Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(103)
Thank you, she finally wrote back, vision blurry from fatigue and the aftermath of tears. But you don’t have to come. I know there are other sessions happening at the same time.
Cherise sent three rolled-eyes emojis, then one more short, decisive note. Expect a cheering section, ULS. You deserve it.
At this point, April was beyond words. A row of heart-eyes emojis would have to express her emotions sufficiently, at least for the night. Then she set aside her phone and got ready for bed, because she needed her sleep and strength for the day to come.
In the morning, she had a remediation plan to finish enacting.
No more hiding, she’d vowed in that other hotel room months ago. No more hiding.
The cosplay contest was tomorrow morning, and she intended to wear her Lavinia costume with pride, despite all the cameras and all the whispers. Her friends, apparently, would be there to cheer her on. Then she’d moderate the session with Summer Diaz. Afterward, she’d email Mel and Heidi about how it went, as they’d demanded last week.
No doubt about it. She’d definitely stopped hiding her body and her fandom.
Maybe, once the weekend was over, she could stop hiding her heart too.
EARLY THE NEXT morning, Marcus visited the vendors and bought an Aeneas mask, much to the amusement and bemusement of bystanders. After signing a few autographs and taking more selfies, he returned to his room.
It was half-empty now. Alex had left the night before, either in obedience to Ron and R.J.’s demands, upon the advice of his lawyer and agent and PR team, or in pursuit of Lauren. Marcus was pretty certain he knew which one.
So far, his friend had responded once to Marcus’s texts: Going to fix this. Don’t worry.
As if that were possible. But there was nothing more he could do for Alex from the con, and he had responsibilities and obligations all day. Also one other event he refused to miss, no matter how fraught and painful the circumstances.
In jeans and a basic long-sleeved tee and his mask, his appearance didn’t merit a second glance. The scheduled hall was crowded despite the relatively early hour, but finding standing room off to the side didn’t prove a challenge either.
April wouldn’t see him, but he still intended to see her.
The cosplay contest entrants stood clustered at the foot of the stage. Even amid so many bright and wild and impressive costumes, spotting her took him only a glance. Maybe because of her hair, or maybe because—to him—she’d always shone as brightly as a woman under a spotlight. A star, in the truest sense of the word.
Her cloak still concealed her costume, and she was looking down at her phone. As he watched, though, she jerked her head up, her mouth fell open in startlement, and then she was beaming and holding out her arms and getting embraced by two very familiar figures. Scarf-bedecked Mel and blue-haired Heidi, her coworkers and partners in costumery, had evidently arrived to watch the contest.
As of last week, April hadn’t expected them to come, and the touched surprise in her smile as she basked in the support of her colleagues, of her friends, made his throat prickle.
Other people were surrounding her as well, people she didn’t seem to recognize. After a brief conversation, though, she was hugging them too, laughing, and he had to know.
He moved closer, still unnoticed. Closer. Close enough to read one of the lanyards.
Cherise Douglas, it read. Then, in parentheses below: TopMeAeneas on AO3.
His chin dipped to his chest, and he gathered himself before moving away once more. All those people calling out to one another and grinning and hugging were no longer his community, just as April was no longer either his best online friend or his girlfriend.
He wouldn’t intrude. Couldn’t intrude, not without inviting Alex’s same punishment.
Then the contest was starting, and April shed her cloak, handed it to Mel with a flourish, and got in line. From what he could tell, her costume didn’t appear all that different from the Lavinia garb she’d modeled on Twitter, if somewhat brighter and better-fitting.
When she mounted the side steps and took her turn walking across the stage, though, he saw the difference. They all did. Halfway across, she turned to the audience, paused, and undid some hidden fastenings. Moments later, she’d somehow—somehow—turned Lavinia’s skirts into a cape and done something with her bodice that revealed a second, entirely different costume created from her first.
Breeches. A doublet. A sword hidden beneath her transformed dress.
Aeneas. She was dressed like Aeneas now, through some clever trickery.
She stood there ablaze under the bright lights, before all the cameras trained on her, laughing. Gorgeous. Simultaneously warrior and maiden. Lavineas, her OTP, made flesh. Proud, proud as she swept a courtly bow in response to audience applause and a few wolf whistles.
Marcus knew that set of her chin. Defiance.
Despite the vulnerabilities he only now understood, she was revealing herself to the world and daring it to judge her body, her passions, her accomplishments, her life. And she was doing so with a community of people supporting her, surrounding her, because she’d allowed them to know her, truly know her.
It was triumph. More than that, it was bravery. Sheer courage.
Aeneas couldn’t match it, demigod or no. Marcus couldn’t, either.
But maybe, like all the other skills he’d struggled to master over the years, it simply required practice.
Once April had been presented with her runner-up ribbon and trophy—which he considered a grievous miscarriage of justice—he returned to his room and gathered his own courage.