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holy cats I wrote a nearly 4,000 word LonixAlex thing in 3 hours, wtf brain
There was a change in the way you breathe
Fandom: Kingdom
Cast: Loni, Alex, and a cameo by Deon
Prompt: 31 days “the past takes its meaning from whatever we do right now”
Suggested song: “Stole You Away” by Benjamin Francis Leftwich [vid here]
“If he skips out on child support, you’ll be the first I’ll tell,” Loni pressed her chapped lips against Kona’s soft forehead, watching as her sleeping toddler frowned, flailing arms rooting for the warmth of Eli in the bed they shared. The two were the closest in age at the Hunter Creche, and with the MacKay house in turmoil, there was no other sanctuary she’d consider for her sunflower child.
Her words were a lie, but one Deon was unlikely to discover. Even now he stood in the shadows of his son’s room, trapped between malevolence and concern and a smugness that screamed he was right all along. For once the man held his tongue, perhaps aware Loni was suspiciously far too at ease with the separation, that an argument over their sleeping children was hardly beneficial to the awkward situation, that if she stopped to breathe the feeling would catch up to her and strike like a thundering train.
“I can watch over them both for as long as you need,” Deon shrugged, shifting through countless options before settling on human decency. She thanked him for his restraint, through she would have welcomed the fire of righteousness— it might replace the hollow her heart had sunken into these past few years. “Mara’s out of town hunting, but I can handle the kids. Anela’s a decent babysitter, with all the practice she gets with your spawn.”
In spite of the gravity of the situation, her lips quirked in a shadow of her usual smile. “Maybe you and Mara can catch up to me now.”
Deon let out a rude sound. “The world wouldn’t know what to do with that many Barros kids.”
Loni let her eyes fall to the sleeping babies below, her smile softening around the edges. “You still need to equal the numbers. You and Eli are quite outnumbered.”
“Mara would kill me for suggesting we make a baseball team like yours.” Deon repeated the rude sound, his hands ceasing their clenching to awkwardly wrap around her shoulder. It wasn’t an embrace and it was twenty kinds of awkward, but it was a comfort to know Deon had at least tried. “If you need to talk…”
“Thank you,” Loni cut him off before he could embarrass himself with a surfeit of feelings, wincing as her body protested rising to her feet. It had been a long, exhausting day and the night was threatening to continue on forever. It was time to return to the house that had survived a relationship she had hoped would last forever. “I can’t remember the last day I had to myself.”
“Go enjoy an empty house,” Deon laughed, leading her from the room. “I don’t remember what that is either, you’ll have to tell me all about it when you pick up the kids.”
Empty. The word loomed before her, and for a breath she twisted back to see Kona, her hands itching to take at least one of the children home, to push off the inevitable silence another day. But the toddler was already comfortably asleep, her open palm wedged against Eli’s face, and she had wasted years already. It was time to move on.
“Call me if…” Loni sighed, turning her back on the peaceful scene. “Well, if it gets too much, or if anything-”
“Go home Loni.” Deon placed both hands on her shoulders, his hold firm and steady, and pushed her outside the house. “I’ll see you tomorrow night and not a moment sooner.”
It would be nice to have Deon continue to push her along, but she needed to steady the becalmed ship her life had become herself. And as a hunter with powers over wind, there really wasn’t an excuse for her to be lingering in the dead sky, directionless.
“See you,” she breathed out, walking back to the minivan that had never been this silent, this hollow before.
Finally, she thought, something matches me.
* * *
The phone calls began after she had steadied herself with irish coffee, letting the liquor ignite her body and the badly needed caffeine boost her sagging blood. Her fingers still shook as she died Val’s home number— it wasn’t late so much as frightfully early in New York, and she wasn’t surprised when the line directed to voice mail.
It was a weekend, and that meant he was with company she didn’t want to interrupt with a useless call to his cell. There wasn't anything he could do over the phone, anyway.
“I left him,” She said simply into the receiver, wrapping the coil of her old fashioned phone around her worn finger. “I just thought you would want to know. Everything is fine, the children are at Tasha’s and Deon’s.”
She took a deep breath, the air stretching across the chasm between Sunset City and New York, frozen and aching for her best friend. “I’m okay. Should have done it years ago. I just woke up and knew I couldn’t go on another day of lying to myself that this was love and not a bad habit I should have kicked ages ago.”
“He said he’d been trying to work up the words for years himself,” Loni continued, wondering at the state of her nails and when the last time she had painted their dull, misshapen lengths. Ages, she imagined, not since the last time Val had dragged her out for a spa day, somewhere between Kona and Emalani.
“Is it bad that I’m glad we lacked the courage? Because then I wouldn’t have had Emmy. And it might have been him doing the leaving, and I might have imagined myself hurt instead of exhausted and worn.”
“I’m blathering on,” Loni sighed once more, a blistering heat squeezing in her throat, trying to escape. But she wasn’t going to cry, especially not on the line with Val’s answering machine to record every hurt sound. Leilani Joan MacKay was made of sterner stuff than that, and it was about time she reminded everyone who the dragon really was.
“I just thought you should know. I’m fine, really, don’t hop on a plane or anything dramatic— I know you are already booking tickets, so stop, please. I’m going to enjoy the next 24 hours of having no one in the house, but I promise I’ll call you tomorrow and I swear we can discuss creative maiming then.”
“I miss when things were easier, Val,” She breathed out one last time, around the choking heat and shuddering of tears threatening in spite of her best efforts to hold back the tide. “But maybe things were never really that easy, were they? Anyway, I’ll call you tomorrow-- and really, don't you dare buy that plane ticket or I'll never speak to you again I swear. Love you.”
She pressed the end button on the receiver before she could blather on again, before her voice could break, before the shudders became too forceful for her to contain. It had been ages since she had felt anything this overwhelming— not since Emmy’s birth, when Alex had drifted to her side and helped her shaking hands steady on their precious burden, the hardest labor she’d managed and all without the help of the father…
Loni slid down the tiled wall of the kitchen, leaning her too hot forehead on her raised knees. The silence of the house was overwhelming, pressing ominously against her. There were no little ones to distract her, no hunter crisis to mask what she should have reached for ages ago. She was alone with the failure to keep her family together… with the failure to really care she had pushed the father of her children away.
She was free now, maybe her wings would remember what it felt like to fly.
Taking one last boosting breath, her hands still trembled as she dialed the familiar number. It was late, but she knew he’d answer.
“Loni?” Alex’s voice was muffled, broken by a yawn and the beginnings of worry. “Are the kids okay?”
“Fine.” She managed, forcing her shudders to stop, for her voice to remain level. Her voice was cold, devoid of any energy— it was everything she could do to keep from crying out at the sound of his voice. “They are fine.”
“What’s going on, Loni?” His voice was already alert, shrugging off the sleepiness. “Are… are you okay?”
It was impossible to put on artifice with him, not even over the line. Especially when it was just his voice and her own, reaching out across the wires. Her face collapsed into the misery she’d pushed aside the past years, past the lies she told herself to keep going on as if nothing was wrong. “No. Everything has gone wrong Alex…”
* * *
She was still crying when his car pulled up, hours later— it was still idling when he burst through the kitchen entrance, his face frantic as he searched for her.
“I’m down here,” She managed with only one hiccup, feeling all of 15 against the worry carved across his muscular frame.
Which was wrapping itself around her, his arms pressing her trembling body tightly against his warmth. “It’s going to be okay Loni,” His voice was the same comfort her children had received, kisses against their scrapped knees and bruised egos and his heartbeat sounding steadily against his chest, the same stable rock he had always been. “I’m here now, ssshhhh.”
It would be easy to stay there, let his arms do the grieving for her, while she just hung on and let the tears wring themselves out of her. Alex was strong enough to carry the grief her lack of love had wrought. But she couldn’t, not after everything that had happened, everything that lingered beneath the surface.
“I left him.” Loni managed around the sobs, the words a boon to her struggle for control over her emotions.
She couldn’t miss the tension that stretched across his body, her face pressed as it was against his chest. But it was as much a mystery as why she had counted on him to be there, why his heart was racing faster than her own, why they were clinging to each other in the kitchen she really should have cleaned before dialing his number.
“Are you… do you need… what can I do?” He managed, his words as carefully constructed as Alex could manage.
“Don’t look at the mess the kids left the kitchen, for one.” Loni laughed, surprised that the tone wasn’t the hollow mask it had held for far too long.
His lashes fluttered closed, golden curves against his handsome face. “I’ll keep my eyes closed,” he promised— though his tone was edging on breathless, it remained as earnest as ever. “What else?”
She looked around, wincing at all the faults staring out at her. Her body was wrung out, from the stress, from the tears, from hours on the cold tile floor wrapped up in her own loss. What a piece of fluff he must think me, Loni inwardly sighed. “I feel pretty pathetic, collapsing here on the kitchen floor. Could you help me up?”
She shivered at the press of his hands as he blindly reached for her waist, leveraging himself to raise them both to their feet. His lips held a secret smile, familiar but the meaning lost to her, suddenly too close to her own for comfort. She managed a shaking step back, letting his hands slide from their hold.
“What else?”
Her stomach answered for her, loudly protesting the hours without nourishment against the stress of telling everyone the shameful truth. “Eat with me?”
“You know I can’t cook anything with my eyes closed.”
“I can cook just fine,” Loni protested, although years into her relationship the scorched meals far outweighed the surprising successes. “Alright fine, you can open your eyes. Just… know that it all happened a bit suddenly, and I didn’t have much time to clean-“
His eyes fluttered open, and Loni was struck by how they were the only source of warmth in the chilled kitchen, brilliant with some emotion that caught at her breath. “You don’t have to apologize, Loni,” his smile deepened, faint dimples pulling at the chiseled features so comfortingly familiar to her. “It has clearly been a day, and you didn’t have anyone to help you.”
She looked away, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “Deon and Tasha took the kids-“
“I was wondering where the littlest MacKays had gone. It isn’t like them to wait this long to pounce on their dear old Uncle Alex.”
Something weighed on his voice, a texture of feeling so unlike the Alex she had known all these years. She looked back at him, just in time to see a flickering of emotions on his face before he turned around himself. His hands rose to his hips as he surveyed the mess of the kitchen, the moment, whatever it had threatened to be, passing on in a pinched heartbeat.
“I’m sorry for the mess-“
“Five kids and no one to help? Loni it is a miracle this place looks as good as it does. Don’t apologizes, okay?” He started for the sink, rolling up his sleeves to bare his corded arms. “I grew up with a lot of siblings myself, I know how it can get.”
“You don’t have to-”
“No, I don’t,” Alex tilted his face just far enough that she should see his wide grin, the flash of his bright teeth against the dim light from the street beyond the tiny kitchen window. “But I’m going to anyway. Can you get the lights?”
“I’m not an invalid,” Loni huffed, walking slowly on stiffened muscles to the ketchup encrusted switch. Chester’s work again, she thought tiredly, rubbing at the mark absentmindedly. It was still difficult to think her youngest boy was tall enough to reach the switch. That she was old enough to have two children in grade school. That a third was about to join them in the fall.
Alex was oblivious to her thoughts— he was humming, some mindless tune she vaguely recognized from their youth. Standing in the shambles of a relationship that had been doomed never to be a marriage in the first place, it felt like a lifetime ago, when her skin had been new and the fight something that hadn’t yet taken its toil. When romance flared, struck with the same ease as a matchstick coming to life.
Loni edged herself closer to Alex, leaning her arms against the tall counter that separated them. Her head came to rest atop her arms, considering the man washing dishes with considerably too much pep to his movements for the lateness of the hour. There was an air of satisfaction to his movements that seemed normal enough for Alex, but out of tune with the drama he had walked into.
“What do you want to eat?” He asked, tilting his eyes back towards her as he interrupted her thoughts. “I don’t have a huge arsenal, but I’m sure I can whip up something good.”
“Think you could manage a grilled cheese sandwich?”
He grinned, the lines of his back keenly outlined against his shirt as he turned back to the sink. “You know grilled cheese is my speciality.”
“You got Kona obsessed.”
“The way to a woman’s heart is through good food,” Alex beamed, carelessly waving a plate dry as he nudged the faucet off. How he had tackled the sink full of dishes so fast, Loni could only wonder, her heart wanting with envy. Dishes were her least favorite thing in the world, and that included killing blows to crying, terribly cute daemons. “How is Emmy? Six months last week, right?”
“She’s the quietest of the bunch, so it is hard to tell. I can’t tell if she’s lazy or just slow to develop— the others were scooting around, but she just lays there, happily gurgling at nothing there. She’s a weird one.”
In her recital of her youngest’s development, Alex had taken to rooting around in the fridge, his voice muffled behind the door covered in layers of childish paintings and awards from school. “She’ll develop on her own schedule, I’m sure. It must be nice to have one stationary child.”
“It has its benefits.” Loni closed her eyes, sighing wistfully. Not that she’d be enjoying any of them any time soon. She was surprised by Alex dropping the block of cheddar onto the counter with considerably more force than was strictly necessary. She frowned, considering the hard lines of his tense arms, the stiffness of his shoulders. If she didn’t know Alex better, she could have sworn he was itching to punch something. But that was beyond silly— he was probably just tired. It had been a long drive down to Sunset City, and he’d had to deal with her decidedly not at her best. “You need any help?”
“I think I can manage a sandwich on my own,” Alex cast a winsome smile her way, which belied the way his shoulders were creeping up. Whatever it was that was bothering Alex, she knew from experience it wasn’t something he was ready to talk about, something he was guarding deep inside away from prying eyes.
Like Emmy, Alex needed to take his own time to go about things— but she was always willing to wait until he was ready to reveal what was troubling him.
Loni rubbed at her eyes, fighting against the pull exhaustion was beginning to bang at her gates. “Sorry to wake you up like that, Alex; it just hit all at once…”
Alex’s smile did not slip, not even a bit, but his eyes were burning again; she shifted uncomfortably against the counter, and not just because her legs were in agony from their hours long slump against the floor. “I’m always here, Loni.”
She huffed, the heat of her breath steadying her. Loni wasn’t about to let him wave aside the immeasurable kindness he had provided for her that night. “I just wanted to thank you for coming to my rescue, Alex. I don’t want you to feel like you have to-”
“That’s what Knights do, Loni— we rescue the maidens in distress.”
Loni made the same rude noise Deon had made earlier. “I haven’t been a maiden in years, and I’ve been a dragon for longer. Might not call out the totem any more, but the spirit is still there.”
She raised her face, surprised at the serious look that had settled in his eyes. Alex’s hands were crossed against his chest, the thin fabric of his shirt stretching almost painfully against the strength those arms carried, even in his semi retirement from hunting. And he was watching her with an unreadable expression, which was curious because Loni thought she was an expert on Alex and his easy face but this night was teaching her she still had a few lessons to master. “I know. I just didn’t know if you remembered.”
They shared a grin, broken only by her yawn. “I don’t know if I’m going to stay awake long enough to eat that sandwich,” Loni admitted.
Alex was already moving around the island, gently pressing his hand against her elbow. “It will hold until morning, lets get you upstairs and some sleep inside you.”
She allowed him to guide her up the stairs and down the hallway— it felt odd to have him leading her to a part of the house he’d never ventured into, but he plowed right into her bedroom and made no sign he was aware he had entered sacred territory. With a disappointing air of ease, he pushed the covers of the lonely bed down and patted the mattress.
She sat down, wondering how he had figured which side she slept on, but not quite ready to hear the answer. It was Alex, and he was standing there watching her sit in the bed that less than 24 hours ago had belonged to her and another man, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to look him in the eye.
It was much safer to close her eyes and let gravity pull her down.
She wasn’t surprised to feel the blankets being tucked around her exhausted form. Alex, tucking her in with the same care he gave each of her kids when they were going down for a nap. She tried not to let her lips drag into a scowl, but at the gentle breeze of laughter pressing against her forehead, she knew she had failed.
“It will be a little better in the morning, I promise.” Alex pressed his lips against her forehead, her skin tingling at the brief contact.
“Will you still be here in the morning? I mean, I don’t want to take you away from work.” Loni struggled to open her eyes. He was already at the doorway, but he twisted, looking back at her covered form in the bed. There was just enough light in the bedroom to see that his eyes were as unreadable as they had been earlier.
“It’s the off season, I’m sure the guys will be fine without me for a few days. I’m going to crash in the bottom bunk tonight.” The bottom bunk was solely the possession of Bennet, but Loni knew her eldest son would gladly cede his rights to the man he considered his mentor and one of the coolest hunters around.
“Good,” She hummed her own tune of satisfaction then, burrowing her head into her pillow.
But there were no trailing footsteps; Alex remained at the door. “Loni…”
She managed, with great difficulty, to open a single eye. “What, Alex?”
“I have some time off coming off…” He dawdled, leaning against the entrance to the room she had shared with another man. In that moment, in his hesitation, there was a distance between them that Loni could not understand. His eyes burned, a maelstrom so unlike the calm warmth Alex always radiated. He was not the unyielding earth she had come to depend on in that moment, but a changing, molten core of a volcano rising from the churning seas, growing and shaping into something different before her eyes. Something better, something that took her breath away.
It shocked her as much as it awoke her curiosity,.
“I know the kids were talking about Disneyland the last time I was here, and it might be good to get their minds off the empty house…”
“I think that sounds lovely,” Loni managed to steady herself enough to utter, fascinated by the flickering emotions scattering across his handsome face too quick for her to catch. She’d have to make a list of them in the morning, when she had enough of a brain to properly examine the new Alex. “Sleep tight Alex.”
His smile was the same as ever, all charm and steadiness. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a promise lingering there, and Loni was mystified why the last, lingering look he gave before withdrawing carried the air of utter satisfaction. It was a mystery better set aside for when her brain was working again.
Loni nestled into the pillow once more and drifted off into a warm oblivion.
Fandom: Kingdom
Cast: Loni, Alex, and a cameo by Deon
Prompt: 31 days “the past takes its meaning from whatever we do right now”
Suggested song: “Stole You Away” by Benjamin Francis Leftwich [vid here]
“If he skips out on child support, you’ll be the first I’ll tell,” Loni pressed her chapped lips against Kona’s soft forehead, watching as her sleeping toddler frowned, flailing arms rooting for the warmth of Eli in the bed they shared. The two were the closest in age at the Hunter Creche, and with the MacKay house in turmoil, there was no other sanctuary she’d consider for her sunflower child.
Her words were a lie, but one Deon was unlikely to discover. Even now he stood in the shadows of his son’s room, trapped between malevolence and concern and a smugness that screamed he was right all along. For once the man held his tongue, perhaps aware Loni was suspiciously far too at ease with the separation, that an argument over their sleeping children was hardly beneficial to the awkward situation, that if she stopped to breathe the feeling would catch up to her and strike like a thundering train.
“I can watch over them both for as long as you need,” Deon shrugged, shifting through countless options before settling on human decency. She thanked him for his restraint, through she would have welcomed the fire of righteousness— it might replace the hollow her heart had sunken into these past few years. “Mara’s out of town hunting, but I can handle the kids. Anela’s a decent babysitter, with all the practice she gets with your spawn.”
In spite of the gravity of the situation, her lips quirked in a shadow of her usual smile. “Maybe you and Mara can catch up to me now.”
Deon let out a rude sound. “The world wouldn’t know what to do with that many Barros kids.”
Loni let her eyes fall to the sleeping babies below, her smile softening around the edges. “You still need to equal the numbers. You and Eli are quite outnumbered.”
“Mara would kill me for suggesting we make a baseball team like yours.” Deon repeated the rude sound, his hands ceasing their clenching to awkwardly wrap around her shoulder. It wasn’t an embrace and it was twenty kinds of awkward, but it was a comfort to know Deon had at least tried. “If you need to talk…”
“Thank you,” Loni cut him off before he could embarrass himself with a surfeit of feelings, wincing as her body protested rising to her feet. It had been a long, exhausting day and the night was threatening to continue on forever. It was time to return to the house that had survived a relationship she had hoped would last forever. “I can’t remember the last day I had to myself.”
“Go enjoy an empty house,” Deon laughed, leading her from the room. “I don’t remember what that is either, you’ll have to tell me all about it when you pick up the kids.”
Empty. The word loomed before her, and for a breath she twisted back to see Kona, her hands itching to take at least one of the children home, to push off the inevitable silence another day. But the toddler was already comfortably asleep, her open palm wedged against Eli’s face, and she had wasted years already. It was time to move on.
“Call me if…” Loni sighed, turning her back on the peaceful scene. “Well, if it gets too much, or if anything-”
“Go home Loni.” Deon placed both hands on her shoulders, his hold firm and steady, and pushed her outside the house. “I’ll see you tomorrow night and not a moment sooner.”
It would be nice to have Deon continue to push her along, but she needed to steady the becalmed ship her life had become herself. And as a hunter with powers over wind, there really wasn’t an excuse for her to be lingering in the dead sky, directionless.
“See you,” she breathed out, walking back to the minivan that had never been this silent, this hollow before.
Finally, she thought, something matches me.
* * *
The phone calls began after she had steadied herself with irish coffee, letting the liquor ignite her body and the badly needed caffeine boost her sagging blood. Her fingers still shook as she died Val’s home number— it wasn’t late so much as frightfully early in New York, and she wasn’t surprised when the line directed to voice mail.
It was a weekend, and that meant he was with company she didn’t want to interrupt with a useless call to his cell. There wasn't anything he could do over the phone, anyway.
“I left him,” She said simply into the receiver, wrapping the coil of her old fashioned phone around her worn finger. “I just thought you would want to know. Everything is fine, the children are at Tasha’s and Deon’s.”
She took a deep breath, the air stretching across the chasm between Sunset City and New York, frozen and aching for her best friend. “I’m okay. Should have done it years ago. I just woke up and knew I couldn’t go on another day of lying to myself that this was love and not a bad habit I should have kicked ages ago.”
“He said he’d been trying to work up the words for years himself,” Loni continued, wondering at the state of her nails and when the last time she had painted their dull, misshapen lengths. Ages, she imagined, not since the last time Val had dragged her out for a spa day, somewhere between Kona and Emalani.
“Is it bad that I’m glad we lacked the courage? Because then I wouldn’t have had Emmy. And it might have been him doing the leaving, and I might have imagined myself hurt instead of exhausted and worn.”
“I’m blathering on,” Loni sighed once more, a blistering heat squeezing in her throat, trying to escape. But she wasn’t going to cry, especially not on the line with Val’s answering machine to record every hurt sound. Leilani Joan MacKay was made of sterner stuff than that, and it was about time she reminded everyone who the dragon really was.
“I just thought you should know. I’m fine, really, don’t hop on a plane or anything dramatic— I know you are already booking tickets, so stop, please. I’m going to enjoy the next 24 hours of having no one in the house, but I promise I’ll call you tomorrow and I swear we can discuss creative maiming then.”
“I miss when things were easier, Val,” She breathed out one last time, around the choking heat and shuddering of tears threatening in spite of her best efforts to hold back the tide. “But maybe things were never really that easy, were they? Anyway, I’ll call you tomorrow-- and really, don't you dare buy that plane ticket or I'll never speak to you again I swear. Love you.”
She pressed the end button on the receiver before she could blather on again, before her voice could break, before the shudders became too forceful for her to contain. It had been ages since she had felt anything this overwhelming— not since Emmy’s birth, when Alex had drifted to her side and helped her shaking hands steady on their precious burden, the hardest labor she’d managed and all without the help of the father…
Loni slid down the tiled wall of the kitchen, leaning her too hot forehead on her raised knees. The silence of the house was overwhelming, pressing ominously against her. There were no little ones to distract her, no hunter crisis to mask what she should have reached for ages ago. She was alone with the failure to keep her family together… with the failure to really care she had pushed the father of her children away.
She was free now, maybe her wings would remember what it felt like to fly.
Taking one last boosting breath, her hands still trembled as she dialed the familiar number. It was late, but she knew he’d answer.
“Loni?” Alex’s voice was muffled, broken by a yawn and the beginnings of worry. “Are the kids okay?”
“Fine.” She managed, forcing her shudders to stop, for her voice to remain level. Her voice was cold, devoid of any energy— it was everything she could do to keep from crying out at the sound of his voice. “They are fine.”
“What’s going on, Loni?” His voice was already alert, shrugging off the sleepiness. “Are… are you okay?”
It was impossible to put on artifice with him, not even over the line. Especially when it was just his voice and her own, reaching out across the wires. Her face collapsed into the misery she’d pushed aside the past years, past the lies she told herself to keep going on as if nothing was wrong. “No. Everything has gone wrong Alex…”
* * *
She was still crying when his car pulled up, hours later— it was still idling when he burst through the kitchen entrance, his face frantic as he searched for her.
“I’m down here,” She managed with only one hiccup, feeling all of 15 against the worry carved across his muscular frame.
Which was wrapping itself around her, his arms pressing her trembling body tightly against his warmth. “It’s going to be okay Loni,” His voice was the same comfort her children had received, kisses against their scrapped knees and bruised egos and his heartbeat sounding steadily against his chest, the same stable rock he had always been. “I’m here now, ssshhhh.”
It would be easy to stay there, let his arms do the grieving for her, while she just hung on and let the tears wring themselves out of her. Alex was strong enough to carry the grief her lack of love had wrought. But she couldn’t, not after everything that had happened, everything that lingered beneath the surface.
“I left him.” Loni managed around the sobs, the words a boon to her struggle for control over her emotions.
She couldn’t miss the tension that stretched across his body, her face pressed as it was against his chest. But it was as much a mystery as why she had counted on him to be there, why his heart was racing faster than her own, why they were clinging to each other in the kitchen she really should have cleaned before dialing his number.
“Are you… do you need… what can I do?” He managed, his words as carefully constructed as Alex could manage.
“Don’t look at the mess the kids left the kitchen, for one.” Loni laughed, surprised that the tone wasn’t the hollow mask it had held for far too long.
His lashes fluttered closed, golden curves against his handsome face. “I’ll keep my eyes closed,” he promised— though his tone was edging on breathless, it remained as earnest as ever. “What else?”
She looked around, wincing at all the faults staring out at her. Her body was wrung out, from the stress, from the tears, from hours on the cold tile floor wrapped up in her own loss. What a piece of fluff he must think me, Loni inwardly sighed. “I feel pretty pathetic, collapsing here on the kitchen floor. Could you help me up?”
She shivered at the press of his hands as he blindly reached for her waist, leveraging himself to raise them both to their feet. His lips held a secret smile, familiar but the meaning lost to her, suddenly too close to her own for comfort. She managed a shaking step back, letting his hands slide from their hold.
“What else?”
Her stomach answered for her, loudly protesting the hours without nourishment against the stress of telling everyone the shameful truth. “Eat with me?”
“You know I can’t cook anything with my eyes closed.”
“I can cook just fine,” Loni protested, although years into her relationship the scorched meals far outweighed the surprising successes. “Alright fine, you can open your eyes. Just… know that it all happened a bit suddenly, and I didn’t have much time to clean-“
His eyes fluttered open, and Loni was struck by how they were the only source of warmth in the chilled kitchen, brilliant with some emotion that caught at her breath. “You don’t have to apologize, Loni,” his smile deepened, faint dimples pulling at the chiseled features so comfortingly familiar to her. “It has clearly been a day, and you didn’t have anyone to help you.”
She looked away, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “Deon and Tasha took the kids-“
“I was wondering where the littlest MacKays had gone. It isn’t like them to wait this long to pounce on their dear old Uncle Alex.”
Something weighed on his voice, a texture of feeling so unlike the Alex she had known all these years. She looked back at him, just in time to see a flickering of emotions on his face before he turned around himself. His hands rose to his hips as he surveyed the mess of the kitchen, the moment, whatever it had threatened to be, passing on in a pinched heartbeat.
“I’m sorry for the mess-“
“Five kids and no one to help? Loni it is a miracle this place looks as good as it does. Don’t apologizes, okay?” He started for the sink, rolling up his sleeves to bare his corded arms. “I grew up with a lot of siblings myself, I know how it can get.”
“You don’t have to-”
“No, I don’t,” Alex tilted his face just far enough that she should see his wide grin, the flash of his bright teeth against the dim light from the street beyond the tiny kitchen window. “But I’m going to anyway. Can you get the lights?”
“I’m not an invalid,” Loni huffed, walking slowly on stiffened muscles to the ketchup encrusted switch. Chester’s work again, she thought tiredly, rubbing at the mark absentmindedly. It was still difficult to think her youngest boy was tall enough to reach the switch. That she was old enough to have two children in grade school. That a third was about to join them in the fall.
Alex was oblivious to her thoughts— he was humming, some mindless tune she vaguely recognized from their youth. Standing in the shambles of a relationship that had been doomed never to be a marriage in the first place, it felt like a lifetime ago, when her skin had been new and the fight something that hadn’t yet taken its toil. When romance flared, struck with the same ease as a matchstick coming to life.
Loni edged herself closer to Alex, leaning her arms against the tall counter that separated them. Her head came to rest atop her arms, considering the man washing dishes with considerably too much pep to his movements for the lateness of the hour. There was an air of satisfaction to his movements that seemed normal enough for Alex, but out of tune with the drama he had walked into.
“What do you want to eat?” He asked, tilting his eyes back towards her as he interrupted her thoughts. “I don’t have a huge arsenal, but I’m sure I can whip up something good.”
“Think you could manage a grilled cheese sandwich?”
He grinned, the lines of his back keenly outlined against his shirt as he turned back to the sink. “You know grilled cheese is my speciality.”
“You got Kona obsessed.”
“The way to a woman’s heart is through good food,” Alex beamed, carelessly waving a plate dry as he nudged the faucet off. How he had tackled the sink full of dishes so fast, Loni could only wonder, her heart wanting with envy. Dishes were her least favorite thing in the world, and that included killing blows to crying, terribly cute daemons. “How is Emmy? Six months last week, right?”
“She’s the quietest of the bunch, so it is hard to tell. I can’t tell if she’s lazy or just slow to develop— the others were scooting around, but she just lays there, happily gurgling at nothing there. She’s a weird one.”
In her recital of her youngest’s development, Alex had taken to rooting around in the fridge, his voice muffled behind the door covered in layers of childish paintings and awards from school. “She’ll develop on her own schedule, I’m sure. It must be nice to have one stationary child.”
“It has its benefits.” Loni closed her eyes, sighing wistfully. Not that she’d be enjoying any of them any time soon. She was surprised by Alex dropping the block of cheddar onto the counter with considerably more force than was strictly necessary. She frowned, considering the hard lines of his tense arms, the stiffness of his shoulders. If she didn’t know Alex better, she could have sworn he was itching to punch something. But that was beyond silly— he was probably just tired. It had been a long drive down to Sunset City, and he’d had to deal with her decidedly not at her best. “You need any help?”
“I think I can manage a sandwich on my own,” Alex cast a winsome smile her way, which belied the way his shoulders were creeping up. Whatever it was that was bothering Alex, she knew from experience it wasn’t something he was ready to talk about, something he was guarding deep inside away from prying eyes.
Like Emmy, Alex needed to take his own time to go about things— but she was always willing to wait until he was ready to reveal what was troubling him.
Loni rubbed at her eyes, fighting against the pull exhaustion was beginning to bang at her gates. “Sorry to wake you up like that, Alex; it just hit all at once…”
Alex’s smile did not slip, not even a bit, but his eyes were burning again; she shifted uncomfortably against the counter, and not just because her legs were in agony from their hours long slump against the floor. “I’m always here, Loni.”
She huffed, the heat of her breath steadying her. Loni wasn’t about to let him wave aside the immeasurable kindness he had provided for her that night. “I just wanted to thank you for coming to my rescue, Alex. I don’t want you to feel like you have to-”
“That’s what Knights do, Loni— we rescue the maidens in distress.”
Loni made the same rude noise Deon had made earlier. “I haven’t been a maiden in years, and I’ve been a dragon for longer. Might not call out the totem any more, but the spirit is still there.”
She raised her face, surprised at the serious look that had settled in his eyes. Alex’s hands were crossed against his chest, the thin fabric of his shirt stretching almost painfully against the strength those arms carried, even in his semi retirement from hunting. And he was watching her with an unreadable expression, which was curious because Loni thought she was an expert on Alex and his easy face but this night was teaching her she still had a few lessons to master. “I know. I just didn’t know if you remembered.”
They shared a grin, broken only by her yawn. “I don’t know if I’m going to stay awake long enough to eat that sandwich,” Loni admitted.
Alex was already moving around the island, gently pressing his hand against her elbow. “It will hold until morning, lets get you upstairs and some sleep inside you.”
She allowed him to guide her up the stairs and down the hallway— it felt odd to have him leading her to a part of the house he’d never ventured into, but he plowed right into her bedroom and made no sign he was aware he had entered sacred territory. With a disappointing air of ease, he pushed the covers of the lonely bed down and patted the mattress.
She sat down, wondering how he had figured which side she slept on, but not quite ready to hear the answer. It was Alex, and he was standing there watching her sit in the bed that less than 24 hours ago had belonged to her and another man, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to look him in the eye.
It was much safer to close her eyes and let gravity pull her down.
She wasn’t surprised to feel the blankets being tucked around her exhausted form. Alex, tucking her in with the same care he gave each of her kids when they were going down for a nap. She tried not to let her lips drag into a scowl, but at the gentle breeze of laughter pressing against her forehead, she knew she had failed.
“It will be a little better in the morning, I promise.” Alex pressed his lips against her forehead, her skin tingling at the brief contact.
“Will you still be here in the morning? I mean, I don’t want to take you away from work.” Loni struggled to open her eyes. He was already at the doorway, but he twisted, looking back at her covered form in the bed. There was just enough light in the bedroom to see that his eyes were as unreadable as they had been earlier.
“It’s the off season, I’m sure the guys will be fine without me for a few days. I’m going to crash in the bottom bunk tonight.” The bottom bunk was solely the possession of Bennet, but Loni knew her eldest son would gladly cede his rights to the man he considered his mentor and one of the coolest hunters around.
“Good,” She hummed her own tune of satisfaction then, burrowing her head into her pillow.
But there were no trailing footsteps; Alex remained at the door. “Loni…”
She managed, with great difficulty, to open a single eye. “What, Alex?”
“I have some time off coming off…” He dawdled, leaning against the entrance to the room she had shared with another man. In that moment, in his hesitation, there was a distance between them that Loni could not understand. His eyes burned, a maelstrom so unlike the calm warmth Alex always radiated. He was not the unyielding earth she had come to depend on in that moment, but a changing, molten core of a volcano rising from the churning seas, growing and shaping into something different before her eyes. Something better, something that took her breath away.
It shocked her as much as it awoke her curiosity,.
“I know the kids were talking about Disneyland the last time I was here, and it might be good to get their minds off the empty house…”
“I think that sounds lovely,” Loni managed to steady herself enough to utter, fascinated by the flickering emotions scattering across his handsome face too quick for her to catch. She’d have to make a list of them in the morning, when she had enough of a brain to properly examine the new Alex. “Sleep tight Alex.”
His smile was the same as ever, all charm and steadiness. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a promise lingering there, and Loni was mystified why the last, lingering look he gave before withdrawing carried the air of utter satisfaction. It was a mystery better set aside for when her brain was working again.
Loni nestled into the pillow once more and drifted off into a warm oblivion.