Chapter Text
And so, the years passed.
Time didn’t march with the punctuated pounding of boots stomped against the earth but rather unfurled and stretched out like a silk ribbon from its spool. Yes, it snagged on something every now and then, but those hitches and slips were small in comparison to the tempest of (and leading up to) the Twilight.
Perhaps it was the comfort of having Crow beside him that helped Rean learn to let go of the chains he’d taken to carrying around long after he’d broken free of them. One by one, Crow helped him cut through and discard each link until he remembered their existence only by the lightness in his arms. And with those arms truly free for the first time, Rean allowed himself to fully embrace Crow in a way that hadn’t been possible before. He learned to speak when something bothered him, to voice his concerns without fear of rejection or burdening his partner. Most of the time, anyway.
Crow had gotten better, too. He expressed what was on his mind, allowing Rean access to the highly-entertaining string of tangents that was Crow’s thought process, and eventually, even if he wasn’t able to ask for help directly, he learned how to let Rean know when he needed comfort. He sought Rean out when he was bothered, when the ghosts started to whisper in the back of his mind, when something unexpectedly thrust a rotten, bony arm up through the dirt and snatched at hs legs and tried to pull him under, or simply when he had a feeling he didn’t know what to do with. He would gently pull Rean onto the couch or into bed with him and snuggle close, and Rean would wrap his arms around Crow and just let him be until Crow gave him a small nudge or a light squeeze that meant “go ahead, you can ask”.
The nature of their closeness was still as much a mystery to them as it had ever been, much to the chagrin and disbelief of their friends. Rean tried not to blame them; it wasn’t their fault they couldn’t understand. If he and Crow couldn’t figure it out, how could the rest of them ever hope to come close? Still, they had harped and fixated on it for a while, and Rean had tried to be patient and bear it as well as he could.
Things had come to a head at Prince Olivert’s wedding, and Crow was quick to remind Rean that he only had himself to blame for that. Rean acknowledged that, yes, it was mostly his fault, but still argued that the champagne and Alisa were at least partially responsible for that fiasco.
Rean, in his drunken wisdom, had decided to rile Crow up a bit (nothing overt; a hand on his thigh, a few filthy little whispers in his ear promising delightfully obscene things), so they had opted to skip the after-party. Of course, their absence had not gone unnoticed by the rest of Class VII and in spite of Machias’s warnings, Alisa had taken it upon herself to track them down when neither had answered his ARCUS. She had found them outside the door of their guest room, Crow struggling with the lock and Rean all over him. He didn’t remember the conversation that well, but whatever they’d said had earned them an interrogation the RMP would have been proud of when they joined their friends for breakfast the next morning.
Rean had actually been the one to lose his temper. He had pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, announcing that they were all acting like children. He and Crow were adults and what they did was their business. They wouldn’t have lied about it if they had felt comfortable trusting their friends not to make a scene like this, so if they wanted to blame anyone for keeping them in the dark, they should look at themselves. Then, he said he’d lost his appetite, and Crow had eagerly taken the cue to exit stage left.
Most of them seemed to have gotten the message.
The bright side of having everything out in the open was that they didn’t have to hide their closeness anymore, and with time, their friends stopped looking at their clasped hands and embraces like a secret code the fate of the world hinged upon their deciphering. It also had the bonus of deterring Ash from making inappropriate jokes, because now Rean had no shame about chiming in. This, unfortunately, did nothing to deter Mildine, though their flat, unflustered responses did take the wind out of her sails a bit.
So, the comments trailed off and the strange looks eased, and eventually, even the most determined of their friends finally resigned themselves and dropped the “couple” thing. Their friends each found partners of their own and settled down, but no matter where they went or what paths they chose, they would always be Class VII. And Class VII itself grew, too; with each passing year, a new group of fresh-faced, bright-eyed teenagers with untapped potential entered the gates of Thors main and branch campuses, and he and Crow helped provide them with tools to unlock that potential and shape themselves to build on the foundation he and he friends had laid for them twenty years ago.
Rean sat on the couch with the latest Imperial Chronicle open in front of him as the strands of a melody wove through the air. He smiled slightly, recognizing Elliot’s latest work, and felt the couch shift as Crow settled in beside him. Rean hummed softly as turned the page with a soft crinkle.
His eyes moved over the text as he took in the article, and then, his entire body went stock still.
He blinked, not daring to breathe for a moment, and read the line again.
Sometimes, you’ll find that the one you’re meant to be with has been right beside you the whole time.
No, that couldn’t be right.
There was no possible way!
Okay, yes, they lived and slept together, kissed each other goodbye in the mornings, and Crow still made him lunch every day; they took vacations together because who else would they go with? There was no one on the planet who knew Rean like Crow did. He knew when to push and when to pull, when to hold him and when to back off. And even twenty years later, Crow was still pushing him to be his best. He was probably as strong now as he had been with his ogre power, but that strength was all Rean, and he’d earned it.
There was no one else like Crow, and –
“Holy shit,” he said in utter shock, his face going a little pale as the newsprint fell onto his lap. “We… we really are a couple.”
“Ugh, not you, too,” Crow moaned, rolling his eyes. “Feels like we only just got the rest of them to stop that.”
Rean’s brain was spinning in his skull and stopped only briefly to throw his own words from years ago back at him, then continued whirling gleefully onward at a nauseating speed. “J-Just hear me out. What if – what if we never found somebody better because we were already with the best person?”
Crow paused as if he’d been slapped.
The silence only amplified the chaos in Rean mind, so he filled it himself. “I never thought I’d see you again after you stole my mira, but life just kept pulling us together – and I know there were other things at work, but…even after all this time, I don’t want you to go.”
“I… never even thought about leaving,” Crow admitted, struggling through his own version of what Rean was experiencing.
Rean ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I’ve met a lot of nice girls – and even tried dating a few of them, but it never went anywhere.”
Yes, there had been a few people over the years who’d caught his interest, and it had been the same for Crow; people they’d gone on a handful of dates with, but nothing that lasted longer than two weeks. The reasons varied; the other person hadn’t been interesting enough, hadn’t understood his sense of humor, or had been put off by how close Rean and Crow were. He wouldn’t have called any of them a girlfriend.
There hadn’t been anything wrong with them. They just hadn’t been Crow.
“No one else ever came close to measuring up,” Rean finished weakly.
“I… can’t think of anything I’d want that you don’t give me,” Crow mused in a voice illuminated by slow revelation. He studied Rean for a long moment, then cringed as if bracing himself. “Does that mean our friends were right?” he asked, clearly dreading the answer.
There was a silence in which Rean finally wrangled his runaway thoughts to a squirming stop and contemplated the question.
They’d never gone on a date or offered the grand, romantic gestures Rean always associated with relationships. They did things for each other simply because they wanted to, because it made the other smile – not out of obligation. They stayed together not because they owed it to each other, but because they chose to. “Couple” seemed insultingly simple for what they were. Reduced their relationship to something commonplace and ignored what made it extraordinary.
“... I don’t think so,” Rean finally replied. “We’re… you’re something different to me. ‘Boyfriend’ is too fleeting, and ‘husband’ sounds… it sounds like I’m with you because some contract says I have to be. All those ‘ball and chain’ jokes… it’s offensive. You’ve never held me back or dragged me down. Hell, you’re the one who keeps me moving forward.”
Crow nodded in eager agreement, as though Rean had articulated exactly what had been on his own mind. “I mean, we already did ‘till death do us part’, right? We died, but that wasn’t the end. We’re still here. This thing we have – it’s bigger than that.”
Crow was right, Rean realized, as that unnamable, untamed feeling rose inside him again and chased the concern from his face and replaced it with an ear-to-ear grin.
Theirs was a bond beyond friendship and love that was both and neither; something far more sacred than matrimony and outside human understanding. They could never name it because it had no name. And how could it? It had never existed before.
As he took in the sight of his partner beside him, his heart burned in his chest so intensely it teetered at the precipice of painful – and he realized, with a nearly-overwhelming wave of affection, for the first time, that this gorgeous ache was more familiar to him than the pangs of the curse had ever been. It engulfed every atom of his cells and Rean was powerless to do anything other than take Crow’s face in his hands and kiss the same lips he’d kissed every day for the last twenty years with gentle reassurance, with tenderness, with absolute and complete certainty until they were both breathless.
“We’re something new,” Rean said definitively as a bright, uncontrollable smile spread across his lips. “We’re… something else entirely.”
Crow smiled back as if he could read the previous train of Rean’s thoughts in his eyes, or perhaps translated them through the kiss – and hell, maybe he had because who knew what true the limits of this beautiful, impossible thing were?
“Something else entirely, eh?” he replied as if testing the phrase out for himself. Crow’s smile widened and Rean saw his own conviction and raw, unfettered affection mirrored in Crow’s bright red eyes. “I like it.”