log; ongoing

[rev-it-up.livejournal.com]

When; May 23rd, late-ish.
Rating; PG-13, because Nero's mouth has the potential to be dirtier than a superbowl bathroom.
Characters; Nero (rev_it_up) and Kyrie (sing_my_faith
Summary; Nero's been down for the count, sleeping on park benches and hanging out with Maria, since the mirror city curse. Now he's headed home. Dun dun dun.
Log;

He hasn't been afraid in years. Not of anything that wasn't losing her. His attitude, all up through his late teens, had been one of 'yeah, whatever' coupled with 'come get some' and it hadn't failed him, not once, not until Kyrie was in danger.

He'd gotten past it that once. He'd killed Sanctus, that sonofabitch. He'd stopped Agnus, and he'd saved, well, what was left of Fortuna to save by the time he got there. All in a day's work. But then, there had been no gray. Black and white, kill one megalomaniacal jerkoff to save the world, where's the harm in that?

He knew it was the City. He just... knew it. Logically, rationally, whatever. The City had fucked with his head and screwed him up and made him the badguy, all cast in shade and shadows and whatever, man, whatever, right? That's that, it was over and done.

Nero had never been one to lack faith. The other knights of the Sword had called him an arrogant asshole for a reason. He'd known his limits, and he pushed past them, not realizing until later that his many aptitudes were demonic in origin. No matter what he'd done, no matter how beat to hell he was when he came home, his love for Kyrie - present since they were children, had always, always brought him back from that brink.

Except this time.

He could have killed her.

And it terrified him. Enough that he didn't ever want to go home. Because what if it hadn't been just a curse? What if it was just another demonic song and dance, like manifesting his devil form, that he hadn't known about before? The what-ifs and maybes were taking sideline bets on his sanity and he didn't fucking appreciate it.

It wasn't until he stopped to realize that this was the longest he'd ever spent away from her, since they first met, and that staying away was probably hurting her more than anything else. She loved him. He knew that, had for a while. One of those unspoken things, you know? She loved him and all he could think about was that staying away was safe. Even if it hurt like Hell.

So he went home. It took him three hours to meander back to their apartment building, make up excuses to delay his arrival. He stopped in at a coffee place despite the fact that he hates coffee, and tossed off three java mocha triple shots of 'man that's gay' into the potted plants there. He spent half an hour 'shopping' for groceries, finally came to the conclusion that he had no idea what their place was low on, and left, hands shoved in his jacket pockets.

He made it to the door of their shared apartment as the sun was just starting to kiss the horizon, and knocked after the barest moment of hesitation. The rapping of his knuckles on the door was faint, almost hesitant - if she was sleeping he'd come back tomorrow.

Comments

[sing-my-faith.livejournal.com]

She wasn't sleeping, wound too tightly to even entertain the thought of doing so. She hadn't been sleeping much, or well, lately, but add to everything else the fact that Rem hadn't come back yet, and Kyrie had plenty to think about to keep herself awake. Or rather, more than enough to actively work on not thinking about. In an attempt to stave off her worry--because what good was it going to do her?--she was doing as much busy work as possible. Reading hadn't really been successful as a distraction; her eyes were tired so the words blurred, and it was too easy to not pay attention to the little she could take in. Movies resulted in a similar situation. So Kyrie found things to do that meant she had to keep moving.

The first thought that crossed her mind, at the soft sound, was a kind of blind fear. The apartment was so quiet that the noise seemed magnified, and so out of place that she couldn't immediately figure out what it was, or where it had come from. She wasn't expecting anyone to come over; she'd given Rem a key, so she wouldn't be knocking.

Heart pounding a bit, leftover effects of the start she'd just had, Kyrie moved to check the peephole.

There'd been a time, when she was only nine and a bit more clumsy than most girls her age, that she'd fallen a distance that couldn't have been more than six feet and landed on her back. She could still remember the dizzying pain of suffocating as all the air left her body, as her lungs struggled to recover any in the wake of the impact.

When she saw Nero on the other side of the door, she felt like that again.

Her hands fumbled with the locks on the door, undoing them with a loud clatter and pulling the door open. She still couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, and now suddenly couldn't move. Her mind screamed at her to do something, and her body wouldn't obey.

[rev-it-up.livejournal.com]

There were three things he wanted to do, but none of them made sense right now. He stepped forward, inside what would be the circle of her arms if she but lifted them, and then paused. This scenario was entirely too familiar, and had it taken place three months ago, or four, he might have hesitated.

Instead, he set his hand (the right) on her shoulder. Gently.

"... I'm home," he said carefully, though he remained in the doorway.

[sing-my-faith.livejournal.com]

It was enough, that hand, warm and familiar, on her shoulder. It broke whatever trance she was in, snapped her mind into functioning once more.

When he'd saved her life and rescued their city, she'd smiled at him, took his hand and told him that he was human. This time he was the one to reach for her, and her lips trembled as she tried to smile. Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. She knew he could see them; she tried so hard to be strong for him, but she thought that perhaps this time he wouldn't hold it against her if she broke down just a little.

She dropped her head to his chest, pressed herself close against him and wrapped her arms around him. She held him as tightly as she could, feeling the realness of his body through every inch of herself. She couldn't hear his heartbeat over the roaring of her own, but she could feel it against her forehead.

"...about time," she mumbled against his shirt, an attempt at levity to make up for the weakness of her smile.

[rev-it-up.livejournal.com]

"Sorry it took so long," he managed, though his throat felt raw with the words. He stroked her hair as he spoke and shuffled over the threshold, closing the door with some creative foot movements he'd picked up playing with a hackey-sack when he was a kid.

Their apartment, he realized, was starting to feel like home. He smiled a little to himself, against Kyrie's hair. No. It wasn't the apartment.

[sing-my-faith.livejournal.com]

The words fell with the weight of unknown familiarity; she'd heard them before, heard them from him, but she couldn't remember where. It felt like the shadow of a memory, perhaps something she'd dreamed once. Something that hadn't really happened.

Attempting to summon up an answer to him resulted in some incoherent sound, lost against the material of his shirt. She swallowed thickly, aware of all of his movements, yielding to his movement further into the apartment but surrendering none of her personal space, none of his. She wasn't ready to let him go yet.

When he smiled into her hair and she felt a wave of relieved weakness wash through her, Kyrie honestly wondered when she would ever be ready to let him go again. She knew she'd have to, sooner than she'd like, but for this moment she persisted.

"I would have waited." Her fingers dug into his coat, and she could feel the stitches from one of the hems in the skin of her palm her grip was so tight. "No matter how long."