.

TAZ SKYLAR as SANJI,

When Nolan finally came back, Dom’s jaw was a little slack, but he accepted the kiss willingly, closing his eyes to it. He smiled, could get used to this. “You alright?” He asked, hand on Nolan’s upper arm now, rubbing in what he hoped was a soothing manner. He knew the answer to the question, though. Nolan was exhausted, he needed to rest, but he still wanted to show Dominic something, so Dom obliged, following the other man to the hatch and out into the open air. He surveyed it, taking in the sight slowly. It was impressive, Dominic had to admit that, and he came to sit by the other man, nodding his head.

“You’re incredible.” He said, patting Nolan’s thigh now, offering a little smile. “Thank you for showing me.” He leaned in then and put his hand on the back of Nolan’s neck, feeling a slight hint of sweat. He let his fingers thread into the hair at the back of his neck then pulled the blond in for a lingering kiss.

When Dom pulled back he stayed where he was for a moment. Close. Eyes still closed.

"Incredible," he repeated, eventually. The word turned over in his mouth like he was checking it for sincerity and finding, to some inconvenience, that it was genuine. "That's a bit much."

He opened his eyes. Looked out at the lights.

"I just — " he stopped. Started again. "It needed doing and I could do it so." He shrugged with one shoulder, the half-shrug of someone actively refusing to make something of themselves. "Anyone would."

He said it the way he always said it. The way that had never once been true.

His head dropped sideways and came to rest against Dom's temple, the way it had rested against his shoulder earlier; the same specific surrender of weight, the same quiet admission that he was out of the energy required to hold himself fully upright and Dom was right there and warm and he'd stopped pretending that wasn't relevant.

The exhaustion was very present now. Real and heavy and bone-deep, the kind that lived past the point of second winds. His eyes were still open, still looking at the lights, but there was a quality to the looking that was halfway to sleep already.

"Glad you're here," he said, quietly. To the lights, or to Dom, or to both of them. Not dressed up. Not a joke. Just the plain true shape of it, offered without armor because he was too tired to locate the armor and the lights were on and Dom's hand was warm at the back of his neck and some things didn't need to be anything other than what they were.

A long moment passed.

Then another.

His weight shifted incrementally against Dom's shoulder; not a decision, just a slow and total surrender to gravity, to warmth, to the specific safety of a person his body had apparently decided was worth stopping next to. His breathing changed. Evened out. The hand that had been resting on Dom's knee went still.

He was asleep.

He didn’t say anything of the crumbs that were, undoubtedly, falling on him thanks to the way Nolan decided to consume the last of his pie, and was about to plant a kiss on the side of the other man’s head when he was up and moving, and Dominic knew someone was coming, knew it the way someone knows the answer to something without ever being asked. He shifted, watching as Nolan moved across the room, waiting to be instructed on what to do or to see a problem he needed to intervene with.

Dominic turned slightly in his chair, noting the blonde man behind the door, the way that Nolan was interacting with him. Not exactly friendly, but not hostile either. He filed that away, filed the face away, decided to do his digging later. Now was not the time.

Then Nolan was telling the other man to leave, very curtly and more than once, and Dominic was on the edge of his seat, ready to swing into action should the need arise, but still sat quite nicely on his little chair, his brow furrowed just slightly.

When Nolan looked back at him, his expression was different – something missing in his smile, and it was exponentially smaller than it had been when Dominic first arrived. He silently cursed the uninvited visitor for spoiling what had started out as such a lovely night.

Dominic didn’t say I thought no one came here, didn’t need to, just looked at the other man and saw the weight of it all around him, like threatening to crack the foundation. He watched as Nolan drifted across the room like a piece of driftwood in the current, and sighed to himself, looking down at his lap then back to his mug of tea. He finished it then stood.

“Is that the end for tonight, then?” He asked, sensing the change, the charge in the air.

He was still standing near the counter, still several careful feet from Dom, still running hotter than he wanted to be. He looked at Dom across that distance — at the finished mug, the furrow between his brows, the specific quality of Dom's patience which had always been its own kind of language — and felt the distance like something physical. Like something he'd had and then had taken from him without being asked.

"Give me ten minutes," he said. "Just — stay there. Don't touch the railing."

He turned to the mainframe housing.

"Actually, you can look," he said, without turning back, flexing his fingers that were already arcing with electricity in anticipation, "maybe just don't look directly at it. Just be careful." A beat.

Then he pressed both palms flat to the housing panel and paused there for a moment; not hesitating, just settling. Finding the connection the way you find a familiar handhold in the dark. Then he let it open.

The lights went first. Not a flicker — a surge, clean and total, every bulb in the plant going from baseline to full brightness simultaneously like something coming to attention. The output gauges swung hard right and kept going. The hum of the building shifted pitch; deeper, fuller, the difference between an instrument being plucked and an instrument being played properly for the first time in months.

Then the visible part started.

It ran up his arms in branching threads, blue-white and very bright, tracing the Lichtenberg scars like it knew them, which it did, which it always had, which was the whole point of them. It didn't spark or spit. It moved with a kind of terrible patience; spreading across his shoulders, threading down through his hands into the panel, and from the panel into the infrastructure in a wave that travelled through the building's bones visibly, lighting up the wiring in the walls in brief vivid lines before it settled and was absorbed. From where Dom was standing he would have been able to see it moving through the building. Not metaphorically. Literally — the current visible in the walls, the ceiling, the floor, every connected piece of metal in the room briefly and brilliantly illuminated and then dark again as the charge passed through and was swallowed.

The gauges stopped swinging and held. Well past where they usually held.

Nolan stood there and gave it more. Quiet. Methodical. His breathing was even, his posture was easy, his hands were flat against the panel with no particular drama about them, the absolute absence of performance from someone doing something that would have looked, from the outside, extraordinary. The current kept moving through the walls in those branching lines, again and again with each deliberate breath, each sustained push, and the plant kept taking it with the patience of something that had been waiting for exactly this.

The lights in the east wing — which had been running slightly dim for three weeks — came fully online.

The south grid's uneven hum smoothed to something Nolan hadn't heard from it in months.

Something deep in the building that had been quietly failing simply stopped failing.

He stood there until the pressure in his back teeth was gone. Until the humming under his skin had gone from a shout to a murmur to something almost peaceful. Until the last of the adrenaline had burned through the channel and there was nothing left of it but the warmth of the panel under his palms and the particular silence of a thing that had been fed.

He pulled his hands back.

The room was very still.

He stood there for a moment with his eyes closed, and the exhaustion landed on him like something physical, immediate and total, the tiredness that had been waiting underneath the charge finally arriving all at once, every hour of the night settling into his shoulders simultaneously. His legs felt different. His hands felt different. He was considerably more tired than he'd been twenty minutes ago and he knew it and it was worth it without question.

He picked his gloves up off the counter. Didn't put them back on.

Turned around.

The smile that came then wasn't assembled. It was just there — smaller than usual, softer than usual, a little worn at the edges, but real. He crossed the room, closed the distance he'd hated having, and took Dom's face in both hands and kissed him; not urgently, not making anything of it, just — landing there, the way you land somewhere you've been trying to get back to.

He pulled back and looked at him for a moment.

"Right," he said, quiet, a little rough at the edges. "Come here. I want to show you something."

He didn't wait — just turned and moved, expecting Dom to follow, leading him through the east corridor and past the junction he'd fixed tonight and up a narrow maintenance staircase that looked like it led nowhere useful, the kind of route that only made sense if you'd found it by necessity and memorized it in the dark.

It led to a hatch.

He pushed it open and the night air came in cool and carrying the particular smell of the Substrates, old concrete, distant rain, something electric that might just be him, and climbed out onto the roof and turned to offer Dom a hand up after him.

The view was not glamorous. Not the Strata's clean skyline or floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over organised light. It was the Substrates; industrial, uneven, layers of old infrastructure pressing up against each other in the dark.

But the lights were on.

All of them. Every street lamp, every window, every running sign in the district below — all of it burning because of what was inside this building, because of what he put into it every few nights, because of the years of it. From up here you could see the shape of it; the radius of what he kept lit spreading out from the plant in every direction like rings in water. People down there sleeping with their lights on, their fridges running, their medical equipment humming, none of them knowing why.

He sat down on the edge of the roof, legs hanging, and looked out at it.

"That's mine," he said, quietly. Not with pride exactly. With something that didn't have a cleaner name than this is what I am for. "All of that." He glanced at Dom. "Thought you should see it. From up here."

Dominic was impressed with the speed with which Nolan was eating the pie, like a man with a voracious appetite who hadn’t seen food in days. He was going to finish it before Dominic finished one slice, and that was both amusing and endearing.

“Wouldn’t it be stranger if I didn’t find you incredibly attractive when you’re sweaty and shirtless?” He asked, “Having exerted a great effort? I think that would be absurd.” He chuckled, quite amused with himself and having no qualms about continuing to compliment the blond. “Though the compliment is duly noted.” He said, tapping his temple with the end of his fork.

He did not move. Head still on Dom's shoulder, the pie somewhere to his left, the plant running its uneven lullaby through the walls. Dom's leg warm against his. The hand that had patted his face — briefly, just gently — had left something behind it, the ghost of warmth that Nolan's skin catalogued and kept the way it kept everything useful.

A table between us is too much, is it?

"Yes," he said, simply. Not a joke. Not dressed up as one.

He was quiet for a moment in the way he was rarely quiet, not performing stillness, not doing anything with it, just actually, genuinely still. The tiredness Dom had named sat in him like ballast; heavy and honest and oddly fine. He'd been carrying it so long that having someone notice it felt less like exposure than like putting a thing down somewhere safe and knowing it would still be there when he picked it back up.

Perhaps you should finish your pie and have a lie down.

"In a minute," he said with a breath that sounded like relief. Then: "Maybe two minutes."

He reached sideways, blind, and located the plate by touch. Ate the last of it without lifting his head fully from Dom's shoulder, leaned back into him afterward like the interim hadn't happened. Like he'd just briefly paused a thing he intended to return to.

The plant hummed. The east wing ticked along steady. The room had the specific quality of quiet that felt earned rather than empty and Nolan was, for once, not doing anything with it. Just in it. Eyes closed, Dom warm beside him, the south grid running smooth for the first time in weeks.

He felt the footsteps before he heard them.

Vibration through old flooring, up through the chair legs, into his spine. The weight distribution. The pace. Something in him recognized it before his brain had been consulted and his eyes opened.

He was on his feet before he'd consciously decided to stand, not rushing, not panicking, just up, the way something alert moves when alertness is the only thing load-bearing, and the tiredness that had been sitting in him like ballast, the honest heavy tiredness he'd finally let himself put down, inverted itself completely in the space of two seconds. Not gone. Worse than gone; it was still there, all of it, every hour of it, but now there was adrenaline running on top of it like current over wet ground, and the combination was a particular kind of awful he knew well and hated. Wired and exhausted simultaneously, the body doing what it did when it couldn't afford to be what it actually was.

He was at the door before the knock landed.

He glanced back at Dom, one finger raised, quick, low, the gesture of a man who already knew what was on the other side and wasn't making it Dom's problem. "One second."

Pulled it open.

Ezra.

Nolan looked at him with an expression that was warm and easy and completely, totally shut.

"How did you find this place," he said. Not a greeting.

Ezra told him. Patterns. Knowing how Nolan moved. The gentle implication that he'd never been particularly hard to follow, if you knew what to look for, said it with that familiar tone, almost fond, the way you tell someone something you've always known about them that they thought was hidden.

"Right," Nolan said. Pleasantly. The smile doing exactly what it always did, sitting on his face like it belonged there, like it wasn't covering something that was counting exits and running probability on every version of events where Ezra ends up at this specific door on this specific night. "And what do you want."

Ezra's eyes moved past him into the room. Not at Dom — not yet — at the plant itself. The infrastructure. The output gauges. The wiring. The gap between what any of this machinery could plausibly produce and what was very clearly, measurably running through it. His eyes moved to Nolan's hands. The gloves. Back to the room.

He did the maths in about four seconds.

"I'd been wondering," Ezra said, quietly, "how you were managing it." The tone of someone choosing each word the way you choose footing on uncertain ground. "I wasn't expecting this."

Not this place. Not this setup.

This. The scale of it. The years of it. The size of what Nolan had quietly grown into in the dark while no one was looking, and the size of what was now depending on him to keep growing. The worry in it was not loud. That was almost worse.

Nolan smiled at him. Bright. Easy. Gave him absolutely nothing back.

"I've got company," he said. Still in the doorframe. Not having moved from it. "So whatever this is, it's not tonight."

Ezra looked past him at Dom. Then back. And then, because he had always been immovable when he'd decided to be immovable, he looked at the room again, looked at it the way he looked at things, fully, quietly, all at once, and said, still in that careful gentle voice that Nolan had always found it very difficult to argue with and was currently finding it very difficult not to argue with:

"How long before it goes down for good."

"Ezra—"

"Because you look like you haven't slept in—"

"Ezra."

"And when it does go down," he said, quieter, careful as a hand reaching toward something that might bite, "what happens to you."

The silence that followed was different from the other silences.

Something moved across Nolan's face, fast, and gone, and not nothing. Not the careful blankness or the easy smile or any of the usual architecture. Just something that got through before he could stop it, there and retrieved in the same breath, like a current that spiked and then was controlled again. His jaw was tight. His hand on the doorframe was very still.

"Leave," he said.

Not light. Not pleasant. Not dressed up in anything.

"Nolan—"

"I said leave, Ezra." His voice was even and his eyes were not and the hand on the doorframe had gone white at the knuckle. "I have someone in my home and I have had a very long night and you don't get to come here — " he stopped. Reset. One breath, deliberate. "You don't get to do this tonight. So goodnight."

Ezra looked at him for a long moment. The look of a man who had more to say and knew, with some precision, that saying it now would cost more than it was worth. That the damage was already done. That he'd seen what he'd seen and Nolan knew he'd seen it and both of them knew that was going to matter later.

He nodded. Once.

"Goodnight," Ezra said, quietly. And left.

Nolan stood in the doorway until the footsteps faded. Then he stood there a moment longer, hand still on the frame, not quite ready to turn around. Not quite ready to be looked at.

When he did turn around, the smile was back. Smaller than usual. Assembled with visible effort, if you knew where to look.

He didn't quite meet Dom's eyes straight away.

"Sorry about that," he said. Too light. Slightly too fast. "Old friend. Terrible timing." He moved back to the table, picked up his mug, found it empty, set it back down. "Very on brand for him."

He didn't sit.

Stood there for a moment with his hands not quite knowing what to do with themselves, picked up the empty mug again, put it back, moved to the counter, didn't do anything at the counter, moved back. The adrenaline had nowhere to go now that the door was closed and the threat was gone and there was nothing left to handle; it was just running through him, thin and bright and purposeless, and underneath it the exhaustion was still there, still waiting, and the combination meant he was too wired to settle and too tired to do anything useful with the energy.

And underneath all of that, worse than all of that, he could feel the charge. Really feel it. The adrenaline had fed straight into it the way it always did, indiscriminate and fast, and now it was sitting high in him, humming at a frequency he felt in his back teeth; that specific uncomfortable pressure, like a sound just above hearing, like his jaw didn't quite fit right around it.

He ran his tongue along the back of his teeth. Didn't mean to. Reflex.

He'd drifted, he noticed. Without deciding to, without it registering as a decision at all; he'd put distance between himself and Dom, was standing somewhere near the counter, arms crossed loosely over his chest, a careful, instinctive several feet of open air between them. His body had done the maths before he had. Had just quietly moved him away from the thing he didn't want to hurt, the way it always did when the levels climbed, automatic as breathing.

He uncrossed his arms. Crossed them again. He was not quite looking at Dom, not quite looking at anything.

“Thank you.” He said, taking the plate and offered fork before digging into the very end of the piece, inspecting it carefully, then putting it into his mouth. It was sweet, silky, and indulgent, and Dominic hummed his pleasure around the tines of the fork before removing it, setting it down, savoring the small bite slowly – like letting it melt on his tongue.

“You didn’t electrocute me, my heart didn’t stop.” He corrects, eyes glimmering. “And I anticipated it, so nothing shocking there aside from the literal shock. Are you being clever?” He arched a brow, smile pulling at the left corner of his mouth now.

They sat, silent, for a moment, as Nolan ate his pie, and Dominic savored it slowly, little nibbling piece by little nibbling piece. He stilled his fork when complimented, looking around the room then back at Nolan with a light chuckle, “I look good everywhere.” He said in lieu of another comment of gratitude. Dominic was handsome, he knew that, his beauty had gotten him far in life, he wasn’t about to pretend otherwise. Still, he let his eyes graze over Nolan, “You look good in here, too.” He said, “Maybe specifically in here, like, extra good.” He teased, licking some cream off his fork.

Dom shifted slightly in his seat when Nolan started explaining himself. Still, he knew all of this before the blond started speaking, didn’t he? Understood the obligation that Nolan had to the plant from the first night he’d happened upon it. This wasn’t a job, it was life, and it was life for more than just himself. Nolan was selfless in a way that Dominic couldn’t wrap his head around but greatly admired. He simply nodded his head, “I know.” He said again, looking down at the piece of pie slowly dwindling on his plate, then back to Nolan again, like trying to convey that this was alright with him, they all had their ways.

Nolan continued, explaining that if he couldn’t leave, and Dominic couldn’t come there, they’d never see each other, and Nolan didn’t like that answer, so he’d decided to compromise his rules for Dominic. That settled nicely, like something floating down to the bottom of the sea, resting in the silt and sand, lodging there. He smiled again, bigger this time, a little flash of teeth.

“No one’s going to be following me.” He’d spent years being the follower, he would recognize anyone on his trail long before he was anywhere near Nolan, could shake them, or go back to the Strata. He wouldn’t risk it, knew this was too big of an operation, cared too much about the stupid blond already. It was irritating, actually. “You don’t have to worry, this is going to be fine.” He said, reaching across the table to put his hand over Nolan’s, his gaze focusing on the other man’s for a beat, like to drive the point home.

"I know you're careful," he said. "That's not — " he turned his hand over slightly, not pulling away, just adjusting. "I believe you. I do." His thumb moved against Dom's knuckles once, automatic, the same way it always moved toward Dom's hands without him deciding to. "I just needed to say it out loud. Once. And now I have and we can move on."

He looked back at his pie.

"I didn't electrocute you," he said, in the tone of a man repeating something back to examine it. "Right. Yes. Technically." He pointed his fork at Dom. "Your heart didn't stop, you anticipated it, nothing shocking, very good, excellent, all of that." A beat. "I did still send current through your body via a metal railing while kissing you and you — " he stopped. Reconsidered. "Actually that's a great sentence. I'm keeping that. That's mine."

He ate another piece of pie.

Maybe specifically in here, like, extra good.

He'd clocked that. He'd absolutely clocked that and the cream licked off the fork that had followed it and he was choosing, with great deliberate effort, to eat his pie like a normal person.

"Extra good," he repeated, lightly. "In a dying power plant. Covered in grease." He shook his head slowly. "You're very strange, Dom." He said it the way you said something you found completely wonderful. "I mean that as the highest possible compliment."

He finished his slice. Set the plate down. Looked at Dom across the table, the hand still over his, the last of the pie between them, the plant humming its uneven hum around them both — and felt, quietly and without making anything of it, something that had been running all night finally go still.

"Right," he said. "Now that that's settled." He tilted his head toward the pie. "Are you going to finish that or are you going to keep nibbling at it like a very elegant mouse. Because if you're done I'm having the rest."

Then his chair scraped back and he moved without making anything of it — not a decision, just a direction — and sat down next to Dom instead.

He did the calculation first, the way he always did. Head tilting slightly, listening to the plant the way he always listened to it; not with effort but with attention that had become so habitual it had stopped feeling like listening and started feeling like breathing. Reading the hum. The frequency of it. The places where it ran even and the places where it didn't. The east wing settled. The junction holding. The pressure valve sorted.

She was fine. For now. Tonight, she was fine.

He exhaled and leaned against Dom. Slowly. The way something gives way slowly when it's been holding for a very long time. Close, and then closer than that, because he was tired in a way that had gotten past the part of him that managed things and presented a good face about them — tired in his bones and his hands and somewhere behind his eyes — and Dom was right there and warm and Nolan had been doing this alone for so long that the alone had stopped feeling like a choice and started feeling like just the shape of things.

His head came to rest against Dom's shoulder.

He didn't say anything about it. Didn't make a joke. Didn't explain or deflect or find the nearest exit.

Just — stayed there.

The plant hummed around them both.

"She's fine," he said, quietly, after a moment. Meaning the plant. Meaning tonight. Meaning you don't have to worry, not right now. "We're fine." I'm fine.

He laughed loud when Nolan warned him off the hotplate. “I didn’t touch it for a reason.” He said, brows rising considerably. “Oh, darling, you think you’re shocking?” He continued, pouting for dramatic effect. It didn’t last long, though, as the smile overtook his features once more. He was giddy, practically brimming with excitement. Since when did another person impact him this much?

The energy between them was bubbling with excitement that radiated off of both of them in tsunami-like waves. It filled the space as the two of them tried to act calm, cool, and collected. But they were already both enamored with each other, that much was obvious. They’d both found a piece of themselves they hadn’t realized was missing.

Dominic was silent as he watched Nolan’s practiced movements – the way the spark took to the hotplate like Nolan and it were connected by some invisible fuse. He wasn’t markedly impressed but smiled to himself all the same, the way the familiar motions bled through Nolan’s muscles – practiced memory.

He took a seat, folding one leg over the other, before being invited, just making himself comfortable, and waited to be given his tea.

He roared a laugh when Nolan continued speaking, saying he almost died a couple of times and still looked better than most people on their best days. Dom’s eyes were glittering, “Careful, your head might not fit out the door next time.” He warned.

Then Nolan was back on the record, telling Dominic how he was the only person who had been there, and Dominic busied himself with plucking a tiny bit of lint off of his otherwise pristine jacket. “I knew that already, but thanks for telling me.” He offered, glancing up at Nolan and accepting the mug as it was pushed his way. He watched the steam billow off of it before taking a tentative, burning sip. Just the way he liked it. There was even sugar this time.

Dominic grinned at the open invitation, “Oh, wouldn’t you like that? If I just dropped by ever so frequently.” His eyes shone bright, black like obsidian. He considered it, locked it away. He would be dropping by, just how frequently though remained to be seen. He liked being invited, it warmed him from his core outward, spreading through his limbs. He was certain it wasn’t the tea.

The bang caused Dominic to pause, mug halfway up to his lips. He glanced over at the wall then back at Nolan, listening as the other man spoke, watching as something changed in his expression. “That couldn’t be good.” He said, more to himself than to Nolan who was already reacting, rushing up and away, warning Dom not to touch anything. The older man set his mug down and held up his hands like I wouldn’t dare, then folded his hands back into his lap to wait for Nolan to come back.

As the minutes ticked by, he pulled out his phone and busied himself with checking e-mails. When Nolan returned, there was an easy smile on Dominic’s lips. He listened as Nolan informed him that all was fine, or managing, and offered the other man a nod. “So, we don’t need to evacuate immediately?” He asked, grinning while Nolan sat opposite him.

As Nolan settled in in front of him, Dominic studied him – the tiredness in his eyes, the puffiness beneath them. He wondered how little steam Nolan was running on, wanted to offer him some sort of reprieve but didn’t know how, supposed his company was, for now, good enough.

He laughed lightly when Nolan asked him if he was alright, “Takes more than a random bang to rattle me, thank you. I’m fine.” He said, lifting his mug again for another sip. “Shall we tear into the pie before the whole place comes crashing around us?” He suggested, arching an eyebrow.

He cut his own slice. Sat back. Looked at Dom across the table.

"And yes," he said, "I think I'm shocking." He pointed the fork briefly at Dom. "Darling, I literally electrocuted you and you kissed me back." He raised an eyebrow. "I think we both know the answer to that question."

He ate a piece of pie and watched Dom over the table with the easy, warm quality of someone who was exactly where they wanted to be and had decided, at some point in the last hour, to stop pretending otherwise.

"You look good in here, by the way," he said. Simply. Like it was just an observation. "Annoyingly good. I'd like to register a complaint about that." A beat. "And before you say anything — it's not the lighting. The lighting in here is terrible. That's entirely you. Which is, frankly, unfair."

He turned his fork over once.

Then, quieter, the easy quality shifting into something with more weight underneath it —

"When I said all of that," he said, not looking up, "I didn't just mean the bang." He turned the fork over once. "I meant — " a gesture that took in the walls, the hum, the machinery, the kettle, the mattress on the floor somewhere behind him. "This. All of it." He looked up then. "It's not a job I clock out of. It's not something I do and then go home from. This is home. This is where I go. This is it."

He said it without apology. Just the fact of it, plain.

"And I can't leave it." Not won't. Can't. "People downstream need it to keep running. Medical equipment. Refrigeration. Lights. There's no backup. There's just me and what I can keep going." He speared a piece of pie. "So when something goes bang I don't get to think about it. I just go."

He ate the piece of pie.

A beat.

"Also — " he started, and then stopped, and something shifted in his expression; a thought he'd clearly followed far enough down to find something inconvenient waiting at the bottom of it. He redirected. Smoothly. Almost. "It's complicated. The leaving. For — " a brief gesture at himself, encompassing everything that was him and his hands and the gloves on the table and the Lichtenberg scars visible across his arms " — reasons. That are fine. Not a problem. Just — " another stop. "Complicated."

He ate another piece of pie.

Looked at Dom sideways.

"Which is deeply inconvenient," he said, the corner of his mouth pulled. "Not complaining. Just — noting it."

He was quiet for a moment. Then —

"I want to be transparent with you," he said. "That's all this is. I'm not — " he stopped. Picked his words carefully. "I'd normally say nobody comes here. That's the rule. Wrong person follows the wrong person back and suddenly something I've spent years keeping quiet isn't quiet anymore." He looked at the table. "So my strong preference has always been that this place stays off the map."

A beat.

"And then I did the maths on what that actually meant." He glanced up at Dom. "Which is that if I'm not coming to you and you're not coming here, I'm essentially never seeing you." The corner of his mouth moved. "And I found that unacceptable. Quite quickly, actually. Didn't take long at all to find that unacceptable."

He looked back at his pie.

"So. You're here. And I want you to keep coming back." A pause. "Just — eyes open. Both of us. That's all I'm asking."

He listened as the man spoke, smiling more to himself than anything else as he shook his head, clicked his tongue. “Sure. I’m sure you’ve got it all under control. You sound like a man who’s got it all under control.” He said easily, lazily, and continued to wait for whatever it was that Nolan was doing, let the blond fill the warm air with conversation – questions, mostly, that Dominic hardly had a chance to respond to.

He did look around, everything was the same as it was the last time – the kettle, the hot plate, the plant itself. He made no move to access the hotplate even if Nolan had given him permission to. Mostly because he didn’t know what to do with the pie, but also because he didn’t have amazing electrical powers and didn’t particularly feel like getting shocked by something that wasn’t the shirtless blond ambling above him.

“The walk was fine. I saw some interesting people along the way, but that’s always the way down here, isn’t it? You lot have much better fashion sense.” He teased, lupine grin on his features as Nolan made his way down to him like a very agile monkey.

He asked about the treat, and Dominic held it up, was about to say what it was, but then Nolan was coming down more quickly, landing with a thud that was very much the opposite of catlike. It made Dom smile and shake his head, affection in his features.

He drank in the sight of the man in front of him, in his full glory. He was pleased as punch to get the view of the scarring, the tattoos – it felt intimate somehow, and he was grateful that Nolan trusted him enough to be vulnerable around him. He was also glad that the man was disregarding the shirt, even if it was right there. He took a moment to watch a bead of sweat trail its way down from temple to hem of jeans, then looked back up with just his eyes, dark pools of mystery.

He didn’t have a chance to say anything before Nolan was upon him, hands at the sides of his face, pulling him in for a kiss. Dominic closed his eyes to the contact and returned the kiss, a small hum of pleasure escaping his lips. He hadn’t been expecting it, and usually he didn’t like surprises, but this was a pleasant one. He could do nothing with his hands, the pie was still occupying them.

“Happy to be here.” He replied with another easy smile as Nolan pulled back. His eyes were positively glittering. Then they were rolling.

“Oh, you and your dramatics. On the record, fine, I’ve never been here, we don’t know each other. But we’re not on the record now, are we?” He asked, quirking a brow. It was pleasing to know that he’d had that effect on the other man, though, and he couldn’t help the growing grin on his lips as they pulled back to reveal his teeth.

“I’m going to have so much fun with you.” He said, then looked down at the white box in his hands then back up at Nolan. “It is, indeed, a pie. Their best seller, apparently, and I got the last one of the day. So, you’re thoroughly welcome.” He looked over at the hotplate then back at Nolan. “Shall we?”

I'm going to have so much fun with you.

"Funny," he said, the grin arriving at the corner of his mouth, "I was going to say the same thing." He looked at Dom for just a beat longer than necessary. "Glad we're aligned."

The pie. Their best seller. The last one of the day.

Something moved through his expression that he didn't quite manage to contain, warm and slightly undone, like receiving something small and considered and not being entirely prepared for how much it landed. He'd spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of the afternoon wondering what kind of treat it was..

He reached out and took the box from Dom's hands, carefully, with both of his, the torch tucked under his arm, and his fingers brushed Dom's in the handoff and he didn't move away from that immediately. Just noted it. Held the contact a beat longer than strictly necessary.

Then he turned toward the table.

"Right," he said. "I lied. Don't touch the hotplate — last thing I need is you getting shocked by something that isn't me." He glanced back over his shoulder, the grin still exactly where it was. "I have a reputation to maintain. Very specific kind of shocking. Very on-brand. Don't want anything diluting that."

He set the box down. Reached for the hotplate. The spark from his palm to the element was automatic, practiced, entirely unremarkable to him, just the body doing what it did, the charge finding a use for itself, same as always.

He found two mugs without looking for them. Set them on the table. Did the small familiar choreography of the kettle and the tea bags and the particular domestic machinery of the only home he'd had for years, with Dom standing in the middle of it, and tried not to think too hard about how that felt.

He was, it had to be said, completely over the moon. He was doing an adequate job of not showing it. Adequate.

"I do want it noted," he said, "that I climbed thirty feet of questionable infrastructure tonight, nearly died twice — " a brief considering pause " — maybe two and a half times, and I still look better than most people do on their best day." He glanced at Dom. "Relatively speaking. Objectively speaking. Don't argue with me about this."

He poured the water. Set the mugs down. Pushed one toward Dom.

"For the record," he said, not looking at Dom, voice pitched carefully casual, "you have absolutely been here. You're the only person who has ever been here." A beat. "I thought you should know that."

He looked up then. Couldn't quite help it.

"Also —" the grin shifted into something slightly softer, the showing-off quality dropping away " — you can come back. Whenever you want." A pause, something almost wondering in it, like he was still slightly surprised to be saying it. "That's also on the record. Since we're keeping one."

He picked up his mug.

Something in the east wing went bang.

Not a small bang. Not the usual repertoire of clanks and complaints and things-settling-in-the-heat that Nolan had catalogued into background noise over years. This was a specific, declarative, deeply inconvenient bang, followed immediately by a sound like something under significant pressure deciding it had held that pressure long enough.

Nolan stopped.

He stood very still for approximately two seconds with his eyes closed and the expression of a man conducting an extremely rapid internal negotiation between what he wanted to say and what he was going to say instead. His jaw tightened. Released. Something moved across his face that was very nearly a word and then wasn't.

He opened his eyes.

He was already moving before he'd set the mug down. He hadn't set the mug down. He set it down mid-stride, sideways, in a way that was technically successful.

"Don't touch anything," he said, over his shoulder. "I don't mean — you can touch the pie. Touch the pie, that's fine. Just not the — " he pointed vaguely at a section of wall that was now making a sound it definitely hadn't been making before " — that. Don't touch that. I'll be two minutes."

He was gone.

He was not two minutes.

He was gone eleven minutes, which he knew because the kettle had gone cold by the time he came back. He appeared in the doorway first. jacket in hand, grabbed off a hook somewhere in the dark on the way past, and then the rest of him followed, and the rest of him looked, if you were paying attention, like a man who had been at this since well before Dom had arrived. The tiredness was there underneath the momentum; in the slight heaviness around his eyes, the particular quality of someone running on stubbornness and forward motion and not much else. He'd been doing this all night. Possibly longer.

There was a smear of something dark across his left forearm.

He set the jacket down. Looked at Dom. Looked at the cold tea.

"Right," he said. "So." He picked up the kettle, powered the hotplate again without breaking stride, set it back down. "Good news is nothing's on fire." He held up his forearm briefly, indicating the smear. "This is grease, not blood, just so we're clear." He set his arms down. "The pie is fine. We're fine. The plant is — " a brief pause in which he clearly ran through several possible ways to finish that sentence " — managing."

He pulled out a chair and sat down across from Dom like a man arriving somewhere he'd been meaning to get to all day.

He looked at Dom across the table — the pie between them, the kettle working itself back up to temperature, the plant humming its uneven hum around them both — and something in his expression settled. Quietly. Like something that had been running all night finally finding a reason to slow down.

He hadn't slept properly in two days and the plant had been making that everyone's problem and he'd been managing it alone the way he managed everything alone and now Dom was sitting across from him in the middle of all of it and Nolan found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he didn't mind that at all.

He looked at Dom.

"You alright?" he said. "With — " a gesture that encompassed the bang, the disappearance, the general ambiance of a power plant that was held together with stubbornness and increasingly desperate optimism. "All of that."

          Her heart fluttered at his words 'ask me something harder'. She ignored the words predecessor. She didn't like the fact that she had been willing to ruin the city for him. Didn't like the fact that she would do it again in a heart beat, but it wasn't something that she wanted to think on now.

          Right now all she wanted was to be in his grip, enveloped by the warmth that was Ezra.

          She melted into him, the same way that she always had. The kiss was light and slow despite the years that had passed. Despite the longing that she had felt for him while he was away. Unhurried like Ezra always was with the things he cared about most. He had been the one who had taught her to take life at a leisure pace.

          She had always been high strung. Always in a rush to get from point A to point B. That tended to happen when you could sense the life draining from those who crossed your path. When you knew that they would never achieve the things they spoke of because they were dwindling faster than they anticipated and by the time they grew aware of their own demise it was almost always to late.

          Her read on Ezra had never been one of a ticking clock, not until those last few weeks. It had been a constant and steady flow, allowing her to relax into a sort of lull in his presence. It was the same read that she got from him now. Not exactly the same but close enough that it allowed her mind to find some ease in the thought that he wasn't going anywhere, not anytime soon at least.

          They savored the kiss until it was imperative to their survival to pull away from one another.

          She leaned back, shedding his jacket. Suddenly her skin was flush and warm, a feeling that she hadn't felt in so long, to long.

His hands were still at her waist. Thumbs moving in slow circles without him deciding to.

"There she is." Quiet. Not quite a smile — something more than that. Looking at her likef someone who had been waiting for a specific thing and was now watching it arrive. He'd always run warm enough for both of them. Had always been the thing that cut through whatever cold she was carrying. Apparently fifteen years hadn't changed that arithmetic.

His eyes moved over her face the way they used to — unhurried, taking inventory of the things he'd been carrying in memory and checking them against the real thing. She was different. She was exactly the same. Both of those things were true and he held them without trying to resolve them.

"You always ran cold." He said it softly. Like a thing he'd filed away a long time ago and was only now taking back out. His hand moved up her spine, slow. "Used to steal all the blankets and then act surprised about it."

His mouth curved.

"Fifteen years and I'd bet money that hasn't changed."

Today the file that had come across his desk was that of a young man working as a grocery clerk in the Substrates. His powers were deemed ‘dangerous’ to other mutants, and he had an apparent record of those he had ‘hurt’. Everything in the file piqued Dominic’s interest, not because he believed the young man was actually a danger to anyone but because he had never read about powers like this before.

So, Dominic read and re-read the file until he had practically memorized the kid’s life, then he did some research of his own through avenues he had gathered across years of research. His connections were invaluable, and he learned a few things that weren’t in Muntz’s file on Roque.

After careful deliberation, Dom decided to go down to the Substrates and give the kid a scope out – getting a feel for a person by seeing them face-to-face was a good tell. Dominic had learned a lot about that over the years. He geared up and thought about the kid’s powers again – power absorption and power negation. The file was unclear on how they worked, exactly, only that the young man negated the powers of those around them and could absorb them, use them for himself. He understood immediately why this was a person of interest to Helix and Apex.

As usual, Dominic was out of place in the Substrates, even in their grocery store. He selected a few items that could be useful to him and placed them in a basket while observing the young man as he rang up customers. He was pleasant, gregarious, even, and Dominic couldn’t imagine him being an actual threat. But then he remembered… power negation. In a fight, one-on-one, Dominic would be just a man.

A highly trained man, but just a man, nonetheless.

And if Roque took his powers, then he would be just a man fighting against himself. That was terrifying and thrilling all at once. He grinned to himself, picked up a can from the aisle just to have something to do with his hands. He inspected the nutritional information and winced then set the can back on the shelf, perused another aisle, then finally brought his shopping trip to an end, queuing for the young man’s line (which was, inexplicably, longer than the others).

While stood in the line, Dominic let his mind wander. He was already in the Substrates, caught sight of bleach blond hair, smiled to himself as he thought fondly of Nolan. The pleasant thoughts didn’t linger long as it was soon his turn to queue. He got closer, and he felt something, like a switch being flipped, and he knew then that it was vicinity that negated the powers. But did Roque already possess Dom’s? Did he know what had just happened?

The young man looked up at him, something in the warmth of his brown eyed gaze, the way it lingered – it spoke to Dom, answered his latter question. Yes, he knew.

They spoke briefly, the line multiplying, Dominic knew he couldn’t waste the kid’s time. He gave him his card with an easy smile – a simple thing with his name, number, and e-mail address. Roque looked at him curiously but pocketed the card and gave him a friendly wave, a smile with a single dimple.

He still seemed harmless.

Out in the foggy streets, where light barely seeped through, Dominic checked his phone, smiling and taking pause for the exchange between himself and the aforementioned blond. He knew he’d done something to the other with the offer of a treat, calling him a good boy. He pocketed his phone, handed his purchases off to a rough looking vagabond, and made his way to the diner he and Nolan had had their first date at.

What was better than an offering of pie?

He smiled nicely at Edna’s granddaughter, trying to catch sight of the name on her tag. It said Lou, and he filed that away to remember, in case she wasn’t wearing it next time. She was a sweet enough girl, and Nolan had said that thing about her saving up. He ordered a whole pie from her, tipped her another fifty quid, and was out the door faster than she could thank him.

Dominic had memorized the path to Nolan’s plant (and the way back) from the first time he’d come to visit. The walk there wasn’t arduous but it wasn’t pleasant, either. He didn’t mind, took in the view and carried the pie like it was some delicate thing. Along the way, he caught sight of a few young supes practicing their powers in the alleyway. He shook his head but said nothing to the dangers of that – one never knew who was watching, who had sent out their dog catcher.

Before he knew it, he was finding his way to the door that he knew would lead to one shirtless bottle blond. He thought about knocking but knew that Nolan was expecting him, so just pushed open the door. He was about to announce his arrival, but Nolan was two steps ahead of him – had been anticipating the man’s arrival, or was just that in tune with the building.

He thought for a moment, decided on the latter, and smiled to himself as he kicked the door shut behind him.

He looked to the left when Nolan spat out his warning about the floor, and inched closer to the right before looking up. He could only barely see through the grating but was certain the pay off would, eventually, be worth it.

“It is Dominic, thank you.” He said, standing there and very nicely holding the pie in both of his hands as he peered up at what he could barely see. “Is my treat about to get fried?”

Is my treat about to get fried.

He parsed that sentence. Dom meant the treat — the thing he'd brought, the thing Nolan still had no information about beyond its existence, which had been occupying a dedicated corner of his brain since the text. Dom meant that treat.

Probably.

"The — " he started. Stopped. "No. It's — " another stop. The contacts needed forty seconds and he was spending them on this. "Nothing's getting fried. I've got it under control." A beat that was slightly too long. "The thing you brought. That's fine. Both — " he caught himself " — the situation is fine. Everything is fine up here."

He became aware, in the specific way you became aware of things you'd been not-thinking-about, that he was shirtless. That Dom was directly below him. That the geometry of the situation meant directly below him was a fairly comprehensive vantage point and there was nothing he could do about that because his hands were occupied and the contacts needed thirty seconds now.

"You can look around," he said, slightly too quickly. "Kettle on the table to your left. Hotplate next to it — intuitive, you'll figure it out." Twenty seconds. "How was the walk over."

Ten.

He released the contacts, checked the seal, checked it again, and finally looked down.

"Hi," he said with a half grin. Thirty feet up, in goggles, covered in sweat, Lichtenberg scars catching the light across his shoulders, torch still in his hand, expression entirely beyond his management. "You did bring a treat."

A pause.

"What kind."

He didn't wait for the answer before he started moving. The descent was the usual negotiation; grating that flexed, a very large gap he crossed without dwelling on, a ladder that swayed four inches outward on the third rung from the top before the bolts caught and held. He waited it out. Then kept going.

He dropped from the last two rungs and landed on the concrete with a sound that was slightly louder than graceful and pulled the goggles to his forehead, disheveling his blonde hair, and finally had nothing between him and Dom but four feet of warm plant air.

The Lichtenberg scars were visible in full; old ones pale and settled across his shoulders, newer branches still slightly raised, spreading down both arms in that fern-like pattern that lightning left behind when it wrote itself into skin.

Dom was seeing it. All of it. He could tell.

He closed the four feet without deciding to.

Both hands came up to Dom's face — torch still in one of them, which was not elegant, but elegance had left the building sometime around the third rookie error — and he kissed him like he'd been thinking about it since approximately the moment Dom had walked out of his door the nightof their first date, which he had, which was the whole problem, which was why he'd cross-wired something he hadn't cross-wired since he was nineteen. No preamble. No joke to cushion it. Just that, completely, his palms at Dom's jaw and the pie presumably still in Dom's hands and the plant humming around them both and Nolan not managing any of it, not the charge climbing slightly at the contact, not the expression on his face when he finally pulled back, not any of it.

He pulled back.

Looked at Dom's face for a moment with whatever expression was currently on his own, which he had completely given up trying to manage.

"Glad you came," he said. Quietly. Simply.

Then, before anything else could happen —

"I want it on record," he said, "that I specifically told you this place was off limits and you are only here because I have terrible impulse control and no one to blame but myself." He pointed at Dom briefly with the torch. "You didn't hear that. You've never been here. I don't know you."

A beat.

"I also want it on record that I was going to be finished before you got here and look like a person and that also didn't happen. This is your fault, actually. You were very distracting today. Professionally. I cross-wired something I haven't cross-wired since I was nineteen."

He still hadn't moved the shirt from the railing.

He was not going to move the shirt from the railing.

"Is that pie."

Not even this enigmatic energy bomb of a man.

They stood there staring at each other in the ambient glow around them, and Dominic let his smile linger. For some reason, it felt like he’d known this man an entire lifetime and not a just half a day spread over the expanse of several weeks. He felt so comfortable, and that really spoke volumes.

When Nolan crept in on him, Dominic’s mouth fell ajar immediately, like he was about to say something, but he was silenced by the hand on his face, the lips on his own. His eyes fell closed, and he exhaled a breath through his nose as they kissed each other on the railing. The next jolt of electricity went straight through his feet and into every vein in his body. He jerked slightly while Nolan was still kissing him, but it only made him hold onto the other man tighter, melting into the embrace.

While they were still connected, he could feel the flare up around them – that pulse had done more than the first one, and Dom could sense it even without looking. He let Nolan pull away when he was finished and just stared at the blond for a moment before exhaling another breath – slow and deliberate. He looked at the bio-luminescence again, taken by the sight of it, by the experience of what had just happened – the intimacy of it. His heart was a wild thing in his chest, beating at its enclosure, begging to be let out and to leap into Nolan’s open palms.

He sucked in his bottom lip, licked off the last taste of the other man, and offered Nolan a smile, tilting his face into that hand that was still on his cheek. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced such an intimate moment. It made his heart ache in his chest, the memories etched like scars there.

“Glad we’re on the same page.” He said, reaching up to touch the hand cupping his cheek if only to continue the contact.

He stayed where he was. Didn't move the hand. Didn't move at all, actually, for a moment that was longer than he usually allowed himself stillness around another person. Just looked at Dom's face — the slow exhale, the lip caught between his teeth, the smile that had something aching underneath it that Nolan recognized the shape of without needing it explained. He'd seen that shape in the mirror. He knew what it meant to feel something that cost you something just by existing.

The water was still moving below them. Slower now, the rings long since spread to the edges and fracturing into those last faint tendrils, the vivid turquoise deepening back toward its baseline. The room settling. The room still extraordinary regardless.

He became aware, distantly, that his thumb had started moving against Dom's cheekbone. Small, slow. He hadn't decided to do that either.

Same page. He turned that over briefly. Him and Dom on the same page meant something different than it meant with most people, given that his page included a dying power plant and a mattress on the floor and hands that had to be managed like something feral and a charge that was already climbing slightly in the aftermath of the kiss because his body, apparently, had opinions about what had just happened and was not keeping them to itself.

He was at maybe forty-five percent. Maybe a little above. He clocked it the way he always clocked it; automatic, ambient, filed without drama.

Fine. That was fine.

Which was strange, actually. He'd run the number and felt nothing in particular about it, which was — not normal. Forty-five percent with someone standing this close was usually the point where he'd already be gone. Politely, charmingly, with a good enough reason that no one would think to question it — but gone. Out the door and somewhere he could bleed off quietly before it climbed any higher. He had a whole system for exactly this. He'd used it so many times it had stopped feeling like leaving and started feeling like just — how evenings ended, for him. How things went.

He hadn't moved.

He was going to have to examine that later. Not now. Now was not the time.

"Same page," he repeated, quietly, something almost wondering in it. Like the phrase was new. Like he was putting it somewhere careful to look at again later, the way he'd put thank you for bringing me here somewhere careful, the way he'd been quietly storing things Dom said and did all afternoon in a place he hadn't opened in a long time.

He looked at Dom for another moment.

"I've been on my own page for a very long time. But I think you have too, right?" he said. Not sad about it, exactly. Just — accurate. The tone of someone reporting a fact they've long since made peace with and are now, apparently, in the process of revising. "Suits me, mostly. Less complicated. Nobody to worry about but myself and I'm fairly low maintenance if you don't count the — " a fractional gesture with his free hand, encompassing everything the evening had been, the plant, his powers, keeping the power on for people who didn't even know his name, all of it, "— all of that."

His thumb hadn't stopped moving.

"It's going to take me some time," he said. "To stop waiting for this to go wrong." He said it simply, without apology, without the joke stapled to the end of it that would have made it easier to say. Just the fact of it, laid down plainly, the way he'd laid down I've been thinking about you for three weeks at the diner. "That's not a warning. It's just — " he exhaled. "I want you to know what you're working with. So it doesn't look like something it isn't when it happens."

His eyes moved briefly to the water and back.

"Still on the same page," he said. "Just — flagging the footnotes."

          She had never for a single second thought that Ezra blamed her. The same way neither Nolan nor herself could blame him for what happened that night. The issue was, and always had been, that she blamed herself and although his words might solidify that there truly was nothing more she could have done that didn't ease that feeling.

          She figured that nothing ever would.

          It was the same way that Nolan didn't entirely hold it against her that she had unknowingly been willing to trade his life for Ezra's. Only bringing it up when she refused to share his favorite snack or she made an offhanded comment to him, all in good fun of course. It didn't lighten the guilt that ate away at her every time that she laid eyes on him though.

          She nodded when he explained to her that he had known long before she had that he was destined to burn out. She had known that back then as well, it was why she hadn't told him when she had felt that shift in his lifeline, instead opting to try and funnel any extra life into him from things that wouldn't miss it. She knew he would have told her to stop if she had and that wasn't something that she had been willing to do.

          She couldn't help the sad laugh that escaped from her lips at the mention of being outvoted "What else is new?" She questioned, voice low and brittle. There was no malice in the question, more like a coating of fondness to the words.

          Him admitting that he was glad she was around to give him something to come home to caused her heartrate to double. It reminded her that he was here now, whatever guilt she felt for the things that she had done could be folded neatly back into its box for the time being.

          She looked at him with a look of disbelief in her eyes when he questioned if there was room in her bed for the both of them "You don't need to ask." she murmured lowly. Moving her hand from his for the first time since they had started their conversation. She moved closer, situating herself to stand between his legs as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

          The heat of being this close to him a welcomed feeling to her cold bones.

          "Besides you're crazy if you think I'm going to let you out of my sight this soon after getting you back." She murmured lowly. She moved her forehead to rest against his own. One hand moving to cup his neck right beneath his right ear. "Since we're asking questions." she murmured lowly, eyes dipping down to Ezra's lips.

          "Can I kiss you?"

He felt the cold in her. Even through the jacket — his jacket — the particular chill of someone who'd been living somewhere the heat didn't quite reach. He ran his hands up her back once, slow, like he was simply correcting something that had gone wrong long enough.

"What else is new." He repeated it back to her quietly, not a question. The fondness in it sitting right alongside the thing underneath — the specific ache of someone who knew exactly what that sentence cost her to say lightly. He let it be what it was. Didn't try to fix it.

When she moved her hand from his and stood between his legs he watched her do it the way he watched things he wanted to get right. Let her come to him. His hands settling at her waist like ballast.

"Actually." His voice dropped. "I do need to ask. I've been presumed dead for fifteen years and I showed up at your door without so much as a warning." His eyes steady on hers. "I don't get to assume anything."

He let it be a real question. Let her have it. But she'd already answered it.

"But Okay." Quiet. The corner of his mouth moving. "Okay, I'll take that."

He let her bring her forehead to his. Stayed still for it. The warmth coming off him more than it should, closer than it should, but she'd always been the one frequency that made that feel like the right temperature.

Her eyes dropped to his mouth.

"Marisol." Her name in his mouth like he had all the time in the world. The corner of his mouth pulling into something slow and certain. "You just told me you nearly ruined down three city blocks for me."

His thumb pressed into her hip.

"Ask me something harder."

And then he closed the distance himself. Didn't wait for her answer. His hand moving from her hip to the back of her neck, tilting her down to him, and he kissed her the way he did everything — all the way in, no half measure, like he'd already decided and the deciding had happened a long time ago. Warm. Certain. Like someone who had been thinking about coming home to this specific thing for longer than either of them were going to say out loud.

He didn't rush it. Just held her there, his thumb at the base of her skull, and let it be the answer to every question she hadn't finished asking.

Nolan told him he only lost approximately five percent of his charge when doing this, and Dominic blew a raspberry. “So, it’s just a pretty show then, not really a way to let off steam.” He suggested. “Beautiful to marvel at, but not helpful to you in the way I was hoping.” He turned toward Nolan then and listened to him, nodding his head, filing what the blond said away into interesting information about Nolan. “So, it’s therapeutic for you… that’s nice, too. I’m glad it’s useful in any way. Even if it wasn’t, it’s a god damned sight. I’d sit here for hours, just watching. I can only imagine what it must be like.”

Dominic stood, still as a statue, his gaze focused on Nolan as the other man let out his monologue. It was wondrous in ways that Dominic couldn’t put to words, and he felt deeply touched to be let in on so much information in one go. He supposed he had given Nolan almost as much in their time at the diner, but this felt different, more intimate in a way. He leaned on the railing and kept his mind and ears open, digesting every little detail as it was fed to him like delicate morsels.

Nolan expressed that he didn’t know his ceiling, that he was dangerous, especially to those he let get close to him, and Dominic was starting to understand. All the pieces were slotting into place. It was like he was made for the other man, a special, shock absorbent boyfriend ready to heal himself and provide comfort and care when one needed it most.

The realization of it hit somewhere soft, and Dominic smiled just gently. His hand was still on Nolan’s back.

Nolan asked him if he was in it, like really in it, and past the charm and the fun of it. Dominic couldn’t help but bark a laugh, his head tipping back with the force of it. “Oh, you precious dear… you think I’d follow you down here after seeing where you sleep, after spending weeks tracking you down, if I hadn’t already thought about all of that? This isn’t just a bit of fun for me. I told you that… I felt something when I met you, something I can’t quite explain and definitely can’t shake.” He rubbed a small circle on Nolan’s back now, leaning in closer, something alight in his eyes – something like passion. “I’m in this, whatever that means, however fucking terrifying or brilliant it’s going to be. I’ve already jumped in, with both feet, just waiting for you to catch up.”

I've already jumped in, with both feet, just waiting for you to catch up.

Nolan looked at him.

He'd spent a long time being good at keeping his face arranged into something legible and chosen — the grin, the easy confidence,like someone who is having a good time and would like you to know it. It was a skill. He'd practiced it. He was, by any reasonable measure, excellent at it.

He was not doing it right now.

Something had gotten through the gap between what Dom said and Nolan's ability to do anything about it in time. Just for a second. Just long enough that anyone paying attention could have seen it — the way his expression went very still, and then very open, and then somewhere in between the two, something that looked like a man receiving something he'd stopped believing he was allowed to want. His eyes went bright in a way that had nothing to do with the bioluminescence. A thing he'd needed for longer than he'd known he needed it, sitting suddenly in his hands, warm and certain and entirely real.

He was still looking at Dom's face. The blue-green light was doing something unreasonable to it. Dom's hand was still on his back, and Nolan was aware of every point of contact between them with a specificity that was slightly embarrassing.

He didn't think about what happened next.

His hand came up to Dom's jaw before he'd finished the thought that preceded it — fingertips finding the angle of it, the warmth of skin under his palm — and then he closed the distance between them and kissed him, and it wasn't careful or considered or measured the way most things Nolan did were careful and considered and measured. It was the direct consequence of looking at Dom's face for one second too long in a room full of light that belonged to the forgotten, after Dom had said I've already jumped like it was the simplest fact in the world.

His other hand was gripping the railing when he kissed him. And the wanting of it apparently bypassed every careful circuit he had because the charge moved without him deciding to move it — a pulse through the railing and into the water below, larger than before, unplanned, the kind of release that happened when he stopped managing himself for half a second and something true moved through him instead.

The reservoir responded immediately.

The whole surface lit up — vivid, urgent, more turquoise than blue, brighter at the centre than it had been before, spreading outward in overlapping rings that fractured at the edges into those branching tendrils moving through the subterranean circulation. The walls caught it, the minerals in the old concrete turning the reflected light almost amber at the margins, gold bleeding into green bleeding into the deep blue-dark at the far end of the chamber. The whole room transformed, briefly, into something that had no business existing underneath a city that had forgotten it was there.

He pulled back just far enough to look at Dom's face in the middle of all of it.

His thumb was still against Dom's jaw. His other hand had finally left the railing. The water was still moving with light below them, fading at the edges and brightest at the center, and the room smelled of ozone and something alive and the particular quality of air that had been charged and not yet settled.

"Right," he said. His voice came out quieter than intended. "I think I'm caught up now."

After you, Nolan said, and Dominic chuckled as the other man caught himself. “Silly bugger.” He replied affectionately and watched as Nolan dropped into the hole with practiced ease – all the comfort of something that belongs in the dark, which Dom decided was absolutely untrue about Nolan. He followed the other man into that darkness with full trust and piqued interest. Whatever was down here was going to be worth it, he knew.

Dominic noticed the transference of electricity between Nolan’s body and the torch. He said nothing but watched with delight as the corridor they were walking down became flooded in a beam of low, yellow light. His gaze dragged over to the blond’s face when Nolan looked back at him, that grin on his lips. Dominic matched his. “Fascinating.” He said, both in response to what he had just seen and what the man said about charging cell phones. “I’ve seen yours, though, so I think I’d rather keep to charging mine the old fashioned way. Thanks, though.” He responded, crinkling his nose, small smile still on his lips.

The brunet did as he was told above, falling into step behind Nolan – stepping where he stepped, keeping careful focus on where they were going and on what the blond was saying to him all the while. He ducked where he had to duck, swerved where Nolan did, and otherwise followed the path, absorbing the information as it was fed to him. He didn’t know much about the Substrates other than what little biased information they were taught in school in the Strata. Dom was happy to soak up whatever it was that Nolan wanted to tell him. And he was more than a little aware of the other man’s nerves, was happy to do whatever it took to help ease those.

Dominic looked, intrigued, when the torch was shut off and – moments later – a glow emanated from below. He inhaled deeply, gaze dropping down to the reservoir. The silence stretched before them as Dom copied what Nolan did, elbows on the railing, and leaned over just looking, his mouth slightly agape. He was in awe, didn’t have the words for it. It was eerily beautiful in the way that only things like this can be.

He turned toward Nolan and listened to him with practiced silence. He absorbed every word of it, letting them land somewhere sacred and soft. He knew that this wasn’t something that Nolan did before the other man even revealed the truth of it. It made him smile something tender, and he reached out, put his hand on the other man’s back, looked back down at the reservoir. For a long moment, he said nothing, let Nolan do all the talking – he was better at it, anyway, seemed like he had more to say.

“Thank you for bringing me here.” He said after a moment, his voice quiet as he continued to regard the blue-green glow and everything that was bathed in it. He let the quiet consume them and waited – not for anything in particular but because he knew Nolan wasn’t finished. And he was right.

“Annoyingly good at fine?” He repeated, brows furrowed and lip curved upward in the smallest of slightly smug smiles. But he asked no more questions, needed no further elaboration as Nolan was putting his powers to work. Dominic felt the jolt of it in his whole body, gasped slightly as he watched whatever it was down there respond to Nolan. It was truly spectacular, breathtakingly beautiful, and Dominic was pleased to be able to witness it.

The organism reacted to Nolan in a way that revealed that it was alive. Before, it had just been this motionless glow, then it was something else – like a reflection of the marks on Nolan’s body, like electricity moving through. And Dom had sworn he had heard a faint hum in the air – whether that was from the electricity or the organism(s?), he wasn’t certain, but it added to the ambiance.

After a beat, he grinned and turned to look at Nolan. “This is fantastic… it’s one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen in my life… how much of your charge does it take away? How much does it help?”

It occurred to him, somewhere between the phone comment and the first junction, that he'd never had company down here. It was, he decided, considerably better than he'd expected. ----

He let Dom look.

Didn't rush it. Didn't say anything useful about it. Just leaned his forearms on the railing and watched the water hold its light the way it always did — evenly, patiently, without asking to be acknowledged — and let Dom have the first few moments of it without Nolan's voice in the way.

Dom's hand landed on his back and stayed there.

Thank you for bringing me here.

"Yeah," he said. Simply, not performing casualness, not deflecting, just — receiving it. Letting it land where it was aimed. "Glad you're here to see it."

The smug look Dom gave him over annoyingly good at fine helped, actually. Grounded him slightly. Hard to be precious about a moment when someone's looking at you like that.

Then he set his hand flat against the railing and let the pulse go.

The gasp hit him before he'd finished watching the water light up. He tried not to show that it affected him. Wasn't sure it worked. Moved on quickly.

"Not enough to matter, output-wise, maybe 3-5% if I'm guessing," he said. "Takes the edge off — the way a cold shower takes the edge off, not the way a proper discharge does." He watched the last of the tendrils fade at the margins, the water settling back into its steady blue-green. "It's not really about the output. It's more that it — " he searched for the language, came up slightly short, used the approximate version. "It doesn't flinch. Whatever I put into it, it just takes it. Turns it into that." A small gesture toward the water. "Hard to feel like a liability when the thing you're worried about doing damage to turns it into something like that."

A beat. He looked at Dom sideways, something shifting in his expression — the quality of someone making a decision in real time, contingency plans quietly standing down.

"Right," he said. "I'm already showing you my secret glowing reservoir and telling you things I don't tell people, so." A small exhale. "May as well be transparent about the rest of it." The grin arrived, lopsided, aimed somewhere self-aware. "Consider it a very unromantic disclaimer. So you know exactly what you're stumbling toward before you've fully committed to the stumbling."

He looked back at the water.

"First time I was down here properly I was eighteen. Running on about seventy-two hours and not coping with it." The grin arrived, smaller than usual, aimed somewhere rueful. "Grabbed the railing wrong and felt it connect and just — didn't stop. Full send. Every bit of it." He paused. "Which, in retrospect, was not my most considered decision. Because here's the thing my few friends who know assume — that I'm immune to it. My own power. And I'm resistant, yeah, my body's adapted to generating it, conducting it internally — but that's electricity moving with my nervous system, directed, the way it's supposed to move." He turned his hand over, looking at it briefly. "A return arc coming back through the metalwork is a completely different proposition. That's current hitting me from the wrong direction entirely. My body has no mechanism for routing that safely. It just — takes it. Same as anyone."

He said it lightly. The lightness was doing some work.

"Put me on the floor. Could've destabilized something structural — this whole facility was already held together with stubbornness and old concrete. Could've killed whatever's living in that water before I ever saw it glow." He looked at the reservoir. "Nobody knew I was down here. If it had gone wrong it would've gone very wrong." A pause. "Took about thirty seconds to figure out it hadn't. That everything was still — " he stopped. "Fine. That the water was just doing that."

Something almost wondering moved through his expression even now.

"Came back the next night on purpose. Carefully, that time." A loose shrug. "Been coming back ever since. It was never a solution, can't live down here, and it empties you out and you fill back up again twelve hours later. But it was somewhere to put the worst of it. Until I found something better."

He was quiet for a moment.

"The other thing — since you mentioned not being sure you could be stopped with your powers — yeah. That you hadn't found your ceiling. Right, that I get," he said, and his voice shifted slightly, the easy rhythm of it carrying something heavier underneath. "Trying to keep up with the the plant's needs, it kept pulling more out of me and I kept growing to meet the demand. Which means I don't actually know where the ceiling is." "I'm a lot more than I used to be," he said. "Which is —" a beat, the grin arriving with the very specific quality of someone making a joke because the alternative is saying something true and terrifying "— you know. Totally fine. Completely manageable. Nothing to worry about at all." A pause. "Slightly worrying." A beat. "And the thing about that is — " he exhaled, slow. "On any given day I'm running somewhere between a quarter and half of what I think got. That's the window. That's liveable, manageable, the version of this that doesn't keep anyone up at night." He looked at his hands briefly. "The few times something pushed me past that and I had to use what was actually there —" he stopped. Didn't finish that sentence. Didn't need to. "Let's just say the ceiling being unknown is not an abstract concern."

He glanced at Dom then, just briefly, and then away.

"Which is, you know." The grin arrived, quick and deflecting, landing just slightly too fast to be entirely genuine. "Fine. Very normal. Absolutely not the kind of thing that keeps me up at night wondering what happens when I find out." A pause, the grin fading to something quieter. "It's why I — " he stopped again. Chose his words carefully. "I don't let people get close as a rule. Not because I don't want to. But the risk of wrong place wrong time, and because emotional intensity pushes me out of that window faster than almost anything else. And the person most likely to push me toward whatever the ceiling is —" his jaw tightened fractionally, released. "Is the person I'd least want anywhere near it when I find out."

He said it to the water. Not quite to Dom.

"So." A breath. "That's the whole picture. Or most of it." The easier quality came back into his voice, deliberately, like pulling on something familiar. "Like you, I suppose. Neither of us knows where it ends. Different in every way that matters and somehow the same thing."

He let that sit for a moment.

"Nobody's asked me that before," he said, quieter. "How much it helps." Another beat, not quite looking at Dom. "Thanks for that."

He looked back at the water for a moment. Then he tilted his head slightly toward Dom, something shifting in his expression — softer than his usual register, and more serious underneath it than he'd let most people see.

"I've done most of the talking today," he said. "Which, yes, I know, is my natural state, don't say it." The grin arrived briefly and then settled into something quieter. "But I want to ask you something and I want you to actually think about it before you answer."

He looked at Dom properly then. Held it.

"You followed a stranger into an underground tunnel on the basis of one afternoon and a slice of pie." A beat. "And I've just told you that I don't know where my ceiling is. That getting close to me pushes me toward it. That I've been running at a quarter capacity my whole life and what's above that has — consequences." He exhaled. "And before that you saw where I sleep, which is a moldy mattress on the floor of a dying power plant, and before that I told you I spent three weeks thinking about one night in an alleyway with a man covered in someone else's blood."

A pause.

"Is this something you're actually ready for. All of it. Not the version where it's exciting and I'm charming and the water glows when I touch it." His thumb moved briefly against the railing. "The whole thing. Because I don't do halfway and I don't know how to be smaller than I am and I'm not going to pretend I'm not — " he stopped. Started again. "I need to know you've actually looked at what this is before you decide you want it."