Heart of Glass [manxman]

Epilogue

5 years later...

Rapping my knuckles against the door, I leaned against the doorframe and folded my arms over my chest. When there was no answer, I knocked again. I had shit to do. The deadline was five minutes ago, and I was already late for lectures.

"Fuck's sake, Blanc," I muttered, glaring at the door. I started to knock again just as the door swung open.

Louis raised a brow at me. "In a hurry?"

"A little. I've got to get this paperwork turned in, there's a class full of first-years just waiting to hear me be a hypocrite on the importance of being punctual, and to top it all off, I'm still pissed at you." I handed my paperwork to him. "There. It's my full proposal for the training academy, why it should be built on campus, open to students outside of Guardians', everything's there. There's another copy so you can fax it to the Covenant ASAP, and still have a copy to look over while it's sending."

Blinking, Louis cocked his head to the side, like a confused puppy. "Take a deep breath, Lex. I knew you'd be late. You're always late. The Covenant's deadline for you is several hours away, because I know you and knew to ask for an extension. Now, go be nice to your first-years before I'm personally requested to reprimand you again." He leaned over and kissed me quickly. "And go right ahead and be pissed off, love. I've got a surprise for you anyway."

"I swear to the gods, if it's another adoption application, I'm actually going to hit you." I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose as I gritted my teeth, knowing better than to get into that fight in the middle of the administrative building, in front of all the secretaries and deans and any stray professors.

Ever since our disgustingly public ordeal of becoming soulmates, we had strived to keep the rest of our personal lives private, especially now that Louis and I had a conflict of interest. He had stepped up as the president of the academy, which no one minded, they just resented the fact that they thought it meant I'd get to inflict whatever horrific torture I pleased onto the first, second, and third-year students.

I wasn't any meaner than usual, but Louis had still attempted to reprimand me, which hadn't gone over particularly well. Hell, that was 25% of why I was proposing to begin a training school—I could get away from Louis and continue teaching at one of the most prestigious Hunting academies in the realms.

"We'll discuss it later," Louis said, smirking at me as he stepped back, letting the door close in my face.

"What a dick." I spun on my heel and made tracks across campus to my lecture.

Ever since Rainier left, Louis and I had managed to smooth things over for the most part. On most days, we were content. In a way, things were similar to how they used to be during the first Aquireign defeat. It wasn't exactly the same. The same people weren't around us, and we had both done a lot of growing up. But, there were evenings after I cooked him dinner and he cleaned up the kitchen that we just sat on the balcony. We passed a bottle of whiskey back and forth, listening to the crickets and cicadas and frogs, just enjoying the presence of one another. The way the moonlight touched his face, the warmth emanating off him, and the way he'd always look over at me with that filthy smirk and ask if I wanted to shower with him.

Of course, we were still very much us, and it also wasn't particularly uncommon for us to fight. Neither of us pulled our punches and neither of us were particularly shy about ripping into the other one, but we resolved it well.

It was nice, and it felt normal.

Dr. Malai, my therapist, kept telling me that was progress, which I guess she was correct. Five years ago, I didn't believe in this. I didn't even believe in the possibility of it—of happiness, of having a future with Louis, of having friends, of having the opportunity to run a training academy. And despite the fact that we kept going round and round with it, five years ago, I would have never even considered having children.