darker_london | All you need is love! (Abby, Flynn)

Abby was wearing pink flannel pajamas covered in little sleeping pigs. And she was not ashamed!! In fact, she was wandering her house with no fear of being seen. Of course, it was after midnight, and the chance of her being seen was quite slight. She'd just have to wear them to breakfast the next day too!

As Abby was walking past one of the reception rooms, she spied a flickering light that could only mean someone was watching the telly in there. She ducked through the door and cocked her head to the side when she caught sight of Flynn sitting there, curled up on the sofa, staring straight forward at a silent television, looking slightly confused. "You know...you might get more meaning out of it if you turned the sound on...?"

Flynn looked up, slightly alarmed. And then his expression morphed into something terribly ashamed. "Abby! I'm sorry!" And he quickly clicked the telly off, bathing the room in darkness, lit only by the streetlamps outside.

Abby shook her head and she headed over towards him. "No! No, Honey, there's nothing to apologise for."

"I didn't wake you up?"

Abby cocked her head to the side. "You had the telly muted, Darling. How could you have woken me up?"

"Er...I don't know..."

Abby gave Flynn a sweet smile which he couldn't really see, and she sat down beside him. "Flynn, you didn't wake me up. I'm just restless. Worried about nephews mostly." Flynn gave Abby a sympathetic look and she smiled and wrapped an arm around him. "I missed you, Flynn." He'd moved in here and then she'd hardly seen him since the tour started. But she really enjoyed his presence.

Flynn looked incredibly pleased. "You did?!"

"Of course I did! The house was really quiet without you and Spectre here, and I missed you both very much."

"I sort of...thought you might miss Spectre but uhm...be annoyed with me for...taking him away..." Flynn looked quite shy at that.

"Oh, Sweetheart. That's not how Abby works." She smiled at him and cuddled him closer to her and Flynn rather enjoyed that. A few months earlier and he'd be running for the door. Not anymore. Instead he leaned against her and he looked up at her with soulful eyes.

"Really?"

"You can't think like that when you have a big family. Being jealous because someone's talking or spending time with someone else...you'd be jealous all the time. And Spectre's career came before he moved in here anyway. It makes him happy. And he was born to do it. I want him to have that so very much. And you too, Flynn. You very much too. I'm so grateful you had Spectre to understand the things you were going through. I don't resent the time you've spent together in the least. I'm thankful for it."

Flynn was beginning to feel incredibly shy, but in that 'oh dear, look how lucky I am' way. "Thank you, Abby."

"Any time, Cutie. Hungry?"

"Sort of always." Flynn said cutely. And it was true. He was making up for six years of being unable to eat anything he wanted whenever he wanted.

"Come on. Down to the kitchen, I have ice cream!" Abby bounced off the sofa, pulling a delighted Flynn with her.

And that was how Flynn and Abby wound up sitting on the kitchen counters wrapped in blankets facing each other, each with a carton of ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other. And they were talking about boys. "Stuart does this thing where he looks like he's just so happy and surprised to be getting laid..." Abby said, swirling her spoon around a little in the ice cream.

Flynn laughed. "He probably is. I would be too if I'd spent so much time being a monk..."

"Yeah..." Abby looked thoughtful. "Somehow I can't see Thomas doing that though." She licked the ice cream from her spoon and she closed her eyes in momentary frozen treat ecstasy.

Flynn choked on his ice cream and he looked up at Abby. "Thomas was a monk!?"

"I know, right? He really was. And a good one too. Even if he did get in trouble a lot. He was a believer. That's really the only thing that's changed. His faith. Well...and the sex. But he's always been a wonderful man."

"Lucky for Spectre and Mary, eh?" Flynn wiggled his eyebrows.

Abby giggled. "I guess so!"

"Quinn doesn't do that kind of thing. That...greedy thing. He's more laid back about it really. Even when we were apart for a long time. He kissed me, and that was sort of...'I need you now' kissing. But everything else he takes his time with. It's just...nice, you know? Everything about him is nice." Flynn said wistfully.

Hearing Flynn talk about his relationship with Quinn made Abby grin so wide it felt like her face might break. "Eeeei! You two make me so happy!"

"He makes me happy too. I miss him. That's why I'm still awake. We decided we should probably sleep in our own houses because...they're our own houses. But I don't like it. I miss him and the bed's all empty and blah."

Abby frowned. "I'm sorry, Flynn. I know what you mean, I hated it when Stuart went home too." That was, of course, why he'd moved in. And was currently upstairs in Abby's bed, completely unaware that she was awake, as he dreamed about backpacking across the Serengeti with a dwarf in his knapsack. "It sucks."

Flynn nodded. "Yeah. But it means that I get to have the butterflies in my stomach when I know I'm going to see him again. That excitement and longing and looking forward to it and stuff. I like that. It make me feel...I don't know...young."

"You are young." Abby said, taking another bite of her chocolate fudge ice cream.

"I haven't felt young in years." Flynn said simply. "I've felt old and miserable and mired in a pit of self-loathing. Like there was no part of me worth saving. And I honestly don't know what kept me going, besides a determination not to let my parents' actions kill me. I didn't want them to have that satisfaction. Not that I think they know. They probably assume I am dead. Unless they saw me on the news because of that Rome shit, but they were never big on current events. They were more interested in being brainwashed."

Abby wasn't used to hearing Flynn go in to so much detail about his past. His relationship with Quinn and his time spent with the band really had helped him along in amazing ways. She was proud of him. "Well you are worth saving. Absolutely. I hold you amoung my best friends. And I'm glad the foolish actions of your parents didn't lead to anything worse than the terrible things you went through. It was a tragedy, but one you've turned around so brilliantly. And I'm so grateful you got that chance, and that you took it. You do great things, Flynn. That determination has gotten you far."

"Love has gotten me farther..." Flynn said simply, loving the things Abby said about him because she was brilliant, and if she said them, they had to be true.

Abby grinned. "Oh, I certainly agree with that. When I moved here...I didn't have any friends. Not really. I had my family but...we were close, yes. But I'd sort of drifted from them as well. I was closed off. Completely. And then I came here and I rekindled my friendships with Peter and Stuart...I met Spectre and Renee and Tamm. I suddenly had friends. And I wondered how I'd gotten along without them. You see I...I had taken Thomas's death quite hard. Oh crap, you knew about that right?!"

Flynn nodded. "Deirdre told me. Though I was trying not to think about it..." Mostly because it was weird to be friends with a dead guy. Weirder that he'd hit on one. And Spectre and Mary slept with him. Weird, weird, weird.

Abby sighed in relief. "Well...yeah, it's weird but when he's around, he's amazing enough to make you forget. Anyway...I took that badly. As you do. And then I had this relationship...it was like your friend Autumn. My fiance hit me and I couldn't leave. Because my father had left my mother and that left our family in dire straits. So I believed that if I left, I would somehow be weak...anyway, he very nearly killed me and I did leave then. But I wasn't the same. Not until now. A lot of people say that London is such a dark place right now. But...god...it's the best place for me to be. There's a lot of horrible things here. Bad things happen sometimes. But just...look at the people. They make everything worth it. Love very definitely has gotten me farther than anything else could have."

"That's what we're showing Autumn too. I hope, anyway."

"You are. She couldn't be in better hands. Really." Abby believed that from the very bottom of her heart.

There was something Flynn felt he had to say. Something he still had a bit of trouble with, but he felt it. And he wanted to say it. "Abby?" Flynn was staring directly in to his ice cream carton as he addressed her, and that made Abby raise her eyebrows.

"Yes, Flynn?"

"I love you."

Abby's lips curled slowly into a smile and then she put her carton down and she slid off the counter and crossed the small distance between them. She didn't want to make too big of a deal out of that because she felt like that was saying 'hey, you're not emotionally stunted anymore, congratualtions!!' so she just wrapped her arms around him and when he gratefully did the same, she whispered against his shoulder, "I love you too, Flynn. You'll never be without it again. I promise."

That promise was the best thing in the world. Flynn buried his face in his friend's hair and he grinned. "Neither will you, Abby. Thank you."