Chapter Text
“What should we do now?” Zari asks.
She’s finally disentangled herself from John and moved back to her own side of the car, where she sits fully dressed with flawless lipstick and not a single hair out of place. In theory, she’s trying to find the beacon or clue or whatever it is that she needs to see to learn the hidden truth of her heart — but in actual practice all she’s thinking about is how much she likes the way John’s nicotine-stained fingers look when laced through her own.
“That’s gotta be your call,” he murmurs, soft and low and warm. “It’s your truth we’re trying to find, love.”
Love. Zari knows it’s just a word, a verbal tic, a pet name he uses without serious thought or deep meaning — but when he says it to her…
She feels things. Real things. Dangerous things.
John rolls down his window before putting a cigarette between his lips and lighting it, not once letting go of her hand. Her hair dances in the wind, getting in her eyes and whipping across her cheeks and tangling all over again — but, for once, she doesn’t care.
John’s just leaning against the car door and watching her, smoke curling from his lips, eyes sparkling in the glow of the dashboard lights.
And Zari sighs, a strange blend of contentment and frustration warring within her. She doesn’t want to keep looking for whatever point this feverish coma dream demands. She doesn’t want to look out the window; she doesn’t want to think about the real world.
She just wants to be with him.
“Let’s go back to the apartment.”
They make it there far faster than should be possible, as if the rules of the physical world don’t apply. She simply wants to be back, and then the car turns a corner, and there they are.
It’s a jarring reminder that this place isn’t real, that she’s no closer to remembering her life in the outside world than she was when she first arrived.
As to remembering who she is, well, that’s more complicated.
She might not remember details or specifics, but if she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, she feels something sure and solid and good at the very center of her. Her essence, her soul, for lack of a better word. She’s certain of that, and she’s navigating this strange world by listening to it.
It feels like enough. More than that, it feels like it’s the only important thing.
John hops out once the car is parked and walks around to get her door, holding out a hand to help her.
“See?” She teases, squeezing his fingers. “I knew you were a gentleman.”
“Still wrong,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss into her hair. “I just wanted the excuse to touch you.”
Zari raises a single perfect brow. “As if you need one.”
“You either,” he answers, looping her arm through his as they walk back toward the high rise. “I told you, love. You can have whatever you want here.”
“Trust me,” she says, hip bumping against his as she draws even closer to his side, “I’m enjoying that perk. Immensely.”
She hears John take a deep breath and feels him slow to a stop beside her, right there in the middle of the empty street; he turns to face her, waiting to speak until she meets his eyes. In the silvery starlight she can see him swallow, hard.
“What I should have said,” he murmurs, “is that you can always have anything you want from me. Any time, any place. Real world very much included.”
He smiles then, quick and fleeting and strangely private, as if proud of himself for a single moment of direct honesty.
And then the moment is gone; he doesn’t wait for her to respond before turning on his heel and sweeping them inside the building.
Zari finds it mostly irritating, but a tiny part of her can’t help but be relieved. There were words welling up inside her at the look on his face — beautiful words, terrifying words — words she can never come back from.
And if he’d given her even a second to speak, they’d have spilled out.
Instead, she steps with him into the waiting elevator in silence, the doors closing quietly before it whisks them back up to the penthouse. Zari breathes carefully, her hand wound through the crook of John’s elbow, turning his words and her feelings and this entire made-up world over and over in her mind.
The elevator dings and the doors open directly inside the penthouse; it greets them with the same cool, dark hush it had when they left it hours ago, all sleek and pricey modernity.
They’ve spent the night going in one big circle, but it feels right. Ending where it began, standing here where she first saw him.
Because the truth is that he’s been the only thing calling to her all along.
“What if all I want is you?”
Zari looks at him from beneath her lashes, hoping he hears the parts that she’s not saying — that she’s unaccustomed to vulnerability, that she’s not the kind of woman who wants to get lost in a man, that she knows there’s more — to her, to her life, to the world — than what she has here.
And yet, if she has to choose only one part of it to have here in the wasteland of her subconscious, she wouldn’t have chosen anything or anyone above him.
Zari steps closer, breathing him in, letting the heat of his skin burn through the last of her defenses.
“What if what I want is for you to have whatever you want?”
For half a second, John looks as if she has struck him; his swagger and facade are reduced to a rubble of raw yearning and stunned disbelief.
He hides it almost as soon as it appears; Zari finds herself wondering if it ever happened at all.
Because now he’s just grinning wickedly and spinning her to the solid glass wall overlooking the city, sweeping her hair over her left shoulder and kissing the right side of her neck as he pulls her zipper down in one long, slow drag. He peels the dress from her skin without using magic at all, leaving it pooled around her ankles as she stands in her lingerie and heels.
She’s staring out at the city but she can feel the heavy heat of his gaze at her back; she remembers, suddenly, the feeling of being stared at. How much it’s happened in her life and how complicated her relationship with it is, the way it usually makes her feel separate and inhuman, a cheap commodity to be mindlessly consumed — but that’s not what John is doing. He’s studying her like a great work of art or a master-level chess match; he sees the full, complicated person who deserves to be appreciated, admired, adored.
He unhooks her bra and pulls the straps slowly down her arms, his lips pressing to the bare spot on her spine where the clasp had been. Then he’s on his knees behind her, pulling the thong down her legs, trailing behind it with open-mouthed kisses on the back of her thighs; he helps her keep her balance as she steps out of it and kicks the dress to the side. She’s not sure which one of them chooses to leave her heels on but she likes it, the way it evens out their height difference, leaving them on the same level.
John does that same practiced trick that hastily makes his own clothing disappear and then they’re both standing naked, on display to the whole city but safe in the knowledge that there’s no one out there to look.
He stands behind her, running his palm flat against her spine from base to neck until she’s standing at an angle with her hands pressed flat to the cool glass, her hips back and legs spread. He has barely touched her but she’s soaking wet and throbbing with want; she moans as he pushes into her so deliciously slowly that she can feel every inch. Her entire world narrows to the place where they’re joined; it feels like ages pass before his hips are flush against her ass, until he’s as deep inside her as possible.
And even then she wants more, somehow; she wants him everywhere, touching every part of her overheated skin — but she put him in charge.
Clearly, he wants to torture her with a slow pace.
His hands move to her breasts, her nipples under his calloused palms as he holds their heavy weight; he uses it as leverage to draw nearly all the way out before thrusting back in. Over and over and over again, he moves in a careful, contained rhythm; his breath is hot on her neck, his hands firm, his hips strong.
Zari is spread before the whole world, the glass fogging in front of her face from her breath; her arms strain to brace herself against the window and her knees are trembling, but John’s strong hands help hold her up. She’s desperate for friction against her clit, for a faster pace, for more of him to touch her, but she bites her lip because she wants him in control this time, she wants to know what he’ll do with her—
—But it’s as if he already knows what she needs. He pulls out and she whimpers at the loss for half a second before he’s spinning her to face him and crouching a little; he hooks his elbows under her knees and lifts with more strength than she’d have thought contained in that compact body, putting her back against the glass. He’s grinning and she can’t help but smile back, kissing him hard and messy, all teeth and tongue as she reaches between them and lines him back up.
And then John is fucking her hard and fast, her ankles hooked around his waist, her body weight held by his arms and the way his chest pins her against the cold window. The air fills with the sound of their slapping skin and gasping breath; Zari feels as if she’s flying, weightless, a burning comet rocketing through space.
He shifts the angle of his thrusts just enough to hit her clit with every stroke and she’s moaning and raking her nails across his back and biting into the meat of his shoulder; he just keeps going, pounding into her, and she’ll be sore in the morning but she can’t wait. She wants it, that reminder of this moment and the way the moonlight looks on his sweat-slick skin, the sound of his voice rumbling as he mumbles sweet nonsense into her neck.
She holds on tighter and rolls her hips into his and she’s trying to hold out, to make it last, to stay in this moment of perfect pleasure as long as possible—
—But then he lifts his head enough to meet her eyes, whispering, “Come for me, love,” voice soft and face tender and eyes burning and it’s just all too good. She tips over the edge and falls, shaking and torn apart and utterly spent in his arms.
He follows a second behind, staring into her eyes as she shudders and clenches around him.
They stay like that for a long moment, Zari wrapped around John in every possible way, breathing each other in and slowly coming down.
Zari feels like she’s stumbled across a threshold she hadn’t known existed, unlocking a secret room inside John’s heart that he’d lost the key to long ago. It’s terrifying and thrilling; it sets something in her chest trembling, tentatively drawing closer to him in a way far beyond their physical forms.
John slowly sets her back on her feet, softly kissing the corner of her jaw; she’d swear she could feel a tremor in his fingertips when they brush across her waist.
And even when they inevitably have to separate they don’t go far, curling up together under the soft blanket on the couch. Their bare skin presses together from their tangled-up feet to Zari’s cheek resting on John’s chest, his fingers combing gently through her hair.
“Why are we still here?” Zari speaks so softly it’s nearly a whisper; it feels wrong to break the peaceful quiet that’s wrapped itself around them. “I mean, if that wasn’t magic and truth, I don’t know what is.”
John sighs; she feels the exhale against the crown of her head.
“Shagging the only man on the planet isn’t exactly the stuff the curse is looking for,” he mutters.
With her ear pressed to his chest, Zari feels the rumble of his voice as much as she hears the words themselves — which is why it takes her a second to process the self-loathing nature of what he just said.
And then she shoves herself upright, the tips of her hair sweeping over her bare breasts.
“You’re an idiot.”
He raises his eyebrows, mouth curving into something that approximates a smile — except it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Your pillow talk could use some work, sweetheart.”
“I mean it, John. Listen,” she grabs his chin, forcing him to meet her eyes. “I may not know the details about who we are back in the real world, but I know who we are here — which means that I know who we are in all the ways that really matter. So don’t try to act like everything that’s between us is some kind of cheap last man on earth type of situation, because it is so much more than that.”
She doesn’t want to keep talking, to open herself up like this, but she’s not going to back down just because she’s scared. She knows —in her bones, down to the very core of herself — that that’s not who she is.
“I think maybe you’re the only one here because you’re the only one that matters.”
John blinks, stunned and seemingly broken open, and then a smile — a real one this time — edges onto his face. It’s like the sunrise on a cloudy winter’s morning — small and faint but painfully hopeful; its weak light radiates as he reaches up, cupping her cheek in his palm.
“Thanks for that, love.”
It’s not acceptance, not an admission that he feels the same or confirmation that she’s right about something existing between them, but it’s clearly all she’s going to get from him.
Damn him and his belief that telling her anything about their lives might ruin their chances to get back — especially since she doesn’t particularly care about doing that any time soon.
Even if the world came back, if there were suddenly people to see and parties to attend, if there was shopping and fashion and society, she knows it couldn’t offer her anything better than what she has right here.
Now if only John felt the same way.
Zari frowns but he’s obviously done talking about it; eventually she has no choice but to settle back down against him, craving his warmth and skin and the steady sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear.
Its even, thudding rhythm combines with the smooth rise and fall of his chest as he breathes; his fingertips softly draw absent sigils over the bare skin of her back. It all lulls her into a floating state between sleep and consciousness, everything soft and fuzzy and blissfully wonderful.
Some indiscernible amount of time later, unsure whether she’s awake or still dreaming, she hears John’s rough voice softly rumbling beneath her.
“God help me Zari, I know I need to let you get on with it and find your way out of here, but I can’t seem to take my hands off of you.”
He sighs, the breath warm and soft against her shoulder.
“Probably because I’m a selfish bastard,” he mumbles. “You know, if it was me in your place? If this was my hell and I had to listen to my heart?” She feels his hand on the back of her head, stroking her hair; he inhales deeply enough that it makes her cheek rise. “There’s only one thing it’s saying. And it’s your name, over and over again, with every damned beat.”
He nuzzles in closer; she feels his lips brush over her skin when he whispers.
“I know I shouldn’t, know I’m no good for you, but I can’t help it — I love you.”
John snaps his eyes open and gone is the soft floral scent of Zari’s hair and the protective dark hush of the penthouse. Instead, his nose is assaulted by the sting of antiseptic and the recycled air of the Waverider. The fluorescent lights overhead are blinding; the incessant beeping of some medical monitor screeches in his ears.
It takes him half a second to realize that he’s been ripped out of Zari’s mind and tossed back into his body in the medbay — and then he’s tearing heartbeat and brainwave monitors off himself, half-falling as he fights to get out of the chair and across the room to where Zari lies.
Eyes closed. Face slack. Motionless.
“Bollocks,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face, slumping over her.
“What happened?” Ava asks, rushing over to him; her hands hover worriedly in the air over both John and Zari.
“I got kicked out — the demon’s curse must have transferred to me, too, when I went inside her mind. The second I realized my heart’s truth, it released me.” He grinds his teeth together, gripping the arm of Zari’s chair hard enough that the metal creaks beneath his fingers. “I shouldn’t have gone, I was just a distraction to her.”
“John, talk to me. What happened in there, why are you the only one that’s back, why isn’t Zari waking up?”
He rakes his fingers through his hair, trying to take an even breath, to form words out of the chaotic screaming inside his mind; when his voice finally comes to him it sounds dry and torn and bleeding, like he’s been gargling gravel.
“She can’t wake up until she finds the truth hidden in her heart, yeah?”
Ava nods; John’s mouth presses into a thin, hard line. “Well, she doesn’t even remember who she is, because of course somebody who’s met an alternate bloody version of themselves would have some identity issues. But instead of helping her find herself, I was a selfish git who just went along with whatever she wanted.” He sighs, rolling his eyes to the blindingly bright ceiling. “The only thing she did in there was waste her time with me.”
A sympathetic crease appears between Ava’s eyebrows; John knows she means well, so he tries not to let it piss him off.
“You two are together, John, I think that’s okay.”
He scoffs. “I’m not the sodding secret hidden in anyone’s heart, pet, let alone someone as good as her.”
Ava’s mouth opens — to continue arguing with him, no doubt — but they’re both distracted by a small sound from the chair beside them. A blanket rustles from some tiny movement; there may be a slight disruption in the even cadence of Zari’s breath.
John falls to his knees beside her, clutching her hand in his.
“Come on now, Zari, don’t do this to me, not again.” He presses his lips to the back of her hand as if he could brand the words into her smooth skin, send them coursing through her blood directly into her heart and mind. “Come back to me, love.”
But she doesn’t.
She’s not moving; her eyes are still closed. And John’s a fool because of course she isn’t going to wake just because he whispered his own bleeding confession — and while she was sleeping, no less. But even if she’d heard him, it’s not like loving him is her heart’s hidden truth; that would be ridiculous, he’s lucky she’s even willing to waste some time with a damned mess like him—
—And then Zari squeezes his fingers.
“Zari?” John sounds broken, ragged, but he doesn’t care, not as long as she hears him, as long as she comes back.
Her chest rises with a deep breath; her long eyelashes flutter as she blinks a few times, and then open for good.
She’s awake.
“Oh, thank god,” he mutters, dropping his forehead to her shoulder for just a second before yanking it back, eyes dark with worry. “Please tell me you’re really back, that you remember who you are.”
She smiles up at him; it’s easily the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
“I’m Zari Tarazi, superstar influencer, entrepreneur, time traveling hero—“
John’s suddenly jerked forward by Zari’s hand wrapped in his tie, tugging his face down to hers so she can kiss him soundly.
His lips melt into hers, his heart feeling like molten lava in his chest; it bursts into bright, burning flames when she pulls back just far enough to whisper against his mouth.
“—And I’m someone who’s in love with you, too.”