20. Cara
Cara
Six weeks after the warehouse, Vulture calls Church for eleven in the morning, and doesn't tell Falcon what it's about.
I know, because Falcon tells me over coffee that morning, frowning at his phone like the lack of an agenda is a personal insult. "He hasn't done that in weeks. Usually there's a reason attached."
"Maybe there's a reason attached to not telling you the reason."
"Comforting."
I don't tell him what I know. Zip called me two days ago, quiet, and almost shy about it, and asked if I wanted to be there. I said yes before he'd finished the sentence.
Falcon's healed enough now that the limp's mostly gone, though I catch him pressing a hand to his side some mornings before he remembers I'm watching. He’s had six weeks of physical therapy, six weeks of collections with Rook and perimeter walks with Harrier, six weeks of a man doing exactly what was asked of him without once complaining that it was beneath him, even on the mornings I could see it cost him something just to show up and do it anyway.
He kisses me at the door like it's any other weekday, he tells me he'll see me for lunch and has no idea that half the compound is already gathering.
I get to the clubhouse before he does, I slip in through the back with Maggie and Sarah, who both insisted on coming even though neither of them has any official reason to be here.
Emily's there too, she’s at the transition house now full-time but never far when it matters, standing near the bar in her ridiculous yellow-adjacent everything, her arms crossed like she's guarding the place.
"You look nervous," Sarah tells me.
"I'm not nervous."
"You're doing the thing with your hands." She knows me better than I know myself.
I stop doing the thing with my hands.
Vulture comes out of his office right as Falcon walks through the front door, and I watch the exact moment Falcon clocks the room, half the club standing around instead of scattered through their usual morning business and he understands something's happening that isn't Church.
"What is this?" he says, looking between Vulture and the room.
"Church," Vulture says. "Just not the kind with a table."
He crosses to the desk in the corner, opens the top drawer, and takes out the cut that's been sitting folded inside it for six weeks. I watch Falcon's whole body go still at the sight of it.
"Six weeks ago, I told you that you don't get handed responsibility back in the same hour you lose the right to carry it," Vulture says, loud enough for the room to hear, amd quiet enough that it still feels like it's just the two of them.
"You didn't argue. You didn't ask when. You just showed up, every single day since, and did whatever ugly, unglamorous thing this club needed done, without a title attached to make it feel like less than it was.
That's the only way anybody earns this back.
Not by being sorry. By being useful, quietly, for as long as it takes, with no guarantee there's a patch waiting at the end of it. "
Falcon doesn't say anything. I don't think he can.
"You went to Carrot's mother three weeks ago," Vulture continues, and the room goes very still at the name, the way it still does every time.
"You stood in her living room and told her the truth about her son, all of it, the part that was your fault and the part that wasn't, and you let her be as angry at you as she needed to be, and you didn't run from a single second of it.
That's not something I asked for in exchange for this.
But it's the same thing this patch is supposed to mean, and you already proved you understand it without needing the leather to make you do it. "
He holds the cut out.
"Falcon stays VP," Vulture says to the room this time, not just to him. "Not because six weeks erases what happened. But because he showed every man in this club what it looks like to lose something and rebuild it honestly instead of demanding it back."
Nobody claps. This isn't that kind of room.
But Ice Pick steps forward first and claps him once on the shoulder, hard, and brotherly, and Zip, who's been carrying the acting VP weight for six weeks without complaint, hands over a folder of everything he's been tracking like he's genuinely relieved to be rid of it, and underneath the relief there's real pride in his face too, the kind that doesn't need words.
Falcon takes the cut. His hands aren't quite steady when he puts it on, and I don't think anyone in the room is going to mention that, because I'm not entirely steady myself, watching him.
His eyes find mine across the room before he's even finished settling the leather over his shoulders. I don't smile. Neither does he. It isn't that kind of moment, but something passes between us that doesn't need a smile to mean everything.
"Digger," Vulture says, breaking the weight of it before it gets too heavy for a Wednesday morning. "You're up for full patch review next month. Try not to get shot between now and then."
"No promises," Digger says, and the room finally laughs, and the moment loosens enough for everyone to breathe again.
Falcon crosses the room to me. He doesn't say anything, he just takes my hand, and I let him. We stand there while Harrier starts loudly organizing a celebration lunch nobody asked for and Zip argues with him about whether tacos count as a celebration or a Wednesday.
"You knew," Falcon says quietly, just for me.
"I knew."
"You let me walk in here blind." He’s not mad with me.
"I let you walk in here honest." I squeeze his hand. "You earned every second of not knowing what was coming. That's kind of the point."
He looks down at the patch on his own chest like he's still not sure it's real. "I don't know what to do with this."
"Wear it. Keep doing exactly what you've been doing. That's the whole instruction manual."
His mouth curves, small, real. "You're bossy."
"You used to like that."
"I still do," he says it quietly enough that it's only for me, and something in my chest that's been carefully, deliberately closed for six weeks finally, fully opens.
We don't stay for tacos.
Falcon's quiet on the ride, which isn't unusual for him after something that costs him this much to feel, my arms are around his waist, my cheek against the back of his cut, its new leather smell hits me. I've missed more than I let myself admit.
The compound's near-empty when we get back, most of the club still arguing about Harrier's tacos. Falcon cuts the engine outside his door and neither of us moves right away.
"Six weeks," he says, finally, into the quiet.
"Six weeks." I repeat.
"You waited."
"I wasn't waiting," I say, and he turns to look at me properly.
"I was choosing, every single day. That's different, and I need you to understand why, because I'm going to keep choosing it, on the good days and the ones where you scare the hell out of me, and I don't ever want you to think it was passive. "
Something shifts in his face, dark and certain. "Cara."
"Take me inside."
He doesn't need telling twice.
His room hasn't changed in six weeks, it’s the same bed, and the same dresser, and this time when he shrugs the cut off his shoulders and hangs it over the back of the chair, it's with care. I add my jacket on top of it without thinking, the two of them tangled together the same way they were the last time, except everything about tonight is different, it’s slower, surer, and built on six weeks of him proving exactly what kind of man he actually is instead of the desperate, fear-driven collision we had the night before the raid.
"I keep thinking about how careful I should be with you," he says, low, his hands settling at my waist, his thumbs are tracing slow circles through the fabric of my shirt. "Given everything, and given what you survived before any of this."
I put my hand flat against his chest, right over where the scar sits now, pink and new under his shirt. "I know you do. I love you for it. But I need you to hear me say this plainly, so there's no confusion later."
"Okay."
"I am not made of glass."
His jaw works.
"I survived things that would've broken most people completely," I say, holding his eyes.
"I know exactly what my own limits are, better than you do, better than anyone does, because I've spent years learning them the hard way.
When I need slow, I'll tell you. When I need you to stop, I'll tell you, and you'll stop, and that's not in question.
But tonight isn't one of those nights. Tonight I don't want careful.
I want you. All of you, the way you actually are, not the version you edit down because you're scared of hurting something that already survived worse than you could ever do to me. "
"Cara…"
"Say you understand," I say, quietly.
He looks at me a long moment, something fierce and unguarded moving behind his eyes. "I understand."
"Good." I pull his shirt free from his waistband, slow, and deliberate. "Then stop asking permission with your hands and start using them."
That's the last full sentence either of us manages for a while.
He kisses me like he's making up for six weeks of not being allowed to, one hand sliding into my hair, the other pulling me flush against him, and I feel the difference immediately, there’s no more careful distance, no more testing the water an inch at a time.
My shirt comes off between one kiss and the next, his following it to the floor, and the sight of him bare in the lamplight.
I look at the new scar low on his side next to years of older ones, he does something to my chest that isn't just want, it's pride, fierce and possessive, that this man, scarred and imperfect and finally, fully honest, is choosing to stand in front of me and be seen.
"You're staring," he murmurs against my throat.
"You say that like it's new information."
"Good," he says, and I feel the word land somewhere low and warm.
He backs me toward the bed slowly, his hands mapping every inch of me like he's relearning something he refuses to take for granted twice, and when my knees hit the mattress edge he pauses, his forehead is against mine, and he’s breathing hard already.
"Last chance to tell me to slow down."
"Falcon."
"Yeah."
"If you ask me that again I'm putting you back in the hospital myself."
He laughs, rough and surprised, and the laugh turns into something else the second I pull him down on top of me, all that careful restraint is finally, fully gone.
His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, and he moves lower, unhurried and thorough, learning every response my body gives him like he's cataloguing it for later.
When his hand finally slides between us I arch up into it without a trace of hesitation, because there's nothing in this room tonight except him and want and six weeks of waiting finally, completely over.
"Falcon." His name breaks in half coming out of me.
"I've got you." His voice is wrecked, low, right against my ear. "However you want this. However hard, however long, I've got you."
"Then stop talking," I gasp, and he laughs again, breathless this time, and does exactly what I ask.
There's nothing careful about the hour that follows.
He's thorough and unrelenting and exactly as attentive as he promised to be without once treating me like something fragile. He’s reading every gasp and shift of my body like a man determined to get this right, and when I finally, helplessly come apart under him, the sound that tears out of me isn't fear, isn't memory, isn't anything but pure, unshadowed want, and I feel him groan my name against my skin like it costs him something to hold on a second longer, and then he doesn't have to anymore, and we come apart together, tangled and gasping and completely, finally unguarded with each other for the first time since I came back into his life.
Afterward, wrapped around each other with his heartbeat slowing steady under my ear, I trace the new scar at his side, careful now in a different way, tender instead of anxious.
"Does it still hurt?"
"Not tonight."
I smile against his skin. "That's not an answer."
"It's the only one that means anything right now." His fingers move slow through my hair. "I love you. I know I keep saying it. I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of the way it feels leaving my mouth after five years of not being allowed to."
"Say it as many times as you need."
"I love you," he says again, and I feel it deep in my chest like it's finally, permanently found somewhere to live. "For real this time. No war standing behind it. No patch on the line. Just you, and me, and whatever we build next."
I press a kiss to the scar under my palm, over his heart, and let myself believe, for the first time in longer than I can remember, that whatever comes next, we're finally facing it the same direction.