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It’s after Hughie’s fifth glance at Butcher’s empty desk in as many minutes that Maeve ultimately snaps.
“Hughie!” she calls, her voice cutting through the silence like a knife.
Hughie visibly startles at the sound of it. “What’s up?”
“I have to tell you something,” she says, not in the mood to beat around the bush. Then she pauses for a second before revising, “Frenchie and I have to tell you something.”
Frenchie looks over at her, eyes wide. It’s obvious that he knows where she’s going with this. “Non,” he says emphatically. “Non, non, non.”
Beside him Kimiko lifts her hand up in a fist and gives it a little shaking motion, almost as if nodding her head. It’s one of the few signs every single one of them has picked up.
Yes, it says. Yes, yes, yes.
“But we are not supposed to mention it,” Frenchie counters, though the objection is half-hearted at best. “We said that he needs to figure it out on his own.”
“Um, hello?” Hughie interjects, sounding a bit annoyed. “He is right here, and he wants to know what’s going on.”
Kimiko jabs Frenchie in the side and gestures forcefully at Hughie, who looks put-out and confused. Frenchie studies him for a moment, and Maeve can see the moment it dawns on him that the likelihood of Hughie reaching this conclusion on his own is not going to happen in this lifetime or the next.
Frenchie sighs. “So, you see…” he trails off.
Maeve waits for him to continue but he never does; it’s her turn to sigh. Enough of the pussyfooting.
“You’re in love with Butcher,” she says.
Hughie blinks. “What?” He laughs incredulously. “I— What?”
“Petit Hughie…”
Hughie jumps to his feet and points a finger at them. “No!” he yells, cutting Frenchie off. “No!”
Yes, Kimiko signs again.
“No!” Hughie repeats. He starts pacing. “That’s not— no. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Maeve crosses her arms. “I definitely know what I’m talking about.”
It’s true; twinks have always been the easiest to puzzle out when it comes to sex.
And besides, nobody would put up with Butcher’s shit if they weren’t in love with him. There truly is no other explanation.
Hughie opens his mouth to spout another unconvincing protest, but the sound of the door opening cuts him off before he can.
“We come bearing gifts,” Annie announces as she briskly walks into the room, two large takeout bags from Moe’s swinging in her hands. “Also—”
She stops dead and observes them; Hughie’s look of dawning horror, Maeve’s shit-eating grin, Frenchie’s smug look, and Kimiko’s amused one.
“You told him?” Annie asks incredulously, looking dismayed. “Why?”
Hughie makes a betrayed noise. “You knew?” A pause. “I mean you thought you knew? I mean— oh fuck it,” he says as he plops back down into his chair with his head in his hands. “I’m in love with Butcher, aren’t I?”
MM, who had chosen that exact moment to enter the room with a third bag, skids to a stop.
“So I take it you told him, then,” he surmises.
In the wake of a fifth confirmation Hughie actually fucking whimpers, and Jesus Christ because whenever Maeve thinks he can’t be any more of a bottom he goes and does something like this.
Maeve turns to Annie with a shrug. “Butcher hasn’t even been gone for five days and yet Hughie was staring at his empty desk with that whole ‘when will my husband return from war’ look on his face,” she explains. “I couldn’t take it anymore, alright? I just couldn’t.”
“But I thought we agreed not to say anything!”
“No, you and MM agreed to that. Kimiko and I never did, and technically Frenchie didn’t either,” she tells her. “Bit of an oversight on your part, isn’t it?”
“I’m confiscating your queso for this,” MM declares matter-of-factly.
Maeve crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow. “I will literally break every single piece of equipment in here if you so much as try it.”
MM looks at Annie as if to see if to gauge just how valid that threat is. When all Annie does is shrug, he holds out the bag to Maeve without question. Annie has to look down to hide a laugh, but Maeve is still able to catch the fondness in her eyes. It dawns on her, then, why Annie had offered to go on pick-up duty with MM.
Maeve pushes the thought out of her mind as she walks over and takes the food with a smug expression before going to sit down at Butcher’s desk. Frenchie opens his mouth, probably to caution her against sitting there, but ultimately just shuts it.
“Anyway,” she continues, “sometimes I’m genuinely fearful that he is going to drop to his knees even if we’re all here, I shit you not.”
“Hey—” Hughie starts to protest, but she cuts him off.
“And while that may be a dinner and a show for the two of you,” she points to Frenchie and Annie, “I’ve had more than enough exposure to that man’s cock to last a lifetime, thanks.”
MM’s noise wrinkles in disgust. “Since when have you had any exposure?”
She pops open the queso. “We fucked right before I went on my whole ‘wellness retreat’,” she drawls, air quotes necessary and subsequently applied.
Silence, and then—
“You did what now?” Hughie blurts, his voice an octave higher than it should be.
Maeve shrugs but otherwise doesn’t deem Hughie’s interjection with a response. “And while I wouldn’t do it again myself,” she continues slowly, “I guarantee you’ll enjoy yourself.” She takes a sip of her Diet Coke. “He fucks like a bullet train, I’ll give him that.”
Hughie puts his head into his hands and just kind of whimpers.
“Please reserve any and all noises like that for Butcher’s ears only,” Maeve deadpans.
Kimiko immediately looks to Frenchie and starts signing something, but before he gets the chance to translate the door slams open.
“Now unless one of you lot managed to off that cunt Neuman sometime in the ten minutes it took to get here from my stop for smokes at the fuckin’ Duane Reade,” Butcher begins in lieu of a greeting, “why the fuck are you all standing about.”
“Butcher,” Hughie breathes, looking like he’s bearing witness to the second coming of Christ.
Butcher blinks, clearly thrown by the outright reverence in his tone. “Hughie,” he says slowly.
For the first time ever, all of them are in a room together in complete silence. You could hear a pin drop.
Hughie looks at Maeve of all people for encouragement, and it’s then that she realizes he’s going to do this. Right now. In front of all of them.
So she puts a chip in her mouth and gives him what she thinks might be an encouraging smile but most likely falls flat.
Hughie must be satisfied with it anyway, because he proceeds to square his shoulders and take a deep breath. “I want to preface this with the request that you don’t punch me for what I’m about to say, because I don’t want my face to match my soon-to-be-bruised heart and ego.” He doesn’t wait for Butcher to confirm or deny the request before he blurts, “It has recently been brought to my attention that I’m in love with you.”
Butcher blinks again. “You what.”
It’s not a question.
“I’m in love with you,” Hughie repeats, “and now that I know it I can’t unknow it, and so I figured, hey, why not tell you?” He sighs. “So yeah. That’s me.”
After a moment Butcher silently takes a step forward, which causes Hughie to immediately take a step back.
“Remember when I requested that you not punch me?” he asks, his hands raised in surrender. “That request still stands. It very much still stands. It’s crazy, actually, how much it still stands. I—”
“Shut the fuck up, Hughie,” Butcher growls. Then he cups Hughie’s face in the palms of his hands and presses their lips together.
Hughie makes a muffled noise of surprise before melting into Butcher like he’s made of putty. It’s actually almost kind of sweet, in a way.
(But only almost.)
It just as soon goes from slow and passionate to rough and demanding when all of a sudden Hughie starts kissing Butcher like he’s been dying without it — completely and utterly desperate.
Butcher chuckles in a way that somehow manages to sound both amused, fond, and mocking all at once after Hughie pulls a little at Butcher’s coat as if trying to get it off. Hughie laughs a little too.
When the laugh breaks into a soft whine, MM seems to snap out of the catatonic state he’d fallen into. “Let’s stop this right here,” he calls out loudly.
The pair of them both react to the interruption in ways that, while different, are very true to form; Hughie stumbles backwards with the force of how quickly he tears himself away from Butcher, and Butcher just looks smug and satisfied.
“While I’d normally kill you for interrupting, M, it’s probably for the best that you did,” Butcher starts with a smirk. “I mean, if you waited even a second longer I woulda had Hughie on his fuckin’ knees right here.”
Maeve’s I knew it would happen sooner or later is inaudible over the sound of pure anguish and outrage Butcher’s words rip out of MM.
“This is a place of business!” he yells. Then he gestures to Annie, Kimiko, and Frenchie, who have since opened their own meals. “And people are eating here!”
“That right?” Butcher says, one eyebrow raised. “Hughie woulda been eatin’ too, yanno. Was about to have him just like that.” He nods his head at Kimiko specifically, who’s in the middle of taking a bite of her burrito. She squints at Butcher as she pulls it away, making sure to take slow, almost violent chews.
Hughie winces and Butcher smirks.
“Petit Hughie,” Frenchie says abruptly, “I am taking your food. You have no right to it any longer.”
Hughie splutters. “Wait, what did I do?”
Butcher pulls Hughie forward and into his arms. “Don’t worry, lad.” Butcher winks. “I’ll feed ya something else.”
MM visibly gags at that, much to Maeve’s amusement.
“Please stop,” Annie bemoans. “I am literally begging you.”
Butcher scoffs. “It ain’t you that I wanna hear beggin’,” he drawls.
“Stop!” she yells.
Maeve snorts as she reaches over and takes Hughie’s burrito which, considering he voted to get Chipotle instead Moe’s, he doesn’t even deserve anyway.
“Wipe that damn look off your face, Butcher,” MM demands. “You look like the cat that ate the canary.”
There’s a slight pause in which Butcher and Hughie just look at each other silently. Then Butcher barks a laugh. “My canary,” he corrects. “Ain’t that right, lad?”
Hughie beams.