Chapter Text
There’s a certain decadence to a 3am diner meal; burgers and chocolate smoothies at an hour when any reasonable human would be asleep feels deeply, deliciously rebellious. Leo could have sworn he felt his leg ease up a little, and his vision sharpen slightly, as he took bite after bite. Grace was never disposed to stress eating in college, but she had just realised that terror leaves you with one hell of an empty stomach once it stops flooding it with adrenaline. Both of them ate in silence for a good two minutes, accepting indigestion as the cost for getting food into their bodies now . Their plates emptied, they both took a breath. And then another. And then a third, as both of them thought the other was about to say something. Then Leo bit the bullet and just spoke.
“So.”
Another breath.
“I think if we were action heroes, that would have been a big romantic moment, huh?”
“Heh, and we first met at swordpoint, too. Really hitting all the cliches.”
“If we had, y’know. Back then. Kissed, I mean-”
“I would have been fine with it, for sure.”
“Right, now when you say fine -”
“I- hold on, I’ll try and explain it.”
Grace finished the last of her milkshake, and tried to speak directly.
“I tried dating a whole bunch in college, but it never went anywhere past a couple dates. I always thought it was because I was too busy, too focused on work, too in my head. Looking back, though, I realized that I just didn’t care for, well, any of it. I was always fine going along on dates and making out and shit, but it was all just for the other person. Which was fine , don’t get me wrong, I never minded it, but at the end of the day I couldn’t be bothered to go through all the rituals of dating when all I wanted was someone to spend time with, and care about. Not like a friend though, something a little more-”
She snapped out of the ramble, as she saw Leo’s tears push little holes through the whipped cream at the bottom of his shake.
“Hey, hey, listen, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try-”
“I thought it was just me.”
“What? Wait, you mean?”
Leo nodded, the tension leaving his body.
“Sub in college for high school, and you’ve got my story. God, I thought I was just defective or something.”
Grace grinned. She’d given up on meeting someone who understood fairly recently, and on meeting a hot swordfighter who was into her well over a decade ago, but here he was. She spoke again, for the first time in her romantic experience feeling like she was standing on solid ground.
“So.”
“So.”
“You want to try and figure something out? We can pick and choose what we want from a romance, pull together something new that works for us.”
Leo took a second, drinking in the feeling of, yet again, being seen by Grace Miller in a way no one else had before, and squeezed her shoulder.
“We took down that thing together, I think we could give it a shot. I’d love to.”
The city hums and moves in a way 3am in any other city never could. Down a boiler room staircase, through an arch of pipes, and several million light years away, a sylvan guardsman buzzes with ideas and theories, counting the days till he next meets the mythical human. In a lone star system, Reconciliation analyses every data point obtained about the Hunter, and its new ally, the Engineer.
The Hunter and the Engineer, however, are dozing off on a sofa, curled up together in a harmony neither expected nor knew to hope for. When the next monster comes, inevitably, they’ll be readier than Leo ever could be on his own.
The Guardians of New York fall to dreaming, and the city dreams with them.