The words had rolled so easily off her tongue, as if she knew what the fuck she was talking about, as if she understood the consequences he would invite. But as he’d tried to tell her, she hadn’t understood. She really hadn’t, as the aftermath of Alex’s revelation made clear.

Maybe Marcus still should have trusted her. After a month together. After two. But for a man who’d found his first, hard-won taste of self-worth and pride through his career, she could see how he would hesitate, even then.

Of course, he’d said trust wasn’t the main issue. Not in the end.

I was scared. I was terrified you’d leave me.

And she had.

On her laptop, she found herself searching for his parents’ articles about Gods of the Gates. They weren’t hard to find, given how extensively tabloids and entertainment reporters alike had publicized the obvious rift between Marcus and his mother and father.

Even years before meeting Marcus in person, she’d found the media’s fascination with that rift ghoulish, and she’d refused to read any articles on the topic. But now—now she needed to understand.

Stomach churning, she sat on her bed and studied his parents’ op-ed essays, inspecting them for some connection to Marcus, some telltale indication that these were the people who’d birthed and shaped him.

It was like seeing Marcus through a funhouse mirror, his image distorted and unsettling.

His intelligence was transformed into disdain. His facility with writing turned dry and unemotional. His life’s work warped into a source of shame rather than pride. His place in their lives rendered so small they didn’t have to acknowledge it.

But she could see him, still. On her couch. In her arms. Unsteady and wet-eyed and whispering in a cracked voice about what he owed them. What they deserved from him.

If he could forgive them, good for him.

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

He didn’t owe them anything. She, on the other hand, owed him an apology.

For all her talk about trust, she hadn’t prepared him for her own parents or her volatility after time spent in their presence. She hadn’t described the disgust on her father’s face when she needed new clothes, in a larger size, yet again. She hadn’t told him how her mother would stand naked in front of a mirror and pinch folds of her own flesh, near tears as she evaluated whether she was still thin enough to be loved by her husband.

She hadn’t explained the abject humiliation of realizing a man who’d just seen her naked, who’d just been inside her, wanted her to have a different body instead, and she hadn’t shared her heartbroken rage when that same man would expect her to get naked, spread her legs, and offer her deficient body to him again, regardless.

Those pieces of her past were crucial to understanding her, as crucial as his online identity was to understanding him. But neither of them had said a word.

I was scared. I was terrified you’d leave me.

Even if she wanted to fix things between them, though, even if she could fix things between them, now wasn’t the time, and this hotel wasn’t the place. They both had responsibilities and meetings and friends to attend to.

As if on cue, her phone buzzed with a text from a number she’d entered into her contacts only yesterday. Cherise’s—AKA TopMeAeneas’s—number, shared through a DM on the Lavineas server in preparation for the con.

Sorry to text so late. Hope I didn’t wake you up. Didn’t see you on the server tonight, so I wanted to give you a heads-up: we’re all still meeting for breakfast on Sunday, but you’ll see us tomorrow morning too. Like hell we’re missing your cosplay contest debut, woman.

Well, fuck. Time to wet yet another washcloth and claim even more tissues.

These were different tears, though. Happy tears.

She had a community now—communities, actually; plural—and she didn’t need to hide anything from any of them. Not at work, not online, not anywhere. They knew her and accepted her, exactly as she was. They wanted to support her.

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.

Email would have to suffice, because he didn’t think he could muster the right words out loud.

In the end, he kept the letter straightforward. Which didn’t mean they’d understand what he was trying to tell them. But it needed to be said, regardless, because he owed the declaration to himself as well as them.

The closing paragraph summed everything up, as his mother had said it should when they’d spent endless hours crafting essays that were never, ever good enough.

I love you both. Nevertheless, if you can’t respect me or my work, I don’t want to visit you anymore. I’ve been successful because I’ve been lucky, yes, but also because I’ve worked hard and because I’m good at my job. I’m proud of what I do and what I’ve accomplished. I’m especially proud to have achieved so much despite the complication of my dyslexia. If you can’t feel the same, I’ll understand, but I won’t subject myself to your disapproval any longer. If you truly love me in return, accept me as I am. If you can’t accept me as I am, maybe you need to rethink your definition of love.