Reggie’s exhausted. It’s been an excruciatingly long day, she hasn’t closed her eyes in what feels like a full 24 hours, and she knows there’s no way in hell she’ll be able to sleep past 6:00 tomorrow morning, but she can’t go to bed yet. Because it’s Ares’ birthday for another forty-five minutes, and not even the complete collapse of the only world she’s ever known will make her miss celebrating it on the actual day.

“Okay, I don’t speak for the quality of your birthday cake,” she says into the dimly lit bullpen and tosses a box of birthday cake-flavored Oreos on the table in front of Ares. “But I think you’ll really like slipping into a diabetic coma.”

READ MORE

Ares, finally horizontal after an equally long day, takes a second to blink his eyes open. He smiles, warm, because Reggie is back safe from another day in hell, but his half-awake brain does not quite comprehend what’s going on with the plastic blue package in front of him.

“Aren’t we a little low on insulin for this? And a few days early?”

Reggie rolls her eyes and finally lets herself take a seat, sinking into the metal folding chair like it's a feather mattress.

"I got stress zits trying to get back here before midnight." She pulls a nearly spent tea light from her fanny pack and carefully places it on top of the package. Look at that, this is basically a normal birthday. “If it's the wrong day then we're changing your birthday.”

“As long as you don’t add any years. I want to earn those.” Ares sits up from the threadbare sofa he’d chosen as a temporary bed between calls in a sort of warped sit-up, since he’s about to eat an Oreo and all. He really had forgotten about his birthday, and it’s strange to be confronted with this all now. He turns large, concerned eyes up to hers, to search for damage more than stress zits. Nothing apparent.

“You better not have traded anything good for this.”

"Just some jewelry," Reggie says with a shrugs and fishes half a matchbook out of her bag. "Not much use these days."

Which isn't a lie. But for some reason it's easier to focus on lighting the candle and presenting it to Ares to blow out than it is to look him in the face when talking.

“Reg.” He chides, mentally trying to remember all the jewelry she had. She took her father’s wedding ring, he knows, after he died. He makes a point to remember to look for it later, or get it back somehow.

“For some Oreos that were never even good? You’re at least making half the wish.” He takes the candle with the ease of someone used to burns, and holds it stubbornly between the two of them.

“What?” Reggie folds her arms and kicks her feet up on another chair, pointedly pivoting away from the candle. “Am I going to the opera soon or something?”

Ares just as pointedly moves to sit on the sofa arm to face Reggie and holds it out, narrowing his eyes a little. Come on. Wish.

“What if I said yeah, I bought you Whitney tickets for Christmas in July. Surprise.”

“That would be terrible, because I sold my whimsy to buy you these Oreos,” Reggie deadpans.

“Then they weren’t worth that much. I can’t feel so bad. Blow this out, too.” Ares demands, threatening likely not for the first time to light the station on fire but jabbing out the candle like it isn’t aflame.

Reggie’s face cracks, and she barks out a laugh that’s just a little too loud and unrestrained. “You dick.” She punches Ares in the arm, and looks past the candle. “I was so fucking whimsical I got a six-pack of Cokes, too, just so you know, and if you don’t make your wish already I’m drinking them all myself.”

“Ow.” Ares says automatically, rubbing his arm more out of reflex than any pain. “Fine. Okay. For the need for caffeine…”

But caffeine and sugar isn’t what he wishes for. It’s so Reggie gets her jewelry back, and lives to see her next birthday. He can use his birthday gift on her and she never has to know. It’s time to blow the candle out anyway, so he extinguishes it in a little puff of smoke, and peels the plastic off the top of the Oreos without further preamble.

“But if you don’t help me eat these, I really will die, you know.”

The cookies on the table are a little worse for wear, half broken and probably stale, and the soda cans sitting in a cooler under the table are dented and dusty. Something about the whole scene puts Reggie's teeth on edge and makes her heart beat a little too fast and it's terrible. It's uncomfortable and uncontrolled and wildly unproductive.

So she punches Ares in the arm again. “Sucker,” she hisses like she just cheated him out of a jackpot, and shoves an entire Oreo in her mouth.

Having been friends with Reggie for literally half a lifetime,now, Ares knows when and how to take this kind of punch with a smile. Even when he’d much rather be awfully annoying and pull her in for a hug. He instead chooses to raise his hand and bop her on the head like a misbehaving kitten, stepping a pace back to eat a birthday Oreo in peace.

They’re good. The back of his teeth ache a little, but they are. “Thank you. For not making everyone sing.” And everything else. They can start there.

“I can still make it happen, don’t test me, Makepeace.” Reggie swats ineffectually at him and sneers through cookie-covered teeth. “But,” she plucks another Oreo and a bonus swipe of creme from the crumpled sleeve. “Thanks for living another year, I guess.”

“Sure didn’t try very hard at it.” This is supposed to be an airy joke, almost a brag, but he realizes his mistake the second it’s out of his mouth. None of them are promised birthdays anymore. He doesn’t let regret show, but does pluck another Oreo out of the sleeve, knocking against Reggie’s selection to steal some of the creme.

“But now I do have to last til at least your next. For payback purposes.”

“Yeah, and you know if you don’t,” she yawns, no longer able to keep that creeping exhaustion fully at bay, “I’ll fucking kill you.”

“And I’d absolutely never give you that satisfaction.” Ares grins, standing and throwing an obnoxious arm around his best friend’s shoulders. That’s a promise he can keep, this year.

“Birthday’s over. You gotta sleep.”

Sleep doesn’t offer much respite these days – Reggie’s brain doesn’t shut down without a fight, and if she remembers her dreams it’s because they were extra stressful that night. Unfortunately, their mortal shells required it from time to time. And she couldn’t keep Ares and Dylan and everyone else at Prescott safe and alive if she was barely conscious.

“Yeah, yeah, you ‘n’ me both,” she yawns again and bumps her shoulder against Ares. “Just don’t forget to floss first. You got a lil something in your teeth.”