Sydney knew Rose was right. Sydney knew she shouldn’t have lied to Eddie and definitely not to Adrian. Sydney knew, however, that she’d needed time - there was a lot to process, a lot to process, and she wasn’t always the best at that and she’d needed time.
There had been a few moments where she’d considered just telling Adrian (who she’d decided deserved to know first, for some pretty obvious reasons). She’d considered it on Solstice, which was a pretty big holiday for witches. She’d considered maybe on Christmas, which would have been… cute? But she’d chickened out. And now here she was in this ridiculous dress that she’d spent hours picking out until the lady at the store had called her svelte and she’d decided to just take it and go instead of over thinking it any more.
And… now it was way too warm inside. Sydney couldn’t actually process that she’d found herself outside in the snow voluntarily for the last half hour just watching people roast marshmallows. Which is probably why she completely lost her mind, pulled out her cell phone, and shot Adrian a quick text that just read, ‘Can you come outside for a minute?’. Smooth, really smooth, Sage.
Adrian could tell there was something Sage wasn’t telling him. But, he had decided not to push her. He suspected it was quite disorientating having memories enter your mind like that, and he wanted to give her whatever time she needed to process what she had remembered. Even though there was a large part of him that just wanted to kiss her. He needed her to want him to.
At every party over the holiday season, he knew almost exactly where she was in the room. He just couldn’t help but be aware of her presence. So, he’d noticed when she’d gone outside, and had been surreptitiously watching the door for her to return. But, instead his phone buzzed in his pocket. Curious, he pulled it out of his pocket, and grinned when he read the message.
Standing, he took the few steps to the door, noticing her almost immediately. As he approached, his eyes automatically ran up and down her body, taking in how beautiful she looked in her dress.
“You rang?” he smirked, as his eyes clearly showed his appreciation for her dress.
She hadn’t thought this through. All Sydney had done was made a sudden decision that Rose was right and that this was as good a moment as any. Was it? You know, for someone who was kinda technically married (did it work like that? should it work like that? they hadn’t even technically...) she didn’t know what she was doing. Everything about this was wrong, wasn’t it? This wasn’t how you built a relationship and it definitely wasn’t how you told someone that you realized you were in love with them and she hadn’t actually needed the memories (provided by Zoe or the ones received firsthand) to know that. Maybe she’d needed them to admit the unavoidable truth to herself. But… after all, its why she’d gone straight to him after her breakup, hadn’t it been? That seemed like forever ago now.
Adrian had almost always been better at caring about and caring for Sydney than she ever would be for herself. And he’d been right, even if he hadn’t known it at the time (at least, not the extent of it), she was going to have to eat the words from that argument about whether or not Eddie was meant to protect her too. Well, depending on what Adrian wanted. No amount of intelligence or rationality could tell Sydney how to proceed or how this was going to go.
“Hey.” She said, it was short and she said it quickly as she looked up at him - shoving her phone into the little clutch she had with her (it was impractical, she hated it, but it matched). “You were right.” She sort of half-blurted out. It was a vague statement, not on purpose (at least this time) and she sort of just stared at Adrian to see what his reaction was. And not think about how he looked in that suit, she should definitely not be thinking about how he looked in that suit.
Adrian wasn’t entirely sure what this was about. Sure, he hoped that she’d come to a realisation, that now she remembered them being together, that she wanted them to be together. But, there was still that insecure part of him that worried that she didn’t. That she remembered something he didn’t, which meant that she didn’t love him anymore. He almost always seemed to have an air of confidence and self-assurance, unless he was with Sage. She was the only one he was ever comfortable letting see his vulnerabilities.
“I was?” He asked, confused as to where her train of thought had gone. But, also slightly pleased at her saying he was right about something.
There would have been no avoiding the nervous energy around Sydney at the moment - it practically shone like a beacon, which was exactly what she didn’t want. Adrian could literally read people and she was kinda lucky she’d even bought herself some time of you know… processing everything. To be fair, at least he’d know she’d have a lot to process and given her some space too. That had probably helped… a lot. Not that anything was making it easier for her to, you know, talk about it. She hadn’t even said it to Rose, she’d just told her when and Rose had known because of course she did because she was from the future (she was envying Rose for that less and less).
“Yeah.” She answered, nervously tapping a finger against that stupid clutch. “I lied.” She added, not in any way more smoothly than she’d blurted out that he’d been right about something. Sydney probably should have decided ahead of time if she was telling him everything or just slowly working up to the everything or if… wow, she was really regretting not just… writing him an email.
But even Sydney had the social sense to know you don’t exactly discuss your marriage in an email. That’s not polite.
Adrian didn’t need to use spirit to tell that Sydney was nervous. And, he tried not to do that with her. Even if it was a habit to read people’s auras at times. It made him feel more secure to know what people were feeling around him. But, he also had a couple of drinks in him at this point. Not enough to make him drunk, just slightly buzzed. But it also dampened his magic, meaning he couldn’t exactly read anyone’s aura right now.
All of this meant was that all he really knew was that she was nervous about something. Which made him kinda nervous too. Even if he was better at hiding it than Sage.
“Okay, back up, Sage.”, he started, as he reached for her hands, in an attempt to calm her. “Let’s sit down and start again.” His eyes searched her face briefly, before relaxing into a cocky grin. “Because while I enjoy making you speechless, I suspect there’s something you actually want to say?” He joked, hoping it would relax the alchemist enough to actually have a conversation with him.
Sydney’s life had a habit of always changing too fast. It wasn’t like it was just this. It felt like she’d been on a speed run since she got herself out of Siberia. Helping Rose. Helping Jill. She’d been slowly coming to terms with being a witch. Zoe being here. Everything that came with that. And then, ya know, it wasn’t like she was stupid enough to deny she’d had feelings for Adrian all along - but there was ‘admitting you had feelings all along’ and the whole ‘yeah so you only had one good idea of how to keep me from the alchemists’ thing. Not exactly the same city, let alone country. They were basically places in her life that might as well have been different galaxies.
“No.” She said a bit quickly, as he took her hands. If Sydney sat down she might lose her nerve or something. Sitting down would probably have only made her more anxious. Actually, moving would have made her more anxious. Just about anything would have. “You figured it was the only way to actually have a chance at keeping me safe from the alchemists.” Just a little beating around the bush there, it wasn’t wrong, but it was just about all she could get out with just, uh, blurting the whole thing out. Which she was attempting not to do.
Adrian was beginning to worry about what she was trying to say. Because if it was bad enough that she couldn’t even say it, then it must be pretty bad. Although, based on the only information she had given him so far being, he was right, and she lied, he had absolutely no idea what that thing could be. Since he had no idea what exactly she was saying he was right about, or what she lied about. Well, he was pretty sure she’d been lying to herself for a while. But, that was a completely different subject...or was it?
“Only way to…” He repeated, as he racked his brain to figure out what idea he could have come up with. “Lissa couldn’t help because you weren’t part of the court….OH!” He quickly put two and two together. He wasn’t too far behind that decision that he made when he set out to rescue her after all. “I asked you to marry me?” He asked, his mind figuring out the only way that Sydney could become a part of the moroi court, even though he knew that would have raised a few eyebrows, he knew the queen would have allowed it. The benefit of being close friends with her, he supposed.
She wasn’t making him worry on purpose, but even Sydney figured that it wasn’t exactly subtle that she was being a little cagey. She’d been so… weird about him being here and her being here and him clearly being from ahead of her and then the last year had been just disconnect after disconnect. Sydney knew too much, but she felt too little. Or she felt too much. Right now she felt too much, and maybe before she had too. Sydney just - she wanted things to calm down. She wanted things to… she didn’t know, be normal? Not normal like before she’d ever met Rose or Dimitri or Adrian but something that… she wanted to be with Adrian and she knew that and she knew she’d been stupid.
There was no way she was going to say it herself, or she wasn’t sure. Sydney was kinda all over at the moment and she didn’t like that. She didn’t like lack of simplicity. Lack of focus. But her eyes suddenly came back into focus as he finally hit on what she’d meant. “Yeah, you did.” She answered a little quietly. “So you were kinda right about the Eddie thing.” If she talked about anything else she might calm down a little, right?
“That was pretty clever of me.” Adrian replied, honestly surprised at his quick thinking. Then again, he’d never had any faith in his own abilities. Something Sydney had helped him with in the short time they’d known each other. But, it still didn’t come easily to him.
“I told you, didn’t I?” He agreed. She hadn’t seen how distraught Eddie had been after she’d been taken by the Alchemists. He knew the dhampir had blamed himself. Just as Adrian had also blamed himself.
The moroi examined her face as he stepped closer to her, hope flaring in his heart. But, needing to be sure that he was reading the situation correctly. “Does this mean…?” He trailed off, still unsure whether he could say it outloud himself.
Sydney really wanted to roll her eyes but she knew he was right, she wanted to curse him for being right - she wanted to... okay she equally as much wanted to kiss him but that was kinda besides the point and when he stepped closer to her she knew that there was no way to hide that. She’d been… being cautious, a little distant. Trying to keep to herself to process everything because it was really hard to focus on figuring out what her intertwined feelings meant when he was that close to her and she didn’t like that. She didn’t like how fuzzy Adrian made her. She didn’t like that he could... make the hair on the back of her neck stand up like that.
It really wasn’t fair.
Yes, yes he had told her. He’d called it. Nail on the head. It wasn’t fair, it really wasn’t. Sydney hadn’t gotten - well, now she had, so maybe… This had been the point, right? Feeling the things she knew? She just didn’t know they’d come with extra information and that had made it complicated and she looked up at Adrian with this little almost-pout, “You’re waiting for me to admit I’m an idiot.” She said, a little bluntly. Because it was, well, true.
“Maybe just a little bit.” Adrian admitted, but if he had to be honest, he was actually waiting for something else more. Permission, really. To kiss her, like he pretty much wanted to do every time he saw her, if he was honest. It had very definitely become a problem, a problem he had been very careful not to complain about. Because the idea of pressuring her in anyway, was appalling to him.
“But, more...can I…” He said, once again trailing off, eyes flickering down to her mouth, as his tongue darted out to lick his lips. Unsure of whether this was going where he really hoped it was going.
There was a weird weight that felt lifted that he knew now. She’d held onto this knowledge (okay, she’d told Rose) for a month because she’d needed time. It wasn’t like she thought anyone wouldn’t understand that she felt disjointed and she needed to figure that out and then it was the holidays and now it was New Years and… she hadn’t wanted to go into the new year not being honest with him. No matter how weird it had felt and no matter any of her other very complicated feelings, she didn’t want to feel like she was lying to him by omission. Sydney didn’t like lying and complicated feels or not, she didn’t like lying to Adrian even more.
Adrian seemed incredibly content to just jump right into this knowledge and part of Sydney was tempted to just kiss him (she wanted to a lot more than she was ever going to verbalize). The thought was actually a bit embarrassing and it made a little flush rise in her cheeks that she was just going to pretend wasn’t there, “I’d prefer that to any gloating.” She ‘admitted’ in the closest way to ‘jokey’ that Sydney ever really got, especially when she was nervous.
Adrian had a feeling that this moment held a lot of weight, for both of them. He was honestly not that far behind Sydney, so he knew exactly how future him had felt. Even though he’d had a years extra worth of living, and of knowing Sage. And, he had known for a while, exactly how he felt about the ex-alchemist.
With a slight chuckle, and a grin at her ‘joke’, he slowly but determinedly stepped into her space. Making sure that he broadcast his moves enough to allow her to stop him if she changed her mind he slipped one arm around her waist. Cupping her face with his other hand, he leaned down to capture her lips with his own.