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Title: Unwoven 3/6 (Completed Fic)
Fandom: X: First Class
Rating: PG
Pairing: Azazel/Riptide
Summary: Azazel sleeps with Raven, and everything falls apart.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own words.
Part 1, Part 2
Chapter 3
“Wait,” the boy raised his head, a grin breaking out on his face. “I know you. You’re papa’s husband.”
What?!
“His what?” Janos squawked.
“He’s got pictures of you.”
The boy vanished. Damnit! Where did he go? Janos felt like an idiot running through the house again, but if that boy was still here, he needed to find him and demand an explanation for such a ridiculous statement. What lies had Azazel been telling this kid? Janos was going to kill him.
“Where are you?” he shouted.
“Papa’s room.”
Janos followed the little voice up the stairs. To the right, there was a bathroom. To the left, a shut door and an open door, the second of which led to a room with a tiny bed decorated with a green dragons coverlet. The first door, then (though Janos wouldn’t put it past Azazel to use dragon-themed sheets in secret with the obsession he had). Let’s hope this one wasn’t locked. He jiggled the doorknob. It was.
“I can’t get in,” Janos said.
In an instant, the boy teleported next to him, took his hand, teleported them inside the room, then snuck off under the bed. Dizziness trickled in Janos’s head. He stared at the hand the boy had held, half-expecting some of the blue dust to cling to his skin. It was just like teleporting with Azazel. His father.
He heard a faint teleporting thump from downstairs. Rapid footsteps stomped about the house as Azazel shouted Janos’s name. The boy emerged from under the bed, a triumphant grin on his face and a slim box in his hands, which he shoved into Janos’s numb ones. Azazel’s footsteps grew louder, but Janos scarcely heard them as he opened the lid and saw his own face grin up at him from an old photograph.
The door opened and Janos jumped back, gaping at Azazel, who breathed out in relief, a grin brightening his face, at the boy who shouted, “Papa!” and teleported onto his back, hugging his neck, and at the photograph he held of him and Azazel modeling a pair of new suits they bought six years ago.
“I feared you’d left,” Azazel said, genuinely happy to see Janos, then he turned to the little being attached to his back. “Juan, what are you doing here?” he asked in Russian. “I told you I was working today.”
Janos’s eyes grew so wide that his eyelids felt like they were receding into his head. No. Azazel didn’t-- He couldn’t—He shouldn’t— Not that name. He did not give that child Janos’s name. His legs gave way and he sank onto the bed, the box of pictures falling on his lap, and squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe some telepath was playing a really bizarre trick on him and none of this was real.
“I had a bad dream,” the boy, Juan (Juan?!), said.
“Why didn’t you go to Carmen?”
“She was sleeping. And I wanted to see you.”
Fingers trembling, Janos dug the pile of photographs out of the box. It was half an inch thick. Had he and Azazel taken so many pictures together? He’d only kept one and was embarrassed to admit it. He meant to burn it with the others, but it was the last one left and Azazel looked so ridiculous sunning himself on the deck of the yacht wearing white shorts, which he only wore because he lost their bet the night before by failing to keep silent during sex. He moaned so loudly that Emma and Shaw heard him in their cabin, to their amusement and Azazel’s chagrin. Janos stood beside him, arms stretched out toward him to showcase him like in one of those game shows while Azazel glared at him, his tail sneaking out to wrap around Janos’s knee. A moment after Emma took the picture, Janos wound up ass down on the deck while Azazel laughed. What followed was not fit to be photographed. Azazel had the same picture halfway down the stack. He must have asked Emma to make another copy. But he hated this picture. He declared the sight of himself in shorts to be an abomination. “I’d rather be naked,” he’d said. Janos certainly wouldn’t have protested that.
“Azazel,” Janos said, cursing how shell-shocked his voice sounded .
“Yes?”
Azazel turned around, his hand on his son’s shoulder. After he’d been so desperate to kidnap Janos and bring him here, he’d ignored his presence for the last few minutes to comfort his son. That was so selfless and heartwarming that Janos loved him more for it. At that thought, his heart did a weird swell and collapse thing in his chest and all blood seemed to leave his head. He gripped the photographs until the paper started to crinkle in his grasp.
“I need to talk to you,” Janos said, almost laughing maniacally at the irony that now it was he who wanted to talk. “Alone. I’m sorry for interrupting you,” he added when he felt the boy’s yellow eyes on him. Raven’s eyes. Yet… not really hers. He looked like a gargoyle perched on Azazel’s back like that. A blue, fuzzy gargoyle with bright, curious eyes and a tail that flicked back and forth in wonder just like his father’s. Was this what Azazel had had been like at that age?
“Yes, of course,” Azazel said. Triumph shone in his smile, and for a moment Janos wondered if Azazel hadn’t staged this all with his son’s help to overwhelm him. But the boy was only three and some months old, if Janos’s count was right. And he looked genuinely dejected when Azazel asked him if he could play in the living room for a bit while the grownups talked, his little face wrinkling in a pout, tail wrapping around his father’s arm, making Janos feel awkward and out of place in this family scene. Azazel really shouldn’t have brought him here. What the hell was the man thinking?
Azazel finally won the day by succumbing to every parent’s final weapon.
“You can have strawberry ice cream from the fridge,” he said.
“Yay!” the boy squealed and ran out of the room, little feet stamping down the stairs.
A daze enveloped Janos’s limbs as he struggled to stand, his legs barely holding him upright, but he wasn’t going to let Azazel tower over him, goddamit, not today.
“I’m sorry about that,” Azazel said, switching to English. “He’s not supposed to be here today. He appears and disappears when he likes. It drives us all crazy. He doesn’t know English, so don’t worry about him overhearing anything.” Azazel tried for levity in his tone, but the shakiness of his smile gave him away.
“Azazel?”
“Yes?”
“Did you call him Juan?”
Azazel looked at his feet. He jammed his hands in his pockets, his tail flicking rapidly.
“I did.”
“Did you—“ Keep calm, Janos, keep calm. “Did you name him after me?”
Azazel hesitated for a moment.
“I couldn’t think of what else to call him.”
“Azazel, maybe? Peter. Kurt. Any other male name?”
“It was the only name I wanted to give him.”
Juan. That was his only option. The Spanish for Janos, the name Janos insisted on calling himself when all the kids laughed in his face for having such a weird sounding name. What did they know about Hungarian ancestors and his father’s short-sighted wish to name him after one of them?
“You named her son after me?”
“He’s my son,” Azazel’s voice hardened. He crossed his arms, his back straightening in a stiff line “Raven doesn’t have anything to do with him, doesn’t even ask about him. That’s why I have a separate house, so they never risk seeing each other.”
“Doesn’t he ask why he doesn’t have a mother?”
Azazel sighed, his jaw tightening as he turned his head to the side. His tail swished faster now.
“I told him she left,” he said. “I didn’t tell him the truth, obviously. It’s hard explaining these things to a three year old. It’s like you have to relearn how to form sentences. They can’t understand half of what you’re saying.”
“Is that why you called me your husband?”
Azazel’s eyes flashed up to meet Janos’s. Janos would hazard to say that he looked frightened.
“What?”
He noticed the pictures in Janos’s hands.
“He gave you the pictures,” he murmured. “How the hell did he—I moved those. He wasn’t supposed to find them again.”
“When he saw me,” Janos said, “he said ‘You’re papa’s husband’. Why the hell would he call me your husband unless you said it?”
Janos wished to go with s stronger word than ‘hell’, but, non-English speaking or not, Janos didn’t feel comfortable cursing with a child in the house, not that his parents had even had such a compunction.
“Well,” Azazel said, “like I said, I can’t figure out how to explain things to this kid. He found those pictures and he wouldn’t stop asking questions about you. Who is he? What kind of friend? Is he why you named me Juan? You know how kids are. I can’t use the word ‘lover’ with a kid.”
“You could have said ‘boyfriend’.”
“Yes, I suppose I could have. I just got started with husbands and wives to use something he knows, but then I had to do some mental gymnastics since, obviously, you’re not a woman, but I explained that not all men end up with women and that sometimes two men get together like a husband and wife do and it was a runaway train by that point. It made sense to him that way. I didn’t plan this out. He just gets everywhere and he found those pictures and, well. They weren’t under the bed before. I moved then, yet he still finds them. And I didn’t want to lie to him, not about you.”
Janos gaped at Azazel, stunned. There wasn’t a hint of subterfuge in Azazel’s face or voice, just earnest hope that Janos wouldn’t reject him, that he realized the magnitude of what he’d thrown away by sleeping with Raven. Janos didn’t buy Azazel’s excuse. He hadn’t just stumbled upon the word ‘husband’. Was that what he considered Janos to be while they were together? Janos’s heart was doing flip flops in his chest, clapping like miniature cymbals on his eardrum.
“Can you take me back home?” Janos asked. “I need to process this.”
“Sure,” Azazel said, probably sensing that it was wiser not to push him right now. “Where do you live?”
Janos snorted.
“I’m surprised you don’t know. You chased me around enough after I left you.”
“I’m sorry about that. But I haven’t in years. I knew I shouldn’t.”
Which is why you dragged me here without any means of escape, Janos thought, but while he would have spat that out ten minutes ago, now the words dried on his tongue.
°°°°°°°°
Two piña coladas, two martinis, five shots of rum, four pints of lager, a glass of brandy, and a sadistic hangover later, Janos called Emma.
“I need you to get into Azazel’s head,” he said, swallowing against the swelling of nausea smothering his throat (yet he never threw up, it was so irritating).
“Like a lie detector or do you want me to show you what’s in there?”
“Both. I really need to know what he’s thinking already. He’s driving me crazy. I think literally crazy. You heard about what happened, right?”
“He was projecting so much when he came back that I couldn’t help seeing it. How are you coping? You get good and drunk last night?”
A burgeoning headache lalalaed behind his eyelids, his blood vessels nearing their bursting point.
“Oh yeah.”
“You want me to go where you are or are you coming here?”
“Is Raven there?”
“Won’t be back till Friday.”
“There might be better, then. And I don’t want to pay the hotel bill. I emptied the mini-bar.” He’d changed his mind about going home and opted for booking a room at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan and creating a massive bar tab. “Tell Azazel he can pick me up in, oh, six hours. I need a nap first. And some sanity.”
“Sanity isn’t worth much to anyone, honey.”
°°°°°°°
Maybe he should have put this off until the next day. Really, he could. But calling in sick due to hangover felt so cowardly. Half of this nausea probably wasn’t the hangover’s fault, either. That responsibility fell squarely on the shoulders of the man who sat across from him in the study. Erik and Angel had been warned off upon pain of mind wipes and acute unpleasantness. Knowing Emma and the frightening skills she had mastered, it could mean anything from a headache to the mind thinking it suffered from a 108° fever along with its debilitating symptoms. Erik protested that he was in charge here and she couldn’t threaten him like that, which only made her smile. Soon Erik was off with the sudden urge to go watch a really sappy movie. Angel knew better. She hugged Janos and wished him good luck, then left to go shopping. Luck. What a funny concept. Downright hysterical. If it applied right now, Lady Luck was laughing at him.
Emma sat beside them, mediator and interpreter at once. She sent Janos comforting mental waves. However, though Janos appreciated the gesture, it didn’t do much to smooth his frazzled nerves. He wondered if she was sending Azazel anything. Maybe really nasty visions about what would happen if he hurt Janos again. It’s good to be friends with a telepath.
Both were waiting for Janos to commence the interrogation. Not much sense calling it anything else. That’s precisely what it was, and it was reflected in the wariness on Azazel’s face. He’d submitted to the idea without complaint, which surprised Janos. Azazel never liked having telepaths fiddling in his head. Yet, it also awakened an annoying niggling wish Jonas shoved down his throat, unwilling to contemplate it. What good had hope ever done him in the end?
“Have you had sex with Raven again?” he asked.
Precise. To the point. Janos wasn’t going to trust Azazel’s earlier answers just because.
“No,” Azazel said.
Emma nodded at Janos. He was telling the truth.
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
Azazel’s eyes fixed on his, wishing to transfer some hidden truth without Emma’s interference.
“Does Raven really have no contact with your son?”
“She doesn’t even ask about him. Says it would be too awkward if she knew anything. He’s not her son. He’s just mine.”
Though I’d like you to raise him with me, Emma sent Janos, plucked straight from Azazel’s mind in a tone so hopeful and forlorn that Jason had to restrain himself from shifting in his chair. A shiver trickled up his spine and down to the pit of his stomach. His breath stilled when he imagined that child calling him “papi”.
“You didn’t refer to me as your husband just because you were struggling with the term, did you?”
“No. It made the most sense to me. We were together for four years. We shared everything.”
You want to see when he told his son about you? Emma asked.
Yes, Janos replied.
Emma took him back inside Azazel’s bedroom. Early evening sunlight streamed through the window onto the photographs, which lied strewn atop the green coverlet, tossed everywhere by a browsing Juan. Azazel was picking them up, regarding each with a wry smile as he stacked them back together, each a joyful memory now turned sour. Juan stood at the other side of the bed, eyes bright with wonder as he asked the next in already a long series of questions.
“But who is he, papa? Why do you have so many pictures of him?”
Azazel shook his head. Once Juan got started with the questions, he never stopped. Azazel paused on a picture of Janos smiling at the camera, not doing anything special or anything, just… smiling from his seat in the control room. This was the only way Janos would smile at him anymore.
“You know how Carmen and Antonio are with each other?” he asked, waiting for Juan to nod. “They’re married. Husband and wife. That’s how Janos and me were. Always together. Taking care of each other. Loving each other.”
“So two dads instead of a dad and a mom?”
“Well, you weren’t around yet, so we weren’t dads, but yeah, kinda like that.”
“Why isn’t he here?”
“Because…”
Azazel paused, stuck on the bluntness of the question. He sucked air deep into his lungs, searching for the right words to hide the catastrophic mistake he’d made without completely lying to the kid.
“I made a mistake,” he continued. “I did something that hurt him very much and he didn’t want to be around me anymore.”
“Did you say you were sorry?”
“I did. Many times, but… he couldn’t forgive me for what I did. It was too horrible.”
“What’d you do?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Juancito. You wouldn’t understand.”
How can you understand that the same mistake that cost me Janos gained me you?
“I wish he’d come back,” Juan said, picking up one of the pictures of Janos and holding it up to his face. “I’d like two dads.”
°°°°°°°°
Janos? Are you alright? Emma mentally projected.
He really needed to quit breaking down like this . Fleeing to the bathroom after saying no more than ‘I need a little more thinking time’, then running water over his head in the sink until he got some up his nose was really not the most dignified of reactions. Well, it could have been worse. He could have jumped in the shower fully clothed and drowned for a bit like he wanted to do, but he didn’t think Erik would appreciate Janos borrowing his clothes due to a fir of hysteria.
I’m fine, Janos projected.
You’re not.
Does he love me?
Adores you. It’s like a romance novel in his head with all the fantasies he has of you two getting back together.
Janos heard the scrape of a chair outside the bathroom door as Emma sat down.
Will he cheat on me again?
He truly believes he won’t. That’s the best anyone can hope for. It doesn’t mean you have to go back to him.
Can you tell me what I want? I don’t know anymore.
Oh, please, Janos. Don’t chicken out on me. You want to stop rolling about from bed to bed because none of them is his.
But what about the kid? I see him and I keep thinking of Raven.
I’m not going to make up your mind for you. You need to do that yourself.
~~~~~
Note: I was hesitant about changing Nightcrawler's name, but it made no sense to me to give him a German name in this AU universe. Oh, well.
Part 4
Fandom: X: First Class
Rating: PG
Pairing: Azazel/Riptide
Summary: Azazel sleeps with Raven, and everything falls apart.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own words.
Part 1, Part 2
Chapter 3
“Wait,” the boy raised his head, a grin breaking out on his face. “I know you. You’re papa’s husband.”
What?!
“His what?” Janos squawked.
“He’s got pictures of you.”
The boy vanished. Damnit! Where did he go? Janos felt like an idiot running through the house again, but if that boy was still here, he needed to find him and demand an explanation for such a ridiculous statement. What lies had Azazel been telling this kid? Janos was going to kill him.
“Where are you?” he shouted.
“Papa’s room.”
Janos followed the little voice up the stairs. To the right, there was a bathroom. To the left, a shut door and an open door, the second of which led to a room with a tiny bed decorated with a green dragons coverlet. The first door, then (though Janos wouldn’t put it past Azazel to use dragon-themed sheets in secret with the obsession he had). Let’s hope this one wasn’t locked. He jiggled the doorknob. It was.
“I can’t get in,” Janos said.
In an instant, the boy teleported next to him, took his hand, teleported them inside the room, then snuck off under the bed. Dizziness trickled in Janos’s head. He stared at the hand the boy had held, half-expecting some of the blue dust to cling to his skin. It was just like teleporting with Azazel. His father.
He heard a faint teleporting thump from downstairs. Rapid footsteps stomped about the house as Azazel shouted Janos’s name. The boy emerged from under the bed, a triumphant grin on his face and a slim box in his hands, which he shoved into Janos’s numb ones. Azazel’s footsteps grew louder, but Janos scarcely heard them as he opened the lid and saw his own face grin up at him from an old photograph.
The door opened and Janos jumped back, gaping at Azazel, who breathed out in relief, a grin brightening his face, at the boy who shouted, “Papa!” and teleported onto his back, hugging his neck, and at the photograph he held of him and Azazel modeling a pair of new suits they bought six years ago.
“I feared you’d left,” Azazel said, genuinely happy to see Janos, then he turned to the little being attached to his back. “Juan, what are you doing here?” he asked in Russian. “I told you I was working today.”
Janos’s eyes grew so wide that his eyelids felt like they were receding into his head. No. Azazel didn’t-- He couldn’t—He shouldn’t— Not that name. He did not give that child Janos’s name. His legs gave way and he sank onto the bed, the box of pictures falling on his lap, and squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe some telepath was playing a really bizarre trick on him and none of this was real.
“I had a bad dream,” the boy, Juan (Juan?!), said.
“Why didn’t you go to Carmen?”
“She was sleeping. And I wanted to see you.”
Fingers trembling, Janos dug the pile of photographs out of the box. It was half an inch thick. Had he and Azazel taken so many pictures together? He’d only kept one and was embarrassed to admit it. He meant to burn it with the others, but it was the last one left and Azazel looked so ridiculous sunning himself on the deck of the yacht wearing white shorts, which he only wore because he lost their bet the night before by failing to keep silent during sex. He moaned so loudly that Emma and Shaw heard him in their cabin, to their amusement and Azazel’s chagrin. Janos stood beside him, arms stretched out toward him to showcase him like in one of those game shows while Azazel glared at him, his tail sneaking out to wrap around Janos’s knee. A moment after Emma took the picture, Janos wound up ass down on the deck while Azazel laughed. What followed was not fit to be photographed. Azazel had the same picture halfway down the stack. He must have asked Emma to make another copy. But he hated this picture. He declared the sight of himself in shorts to be an abomination. “I’d rather be naked,” he’d said. Janos certainly wouldn’t have protested that.
“Azazel,” Janos said, cursing how shell-shocked his voice sounded .
“Yes?”
Azazel turned around, his hand on his son’s shoulder. After he’d been so desperate to kidnap Janos and bring him here, he’d ignored his presence for the last few minutes to comfort his son. That was so selfless and heartwarming that Janos loved him more for it. At that thought, his heart did a weird swell and collapse thing in his chest and all blood seemed to leave his head. He gripped the photographs until the paper started to crinkle in his grasp.
“I need to talk to you,” Janos said, almost laughing maniacally at the irony that now it was he who wanted to talk. “Alone. I’m sorry for interrupting you,” he added when he felt the boy’s yellow eyes on him. Raven’s eyes. Yet… not really hers. He looked like a gargoyle perched on Azazel’s back like that. A blue, fuzzy gargoyle with bright, curious eyes and a tail that flicked back and forth in wonder just like his father’s. Was this what Azazel had had been like at that age?
“Yes, of course,” Azazel said. Triumph shone in his smile, and for a moment Janos wondered if Azazel hadn’t staged this all with his son’s help to overwhelm him. But the boy was only three and some months old, if Janos’s count was right. And he looked genuinely dejected when Azazel asked him if he could play in the living room for a bit while the grownups talked, his little face wrinkling in a pout, tail wrapping around his father’s arm, making Janos feel awkward and out of place in this family scene. Azazel really shouldn’t have brought him here. What the hell was the man thinking?
Azazel finally won the day by succumbing to every parent’s final weapon.
“You can have strawberry ice cream from the fridge,” he said.
“Yay!” the boy squealed and ran out of the room, little feet stamping down the stairs.
A daze enveloped Janos’s limbs as he struggled to stand, his legs barely holding him upright, but he wasn’t going to let Azazel tower over him, goddamit, not today.
“I’m sorry about that,” Azazel said, switching to English. “He’s not supposed to be here today. He appears and disappears when he likes. It drives us all crazy. He doesn’t know English, so don’t worry about him overhearing anything.” Azazel tried for levity in his tone, but the shakiness of his smile gave him away.
“Azazel?”
“Yes?”
“Did you call him Juan?”
Azazel looked at his feet. He jammed his hands in his pockets, his tail flicking rapidly.
“I did.”
“Did you—“ Keep calm, Janos, keep calm. “Did you name him after me?”
Azazel hesitated for a moment.
“I couldn’t think of what else to call him.”
“Azazel, maybe? Peter. Kurt. Any other male name?”
“It was the only name I wanted to give him.”
Juan. That was his only option. The Spanish for Janos, the name Janos insisted on calling himself when all the kids laughed in his face for having such a weird sounding name. What did they know about Hungarian ancestors and his father’s short-sighted wish to name him after one of them?
“You named her son after me?”
“He’s my son,” Azazel’s voice hardened. He crossed his arms, his back straightening in a stiff line “Raven doesn’t have anything to do with him, doesn’t even ask about him. That’s why I have a separate house, so they never risk seeing each other.”
“Doesn’t he ask why he doesn’t have a mother?”
Azazel sighed, his jaw tightening as he turned his head to the side. His tail swished faster now.
“I told him she left,” he said. “I didn’t tell him the truth, obviously. It’s hard explaining these things to a three year old. It’s like you have to relearn how to form sentences. They can’t understand half of what you’re saying.”
“Is that why you called me your husband?”
Azazel’s eyes flashed up to meet Janos’s. Janos would hazard to say that he looked frightened.
“What?”
He noticed the pictures in Janos’s hands.
“He gave you the pictures,” he murmured. “How the hell did he—I moved those. He wasn’t supposed to find them again.”
“When he saw me,” Janos said, “he said ‘You’re papa’s husband’. Why the hell would he call me your husband unless you said it?”
Janos wished to go with s stronger word than ‘hell’, but, non-English speaking or not, Janos didn’t feel comfortable cursing with a child in the house, not that his parents had even had such a compunction.
“Well,” Azazel said, “like I said, I can’t figure out how to explain things to this kid. He found those pictures and he wouldn’t stop asking questions about you. Who is he? What kind of friend? Is he why you named me Juan? You know how kids are. I can’t use the word ‘lover’ with a kid.”
“You could have said ‘boyfriend’.”
“Yes, I suppose I could have. I just got started with husbands and wives to use something he knows, but then I had to do some mental gymnastics since, obviously, you’re not a woman, but I explained that not all men end up with women and that sometimes two men get together like a husband and wife do and it was a runaway train by that point. It made sense to him that way. I didn’t plan this out. He just gets everywhere and he found those pictures and, well. They weren’t under the bed before. I moved then, yet he still finds them. And I didn’t want to lie to him, not about you.”
Janos gaped at Azazel, stunned. There wasn’t a hint of subterfuge in Azazel’s face or voice, just earnest hope that Janos wouldn’t reject him, that he realized the magnitude of what he’d thrown away by sleeping with Raven. Janos didn’t buy Azazel’s excuse. He hadn’t just stumbled upon the word ‘husband’. Was that what he considered Janos to be while they were together? Janos’s heart was doing flip flops in his chest, clapping like miniature cymbals on his eardrum.
“Can you take me back home?” Janos asked. “I need to process this.”
“Sure,” Azazel said, probably sensing that it was wiser not to push him right now. “Where do you live?”
Janos snorted.
“I’m surprised you don’t know. You chased me around enough after I left you.”
“I’m sorry about that. But I haven’t in years. I knew I shouldn’t.”
Which is why you dragged me here without any means of escape, Janos thought, but while he would have spat that out ten minutes ago, now the words dried on his tongue.
°°°°°°°°
Two piña coladas, two martinis, five shots of rum, four pints of lager, a glass of brandy, and a sadistic hangover later, Janos called Emma.
“I need you to get into Azazel’s head,” he said, swallowing against the swelling of nausea smothering his throat (yet he never threw up, it was so irritating).
“Like a lie detector or do you want me to show you what’s in there?”
“Both. I really need to know what he’s thinking already. He’s driving me crazy. I think literally crazy. You heard about what happened, right?”
“He was projecting so much when he came back that I couldn’t help seeing it. How are you coping? You get good and drunk last night?”
A burgeoning headache lalalaed behind his eyelids, his blood vessels nearing their bursting point.
“Oh yeah.”
“You want me to go where you are or are you coming here?”
“Is Raven there?”
“Won’t be back till Friday.”
“There might be better, then. And I don’t want to pay the hotel bill. I emptied the mini-bar.” He’d changed his mind about going home and opted for booking a room at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan and creating a massive bar tab. “Tell Azazel he can pick me up in, oh, six hours. I need a nap first. And some sanity.”
“Sanity isn’t worth much to anyone, honey.”
°°°°°°°
Maybe he should have put this off until the next day. Really, he could. But calling in sick due to hangover felt so cowardly. Half of this nausea probably wasn’t the hangover’s fault, either. That responsibility fell squarely on the shoulders of the man who sat across from him in the study. Erik and Angel had been warned off upon pain of mind wipes and acute unpleasantness. Knowing Emma and the frightening skills she had mastered, it could mean anything from a headache to the mind thinking it suffered from a 108° fever along with its debilitating symptoms. Erik protested that he was in charge here and she couldn’t threaten him like that, which only made her smile. Soon Erik was off with the sudden urge to go watch a really sappy movie. Angel knew better. She hugged Janos and wished him good luck, then left to go shopping. Luck. What a funny concept. Downright hysterical. If it applied right now, Lady Luck was laughing at him.
Emma sat beside them, mediator and interpreter at once. She sent Janos comforting mental waves. However, though Janos appreciated the gesture, it didn’t do much to smooth his frazzled nerves. He wondered if she was sending Azazel anything. Maybe really nasty visions about what would happen if he hurt Janos again. It’s good to be friends with a telepath.
Both were waiting for Janos to commence the interrogation. Not much sense calling it anything else. That’s precisely what it was, and it was reflected in the wariness on Azazel’s face. He’d submitted to the idea without complaint, which surprised Janos. Azazel never liked having telepaths fiddling in his head. Yet, it also awakened an annoying niggling wish Jonas shoved down his throat, unwilling to contemplate it. What good had hope ever done him in the end?
“Have you had sex with Raven again?” he asked.
Precise. To the point. Janos wasn’t going to trust Azazel’s earlier answers just because.
“No,” Azazel said.
Emma nodded at Janos. He was telling the truth.
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
Azazel’s eyes fixed on his, wishing to transfer some hidden truth without Emma’s interference.
“Does Raven really have no contact with your son?”
“She doesn’t even ask about him. Says it would be too awkward if she knew anything. He’s not her son. He’s just mine.”
Though I’d like you to raise him with me, Emma sent Janos, plucked straight from Azazel’s mind in a tone so hopeful and forlorn that Jason had to restrain himself from shifting in his chair. A shiver trickled up his spine and down to the pit of his stomach. His breath stilled when he imagined that child calling him “papi”.
“You didn’t refer to me as your husband just because you were struggling with the term, did you?”
“No. It made the most sense to me. We were together for four years. We shared everything.”
You want to see when he told his son about you? Emma asked.
Yes, Janos replied.
Emma took him back inside Azazel’s bedroom. Early evening sunlight streamed through the window onto the photographs, which lied strewn atop the green coverlet, tossed everywhere by a browsing Juan. Azazel was picking them up, regarding each with a wry smile as he stacked them back together, each a joyful memory now turned sour. Juan stood at the other side of the bed, eyes bright with wonder as he asked the next in already a long series of questions.
“But who is he, papa? Why do you have so many pictures of him?”
Azazel shook his head. Once Juan got started with the questions, he never stopped. Azazel paused on a picture of Janos smiling at the camera, not doing anything special or anything, just… smiling from his seat in the control room. This was the only way Janos would smile at him anymore.
“You know how Carmen and Antonio are with each other?” he asked, waiting for Juan to nod. “They’re married. Husband and wife. That’s how Janos and me were. Always together. Taking care of each other. Loving each other.”
“So two dads instead of a dad and a mom?”
“Well, you weren’t around yet, so we weren’t dads, but yeah, kinda like that.”
“Why isn’t he here?”
“Because…”
Azazel paused, stuck on the bluntness of the question. He sucked air deep into his lungs, searching for the right words to hide the catastrophic mistake he’d made without completely lying to the kid.
“I made a mistake,” he continued. “I did something that hurt him very much and he didn’t want to be around me anymore.”
“Did you say you were sorry?”
“I did. Many times, but… he couldn’t forgive me for what I did. It was too horrible.”
“What’d you do?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Juancito. You wouldn’t understand.”
How can you understand that the same mistake that cost me Janos gained me you?
“I wish he’d come back,” Juan said, picking up one of the pictures of Janos and holding it up to his face. “I’d like two dads.”
°°°°°°°°
Janos? Are you alright? Emma mentally projected.
He really needed to quit breaking down like this . Fleeing to the bathroom after saying no more than ‘I need a little more thinking time’, then running water over his head in the sink until he got some up his nose was really not the most dignified of reactions. Well, it could have been worse. He could have jumped in the shower fully clothed and drowned for a bit like he wanted to do, but he didn’t think Erik would appreciate Janos borrowing his clothes due to a fir of hysteria.
I’m fine, Janos projected.
You’re not.
Does he love me?
Adores you. It’s like a romance novel in his head with all the fantasies he has of you two getting back together.
Janos heard the scrape of a chair outside the bathroom door as Emma sat down.
Will he cheat on me again?
He truly believes he won’t. That’s the best anyone can hope for. It doesn’t mean you have to go back to him.
Can you tell me what I want? I don’t know anymore.
Oh, please, Janos. Don’t chicken out on me. You want to stop rolling about from bed to bed because none of them is his.
But what about the kid? I see him and I keep thinking of Raven.
I’m not going to make up your mind for you. You need to do that yourself.
~~~~~
Note: I was hesitant about changing Nightcrawler's name, but it made no sense to me to give him a German name in this AU universe. Oh, well.
Part 4
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