Page 146 of Falcon’s Forever

He kisses me at the door like it's any other weekday, he tells me he'll see me for lunch and has no idea that half the compound is already gathering.

I get to the clubhouse before he does, I slip in through the back with Maggie and Sarah, who both insisted on coming even though neither of them has any official reason to be here. Emily's there too, she’s at the transition house now full-time but never far when it matters, standing near the bar in her ridiculous yellow-adjacent everything, her arms crossed like she's guarding the place.

"You look nervous," Sarah tells me.

"I'm not nervous."

"You're doing the thing with your hands." She knows me better than I know myself.

I stop doing the thing with my hands.

Vulture comes out of his office right as Falcon walks through the front door, and I watch the exact moment Falcon clocks the room, half the club standing around instead of scattered through their usual morning business and he understands something's happening that isn't Church.

"What is this?" he says, looking between Vulture and the room.

"Church," Vulture says. "Just not the kind with a table."

He crosses to the desk in the corner, opens the top drawer, and takes out the cut that's been sitting folded inside it for six weeks. I watch Falcon's whole body go still at the sight of it.

"Six weeks ago, I told you that you don't get handed responsibility back in the same hour you lose the right to carry it," Vulture says, loud enough for the room to hear, amd quiet enough that it still feels like it's just the two of them. "You didn't argue. You didn't ask when. You just showed up, every single day since, and did whatever ugly, unglamorous thing this club needed done, without a title attached to make it feel like less than it was. That's the only way anybody earns this back. Not by being sorry. By being useful, quietly, for as long as it takes, with no guarantee there's a patch waiting at the end of it."

Falcon doesn't say anything. I don't think he can.

"You went to Carrot's mother three weeks ago," Vulture continues, and the room goes very still at the name, the way it still does every time. "You stood in her living room and told her the truth about her son, all of it, the part that was your fault and the part that wasn't, and you let her be as angry at you as she needed to be, and you didn't run from a single second of it. That's not something I asked for in exchange for this. But it's the same thing this patch is supposed to mean, and you already proved you understand it without needing the leather to make you do it."

He holds the cut out.

"Falcon stays VP," Vulture says to the room this time, not just to him. "Not because six weeks erases what happened. But because he showed every man in this club what it looks like to lose something and rebuild it honestly instead of demanding it back."

Nobody claps. This isn't that kind of room. But Ice Pick steps forward first and claps him once on the shoulder, hard, and brotherly, and Zip, who's been carrying the acting VP weight for six weeks without complaint, hands over a folder of everything he's been tracking like he's genuinely relieved to be rid of it, and underneath the relief there's real pride in his face too, the kind that doesn't need words.

Falcon takes the cut. His hands aren't quite steady when he puts it on, and I don't think anyone in the room is going to mention that, because I'm not entirely steady myself, watching him.

His eyes find mine across the room before he's even finished settling the leather over his shoulders. I don't smile. Neither does he. It isn't that kind of moment, but something passes between us that doesn't need a smile to mean everything.

"Digger," Vulture says, breaking the weight of it before it gets too heavy for a Wednesday morning. "You're up for full patch review next month. Try not to get shot between now and then."

"No promises," Digger says, and the room finally laughs, and the moment loosens enough for everyone to breathe again.

Falcon crosses the room to me. He doesn't say anything, he just takes my hand, and I let him. We stand there while Harrier starts loudly organizing a celebration lunch nobody asked for and Zip argues with him about whether tacos count as a celebration or a Wednesday.

"You knew," Falcon says quietly, just for me.

"I knew."

"You let me walk in here blind." He’s not mad with me.

"I let you walk in here honest." I squeeze his hand. "You earned every second of not knowing what was coming. That's kind of the point."

He looks down at the patch on his own chest like he's still not sure it's real. "I don't know what to do with this."

"Wear it. Keep doing exactly what you've been doing. That's the whole instruction manual."

His mouth curves, small, real. "You're bossy."

"You used to like that."

"I still do," he says it quietly enough that it's only for me, and something in my chest that's been carefully, deliberately closed for six weeks finally, fully opens.