Somewhere, Somehow
Abe x gn!Reader
“Out of the confines of fate, the detective and the DA be at last.”
Word count: 2.4k
As encouraged by @crazy-obsessed-enby and @enderman-ezra‘s love especially, for the first and second parts. Thank you <3
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Part 1 - The Prying Hands Of Choice
Part 2 - A Love Never Flourished
Part 3 - Somewhere, Somehow
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Night comes quick in the city; too quick. The days run away from you, sunlight slips through your fingers and the veil of night covers the sky. Breakfast becomes lunch and lunch becomes dinner and you've just woken up and are already going back to sleep.
Time doesn't wait for the bustling and busy ways of the city: it's easy to loose track of the days and the nights. But you've never felt so alive.
Not since before the cold, wooden floor of the manor was firm against your back, blood splattered across the oak and your shirt. Wilford's disheartened look and the detectives body the last thing you'd seen.
Space doesn't have time, always too dark to know what's night and what's morning or when lunchtime truly is. It's unnerving in a way, how quickly you lose ingrained routine for the vastness of space. But how different is the inner city from space? Times comes and goes and you wake and you sleep and the world moves on with or without you.
A too-loud rumble of a car startles you from low murmur of the TV - some rerun of an old show you've never seen before yet have seen a million times - and the coldness of the seat next to you. An army of throw blankets swarm around your waist, disregarded by their other - better - half, and missing the warmth he provided.
Abe.
Pushing the comfort of the blankets away from you, you stood from the worn, leather couch. The deep brown reminding you of the jacket Abe had been wearing when you'd found him again; the reason you'd insisted you just had to have it.
Many a night had been spent curled on that couch: a book, a movie, a shitty rerun of a tv show and some good snacks and company. Not tonight though, Abe's smell withdrawn from the blankets and his warmth gone from your hold.
Padding through the kitchen, past the small island littered with unopened letters, house keys and empty takeout boxes, you pull your sleeves down and the window up. Slipping through the cracked open window, you closed it behind you - not wanting the crisp air to invade the warmth of the apartment that you had been so preciously holding onto.
Rain drips over the ledge of the roof, splashing against the metal of the fire-escape balcony and beginning to soak through Abe's shirt. How long had you let him be out here?
Sneaking closer to the broad-shouldered man, you wrapped your arms around his waist, resting your head against the back of his shoulder.
"You shouldn't smoke; it'll kill you, you know." Abe looked down at his shirt-clad chest, his trembling hands coming to rest against and smooth out the fabric.
"Too late for that." He snarled, immediately apologising for his bitter tone and moving away from you. What was going on?
You often struggled to come to grips with the reality you found yourself in: the warped perception of life a side effect of falling through wormhole after wormhole. You'd awake from a dream that felt too real, just another reality you'd been briefly trapped in, sweating and screaming and crying out for Abe. Who was at your side, thankfully.
Night after night you dreaded the day would come where you'd awake to no Abe by your side, back in that cryopod with a glowing crystal in your hand. And Abe did everything he could on those nights to assure you it wasn't real.
He'd hold you, sooth you until you were fast asleep once again; promise he was here and not going anywhere while consumed with guilt at the white lie. Abe could not guarantee you that he'd come home each night, the work of a detective hard and demanding, so when he was there he made it count.
Except for on nights like these.
Abe constantly worried about you; worried you'd disappear again, die again, wake up alone and panicked because of his job. Fully driven by the idea it was all his fault, he'd made a point to tell you all of his partner had died, gone, been left behind - and yet he'd given you the title as though he was okay with that.
Letting out a deep sigh, he sat down on the steps of the fire escape that lead up to the next floor, taking a long drag from his cigarette before turning to face the sky, white smoke puffed into the black night.
Though your eyes had not left him, you now turned to face him, taking small almost meek steps towards your beloved detective. Taking one of his hands in your own, you caress the side of his face; a silent plea to talk to you.
Abe placed his other hand atop the two connected ones, giving them a gentle squeeze. The lit cigarette balanced between rosy lips, chapped by the cold and wind.
Slowly, he lowers his hands, his firm grip coming to rest on your hips. Gently he pulls you down onto his knee; your legs slotting between his own and an arm coming to rest across his broad shoulders. Resting your hand at the nape of his neck you begin to lightly scratch at the stubble there.
Abe's long-lost look dissolves from his face, his forehead knocking lovingly against your temple as he turns to face you, faces far too close for friendship.
But were you more then friends? You'd been friends when you met, and he held you like a lover. Looked at you as though you were his reason to go on and joked with you like a friend. You'd been everything and nothing entirely - something too complicated to put labels on; labels you'd love to see. But knowing Abe was yours was what mattered, and that he was.
"A penny for your thoughts dear?" Abe shakes his head, taking another drag from his cigarette then harshly blowing it out. "Don't give me that, I know something is wrong."
Taking his lit cigarette from where it was loosely held between his fingers, you took a long drag - holding the fumes in for a brief moment before teasingly blowing it in Abe's face. You move the cig back up to his lips and allow him to take a drag, then swiftly move it away from his face. Shuffling closer, you lean down; almost too close, a hairs length separating the two of you. You knock your nose against his, waiting for him to meet your eyes before you clumsily slot your lips against his own.
Abe instantly melts into the kiss, the smoke leaving his lungs as he brushes chapped lips against soft ones.
"Talk to me." You plead, wanting to know what was going on in his head. One hundred thoughts at once and you were ninety-nine of them; that one unused was reserved for whatever case he had been working on in that moment.
"Do you ever wish we were just the detective and the district attorney? And nothing more."
A daunting question. Life had been simpler then, sure, but the whirlwind of emotions Abe maybe you feel you wouldn't change for the world. Sometimes you don't think you were ever truly alive until you walked into the manor; Abe leaning against the doorframe of Mark's house while you were lounged across once of his many loveseats. It was like you were living for the first time meeting his eyes; as though you'd been born just in the doorway and he was the first thing you ever truly saw.
"What about less?" You asked, hoping and pleading that Abe got the sentiment behind your words: you didn't want less with him, you wanted security.
That's what Abe and you both lacked in this lifetime; knowledge that you would wake up beside the other everyday and that everything would be okay, safe and the same.
You would try and give him that, no matter the cost.
"Less is fine; good even. It's safe." Running your fingers along the back of Abe's neck lovingly, you lulled him into your touch, letting him really feel the heat radiating from your palm and know you were there. Right now. With him. Safe and sound.
The murmur of whatever you had been watching on the tv fades away and in its place is some 70s song - slow and relaxing - it's tune instantly making sleep sink into your bones and fill you with comfort.
"Dance with me?" You asked, barely above a whisper, Abe's head still resting against your own. "While I'm awake enough to."
Abe grunts displeasingly, and you think for a moment he's going to say no, then pushes you from his lap and the idea is almost confirmed. Though he pulls you close to him as he stands; you resting your head against his soft shirt and muscular chest beneath it. The brisk night air was harsh against your exposed skin eliciting a shiver - the cold quickly soothed from your skin by Abe's arms atop your own. Keeping you close and keeping the cold away.
Abe's hand snake away from yours: one reaching for your hand and pulling the intertwined pair up to the side of you, the other curling around your lower back and trying to pull you impossibly closer. Your own free arm is tucked under his, laying flat up against his back, allowing you to tuck yourself into his side slightly, hiding you away from the cold night air.
The pair of you move slow, in sync with the other and simply stepping from side to side, relishing in the moment of simplicity with the other.
"I'm glad it was you - this version of you - I found." You admitted, sheepish blush hidden by the dark of the sky and the way your head was tucked beneath Abe's. "All the other you's I encountered, they didn't have your eyes. Sure, they had your face, your smile or your charm; but they never had your eyes."
"I'm glad it was me too sweetheart." Abe chuckled, voice becoming raspy with need for sleep, night slipping further and further into day under the lights of the city. Rain became drizzle, the occasional pitter patter against the metal staircase reminding you it had rained at all.
You continued to sway to the lull of the song, recognising it to be the same that had played when you returned to Wilford's roller-rink , but choosing to keep that a secret for only yourself to indulge in. The only two times you had slow-danced with Abe were to this song, and you hoped it would be the only one you'd ever slow-dance to and he'd be the only one you'd ever slow-dance with.
As the song came to a sullen end, Abe pulled away from you, but only enough to look at your face. His eyes scoured across your features, taking across your face from your lips to your eyes and back: whatever he was thinking he settles for a chaste kiss against your forehead that makes you crinkle your eyebrows up at the ticklish sensation.
"You know, I'm glad that - even in another life - I got to travel the stars with you." Abe whispered his admission, something shy about it. You'd never mentioned how Gunther specifically looked like Abe; the ADS lead having you wrapped around his finger in ways you didn't even realise.
You'd almost called him Abe the first time you met him; everything about him all to similar to someone else. However, the first time he took off those sunglasses in front of you, you knew he wasn't your Abe, just some lookalike.
Though Abe had recalled your words at the roller-rink, in fact he thought of them often. About how somewhere out there you'd already found him; and somewhere out there you'd do it again. Somewhere, somehow - just like you'd half promised him before your forced departure from the disco.
"You'd have hated it up there. It's lonely."
"Not when I'm with you; never when I'm with you." Abe had always had a way with words; from your first meeting till now, he never failed to make you turn red at his sweet sentences.
"Whatever you say, pretty boy." You teased, pushing away from your detective and heading back towards the window, sliding it open enough to creep back inside and turning to face Abe. Palm outstretched you waited for him to take your hand, moving deeper inside the warmth of the apartment with Abe now in tow.
Pulling him by your connected hands, you led him through the messy room; ignoring the coat that had fallen from the hanger and the mess of blankets and pillows you had left on the couch, deciding they were all things that could be dealt with come morning or sunshine, whatever came first.
Arriving in your shared bedroom, you began to undo the buttons of his shirt, his tie already hung loose enough to slip over his head and onto the desk, ready to use tomorrow. Abe stood there, looking at you in complete admiration as you took him through the motions: helping him get out of his work clothes and into his pyjamas as though it was routine.
Falling back into the mattress and mess of a duvet, still unmade from the morning before, you pulled Abe with you, shuffling up the bed to meet the pillow and letting out a deep sigh; sleep seeping into your bones once again as you finally, truly, relaxed. Shuffling about you made yourself comfortable, leaning into Abe's warmth though giving him enough space to get comfy himself.
It didn't take long for sleep to overcome you, time warped and unusual under the bright, city lights. But Abe watched until gentle snores left your chest, scratching his fingers against your scalp lovingly as he waited for you to fall fast asleep, dream of lands far away. Though not far away enough that you'd wake with a start worried he was long gone and this was all a dream.
Abe often found it hard to come to terms with the fact you were actually here, next to him once again, and that you wouldn't be gone the next time he woke up like the you he saw in his deluded drunken stupors and after a particularly shitty nights sleep.
And though Abe had never been a religious man, he thanked any God out there that you had been returned to his side.
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Hello my lovies!! This brings us to the end of this little Abe series I had planned. I love Abe and there's so little about him so I decided to be the change I wanted to see in the world.
Thank you for all the love. I am very happy to take Abe/Gunther requests so please send any in you may have!!
