#tocomefirst

there’s a part of him that feels blindsided even if it isn’t fair. he went into that conversation knowing that rose needed it and needed support, so that’s what he provided for her. there were pieces of adrian’s side that didn’t fit with the rose he knew or the one that she told him, though. he knows her guilt around the breakup and how it went down, knows that she thinks it wouldn’t have worked out because they didn’t understand each other anyway. yet, there are pieces of the conversation that stick with him. not because he doubts her or doesn’t trust her; there’s nothing that could change that. he trusted her implicitly, but doubt filled his lungs. words about how he and rose were destined to fail because they weren’t meant to be come back to him. words that he brushed off as jealousy and anger originally, now return. 

his eyes roll the second she speaks; of course she would think that. it makes sense given their history, of course, and he’s a little surprised she isn’t asking if he’s crazy. ( he thinks about her episode on the plane, her and lissa’s anxiety about vlad and anna, and suddenly he thinks she’s more afraid of that word and what it could mean for her ). he expected as much coming back from Lehigh with lissa. she wasn’t stupid, and even without the bond, she probably knew about him teaching lissa fighting moves. with the bond, she knew that they had help. he doesn’t think that’s what she’s thinking about right now though.

the first thing he did when he returned was hug her. it was overdue with her return from wherever she flew off to, and he was worried about her even if his worry for lissa took over. he knew rose could take charge and protect herself, and there was no doubting lissa’s strength...but she wasn’t the lissa he knew anymore. even knowing about avery, it was still hard to forgive her behavior. it was one of his worst fears ( perhaps shallow, but he doesn’t give a damn. lissa becoming one of those royals and losing everything that makes her her... it’s a fear that comes the closer they get to court too. how long until the lissa he loves is gone and what’s left is just the perfect princess they all wanted her to be? she was so much more than that. she was so much better than what they wanted. ). 

he’s getting over it and this trip was one of the first steps. he misses lissa, and with lissa came rose, but they were more than that too. so he hugs her, and then he smacks her arm. 

“look. i like eddie.” he does; it surprises him how quickly he was able to let eddie in. he supposes spokane was bound to do that to them, but it didn’t change what came next. he likes eddie, he and eddie are friends, but he and rose... they’re connected. they don’t need a bond to determine that, and it was starting to feel like it wasn’t just lissa that connected them. “but he never should have been the one to tell me what you guys were up to or why.” he can’t play the boyfriend card right now; maybe lissa should have told him, and he would have expected it if they were together especially since it involves spirit. he knew better, but he thought rose did too. “it was stupid, risky, insane. and just about everything the two of us have gotten into since we started talking.” it hurt. he can’t tell her that in so many words, but it did. rose has known eddie for longer, and his fighting skills would come in handy during a trip like this, but christian didn’t like being on the outside. he didn’t like how easy it seemed that he could be replaced if anything happened between him and lissa. he finally had friends; he didn’t want to lose them if he wasn’t dating her. 

“i get it. why you didn’t tell me. i wouldn’t have gone along with breaking the bastard that tortured lissa out....” maybe he would have, though. if they could save strigoi.... it was crazy but it might have just worked. “not on some baseless theory.” isn’t it all they do, though? spirit was new and every day they learn a new ability that comes with it. he and lissa were also supposed to be at each other’s throats so maybe that didn’t factor into rose’s opinion at all.. he’d like to think it did but he knows better. “i know we’re not.. best friends.” he wouldn’t know what else to call her...she’s just. rose. “and that you’ll have to be on lissa’s side no matter what.” because they were best friends, and that’s what the two of them do. it’s rose and lissa against everyone else, and just because this past year has been different doesn’t change every year it wasn’t. “but i don’t stop caring.” could have fooled them, but he never stopped caring about lissa-- even if right now all he’s thinking about is rose. “if lissa and i aren’t together... it doesn’t change you and me. i’m still here for you; i would have gone with you. i wouldn’t tell anyone - i won’t. we’ve been through too much shit for that.” vulnerability is winning, but after spending the weekend with lissa, there’s no other way for him to appear. “i thought you knew that.” 

concern warps his features because this isn’t common. it reminds him of the divide between them because she’s asking to come in, asking to stay instead of just showing up and plopping on the couch. instead of bursting the doors down, she’s standing awkward waiting for permission to enter. he thought they had broken that wall down, but maybe he was wrong and things weren’t okay with them still. 

or maybe.... it has nothing to do with him at all. 

“you want to stay here?” incredulous tone because she hasn’t stayed in quite some time -- not like she used to, and it only takes a few more beats for him to look down. 

she’s smaller than him so it isn’t a huge deal having to look down at her, but his eyes go further than her face this time, all the way down to her left hand where something is promptly missing. eyes widen for a brief moment before he’s stepping aside, confusion no longer an option. 

before he can ask for anything else, she’s picked up on the awkwardness, and she’s fallen into the category of banter to detract from whatever comment he would make about her impromptu visit. “thought we moved past that.” he means the drinking, of course, but he also means the banter. they had reached a point where even he no longer got prickly at getting deep around her, allowing his emotions to rest bare against his features, a fate so few have had the experience of receiving. 

but she did -- and he didn’t want to backtrack. not again. “was it you or him? that called it off.” 

“if we’re going to be all...correct.. here..” he’s being obnoxious to ward off the fear that embraces him over keeping this secret from her. he did it for her own good -- just like he’s sure Lissa (vasilisa, a part of his brain corrects automatically) and Bellamy and Tasha and Laurel all agreed. why bellamy decided now was the time to bring rose into the fold...especially since she’s made her choices very clear for who she supports. he may never know the motives behind it, but he knew the second they had decided that it was what they were going to do...that he was going to be the one to tell her. she used to live with him, after all. and if anything...there’s a part of him that feels like he’s the best equipped to break the news. why, with his blunt nature that isn’t half as reassuring as anyone else that could do it... he isn’t sure.

okay. he does know why. if anything, the burden should fall to him because tasha is his family. he holds responsibility for her actions, and that means...he is responsible for the actions that hurt rose. and with them both good at the projection game, rose could displace some of that anger onto him and she won’t feel as bad as she would if it was laurel or lissa. no... no one else should have told her about this. 

“i did tell you.” he finishes, a small smirk on his face. “just saying..” an awkward pause follows as he shoves his hands in his pockets. “look...” he doesn’t know what to say, so he’s gonna just come out with it. “you’d been through enough. it wasn’t about you; it was because...bringing you in this was just gonna risk you more.” she’s gonna come back saying that it should have been up to her to make that decision, but... “and it puts...me at risk.” hoping that connection is still there, hoping that she still considers him family despite all of this. “i didn’t want to lose you. again.” because how can he ask her to keep another secret from dimitri when she left christian to go take care of him? he’s all about ... being fair. but the meaning behind his words are clear, as is the hurt. “we...” because there are more people involved that just him.. “thought you should know.”  

he doesn’t normally remember what the fights are about. mostly because they tend to be one sided-- o blowing up about something, him trying to comfort her, and then it ending with a door shut in his face. he has learned over the years to keep walking, to leave the apartment and come back later. the door closed meant she was inaccessible; the closed door meant attack. when this happens, he knows that he has to leave and when he comes back, they’ll work it out. they always work it out until the next time. 

desperate pleas used to leave his lips to get her to listen, but today he did not plead with her. today, he yelled back for what might have been the first time in the history of their relationship. he wasn’t standing up for himself, didn’t think there was any reason to stand up for himself-- no. he was standing up for rose because for one of the first times since he met her, she wasn’t standing up for herself. 

he remembers what this fight is about because it has been bubbling at the surface for a while now. what used to be met with a curt stop turned into a full blown attack. 

the guilt would tear him apart more if he wasn’t worried about rose, for more than one reason. he brushed past her, walked outside and started walking just to clear his head. he chose her. for the first time...he chose her and only her. everyone knows how important o is to him, but he got into a fight with her over rose about rose for rose. the treatment that she was facing at the hands of his sister for what....being a person that he loves? for being a person that he still hasn’t been able to tell he loves? for being a person in his life. 

he doesn’t linger on the thought long, but it is a thought. it is something that he has been thinking about recently but hasn’t been able to focus on for long. every time he goes there, a stern voice that sounds like family in his head comes to tell him that he’s being selfish. everything for o. she comes first. her needs, her thoughts, her feelings. he’s the one that’s going against her, and he’s the one who just chose rose, so he is why this fight happened even if it was a culmination of weeks of vicious attacks that rose did not deserve. 

he figures this is the worst it has ever gotten, but it was exacerbated by the fact that it is also the first fight that rose has personally witnessed. she has seen the aftermath of them before, and even then...even then he reached out to her, responded to her questions, shared this..brutal fact with her that not even tasha was privy to. he pulled away from her after that, thinking he was getting too close-- and he walked out the door today because he forgot that by having another person in his life.. he could share these things with her. 

it goes deeper than that, of course, and even he can recognize that this was ugly. rosemarie hathaway is many things, but she is not cruel. she is not ugly, does not let darkness harden her the way it has bellamy. it is something he admires about her, and he fears that it will ultimately tear them apart because... he can be. 

so he paces. he doesn’t know what he is going to come home to right now, and he doesn’t want to know. so he paces back and forth outside the door to his own damn apartment that he pays for so that o has somewhere to live. it occurs to him deep, deep down that he should not be afraid to enter his own apartment, but...he brushes that thought off because that fear goes deeper than being afraid of his little sister’s ire. 

he’s afraid of entering an empty apartment. 

the problem with opening his life up to rose is that...everything feels fuller with her there. the room has an energy to it that he can’t decipher as anything other than her. the idea of going back to a time without her is unfathomable. at this point he already considers this her home, already calls it such. she makes it feel like a home instead of somewhere he sleeps sometimes. so the idea of opening the door and her being gone...tears him apart. 

the pacing only staves off the cold for so long and he knows that he needs to face the music. there isn’t any sound coming from the other side of the door, so the only thing he knows for sure is that they aren’t talking or watching tv. sometimes o does that; he’ll come back and she’ll be on the couch watching tv and that meant he could approach. that didn’t happen here-- so he begins to brace himself for the reality that rose left and he needs to figure out what that means.

his fears are confirmed when he opens the door and the light is off. the living room is empty as expected, and his shoulders slump as he places his keys on the table, removing his jacket to hang it up...then walking into the living room anyway. his hands brush over the red blanket on the back of the couch for a brief moment, blinking away tears. she didn’t take it with her, so maybe that meant she’d come back. it seems more likely that she would feel weird taking back the gift or that it wouldn’t even cross her mind to grab it because she just needed to get out. 

he almost doesn’t notice that she hadn’t left when he turns to go to bed. he only briefly thought about sleeping on the couch but...o’s door is still shut and that meant she wasn’t coming out that night and the idea of tossing and turning on the couch was less than pleasant. he also doesn’t want to disturb the blanket because if he does it gets rid of the frail belief that she’s still with him. his head is tilted down, but it is a very clear foot that he sees in the doorway of his room. 

and it isn’t o’s. 

“you’re still here.” he breathes out when his eyes land on her. she’s still here. for the first time since he left...he exhales. i love you. he thinks. “thank god.” he whispers, automatically moving across the room, blinking the rest of the tears away. he’s failed, of course, and a few slipped out as he wraps his arms around her, holding her to him. “i’m so sorry.”

the last time they tried to celebrate his “birthday” the apartment nearly went down in flames and he was left to put the fire out. unfortunately for him, it meant both literally and metaphorically. octavia had tried to do something for him and nearly burned down their home, suffering the wrath of their mom only for him to have to comfort her. it had been a sweet gesture, but one he was grateful she hadn’t tried to repeat. it left a sour taste in his mouth, though, that despite how well the day has been going...something is going to go wrong. 

he hasn’t been afraid in a while about o and rose fighting, but when he comes out of the shower to see the decorations and them fighting over how to decorate the cake, he almost bursts into tears right then. part of him wants to grab the lighter before any mishap can occur, another wants to hug them both, and a third wonders how he got so lucky to spend the day he and rose chose together with everyone in his family. ending the day with the two most important people in his life was just...the icing on the cake. 

except the fear that a fight will brew lingers under the surface as they eat dinner. everything is too easy, and it feels like a ticking time bomb. he wants to ask o for alone time with rose, wants to spend time with his girlfriend on the day they created, wants to be with the person he’s planning on spending the rest of his life with...and he’s worried of the explosion that could occur when he does. he spends most of dinner and all of desert wondering how to bring it up without it causing a stir only for rose to effortlessly say she has a surprise for him and needs to steal him away. only for o to say that it was fine and start cleaning up. 

at first he tugs at the party hat octavia insisted that they wear, thinking it cut all circulation to his head, only for rose to squeeze his hand and show that it was real. he gives her a small nod, tears pricking at his eyes again over how much love is in the room, before rubbing her arm and telling her he’ll be right there. 

there was a time when he thought he would never get used to that, and to a certain extent, it was still true. instead of a giant tear-filled reaction or “rosemarie...” the statement just fills him with warmth. he was no stranger to making home out of a person: octavia, briefly tasha, always aurora, but the most stable of all was rose. rosemarie blake hathaway. he was never going to ask her to give up the hathaway name knowing how much it meant to her, but there was a part of him that wanted them to share a name anyway. despite bonding over their lack of middle names, it wasn’t something he had considered as a possibility. he had welcomed rose into his heart and made her a blake; it didn’t need to be official to be real to him. still, if he’s learned anything, it’s that officiality is pretty damn sweet. 

he thinks of his fingers lingering on the paper here, of all the happiness he has felt since they said i do. since she asked him...since before that, really. marriage was never something he could imagine as a dhampir, but a partnership was easy. it wasn’t as effortless as he had hoped, but once they let each other in, it was the easiest thing in the world. loving her has always been the easier thing in the world. he would have loved her forever even if they never married, had accepted that wouldn’t happen even when they co-habited. they both thought that they would live together until the state considered them legally married or domestic partners, and that would have been more than enough because of the knowledge that this was her home. the place that they were building together, but also each other. it was something that could never be taken away by anyone else. except that there has been a question nagging at him ever since she asked that he never addressed because it had been overshadowed by how happy he was to be briefly engaged and then married to her. nothing else mattered except making sure she was certain that she wanted it. her happy hop when she realized that they were allowing them to get married doesn’t leave his mind, and any time he misses her, that’s the image he conjures up. the pure bliss on her face when she realized that they were getting married. it’s the image he uses to gain strength to ask her now. “hey, baby? i have a question.” he kisses over her ring finger without much thought, smiling against her knuckles before kissing again. “what changed your mind? about marriage?” there are enough things that they’ve worked through to make him think that the answer is him, but he feels like there’s something more. this was something she was always certain of even before her miserable experience. what changed her mind about marrying him?

he needed this, and he knows it. the part of him that stopped to look toward the kitchen was enough to satisfy him until he could be with octavia again. she was consumed by making breakfast, and it gave him time to focus on rose and the trauma they had both endured. she helped him this morning with remembering that octavia was home safe, and he had to make sure that rose understood that he was there for her, too. octavia wasn’t the only person he thought he had lost in the past four days, and it wasn’t octavia’s screams he woke up remembering this morning. she might have been the person he looked for first, but it was the butt of a gun hitting rose that he had vivid flashes of. 

it was her on the ground with it pressed to her skull. it was her, and he can feel his throat closing again with the memories. even with his hand wrapped around hers, he’s afraid that she’ll fall through the cracks and they’ll be back there. he can’t lose her; the pain radiating through his wrists could never compare to what that would do to him. he’d beg for them to trade places every day, wish that she hadn’t come to find him if it meant she got out unscathed. he knew every second he was in there that rose was on her way, and he loves her for it, but god, he wishes it had been simple. he wishes he had been quicker to warn her; he wishes he were a better partner. 

she never should have been in that situation, but neither should he. he’s trained to take on strigoi; he should have been able to take the barely trained reckless dhampir with ease. it should come as no surprise that he believes he should have been able to do this despite the gas that knocked him and tasha out so that he was incapable of fighting back. his hands were in chains, but he should have been able to tear it out of the concrete and break down the bars to get to rose before denis could pull the trigger. 

the thoughts threaten to overwhelm him, so he focuses on the best thing he can: her heartbeat. just like he had directed her hand to his the night before to remind her that he was there safe, he presses his own to hers for the same reminder. there’s no better grounding technique than feeling and hearing her heart beating. his hands don’t come off her even as they help each other undress, his hands still around her as they turn the water on, wrapped around her when they finally get in. one remains on her even as he reaches for shampoo and soap. his eyes close when he notices the water going down the drain is tinged with red, and he thinks he should be out of tears by now, yet they come in waves when he thinks about her crumpling. 

her hands in his hair do little to pull him out of his grief, but he leans into it nonetheless. his automatically rub little circles over where the gun was pressed, thinking that he could send enough love into it to erase the betrayal. he found it difficult to trust, but rose had her heart open for the entire world; he hated when the people around them abused that, and watching her suffer knowing that someone she had trusted turned on her hurt almost as much as the physical strike. he struggles switching from washing her hair to body for this reason, wanting to keep his focus on her head, but he already has marks from where his skin has been rubbed raw. he’s done all he can to wash the blood away, and they’ll spend however long it takes to work on the emotional scars.

when he does switch to her body, he becomes overwhelmed by another scar. one right over her heart, down the center of her chest. he knows the precise location of her heart because of their training, but he’d be able to find it just because it’s hers. now his eyes remain between her breasts as a sob escapes him. he couldn’t count the number of times he’s randomly been hit by the knowledge that rose died twice before meeting him, and only one of those times was she able to bring herself back. after the events of these last few days, he’s reminded of how fragile life is, and how much it would destroy him to lose her. his hand is shaky as it reaches out to trace the jagged line from where the bullet pierced the ensuing surgery. he finds that his eyes close again as he traces it, committing the lines to his memory as a testament for rose’s strength and will to live. she’ll come back to him, just like he once promised to always come back to her. it does little to stop his own struggling breaths, but he thinks he’s entitled to a few mental breakdowns after being held captive for four days, and even more for the helpless feeling of begging her to look into his eyes in case it was the last thing she saw. she’s alive. she’s here. we survived.