#thank u everyone for ur kind reactions to my snippet earlier today and for still wanting these fuckers to kiss

[sollucets]

ocean eyes, vi

previous parts

it’s been a long time! this is my canon-two-steps-to-the-left slowish burn samdarlinangeldavid fic featuring my ocs, and here is an update

this time: ivy, sam, aster, and david meet up all together, about one month post-inversion

usual caveat for ocean eyes for named & described listener ocs: ivy (darlin, they/them) & aster (angel, she/they/he)

on ao3 or full 4.8kish chapter under the cut

“Are you feeling up to visitors?” asks David through a yawn.

“Are you?” they counter, because frankly that should be the more important consideration. After all, it’s David who’s grieving, traumatized, fully recovered from his injuries only last week and constantly swamped in administrative work for people who need him.

“I asked first,” he mumbles almost petulantly, then sighs, tone going more serious. “I can’t guarantee them good company, or… anything at all, really, but. I’d like to see them. Both of them. I can make time.”

Despite everything, Aster can feel the corner of their mouth curving into a little smile at hearing David just admit that out loud. “Okay then,” they say, beginning the arduous task of composing a text reply with one hand. “The usual time?”

“Aster,” he says, and they stop still. David so rarely uses their actual name that it feels weird to hear him say it. Like he’s upset. Is he upset? “Answer the question.”

“I— oh,” they say, frowning, and take yet another a moment to think it through. Do they want company?

💜

01/24/22

from: ivy 🐺💜

sent at: 18:44

do u mind if i bring sam on wednesday

 Aster’s been staring down at the text for a solid ten minutes when David comes out of his office, crosses the dark living room, and sits next to them on the couch. The only illumination is the too-bright light of their phone screen; Aster’s been sitting in the same spot since long before it got so late.

Because he’s a literal giant, David sitting so close on their squishy couch has the usual secondary effect of tipping their body into his. As always, as is typical for wolves, he’s a solid line of heat against them. They have no idea how he gets away with claiming they’re the fire elemental in this relationship.

With a little patented David Noise, a bare exhale that’s half sigh and half growl, he shifts around on the couch enough that he can drop his head to their shoulder. His hair brushes soft against their skin where their pajama shirt is stretched out.

“Hi, baby,” they say, soft enough not to bother his ears. If he’s been on those video call meetings again, he’ll have a headache already.

“Hey, angel,” he answers, muffled by the way he’s speaking directly into the fabric of their shirt.

He doesn’t seem inclined to immediately say anything else, and they won’t make him. It’s been a long day for them both, they think, with a certain amount of mental irony.

David’s been hidden away in his home office since he got back from his actual office, dealing with budget suggestions and job reassignments and more. It’s January now, and he’s been helping send out the last of the company’s W-2s, because taxes wait for no massive community-wide disaster and the person whose job that would usually be is on trauma leave.

And for their part, Aster’s had a long, productive day off from work spent waking up at 2 p.m. just to sit on the couch and watch something on Netflix. They genuinely don’t even remember what it was anymore. The TV turned off from inactivity at least half an hour ago.

They’re both tired, is what they’re getting at here.

David just breathes against their shoulder. It’s a little hard to see in the darkened room, but he has to be doing some frankly spine-hurting contortion to be in this position. With the hand not holding the phone, they run their fingers softly through his hair until they’re cupping the back of his head, then push him down onto their lap. It’s just the barest amount of force; he goes easily the moment he feels them moving him.

He’s heavy with his full weight over their legs, like he always is, but it helps. Combination weighted blanket and heater; that’s their mate. They leave their hand in his hair and absentmindedly run little patterns through it, occasionally scratching at his scalp in a way he doesn’t like to admit he likes. (It’s a dog stereotype thing, they think.)

“What are you looking at?” he mumbles after a quiet little eternity.

Instead of answering, they shift the phone down to show him. He makes another David Noise at the sudden screen brightness near his face, but reads it and seems to consider for a moment.

This is the first time they’ve heard from Ivy since — the Games, actually. Three Wednesdays passed in total radio silence; they hadn’t come to any of the two Pack meetings this month, either. Aster knows they’re still in Dahlia only because William apparently let David know. And now, just like the fatal text that kept Aster coming to movie nights in the first place, here they are again. Texting first like they never do, using the casual assumption of someone afraid to ask.

“Are you feeling up to visitors?” asks David through a yawn.

“Are you?” they counter, because frankly that should be the more important consideration. After all, it's David who's grieving, traumatized, fully recovered from his injuries only last week and constantly swamped in administrative work for people who need him.

“I asked first,” he mumbles almost petulantly, then sighs, tone going more serious. “I can’t guarantee them good company, or… anything at all, really, but. I’d like to see them. Both of them. I can make time.”

Despite everything, Aster can feel the corner of their mouth curving into a little smile at hearing David just admit that out loud. “Okay then,” they say, beginning the arduous task of composing a text reply with one hand. “The usual time?”

“Aster,” he says, and they stop still. David so rarely uses their actual name that it feels weird to hear him say it. Like he’s upset. Is he upset? “Answer the question.”

“I— oh,” they say, frowning, and take yet another moment to think it through. Do they want company?

Their immediate, base instinct is no. Anything past both their actual job and their job as David’s partner seems — monumental, right now, too much. They’re so tired.

But it’s Ivy. Ivy, who they’d last seen startling awake in their lap in wolf form then charging away into the crowd. Ivy, who they’d held for hours on the worst day of their life, who they’d called baby, who’d disappeared entirely for weeks after that. No matter how many times they’d tried to logic their way out of it with the plenty of other reasons Ivy might do this, a little corner of their heart had feared. And Aster’s missed them, honestly, just the regular way they’d miss someone they — cared about. Ivy, finally reaching out of their own accord.

There’s Sam, too, soft-spoken and awkward and kind Sam with a wicked side they’ve barely gotten to see, who Aster genuinely likes and had meant to get to know better after the Solstice.

So no, the option doesn’t sound good. But Aster has been here before, in this dark clinging tired nothingness. Everything always seems like too much; they should know better than to believe it by now.

“Yeah,” they say, at length. “I’m up for it.”

“Good,” David grumbles. His tone doesn’t get any less characteristically irritated when he adds, “Your feelings matter too. Don’t just ask me.”

“I love you,” they tell him, since it’s true and they can’t kiss him from this angle. They’re rewarded by a soft, pleased little noise in his throat and, eventually, the tell-tale even breathing of him actually taking a break.

*

to: ivy 🐺💜

sent at 19:20

We’d love to have you both.

*

“You sure I’m invited?” asks Sam for the second time that night.

“We’re already here,” Ivy says, glancing at him across the center console as they turn his truck off. “It’s a little late to back out if you didn’t want to come after all.”

Sam makes a face at them, and they soften, as they always do in the face of him. “Why are you so nervous about this? I asked, and they said they’d love to have us both.” They choose strategically not to mention how relieved they’d been to get that response.

Sam is frowning slightly, one hand tapping against the dashboard. “I’m not nervous,” he says, which is a lie, but they’ll let it pass. “Just, Wednesdays were always your thing, darlin’. We do plenty of things together; you don’t gotta bring me everywhere these days just ‘cause I’m—”

“Just ‘cause you’re what?” Ivy asks, sharper than they mean to, and winces. “Look, you wanted to come, right? You get along with Aster good enough, and you and David—” They stop, unsure how to tactfully phrase “recently had a near-death experience together”. “It’s just Wednesdays. We just eat something and watch a movie, it isn’t gonna be high-stress. You don’t even have to talk if you don’t wanna.”

That’s true enough, at least. Ivy has come unwillingly to Wednesdays enough times that they know neither Aster or David will actually make them speak if they’re not in the mood, awkward as that is (or isn’t. It isn’t, really, not just sitting in their living room while Aster and David exchange companionable insults over their head. But it should be, probably.)

Sam is still looking at them with an expression they hate, so they continue, trying for levity. “Besides, you got dinner, so you’re going to be everyone’s favorite anyway.”

“Oh, sure, all that hard work I put in on our takeout order,” Sam says, but his posture shifts enough that he isn’t sitting straight-backed in his seat anymore, like he had been all the way over, and they’ll count that as a win.

Sam grabs the boxes of food out of the back seat and they both head up David and Aster’s front lawn. January is rainy season in California, and everything looks colorful and bright. David really does love his landscaping thing; he talks about it all the time. If it also looks a little overgrown, well. Who's gonna blame him?

Stopping just before the door, they raise a hand to knock (even though it’s unnecessary; Sam’s truck is loud enough that their presence is surely already noted) and then stop. Glancing sidelong at Sam, they murmur, “And all that aside, I want to bring my mate places. Stop assuming it’s not selfish.”

Sam gives them this look, the one that he’s had every single time they say something like that out loud, awe and gratitude and guilty shock, moonsilver eyes all big and round. It’s very cute, but it makes them feel flayed open to their soul, and so they turn away like a coward and knock three times.

“Aster says ‘come in’,” Sam informs them, the edges of his words all curved in so that they know he’s smiling. He loves lording his better hearing over them. They bump their shoulder into his in reproach before opening the door.

Aster comes into the hallway to greet them after a moment, socked feet padding gently against the wooden floor. They look well, bad. Ivy immediately mentally backspaces — it’s in the sense that they look tired and dressed down, not necessarily that Aster looks bad. Ivy’s honestly not sure that Aster’s capable of looking bad.

Their mass of blonde hair is pulled into a loose bun at the nape of their neck, hairs falling out every which way, and they’re completely without makeup, glasses magnifying their green eyes huge and highlighting the little bags underneath them. Even so, though, tired or not, Aster’s just pretty, all the time, all cheekbones and freckles and piano fingers just barely sticking out of the long sleeves of a sweater.

They have the right to look tired, after all. Frankly, Ivy would be a little surprised if they didn’t. They’re sure they don’t look any better, even if they had made something of an effort before coming today. It’s been a long, bad January for everyone.

“Hiya,” Aster says, smiling in the way that sends little lines feathering up towards their temples. “Good to see you, Sam, welcome in. We can set those over on the table.”

“Hey, Aster,” he says, still audibly smiling. “Thanks for having me.”

“Thanks for paying. Come on, Davey’s in the living room being a shitty little work gremlin even though he said he wouldn’t.”

Ivy hears an indistinct noise of annoyance from the living room and finds the corner of their mouth quirking. It has been — they have missed this. Enough to send that text, despite everything (everything here including their general aversion to texting).

On the way over to the kitchen, Aster turns to Ivy and says, very quietly, so unlike usual, "It's a girl day. I know I don't look--"

Ivy resents it violently, for a moment, that sense of something dark so obviously hanging over every interaction that has clouded January. But it isn’t something they can reasonably be mad about; not here, anyway. They’ve told Sam already, and Aster clearly feels bad as is. “Okay,” they say, cutting Aster off to smile at her. She smiles back, like a reflex, and pushes a little hair out of her eyes.

Sam sets the boxes out on the table, and then they all swing into the living room despite the relative ease of just yelling at David to come in. The living room is appointed in the designated ‘movie theater’ way; Aster still hasn’t given up on that dream, evidently. The windows are covered, and blankets drape over most surfaces. One of those surfaces includes David, who’s sitting on the couch with a laptop that he looks up from when Ivy comes in.

David shows the wear much less obviously than Aster does, but it’s there, in the tightness of his jaw and shoulders and the casualness of his clothing. “Ivy,” he says in greeting, raising a hand. “Sam.”

“Good evening,” says Sam. He actively tips his hat next to them, which is ridiculous since it’s just a baseball cap. You can take the cowboy out of the South, they guess, snickering a little.

The laugh dies when they glance down and find one of Sam’s hands idly fiddling with the seam of his jeans pocket. Frowning, they bump into him on purpose as they walk a little further into the room. He’d been nervous at the Solstice, too, sure, but that’d been a lot larger of a gathering. For all their jokes about being selfish, they hope that he isn’t actually uncomfortable to be here.

Over on the couch, David puts a hand on his laptop like he’s about to close it and then clearly gets distracted, and Aster sends a glare that could strip paint. “David Shaw.”

“Yeah, yeah, I— sorry,” he says, obviously chastised, and shuts it with a decisive snap. “It’s not work, it was just Kieran.”

That sends another pulse through that hanging cloud over them all; if Kieran’s messaging David, it’s probably about Milo, who’s had to go back to the healers now that it’s been nearly a month. Aster looks visibly guilty, and David shakes his head at her, expression gone all soft.

Nevertheless, she goes over and stands in front of his place on the couch, taking the sleeve of his t-shirt in her fingers and worrying at it absentmindedly.

“Good to see you," David starts, his face halfway to frowning like it’s a reflex he hasn’t turned off. “I’m sure Aster said something while you were messaging, but we probably aren’t going to be the best hosts today.”

She hadn't, but Ivy shrugs in what they hope is a commiserating fashion, and Sam smiles much the same. “Don’t worry about it none… David.” His obvious trip over using David’s first name is — well, Ivy thought they were past that by now. Maybe it’s the atmosphere.

By the couch, Aster stays quiet, and the cloud over them all deepens a little. Ivy hadn’t realized — well, they had, but never so acutely — just how much Aster carries the socializing at these.

“Should we, then?” Ivy asks, just to break the silence, and when David and Aster both nod they take Sam by the elbow and start back towards the kitchen. In the hall, they make eye contact with their mate; Sam looks a little sheepish. They’d bet ten dollars he’s resisting the urge to apologize. “It’s not your fault,” they tell him, frowning.

He doesn’t have time to respond before they get back into the kitchen. Aster and David come in hand in hand; it is weird to see David dressed like this, honestly. Even on past Wednesdays at home, he still usually wears at least jeans. Sweatpants and a t-shirt feels like Ivy’s seeing something not meant for them.

Sam starts opening the boxes as Aster goes to get plates, and Ivy —

Well, they initiated this, and Aster shouldn’t have to carry everything all the time. They pull out their phone and go to where they know Aster keeps her speaker, putting a playlist on without asking. They keep it quiet enough that it won’t disrupt conversation. It’s a compromise of a choice — Ivy has wildly different music taste from her, although David’s interests trend similar (real guitars or fuck off) and thus a middle ground is acoustic stuff that’s still kind of upbeat. They’ve spent time thinking about this before, though they’ll never admit it.

Nobody talks much as they eat, although David quietly compliments their song choice. Ivy is never going to admit to just how much that little pride curls in their chest; Sam pokes their cheek after, though, so they’d probably been smiling. Bastard.

As she’s clearing the dishes, Aster (and David, after a moment) thanks Sam for his treat, and then it’s cursedly quiet again. Even when Aster’s been in quieter moods before, David usually needles lovingly at her enough to keep things moving entirely without Ivy’s involvement. And it’s okay to be quiet, but this feels so wrong. It isn’t like they want to be quiet, it’s like they’re all just unsure how to talk to people, like everything is so different it’s impossible to be like it was before.

And it is, but—

Ivy sighs, loud and explosive, and Aster turns to look at them with a startled expression from the sink. “Look,” they say, probably again sharper than they should. They have had a lot of practice recently in gentling the edges, in wanting to gentle the edges, but they’re still no good at comfort, at tact. Ivy would never be their own first choice for that. But, well. Someone should say it, right? “We all were in the same boat, you know. Me and Aster, and Sam and David, and all of us together this month. I know it’s a little my fault, the way I texted, but… Pretending we’re all just like normal — it’s not gonna work. We don’t have to talk about it, or we can if you want, but — God, if it’s not normal it’s fine. This isn’t a party, we’re not some people you don’t know, you don’t have to cater to us. It’s fine.”

That just sits there in the air for a long minute. The only sound is the almost perversely cheerful melody from the speaker. Aster’s face, for once, is completely impassive; David just looks mildly surprised. Sam, who’s the easiest for them to read after long study, looks like he expected this. Maybe he should’ve. He’s dealt with a fair amount of their outbursts this month, and that thought leaves a bitter taste in their mouth. Ivy’s pulse picks up, entirely beyond their control, and they swallow loudly.

To their shock, it’s David who cracks first. “Kieran told me they didn’t get any new information from the visit,” he says, voice low. “That it’s just the same as before. They didn’t have a lot of idea what to expect from Milo’s kind of injury in the first place, so it’s not alarming precisely, just frustrating for him.”

“It would be,” Sam responds slowly. “It’s a shit deal from either side of that - to tell someone ‘Sorry, but we don’t know’ and to hear it.”

“Yeah,” says David with a cut-off little exhale. “That’s about the gist of it. He’s doing his best to keep busy. They both are.”

“God, I wish that were me,” Aster says in a half-murmur. She looks a little surprised at herself, and stutters to correct it. “Not, uh, about the healers thing, just — busy. I don’t know. I am, sort of, but no more than usual, but— I’m just— tired.” Wincing, she adds, “Fuck. Sorry.”

Ivy looks at her for a moment, catalogues the apologetic twist of her nose and the worried set of her mouth, and says, “I get that. I wanted to take time off of my stuff to help at the Clan complex while Sam is doing a whole-ass extra job, but if I do it too much he gets all guilty.”

“Ivy,” Sam cuts in, sounding genuinely surprised. “I love having you around.”

“I — know,” they get out, startled halfway through to find it’s true. “You just don’t want me to derail my schedule for you, but you won’t say it, so you just give me these sad eyes.”

There’s another moment of uninterrupted soundtrack in the kitchen, and then Aster laughs a little, an alarmingly choked noise. “Same boat indeed.”

“Well, I meant it,” Ivy says, awkwardly, and sees David smile just a little out of the corner of their eye.

It’s still not fixed, precisely. The air is still heavy, but it’s cleared up a little. When Aster goes back to the dishes and David gets up to help her, Sam hums along to one of Ivy’s songs they’ve played for him before, and the silence isn’t really a silence this time, there’s a difference, and that’s — good, they did that. They’re glad.

They all start to make their way back over to the living room. When Aster and David sit on the couch in their usual Wednesday positions (bracketing Ivy, which they’ve never understood but will never question out of silent fear they’ll stop) and Sam looks like he’s going to take the chair, they tilt their chin a little towards the last open space on David’s left. Sam gives them a slightly betrayed look, but to his credit doesn’t hesitate, and squeezes himself in at the end. They just barely fit, all four of them, but it’s not uncomfortable. Perfect size couch.

Aster puts on something they’ve all seen before at three quarters volume, an inoffensive romcom that actually belongs to David, and silence settles again, but easier this time. David opens his phone in his lap, and Aster glances at him but doesn’t comment; Ivy sees “Kieran” at the top of a text chat and looks away, glancing past David to look at Sam instead.

Ivy doesn’t want to admit it, and won’t comment on it out loud in case it’ll make him never want to come again, but even with all of the heavy awkwardness of this visit, with Sam here it does feel kind of like — well, like a date, really. Ivy’s never been on a double date, but it’s something people do, right? Dinner and a movie and your partner. They don’t think about what that means for David and Aster to have been doing this with just them for months already, because that’s not anything. It’s different, it just is.

After a little while, again to their shock, it’s Sam who breaks the silence. “David,” he says, steadier this time, and the wolf in question glances over. “Vincent told me you’d asked him about his healing coursework.”

Ivy’s eyebrows raise without their prior consent. They had no idea Vincent and David even knew each other, much less well enough to be asking about this kind of thing, but — oh. Right. That whole near-death experience thing.

For his part, David averts his eyes, looking something close to shy. “Yeah, I — I probably shouldn’t have. He’s really busy right now, I should’ve thought of that, and he was good about it but I think I touched a sore spot. It’s not like it was urgent.”

Sam hums consideringly. “It probably is a little tender just now, yeah, but Vincent’s proud of where he got, and he’s right to be. Don’t get too in your head about all that.” He pauses for a second, then just goes right in. “So, did you skip over me on purpose, or…?”

To Ivy’s delight, David’s shoulders hunch up. “No, I just — well. You learned it before you turned, and Marie never went to DAMN.”

“Fair,” Sam acknowledges. Careful, he continues, “Were you askin’ for any particular reason, or…?”

With a shock, Ivy recognizes that tone. He uses it on them all the time, obviously conversationally sidestepping a topic to give them a built-in out if they don’t want to talk about it after all. It shouldn’t be so surprising, it’s just how he talks, but it’s just — funny, they guess, to hear him using it on a different stubborn shifter.

In deference to their conversation, Ivy turns to Aster, meets her eyes in the dim light. She looks back, seems to consider for a moment. Then, in one of the quietest voices they’ve ever heard out of her, she says, “You were gone this month.”

Ivy winces. They’d known after the first week that it wasn’t the sort of thing Aster was used to from them. She’d never had to put up with them being the kind of person who disappeared for far worse than weeks at a time the way David and even to a certain point Sam had, and they’d thought of it that way for a while and felt bad. And then they’d realized that they weren’t really used to being that person anymore, either, and it had all spiraled until they’d given up and sent a text after a reasonable amount of anxious dithering.

“I was,” they answer, hating it. “I’m — sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Aster answers, predictably. “We all had a lot going on.”

“Yeah,” Ivy concedes. That's one way to put it. “Sure. But I could’ve messaged sooner. Or come to meetings. Or… yeah. I’m sorry.”

It doesn’t actually make them feel better, the way Aster tilts her head and looks at them like she’s never seen them before at even a basic courtesy. “I could’ve texted, too,” she says slowly. “Don’t feel bad, Ivy.”

Instead of providing them a useful argument, like how she's always the one texting first, their patently unhelpful brain instead decides to remind them of the last time they’d argued, the last thing she’d called them, the sound of “Ivy, baby” in a tear-thickened voice, and —

No, no, not useful. They were just busy and a shit person who gets like this. It’s not anything.

Ivy swallows, reaches out very carefully, and sets their hand over hers just briefly. Her fingers are cool and much longer than theirs, and she isn’t quite fast enough to return the touch before they pull away. “You can,” they manage, looking at the familiar checkered fabric of the blanket over their lap. “Text me, I mean. I’m much worse at it, you know me, but I could… I can try.”

“You could try it,” says Aster, and they glance up to see her face, alarmed. Is she mad after all, does she —

Oh. She’s smiling, hair all falling into her eyes behind her glasses and top teeth just barely visible. Ivy gets caught, for a second, looking.

Behind them, David laughs, a low rumbling thing, and Ivy feels — good, relieved. Something had been building up in them that they’d both known and not known, and this is what it had needed. Funny how that goes.

With an intake of breath, they look away and back over to Sam, who is paying careful attention to David as he keeps talking about what Milo’s mom Marie had told him, how she’d been self-taught to a certain point then took a community first aid class.

The movie keeps playing behind them all at low-volume, and it’s not normal. They wouldn’t be talking about any of this if it were, and it’s new to have Sam here, but that’s what they’d said. It’s fine like this, familiar but different, because at least they feel — happy.

*

(David doesn’t make it through the movie. Aster had thought that might happen, after his wake-up time this morning, but it’s even cuter than she’d thought it might be to see him end up sleeping almost diagonal, his arm pressed into Ivy’s and his head leaning at a neck-breaking angle onto the back of the couch, mouth a little open. It’s cute to see Ivy obviously frozen in place to avoid waking him, stiff with indecision and cautious joy, cuter still to see Sam take a picture of them with a lopsided smirk on his face and promise to send it to her. It’s dangerous to her heart, but at this point, she can’t bring herself to care. It’s been a long, terrible month, and this is good, and that’s enough.)