disclaimer: disclaimed
dedication: to the twiyor 20+ discord server for absolutely enabling me
notes: no this isn't what you think it is lmao
notes2: girls girls girls — FLETCHER.
title: how not to drown
summary: Twilight is always overhearing things that are, frankly, none of his business. Or: adoption legalities are hard, and Loid Forger loves his family too much. — Twilight/Yor.
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It starts, as most things do, because Twilight overhears something he ought never should have overheard.
Sluggish in the veins at the end of the day, Twilight fusses with his collar as he prepares to leave the hospital. The antiseptic white washes him pale and weary with the lateness of the hour; even the days when he has no other missions, the stacks of unfinished mission reports pile up, and it's not so unusual that he spends a day or three catching up.
So he's late, and that's the root of all his problems.
Emergency's waiting room is closest to the trolley station, and every day, here passes Westalis' greatest spy on his way home.
Twilight will never be able to put his finger on why, exactly, he pricks his ears up. Emergency is very rarely quiet, and even more rarely of concern to him. Hospitals are thick with death no matter where he goes; perhaps it's the rain sheeting down the windows that's different. But perhaps it's something else. Emergency is frozen to stillness, for once; quiet without an expected madness.
Perhaps the truth of it is that even when he's not paying attention to his surroundings, Twilight is always paying attention to his surroundings.
There is a woman sitting very still in the emergency waiting room, her arms wrapped around a small boy slumbering in her lap who can't be any older than Anya. A nurse sits at her side, concern painted into the crease of her mouth.
"—what I'm going to do! I'm not—we only just married! We haven't got around to—!"
"Ma'am—" the nurse starts, very gentle. "The law is clear—"
"He's my son, too! And now his father—my husband—!"
Twilight saunters out into the rain. The snap of his umbrella cracks through what the nurse says next, and the rain swamps away the rest. A little bit of someone else's problems, nothing that Twilight can use.
And regardless, Yor and Anya will be waiting for him at home already. The rain is distraction enough. Autumn, already.
Twilight puts the wisp of conversation from his mind, and thinks of it no longer.
—
Of course, Twilight finds himself thinking of it whether he wants to or not.
The woman's misery lingers in the back of his mind. Twilight is careful to allow days to pass, but the more time goes on, the more it niggles at him. A rotten tooth of a thought. He catches himself pressing at it without meaning to, finding frissions of pain shooting up his haw, as though he's been grinding his teeth.
He watches Yor dance Anya around the kitchen in the afternoon sunshine on the weekend, and thinks himself in spirals.
Twilight carries the thought for two whole days 'til he leaves the house on Monday morning, when the world is still sleepy and painted with sunrise, to meet Franky at the newsstand.
"You look like shit, man, whaddup?"
Franky is, in a deeply unfortunate turn of events, the closest thing that Twilight has to a friend. This makes him hateful, as he refuses to allow Twilight the cycle of his own denial.
"Nothing," says Twilight.
"Son, do not lie to me!" Frankly nearly smacks him in the face with a rolled up newspaper, trying to point directly at his nose. Twilight only barely manages to duck out of the way. "Did you skip your coffee, or something? No kiss good morning?"
"It's nothing, Franky."
"Bull-shit!"
Twilight glares at him. Having friends is a terrible blight. This was a horrific life decision on Twilight's part, and he ought to be ashamed of his past self. Friendship. Disgusting.
Franky is entirely unruffled by Twilight's ire. He waves a hand. "Yeah, yeah, I'm a bastard who should watch his back, whatever. Am I wrong, though?"
Emotions flicker at the bottom of Twilight's lungs. Annoyance. Knowing. Curiously, fondness. He shoves them down until they're nothing at all, and he meets Franky's level gaze with no irritable heat.
"Leave it," Twilight says.
Franky considers this for a long moment. "That bad, huh,"
"We're not discussing this," Twilight says, flat as a board. It's none of Franky's business. It's hardly even Twilight's business, not that Twilight is going to acknowledge that. The information will smooth the flow of Operation Strix. Anya's well-being is secondary, to say nothing of Yor. A little slight-of-hand has a piece of paper in Franky's fingers, disappearing into his palm already. Adoption regulations. Inheritance laws. What happens to a child if their remarried parent dies—
Franky's not so uncouth to read it in the open, but Twilight resolves to ignore the inevitable raised eyebrows the next time he has to face the informant.
There's only so much Twilight can take, and Franky's needling is tiring.
"If you happen to come across anything, I'd like to know," Twilight says over his shoulder as he turns from the newsstand, hat tipped down, mind already circling the piles of paperwork awaiting him at the hospital and the missions that Handler no doubt has waiting in the wings. The day is clear and cool, blustery, and this will be the last respite that Twilight has for the next ten hours.
Berlint presses in, city life abuzz, and Franky's laughing reply is nearly lost in the sound.
Unfortunately for everyone, Twilight catches it.
"Good luck with that, sucker!"
Twilight grits his teeth.
Already he knows; it's going to ring in his ears for the rest of the day.
—
Loid comes home, and his daughter attacks his knees.
"Hi Papa! Did you have a good day? Did you do a an-con-fish-ment?"
"Accomplishment, Anya," Loids finds himself smiling at her a little helplessly. He bends to swing Anya up, settles her against his chest. "Were you good for your mother?"
Anya sniffs with the pronounced, practised disdain of a much older woman presented with a ratty sweater. "I'm always good for Mama."
It occurs to Loid that his daughter may be spending too much time with the Blackbell girl, but any further contemplation of that thought is cut off at the sight of his smiling wife, curled up on the couch waiting for them both with a steaming pot of tea. The television buzzes silently in the background.
(A complication:
Loid Forger is in love with his wife. It was something that crept up on him, and the urge to lean in close and tuck her hair behind her ear rises vicious in his throat. To, god forbid, touch his mouth to the sweet flush on the high curve of her cheekbone.
Twilight is ruthless in this. He crushes the urge beneath his metaphorical heel, or he tries; each day it becomes more difficult. Yor overcomes him every time.)
"I went grocery shopping," she says, and Loid has to breathe around the sudden swell of affection. "I found those jammy biscuits you like!"
Christ, one of these days, he really is going to kiss her.
"Do it, Papa! You gotta—" Anya cuts herself off very abruptly, eyes huge.
"Do what, Anya?" Loid asks, eyebrow crooked.
"Um—put me down! You gotta put me down, it's time for Bondman!"
Bondman isn't on for another three hours. Loid glances at the muted television, set to the supper-hour news, and then to Yor, who only shrugs with a puzzled little smile.
"We got her homework done," Yor says. "So… I guess it doesn't hurt?"
Loid is distracted from wanting to kiss her again only by grace of Anya wiggling to get down. She's like a worm until her feet hit the ground, and then she hovers there between them for a moment that Loid can't quite parse.
Their daughter stares very intensely for another ten seconds, whipping her head back and forth like she's expecting something to come of it.
"Anya?" Yor says, quietly concerned. "What is it?"
"Nothing!" Anya half-shouts, and, still wide-eyed and hunted-looking, sprints towards her open bedroom door. She trips and nearly crashes; Bond catches her back of her shirt to keep her upright. Anya manages to pump her fist in victory, gravity defeated once again by virtue of giant, fluffy dog. "Nothing, mama, promise! S'fine! Bondman! Gotta go!"
Her door bangs shut behind her, Bond's barked agreement cut off.
Anya's parents stare at one another, faintly bemused.
Loid thinks that he is never going to understand little girls.
With another glance at his wife, he amends: girls, no matter their age. Impenetrable.
But dinner isn't going to make itself, and even though Yor's cooking might legally be considered a biological weapon in some states, she's an artist with a butcher's knife. They've learned to move around one another in this space, the easy hum of the incandescent light glowing overhead as the sun sinks beyond the window.
There's a bang as Anya's door slams open, and a pink blur goes zooming by.
"Anya, you're going to trip—!"
"It's Uncle Scruffy!" Anya shouts over her shoulder, grinning like she has a secret, so wide it nearly falls off her face. She yanks the door open with a child's idea of a flourish. "Hi Uncle Scruffy! Wanna eat din-din with us?"
Franky stands in the doorframe with his hand raised to knock.
"Uh," he says, looking a little shocked. He'd not got all the way through actually knocking, after all. Anya had got the door open before he could. "Hi, kiddo."
"I already said hi, Uncle Scruffy," Anya tells him, deeply patronising. "Papa's cooking! You gonna come in?"
Franky crooks an eyebrow, raises his gaze. "I dunno, Loid, man, is that okay? I don't want to interrupt."
"It's fine," Loid says, ducked out of the kitchen to come gather his wayward child. They look at one another, father and daughter, for a long, measured moment. But the father relents, shaking his head. "There's more than enough, come in. Anya, you know the rules. No running, you'll fall and get hurt."
"Won't," Anya mutters under her breath very ungratefully, curls her hands into Bond's voluminous fur to keep herself upright. "C'mon Bond, let's go help Mama, Papa's gotta talk to Uncle Scruffy 'bout stuff."
Loid watches his daughter toddle back to the kitchen to keep Yor's death-touch-cooking to spill over into supper. Anya doesn't look over her shoulder; it's like she doesn't need to. Franky closes the door behind him.
"She's gonna be a problem when she's older, huh," Franky says, mild.
"Probably," Loid nods.
They don't talk about it.
And while Yor is distracted by Anya in the kitchen, Twilight unfurls in his own skin.
"How much am I going to hate what you've found out?"
Franky shrugs. "I dunno, how much do you think you're going to hate it?"
Twilight glares at him.
"You keep that up, it's gonna stop scaring me, and then you'll have no power," Franky says, and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. "Did you know that just anyone can go in City Hall and ask for legal records? Just anyone."
"And?"
"Yor's going to have to adopt her. If you wanna keep it legit, anyway. It could get ugly, if you don't."
Twilight had expected as much. He thinks about the woman in the emergency room again, the sorrow that had settled into her shoulders and shaken there.
Loid Forger isn't going to survive the coming wreck, but he doesn't want his family to suffer for it.
"Go entertain Anya," Twilight says. "I'll talk to Yor."
Franky snorts. "Course you will."
Twilight reminds himself that Franky is an asset, and tries to put himself back together.
It's not so hard; there's softness to the mundane evening rituals, and they help.
Softness is not something that Twilight often allows himself. But it's—difficult, to extricate himself from it, here in the kitchen while Yor sets the table for four and he's trapped between two faces of his own making. The air smells of the sizzle of cooking fat and warm bread, the autumn evening threatening winter outside the window.
The spy wants to deal with Franky's intel and have it over with. The man wants to go apply his mouth to the curve of Yor's neck, wants to put the rotten-tooth thought of afterwards away to think about later.
But Twilight's cover is only as good as his forged paperwork, and Franky wouldn't have interrupted the evening meal without reason, raised eyebrows and all. In some ways, Franky is the better spy; he understands the importance of discretion, and when to discard it,
Loid looks at his wife, and Twilight looks at Yor, and they both know what they have to do.
For Operation Strix. For Anya.
For Yor, herself.
"Would you mind speaking privately tonight, Yor? After Franky leaves, when we've put Anya's down."
A beautiful stillness ripples over Yor, smooth as a wave. Her shoulders straighten, chin up like a dancer, kitchenlight glancing off the oilslick of her hair. She cocks her head at him, birdlike and sharp, gaze a cherry-brandy gleam.
"Is everything alright?" she asks, so careful.
Loid shakes his head, a little rueful. He knows how he has to play this. "Everything's fine. It's—something happened at the hospital today that we should discuss. That's all."
Yor's shoulders relax, and she nods. She never hides. Even in worry, she is unreservedly herself.
He always finds himself envying her.
He envies rather a lot of things about Yor. Loid tries not to think about it too much; he learned a long time ago not to drink poison without reason.
Sometimes that poison is his wife's cooking, but most of the time, it's not.
Most of the time, poison is a much more insidious thing.
It's Franky poking fun at the rice stuck to Anya's cheek at the dinner table. It's Yor's smile over the rim of her teacup, her eyes warm. It's Loid himself, too human these days, too unprepared, listening to conversations in the emergency room lobby, and trying to plan for a fallout. It's a bomb shelter, a silenced gun, a pleasantly smoking dawn.
It's making sure that his daughter will have a mother, even when she doesn't have a father.
When everything implodes, at least Anya will be able to stay with Yor.
—
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Kicking Franking out of his house is a trial. Getting Anya into bed without a fight is a trial. Keeping the world from falling apart is a trial.
Talking about it is a trial, too.
But Yor is waiting for him, and Loid doesn't want to disappoint her. She watched him all through dinner, and while she's not peculiarly perceptive the way Anya is, there is a heaviness to Yor's regard that neither Twilight nor Loid knows how to shake.
His wife makes caring look so simple.
Loid dries his hands with a towel, the last dregs of the dishwater draining away. Yor is comfortable in her favourite red sweater, dark hair pulled back from her face, just waiting for him. She gives him the space he needs, her hands tucked neatly together.
Do you want to talk about it?
Of course he does.
"Let's sit down," Loid says, instead.
Yor tilts her head, and follows him without question to the sitting room. She settles on the couch next to him, just a hairsbreadth too far away to touch. It's a good thing, Loid reminds himself, over the hissing of the spy in his head.
"What happened, Loid?" Yor asks, softly. "You've been jumpy all evening."
Loid takes a breath, and carefully sorts out the lie.
"A man died today," he says. A small lie, this, only slightly left of the truth. Somewhere, today, a man did die. "Not one my patients, but a colleagues'. He was married—remarried, rather."
His wife makes a tiny encouraging noise at the back of her throat, urging him on.
"He had a son, and—" Loid breaks off to shake his head. The frustration wrought tight in his stomach feels too real. "Yor, what if something happens to me?"
"Nothing is going to happen to you," Yor says instantly, clad in iron.
"We don't know that," Loid says. Something's going to happen eventually, he doesn't say. Once everything is over. I've died before. I'll die again.
"No, I would never—nothing's going to happen to you, Loid, don't say that."
Loid manages a chuckle that doesn't really sound like a laugh. He reaches across the fractal of space between them to lace their fingers. Yor is faintly pink. Loid thinks he might be faintly pink, too; daring, this precarious thing between them. Dangerous, too.
"Yor," Loid says, looking at her hands because he can't look her in the eyes. "How would you feel about adopting Anya?"
Yor gapes at him.
"I—" she starts. "But that would—"
Make it real, hears Loid.
He inhales around the curdling inside his chest.
"You don't have to decide right now," he murmurs. Gentle, aching, gentle again. There's a fiery wreck in his future, near or far. "But think about it, please. It would mean a lot to me."
"Would Anya want that?" Yor asks. Her voice is so small.
For a horrible, endless moment, Loid can't breathe. This is what happens when he allows himself to forget what he is, even for a blink of time. He has to swallow around an awful lump at the top of his throat.
"I think it's all she wants," he says, when he's regained control of himself. It's only a split-second of hesitation, easily written off as a man apologizing to his dead wife as he soundlessly moves on.
If Loid Forger were real, it wouldn't be a lie.
Quiet between them, a stillness full as a held breath.
"Are you sure?" Yor asks, at last.
"We can ask her in the morning, if you want," Loid murmurs. They'll have to wait that long for the paperwork, anyway. He's going to do this right, do it legally; this one thing, just this one thing, needs to be untouchable. There can be no holes. No loose threads, not for Yor, not for Anya.
Anything less would be unacceptable.
Yor takes a deep breath like she's steeling herself. Loid recognizes a woman finding courage inside of herself, and wants to die of it.
"No," Yor says. "It's okay. I'll do it. I want to."
She tips in towards him, and then her head is resting on his shoulder, and Loid might not ever breathe ever again. She's warm, flushed the way she always is when they touch, skin smelling of sugar-roses and soap.
He's going to die. He allows himself to forget about the noose tied around his neck, anyway.
Loid Forget drops his chin to the top of his wife's head, and closes his eyes.
—
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fin.