Chapter Text
“I wanted you,” he says, blood spilling from his lips along with the words. His mouth feels like an open wound, one that will never close, never stop bleeding. “I think you knew that.”
“I did.”
Simple. Raw. An admission — a condemnation in its own right, worse than a death sentence. Finney has had enough of them.
“Is that why you never said anything?”
“What was there to say that you didn’t know already?”
“Maybe I wanted to hear it.”
“Maybe,” the other boy laughs. “It wouldn't have changed anything.”
“It would have.”
“How come?”
Finney scoots closer, right arm brushing Robin’s left, careful not to scrape against any of the gashes there. “I would have come sooner.”
Robin scoffs. “I wouldn’t have let you.”
“Wouldn’t-have-let-me my ass. I don’t need your permission.”
“And I don’t need you acting stupid just because you can. What the hell, Finn? Who the fuck walks towards their certain death knowing there’s no turning back?”
“Me.”
The boy sighs. “You were supposed to be the smarter one.”
“I still am. Bet you still don’t know what quadratic functions are.”
“Hey! You were the one who was supposed to teach me. That’s on you.”
“Is it really? Even Gwen got it when I explained it to her. Clearly it’s not me that’s the problem here.”
Robin nudges him in the ribs with an elbow. He whispers an apology when Finney hisses in pain, chest nearly caving in. An arm snakes its way around his shoulders, pulling Finney to his side.
They sit. It’s silent. Not a breath, not a heartbeat to be heard.
“...Do you think she’s angry?”
“Oh, yeah. And then some.”
“At us?”
“At the Grabber, mostly,” Robin concedes, “Maybe a little at us, too. For leaving her.”
“I'd have been angry too, I think.”
“You were.”
“Really?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No. It’s all kind of... blurry. Like it’s slipping away.”
“Huh,” Robin hums, gaze distant. “Maybe that’s for the better.”
“You’d have told me if there was something important I was forgetting, right?”
Another hum. “Of course.”
Finney bumps their shoulders together, insistent.
“Ow— What?”
“Robin.”
“Alright, alright,” the boy grumbles. “Well. Do you remember Gwen?”
“Duh. We were just talking about her.”
“Hey, don’t sass me. I’m just doing what you asked me to do!”
“You asked me if I remember my sister. She’s the last person i would ever forget about, Robin.”
“...Including me?”
“Possibly.”
“Damn. That’s some strong competition I've got going on.”
“She’s my family.”
“And I’m not?”
“You are.” Finney turns away. There’s nothing else to look at besides Robin, but he can pretend. “It’s not the same.”
“Way to make a guy feel special, Finn.”
“I’m here with you, aren’t I?”
Robin pauses. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “I guess you are, amor.”
“I still don’t know what that means.”
“Still?”
“You promised you’d tell me.”
“I will. Later.”
“That’s what you said last time,” Finney complains, “Isn’t it later already?” He turns his big, pleading eyes on the other boy, knowing he can never resist their full effect. Knowing he can hear the underlying meaning of his words.
Tell me before it’s too late. Tell me before the last phone call, the first one, and the one before that. I wish you had told me before that.
“...It means ‘love’.”
He doesn’t meet Finney’s eyes. Finney wishes he would. He hopes he won’t.
“All this time?”
“All this time, Finn.”
“You really did know.”
“You weren’t exactly subtle, mi amor.” Robin huffs, the sound self-deprecating in a way Finney’s only rarely heard him ever be. “Then again, neither was I.”
Finney’s chest bleeds. It is not from the wound splitting it open.
“...When—”
“I don’t know.” The other boy closes his eyes. Brushes a hand through his matted hair. Sighs. Like this, Robin doesn’t look his age. He looks tired. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me,” Finney clasps his hands together, bloodied fingers twiddling with each other in a nervous habit. Robin gives him his left arm. Finney latches onto it gratefully. “I want to know how much time I’ve wasted.”
“You wasted nothing.”
“But I did.” Finney thumbs at Robin’s palm. “We could have had more time, Robin. If I had caught on earlier, told you sooner, then we—”
“Then we’d still have the same amount of time together.” Robin’s tone is fierce, determined. It sounds better without the crackle of phone static. “You and I had all the time in the world. It wasn’t our fault some fucker decided to cut it short. Even if we had told each other how we felt, it wouldn’t have stopped that creepy hijo de puta from going after kids and kidnapping us.”
Finney’s hand clenches on instinct at the mention of the monster wearing a man’s skin. Robin doesn’t wince.
“At least we... at least we knew.” He gives Finney’s hand a squeeze, uncaring of the blood staining their palms. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“I knew I loved you,” Finney nods, “I knew you loved me.”
“Then what is there to be missed? We already had each other, in all the ways that mattered.”
Finney should drop it. He knows this is a topic they could circle back to round and round on repeat, but his tongue has been cut loose once the axe had made contact with his chest and the regret filling his lungs spilled out into the open like moths and carcass.
“I didn’t know you wanted me.” He sucks in a much needed breath. Lets it out once he realizes it is not needed at all. “In the way I wanted you.”
Robin laughs. The sound is bitter as much as it is beautiful. Haunting.
“Mi amor, I didn’t die until you took your last breath in that basement. I needed you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in life, Finn.” He presses their foreheads together. It’s cold. Everything about them is cold. “And in death too, I suppose.”
Finney doesn’t cry. He’s shed all his tears. All that’s left is blood, blood, endless, oozing form his heart, his mouth. Robin doesn’t care. He claims both with an unabashed kind of fearlessness that only comes with loving something so fiercely it doesn’t matter how damaged it is. It’s his. Finney will always be his.
“We deserved more time,” Finney sobs, because if he doesn’t, the sorrow is going to fester inside of him forever, into his next life, into the one after that.
“I know, mi amor.” Robin hushes him, “We have it now.”
His body shakes with badly concealed tremors. He doesn’t think Robin’s lying to him, but there’s a quality to his voice that makes it hard to believe what he says. An unfound confidence, maybe, one that belies the true nature of his words, the reality that goes like this:
Neither of them have any way of knowing how long they have before... before some higher power forces them apart, again. Neither of them can do anything about it if– when it happens. Again.
The very thought terifies him more than a self-proclaimed magician from Hell ever could. Even as he was parting with the world, Finney had been comforted by the thought that Robin—brave, compassionate, ineffable Robin—would be awaiting him on the other side with open arms.
And he has. Finney’s not prepared to let go of him just yet. He wasn’t before — he doesn’t think he’ll ever be, not truly. Not when Robin’s always felt like home and Finney had readily run into Death’s clutches to return to the only shelter, the only refuge his soul had ever taken.
He says so to Robin, “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“Then don’t.”
Finney looks at him, eyes glassy, “It’s that easy?”
“It can be,” Robin shrugs. The movement makes the wound on his throat stretch open, leaking blood over both of them. It’s probably not going to scab over, not now, not ever.
Finney traces a finger along the bite mark, eliciting a shiver from the other boy. He’s never been a dog person. He suspects Robin’s own partiality for them had not survived either.
“Alright, then,” Finney allows. He’s tired. He wonders if Robin would get angry at him for falling asleep. “How many times do you think we’ve done this?”
“Hm?”
“This,” he gestures between the two of them. The sight of his hand, bloody and mangled unnerves him. He slips it back between Robin’s. “It just... feels like this isn’t our first time here. Like this.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
Robin thumbs the back of Finney’s hand. He’s grown bored of tracing his life line. It’s much too short. He wishes it were longer.
“Maybe a couple hundred times? Maybe a couple thousand.”
Finney whistles. The sound comes out as a choked-off gurgle. “That’s a lot.”
“It is.” Robin nods.
Relief washes over him. It’s... nice, to have something to look forward to, nicer still to think that they have a future that ended and a past that could begin. That somewhere along the line, whether they find each other or not, they could eventually reunite and meet here once more.
Perhaps, Finney thinks, this is that once more.
“Think it was mostly you who died first or me?” Finney asks. “I think it was you, personally. You have the survival instincts of a squirrel.”
“I personally think I strangled you in more lifetimes than not. You’re insufferable.”
“You didn’t strangle me in this one.”
“How’d you know I wasn’t going to?”
“You love me.”
“A terrible decision, really.”
Finney laughs. Robin turns to him, a soft smile on his lips. He looks like he’s—like he’s in love... with Finney...
He’s always looked that way, Finney realizes.
“I’m glad.”
“What for, cariño?”
“What does that mean?”
“Answer me first, Finn.”
Finney huffs. “I just meant, you know,” he rubs at some of the drying blood flaking off of his forearm, “I’d hate to be here alone. Waiting for you. Or have you waiting for me. The thought that maybe one of us had to go through this on our own in the past...” he furrows his brows. “I don’t like it.”
Robin tilts his head, not unlike a puppy.
“Does that make me a bad person?”
“What? Being glad you’re not the only one who’s dead?” Finney flinches. Robin presses in closer. “No, Finn. You’re not a bad person. Even if we’re dead, at least we’ve got each other. Silver linings and all that, am I right?”
“...It feels right.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Robins huffs out a chuckle. “Who do you think we were? In the past.”
“Dunno. Merchants, maybe.”
“That’s boring. Really? Out of all the things you could have picked, you chose merchants? Finn. I’m disappointed in you. You can do better than this.” Robin clicks his tongue. His disapproval for Finney’s taste warms him.
“What would you choose, then?”
“Something cool, obviously.” He sniffs. Finney wants to hit him. He also wants to kiss him. He settles for a compromise and does the latter, cherishing the dazed look on Robin’s face when he pulls back. “Like, uh,” he stammers, “like a king! Or a knight.”
“A knight?” Finney raises an eyebrow. “Would I have been a knight too?”
“You’d be my damsel in distress, obviously.”
“Does that mean I have to wear a dress?”
“You do have the legs for it.”
Finney swats at him. Robin laughs, loud and brash.
“If you spent less time staring at my legs and more time doing knightly things, neither of us would be here in the first place.”
“Oof, low blow,” Robin clutches at his chest theatrically. “Are you blaming me for our current predicament?”
“No. I’m blaming you for our past selves’ predicament. I could have been running around in my giant castle or living the life of a humble, poor farm-boy had you not been so busy ogling me. You probably let me fall from a tree or something.”
“I’d never.” Robin’s voice tickles the back of Finney’s ear. It’s not hot, but it’s there. “Even if I couldn’t save you, I’d always come for you, Finn.”
He did. He has. He will. Finney knows it, feels it in his bones like he knows that he and Robin have found each other before, will find each other again.
“Cariño.”
Robin chokes. Finney’s not sure on what. It’s not like he needs air to, well, breathe.
He repeats the word.
“You shouldn’t say things you don’t know the meaning of, amor.” Robin coughs into his fist.
“But I do know,” Finney counters. He leans in, pressing his temple against Robin’s cold cheek. Robin’s nose buries itself in his hair. No warmth, only comfort. Only familiarity. One that outlasts life and will outlast death. Or at least, Finney hopes it will, just like he hopes it has.
“Oh? Go on, then. Enlighten me.”
“It means you love me.”
It doesn’t. It does. The word is too short to encompass an entire sentence within itself. And yet, Robin doesn’t correct him. There is nothing to correct.
He nuzzles the top of Finney’s head, takes a deep breath. His last one. His first one.
“It means I love you.”