Work Text:
The window is open. Only slightly, just barely enough to fit one's fingertips beneath, but open nonetheless. Lydia’s been leaving it open for a fortnight. It’s nearly habitual now.
She’s justified it with arguments about fresh air, needing the noise to help her sleep, or whatever else was convenient. Ignoring the safety risks of a blatantly unlocked entrance in this city, the moths that find their way to her lamps, and all sense she has, Lydia leaves the window open.
Tonight, a puddle has formed beneath the little gap. The rain had come with no warning, only the sudden darkness and downpour, hovering over barren streets. She’d only been gone long enough to shower and now there is a small pool on the floor.
Lydia should probably close the window. It would be the reasonable thing to do. Standing there in nothing but a towel, the cold air makes her shiver. She should close the window and mop up the floor, and maybe turn up the heat.
Instead, she walks into her kitchen, takes the bag out of her trash, and places the dented metal can beneath the dripping sill.
She wants to justify it, but she can’t. Not really.
She’s alone in her shitty apartment, and it doesn’t feel right (it’s stupid, she’s lived alone for years ), but something about the once-familiar stillness has begun to make Lydia’s skin crawl. She’s alone, standing in the center of her bedroom in a towel, fresh out of the shower and feeling no cleaner than she’d been upon getting in. She’s alone, watching the rainwater steadily drip, drip, drip into the trash can, the trash can that should be in her kitchen , the window she should probably still close, and none of it changes anything.
She’s alone like she always has been.
Forcing her eyes away from the can takes longer than she’d like to admit and moving her feet takes longer still. She’s barely managed to shift her weight, before Lydia’s blinking and she’s no longer in the towel at all. Instead, she can see it, crumpled in a ball near the foot of her bed. In its place is a plain cotton t-shirt- one that doesn’t even begin to fit her, hanging down to her knees and falling off her shoulder. For a breath, she is warm, as she buries her nose into its collar, inhaling the familiar scent lingering in the fabric- but the cold returns with a breeze from the still-open window, taking the comforting warmth of aftershave and cocoa along with it.
Now, dressed and shivering, comes the waiting game. Staring at the window, heart in her throat, waiting to crawl beneath her sheets, waiting to sleep, waiting to breathe - waiting for the familiar shadow to appear outside. The barely there reflection, the ghost of normalcy she’s come to rely on. Waiting, even when Lydia knows she shouldn’t.
In three weeks, he hadn’t missed a night. But in three weeks, it hadn’t rained. Tonight the gamble is greater. Tonight, he could decide not to come. It would make sense- it would be the smart thing to do, fight crime and head home. It’s close to four am, and Officer Morielli clocks in at 8-
A flickering shadow cuts off her spiraling thoughts.
He’s there .
And immediately, she’s childishly wishing he wasn’t. As she does every night he’s been there, she wishes he wouldn’t come. And tempt her.
Renaissance thinks Lydia is oblivious to his visits, but she could not be further from it. Instead, she’s pathetically begun to count upon them. Begun to count upon his steady presence on the edge of her fire escape. Cannot sleep until he’s there.
She watches the shadow for a while, watches it shift and settle. Now, finally, knowing he’s there, she can crawl beneath her sheets. Her gaze stays trained on the window- watching. She tries not to lose sight of his shadow, readjusting her pillows to keep him in her view. She can just barely see the hunch of one of his shoulders- and the slight trembling
Raindrops slowly chase each other into the dented can, making nearly silent splashes - the rain has slowed enough that she can hear each one. “He’s going to catch a cold,” her mind whispers traitorously (and inaccurately, the rain doesn’t make you sick and she knows that) “He’s going to get pneumonia, you shouldn’t let him stay out there. You should send him away. You should invite him in -“ She shakes her head and buries her face in the pillows.
No . A little rain is not going to shatter the loosely built conviction she’s garnered. She did the right thing. She made the responsible decision. She ended it. She had to end it. It wasn’t safe for either of them, especially not Emmett. She had to keep him safe, even if they’re both miserable, even if all she wants is to curl up in his warmth and stay there forever, even if he’s right there and she’s desperate and-
“You know, this conversation would probably be more productive if we were having it .”
She blinks, sitting up in bed, wondering who had spoken, before realizing it had been her . Ah, indifferent sarcasm, her oldest friend. Between the noise of the city and the lingering sprinkles of rain, she half hopes he didn’t hear her.
When the shadow freezes, she knows he has. Moving abruptly, not towards the window, but towards the edge, the vigilante is clearly going to leave, and she should let him but her chest aches and she’s so cold-
“ Please, don’t go.”
She bites her lip, wincing at the obvious crack in her tone. All she can do is watch, and pray that he listens ( selfish selfish selfish ) -
His form pauses. She can practically feel his uncertainty. She expects him to vanish, maybe for good this time. She expects his shadow to flicker away completely, but instead it remains, nearly statuesque.
When he doesn’t move again, she continues, “The window’s open. Has been. If you wanted… to get out of the rain.”
Her voice is stilted and scratchy from lack of use, she hardly recognizes it. The tension is nearly unbearable. Lydia forces her eyes away from the window, instead landing on a little dent in the wall. She herself isn’t sure what she wants him to do, to stay or to go.
When the window scrapes further open, she is disgustingly relieved.
She doesn’t watch, doesn’t move, keeps her gaze firmly on the little hole as he enters. His too-wide form scrambles through her little window- she hears a clang, quiet ‘shit’ and the creaking of her floorboards. She pictures him kicking the little can- it would be comical, if she could laugh.
He shuts it once he’s through, the sounds of the city suddenly cutting off and leaving only heavy silence behind. She is frozen, sitting up in bed with blankets haphazardly strewn across her lap, urging herself to look at him, because he is right there and it is all she has craved for weeks, but she cannot force herself to turn.
A cough breaks their silence, the sound quickly drawing her gaze to the man standing in the center of her dreary bedroom.
He’s dripping. That’s the first thing she notices. He’s dripping, and more little puddles are forming on her floor. She absently considers moving the trash can, as she watches the largest of the little pools rippling with each drop. Her mind wants to stay locked on the puddles, but she forces her eyes away, moving to his boots momentarily. Then his weight shifts and her attention is drawn away from the floor entirely.
His “uniform” is tighter than usual, kevlar plastered against his skin. She wishes it wasn’t distracting, but alas, he always is. He’s clearly soaked to the bone, minute shivers moving through his frame, most noticeably in his shoulders. It’s clear he is trying to suppress them. She reads the tension in his frame as she reads poetry, can see how hard he’s working to stay perfectly still. As though he could change her mind, as if she hadn’t already let him inside.
Finally, her eyes reach his.
She is once again struck by just how pretty they are- green and warm and kind. Trailing over the rest of his face, she notices several things. His face is pale, his usual warmth hidden beneath an unfamiliar pallor. The bags under his eyes are deeper than she’s ever seen them, nearly the color of bruises, and they sit alongside a fresh cut over his cheekbone. There are several new cuts and bruises actually, covering most of his visible skin- she can only imagine what he looks like under the suit.
Of course.
Because “Renaissance” has been more active than ever in these last few weeks. Because he’s been out there fighting forces he has no business engaging with, this time on his own. No one to patch him up after “work” as she’d been doing for months .
She had thought she couldn’t feel more guilty. Oh the joys of being proven wrong.
They stare, for minutes, for hours, for one second , they stare at each other, afraid to make a move, afraid to ruin this all again. Her own words from weeks ago echo in her mind, telling him to go. Telling him they can’t be together. Now here she is, begging him to stay.
The silence is unfamiliar. She can’t remember a time that the two of them had been silent - Emmett Morielli is notoriously terrible at silence (though, he must be capable of silence- his “night life” certainly requires it). Regardless, it’s unnerving, and quickly becoming unbearable. Stifling pressure weighs upon her chest, her lungs threatening to collapse under the strain. He is so close, for the first time in so long, he is right in front of her, within reach.
It is this thought that breaks her stillness.
She stands, pausing for a moment when her vision blurs around the edges (when was the last time she had eaten?), before stepping around the bed towards his still form. He is at attention, back straight, feet just so- like he is awaiting her inspection. Only his eyes follow her movements, and she sees him grow somehow stiffer as she nears him. The touch he’s anticipating never comes, however, when she moves right past him to her overfilled dresser.
He still doesn’t move, watching her every move. She can sense something in his posture and gaze- an uneasiness that clashes with the image of Emmett she has in her mind. All she wishes is for it to fade away- and to never again be the cause of it.
She opens the drawer, painfully slowly, before quickly searching through the mess to find what she is looking for. Clothes in hand, she takes a breath to steel herself, before turning back to Emmett’s frozen form. The crumpled towel catches her eye, and she quickly snatches it off of the floor as well.
“You’re going to ruin the floors,” she says stiffly, “Change,” holding out the leisure wear she refuses to meet his gaze. He stares at the bundle, remaining silent, before reaching out and taking it from her hands. She nods at that, before robotically returning to her side of the bed. She hears movement, knows he’s headed for her too-small bathroom. When the door shuts behind him, she half-collapses onto the sheets.
“What am I doing?” She wonders, eyes wandering, before landing on the cracks that surround the ugly brown water stains in the ceiling. The cracks in the plaster offer no answers, but they do remind her of the tragedy that mess had been.
That day had been fucked from the beginning, traffic sucking and work sucking and everything sucking . And to add insult to injury, just as she got home and collapsed into bed for a well deserved nap- a fucking pipe burst upstairs. She’d woken up thinking she’d fallen asleep outside (it wouldn’t have been the first time) but instead of a park bench and a sudden storm, she is met with a shower of disgusting brown water- all over her fucking bed.
Her mattress was dead, her sheets completely ruined, and she suddenly had a massive dripping hole in the ceiling. Not to mention the water all over the floor and her.
An awful day, truly, except for the part when she called Emmett. Her only intention had been to cancel their date (their first date)- because the sewage-smell wasn’t really ideal when trying to make a good first impression . Somehow, instead, that conversation had ended in his arriving at her apartment, with a bottle of wine, a mop, and an air mattress. Together they mourned the loss of her bed, before Emmett sent her to go shower, and started mopping up her poor bedroom floors. A hot shower, three bottles of wine, and four rolls of paper towels later, Lydia ended up waking up entangled with Emmett on the floor. Fully clothed, mind you- they’d simply rolled off of the air mattress (and apparently hadn’t been phased enough to wake).
In the days following, Emmett had helped her move the disgusting mattress, set up the new one, pick out new sheets and patch the hole in her ceiling when her landlord wouldn’t. Somehow he’d turned a shitty accident into a three-day date, which inevitably ended in an actual genuine relationship. One she’d never planned on having.
The cracks might be an eyesore, but they’re full of memories, happy memories. The flutter of warmth in her chest is enough to shatter her earlier resolve even further. Lydia had missed him. And now he’s changing out of his suit in her bathroom . When the door opens again, she tenses expecting footsteps, but the footsteps don’t come. She waits for a breath before she turns to see why he’d stopped.
His silhouette is still in the doorway, hesitation clear in the lines of his figure. His mask is gone, and it’s the first time she’s really seen his face since, well. Seeing him, usually so frustratingly confident, so uncertain, unfreezes her.
Half sitting up, she reaches towards him just slightly, hand open. An invitation. A decision. A chance .
His hand is warm in hers, as she slowly pulls him down towards the sheets. He follows her, tension slowly evaporating with every breath. Soon, he’s lying parallel to her, and it feels so right. Her bed feels like her own again for the first time in weeks , and the irony in it taking Emmett to accomplish that is not lost on her.
He drops her hand to adjust the covers, and she misses his warmth instantly. He’s careful not to get too close- so considerate of boundaries she’d never meant to set. He’s here and it’s almost enough to put her completely at ease, except-
He’s right there except he isn’t, he’s a solid two feet away from her and all at once it’s too far - she doesn’t know how she had functioned with him outside , because in this moment, she doesn’t think she could ever be close enough . It’s a strange feeling for someone who used to shy away from fucking handshakes , but Emmett had changed that, changed her damnit, and then she’d made him leave and god she’s missed this, missed him.
She’s reaching for him before she can hesitate, before she can roll over and try to ignore the aching in her chest, before he can change his mind and get up and leave her again-
He catches her arm in midair, and she’s half expecting him to push her away- she is absurdly relieved, however, when he starts pulling her closer to him.
In half a heartbeat she is feeling his, pounding under her cheek. He tucks her head beneath his chin, the hand on her arm slides lower, wrapping securely around her waist and drawing her closer- there isn’t room for a breath between them. His other arm is wrapping around her back, cradling her head, and she flails for a moment before hooking her fingers into the fabric of his shirt and clutching on hard enough to tear -
Their legs move almost frantically, tangling together, drawing closer, closer, closer, even when there is no closer they can possibly get. Lydia’s breathing picks up, warmth flooding her system. It's overwhelming in a relieving, wonderful, exhausting way. She honestly isn’t certain that she isn’t dreaming. She’s almost completely on top of him, and he is still pulling closer. It’s too perfect, too easy , that he just came in through the window and now he’s holding her again .
She doesn’t mean to start muttering apologies into his collarbone. She doesn’t mean to allow silent tears to soak into his shirt. She doesn’t mean to break- she’d held off breaking for so long, since the moment she told him to get out and he had listened. But something about the way he begins muttering reassurances in her ear, the way he accepts her apology, the way he’s rubbing her back and humming under his breath and treating her like something precious, something worthy of his forgiveness-
The last thing she remembers before finally fading to sleep is the feeling of tears beginning to slip into her hair, and the ghost of a kiss being pressed to her brow.