Progression

This story, depicting the progression of Chance and Tobi from unfriendly roommates to lovers, was originally written and posted on Tumblr in March of 2015 with the following thoughts: "lately I’ve been thinking about how much I miss writing these two and last night I just… did. For several hours. I have a lot of trouble ever deciding on a Definite Canon Way Things Happen for them but all things considered I’m pretty happy with this."

The way it started was strangely both organic and awkward. They grew closer very naturally over time, from begrudging roommates to friends to who knows what. Sometimes, though, there were stilted jumps forward followed by discomfort and denial and backtracking and whole days spent avoiding one another’s gaze. Even when things were definitively, undeniably Happening, it was ages before either of them let it be defined or put into words at all.

No matter how they tried to articulate it, it sounded serious or important or official, and they had never been any of those things, really.

It was probably years before they were able to agree on it all and admit it to others, too.

Chance’s simplicity and straightforwardness confused Tobi immensely. He had never dealt with anyone as genuine or as selflessly kind as she was. He was a demon – he had no experience with people who were nice. That’s what she was, really – just nice. It was unnerving for a long time.

But it grew on him, inevitably. It was weird that she didn’t like to order him to do things, despite having total power over him, if she wanted it. For a long time she was nervous about ever asking anything of him, out of fear that he wouldn’t have a choice. Eventually she learned when it was appropriate, but she never seemed happy about it. But he found it oddly endearing. The fact that she cared about him for the simple fact that he was a person – in as much as a demon could be a person, anyway – was foreign, but pleasant.

And as they grew closer, and she came to care about him more, well, of course he started to care too. It was hard to spend that much time with someone so totally positive and well-meaning without softening towards them at least a little. For a while it was hard to justify that to himself, but then he remembered that he was bound to her for the next fifty years. So he may as well at least have a decent time. Make the best of things.

Chance had no idea what to do with him. She worked out the eternally-vague “it’s a legal thing” excuse for his constant presence, but from there she was stuck. The fact that so many people assumed they had to be dating, or at least sleeping together, was frustrating as all hell. And the constant mischief he got up to didn’t help, though of course it was in his nature.

But the more time they spent together – as of course they had to do – the more she saw in him. Yes, he was physically attractive, that had been what drew her to him in the first place, but there was a lot going on under his crisp outlines and intentionally obnoxious behaviour. He was a great cook, and sometimes when he got really into it she could peek into the kitchen and see a kind of concentration and internal calm that was surprising in someone whose whole purpose was chaos. He was peaceful when he slept, but he’d wake up if she tried to slip through the room. He was observant and usually quite perceptive. He liked classic rock and horror movies – he was extremely picky about the former and entirely indiscriminate about the latter. He avoided causing trouble for her friends, despite the fact that they would have made easy targets. And after a while he stopped complaining about her sitting longways on the couch with her legs across his lap.

Sometimes, he was even nice. Sometimes he helped her warm up – damn her terrible circulation – or listened to her play guitar or helped fold laundry. Sometimes, when he thought she wasn’t looking, he even smiled at her – not the laugh or the smirk or the shit-eating grin but a real and actual smile.

Everyone else seemed to see it in them before they did. Cliché, really, but true. Tobi might have known, but he was in firm denial – Chance, on the other hand, was definitely oblivious, at least for a long time. People had even said things to her about it a few times, but she shrugged it off as assumption. She knew people had difficulty imagining a girl and a guy living alone together with absolutely nothing going on between them, though she hadn’t thought it would be that much difficulty.

When Tobi started to realize the direction he was going, he slammed the mental brakes, but it didn’t help for long. So he rationalized and he avoided and he denied. He was a chaos demon, and he absolutely was not meant to fall in love. It wasn’t even love, he told himself; it was like. He liked her. Except he didn’t – of course not. He wanted her. That, he could manage to accept. He was a demon and she was a human being and he wanted to fuck her. That was messy and uncomfortable and never going to happen, but it was far better than wanting to hold her and protect her and make her smile. There was nothing demonic about that.

Chance, when she finally caught onto her own feelings, was upset with herself. She had to spend most of her life with him, and falling in love was no way to go about it. He was going to make relationships difficult, but she’d tackle that when she got to it. Liking him was just way too complicated. Because he was a demon and there was no way it was ever going to be mutual. Hell, she didn’t even know if it was possible. She worked hard on pushing it away, but he was just tender enough just often enough to make it difficult.

Their first kiss – first real kiss, the original didn’t count – was drunken (well, tipsy, at least) and fumbling and weird. It was one in the morning, walking home from Juliet’s New Years’ party, on a dark stretch of sidewalk between streetlights. She had said she’d never had a New Years’ kiss, and he had turned to her, eyebrows lifted, face unusually open, and kissed her, one leather-gloved hand on her cheek. She kissed him back, since it seemed like the thing to do, given the circumstances. He tasted like gin and she tasted like peach coolers. It was clumsy and short, and after a moment they pulled apart and looked at each other, breath fogging in one another’s dimly-lit faces.

His wide eyes, raised brows, and parted lips made for an expression she’d never seen on him before, with no trace of his usual amusement. That face was the one clear memory she had of the night. She imagined she must have been looking back at him with surprise, at least.

Neither of them remembered exactly how they got home after that, but it was two days before they could speak to each other in full sentences again, let alone make eye contact. They didn’t talk about the kiss even once. There was nothing to say.

There was another time that the heat in the building quit in the middle of the blizzard of the decade. The superintendent apologized profusely and promised it would be fixed as soon as a repairman could make it in safely, but in the meantime Chance was just about dying. She’d collected all the blankets in the apartment for her bed, but when Tobi glanced in to check on her after a late-night bathroom trip, she was curled up in a shivering ball.

He hesitated briefly, and if he’d known how tender and concerned the look on his face was he’d have been glad there was no one around to see it. After a few seconds he sighed, summoned himself a t-shirt to go with his pyjama pants – to minimize morning awkwardness – and came into her room, slipping into the bed. She had huddled against him on the sofa all evening, so he didn’t think this was necessarily entirely inappropriate. He laid close to her side, barely touching her, but close enough for his supernatural body heat to warm up the bed. Eventually he relaxed enough to fall asleep, but he slept stiffly, not wanting to move closer to her and make her any more uncomfortable than she might have already been.

It turned out there was no point to that, since she was drawn to his heat in her sleep, and woke up pressed close by his side. Blearily, she sat up and stared at him in mixed embarrassment and confusion. He woke instantly and quickly tried to explain himself, but she was too sleepy, and it was too cold outside of the blankets, so she shook her head and laid back down on his shoulder, tugging up the covers. He shut his mouth and stared at the ceiling for a few moments before shrugging mentally and trying to relax.

It hadn’t been unusual for her to grab his hand and drag him along when he was being difficult, or to link her arm with his and walk that way when they were mostly alone and both feeling friendly. But it was becoming more common for her not to let go, or to take his hand even when she probably didn’t have to. They both tried not to think too much about it; it was just something that was happening. His hands were quite a bit bigger than hers, and she found it comforting to feel his fingers wrapped around her own. It wasn’t until she caught herself reaching for him absently in public that she finally gave herself a stern talking-to about that kind of behaviour.

But it was only days later that she caught herself grabbing his hand again, excited to point something out on their hike.

He didn’t seem to mind so terribly.

Melody had sent Chance a bottle of wine for helping out with another one of Adrian’s fundraisers, which was a big success. Frankly she didn’t really know what to do with it, but Tobi did. He cooked a nice meal that he knew would go well with it and they had themselves a fancy dinner. It was a little bit silly, but it was fun, too, and between the two of them they finished the bottle.

More than a little bit drunk again – why did it always happen like this? – they sat on the couch and giggled together, until she spent a few moments watching his smile and leaned forward and kissed him. It was quick; just a peck, really. He stared at her, taken by surprise, when she pulled back and looked at him, cheeks tinged pink not just because of the alcohol. Then, suddenly, he kissed her again, and again, and again. She hadn’t been expecting the amount of force he used, but she was receptive.

After a few sloppy minutes, Tobi jumped back and stared at her again. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with her, but he wasn’t too far gone to know that he definitely didn’t want to do it drunk. She cocked her head, frowning, and watched him, his usually neat hair messy, his top button undone, his sleeves pushed haphazardly up past his elbows. It was odd to see him dishevelled, but odder still to see him with his brows raised so high, his expression so simultaneously surprised and confused and thoughtful. He got to his feet almost in a rush, mumbling something unintelligible, and hurried into his room. She watched him go, bewildered by everything that had happened.

In the morning he got up early to make her breakfast, an apology for leaving all the cleaning-up to her the night before. French toast with cinnamon and a bowl of fruit and a tall glass of orange juice. He didn’t say much.

“It’s four in the morning.”

“And I wanted to kiss you.”

“We can’t possibly be thinking straight at four in the morning.”

“We’re not drunk this time.”

“But,” Chance insisted, looking worried. “I don’t want to do anything you don’t want.”

“I just said I wanted to kiss you,” Tobi answered, hovering near her. “Isn’t it obvious what I want?”

“But what if…” She shifted, and the TV remote fell to the floor. Their late-night reruns were all but forgotten. “What if I ordered you to do something and you couldn’t help it?”

He searched her face, lit only by the flicker from the television. She was genuinely concerned with this possibility. “I swear, I’m doing this all by my own free will.”

“I know you are now, but what if…” she trailed off, looking down.

Tobi dropped his face close to the curve of her shoulder, eyes closed. “It’s four in the morning, and I wanted to kiss you, and I want to do it again, but I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

He felt her tense slightly. “But if I told you I wanted you to…”

Maybe she was right; maybe he wasn’t thinking all that straight. But at least they were sober. He looked back up at her face, looking for rejection, but all he saw was anxiety. Cautiously, he kissed her again, and after a fraction of a second, her desire seemed to win out over her nerves and she started to kiss him back. It grew deeper as their hands wandered hesitantly over territory still unfamiliar even after more than a year living together. After a while they broke apart and stared at each other, as they so often did in these circumstances, except that this time they finally seemed to have come to an understanding. Tobi had just enough presence of mind to turn off the TV before they stumbled all the way to her bedroom.

He trailed kisses down her neck and across her shoulder as he pulled at the sleeve of her tank top. At the same time she was quietly unbuttoning his shirt, letting herself brush her fingers across his chest. They tumbled onto the bed even as they were still pulling at one another’s clothes. Once she was finally undressed he looked at her with a soft sort of awe that, later, she blamed mostly on the hour and on both of them being too tired, really.

He didn’t fuck her the way he’d let himself fantasize about, intense and dominating and fast. He was slow and gentle and attentive – not because he loved her, of course, nothing like that, but he liked her enough not to want to hurt her. It was soft and it was tender and it was late enough that, blessedly, neither of them had the brainpower left to think about the way they held each other.

There wasn’t a lot of talking, besides a fair amount of “is this okay?” and “are you sure?” on both of their parts. Their pants and moans were muffled, held in with bitten lips or impassioned kisses. Eventually it was over, and if they’d been tired before they were exhausted now. Tobi held Chance close and slowly stroked her hair until she fell asleep, and even then he stayed for a while, what little capacity he had left for thought devoted to being grateful he couldn’t think much more. After a while he pulled the covers over her, picked up his clothes, and went back to his room.

Three days later Chance finally found the courage to say something about it. She was clearly pretty wound up, and he flinched, feeling guilty.

“I’m sorry,” Tobi said, looking at the floor. “I didn’t want to hurt you, I…”

“You didn’t,” she managed. “We both- I mean- I wan-… I wanted it.”

“I did too,” he said, and when he looked up at her she thought she had never seen him look so sincere when both sober and fully awake. They searched each other’s eyes for a moment. “I… do too.”

They weren’t sure how exactly, but from there it happened again.

It was a few months of this before he caught her crying late one night.

“Is it me?” he asked immediately. He didn’t know why he’d assumed that, nor why the thought felt like a punch to the gut.

“If I try to define it, it will disappear,” she sobbed.

“Oh, god,” Tobi answered after a moment, because at that moment he simultaneously realized that she loved him, and that he absolutely was in love with her, as well. He sank onto the bed next to her and pulled her into his arms.

They still didn’t put it into words, as if the fear remained that if they did, they would break it. But they were no longer confined to drunken kisses nor to ill-advised sex. There was still a lot of uncertainty and hesitation, but they weren’t quite as anxious to show tenderness. They kissed each other when they felt like it, and held hands, and sat close to each other on the couch. And they fucked, but it was more comfortable now; it wasn’t so anxious or muffled or desperate. They weren’t so afraid of showing a little affection when they did it.

Slowly they found themselves growing more comfortable with it all, and they settled into something somewhere between the new routine and the old. Over time they found a balance between the friendly comfort they’d had before and the affectionate one they had now.

They still denied it to everyone they knew and avoided showing too much affection anywhere that they might be recognized. But home was safe.

This went on quite a while, a little awkward at times but working overall. The arrangement was pretty informal.

Until the morning that she came into the kitchen and he said, “Good morning, my love.”

For a moment he carried on scrambling his eggs, but as he registered what had slipped out, he slowed. One hand still on the handle of the frying pan, he turned and looked at her nervously. She was staring at him.

“I…” he started, trying to explain himself, but he drew a blank.

She covered her mouth with one hand, looking almost as if she might cry.

“I didn’t mean,” he tried again, but watching her face he realized that that was wrong. “That is, I did. I did mean… I do…” he cleared his throat and swallowed uncomfortably.

“I didn’t know,” she said slowly, fingers lingering over her mouth.

This took him aback. “I- you didn’t? Of course I…”

“I didn’t know if you could,” she confessed.

“Chance, I…” he had never said it, of course, but he thought she knew. Somehow or other. Despite the fact that they had both clearly been too afraid to say it out loud and break the spell. He looked at his eggs and moved the frying pan off the burner, then turned to her. He cleared his throat again, anxious despite everything. “I love you, of course I love you,” he said finally, pulling her into his arms.

She held him tightly. “I love you too, Tobi,” she murmured into his shoulder.