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>

He's been delivering bread ever since he, himself, was delivered into this feeble corner of the world.

Even after escaping France with merely the clothes on his back, forced to leave his family and life behind amidst the treacherous conditions of France's capture, Logan has fallen into a... thoroughly familiar pattern. Running from a German-occupied Paris was one thing, but getting to Britain for a hope of some semblance of safety -- or, lest he be hopeful, protection -- was another endeavour entirely. Fortunately, the Brits rather favoured the French rebellion members, all things considered. There were informants from the front lines, however unarmed and desperate; information was invaluable amidst the war, Logan knew. It was what had pushed him to make the ultimate sacrifice to evade German authorities -- to live when he very well should have been put to death -- and leave his loved ones behind.

More fortunately still, he's found a job. It pays as well as one can with the state of the European world, but Logan enjoys it all the same; if nothing else, he's privy to pretty pastries and even prettier views.

"Lo," heeds Leo in his oh-so-endearing Southern-American drawl, practically drenched head-to-toe in upchurned flour; he mindlessly adjusts the apron tied around his hips and, if he were any stronger, Logan might've dragged his gaze far away from those nimble fingers. (Alas, he's a weak man.) When Leo lifts his head to grace him with a blazing smile, Logan nearly lets his knees take him to the ground. He'd happily bask in the generous haunches of Leo Knut, baker extraordinaire, sunshine incarnate. "I told you not to rush. You aren't due to start for another--"

"I enjoy being here," Logan tells him in earnest and, judging by the fond roll of ocean blue eyes, the sincerity is palpable. "With you. The quiet is... c'est horrible pour moi. Unsettling."

Leo's soft smile turns sympathetic, even as he reaches out to clasp gentle fingers over Logan's aching shoulder. "You don't have to justify anything to me. To anyone."

Logan can't help the twinge of laughter that bubbles out of him; he's too far out of his element to be composed, in truth, but Leo doesn't need to know that. Not when he's so graciously opened his and his roommate's (read: secret boyfriend) flat to Logan, even knowing the risks and their stranger status in the beginning. It'd been a blessing in more ways than one, however disguised. "I think Finn'll still ask. He doesn't exactly have an off button when it comes to curiosity."

"No, he doesn't," Leo muses with a brilliant, glowing grin. Unbeknownst to him, Logan's fighting every urge to stare unabashedly at his plump, kissable, rosy lips; he can see the minutely bruised state of them, likely the fault of one Finn O'Hara, casanova and literature enthusiast, his "roommate" and otherwise partner in crime at the patisserie. Leo idly leans one hip against the front counter, gazing wistfully over Logan's shoulder at the mountain of novels to be shelved alongside the other handful the "Reader's Patisserie", as Finn unofficially dubbed it several months prior, holds in store. When Leo sighs, Logan frustratedly stamps down every flutter of his racing heart. "It's what happens when Oxford takes an already brilliant mind and encourages it to seek more. He's truly something, isn't he?"

As if on cue, Finn himself strolls through the front doors, the sweet jingling of the overhead bell wafting through the quiet morning at the entrance. Logan stares, truly and thoroughly unable to hide it, at the slight furrow of his brows, the curly, though disarrayed state of auburn hair from however many hours of rest he'd gotten; he's well aware there's very little that can rouse Finn from sleep. It's a talent, if he's being honest, even if it does leave red curls in a crazed state in the morning. He and Leo have spent one too many sleepless nights laughing over such a thing and yet, Logan still wishes to run his finger through the bedhead -- not to tame it, but to explore it as it is.

Finn's beam brightens tenfold at the sight of them and, if not for the way Leo's blushing a beautiful shade of scarlet, Logan might've been able to muster a word. (He is a weak, weak, weak man.)

"Good morning, love," comes the Scottish-accented quip, fluid and delighted all the same. "Hey, Lo!"

"Bon matin," Logan replies. How could he not, with the enviable state of lovestruck brown eyes?

When Finn reaches the till, Leo is in his arms at once -- really, Logan ought to feel like he's intruding, with the way Finn's hands dart tightly to the jut of Leo's hipbones. When they lean in, it's to brush noses, even with the open state of the cafe and shiny windows behind them; one of these days, Logan had had to remind himself of the risk of involving himself amongst their peaceful paradise. Then he witnesses this, and knows they're all risking something. At the very least, they should be happy in the meanwhile.

"Butterscotch?" Finn muses, licking a small stripe across Leo's cheek that has not only Leo's chuckles turning sickeningly sweet, but also sends Logan's heart straining hard against his weakening ribs. It's like a painting -- to see, to admire, but never to touch, never to have. A daydream.

"How do you always know?" Leo says, grinning brighter than the sun, and Logan doesn't know how he'll ever get over the yearning so fully seeped into the very foundations of his being. Every day is spent living for them. For this. Do they even know?

Finn casts a glance over at Logan, unexpectedly, and his eyes softened infinitesimally. "Just had a feeling."

Logan won't deny how his heart picks up its pace at the once-over he receives.

(And if they end the night in a tangle, lips and bodies pressed close between bookshelves and behind cash registers, who's to say it's undeserved? Wrong? When there is nothing that feels more right than this, than them, than letting loving overcome his senses and wield his fickle fear into protectiveness, into loyalty, into devotion?)

>

"Mon dieu," comes Logan's thirteenth grumbled complaint in three minutes, "what have we done to deserve this hell?"

Leo sleepily chuckles against where his cheeks are smushed against Finn's bicep. "Heaven."

Logan grumbles, and Finn can't help but grin.

"Oh c'mon, grumpy," Finn muses, rolling minutely onto his back to entangle an arm around Logan too. The brunet follows willingly, pressing his forehead to the pit of Finn's bare stomach with a disgruntled huff. Fortunately, Leo reaches over and plants nimble fingers amongst sweaty brown curls. "The AC's already all the way up."

"He'ps n'ne," Logan murmurs and, not for the first time that summer, Finn remembers exactly why he fell for these boys.

"Yes, well, give the thing some credit. Sounds like it's gonna explode if we turn it up any more."

Finn grins, nose brushing along the outskirts of the crown of Leo's head, tickling blond tresses in its wake. "Do you get more Southern the further we are from home?"

Basking in Leo's golden laughter, Logan lifts his head, propping his chin upon the dip of Finn's stomach. Green irises reflect the same emotion Finn feels so intimately here in Nice: joy, unbridled and whole and true. Moreover: love.

"I want to spend forever with you," Logan says, sincere and low, and Leo's face burns a brilliant scarlet despite the brightening of his effervescent smile. A recently-tanned hand extends to cup one of Logan's nearly-sunburned cheeks and, at the contact, Finn's heart trips clean over itself; intent green eyes delicately flutter shut.

"You will," Leo tells him, promises, voice barely teetering above a whisper yet it resounds so wholly in Finn's ears, he might as well have shouted it to the rooftops. Maybe Finn could convince them to do that on their next hike - everyone would surely hear them, the birds and the towns and the fish and whatever higher powers above, from a clifftop. It is their honeymoon after all, what is there to do besides be happy and stupidly in love?

Finn takes Leo's free hand into his own, drawing the glowing expanse of its back to his lips. The slivers of silver gently encircling Leo's ring finger has his heart leaping, as always, at the reminder; Leo's his, they're both his, and he's theirs.

He plants soft lips to the silver band Logan picked out for Leo, watching the sunlight cast through blond curls; if anything, it makes Leo look tenfold more like an angel, with a halo to match. Leo smiles and, below, Finn can feel attentive green eyes fixated upon the rings decorating his own occupied hand. He reaches out, taking Logan's nape into careful hands, and gives a comforting squeeze; the punched-out sound it leaves in its wake only makes Finn's smile widen ever more.

"I love you," Finn says, shouts, to the sun, to the moon, to the stars and the sky above, to the birds and the trees and the critters scurrying along outstretched branches. To the heartwarming music carried along gentle breezes, to the shells overturned by even gentler waves, to the glow of ocean irises and forest ones alike. To Leo and to Logan, to his husbands, eternally and beyond, he promises, "I love you."

And they say it back, again and again, until his heart and soul sings with it: I love you, I love you, I love you.

>

It started as a joke, really, though Finn can't remember when.

Somewhere between his and Logan's dancing around one another, they'd procured a sentimentality around the solitary mountaintops; if nothing else, they're too frigid for human and gods' tastes alike. It gave them more than a little bit of quiet, a peace thoroughly unrivaled between their godly duties and familial figures busy attempting to keep humankind in line (key word: attempting).

It started with a song, one that Finn had written himself. Alex had taught him how to sing, however badly, a hundred years prior, at the dawn of the Quebecois making themselves active figures amidst the ever-raging Trojan War. Though half mortal, Logan had undoubtedly captured his attention - and attraction - the minute they'd laid eyes upon each other and, well... the rest was history. One for the story books, surely, seeing how many supporters the heroic demigod had garnered from their common displays of ever-blooming romance.

Finn tosses a sidelong glance towards his lover several feet away, sunken nearly up to his shoulders in the hot spring Finn had made sure to warm for him. Being a demigod wasn't the same as being a god, after all, no matter how many times the lines had been blurred; Finn is simply lucky enough to be able to work with the landscape and fire alike to lead the demigod into a state of savoury disarray. It's the only way they've been able to continue their meetings on this mountaintop - alone, together, perfect.

"You sure know how to make a man feel treasured," Logan muses, eyes fluttering shut when Finn tangles a gentle hand through his hair. When a damp curl is pressed behind his ear, Logan surges forward to catch Finn's warm lips.

When they retract, Finn chases him, as always yearning; Logan's laughter is golden like the stars overhead as he presses their foreheads together, tugging Finn further into his orbit. Water pools in Finn's lap, from where he's sitting on the edge of a particularly rigid rock, and he couldn't care less; the grin atop his lips is as bright as it is fierce, and he snags a taste of Logan's smile even when the wind sifts past their intertwined figures.

"Finn," Logan begins, all red-cheeked and sincere; when determined green meets blazing brown, Finn's breath catches. "I lov--"

"I didn't realize anyone found my hide out," comes an unexpected voice and, when Finn turns, he's nearly blinded altogether by the golden silhouette enchanting every fibre of his being. He can feel Logan press a smile into his neck, practically vibrating with an excitement Finn didn't realize he was missing out on.

"It's hardly hidden," Finn says, watching the way rosy lips pull up brilliantly; his stomach bottoms out and, unlike anyone else, the stranger leaves him feeling just as breathless as he does around Logan. "There's villages all around and a shrine nearby."

The sunshine incarnate just grins brighter, gaze drifting towards where Logan has lifted his head, staring unblinkingly at the figure stood across the minutely flattened hilltop.

"I'm aware," the stranger says, planting both hands on his hips. "It's dedicated to me."

Logan's cheeks are burning where he's pressed against Finn's side. He swallows around whatever emotion's stubbornly lodged in his throat and manages a meek, "Leo?"

"The one and only," 'Leo' says. Finn almost can't believe he's privy to the scene unfolding around him -- Logan had mentioned the god before, said how ethereal and selfless he is, how helpful he'd been in even the most dire of moments. He'd been there for Logan when Finn had, otherwise, been forbidden to.

"Your mountain sculpting needs some work," Finn grumbles, sorely missing the bite it was intended to carry; his heart beats frantically, only picking up further when Leo laughs, golden and bright, in response. Logan peers up at him with a smile of his own and, really, who's Finn to refuse?

"And I don't suppose you're looking for a student?" Leo says and, for the first time, Finn finds the blond's cheeks going scarlet. He grins despite himself.

"I'm feeling generous," Finn says, and lets Logan drag him towards the sun.

>

He wakes with a start. 

It shouldn’t be nearly as earth-shattering as it is, really, given the countless years he’d spent amidst nightmares, walking and conjured alike, but the sweat soaking him through upon waking from another fitful slumber left Neil feeling raw and vulnerable. Even with Andrew cooking up a sugary-sweet breakfast in their kitchen, now retired after several years taking up the goal posts at Neil’s back, and here to stay, he fell into the familiar rhythm.

It starts with an itch lodged firmly in his head, lending itself to a too harsh scratch; a jumbled disarray of limbs obscures the blurry lines of the bedroom, draped in darkness from the thick curtains hanging precariously along the fresh, silvery rod secured to the wall. He briefly considers tearing it down, convince his tongue the faux metallic taste in his mouth is nothing compared to the real thing, and throw himself clean through the glass; it’s neither unthinkable nor out of character for Nathaniel, maybe, but Neil?

Maybe Andrew would chalk it up to sheerly waking up on the wrong side of the bed; a thoughtless spurt of impulsivity that left Neil splattered across the pavement below their apartment window like split paint. It’d be an awful shade of red – one Nathaniel embraces, one Neil wishes he didn’t know intimately – but, perhaps, it’d make for a makeshift masterpiece. The last hurrah in his fucked-up life.

The trudge to the bathroom is hardly as daunting as the face staring back at him when he reaches it. It’s dim, with light filtering through the blinds, as he watches him – not Nathaniel, but Nathan himself. The Butcher of Baltimore.

Tan skin with the light freckles that peak out most amidst the summer sun. The softly-defined wrinkles dimpled into aged, worn skin. The purse of lips. The slightly jagged nose from one too many run-ins with unwanted foes. Fiery red locks framing a too-familiar face. Bags beneath haunting – haunted – eyes. Piercing blue.

Neil scrapes a hand across his cheek, over where the phantom flame of Lola’s lighter still marrs faded scars and delicate skin alike. If he closes his eyes, he can still see her crazed irises blazing with hunger as she dangles her talons in front of his helpless form; if he could stop grinding his teeth, Neil’s sure he’d catch wind of her hideous laughter bouncing off the tiles. He ducks his head, the chilled surface of the vanity doing little to soothe his racing heart and mind – in theory, he should be able to work through… whatever this is, with ease, like he’s been doing for the last decade and a half. He’s never needed a therapist, not even one as seemingly-attuned as Betsy, and he sure as hell isn’t going to start seeking their input now. He trusts them only half as much as he trusts his estranged bouts of memories – the ones fallen through the cracks, anyway. Neil’s more than aware his memory rivals even Andrew’s eidetic one on his best days; they learned that the hard way.

Blue eyes fly open, if only at the sound of skittering – or is that squelching? – behind him. It’s too much and yet not enough, the volume of it, but Neil whirls all the same, dizziness heightened uncontrollably at the darkness denying receding behind him. Nathan’s eyes, filled far too much with emotions Neil knows his father never harboured, pin him on the spot; if he wriggles, maybe his father will miss the legs in his tendons, and he’ll still be able to run. Maybe it’ll hit an important artery and he won’t have to see the aftermath of whatever his father plans to do with his runaway son.

He sucks in a harsh breath through clenched teeth, and the tension riddling high shoulders is enough to tip him over the edge.

“Andrew,” he tries for, and falls incomprehensibly flat, when the blond himself manifests in the doorway behind him. It seems ghoulish, staring at his past’s face next to his future’s, and Neil hadn’t even realized he’d been clutching the countertop so hard until tentative fingers encircle one wrist, then the other, all without shying from striking ocean blue. Neil desperately wants to warn him off, tell him to run, to go, to leave, but as it stands, his tongue’s tied and legs leaden; he couldn’t move even if he wanted to.

Andrew looks more himself than he ever had, after years of playing Court, away from the past and into a brighter present, a nicer future. Away from Cass and California and Aaron’s court case and meds and rehab. It’s been fifteen years since they were dumb twenty-year-olds, and yet Neil is still just as entranced by Andrew as he had been all that time ago; it’s a minute detail he’s willing to accept, even if Andrew sparsely admits such a thing, after their histories began to intertwine at PSU. In truth, Neil’s quite sure his own would’ve ended abruptly if they hadn’t.

“Rabbit,” Andrew says, firm and unyielding as unwavering hazel eyes. Neil would crumble, if he weren’t as strung up as a bow, waiting for the moment an arrow pierces his heart and ends him once and for all. Maybe that’d be a substantially better fate than turning into the man of his nightmares, however gruesome.

“Why won’t he leave?” comes tumbling out against his will, disjointed and broken as the fragments of his soul laying shattered on the floor all around them. 

Andrew’s expression hardens before he promptly steers Neil away from the mirror. After a shower spent in comfortable silence – mostly since Neil couldn’t muster the courage to risk hearing a voice resembling his father’s, and Andrew knew him well enough to know this – he found himself curled up on the couch, their couch, with an Exy match flickering blearily across the television screen across the room. He didn’t comment on how Andrew had covered all the mirrors in the house in blankets by the time the blond returned to comment on his Exy obsession.

Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. Maybe it’s hell.

Even worse, he knows it’s reality.

>

Neil Josten has never been normal.

From the day he was born, the stars sang of his curse; it practically lived alongside him, day in and day out, holding his battered hands like a tether. A lifeline. For Neil was nothing without running, at some point or other, until he stopped.

Planted his roots in the rich soil and breathed in the influx of oxygen all around, enjoyed the open skies and quiet suburbs Palmetto State University had to offer. And Andrew — oh, Andrew.

The concept of romance had been all but beaten out of him before Neil had ever even really encountered it; truth be told, it was a foreign thing to a kid who stared down the barrels of guns and kissed death’s frozen lips. It was far from his normal— in fact, it was dangerous, an unthinkable, unfathomable preconceived terror that bled into the very fabric of his being, sewed itself into the core of his soul like a parasite.

“Love is war,” he once heard from the old ladies at the café he used to stop by after school during his mother’s fear-induced, European escapades. He’d only been deft enough to whittle away from her fierce clutches during her “routine” (read: unimaginably inconsistent) meetings with his uncle. “It can bring just as much joy as pain.”

He remembers flipping through poetics and light novels when he could get his hands on them, ignoring scrutinizing, lingering stares from passersby and stuck-up librarians alike. Remembers the enrapturing strokes of ink that encompassed far more than anything he’d experienced on the run, watching and waiting and wilting at the notion of its being out of his reach.

Neil isn’t a dreamer; he wasn’t allowed to be. He looked misery and loss in the eye without faltering, time and time again, even at the fault of his own hand. There is no salvation for the wicked, and he resigned early on to believing he could not be saved.

But the Foxes, against all odds, had stubbornly burrowed their way into the deepest, closeted parts of himself. They held his wrongdoings and scars and unraveling past up to the light and embraced it still; he was nothing more than a moth drawn to a flame. Still running, but with a newly-discovered purpose.

Poetics and fatalities and fathers and hiding disappeared, replaced with adrenaline and warmth and love. There’s even still something so unbridled yet unabashed about his latching onto the rag-tag team of Foxes — trust, respect, loyalty — that, in truth, he’d never be able to stamp down. Reliability and stability were things he couldn’t even begin to consider in his youth, and then? Neil was swimming in it. Drowning, for lack of better words.

And Andrew. Their connection was nearly instant, a blanketing disconcerted truce turned tentative trust turned… intimate. Deep. Undying, and stubbornly so. If Neil had the words to describe it, what he felt for the man who wanted “nothing”, who wanted Neil, who still has Neil, all these years later, he’d surely earn a place among the stars.

“They’re almost here,” Andrew relays, the edges of a once lethally sharp jawline emboldened by the dim glow of the smartphone laying discarded alongside whichever cat has wrestled its way into his lap. The dismissive lull in his soothing voice comes off sounding more and more like a honeyed timbre after his swearing off cigarettes in Neil’s second year. Strong arms curl over the broad back of the forest green couch — their couch, that they picked together upon Neil’s being drafted to Andrew’s pro team, in their home — as hazel eyes waft over to where Neil’s standing in the apartment’s foyer, older but no less sturdy.

Years spent out of harm’s way has given his scathed skin a much-needed reprieve; he’s used enough scar creams to last a lifetime, and yet Allison still sends a variety more whenever she comes upon it. Neil doesn’t dispute it — he’s learned the hard way that there’s truly no arguing with Allison Reynolds — and regardless, the offerings are often littered with a gift or two from Renee. Though they all know Andrew would never admit it out loud, Neil’s seen the elated glow of softened hazel enough times to sense its invaluable importance.

“I thought we said 7:00,” Neil muses, shucking a pair of loose-fitting blue jeans over the boxers he’d pulled on after his post-practice shower. Andrew’s Palmetto hoodie hugs his torso, worn-out but nonetheless comforting, as Neil lugs himself onto the couch cushion at Andrew’s side.

At the added weight, King drifts from pale, rhythmic hands to Neil’s far more shaky ones with a low trill in the back of his throat. It’s strangely grounding, Neil can now confidently confirm after all these years of looking after the bizarre beasts, and the slight quirk of Andrew’s lip in his periphery is enough to settle the racing pace his heart’s taken up; needless to say, he’s going to be avoiding the mirror for the rest of his life. There’s no greater scare than growing up.

It’s him.

The breath is punched out of him all at once — it comes out as a wheeze, though fortunately inaudible. He has to physically restrain himself from the idea of getting up to run — years later, he’s still not shaken the habit; Aaron’s convinced he might never, though Matt’s far more enthusiastic in the contrary — and, instead, closes both eyes. He knows they’re piercing, knows that icy blue is waiting to sink its bloodthirsty claws into his vulnerable underbelly when his back’s turned. It’s an endless loop, a dance he knows well, like the back of his hand; like a out-of-tune piano with all the notes written on its white slivers. Functional, but damaged.

Even at Andrew’s knowing glance, Neil sighs. It’s taken upwards of a decade to confine the paranoia and urges to the furthest depths of his mind; even harder to banish them completely. Thankfully, Andrew’s rather adept at combatting faceless demons, and Neil has few demons left to counter.

A knock on the front door has them both jumping. Andrew stands, the now-familiar cricketing of his joints popping bringing a tender smile to Neil’s face, and makes for it before Neil can duck out.

“Stop it,” Andrew grunts, the bite thoroughly lacking. Even with his back turned, Neil knows the glimmer he’d find in once-perilous hazel eyes.

“Never,” Neil replies as the house floods with laughter and voices he never wants to forget.

>

The short distance feels endless.

He goes stiff as a board when the crowd exploded - or perhaps that was just the blood pumping hard through his ears. The buzzer rings out when the time wound down, at long last, and Leo swallows despite every instinct urging him to succumb to the nausea threatening to eat him alive.

It's merely a handful of feet - of metres, as Logan would say -- some sum of inches, small but ever-present. Like a lake with a current that could drown you if you fell in; he's drowning, amidst the sea of navy and familiar red and gold, and the blocky "10" staring back at him. It isn't mocking. Right?

He stamps down the nerves wedging his stuttering heart wide open, sucking in a sharp breath when frighteningly-intent green irises settle upon the cage holding his composure within the confines of his mask. Clammy hands sink into his jersey with a fervour not unlike the one reflected in Logan's eyes before the winning goal was scored.

Logan - skating fast, breathing hard, cheeks flushed with exertion, and absolutely, positively breathtaking. The sight only further fueled him; with a quick exhale, Leo's at the top of his game. It's as instinctual as breathing, truth be told, the way his body lurches into action at once. Green eyes meeting blue, skittering away like the puck that's sent flying deliberately into the net - the one Leo just misses. The one that widens his eyes, forces him to watch as the Lions' victory falls apart.

And it's all his fault.

It felt so close; it was tangible, right there, right out in front of them. Just like it had been the year prior when the Lions had won it all. The Cup, the season, the game, the series - Leo isn't sure when this season became synonymous with proving that the Lions were good enough to house Logan, but he realizes it, somewhere between dropping his stick and watching the brunet being dragged into a group hug. It's always been about Logan. About Finn. About his friends and found family and the livelihood he'd forged with his own two hands.

Logan watches him like he's expecting Leo to tear him a new one; there's a distinct, perhaps second-nature driven, fear trapped in green irises. It stares at him just as strongly as Logan himself does. If he wasn't so pissed at himself, Leo might've done more to comfort him. He might've--

It's inches stretched into metres stretched into miles and a lifetime spanning between them, like a barrier he can't break no matter how hard he tries. Logan's eyes pin him down like a butterfly under a researcher's attentive hand; he doesn't know when he stopped breathing, but Logan closing the distance - the inches, miles, eternity - silences every single thought his muddled mind could've mustered.

"Merci," Logan whispers, gathering Leo into his arms. He isn't sure when he started crying, but Logan hushes him all the same; he's crying too, Leo realizes with a start. "Tu as été genial."

It's an all-encapsulating gratitude - thank you for the game, thank you for waiting for me, thank you for looking out for me, thank you for loving me - and Leo helplessly curls both white-knuckled fists into the back of Logan's jersey and cries harder, face tucked into the safety of the man he loves.

"I love you," Leo tells him and tells him and tells him.

---