VELVETEEN PRESENTS TAG vs. Being Alive #4
She started to turn toward the kitchen, and only stopped when he yelped. “Wait! Please. Please, can you wait? It feels like this is the same conversation we’ve been having over and over since I got back. All polite and careful and…and as dead as I was. Please. I don’t want this.”
Vel stiffened. “No? I didn’t mean to force something you don’t want on you.”
“So stop, and talk to me.”
Vel turned back to him. “About what, Tag? About how you’re trapped with me? We’d barely started dating when you died. You shouldn’t be stuck with me just because I went and kissed you back to life.”
“Is that what you think is happening? That I’m here because I feel obligated?
Sweetheart, if I were going to feel obligated to someone, it would be Cara.
She’s the one who supplied the glass coffin, and the apple, and the safe place to wait.
Even if she somehow lost Jackie while I was out of it.
I wouldn’t be here if not for her. All you did was figure out you loved me.
But true love’s kiss doesn’t work if the love isn’t on both sides.
They used to use it as a way to determine whether couples could be happy together.
True love isn’t enough to make up for everything else you need in a relationship.
But it’s a start. It’s not supposed to be an ending.
I thought I was getting a new start with you. ”
“I can’t make you…”
“You’re not making me do anything! I feel more like I’m the one who’s making you put up with me when all you want is to forget that any of this ever happened.”
“I didn’t—I wasn’t—I don’t. I kissed you because I finally figured out that I might love you enough to wake you up, and I missed you, and I wanted you to hold me and tell me everything was going to be okay.
But you’re only the second boyfriend I’ve ever had, and then when you actually woke up, what I’d just done was so big that I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
What if you didn’t want to be here? What if I was derailing your whole life? ”
“If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t have done all that damn paperwork to get relicensed to work in Portland,” said Tag.
“If I didn’t want to be here, I’d be gone.
I still have friends, weird as it is to imagine.
There are people who’d let me use their couches, just like you are.
I can leave any time I want to. This isn’t like what happened after I died, where I was only up and moving around because you were pushing so much power into me that my body forgot how to be dead.
This is me, alive, and here, and loving you enough to stay.
But only if I’m not forcing you to put up with me. If you don’t want me, I’ll go.”
“I want you!” exclaimed Vel, then froze, looking almost mortified.
Tag grinned as he got off the couch, walking over to where she was standing. Moving carefully, he slid his hands over her cheeks and into her hair, winding it around his fingers as he looked into her wide brown eyes, measuring them, reading her expression as well as he could.
“Hey, bunny-girl,” he said. “I missed you.”
“Missed you too, vandal,” she whispered.
He leaned in and kissed her. As he did, the climbing vines he’d drawn all over the room with a black light pen burst into bloom, morning glories peeling themselves out of the walls and extending their delicate tendrils toward the wall.
They smelled faintly of alcohol marker, but they were beautiful, and they were perfect enough to frame the moment.
Vel leaned in as he leaned forward, molding herself against him, and when he lowered his hands to slide his arms around her waist, pulling her close, she didn’t resist. Instead, she pressed harder against him, and he took a step backward, guiding them toward the couch.
“…rude,” she gasped. “I have roommates.”
“They’re out for the night,” he replied. “Yelena said they were going to a hotel with a really nice hot tub and won’t be back until tomorrow.”
“Public space,” she managed.
“You going to tell me two superheroes can’t clean a couch?”
Velveteen squeaked as he moved his lips to her neck, then swept her off her feet.
He staggered a little—they were very similarly sized—but didn’t drop her, only carried her a few steps down the hall toward her room.
The door was already open, a small welcoming committee of dolls and plush toys gathered in the hall as if to invite them inside.
“I love you,” Velveteen whispered against the skin of his collarbone.
“I love you, too,” he said, and stepped into the bedroom, carrying her to the bed piled high with paint and marker flowers.
They both tumbled into the fruit-scented petals, arms locked tight around one another.
“Maybe not forever, but enough right now that you could bring me back, and that’s more than enough for anyone, I think. ”
Velveteen laughed and kissed him, as the flowers dissolved beneath them and they fell to the mattress, arms still tight around each other.
Politely, the teddy bears closed the bedroom door, and while the window remained unlocked, no one tried breaking in.
That was probably for the best.