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Vegas wakes up with a start. Always has.
He isn't really the type to slowly blink awake, taking minutes of honey-thick time to ease into the waking world, with sleep slowly seeping out of his bones. Or he hasn’t been the type.
Now he’s not so sure anymore.
Something is wrong when he wakes, though. It takes him a moment to place it, that booming sense of unease that comes with the kind of silence around him. There’s no shouting, no walking in the halls. No beeping machines or the rumble of the cart carrying food outside of his room.
It’s too silent, now that he’s out of the hospital for good.
Which is weird, since all he wanted while staying there was to leave and be free of the IV in his arm and the monitor attached to his finger and the steady rhythm of his own heartbeat reverberating around the room.
It’s too silent without Macau shuffling his homework or having quiet, playful arguments with Pete.
Pete .
It takes Vegas a second, longer than he would have before , to fully come to his senses. The first thing was the quiet, but now there’s another sensation he isn't used to yet. The weight of an arm draped carefully around his waist and a head resting on his right shoulder, hair tickling at his throat.
It’s not his bed either, one of the many he got used to over the years, but a new one with a mattress that’s maybe a little too soft for Vegas’ liking, and with an absurd amount of pillows piled behind and underneath him.
Pete fussed about his wounds - tender scars now, red and fresh and sensitive on his skin - until Vegas agreed on this bed with all its new comfort.
He suspects that maybe Pete just likes it, the new luxury he hasn’t been afforded for years.
He doesn’t mind it, not really.
It’ll take some getting used to, most of whatever it is that is to come will, Vegas suspects. But if the future looks like this; soft white sheets and morning light in a quiet room in a quiet house, with a ridiculously beautiful man on his chest, Vegas doesn’t mind it, at all.
He’s good at adapting, at becoming something different, and maybe this different will actually stick for once.
Vegas shifts lightly, only with the intention of bringing a hand up to play with Pete’s hair, but it wakes him all the same.
Some habits are hard to lose, he supposes. If he still wakes up waiting for something to happen - a summons of his father, or his uncle, a call to violence or simply a sleepless Macau looking for comfort - then Pete will still be waking up at the slightest change, or movement, or anything because truthfully Vegas has never met anyone with quite the same instincts as Pete.
He’s never met anyone like Pete, full stop.
Pete, with all his glorious kindness and charm, the optimism and the bright, bright smile that Vegas spent hours and days crashing up against- a ship throwing itself at the cliffs with a storm raging around it.
He’s beautiful and deadly, a poison glittering so prettily he couldn’t do anything but get addicted to it, the pain and the relief, couldn’t hold onto anything while tumbling down and down.
With Pete stirring, arm tightening around Vegas’ waist, he really doesn’t have it in him to mind. Hasn’t for a long time, not since those first few days in the safe house, Pete bathed in blood red light and grinning like a devil come to reap his soul.
“I’m sorry,” Vegas mumbles. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Pete blinks at him, dark eyes contrasting against the pale skin, and smiles softly. It sets Vegas’s insides aflame, teetering somewhere close to burning but not yet. Not quite.
“It’s okay,” Pete says quietly. His voice is raspy, deeper than usual. He’s still heavy and sluggish with sleep, and Vegas takes a moment to soak him in like this.
They haven’t had mornings like this, yet.
Mornings that are just the two of them, quiet and somewhere they might consider home eventually. Mornings that are free of chains, free of self restraint, free of pressure and now, too, free of that sanitiser smell of hospital that filled his nose for months.
Pete shifts, hand moving from Vegas’s hip up to his chest, with featherlight fingers teasing along his stomach. A pleasant shiver runs down his spine, and Pete gives him a small, teasing smile.
He knows, by now, through Vegas’s own words and that damned, treacherous heart monitor, what kind of an effect he has, and he enjoys teasing him. Vegas enjoys that, too. Quite a lot.
“Did you sleep well?”
There’s a hint of worry in Pete’s voice, one that hasn’t really left ever since Vegas woke up in the hospital for the first time to find him clutching at his hands, hair greasy and eyes shot red.
Vegas doesn’t actually remember all that much from his first few weeks after getting shot. There’s a blur of voices, and pain, so much pain that he wasn’t sure if he was actually alive or just drifting along in whatever kind of hell decided to take him in. There are a few clear moments, like that first haze of consciousness, with Pete at his bedside.
Some snapshots of Macau cursing him out, tears on his cheeks. Pete arguing with a doctor over something Vegas hadn’t been clear enough to fully grasp, instead focusing on the imposing figure of Pete, clad in one of Vegas’s shirts, guarding him. There’s the vague memory of a visit from Porsche, and Kinn as well, nothing more than hushed whispers and uncertain smiles, and then Pete again, darting into his field of vision with that kind, kind smile.
Most of what Vegas remembers from that time is Pete, and Macau.
And after, too. It was mostly them - only them - for the majority of his stay in the hospital, between all the surgeries and the doctors telling him how much of a miracle his survival was, how lucky he was to be alive.
Pete had always sounded or looked a bit worried then, sometimes pale with it, sometimes trying to hide it between smiles Vegas has become an expert at deciphering. It’s still there, that worry, etched into the corners of his eyes and the hue of his words.
Vegas wants nothing more than to kiss it away, all that worry and pain he caused. He buries his hand in the soft hair at the back of Pete’s neck, tugging gently, and smiles.
“I did, don’t worry. Couldn’t even feel the scars.”
It’s a lie, albeit a small one. The pain has lessened over the weeks, now nothing more than a twinge when he moves wrong, and a dull, almost imperceptible throb, when it’s a bad day. One of the physical therapists said that he might never be fully pain-free again, but Vegas doesn’t worry about that too much. It’s not like pain would be a new companion.
Pete taps at his left collarbone. “You’re a bad liar.”
“It wasn’t too bad,” Vegas amends.
A small frown tugs at Pete’s mouth, and Vegas reaches out with his free hand to rest his fingers on his cheek, waits until the frown evens out. “It’s okay.”
He tries to sound reassuring, but there’s still a level of uncertainty in Pete’s eyes, and he takes in the way Vegas is propped up against the mass of pillows surrounding them, their bodies slotted together, partly covered by a duvet.
Something cold and unpleasant crawls into his stomach, a sensation he’s become all too familiar with over the years.
Guilt has always tasted acidic, crawling up his throat and settling in his mouth until it feels like it’s choking him, making it hard to breathe. This particular brand of fear that snakes its way around Vegas’s chest is cold and clear, carving itself into his ribs the way a glacier might carve itself into the landscape, immovable and only able to melt slowly.
Vegas is good at suppressing that, usually. Good at pretending he’s fine and that things don’t bother him until he has the safety of privacy and only his own four walls to witness him, but things have changed, and while that’s a good thing in most circumstances, he still finds himself wishing that right now he was alone.
Pete, gorgeous, understanding Pete, looks at Vegas and he feels laid bare.
That’s something that he’s done since the beginning, something that Vegas found unsettling, scary even, before it morphed into some greedy sort of desire for Pete to keep looking at him, to keep seeing him.
Few things escape him, and again, Vegas supposes that it’s something necessary for the type of work Pete tied himself to for years and years, but to be observed like this is new, and it’s utterly terrifying.
And that’s the thing with Pete.
He’s terrifying in so many ways, least of all his ability to hide the darkness that lurks beneath his skin and inside his bones and blood, behind smiles and soft comforts. Pete is warm and inviting, generous and kind and all the world’s cruelties just seem to glance off his armour, but Vegas knows.
He knows.
Pete looks almost harmless, a pretty thing - Vegas himself had thought of him as only that for the many years they’d known each other before, and he regrets it dearly now. There’s a sharpness to him that only comes to light when lights grow dimmer and pressure piles higher, when blood paints crimson rivulets on the floor.
Vegas knows that underneath all his velvetine glamour, the soft edges and gentle curves of his face and smiles, Pete’s edges are razor-sharp and ready to lacerate skin.
Vegas also knows that he’d gladly cut his fingers to shreds, bleed from sliced up lips, suffer from small splinters stuck inside his heart, if it allowed him to keep Pete close, to cherish him and see him smile, truly smile, to kiss him and to if, if only for a breath longer, it meant that he is Pete’s. And Pete is his.
Which brings him back to the issue at hand, the acid burning in his throat and the ice cold sensation winding itself tighter and tighter around his chest in already familiar grooves. Pete studies him, eyes fitting across his features restlessly, brows creasing, and it doesn’t help somehow, doesn’t help at all.
Pete watches Vegas, watches and sees and he can feel himself splinter under that heavy gaze, nearly cracking into too many pieces to keep together. He’s been barely more than a construct, tape and glue and sheer stubbornness keeping him as whole as possible for years, and now even that’s threatening to fall apart.
It’s like Pete has wormed his way inside of him, working to uncover all the scars he’s closed, digging up all the old wounds and fears, the darkest shadows that even Vegas has tried to hide away, the things that make him convulse with heavy, choking sobs at night. And Pete, with his gentle hands and quiet voice, the surety with which he speaks, opens that Pandora’s Box, with the intent to fix it.
And truly, that is the issue.
Vegas yearns to be whole, to be something new and working, to be more than a crudely sewn together shell, but he doesn’t want Pete to feel like it’s his duty to do that work. He doesn’t want to be a burden, a responsibility, something that might hold him back.
Pete has spent almost three months at the hospital with him, sleeping bent over the bedside, fingers clutching at Vegas’s hand, or curled up in an armchair, eventually stretched out carefully beside him. He hasn’t been home in god knows how long, has barely seen his friends - his family - at the Main Family’s compound. Hasn’t relaxed, always ready to defend both Vegas and Macau.
And lord, how Vegas appreciates that.
He loves Pete for it, for the safety he offered Macau when he himself couldn’t. He’s not sure how to thank Pete for all the things he’s done for both of them, and it's killing him a little bit, the guilt bubbling up and choking him when he thinks about all of it for too long.
Vegas can’t help but wonder if Pete isn’t wasting his life, by staying. He could be so much more, so many great things with the world now at his disposal instead of being confined to the proximity of the men he’s assigned to guard.
“Vegas,” Pete says softly, voice barely above a whisper. He props himself up on his side, his hand wandering from Vegas’s chest up to gently cup his jaw. “Vegas, what’s wrong? Do you want some of the painkillers they gave us? Do you need to sit up?”
His thumb is moving over his cheek in small circles, and Vegas leans into the touch for a moment, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath that pulls at the scar above his lungs.
Pete is still looking at him when he opens them again, and Vegas briefly wonders if Pete has ever stopped looking, since that time at the safe house.
Lord knows he hasn’t.
The ability to look away from Pete was stripped from his life with that first blood coloured smile, with the first chuckle. The option of tearing his eyes from him was taken the moment Pete laid his honest, considering gaze onto him, painted in golden light, and Vegas has been transfixed ever since.
“Am I a burden?” Vegas asks quietly.
His voice cracks on the last syllable, and he’s faintly aware that he sounds less like himself and more like a scared boy. It’s an unpleasant development, that side of him, that only Pete seems to be able to bring out. Something Vegas would’ve liked to ignore.
The thumb stills on his cheek and Pete regards him with something dangerously close to alarm. Not pity, never pity. But alarmed worry all the same, and it makes Vegas’ chest just a little colder, just a little more tight.
“Why?” Pete asks slowly. “Why would you be?”
He resumes stroking over Vegas’s cheek, the movement infinitely gentler now, and it’s almost enough to make him shatter up against that ragged shoreline that Pete presents him. His eyes sting hot, and when Vegas speaks again his voice is even smaller than before.
“Because you’re spending all your time here, and maybe you're just wasting it, when you could be doing something else. Something better”
“And what could I be doing that wouldn’t be wasting my time?” Pete is quiet and calm, waiting, and it’s unfamiliar, the genuine curiosity in his voice.
“Anything else, really.” It comes out as barely more than a whisper squashed by the months of anxieties he’s been keeping pinned down, the fears and the worries and the guilt, acrid in his mouth, almost choking him before he can get the words out.
“Oh,” Pete says softly. “Oh. Vegas. Darling, come here.”
He pulls them both up in a swift yet gentle movement, propping a few pillows behind Vegas’s back and settling himself in front of him, legs crossed. He’s quiet, methodical, and Vegas feels fragile in a way he never has before, not even in those few intoxicating, breathless moments in the main compound's basement, blood spilling from his split lip and Pete above him, gun cocked and fist ready to strike.
This is uncharted territory for him, both of them maybe, but Pete just takes a long breath and grabs both of Vegas’s hands, rubbing his thumbs over his knuckles.
“Vegas,” he says again.
He looks at Pete now, slightly blurry by the sheen of hot tears that have gathered in the corners of his eyes. There’s that worried crase between his eyebrows again, that fucking look so full of worry and love and kindness it makes him shudder.
“Love, do you not think me capable of making my own decisions? Haven’t I told you that I’m here because I want to follow my heart?”
Vegas nods, shakily. The grooves driven into his being from years and years of being left behind freeze over, constricting his chest, until breathing becomes harder than it should. Pete’s voice is kind and free of accusations, free of judgement or anger and yet.
Yet Vegas waits for it. Waits for the outrage that Pete showed him at the pool, illuminated in blue and silver with two wings of bloodstains on his back, a fallen angel made of anger and vengeance and desperate, bleeding love. Somehow it would be more merciful than this.
In his lap, Pete begins applying a bit of pressure to Vegas's knuckles, not enough to hurt, but enough to get him to focus, to look at him. There’s the smallest inclination of his head and Vegas forces another breath into his cold, cold chest.
“I believe you can do anything you’d like, and that there’s nothing in the world that could stop you,” he says.
Pete nods, a small smirk tugging at his lips, there and gone in a second. “Then why would you think I’d be wasting my time with you, if I could do anything else? Why would I still be here if I didn’t want to be, why wouldn’t I just leave?”
“I don’t know,” Vegas admits. He can hear how small he sounds, how utterly defenceless, and if he were with anyone other than Pete he would need to kill them for seeing him in this state. But it’s Pete, and Pete has seen the worst of him a long time ago and chosen to stay with him until now anyway. “I don’t know, Pete.”
Tears crowd his face now, running in well worn tracks and it makes Pete’s expression hard to see. He squeezes his hands and sighs quietly. “I’m not going to disappear from your life, Vegas.”
“You might.”
“How can you say that?” And Pete sounds hurt, genuinely hurt, voice snagging on that emotion and tearing Vegas right through the middle.
He pulls his hands back, wipes at his face and lets them drop into his own lap, focusing on his fingers and the duvet and the fabric of his pyjamas. Works through the lump in his throat for a moment.
“Everyone else has left me. They always leave, the good things in my life. Everything I’ve ever loved disappeared eventually. I don’t… I don’t know how I would survive you leaving, too.”
“Vegas, look at me,” Pete says. His voice is unsteady, hitching and hands shake as he reaches for him, cups his face. “Look at me.”
It’s a command, punctuated by a tug up, until Vegas is forced to make eye contact. The dark onyx that meets him shimmers with tears, mirroring the hot trails on his cheeks, the droplets clinging to his jaw.
“I know, love. I know you were alone for so long that you don’t know how to be now, but I’m begging you to believe me. I’m demanding you to believe me, because it’s unfair to me if you don’t. You bound me to you, and you don’t get to push me away again. I’m not letting that happen.”
There’s fire in his words, burning away at the last bits of string and badly plastered cracks that still hold Vegas together. Pete’s grip is strong, and now, even if he wanted to, Vegas wouldn’t be able to look away from him.
“Everything I touch turns into a disaster,” he whispers, the words from his dad echoing in his ears. “I can’t promise I won’t destroy you, too, and I couldn’t live with myself if I did.”
“Vegas.” Pete always handles his name so carefully, like he might break it, or him and now, somehow, he does.
He breaks Vegas on his first morning home, out of the hospital. Every bit of work he’s put into holding himself together over the years crumbles to dust with this single utterance, with his name out of Pete’s mouth, spoken with so much warmth and tenderness, so much care that it rips away every defence, every little wall he still had.
It cracks him like an egg, his fragile form bursting apart, and for a moment Vegas wonders if Pete can feel it, too, because he pulls him in, a hand sliding to rest on his neck, curling into his hair.
Vegas falls into Pete, forehead resting against his collarbone, and cries. It’s ugly, and loud, ripping at him from this way and that. But Pete’s hands are on his neck, in his hair, on his back, his shoulders, moving as though he’s trying to keep him together even when there’s nothing left.
“I love you,” Pete murmurs into Vegas’s ear. “I love you, and I chose you, okay? I chose this life, and I chose to resign, and I chose to stay at your side in the hospital when you looked
more dead than alive. You pulled me in and made me yours and when you let me go I chose to return and to stay because there’s nothing else in the world for me to do. I wouldn’t want to be elsewhere, because I wouldn’t have you. I’m staying, my love, I promise.”
Vegas forces himself to nod, chokes on a sob and comes up gasping for air with Pete’s hands gripping his face again. The affection in his eyes nearly snaps Vegas in half again, and then it’s replaced by something else, by a small note of anger, and Pete kisses his forehead.
“I love you, but I’m not letting you break me like that,” Pete says. “If you try to get me to leave, if you try to make that decision for me I’ll hunt you down and make you regret it, okay? You don’t get to do that.”
It’s a threat Vegas knows Pete means earnestly. It’s all there, in the colour of his voice, darker than before, that small but familiar spark of righteous anger that makes his knees weak and the desire to push him backwards into the sheets burn up brighter despite the mess of emotions battling in his chest.
It’s the most reassuring thing Pete could have said.
People can lie about their feelings, their affections. Vegas is no stranger to doing so, and although he knows that Pete is nothing if not shockingly earnest about himself, hearing him with the same sort of anger that threaded through his pleading at the pool, months ago, is more calming than anything else.
Vegas may be broken now, shattered, but he’s crumbled into Pete’s hands and there’s no safer place for him to be than the only person who could break him again and again. He trusts that Pete would put him back together better than before every time.
“Okay,” he croaks, still aware of how pitiful he sounds. “I’m sorry.”
Pete hums softly, kisses his forehead again and wipes at the tears that are still trailing their way down Vegas’s cheeks and onto Pete’s skin. “I don’t need you to be sorry, I just need you to stay.”
Vegas can’t help the laugh that claws it’s way out between his hitching breaths, still trying to recover.
Stay.
It’s such an easy thing to say and such a world-shattering thing to want. He remembers begging Pete to stay with him, remembers the blood that wasn’t his clinging to his knife and the desperate, awful tears they shared back then.
Both of them at a breaking point, both of them beyond it and somehow still staying as one. He knows that that was when he’d devoted himself entirely, when his world startet revolving around Pete like it hadn’t ever done with anyone else, none of the short-term boyfriends that have periodically marked his life.
It seemed impossible, the future that they have now.
“I’m staying,” Vegas promises wetly. “I’m staying.”
“Good.” Pete kisses him, and it’s salty and yet sweet at the same time, his tears getting mixed up in the gentle press of lips against each other, Pete’s hands sliding back into his hair, curling at the base of his skull.
He presses in, sliding his arms around Pete’s torso and pulls him closer, demanding more. It’s a push and pull between them, an equal exchange of fire and for a few moments he forgets how to breathe entirely, when Pete takes control. He rarely does, and it’s always more than enough to make Vegas’ world jump out of its axis, his heart some wild untamed thing rebelling against the cage of his ribs.
Then Pete pushes him back, a hand on his shoulder, and despite his best efforts, Vegas can’t hide the wince from him. He draws back immediately, breathing heavily and staring at him with concern, looking slightly guilty and slightly pleased both, at the dishevelled state he’s put him in.
“Let’s get you lying down, hm?” Pete asks, a smirk growing lazily on his face, when he notices the heavy rise and fall of Vegas’s chest, the way he can’t keep his eyes off his lips. It’s a practised move, and only takes a few seconds before Vegas is reclining on the mountain of pillows again.
“It’s a shame,” Pete comments, fingers back to trailing over his stomach lazily, skirting the scars. “I’d love to see all the things you have to offer, now that we’re not in a barely equipped safe house anymore.”
He heaves a sigh, somewhat melodramatic, and drops down beside Vegas, hair tousled and eyes still glinting with that greed that drew Vegas in between multicoloured lighting and makeshift restraints. It’s mirrored in his own eyes, he’s sure, because now that the ice around his chest is melting and warmth floods back in, various shades of adoration for the man before him, it starts crawling through his blood stream.
Where his guilt is sharp and burning acid, his greed, this greed is hot the way a shot of vodka is. It burns and spreads, but it doesn’t eat away at him until destruction, it just lays itself on top of everything else until he’s sated.
It’s something he’s known for years, but only with Pete has Vegas ever felt like there was someone who could understand it, and who could help him satisfy it.
“Soon,” Vegas promises now, and Pete leans in to kiss him again. Despite their shared, oh so obvious, want it’s slow and sweet, a seal to a promise that both of them will make sure to remember.
Pete grasps his bicep, pushing himself up so he’s leaning over Vegas, smile lopsided and lovely. He pushes some of his hair out of his face, tucks it neatly behind his ears, drops kisses onto his forehead and cheeks, his nose and grins with obvious satisfaction against his mouth, when Vegas gets impatient and pulls him in by the back of his neck.
There’s a residual pain still pulling at his skin, and a dull throb where a headache will form as a result of his tears, his chest still too cold and tight in some parts, a permafrost that might take years to melt away.
He’s shattered completely, broken apart in so many directions he wasn’t even aware he could, but he’ll pull himself together. Pete will pull him together by sheer force of will, if necessary.
And Pete is still here. Soft and kind and kissing him, with bed hair and a bit of morning breath, his hand splayed over Vegas’s chest to stake a claim that nobody would - should - ever dare to question, not even in the privacy of their own bedroom.
This first morning of an undreamt future is messy, and emotional, but Vegas thinks that many things with Pete will be like that, and once again he can’t bring himself to mind it.
It’s something to look forward to, the lull of the sea as the ship gets back in shape and crashes again, a constant thing, tidal and scheduled, and beautiful in its destructive reconstruction.
Vegas may be irrevocably broken, somewhere deep down, but Pete is, too. They break each other and put their pieces back together, and they’ll stay, and that, really, is more than he ever could have asked for.