[ Two long weeks came and went, stretching out, stretching the cord they'd thoughtlessly tethered to each other more and more taut.
Eventually, something must give. Or it snaps. The only two options, and wiser to allow it to snap -- but McGillis feels his resolve weaken each time he tries to commit to that option. Two weeks since they'd last spoken, since a night spent warming over, since that night spent sharing a room. The uneasy continuation of a truce that evolves in strange ways.
The memory of a thumbprint dragging against thin skin. The same spot of flesh still tingles when he thinks on it.
A new world on the horizon, status of the potential for danger unknown. He must message Gaelio.
[ Two weeks. If at all bearable, through the convenience of distraction. A considerable headcold that laid him out for a few days. A novel, consuming, and wholly exhausting application of his power (and ... frivolous). Past that week, assisting in clean-up and occupied with Julieta. The possible snap of that cord, the charged build of the air when their paths crossed within the mansion; kept barely at bay by those.
Superficial occupations for the mind, sleights of hand that could not fully or truly take his mind from where it must go. As if his mind ever strayed far, even before that night. An inextricable core, emanating and drawing.
Unsustainable.
A new world. Less known. Less certain. Less resolved.
More and more to haunt his dreams.
Communication needed, but he's surprised to feel the pleasant poke from McGillis. McGillis, reaching out.
Brittle caution restricts him to a response of equivalence.
Truce, because must kill and whatever of Fate, might no longer be able.
Warmth pervasive beneath the sheets and a weight draped over his side. ]
»Yeah.«
[ What did it change, after all, but that they no longer pinned resolution on developments external to them, revelations of Qri or their world or otherwise?
If, however, you chose to seize it...
What does McGillis choose with this, when he would do everything the same? ]
[ As Gaelio had been knocked from resolve, so had McGillis. Cobwebs shaken from ideas as old as them.
He's not sure how to process whatever happened between them, but he does know this: he can't afford to fail. If change is happening, if change leads back to fate and the fate of the world known to them ties in, he can't afford to look away.
Used to be that he couldn't afford to look. Used to be, or never was?
Even the method of communication, the method of meeting, is a decision he wrestles with. ]
»...«
[ Indecision that can be felt, heavy between their link, and so he hurries up to decide. ]
[ Tempting to draw attention to it, to taunt the rarity of McGillis's indecision. As though Gaelio had any right to targeting irresolution. As though it would accomplish anything but petty and fleeting satisfaction, a childish jab to distract from his own, more severe difficulty.
Two weeks of resuming an avoidant dance, though the steps had changed, the music, the beats. How better to end it than by deliberate proximity.
Decided, then, which should close temptation, yet it slips, the thought too prominent -- ]
»Was it a difficult choice for you? If I'm a threat to you either way, then I admit, I'm gratified.«
[ Foolish, really, as the threat's reciprocal. But he will always be a fool.
At least where Gaelio now stands provides more space for orbit than did the interior of the mansion, or the rain enclosed enclave. ]
»The beach.«
[ Moonlight bright on the tide, his thoughts wondering at the moon and its nature, given the strangeness of the island itself. Sleep often eludes or nightmares interrupt. Once early to bed, he waits longer these days. ]
[ If I'm a threat to you either way, then I admit, I'm gratified.
It's clearly meant as a jab, meant to get underneath his skin. It does, as most things about Gaelio do -- but something about the expression of gratification makes the jab unfurl once it's made a home inside of him, prickling at his skin, and deciding to attribute that to irritation with the expressed thought.
Not having all of his defenses neatly in line, in person or through telepathy, should be embarrassing. It does embarrass, a tiny amount, with Gaelio pointing it out. He can't afford to extend more effort into containing that reaction.
It flares up in a terse retort, a jumble of not-quite-irritation straining towards sarcasm, wanting to maintain, deliberate and inauthentic indifference layered like a thin film. ]
»As long as you are gratified, I can admit that it was.«
To the beach. An interesting spot to meet -- is he already there? McGillis doesn't bother to deliver an expected timeframe after that jumble, going quiet during travel. But it isn't long until he reaches him, taking to flight to reduce travel time significantly. He can move quickly, and from a bird's eye view, easily pinpoint Gaelio's location.
Within a few minutes, he's able to find him. Gaelio stands by the water's edge, a curious figure in moonlight.
Almost ghostly. A hawk swoops down to join his side and flap his wings to land. Transitioning smoothly, once he's hovering just above the ground, he changes back into man.
And turns at an angle, shifting to hold his back straight and hold wrist behind his back. ]
[ Having elicited more concession than anticipated, he ought to have left it alone, as satiated by what McGillis fails to keep apathetic, thus demonstrating the initial necessity of meeting outside of their minds.
Yet, that McGillis's mind could be disturbed by him, had been and would be still -- that he is capable of stirring near-irritation, as threat more than pest to be swatted away -- he expresses his small, hollow pleasure, a follow-up jab to make stark his awareness of the emotion palpable through the film.
Though another danger in each of these traces of McGillis's susceptibility, humanity, the same that has already undone him.
Less accustomed to McGillis's efficient utilization of his power, Gaelio had not expected the hawk, but on noting the bird's descent, understands before the transformation. Likewise keeping his focus and body directed toward the sea, Gaelio's inversion is in the placement of his arms: crossed over his chest. He does not stoop with it, back as straight.
Having already dug at him, and with a question suspended by the saturated air between them, he restrains himself from another taunt: Did you rush to me?
That it seems he did he must attribute little towards. Why walk when he could fly? ]
No.
[ Expand upon that or put an end to small talk before it could begin? ]
My nocturnal wanderings are irrelevant to the status of our truce.
[ The latter. And yet, having refrained from one taunt -- his eyes flick toward, away. ]
[ It's harder than expected to place the specific meaning or reason for Gaelio's jabs, the prior, the follow up, the one he faces down now. Layers to it, difficult to extrapolate and examine.
Desperate to know where to find him -- McGillis shifts his gaze to the corner of his vision, peeking at Gaelio, without moving any other part of himself. Curious to be curiously drawn in, to give into it.
Is it bland hatred that makes up the meal of those statements, slopped before him because Gaelio can spit nothing else out when made to speak and plan with McGillis? It must be that. Their predicament deepens uncomfortably. They continue to meet out of necessity. Yet it doesn't feel bland. A spark of a dimly lit trail, a tiny thread that can be yanked at, followed to different conclusions.
The danger in pulling at threads: he shows his interest.
Does this man think about that night as often? His vision is treated to the side of him that lacks as much scarring, by chance. He can see more than a memory, more than a ghost.
McGillis flicks his gaze away, a couple of beats later than Gaelio, out to sea. He turns his wrist in his hand behind his back. ]
Would my answer be as irrelevant to the status of our truce?
[ For a moment, they look at one another without their eyes meeting. The nature of the periphery. Yet, he senses it, or believes he does. How precarious and absurd to seek that stimulation, the stimuli of the mere possibility of McGillis's attention, his interest.
It should be bland hatred.
If not bland, then sparking into flame then inferno, but still hatred.
Gaelio is not devoid of antipathy, of that fire, but more burns. More kindling, more blazing. The difficulty, one of the chief onuses that has newly been laid upon his shoulders, how much of the other burns hotter than rancor, beginning to consume and swallow it.
The hum in that voice thrums through his ears and through him, an answering reverberation in his chest. Memory triggers with salt smell and dulcet sound. Knocking shoulders, fingers brushed in a teasing prod at side, and stealing his wine, so you've managed to get away -- have you been looking for me? ]
If the middle would bear a spectrum, then closer to the opposite.
[ Admission, or concession, or both. Both taut and quiet, voice caught along the tension of that pulled thread.
Memory, shoulder not withdrawn, leaned and lingering as he tips the glass, smiling around the rim, well, I've been waiting for you. ]
[ Admission, stringed from Gaelio as if on a wire. Closer to the opposite.
Closer to the opposite, each syllable picked through for contamination. Tension builds once more, yet again, each time they speak or linger, as unavoidable and natural as the lapping of the shore. A tic, wrist continually turning about the circle of his fingers behind his back. Once he's able to note the sound of shuffling cloth to himself, despite how quiet, he stops.
Thumb at his wrist. Pressed and pressing to a delicate spot. ]
It's in our best interests to continue it.
[ Too placid a response. He can sense it, once the words leave his mouth -- the dodge in it, the disappointment in the flat arrangement of a dull reply in air as thick as this. Side-stepping what he wants, and the very question of want, the responsibility of owning it.
As he side-stepped back then, stealing quiet, burning looks when Gaelio would tip glass further back, or was distracted by another sight or sound, or was turned at a convenient angle. All kept to himself.
McGillis, a half-human creature, does understand -- it's not the sort of reply Gaelio is interested in.
It will string them along to nowhere. ]
I want to continue it.
[ More decisive, stronger in pitch. He tilts his chin back to catch sight of a star. ]
[ More than odd salt spray fills the air, more than the moisture of truncated waters. More, too, than the remnant weight of stormy days and flood, that which leaves the temperature less chilled than before the floods (if not enough to shuck the likelihood of oncoming winter).
Each second must drag itself through the density of the air, slowed and conscious of it. Tracking the pained beating of his heart, pulled through memories he no longer trusts but cannot forget. Sound carries through well enough. Cloth at McGillis's back, movement that would suggest anxiety if he was capable of it.
Gaelio knows, if only presently through their earlier thoughts, that McGillis is capable of it.
Over him, no less, and standing now at his side, the tenor of his satisfaction changes, quavers.
Shrivels to hear best interests. As though he could feel the abrasion and quieting of his heart, feel a shutter in his eyes. Gaelio's mouth lines tight, as flat, and his teeth press but do not grind, loosing.
Our best interests. How infuriating to feel disappointed. To have put himself in a position where it remained possible, that McGillis could let him down. To want or expect more than that. Of course he would still speak like so, attached only through practical paternalism. As impersonal as Fate.
At disruptive odds with the scrap of shirt sleeve still in his pocket, with the memory of his arm and how it curled, keeping.
His jaw works, but before he can shape a hollowed retort, McGillis speaks again. ]
When Gaelio's chin snaps toward him, a jerking swivel on his neck that would give him whiplash, McGillis gazes for the stars. Unable to ease his face away, back to the sea or the sand or to follow above, Gaelio at least scrounged for composure. Feeling the tremble in his bottom lip, the spiderweb cracks over his features, amassing. Smooth them out, smooth it out.
Safer to read distance still. What did continuation mean, if the truce kept as it was? Only the agreement to not kill one another. To stave off hostility until a less and less certain future. Their truce, continued as it is, would keep a far flung orbit, where the magnitude of attraction nonetheless repelled, gravitation without speech or contact.
But that truce would be sufficiently expressed by best interests. The convenience of Gaelio's checked raged and reined back opposition. What more does McGillis say, does he say more, to speak of want?
His fingers dig into his arms, furrowing fabric, restraint against extension.
His voice, damnably, sounds hoarse. His eyes, damnably, stare directly into the sun. ]
Why?
[ Damnably, hoarse, but a strained plea bleeding through the edges. ]
I can't -- help it, either. It must continue.
[ No new confession in that, not since the rain. McGillis has heard it already: doubt as to his ability to kill him. ]
[ He can feel those eyes on him, the swiveling movement, feeling that they stay, that they burn.
If the first response, coated in all protective layers as instinct instilled in him by nature, was insufficient, this one might be too sufficient. In the throes of uncertainty with Gaelio, roads they've never been down before. Where will it end, if he continues to tread forward? What will still belong to him by the end of this tentative journey?
Continuing this pattern will set an expectation. And upon setting expectations, he can't afford to fall beneath them. Not with this person. Even small slips will be viewed with suspicion, rightly so. Pulling back after giving an inch will be far more devastating to their condition than it ever was before.
The weight of that stare, and even heavier -- the weight of a plea, questions that twist and wring at his heart. Heartless, bloodless, emptied, filled, filling.
If he doesn't answer, if he doesn't answer correctly, an avalanche will cover their freshly thawing bodies back up in snow.
McGillis keeps steady, the pause that he tends to meant to give him ample time to be careful with his response. ]
Whatever was missing before.
[ Does he want that? Would that not shackle him to another person indelibly, a sentence he can't afford to give himself? And what destruction awaits him if he chooses to shackle himself to this person, to a person he has destroyed?
His head pounds to hear his own words, the volume of his voice only just above the sound of the waves, fluttering over. ]
Past belief, past credibility, if not for every step they've taken before these sands. If not for his sleeve sopping with blood and the cradling of white space. If not for hands and wrists held. If not for the drag of an ankle and lift into arms. If not for the rain, only friend, and the room, and the bed.
McGillis only killed his enemies. McGillis killed his only friend.
Something missing, despite their affection, so he wore his cruelest mask and tugged marionette strings, and swung the blade. Unforgivable, but Gaelio wavers.
It might be that McGillis wavers, too.
If they had found it before, would Gaelio have seen? Would McGillis have held out his hand? ]
Mc--
[ In his throat, rattling exhale, strangled mute. Struck as if by thunder, by the sound itself, not the flash of jagged lightning. His heel dips into the sand, he seems to be turning. Fingers white-knuckled in his arms, then freed, lurching with the step toward McGillis, quick closure of the space between.
Fingers clenching on shoulder, wrenching McGillis toward him, forcing McGillis to face him. His other scrambles from shirt collar to chin, direction his face, look at me.
Only, once he's ensured that, releasing, fingers spasming back as if shocked, sand spraying as his feet push back, away. ]
You wouldn't say it, if you didn't mean it. Would you?
[ Swing back, forward, back, forward, needing to reach and recoiling back from the electricity of it. Forward now, right hand finding McGillis wrist, held less tight.
As if a nervous twitch, his thumb coaxes along McGillis's inner wrist. Remembering, but McGillis had slept through it. ]
You'll -- you want to work with me? To find it. To...
[ tremulous. ]
...understand one another.
[ Carta, Ein -- will they forgive him? He won't forgive himself, but
these words, he must hear, cannot forget, cannot erase. ]
He did not think himself, nor Gaelio, capable of it. Especially not Gaelio -- the more honest truth was that he'd always suspected himself capable of it. Wavering, slipping, that was precisely the danger he'd worked to avoid. But Gaelio should not have been capable of allowing McGillis's name to rattle in his voice that way. He should not be capable of any of it.
Instead they exchange it back and forth, giving inches, giving slack. Necessity born of a situation that had taken them off their violent path, but thereafter the two of them chose to continue on a new one, even admitting to a certain shared helplessness.
The most recent development. How quickly it's all unraveled, since the first decision he made to step towards this direction with this man.
When it's like this, he can't help but waver. When it's been building like this, the harsh whisper of just the beginning of his name is as heady as strong alcohol. A voice that he'd heard in his head for years, a voice long dead, but Gaelio isn't dead -- he rushes forward to prove it.
The rush of him moving in, as heady as the rest, a strong wave that jostles and drenches him. A hand pulling at his shoulder and the other guiding from under his chin. Surprise does flicker across his features, and tension ripples, but does not stop him from following Gaelio's guiding placement.
He watches as he twitches back after creating a face-to-face encounter.
Arms have already loosened from behind his back when Gaelio moves forward again and clamps onto his wrist. Not tight, not without a certain erratic energy. Surprise clings to his own countenance, bypassed by subtle crumpling in the deep pit of his eyes, when that thumbing at his wrist starts.
A delicate thing. Almost nothing. It washes him in another memory and strips off another layer of steel.
Even he can't bring himself to begin to lie anew, not when Gaelio looks to and speaks to him this way, after everything. It's courage that astounds him.
Courage that he, himself, is positive he wouldn't possess, if he ever had to face himself the way Gaelio faces him now. He's momentarily bowled over by it, the hand not held drifting up to graze over his own chest, fingers absently clutching at the material.
[ Was this truly all he ever wanted? How can he say it, and mean it, how can he -- how can he? How can he agree to work with him, after everything, in exchange for -- this?
Had he wanted it as desperately, back then? If so, how could McGillis have missed it?
Understanding each other. He hadn't thought it possible. He'd never thought it possible. He'd declared it impossible to him, only a few months ago. ]
...Gaelio.
[ Relaxing, slowly, a smile grows in place of all traces of surprise. Small and soft, and sad, his eyes morphing to match.
He slips his hand through, not to tug away.
For a split-second it might seem that way. He slips his hand through to clutch at fingers with his palm, his own fingers curling. ]
It will certainly take work.
[ Unspoken, but spoken loudly with action: yes.
He wants to find it. He wants them to be able to understand each other. It's not as if he'd never wanted that himself, only that it might be the first time he thinks it possible. It's the first time he thinks it that could even be within their grasp, if patterns continue to hold.
With that thought, warmth gathers at the back of his neck, threatening to heat over ears. ]
[ Microcosms of expression, then more, blossoming before his searching eyes. First, the tincture of surprise, finer details in the shifting of the lines around McGillis's eyes. Softer emotion that Gaelio elicits. Grasping for whatever he could within him and pulling, refusing to let go.
From their first day, McGillis has yielded unexpectedly. Permitting each and every rough seizing, every push and pull. No satisfaction in that, no accomplishment, instead a disconcerting sense of detachment from the body, that which McGillis would give to keep the more vital, internal parts preserved. (Dangers in history, dirt, bruises.) Superficial yielding, while McGillis gave less and less.
Only, he didn't give less. Inch by inch, if not by centimeter. If first for Fate, if next what had spilled from their dreams that they could not undo, could not wash away. Indelible stains, ink and blood and white. Beginning a rapid tumble toward the rain, toward McGillis's wrist in his hand, against his thumb.
Toward McGillis's hand, fluttering and braced against his chest, an endearing, soft thing.
It has not been unlike, is not unlike, the rigor of the last two years in accumulating evidence and obsessing over the puzzle, unraveling and raveling, clawing toward resolution. Here, he collects intimations of soft sentiment and obsesses, raveling and unraveling, falling into irresolution.
Sincerity in his name in that mouth, in that voice. Sincerity in his smile, in all that bleeds soft through lips and gaze. Is Gaelio foolish to believe in it, in him?
Without a doubt, he is a fool.
Alarm spikes, settles, as McGillis does not free his hand, the glide of his hand only to better align. McGillis clasps his hand, grounding affirmation in contact, and Gaelio would spin out in sheer delirium if not for the hand which tethers him.
McGillis smiles, curls his hand. Muscles tremble across Gaelio's face, a shiver focused in his jaw, an attempt that falters. Not yet a smile, but the struggle toward, too much taut and strained, but no longer a grimace, no longer a scowl or frown. Incline, not decline. McGillis curls his hand, smiles. Gaelio's fingers clutch, tighten, too hard, but less as though to break the bird's bones. More as though to hold less would see it slip through, after all. ]
Yeah.
[ Choked. Unquestionably, it will take work. His eyes burn, prickle, and a different burning in his chest. A blanket thrown over anger, over hatred, this blanket of McGillis's hand, smile, voice, but the smoke trails from beneath it, the flame not yet smothered. What he feels for McGillis might be greater, more layered, more complex than hatred, vastly and infinitely more, such that with him like this, fury falls away.
But it cannot die, because it lives on Carta, on Ein, on their rot.
But he cannot look at it, cannot see it, when gazing at McGillis and seen in turn.
Still, he does not know what he should do, what he must do (kill him, but if not a creature of only brutality, if his best friend, then it's impossible--), but he knows what he cannot help but do.
Though he blinks again the sheen in his eyes, Gaelio's voice strengthens, gaining levity. Brittle, but lifting. ]
I did tell you. I've worked hard for you from the day I met you.
[ Closer, in his mouth, to the right angle, to how his muscles should arrange, despite the protest of rust and rigor mortis. And he leans, enough for his other hand to extend, to grasp not wrist but McGillis's. Cupping over the back, then gently twisting, guiding beneath his, to loose fingers from shirt. Palm to palm, lacing, but Gaelio does not lower their hands, leaving his fingers now curved against McGillis's shirt, chest. ]
[ He's barely noticed his hand upon his chest, grasping for stability, to keep insides from spilling. He should really do a better job at maintaining, containing, knowing all the steps. Knowing how to pretend.
Having told Gaelio the truth of the matter, the one friendship that ever mattered, it feels as though he's locked himself out of spaces he used to crawl into with ease. It's not as easy to access them as it once was, not as easy to hide away in them. Having exposed that and lost that, he scratches and clutches for something in the interim -- a hand, his chest, some reassurance that he has done the correct thing.
His destined enemy, or his destined friend? If he does the correct thing now, how incorrect was he before?
What he feels for Gaelio must be as layered, as complex, known from the moment he cut him down as coldly as he had and felt eternal winter creep in his absence. Every moment that came after had taught him that he would never fully be able to escape what he'd done, nor anything that came before. The very concept of companionship had been purged forevermore in a last ditch attempt. Never again would it be allowed in the ways he'd allowed it, to lose himself to it, to ultimately lose it.
But he hadn't expected this turn off the main road. He hadn't expected falling this far simply by trying to analyze it. There's a tremble in Gaelio that he can see, felt echoed in the iron-clad grip of his hand squeezing back. His voice is choked, choking, his eyes are wet, and the scars in him must hurt. The ones inside, not out.
Or maybe it all hurts.
They may still hurt each other in the future, a distinct possibility that neither of them are fool enough to discount. Foolish as they may be.
Bright, blurring pools of blue, tense, taut, trembling. Gaelio reaffirms; he's worked hard for them, for McGillis, since the day they met.
Of course, that also hurts. Squeezing back with their hands, a shudder of an exhale, a sadder smile at those words. When Gaelio leans in, he almost wonders if he'll claw through to his heart and pluck it out, such is the strangeness of being as exposed. He leans in to guide their other pair of hands to another clasping, fingers laced and palms squeezing, McGillis inhaling with the same shaky quality as he glances down to look.
Strangely intimate sight, their hands melding together at two points.
He lets go of a huff -- "You might be the one who has to keep up." Understood, familiar, and he can be amused, but too much in the sound. Tumbling.
Despite all that's happened between them, and because he's only human after all, all this contact and honesty breeds simple human desire. Reflexive yearning for lost companionship. For him, for him. The total sum of companionship, the total sum.
And forced to face, from distances as short as this, how lonely he's been without him. Like this, unable to squirrel into denial. ]
I'm sure you'll enjoy that.
[ Strange joke, bloated with too much. McGillis tugs the hand resting by his heart in closer, still gazing at it and both intertwined.
He thumbs over a knuckle. A bit of scarring even there. ]
Watching me struggle.
[ Voice further away -- something overtakes him and he tugs up next, bringing it closer to this throat, but stops short with the movement.
Indecisive. As if he'd meant to keep moving, but can't. ]
[ It all hurts. It never stops hurting. Future hurt seems, even now, more distinct certainty than possibility.
Yet, he leans until his feet shuffle forward again, mounding sand, less and less space between them. That motion, then feeling the quiver of McGillis's exhale, his every breath, against his knuckles, then following the dip of McGillis's eyes, finding their hands. The imprint of a smile softer, pained, as he looks to this curious sight.
Palm to palm; so paired.
Gaelio does not yet lift his gaze, though drawn by the shorter, emotive exhalation. More than amused, too tangled for mere humor. It would give him pause, gives him pause. Within the knotting, enough discrete emotion to resonate.
Now lifting, slow, as his heartbeat echoes irregular in his chest. Hollow sounds, dinged metal. Not rushing to follow their hands, but trailing slow after them, feeling before he sees the placement of McGillis's thumb, the motion begun and ceased unfinished.
Gaelio recognizes indecision, so familiar as to be intimate. Comprehension breeds further inquiry: where McGillis would have taken them? Past throat, higher, yet there stalled, the heavy jest left between them. Caught in the webbing of their fingers.
The brilliance of the moon on the water darkens, the moon swept behind pendulous clouds. Gaelio seeks McGillis's eyes in the more velvet shadows, mouth more angled still, voice following the tide.
Now, drawing out, away. ]
I wonder?
[ It would be distant, even light with whimsy, but for the contagion of bloat. ]
Maybe not before. But...
[ Now, rushing in, splashing and frothy against their heels.
Gaelio lifts his fingers.
In doing so, his palm keeps snug, firm against McGillis's. Impossible to read an attempt to pry free. Instead, strange extension, brambles askew from knuckles, but with purpose: they graze. His fingertips trickle down the sidelong curve of McGillis's neck. If less deliberate, if less of a push in his wrist to help effectuate it, it might be easy to dismiss. A tick, a needed stretch, a meaningless flex as his fingers opened and closed, resettling, lacing again as soon.
[ Eyes flick up at the sound of Gaelio's voice, the quality mesmerizing, the words almost hypnotic when laid out against that specific intonation.
A hex, or a spell. Something like that. With the wounds between them still pulsating, still raw, this must be the height of foolishness. They should disentangle and begin to address the challenge analytically. It's impossible to see through to a clear goal, with how close they linger, how tight they grip without stepping past a line, without --
In the back of his mind, he's aware: the line they're careful not to cross.
It's always been that way. McGillis wouldn't, and Gaelio wouldn't. But it survived death deformed. It's been brought here and it sits between them with a vengeance, blood-stained. Cumbersome, impossible to breach, more messy than ever.
Or is it impossible?
Caught by those eyes, caught by the spell of his reply, when Gaelio stretches his fingers into a stroke (is it? an accident, or?) that lands on his neck, he can't help but flash back to the evening spent warming by the fire, breath ghosting over his skin.
He can't help but flash back to other evenings, other times, to years and years of Gaelio's constant presence. How he lingered close, but never too close. Like trying to catch feathers in the wind. Not always trying -- like feeling them brush past and watching them flutter on, understanding futility. It's always been like that, but the staying presence of fingers sweeping over his neck cannot be ignored in this hypnotic moment.
The heat building at the back of his neck spills over, spilling against touch as a tiny shiver runs up his spine. Something is different, in the settling press of his fingertips, in the smoky lidding of this man's eyes.
McGillis watches him with wider ones, a rare occurrence. He opens his mouth on a delay. ]
Maybe it's owed.
[ Struggling. A state that gives Gaelio equal ground. A starting point.
A waver at the edge of his voice. ]
Maybe it's necessary, for understanding.
[ As he speaks, he carefully frees the hand that hangs down at their sides, only to pass his palm over the back of Gaelio's and begin to stroke slowly up his arm.
[ Sand pushed. Toe of boot against toe of boot. Toes over the line drawn in the sand. Sea blue-green against darker blue sky, half-mooned.
What is it they do? What does he do, fingertips learning the texture of his neck? How close to neck he'd breathed, skin pressed to skin, there and there and there. How thin the sheet, how great then small the mattress between, how snug the arm circling waist. How like gossamer, the inner wrist against which his thumb traced a new line.
How often over the years Gaelio had looked at this man and learned not to bite his lip, and measured out his breaths. A brother, wed to his child sister. A brother, loved by the woman they'd grown alongside, the woman he'd seen struck down. Made enemy, blood and anguish filling the rift between them. Revenge, the smoke of it still clouding. He must breathe out, breathe out smoke, to clear his head of it, but it won't ever clear.
A brother, an enemy, a murderer, a traitor.
A best friend.
A man whose fingers thread, whose neck felt hot, whose palm keeps flush. Who trembles.
Years of looking at his back, his profile, of staggering heart and careful breath and leaning only as far as permitted, as was too far yet safe enough. If you'd but held out your hand, hand extracted from Gaelio's vice, and smoothing slow up his arm.
Slow, dragging, a caress that shivers through him.
It should not be possible to feel this, for the steel implanted in his spine to bend. Nor, rationally, should it have been possible to keep indecision for the duration he had. To hear brutal words, witness brutal acts, and be cut down, brutal. To hear, see, feel, die, but wonder, but seek more. Grasping for an answer, landed on with brittle and wretched difficult, snapped and wrenched away here.
Impossible, feeling what he does for McGillis, the extent of it more that he does not and cannot understand.
Impossible and insane, for breath to shudder out like this. Hypnosis or spell, for lids to lift, mirroring the roundness of McGillis's eyes, as that hand traverses his arm. Yet, keeping the curve of his mouth, sharp and relearning an old shape, if distorted by scar tissue and wreckage. ]
Will you struggle for me?
[ Murmured low, too much breathed in those words. His hand begins to disentangle from lacing. Once free, wrist tilts, fingers and palm shaping to throat. Thumb over adam's apple, and he hopes, strangely, that McGillis would swallow, let him feel it. ]
But I don't want it like that.
[ Quiet correction. His fingers do not yet squeeze. The middle stirs in the hairs at back of McGillis's neck. ]
Struggle with me.
[ Like that. Not alone. Not in the dirt. He's never wanted to stand above McGillis, towering or lording, or superior. That had not been the core of his need to deny him, and even in denial and judging him inferior as a moral creature, that creature, that man, might not exist.
That creature, that man, cannot be this one.
He wouldn't do this, if he didn't mean it.
Would he?
God, please.
To think, indeed, that humans could become so foolish.
His hand smooths up, still shaping. Cupping cheek. Toe sliding to mid-boot, noses close, his exhale not heavy but still co-mingling. Below, his fingers flex inward, and out, and his elbow bends once McGillis's hand has passed, drawing his own hand. Fingers flex again, hooking in the fabric of McGillis's shirt, index over a button. The nail only just grazes skin.
I'd have done the rest. ]
Together. That must be necessary, for understanding.
I'll take what I'm owed. You'll take what you're owed. McGillis...
[ Queer assertion in his tone wavers, dipping into tenuous doubt with that name, the only name now thrumming through him, though there should be two others. His eyes flick down, stick, only just able to fix on McGillis's mouth given how close their faces.
Breathless with doubt. No, it isn't doubt that makes him breathless. ]
[ The notion that Gaelio might find some satisfaction in extracting a portion of his revenge through this, does not make his blood run cold. That the tilt of Gaelio's mouth remains, less a proper expression of mirth and more a shape forming and reforming into something like it, pushing at a scarred visage, does not give his insides a reason to twist. That he asks:
Will you struggle for me?
That he asks and the shape of his fingers settle over throat as if to hold. McGillis hears an internal click. A whirring, his cogs responding to grease. His eyes are still larger than usual, but calm knowledge washes them out. He finds a ledge, a space to stow away; this makes sense to him. This is what makes sense to him, this is what's easy to parse. He knows how to keep his body still, how to make his face go still. He doesn't swallow, instead relaxing for Gaelio in preparation for words or actions more sinister.
What doesn't make sense:
But I don't want it like that.
As soon as it washed over him, that state of calm cracking like glass. Hair-cracks that spider up his countenance and twist the flesh between brows, twisting confusion into place.
Confusion blotted out, just as quickly, by a finger that nudges at his hairline. A request like this from someone he has wronged. Confusion blotting and a wrinkling forming about the edges of his eyes, after the same hand that had hinted at throttling journeys up to swallow his cheek. As gentle as that, palm to flesh, their boots sliding together in the sand. Their noses touch, their breathing mixes, and McGillis draws his palm up, having paused above the elbow.
On the other side of his bicep, skimming the underside of his upper arm.
Together. He breathes out, at that, at his name, and all the rest. Taking what they're owed --
Nudging forward, so that when he speaks, lips brush continuously. ]
Why not be owed more?
[ He can feel the tremble he'd elicited, and in turn, the slightest presence of a nail clipping his torso when Gaelio hooks onto the front of his shirt.
Can't help but arch hips in, a infinitesimal degree. His palms have found their way to Gaelio's shoulders by now, bracing both lines. The bottom of his lip clips the underside of Gaelio's bottom lip. As he pulls into the end of his speaking, there's a near accidental smoothing over.
Beat, beat, beat, in his ears. ]
When does the taking begin?
[ He feels as drunk as an entire bottle of wine's consumption would produce, head swimming, and words as dreamy.
But he's confident he isn't playing at this alone. Confident and nervous at the same time. The print of his index finger draws a circle at the base of a collar, over the beginnings of skin. ]
[ Terrible, and for the weighty thud of a heartbeat, terrifying: to stand so near and watch the mask smooth over that face. A placid visage as the man behind retreats. Reassuring, then, how quickly it breaks. A short assault, heart wild and ground quaking, or maybe just his wrist, just his lip. More, for security's sake, he wants more of that furrow, that crinkling, hairline fractures. Wants to dig his fingernails between the cracks and pick free each fragment, exposing the truth beneath, soft emotion, soft skin, not stone.
Soft lips, feathering against his lips. McGillis breathes out and Gaelio breathes him in.
Difficult to think, to parse, to understand, when McGillis speaks against him like that. The hush of his words, the breath needed to enunciate each, passing between Gaelio's lips. Words that settle on his tongue and taste like more than debt, more than truce.
Difficult to understand anything but the contact, but what McGillis must want as sorely as he does, to have tilted into this. Inexplicable and impossible, that he would, that Gaelio would. Killer and killed.
A near pull, a near press of his bottom lip. Gaelio had wanted it of McGillis; instead, he swallows. Pupils blown out, blowing out, the clouds thick over the moon and sprawled wide across the sky. It won't resurface soon. Gaelio may never resurface.
Hips below, he's too aware. Hands on shoulders, he's too aware. Pad of finger rounding skin.
Retorts lost in his mouth, displaced from tongue by those words breathed in. Can we lay claim to more? Is it possible, are they capable, is it fair? Or, absurd and taunting, the notion of swinging back, mouth more cruel than mischievous, needing to cough up bile for Carta, Almiria, Ein, but unable to, feigning it, and inviting a later development. Soon. As though Fate had more yet to show them, as if they do not stand here with it passed between their mouths.
Because they breathe it already, he cannot swing away.
His eyes swing instead, mouth to eyes, eyes to mouth. Unable to hear himself breathe, but able to feel the irregularity with which it leaves him.
Only one word can form, dizzy and sloppy on his tongue, contained in a single syllable. ]
Now.
[ His palm firms on cheek, his fingers curl tighter in fabric, pulling. Gaelio needs only angle by increments to seal their mouths together. He angles. A breeze lifts, from sea or woods, he's unsure, though it gives peaks to the tide and rustles in distant leaves. It tickles through air, wafts bangs, knocks McGillis's against Gaelio's cheek.
Something in his chest, organ and muscle, rupturing to pulp.
But he kisses McGillis with tentative, quick precision. The small shocks of each brush a longer, electrifying jolt, immediately overwhelming. He won't ever resurface, and the certainty of that angles him back, rushes open eyes that must have closed, terror surging back with the need to confirm McGillis's expression, to see more than stone. ]
Unless you disagree.
[ Intended steady, even fluid, but rippling. Needing. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Eventually, something must give. Or it snaps. The only two options, and wiser to allow it to snap -- but McGillis feels his resolve weaken each time he tries to commit to that option. Two weeks since they'd last spoken, since a night spent warming over, since that night spent sharing a room. The uneasy continuation of a truce that evolves in strange ways.
The memory of a thumbprint dragging against thin skin. The same spot of flesh still tingles when he thinks on it.
A new world on the horizon, status of the potential for danger unknown. He must message Gaelio.
whoa
]my love
i've hungered for
»Gaelio.«
[ startin with a lil poke ]
no subject
Superficial occupations for the mind, sleights of hand that could not fully or truly take his mind from where it must go. As if his mind ever strayed far, even before that night. An inextricable core, emanating and drawing.
Unsustainable.
A new world. Less known. Less certain. Less resolved.
More and more to haunt his dreams.
Communication needed, but he's surprised to feel the pleasant poke from McGillis. McGillis, reaching out.
Brittle caution restricts him to a response of equivalence.
my darling
]your touch
»McGillis.«
no subject
Now how to word whatever it is he wants to say... ]
»It's been some time. We should discuss the status of our truce before our coven moves into the new world.«
no subject
Truce, because must kill and whatever of Fate, might no longer be able.
Warmth pervasive beneath the sheets and a weight draped over his side. ]
»Yeah.«
[ What did it change, after all, but that they no longer pinned resolution on developments external to them, revelations of Qri or their world or otherwise?
If, however, you chose to seize it...
What does McGillis choose with this, when he would do everything the same? ]
»Like this?«
[ Or in person. ]
no subject
He's not sure how to process whatever happened between them, but he does know this: he can't afford to fail. If change is happening, if change leads back to fate and the fate of the world known to them ties in, he can't afford to look away.
Used to be that he couldn't afford to look. Used to be, or never was?
Even the method of communication, the method of meeting, is a decision he wrestles with. ]
»...«
[ Indecision that can be felt, heavy between their link, and so he hurries up to decide. ]
»In person. I'll go to you.«
[ the unspoken: coordinates pls ]
no subject
Two weeks of resuming an avoidant dance, though the steps had changed, the music, the beats. How better to end it than by deliberate proximity.
Decided, then, which should close temptation, yet it slips, the thought too prominent -- ]
»Was it a difficult choice for you? If I'm a threat to you either way, then I admit, I'm gratified.«
[ Foolish, really, as the threat's reciprocal. But he will always be a fool.
At least where Gaelio now stands provides more space for orbit than did the interior of the mansion, or the rain enclosed enclave. ]
»The beach.«
[ Moonlight bright on the tide, his thoughts wondering at the moon and its nature, given the strangeness of the island itself. Sleep often eludes or nightmares interrupt. Once early to bed, he waits longer these days. ]
1/2
It's clearly meant as a jab, meant to get underneath his skin. It does, as most things about Gaelio do -- but something about the expression of gratification makes the jab unfurl once it's made a home inside of him, prickling at his skin, and deciding to attribute that to irritation with the expressed thought.
Not having all of his defenses neatly in line, in person or through telepathy, should be embarrassing. It does embarrass, a tiny amount, with Gaelio pointing it out. He can't afford to extend more effort into containing that reaction.
It flares up in a terse retort, a jumble of not-quite-irritation straining towards sarcasm, wanting to maintain, deliberate and inauthentic indifference layered like a thin film. ]
»As long as you are gratified, I can admit that it was.«
no subject
Moving on.
To the beach. An interesting spot to meet -- is he already there? McGillis doesn't bother to deliver an expected timeframe after that jumble, going quiet during travel. But it isn't long until he reaches him, taking to flight to reduce travel time significantly. He can move quickly, and from a bird's eye view, easily pinpoint Gaelio's location.
Within a few minutes, he's able to find him. Gaelio stands by the water's edge, a curious figure in moonlight.
Almost ghostly. A hawk swoops down to join his side and flap his wings to land. Transitioning smoothly, once he's hovering just above the ground, he changes back into man.
And turns at an angle, shifting to hold his back straight and hold wrist behind his back. ]
Do you often spend evenings at the shore?
no subject
[ Having elicited more concession than anticipated, he ought to have left it alone, as satiated by what McGillis fails to keep apathetic, thus demonstrating the initial necessity of meeting outside of their minds.
Yet, that McGillis's mind could be disturbed by him, had been and would be still -- that he is capable of stirring near-irritation, as threat more than pest to be swatted away -- he expresses his small, hollow pleasure, a follow-up jab to make stark his awareness of the emotion palpable through the film.
Though another danger in each of these traces of McGillis's susceptibility, humanity, the same that has already undone him.
Less accustomed to McGillis's efficient utilization of his power, Gaelio had not expected the hawk, but on noting the bird's descent, understands before the transformation. Likewise keeping his focus and body directed toward the sea, Gaelio's inversion is in the placement of his arms: crossed over his chest. He does not stoop with it, back as straight.
Having already dug at him, and with a question suspended by the saturated air between them, he restrains himself from another taunt: Did you rush to me?
That it seems he did he must attribute little towards. Why walk when he could fly? ]
No.
[ Expand upon that or put an end to small talk before it could begin? ]
My nocturnal wanderings are irrelevant to the status of our truce.
[ The latter. And yet, having refrained from one taunt -- his eyes flick toward, away. ]
Unless you're desperate to know where to find me.
no subject
Desperate to know where to find him -- McGillis shifts his gaze to the corner of his vision, peeking at Gaelio, without moving any other part of himself. Curious to be curiously drawn in, to give into it.
Is it bland hatred that makes up the meal of those statements, slopped before him because Gaelio can spit nothing else out when made to speak and plan with McGillis? It must be that. Their predicament deepens uncomfortably. They continue to meet out of necessity. Yet it doesn't feel bland. A spark of a dimly lit trail, a tiny thread that can be yanked at, followed to different conclusions.
The danger in pulling at threads: he shows his interest.
Does this man think about that night as often? His vision is treated to the side of him that lacks as much scarring, by chance. He can see more than a memory, more than a ghost.
McGillis flicks his gaze away, a couple of beats later than Gaelio, out to sea. He turns his wrist in his hand behind his back. ]
Would my answer be as irrelevant to the status of our truce?
[ Ever so careful. ]
Or exactly the opposite?
[ A considering hum, a level tone. ]
Perhaps somewhere in the middle.
no subject
It should be bland hatred.
If not bland, then sparking into flame then inferno, but still hatred.
Gaelio is not devoid of antipathy, of that fire, but more burns. More kindling, more blazing. The difficulty, one of the chief onuses that has newly been laid upon his shoulders, how much of the other burns hotter than rancor, beginning to consume and swallow it.
The hum in that voice thrums through his ears and through him, an answering reverberation in his chest. Memory triggers with salt smell and dulcet sound. Knocking shoulders, fingers brushed in a teasing prod at side, and stealing his wine, so you've managed to get away -- have you been looking for me? ]
If the middle would bear a spectrum, then closer to the opposite.
[ Admission, or concession, or both. Both taut and quiet, voice caught along the tension of that pulled thread.
Memory, shoulder not withdrawn, leaned and lingering as he tips the glass, smiling around the rim, well, I've been waiting for you. ]
What would you have it be? Our truce.
no subject
Closer to the opposite, each syllable picked through for contamination. Tension builds once more, yet again, each time they speak or linger, as unavoidable and natural as the lapping of the shore. A tic, wrist continually turning about the circle of his fingers behind his back. Once he's able to note the sound of shuffling cloth to himself, despite how quiet, he stops.
Thumb at his wrist. Pressed and pressing to a delicate spot. ]
It's in our best interests to continue it.
[ Too placid a response. He can sense it, once the words leave his mouth -- the dodge in it, the disappointment in the flat arrangement of a dull reply in air as thick as this. Side-stepping what he wants, and the very question of want, the responsibility of owning it.
As he side-stepped back then, stealing quiet, burning looks when Gaelio would tip glass further back, or was distracted by another sight or sound, or was turned at a convenient angle. All kept to himself.
McGillis, a half-human creature, does understand -- it's not the sort of reply Gaelio is interested in.
It will string them along to nowhere. ]
I want to continue it.
[ More decisive, stronger in pitch. He tilts his chin back to catch sight of a star. ]
I can't help but want to continue it.
1/2
Each second must drag itself through the density of the air, slowed and conscious of it. Tracking the pained beating of his heart, pulled through memories he no longer trusts but cannot forget. Sound carries through well enough. Cloth at McGillis's back, movement that would suggest anxiety if he was capable of it.
Gaelio knows, if only presently through their earlier thoughts, that McGillis is capable of it.
Over him, no less, and standing now at his side, the tenor of his satisfaction changes, quavers.
Shrivels to hear best interests. As though he could feel the abrasion and quieting of his heart, feel a shutter in his eyes. Gaelio's mouth lines tight, as flat, and his teeth press but do not grind, loosing.
Our best interests. How infuriating to feel disappointed. To have put himself in a position where it remained possible, that McGillis could let him down. To want or expect more than that. Of course he would still speak like so, attached only through practical paternalism. As impersonal as Fate.
At disruptive odds with the scrap of shirt sleeve still in his pocket, with the memory of his arm and how it curled, keeping.
His jaw works, but before he can shape a hollowed retort, McGillis speaks again. ]
no subject
When Gaelio's chin snaps toward him, a jerking swivel on his neck that would give him whiplash, McGillis gazes for the stars. Unable to ease his face away, back to the sea or the sand or to follow above, Gaelio at least scrounged for composure. Feeling the tremble in his bottom lip, the spiderweb cracks over his features, amassing. Smooth them out, smooth it out.
Safer to read distance still. What did continuation mean, if the truce kept as it was? Only the agreement to not kill one another. To stave off hostility until a less and less certain future. Their truce, continued as it is, would keep a far flung orbit, where the magnitude of attraction nonetheless repelled, gravitation without speech or contact.
But that truce would be sufficiently expressed by best interests. The convenience of Gaelio's checked raged and reined back opposition. What more does McGillis say, does he say more, to speak of want?
His fingers dig into his arms, furrowing fabric, restraint against extension.
His voice, damnably, sounds hoarse. His eyes, damnably, stare directly into the sun. ]
Why?
[ Damnably, hoarse, but a strained plea bleeding through the edges. ]
I can't -- help it, either. It must continue.
[ No new confession in that, not since the rain. McGillis has heard it already: doubt as to his ability to kill him. ]
But what do you want it to be?
no subject
If the first response, coated in all protective layers as instinct instilled in him by nature, was insufficient, this one might be too sufficient. In the throes of uncertainty with Gaelio, roads they've never been down before. Where will it end, if he continues to tread forward? What will still belong to him by the end of this tentative journey?
Continuing this pattern will set an expectation. And upon setting expectations, he can't afford to fall beneath them. Not with this person. Even small slips will be viewed with suspicion, rightly so. Pulling back after giving an inch will be far more devastating to their condition than it ever was before.
The weight of that stare, and even heavier -- the weight of a plea, questions that twist and wring at his heart. Heartless, bloodless, emptied, filled, filling.
If he doesn't answer, if he doesn't answer correctly, an avalanche will cover their freshly thawing bodies back up in snow.
McGillis keeps steady, the pause that he tends to meant to give him ample time to be careful with his response. ]
Whatever was missing before.
[ Does he want that? Would that not shackle him to another person indelibly, a sentence he can't afford to give himself? And what destruction awaits him if he chooses to shackle himself to this person, to a person he has destroyed?
His head pounds to hear his own words, the volume of his voice only just above the sound of the waves, fluttering over. ]
If neither of us can help it, we must find that.
no subject
Past belief, past credibility, if not for every step they've taken before these sands. If not for his sleeve sopping with blood and the cradling of white space. If not for hands and wrists held. If not for the drag of an ankle and lift into arms. If not for the rain, only friend, and the room, and the bed.
McGillis only killed his enemies. McGillis killed his only friend.
Something missing, despite their affection, so he wore his cruelest mask and tugged marionette strings, and swung the blade. Unforgivable, but Gaelio wavers.
It might be that McGillis wavers, too.
If they had found it before, would Gaelio have seen? Would McGillis have held out his hand? ]
Mc--
[ In his throat, rattling exhale, strangled mute. Struck as if by thunder, by the sound itself, not the flash of jagged lightning. His heel dips into the sand, he seems to be turning. Fingers white-knuckled in his arms, then freed, lurching with the step toward McGillis, quick closure of the space between.
Fingers clenching on shoulder, wrenching McGillis toward him, forcing McGillis to face him. His other scrambles from shirt collar to chin, direction his face, look at me.
Only, once he's ensured that, releasing, fingers spasming back as if shocked, sand spraying as his feet push back, away. ]
McGillis.
[ Ragged, rasped. Everything smoothed out, now crumpled, contorted, breaking. ]
You wouldn't say it, if you didn't mean it. Would you?
[ Swing back, forward, back, forward, needing to reach and recoiling back from the electricity of it. Forward now, right hand finding McGillis wrist, held less tight.
As if a nervous twitch, his thumb coaxes along McGillis's inner wrist. Remembering, but McGillis had slept through it. ]
You'll -- you want to work with me? To find it. To...
[ tremulous. ]
...understand one another.
[ Carta, Ein -- will they forgive him? He won't forgive himself, but
these words, he must hear, cannot forget, cannot erase. ]
1/2
He did not think himself, nor Gaelio, capable of it. Especially not Gaelio -- the more honest truth was that he'd always suspected himself capable of it. Wavering, slipping, that was precisely the danger he'd worked to avoid. But Gaelio should not have been capable of allowing McGillis's name to rattle in his voice that way. He should not be capable of any of it.
Instead they exchange it back and forth, giving inches, giving slack. Necessity born of a situation that had taken them off their violent path, but thereafter the two of them chose to continue on a new one, even admitting to a certain shared helplessness.
The most recent development. How quickly it's all unraveled, since the first decision he made to step towards this direction with this man.
When it's like this, he can't help but waver. When it's been building like this, the harsh whisper of just the beginning of his name is as heady as strong alcohol. A voice that he'd heard in his head for years, a voice long dead, but Gaelio isn't dead -- he rushes forward to prove it.
The rush of him moving in, as heady as the rest, a strong wave that jostles and drenches him. A hand pulling at his shoulder and the other guiding from under his chin. Surprise does flicker across his features, and tension ripples, but does not stop him from following Gaelio's guiding placement.
He watches as he twitches back after creating a face-to-face encounter.
Arms have already loosened from behind his back when Gaelio moves forward again and clamps onto his wrist. Not tight, not without a certain erratic energy. Surprise clings to his own countenance, bypassed by subtle crumpling in the deep pit of his eyes, when that thumbing at his wrist starts.
A delicate thing. Almost nothing. It washes him in another memory and strips off another layer of steel.
Even he can't bring himself to begin to lie anew, not when Gaelio looks to and speaks to him this way, after everything. It's courage that astounds him.
Courage that he, himself, is positive he wouldn't possess, if he ever had to face himself the way Gaelio faces him now. He's momentarily bowled over by it, the hand not held drifting up to graze over his own chest, fingers absently clutching at the material.
A little breathless. ]
no subject
Had he wanted it as desperately, back then? If so, how could McGillis have missed it?
Understanding each other. He hadn't thought it possible. He'd never thought it possible. He'd declared it impossible to him, only a few months ago. ]
...Gaelio.
[ Relaxing, slowly, a smile grows in place of all traces of surprise. Small and soft, and sad, his eyes morphing to match.
He slips his hand through, not to tug away.
For a split-second it might seem that way. He slips his hand through to clutch at fingers with his palm, his own fingers curling. ]
It will certainly take work.
[ Unspoken, but spoken loudly with action: yes.
He wants to find it. He wants them to be able to understand each other. It's not as if he'd never wanted that himself, only that it might be the first time he thinks it possible. It's the first time he thinks it that could even be within their grasp, if patterns continue to hold.
With that thought, warmth gathers at the back of his neck, threatening to heat over ears. ]
no subject
From their first day, McGillis has yielded unexpectedly. Permitting each and every rough seizing, every push and pull. No satisfaction in that, no accomplishment, instead a disconcerting sense of detachment from the body, that which McGillis would give to keep the more vital, internal parts preserved. (Dangers in history, dirt, bruises.) Superficial yielding, while McGillis gave less and less.
Only, he didn't give less. Inch by inch, if not by centimeter. If first for Fate, if next what had spilled from their dreams that they could not undo, could not wash away. Indelible stains, ink and blood and white. Beginning a rapid tumble toward the rain, toward McGillis's wrist in his hand, against his thumb.
Toward McGillis's hand, fluttering and braced against his chest, an endearing, soft thing.
It has not been unlike, is not unlike, the rigor of the last two years in accumulating evidence and obsessing over the puzzle, unraveling and raveling, clawing toward resolution. Here, he collects intimations of soft sentiment and obsesses, raveling and unraveling, falling into irresolution.
Sincerity in his name in that mouth, in that voice. Sincerity in his smile, in all that bleeds soft through lips and gaze. Is Gaelio foolish to believe in it, in him?
Without a doubt, he is a fool.
Alarm spikes, settles, as McGillis does not free his hand, the glide of his hand only to better align. McGillis clasps his hand, grounding affirmation in contact, and Gaelio would spin out in sheer delirium if not for the hand which tethers him.
McGillis smiles, curls his hand. Muscles tremble across Gaelio's face, a shiver focused in his jaw, an attempt that falters. Not yet a smile, but the struggle toward, too much taut and strained, but no longer a grimace, no longer a scowl or frown. Incline, not decline. McGillis curls his hand, smiles. Gaelio's fingers clutch, tighten, too hard, but less as though to break the bird's bones. More as though to hold less would see it slip through, after all. ]
Yeah.
[ Choked. Unquestionably, it will take work. His eyes burn, prickle, and a different burning in his chest. A blanket thrown over anger, over hatred, this blanket of McGillis's hand, smile, voice, but the smoke trails from beneath it, the flame not yet smothered. What he feels for McGillis might be greater, more layered, more complex than hatred, vastly and infinitely more, such that with him like this, fury falls away.
But it cannot die, because it lives on Carta, on Ein, on their rot.
But he cannot look at it, cannot see it, when gazing at McGillis and seen in turn.
Still, he does not know what he should do, what he must do (kill him, but if not a creature of only brutality, if his best friend, then it's impossible--), but he knows what he cannot help but do.
Though he blinks again the sheen in his eyes, Gaelio's voice strengthens, gaining levity. Brittle, but lifting. ]
I did tell you. I've worked hard for you from the day I met you.
[ Closer, in his mouth, to the right angle, to how his muscles should arrange, despite the protest of rust and rigor mortis. And he leans, enough for his other hand to extend, to grasp not wrist but McGillis's. Cupping over the back, then gently twisting, guiding beneath his, to loose fingers from shirt. Palm to palm, lacing, but Gaelio does not lower their hands, leaving his fingers now curved against McGillis's shirt, chest. ]
You might be the one who has to keep up.
no subject
Having told Gaelio the truth of the matter, the one friendship that ever mattered, it feels as though he's locked himself out of spaces he used to crawl into with ease. It's not as easy to access them as it once was, not as easy to hide away in them. Having exposed that and lost that, he scratches and clutches for something in the interim -- a hand, his chest, some reassurance that he has done the correct thing.
His destined enemy, or his destined friend? If he does the correct thing now, how incorrect was he before?
What he feels for Gaelio must be as layered, as complex, known from the moment he cut him down as coldly as he had and felt eternal winter creep in his absence. Every moment that came after had taught him that he would never fully be able to escape what he'd done, nor anything that came before. The very concept of companionship had been purged forevermore in a last ditch attempt. Never again would it be allowed in the ways he'd allowed it, to lose himself to it, to ultimately lose it.
But he hadn't expected this turn off the main road. He hadn't expected falling this far simply by trying to analyze it. There's a tremble in Gaelio that he can see, felt echoed in the iron-clad grip of his hand squeezing back. His voice is choked, choking, his eyes are wet, and the scars in him must hurt. The ones inside, not out.
Or maybe it all hurts.
They may still hurt each other in the future, a distinct possibility that neither of them are fool enough to discount. Foolish as they may be.
Bright, blurring pools of blue, tense, taut, trembling. Gaelio reaffirms; he's worked hard for them, for McGillis, since the day they met.
Of course, that also hurts. Squeezing back with their hands, a shudder of an exhale, a sadder smile at those words. When Gaelio leans in, he almost wonders if he'll claw through to his heart and pluck it out, such is the strangeness of being as exposed. He leans in to guide their other pair of hands to another clasping, fingers laced and palms squeezing, McGillis inhaling with the same shaky quality as he glances down to look.
Strangely intimate sight, their hands melding together at two points.
He lets go of a huff -- "You might be the one who has to keep up." Understood, familiar, and he can be amused, but too much in the sound. Tumbling.
Despite all that's happened between them, and because he's only human after all, all this contact and honesty breeds simple human desire. Reflexive yearning for lost companionship. For him, for him. The total sum of companionship, the total sum.
And forced to face, from distances as short as this, how lonely he's been without him. Like this, unable to squirrel into denial. ]
I'm sure you'll enjoy that.
[ Strange joke, bloated with too much. McGillis tugs the hand resting by his heart in closer, still gazing at it and both intertwined.
He thumbs over a knuckle. A bit of scarring even there. ]
Watching me struggle.
[ Voice further away -- something overtakes him and he tugs up next, bringing it closer to this throat, but stops short with the movement.
Indecisive. As if he'd meant to keep moving, but can't. ]
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Yet, he leans until his feet shuffle forward again, mounding sand, less and less space between them. That motion, then feeling the quiver of McGillis's exhale, his every breath, against his knuckles, then following the dip of McGillis's eyes, finding their hands. The imprint of a smile softer, pained, as he looks to this curious sight.
Palm to palm; so paired.
Gaelio does not yet lift his gaze, though drawn by the shorter, emotive exhalation. More than amused, too tangled for mere humor. It would give him pause, gives him pause. Within the knotting, enough discrete emotion to resonate.
Now lifting, slow, as his heartbeat echoes irregular in his chest. Hollow sounds, dinged metal. Not rushing to follow their hands, but trailing slow after them, feeling before he sees the placement of McGillis's thumb, the motion begun and ceased unfinished.
Gaelio recognizes indecision, so familiar as to be intimate. Comprehension breeds further inquiry: where McGillis would have taken them? Past throat, higher, yet there stalled, the heavy jest left between them. Caught in the webbing of their fingers.
The brilliance of the moon on the water darkens, the moon swept behind pendulous clouds. Gaelio seeks McGillis's eyes in the more velvet shadows, mouth more angled still, voice following the tide.
Now, drawing out, away. ]
I wonder?
[ It would be distant, even light with whimsy, but for the contagion of bloat. ]
Maybe not before. But...
[ Now, rushing in, splashing and frothy against their heels.
Gaelio lifts his fingers.
In doing so, his palm keeps snug, firm against McGillis's. Impossible to read an attempt to pry free. Instead, strange extension, brambles askew from knuckles, but with purpose: they graze. His fingertips trickle down the sidelong curve of McGillis's neck. If less deliberate, if less of a push in his wrist to help effectuate it, it might be easy to dismiss. A tick, a needed stretch, a meaningless flex as his fingers opened and closed, resettling, lacing again as soon.
But not as soon.
They settle slow, glide slow.
Imitation above, his eyes half-lidded. ]
I think I've developed the taste.
[ Might have. ]
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A hex, or a spell. Something like that. With the wounds between them still pulsating, still raw, this must be the height of foolishness. They should disentangle and begin to address the challenge analytically. It's impossible to see through to a clear goal, with how close they linger, how tight they grip without stepping past a line, without --
In the back of his mind, he's aware: the line they're careful not to cross.
It's always been that way. McGillis wouldn't, and Gaelio wouldn't. But it survived death deformed. It's been brought here and it sits between them with a vengeance, blood-stained. Cumbersome, impossible to breach, more messy than ever.
Or is it impossible?
Caught by those eyes, caught by the spell of his reply, when Gaelio stretches his fingers into a stroke (is it? an accident, or?) that lands on his neck, he can't help but flash back to the evening spent warming by the fire, breath ghosting over his skin.
He can't help but flash back to other evenings, other times, to years and years of Gaelio's constant presence. How he lingered close, but never too close. Like trying to catch feathers in the wind. Not always trying -- like feeling them brush past and watching them flutter on, understanding futility. It's always been like that, but the staying presence of fingers sweeping over his neck cannot be ignored in this hypnotic moment.
The heat building at the back of his neck spills over, spilling against touch as a tiny shiver runs up his spine. Something is different, in the settling press of his fingertips, in the smoky lidding of this man's eyes.
McGillis watches him with wider ones, a rare occurrence. He opens his mouth on a delay. ]
Maybe it's owed.
[ Struggling. A state that gives Gaelio equal ground. A starting point.
A waver at the edge of his voice. ]
Maybe it's necessary, for understanding.
[ As he speaks, he carefully frees the hand that hangs down at their sides, only to pass his palm over the back of Gaelio's and begin to stroke slowly up his arm.
Tit for tat. ]
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What is it they do? What does he do, fingertips learning the texture of his neck? How close to neck he'd breathed, skin pressed to skin, there and there and there. How thin the sheet, how great then small the mattress between, how snug the arm circling waist. How like gossamer, the inner wrist against which his thumb traced a new line.
How often over the years Gaelio had looked at this man and learned not to bite his lip, and measured out his breaths. A brother, wed to his child sister. A brother, loved by the woman they'd grown alongside, the woman he'd seen struck down. Made enemy, blood and anguish filling the rift between them. Revenge, the smoke of it still clouding. He must breathe out, breathe out smoke, to clear his head of it, but it won't ever clear.
A brother, an enemy, a murderer, a traitor.
A best friend.
A man whose fingers thread, whose neck felt hot, whose palm keeps flush. Who trembles.
Years of looking at his back, his profile, of staggering heart and careful breath and leaning only as far as permitted, as was too far yet safe enough. If you'd but held out your hand, hand extracted from Gaelio's vice, and smoothing slow up his arm.
Slow, dragging, a caress that shivers through him.
It should not be possible to feel this, for the steel implanted in his spine to bend. Nor, rationally, should it have been possible to keep indecision for the duration he had. To hear brutal words, witness brutal acts, and be cut down, brutal. To hear, see, feel, die, but wonder, but seek more. Grasping for an answer, landed on with brittle and wretched difficult, snapped and wrenched away here.
Impossible, feeling what he does for McGillis, the extent of it more that he does not and cannot understand.
Impossible and insane, for breath to shudder out like this. Hypnosis or spell, for lids to lift, mirroring the roundness of McGillis's eyes, as that hand traverses his arm. Yet, keeping the curve of his mouth, sharp and relearning an old shape, if distorted by scar tissue and wreckage. ]
Will you struggle for me?
[ Murmured low, too much breathed in those words. His hand begins to disentangle from lacing. Once free, wrist tilts, fingers and palm shaping to throat. Thumb over adam's apple, and he hopes, strangely, that McGillis would swallow, let him feel it. ]
But I don't want it like that.
[ Quiet correction. His fingers do not yet squeeze. The middle stirs in the hairs at back of McGillis's neck. ]
Struggle with me.
[ Like that. Not alone. Not in the dirt. He's never wanted to stand above McGillis, towering or lording, or superior. That had not been the core of his need to deny him, and even in denial and judging him inferior as a moral creature, that creature, that man, might not exist.
That creature, that man, cannot be this one.
He wouldn't do this, if he didn't mean it.
Would he?
God, please.
To think, indeed, that humans could become so foolish.
His hand smooths up, still shaping. Cupping cheek. Toe sliding to mid-boot, noses close, his exhale not heavy but still co-mingling. Below, his fingers flex inward, and out, and his elbow bends once McGillis's hand has passed, drawing his own hand. Fingers flex again, hooking in the fabric of McGillis's shirt, index over a button. The nail only just grazes skin.
I'd have done the rest. ]
Together. That must be necessary, for understanding.
I'll take what I'm owed. You'll take what you're owed. McGillis...
[ Queer assertion in his tone wavers, dipping into tenuous doubt with that name, the only name now thrumming through him, though there should be two others. His eyes flick down, stick, only just able to fix on McGillis's mouth given how close their faces.
Breathless with doubt. No, it isn't doubt that makes him breathless. ]
...are we owed this?
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Will you struggle for me?
That he asks and the shape of his fingers settle over throat as if to hold. McGillis hears an internal click. A whirring, his cogs responding to grease. His eyes are still larger than usual, but calm knowledge washes them out. He finds a ledge, a space to stow away; this makes sense to him. This is what makes sense to him, this is what's easy to parse. He knows how to keep his body still, how to make his face go still. He doesn't swallow, instead relaxing for Gaelio in preparation for words or actions more sinister.
What doesn't make sense:
But I don't want it like that.
As soon as it washed over him, that state of calm cracking like glass. Hair-cracks that spider up his countenance and twist the flesh between brows, twisting confusion into place.
Confusion blotted out, just as quickly, by a finger that nudges at his hairline. A request like this from someone he has wronged. Confusion blotting and a wrinkling forming about the edges of his eyes, after the same hand that had hinted at throttling journeys up to swallow his cheek. As gentle as that, palm to flesh, their boots sliding together in the sand. Their noses touch, their breathing mixes, and McGillis draws his palm up, having paused above the elbow.
On the other side of his bicep, skimming the underside of his upper arm.
Together. He breathes out, at that, at his name, and all the rest. Taking what they're owed --
Nudging forward, so that when he speaks, lips brush continuously. ]
Why not be owed more?
[ He can feel the tremble he'd elicited, and in turn, the slightest presence of a nail clipping his torso when Gaelio hooks onto the front of his shirt.
Can't help but arch hips in, a infinitesimal degree. His palms have found their way to Gaelio's shoulders by now, bracing both lines. The bottom of his lip clips the underside of Gaelio's bottom lip. As he pulls into the end of his speaking, there's a near accidental smoothing over.
Beat, beat, beat, in his ears. ]
When does the taking begin?
[ He feels as drunk as an entire bottle of wine's consumption would produce, head swimming, and words as dreamy.
But he's confident he isn't playing at this alone. Confident and nervous at the same time. The print of his index finger draws a circle at the base of a collar, over the beginnings of skin. ]
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Soft lips, feathering against his lips. McGillis breathes out and Gaelio breathes him in.
Difficult to think, to parse, to understand, when McGillis speaks against him like that. The hush of his words, the breath needed to enunciate each, passing between Gaelio's lips. Words that settle on his tongue and taste like more than debt, more than truce.
Difficult to understand anything but the contact, but what McGillis must want as sorely as he does, to have tilted into this. Inexplicable and impossible, that he would, that Gaelio would. Killer and killed.
A near pull, a near press of his bottom lip. Gaelio had wanted it of McGillis; instead, he swallows. Pupils blown out, blowing out, the clouds thick over the moon and sprawled wide across the sky. It won't resurface soon. Gaelio may never resurface.
Hips below, he's too aware. Hands on shoulders, he's too aware. Pad of finger rounding skin.
Retorts lost in his mouth, displaced from tongue by those words breathed in. Can we lay claim to more? Is it possible, are they capable, is it fair? Or, absurd and taunting, the notion of swinging back, mouth more cruel than mischievous, needing to cough up bile for Carta, Almiria, Ein, but unable to, feigning it, and inviting a later development. Soon. As though Fate had more yet to show them, as if they do not stand here with it passed between their mouths.
Because they breathe it already, he cannot swing away.
His eyes swing instead, mouth to eyes, eyes to mouth. Unable to hear himself breathe, but able to feel the irregularity with which it leaves him.
Only one word can form, dizzy and sloppy on his tongue, contained in a single syllable. ]
Now.
[ His palm firms on cheek, his fingers curl tighter in fabric, pulling. Gaelio needs only angle by increments to seal their mouths together. He angles. A breeze lifts, from sea or woods, he's unsure, though it gives peaks to the tide and rustles in distant leaves. It tickles through air, wafts bangs, knocks McGillis's against Gaelio's cheek.
Something in his chest, organ and muscle, rupturing to pulp.
But he kisses McGillis with tentative, quick precision. The small shocks of each brush a longer, electrifying jolt, immediately overwhelming. He won't ever resurface, and the certainty of that angles him back, rushes open eyes that must have closed, terror surging back with the need to confirm McGillis's expression, to see more than stone. ]
Unless you disagree.
[ Intended steady, even fluid, but rippling. Needing. ]
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