Work Text:
He checks the CCTV feeds one more time. Closes his eyes, counts to ten one more time. He can hear Vanderwood faintly complain about the lack of actual nutrition in his fridge and the hiss of a Dr. Pepper being opened. When he opens his eyes, nothing is happening in the hallway, the code for the RFA app is just as he’d left it (half tampered-with and half previous code). Luciel opens his eyes and he’s fast to say the Saint Michael prayer like he means it (because he does).
Because there’s a sense of foreboding that’s gripped his chest that he can’t identify- he doesn’t know when the other shoe is going to drop, but he can feel it hanging in the air.
He watches you walk down the hall and turn off towards the bathroom to prepare for bed (he notes that it’s almost three in the morning and can’t decide whether or not it’d be hypocritical to call you to tell you to go to sleep). His fingers tap one-two-three beside his computer and he picks up the phone anyway, dials your number through the app, and then waits for you to pick up. It’s selfish and self-indulgent, but his heart practically rests in the middle of his throat, and hearing your voice (hearing the confirmation that you were alive and well) was one of the few things that he knows could settle it.
You pick up on the fourth ring, and he can hear the faucet running. “Sorry, Seven, I was brushing my teeth.” There’s a slur to your words that he knows probably came from staying up so late. Luciel feels stupid for doing so, but he closes his eyes and pretends that he was in the same apartment, grinning and leaning in the hallway like this was normal.
“Ah, no, no- it’s fine. Just called to make sure you were alright.” He hates that there’s a slight stutter to his voice. While he can’t say it breaks the fantasy (the familiarity would definitely trip him up and he’s not sure how he would act), it does push him to actually consider what to say next. “So, er, everything’s fine? Nothing suspicious?”
“You can just say you called to talk, Seven- it’s perfectly fine.” There’s still that same chipper tone in your voice, even as you cut your own sentence off into a yawn. “I’m fine- never better. I like talking to you.” A playful tone comes into your voice. “Who wouldn’t like talking to God Seven-Oh-Seven?” He can practically see you doing some ridiculous pose and, what should’ve calmed him down (gotten him into the rhythm of the chat) just makes him a tad more tense.
“You’d be surprised...” He says, almost pointedly looking at Vanderwood, who rolls her eyes at him. He turns back towards the computer before he manages to catch her flipping him off (him shirking work and talking shit about her was the easiest way to making her mad), and catches you in the hallway, finger on your chin. “Headed to bed? Maybe we’ll meet in the land of dreams.” He lays the charm on thick, heavy, and cheesy, and watches you giggle, your smile pushing your eyes closed. Another yawn. His chest goes heavy in an emotion he can’t identify, and he leans closer to the screen to see you.
“I hope so.” You’re so genuine that he feels a blush crawl up his neck. “Are you watching me right now, Seven?”
He nods, a little too out of it for a moment to recognize that you can’t see him, and then verbalizes, “Yeah.”
You open your eyes again and turn to face one of the cameras (which you must’ve found when he’d had Vanderwood on task for watching you- it was no easy feat). You wiggle your fingers in a slow ‘hello’ and he raises his hand to wave back before realizing you can’t see him. “Was that the right one? Could you see that, Luciel?”
He should say something about going after the hacker. He should crack a joke about being the Defender of Justice, keeping everyone safe. Instead, his mouth is dry and it takes him opening and closing it a few times before he can get any words out. “Yeah, that’s the camera I’m... I’m looking through.”
Your eyes light up in surprise and a wider smile takes over your face. You stretch on your tiptoes to be able to be closer to it and, just when Luciel is about to ask what you were doing, you blow a kiss to the camera and mouth ‘goodnight’. His eyelids droop immediately, his lips falling open into a pout. “ God- I mean, goodnight to you, too.” He can hear your giggle on the other end. He tries to memorize it so he can revisit it later, when he didn’t have to use any of his brain to focus on catching the hacker.
“Sweet dreams, babe.” He hears you say, and it’s a joke, and he knows it’s a joke- a reference to when things were a lot more platonic (which, upon retrospect, they were never completely - always a grain of truth in there somewhere).
He plays along (but not really). “Sleep tight, babe.” He hears you giggle before the line goes dead, watches you cradle your phone through half-lidded eyes before shaking your head and heading off to your room.
He’d joked once about recording your voice to listen to later, but he genuinely considers it now. What sort of device he’d have to use for it to be untraceable (and also poor quality, but he’d sacrifice a little sound purity for more anonymity)- he’s thinking about 8 track tapes when he cradles his head in one palm and starts to slump. He’s still smiling- sweet dreams, babe . Vanderwood had come into his house complaining about how damn cold it was, and had turned the heat up, and it’s just enough to get him to lose himself for the moment- to forget about how he needs to stay awake and watch the feed, to stay awake and catch the hacker.
Instead, his eyes shut of their own volition and he falls asleep into the crook of his elbow.
-
Your fingers in his hair. He wakes up to his head on your lap, blinking slowly and yawning and feeling like he’s squinting through fogged glass. You’re giggling, and he can feel your fingers slide down and under his jawline; when they come back up and bump along his temple, he realizes his glasses are off. He opens his mouth to speak, to say something or ask how this happened- where are you two and how- how could this be happening.
“Saeyoung.” Your voice is soft- a lot softer than he’d ever heard over the phone, and his heart hurts in how it pulls tight. Like someone took the two strings of a coin purse and pulled with all of their might. “Good morning, sweetheart. Sleep well?”
His mouth is dry. Completely dry- even when he moves his tongue to form words, it’s like sandpaper on sandpaper. He says your name through a scratchy throat, his eyes heavily lidded but seeing your vague outline above him, feeling your fingers comb back through his hair. “Of course, with you here.” But it doesn’t come out as 707 Charming as he’d wanted to- it sounds raw and real. “Could I... Could you hand me my glasses?” He’s so worried that the illusion could break- he’s practically holding his breath.
You shuffle over him, reaching out to the right. He can only tell because he feels you shift underneath his head. The sound of his glasses unfolding, and then you’re accidentally poking him in the cheek with the glasses, nervously close to his left eye. “Oh, sorry!” You apologize, very quickly, before setting them right on his face.
He blinks up at you, in high definition, peering down at him with a half-smile on your face, your slight grimace apologetic. A heavy blush crawls up his neck until Luciel thinks his pulse might physically explode out of his body. “Saeyoung?” He says, and maybe it’s more of a squeak than anything. It’s been years since he’s heard his birth name and even longer since he hasn’t immediately flinched away from it.
It’s somewhat disarming how calm he is, the fact that he’s never felt more at ease sitting in your lap, on his bed.
On... On his bed. Yes, that was actually a really important detail to notice- he’s in his pajamas, but he can see the same old pair of jeans throw haphazardly at the foot of the bed from yesterday. You’re both sitting in the middle of his bed, and he had been sleeping on you. He’s not sure what to make of it.
“Hm?” Your response is slow, and your fingers pause in his hair. He almost wants to tell you to forget about it, just keep touching him, just keep letting him live this fantasy. “You told me to call you Saeyoung- do you want to go back to Luciel aga-”
“ No .” He says it so fast that he surprises himself. For the first time in a long time, he considers it. Considers what it would mean to be Saeyoung again, to stop being Luciel. In this big house, in this big room with you- just being himself. The ‘him’ that he hadn’t been since he was a child, uninfluenced by V or by the RFA or... “No, it’s fine if you call me- call me Saeyoung. I like it.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good.” You sweep your hand over his forehead and pull his bangs back, then bend at the waist to give him a kiss on his forehead. “You know, it’s your turn to cook dinner tonight, but if you want the leftovers from yesterday, I won’t hold it against you.” You stick your nose in the air, your hand still softly cupping his hair back. “It’s a humble offering to the one and only God 707, after all!”
Cotton mouth. He can’t tell if it’s because he’s going to do something as domestic as eat your leftovers from the fridge or because you’re very obviously trying to cheer him up. In his best, most energetic voice, he responds, “I will gladly take your offering- expect flourishing crops and a very happy lover over the... next few... weeks...” His voice drops off as he realizes that the lover would, well, be himself , and the blush that had waned over time comes back in full-force. “Of course, it’s probably more nutritious than Honey Butter Chips and Dr. Pepper!” He tries to cover, rather unsuccessfully.
“And more delicious?” You poke him in the chest, your smile wide and teasing. In that moment, Luciel (Saeyoung? He wasn’t quite sure which he was at the moment) felt that he was going to die.
He nods, mutely, then grins. “Anything made by you has to be delicious!” When you giggle and smile at him, he sees stars, fireworks, a whole non-deadly explosion. “C’mon- it’s no fun to eat alone.” He surges up (and almost immediately notices the loss of your body heat against him), and it takes him some shuffling to actually get up and off of the bed. You follow after him, reaching out your hand for his, and he tries not to seem so desperate when he laces your fingers together, when he very nearly clutches your hand to his side.
He leads you all the way down the stairs, even though it really looks like you know your way around. He gives a gentlemanly bow at the very end of it, rather close to you because he refused to let go of your hand. “So, my dear- to your left we have the kitchen, with all of its amenities at its disposal. To your right, we have the dining room, with far too many chairs for a single person to eat junk food comfortably.”
“So that’s why your room is a mess?” You tease, and he chuckles.
“Guilty as charged.” He pulls you towards the kitchen, then tries to sit you on the island in the middle of the kitchen. When he opens the fridge, there’s a tupperware full of sundubu jjigae in the fridge. He clutches his heart, turning to you. “Babe, you know what they say about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach.”
You snicker at that and hop up onto the island, swinging your legs while Saeyoung (because he was Saeyoung here, without the expectations of Luciel, the fears of 707) partitions what’s left into two bowls and puts them both in the microwave. Some of your hair falls into your face and, raising your eyebrows, you pick up your left hand and move the hair out of your face. Saeyoung drops the spoons he’d gotten out of the drawer, gaping slightly.
A gold band on your fourth finger. With a sense of urgency, he drops his gaze down to his own hand and sees a matching one there, can feel the cool metal when he touches it. His heart could explode.
You open your mouth. “Shouldn’t you be checking the cameras?” It’s a strange enough question that it makes him pause, breaks him out of his reverie, the warm atmosphere of being engaged and living in the same home. “707, they’re your problem, not mine- you shouldn’t be sleeping, anyways.”
His stomach bottoms out, like missing a stair on a long staircase down, and he jerks himself awake, back in his computer seat, alone, his cheek pressed firmly on the spacebar and the adjacent keys. Only half-awake, but understandably startled, he quickly makes sure he didn’t accidentally kickstart the self-destruct routine on his computer (he hadn’t).
“Oh, so you’re finally awake again?” Vanderwood is cracking open another Dr. Pepper. She looks exhausted, and he can see the bags under her eyes starting to develop. He kinda wants to tell her to stuff it, if only because he hasn’t slept at all for the past four days and has been split-screen doing his work and watching over you anyways.
The CCTV cameras don’t report anything new, but Luciel still finds himself distracted by them for minutes upon minutes, looking through the lens and thinking of a different, better world without baptismal names or secret agencies.