LaFontaine woke up with the sun stinging their closed eyes. It was an extremely rare occurrence, waking up because of the sunlight, because they lived with Perry, who considered closing the curtains at night equally important to brushing your teeth.
But they remembered why Perry hadn't closed them the night before and couldn't help grinning. Not getting frisky, but actually staying up playing truth or dare. It seemed ridiculous, seeing as they were practically engaged and living together at twenty-five, but they didn't care. It had ended in a particularly heated make-out session, but they had both been too tired to take it any further, and had all but fell asleep while the kisses grew slower and lazier but also homier and safer and sweeter and so great. That was their favourite kinds of kisses – the kind where Perry was too tired to care about everything that normally plagued her mind all day. When all Perry did was press into their embrace and held them and kissed them again and again just because she could and she wanted to.
Their heart still beat faster sometimes, when they thought of how lucky they were.
They started registering their body and the position it was in – their back hurt. They were obviously getting older already. A familiar weight pressed down on their chest, familiar fingers intertwined with theirs, arms wrapped around them and legs tangled. They had one arm firmly wrapped around Perry's back and the other was angled so that their hand was tangled in her hair.
It was perfect. Until they tried to pull their hand out to bat away some of the hairs tickling their nose, and they realised their hand was stuck.
Their second hand was tightly gripped by Perry and cradled between her chest and LaF's lower ribcage. They couldn't move that. So they just angled their face away as best they could and held her tighter. They would take any moment of peace they could. In a few hours it would be time to make their daily calls.
Graduating from Silas while trying to save the place from the Draco-pyromaniac who suddenly decided to make an appearance (but thank god never touching the angler fish) hadn't been easy, and sacrifices had been made. Danny had been kicked out of the Summer Society. Perry and Kirsch had even gone to try to talk to them about it (they didn't like Carmilla or Laura since we came back to Silas, and I had expressed annoyance over their competitively too often to be considered), but to no avail.
Carmilla and Laura broke up. It was beyond hard on both of them, but Carmilla still took our calls. She never talked to Laura, but apparently she could accept Perry's interrogative questions about her wellbeing and my inquires about vampire biology once a week.
We called Laura and Danny every day. Danny was, as it turned out, relieved to be leaving the weekly mortal danger of Silas U, but she missed the kicks and the way of using her body regularly for something really important instead of just working out. I often suggested sneaking her into a zoo or finding some old member of the Alchemy Club, but she declined.
Laura was a mess. If her diet was bad before we left Silas, it was ten times worse now. I wasn't sure she ever ate real food, not even, like, sandwiches. She barely talked. We never saw the Laura we remembered unless she was watching Agent Carter or Doctor Who.
It had shaken all of us, but them the most. I'd say Perry and I got out the most unscathed – at least we still had each other. She would still get in moods sometimes, though. There were days when my fiancé would just sit for a whole day and stare out the window (and let me tell you, Lola Perry wasting an entire day doing nothing is nothing short of a miracle), reminiscing the last month at Silas that we referred to as "the war", because it had been that violent.
It was never long under the surface for me, either. Mostly because I could see the Latin on Perry's stomach every night. I mean, I got used to it, but I would still have nights when it was worse than other nights. When the anger and frustration and helplessness would bubble up just under my skin and make me feel like I was going to explode.
But I had Perry. When she had bad days, I stayed with her and eased her out of it. When I had outbursts of anger and cried all night, she let me cling to her like a raft and told me in soft tones until that it was alright. She was alright.
"It's over, LaFontaine. It's over."
