a certain end with his brother’s grief-stricken widow by his side. He’d counted clouds back then, trying to fend off the monsters in his mind. The sky had been gorgeous over the desert, a vibrant, vivid blue that felt like a far-off comfort, a promise of better things.
Here, now, the sky feels closer than ever.
2. Tesla
“Yeah, mom, I’m at the airport,” she says. She feels a little out of place, but it’s a familiar feeling. Almost nostalgic. “I can’t see anything yet, but I’m sure Nai sent someone.”
A woman holding a toddler and pushing a pram struggles to pick up a suitcase, and Tesla hurries to pick it up for her. The woman shoots her a look of such intense gratitude that she almost blushes.
“I have no doubt that Nai has it handled,” Rem says on the phone, “but it’s you I’m worried about. Will you even make it out of the gate? Please ask someone for directions.”
Tesla walks with the woman, still holding her suitcase in one hand and her phone in the other. “Of course I know where I’m going, Mom, there’s signs everywhere. I’m hanging up, okay? I’ll call you back when I’m on my way.”
The toddler’s staring at the hand peeking out of Tesla’s coat. She grins and flexes, making the metal glint in harsh overhead light, and the kid’s eyes go super wide.
“Where are you headed?”
The woman juggles the pram and the child and smiles at Tesla, the harried, hassled smile of new moms everywhere. She looks a little younger than Tesla, but exhausted like she hadn’t slept in days.
“Just the next gate over. Our next flight’s in twelve hours.”
Tesla winces. She still has her phone in her hand, and she’s calling without thinking.
The rings are familiar. What takes her by surprise is when it stops: when someone breathes, softly, “Hello?”
Something in Tesla’s ribcage shudders. Her feet stop moving.
Here’s the thing about having a baby brother: you got used to it. You got used to the big blue eyes staring up at you, the wonder at the smallest thing you did. You started to believe it, too: that you were a hero, incredible, unstoppable, even after those big blue eyes weren’t looking up at you anymore.
“Vash,” Tesla says, and her voice is even, cheerful. No indication that she felt like her heart was clawing out of her chest. A hero, she reminds herself. “Calling for a favor. No chance that you’d know a decent babysitter for a couple hours, is there?”
A shaky breath, on the other end. Her baby brother. “Yeah. I think I might know who to ask. Should I call you back?”
“ No,” Tesla blurts. Her hands are shaking. The toddler reaches out wondering hands towards her, and she smiles and links pinkies: metal and flesh, his tiny finger barely long enough to curl around hers.
A little calmer, she says, “If you could, could you please stay on the line?”
Another quiet inhale. “Yeah,” Vash says. “Yeah, give me a second.”
The sound of the phone being moved away. Even this small parting rips through Tesla, somehow.
“It’s my first time talking to him in ten years,” Tesla says to the woman, whose eyes widen. Her hand comes to Tesla’s shoulder. “But he’s incredible, you’ll see. He’s going to help us out.”
“You really don’t have to,” she tells Tesla. “You don’t even know us.”
Tesla smiles. “I’d like to help, if I can.”
She very often doesn’t. When she was younger, she thought it was about scale: threw herself and her lauded genius at environmental science and clean energy, trying to find the best way to help the most people. Came close to resenting the accident, the clunky metal arm she was straddled with in the aftermath. Came close to resenting her family.
Now, she respects the good that Rem and Nai and Vash do, but it’s not for her. She was always bad at believing in a cause when it felt far away. It’s both harder and the easiest thing in the world to kneel next to a kid and ask them if they needed help.
Vash says, “I asked Nico. He said he knows someone who can come, if you give us the location.”
He sounds so grown up. In the photos Rem sends her, he’s unrecognizable as the lanky teen he used to be, smiling at the camera with a dark-haired man at his side. He looks content. He sounds content.
“Thank you,” Tesla says, shooting the woman a thumbs up. Her shoulders sag in relief.
A silence. Tesla finds herself reluctant to hang up.
“Will you make it for the charity dinner?”
Vash’s voice is rough, like he gathered all his reserves of courage to ask.
Not far off, Tesla can see a beloved grumpy platinum blond head waiting at the exit. She raises her hand in a wave. Nai finally relaxes when he spots her, stops looking like he’s about to make the staff at the help desk cry.
She starts to smile uncontrollably. Her eyes are wet.
“Of course,” she says. “Can’t wait to see you again, Vash. Do you think you can introduce me to Nico?”
“Yeah,” Vash says. He sounds like he’s smiling too. “Yeah, I’d love to.”
3. Meryl
The first people she runs into at the gala are Wolfwood and Vash, their hands linked and shoulders brushing. Meryl really has the worst luck on the planet.
“Get out of here, shoo, shoo,” she says, trying to get them to duck out of sight before Roberto returns from the bar. “God, fuck, why are you both so slow?”
“Meryl,” Vash says, sounding hurt.
“It’s not you,” Meryl snaps. “Roberto’s got this weird idea that all gay people know each other, and if he sees you with me–”
“Meryl,” Roberto says, and Meryl sighs and stops trying to shove Wolfwood. “I didn’t know you knew Wolfwood’s friend Vash.”
Meryl throws her hands in the air. “For the last time, I don’t know every gay person on the continent! I just know these two clowns because you introduced them to me!”
“She’s trying to dodge the date I set up for her,” Roberto tells the clowns confidentially. “It’s my niece. Perfectly nice girl. I said all of you probably already know each other and she’s taking it badly.”
“I don’t need a date.”
“Irrelevant,” says Wolfwood, and now it really is all of Meryl’s nightmares coming to fruition, because he’s grinning wide. “What’s your niece’s name?” When Roberto replies, his eyes go wide. “Milly? Like, Milly from HR?”
He looks down at Meryl critically. “You’re kinda small for her. You should have dressed up more, isn’t this a big event?”
“A very fuck you to you too.”
Vash starts when Wolfwood nudges him. “What do you think? Milly’s like six feet tall and this one’s the size of two pomeranians stacked together. Is it gonna work?”
Vash blinks. He’s kinda out of it, Meryl notes: more reserved than usual, his eyes distant. From time to time his eyes will drift toward the door, almost longing. It reminds her of something that refuses to crystallize in her memory. A dark coat, dead eyes. Endless vines. Purplish and pulsing and dead.
She decides not to worry. Wolfwood wouldn’t be so relaxed, if she had to; he’s gentle, but grinning and rolling his eyes when Vash says, “Huh?”
“Milly from HR and Meryl. Are we supporting this or nah? Milly can’t possibly have deserved it, but she’s related to Roberto so who knows.”
“Anyone would be lucky to date Meryl,” Vash says loyally, then ruins it by adding, “and maybe Milly’s really into short girls who yell a lot.”
“I’m going home,” Meryl says, bitter.
Wolfwood grunts something that sounds like take me with you, but Meryl misses it because a gorgeous woman in a scandalously low-cut blue cocktail dress sidles up to Roberto with a cry of “Uncle!”
Meryl’s ears start ringing. She’s aware that her lips have parted and her breath has gone ragged. She’s also aware that Wolfwood and Vash are laughing at her.
“Oh,” says the goddess, turning to smile at Meryl. She’s so fucking tall. Meryl could climb her like a tree. “So you’re the Meryl he keeps talking about. It’s very nice to meet you.”
Dimly, over the ringing in her ears, she hears Roberto’s disappointed grunt: “So they didn’t know each other after all.”
4. Legato
Wolfwood comes into the restroom while Legato’s washing his hands. They both sneer at each other in greeting. Wolfwood disappears into a stall and Legato’s content in knowing that if he’s lucky, they won’t have to interact for another ten years.
He’s thinking about locking the door when a man with sandy hair comes in behind him. “Nico,” he says, plaintively. “You can hang out with Vash, so it doesn’t matter if I go.”
No reply.
“Come on, Nico, you know how I feel about these things,” he whines. Legato discreetly watches him in the mirror: handsome enough, in a kind of sad-puppy way. Not his type. “I’ll take a cab, you and Vash can take the bike.”
More silence. Is Wolfwood hiding?
Well. None of his business, really. Except kind of his business, because this was Nicholas Wolfwood, the man who made even the great Knives Haymoss’s life hell. It was in Legato’s best interests to mess with him.
“He’s in that one,” Legato says, nodding at the stall Wolfwood had gone into.
The man with the fair hair blinks his puppy eyes as if just realizing Legato was there. “Huh,” he says, tilting his head. “Were you here the whole time?”
Legato frowns. The man’s demeanor has shifted: still a puppy, but with something with great force behind it.
He tips up his chin. “What of it?”
“And you listened to everything?” the man takes a step towards Legato, and Legato feels his face flush unexpectedly. The man’s huge, compared to how slender Legato is. “That’s kind of rude. You should have said something.”
“You’re the one who was yelling at the top of your lungs,” Legato says, a snarl in his voice.
“You could have just moved on. Or were you trying to get my brother in trouble?”
He puts a massive hand on the granite counter, next to Legato’s hip. Legato finds himself staring down at it. His fingers are thick, capable-looking.
When he looks up again, the man’s smiling faintly. “Ah. So you were trying to get in trouble yourself.” He brings his other hand up to pick Legato’s glasses off his face. He polishes them on his shirt and puts them back on, huge hands careful on the delicate metal frames.
Legato’s practically shaking. He gasps when their skin touches: those blunt fingers on the shell of his ear.
“If you’re still looking for trouble, maybe I’ll see you around,” the man says. With a final smile, he ducks out of the restroom.
Legato’s staring at the splotchy blush on the milky-pale skin of his reflection when the stall behind him opens.
Wolfwood says, “What the fuck was that.”
5. Knives
Whoever assigned the seating chart has had the unfortunate shortsightedness to put him and Wolfwood next to each other.
Or maybe it’s more nefarious than that: he’d seen Tesla and that drunken old reporter from the Bernardelli News Agency frantically rock-paper-scissors to swap seats, so that Tesla was next to Vash and the reporter in between Milly from HR and what looked like a middle-schooler. Their table is the most raucous one in the hall: people keep turning to stare as the middle-schooler tries to climb over the old man’s seat towards Milly from HR. Wolfwood’s soft-spoken brother is next to her, and is having a conversation with one of their directors that looks like they’re moments from a fight. Or something.
And there’s also Tesla and Vash, who haven’t stopped talking since they met. There’s been a lot of tears, and they keep drawing Knives in for hugs that he bears with the grace of a cat being dropped into a bathtub. Still, it makes something under his ribs twinge to see them. To have the full force of their grins back in his life, like two twin suns. They were always more alike than Knives was to Vash.
He’s...glad, he thinks.
“Feelin’ left out?” Wolfwood asks.
He’s doodling a game of hangman on his napkin. _ _ _ K, it says.
“D,” Knives says. “I. C.”
Wolfwood scowls as he fills it in. “You couldn’t entertain a toddler,” Knives tells him.
“Entertain this,” and Knives doesn’t even have to look at him to know that he’s flipping him off.
They sit together in resentful silence. A waiter tops up their champagne and Wolfwood tips his whiskey into both flutes, and as Knives brings it to his mouth he catches Vash staring at them.
It's a stare that's growing familiar. Half disbelief, half bone-rattling, knee-shaking gratitude. Like Wolfwood and Knives are performing miracles.
Knives broods. It's true that things were bad for a while: he's apologized for making Vash think he owed it to their family to stay in a job he hated, but it feels like there's more than that. He still has dreams of Vash's arm getting snatched away by some hungry, devouring thing. He still has dreams of drowning in knives and floating in the cradle of the sky; consistently, continuously left behind, alone, alone, alone.
"Can you fire that guy," Wolfwood says, and Knives blinks sand from his eyes and lands back in the present. From across the table Vash gives him an anxious, reassuring smile and Knives nods.
"What," he rasps.
"The guy. You know. Blue hair and pronouns," Wolfwood says, astonishing in his inability to string words together as always. "He's got something weird going on with my brother."
Knives knows what he's talking about. He's been trying not to pay attention. "It looks like it's the other way around, actually."
Wolfwood grimaces and looks back down at his napkin.
Knives looks around as well. The CEO is still chatting to some of their junior partners, even though it’s almost time for her speech. Knives should probably send someone to fetch her.
“Stop trying to micromanage your mom,” Wolfwood says.
“She’s been crying all morning and talking to randoms all night. She’s not going to be able to give her speech.”
“Stop calling your employees randoms. Name one employee–”
“I’m going to go get her,” Knives says, heading off the hundredth iteration of that challenge. He knows all the employees. He’s an impeccable CFO.
“Running away,” Wolfwood notes condescendingly.
“You go get her then.”
“Fuck no, she’s scary.”
“To you. As she should be. You don’t deserve her son.”
“I really don’t deserve to have to sit here listening to him.”
“Nicholas,” says their CEO from behind them, sweet. “Nai. You really must explain how you’re both so close when HR swears you’ve never even met each other before.”
Vash and Tesla look up at her and beam. “Mom, Vash is taking me around town tomorrow. Want to come with? I want to go to a museum and pretend I’m a cyborg from the future.”
Rem smiles, and ruffles Vash’s hair. “It’ll be just like when you were babies. We should all go.”
Knives reflects on his memories of fighting geese while Tesla and Vash sighed over swans. “I have a meeting,” he says quickly. “Whole day thing. Very busy.”
“Me too,” Wolfwood says.
Knives is about to deny this, when he sees the way Wolfwood’s smiling at Vash and Tesla. Sappy. A little wistful.
Fucking orphans.
Knives looks at Rem, and she’s smiling too. “Fine,” he relents. “Meeting’s cancelled. We’ll pick you up at eight.”
Wolfwood begins to say, “Hey–” but he’s interrupted by Rem clinking her fork delicately on her glass.
“Thank you all for doing the great honor of joining us tonight,” Rem says, as the room hushes down. “Whether you’re a donor, volunteer, or just someone who cares deeply, your presence here speaks volumes. But as we continue to invest in a future, let’s not forget the importance of what we already have, and continue that legacy of hope for our families. Thank you.”
She takes a seat, completing their circular table as the hall applauds. Wolfwood and Vash turn to each other, and Knives looks away just fast enough to miss the way they lean in for a quick kiss. Tesla catches his eye instead, and makes a face at him.
They’re all so deeply embarrassing. Knives is glad they’re here.