Enigmatic: Sapphire City Supers

Chapter 27: Let's Talk About It

**A/N**

I don't usually do these first, but I'd like to say SORRY to anyone who's been waiting ages for this update! I finally caught up to what I'd had written and now I have to write before I can update and, well, the holidays, amiright? I'll do my very best to keep up from here on out. Love to you all, you poetic land mermaids!

** And now....**

*

"I still can hardly believe it," I said a little while later once we'd resurfaced.

"What I can't believe," Ewan added with a little guilty smile, "is that you're not furious with me. I have a lot to answer for." 

He was dressed as himself now, in a t-shirt and jeans. As it turned out, clothes worked as part of his camouflaging, so he was able to ripple in between his Enigma kit and regular clothes like different skins. A handy trick, really.

"Luckily for you, my happiness outweighs my righteous rage. Which is not to say I don't have a lot of questions for you to answer." I leaned my chin on my bent knee and narrowed my eyes at him.

"I promise you that I've planned, worried, and dreamed about telling you for basically as long as this has been going on." The guilty look was still there.

"Why didn't you tell me that first time when you came to save me from the stabby man?" I put a teasing emphasis on 'save'.

"Ugh, don't remind me how much you didn't need me," he dragged a hand over his face in embarrassment. "I had no idea of the things you could do. And to answer your question, you made it plenty clear how you felt about Supers and you can be scary as hell, in case you didn't know." He answered my grin with one of his own. "I haven't been a Super for very long; it was the amulet and the tablet that awakened my dormant abilities in the first place, and I was still feeling a little insecure then. I didn't know what else to do, and well, it was you." He said it with such meaning that my heart began to thud.

"How long have you ... " I trailed off, meeting his eyes, unsure of how to phrase it.

"Known that I was crazy about you?" he finished, looking a little vulnerable, eyes full of warmth.

My heart stopped a little. All I could do was nod.

"I'm not sure when I realised it, exactly. Maybe years. Maybe it crept up on me until knew I was hopeless." This time he smiled ruefully at me. "Especially after we 'met' and started spending even more time together. I guess I saw an opportunity for a fresh start of sorts with you, and before I knew it, I was in too deep, and I couldn't figure out how to tell you."

"It's weird to think that all that time, I've been talking to you and getting to know you all over again," I mused. Glancing at him from the corner of my eyes, I added, "you know, I said I'd never get involved with another Super again."

"I always thought Greg was a moron. It's probably not surprising that I thought the same thing about Cobalt. You have no idea how hard it was not to confront him after you told me what really happened between you two, but I knew it wasn't my place." His pained expression made me giggle, for some reason. It was all a lot to deal with.

"How did I not realise who you were sooner? I guess I wasn't protecting Greg's identity after all, since you would have known immediately. I'd say I'm embarrassed to have bared my humiliation to you and not to some stranger, but I think I'm glad instead that you understand what it's taken for me to come to terms with you." Vulnerability wasn't really an overly comfortable feeling for me.