To be with McGillis, in any capacity, spikes delirium. More than lapping tides, instead tsunami. Dream, nightmare, dream. To be with McGillis, his heart's deepest core, cored out. Left with a space into which flooded abandonment and retribution, fury and aggression, and pain. All that, but never filled, the trench too deep, the fit too particular then savaged by the coring -- yearning and bliss torn out, crumbling the foundation, jagged splits and cracks down the side, distorting the shape.
Nothing could have, should have filled it. Pour in enough sand, the shifting of irresolution and revenge. Pave it over with veneers of respectable emotion, and weigh it down with, the ground sinking beneath, all that his shoulders bore. And aggression bubbled out, acid geysers, and the aching reverberated within marrow, within cardiac valves.
The aching, reverberating now against tongue, syncing to the sound that rocks through him: McGillis groaning, low and sated, sating, wanting, a hum against his mouth that shivers down his throat and plunges. Unfurling and heating in his gut, sparking through the grasping of his fingers and the curling of his toes. Such a sound must be true, and there, too, pursuit.
In his lifetime of reaching, Gaelio had not clawed like this, had known but suppressed hunger like this. Scratching out of the grave, scratching after him, had born aggression that lives even here, like this, a ready boil. Beneath his hand, beneath the breadth of muscle and sinew, beats McGillis's heart. He presses his palm as though he could feel it, could cup against, could hold and squeeze and core.
No, not core, because the fact of it, the fact of beating, the fact of his tongue between Gaelio's lips and learning against Gaelio's tongue, might prove that core, might stay the blade. An impossible betrayal, but that he might permit McGillis his, the same hold, a belief that he would not again crush it -- struggle together, work together, understand together, exchange Fate on breaths passed between their lips, share misery with the bittersweet taste of each kiss.
Impossible to trust him, to believe it, but chasing as though. But inviting as though. But assertive, as though. Chasing what he'd missed if not what was missing, what he should not miss, what he cannot be permitted to miss, McGillis --
wrenches back, gasping.
Gaelio cannot yet recover, dazed by the spots in his vision when he opens his eyes, the wet swell of his lips, the sound that clipped out of his throat in breaking, baffled protest. Then, all too quickly, recovery: because McGillis does not see him. Smolder doused by ice, by the renewal of that terror, bunching up in brow, as much contorted by confusion as fear. But he holds him still, hands against shoulders, fingernails still just digging.
His name, and focus, and his eyes.
Gaelio gazes, his own eyes bright with the question, his breath in uneven, faltering gives and pulls. Though his eyelids would flutter for the smoothing of McGillis's hands, firm and grounding, he resists it to keep his eyes.
He doesn't understand. Of course he doesn't understand: that he should expect. He doesn't understand why McGillis reeled back, why he rushed in again to assuage, why his hands soothed but then hesitate, why his eyes edge away, and why now, he slips and folds in, a deliberate and stroking embrace that settles him tucked, half-vulnerable.
To think, that McGillis could be vulnerable. Disbelieved. Haunting words that crack and deteriorate in their regular circling through his skull: soft-hearted emotions unfortunately will not reach me.
I'm sorry, now breathed half against his neck, a warm and tickling contrast to the near winter's chill around them. An apology. An apology not contained to this moment, to whatever spooked and changed this.
Only a little disturbed by the motions, Gaelio's hands press still against chest and shoulderblade. A touch awkward, but slow to yield to the natural rearrangement. Gravity encourages it, magnetism, but for a moment he stands still and unresponsive, feeling the portions of McGillis's exhale in goosebumps along his neck, feeling the feathering of McGillis's hair against his jaw, less felt where the scarring cuts.
An apology, elicited and soft. Inexplicable for this, unacceptable for the rest. Gaelio stares along the shore, the paler sands yet dark in shadow, the moon caught still by clouds. His heart lodges in his throat, dribbling blood with each unsteady beat, with inquisition. With indecision, with a hundred and a thousand impetuses, with a hundred and a thousand accusations against this man and himself, with a hundred and a thousand questions. Which to ask -- where had he gone? why? why had they collided so absolutely into that, a rush and a song, a humming that still thrums in his chest, with every breath? Though he has the right to a hundred and a thousand demands, should he apologize for the kiss, though McGillis had agreed, had it been assent born on the delirium of compromise and implicit oath? Apologize, if not to McGillis, then to them -- but that no answer to the retreat.
Why do his arms so ache to settle as is natural, that he must oblige, that his hand shakes while trailing in the close space between, mirroring paths along ribs, around back. His arms curve, pull, answering the embrace. Tremulous and slow, his right hand flutters higher, hovering before rounding over the back of McGillis's head.
On this beach, with McGillis. With McGillis in his arms, with McGillis breathing apology against him. The man he had to kill, but cannot kill. Not this man. Instead, the man he'd press against and ache for, and if he forgives but cannot forgive him, then that they share, too. ]
McGillis.
[ Eyes shut tight, into red. Teeth grit, cannot swallow around heart, slow to loose, the ache now in his jaw. Thumb circles in fine strands, his chin begins to dip toward. ]
We needn't be owed that. There's enough. This is enough. You --
[ if you mean it, and like this, like this, he must, he must, he must, together, a start, together, murderer and traitor and friend, together, first steps toward finding it, together, he must, ]
[ Foolish to allow the fire to spread out of control, when all must remain under his control. And yet --
With Gaelio, there is justice in it, in allowing consumption. In allowing himself to be consumed by perplexing fires and in handing that over to this man -- one of his most precious guards torn down, exposure and lit by suppressed desire, and Gaelio can reap, sow, take, reject, kill -- whatever he pleases.
Bearing any and all as an expression of sincerity. A betrayal, then, that his reflexes betrayed him.
Another betrayal that he could not keep himself open and allow Gaelio access to the places where he could've done the most damage. Could not risk damaging himself with too much fast flooding.
Would that not be an act of proof, after the damage he's done? They've agreed to try to understand one another, but one fact remains: Gaelio can't believe him. McGillis rendered his own words meaningless with his betrayal, meaning he must act, meaning he must give something to prove himself. Meaning he must give into want and allow it to guide him, for the first time, for any of it to have any sort of meaning.
But he'd failed. He succeeds only in stacking betrayals one on top of another. He catches the bright confusion on those features once he sees him again, the edge of fear in his eyes, before he buries himself away in his neck, shame warming his own skin. An exhale equally buried, following his strange apology -- understanding that it will be meaningless, inapplicable, peppered with frustration aimed at the self. A creature of rage and resentment, and unfit for this and for that.
A hand squeezed against his fast beating heart. Gaelio is slow to react. McGillis opens his eyes to thoughtful slivers and takes in the glitter of moonlight against metal at the edge of his spine, wondering as to its construction. How was it built into him? How long did it take? What was his state upon waking? What was told to him? What was the look on his face back then?
His palms squeeze once in their hold, curled above hips, a strange hint of inadvertent possession overtaking hand muscles as the questions beam through his thoughts.
Unfit, except Gaelio finds a fit for his arms, talented as he is. He finds a way to hold, though his hands tremble to hold. Cheek brushing against the curve it found, McGillis closes his eyes again to map it out internally, each tremor laid over his ribs and back, and the shock of a hand nestled against the back of his head. Eyelashes flutter open and ghost over skin, surprise catching him -- for that and for the words that follow.
Enough?
He senses his brow wrinkling, senses the haze overtaking and the struggle -- already struggling to understand. Something warms over inside himself to hear words like those, but he doesn't know why. How can anything be enough, let alone --
A break in the response that bubbles to the surface, hands clinging tighter to Gaelio's back. Drawn into warmth, leaning in. ]
A lie told in revenge?
[ He bleeds to hear something so foreign, as though Gaelio had pressed against inflamed infection with his reply, pressure that oozes through the warped note in McGillis's tone. ]
If so, you've hit the mark.
[ It stings to think that it will be taken away from him eventually. Teasing a monster with such an absurd concept; enough. ]
How appropriate, that as familiar frustration begins to clash against McGillis's exposure, Gaelio has no awareness of it: that they struggle together. That McGillis, too, wrestles with incomprehension, born of words and gesture. Enough and an embrace, his cupping hand; apology and an embrace, and hands that clutch, tighten. It would comfort to know, perhaps perversely, as had witnessing the crimping of misery unmasked. Yet, unknown.
Instead, left to further wonder, as McGillis accuses him of dishonesty. Too raw in it, too raw in ceding to what such would, has done to him, for what kicks up within Gaelio to become a proper storm. Though his fingers begin to curl in fine hair, begin to clench, not yet hard enough to pull or hurt -- it might feel on the brink of it, the suggestion of violence. Intended or not; he's less sure, again both adrift in disconnect and taut in suspension.
His voice drifts, strange. Far, but contorting. ]
A lie?
[ Hypocritical, as he veers without consciousness of his double standards, too entrenched in his entitlement to them: that he can and will and does levy such charges at McGillis, but bristles now to hear them returned. He has the right, though bleating that with each shallow wound, each deeper thrust, dilutes it. Only one had betrayed, piercing Kimaris to kill, discarding their friendship, a friendship born of a lie, as soft-hearted emotions could not and had never reached him.
Or not.
What would, should, does begin to flare, stoppered by admitting the mark, by how McGillis clings, by his breath on his neck. In the absence, in the hollow so charred by conflagrations of rage, jury, and frustration, he's left to question. ]
Revenge, huh... I wonder.
[ It should be. The thought of that, of what is owed, ever on the periphery, ever seeping out, ever a pressure against what cavity they've clawed into here, together, hands clasped, eyes meeting, the thought of that wrenches him farther, as immediate and jarring as McGillis's separation. Which? This and that and every.
Pulled back farther, pulled in closer, by breathing, by hands, by fingers that would press marks through cloth. A new and fast old mantra: must kill, for them. cannot kill, if this. unforgiven, unforgiven, unforgiven, both. It should be, but even if he could still manage it, this revenge would not be deliberate, unable to understand the how and why of its efficacy.
What expels from his mouth is harsh and short, a breath, but with sound enough to venture at a laugh. Too bitter and pained for it, or too bitter and pained to be anything else. ]
If that's what it took, then I have no revenge.
[ If words could strike McGillis. If words could knock him from power, into dirt, grinding his face into the emotions he had buried there in his climb. If the monster could be made to bleed by so simple an utterance, so simple a truth, then he had been no monster. Then those words reached, the emotions not buried beneath but hidden within, inadvertently cut loose.
Impossible to have revenge on a figment, to enact the method, to wring honor from what had not, truly, been dishonor.
Impossible to have revenge on his friend who holds him like this, who falters to be told enough, though Gaelio little understands the difference, the significance, not having intended to ask more, to supplement, a flesh compromise with his kiss.
Impossible to explain, without understanding. Gaelio speaks, in an effort to keep from spinning out farther, in an effort to grasp at it through these faltering steps. ]
Need isn't want.
[ Mad, after all and everything, for that want to be so. Yet, it would be blinding to refuse to acknowledge it with the taste of him lingering on tongue, on lips. That he wants him, a different want, sequestered and primal. ]
What you need, I don't know. I never understood you. I don't know how to ask. What we need, I've imposed too often. I've the right, but it isn't an answer.
[ He cannot alone supply the missing piece. ]
What I need... I don't know that, either.
[ Faint, realizing, his arm tugging McGillis tighter against him, as though he could shield himself from it. How perverse that his instinct, even now, is to reach for him. ]
But, I think I need my friend. I think I need you.
[ No masks. No effort beyond that of honesty, whether Gaelio can believe it so soon or not. No actions, though actions are simpler until they aren't. Simply him, if true. If true in speaking friend, if true that in a dream shared, his boy heart swore he'd meant too much and cradled him against time and bloodied Fate. ]
He can't conceive of a relationship without some element of aggression present, either hidden or bared out in the open. If Gaelio pursues him out of a violent need, out of a need for revenge, he can fathom it. If Gaelio pursues understanding and confesses to needs that are not as simple as violence led by honor, it takes straining effort to wrap his mind around that, to double back to his own feelings of earnest warmth towards this man, this man he has tried to kill who must also kill him, and untangle where they begin and where they end.
If they kiss upon their renewed oath, all the more confusing, all the more soothing.
If he asks Gaelio, if he prompts him to lie, it amounts to another confession of not understanding him. It's painfully difficult to understand, after injury, personal and proximal, after lying, abusing trust, using, painfully difficult to understand Gaelio's straining, the effort he puts into McGillis still. It forces him to reexamine what he'd failed to bury completely, those soft-hearted pieces that had only been shorn into being by this man, new layers of sediment discovered, eroded into existence by more than a decade of attachment --
The reason why he fails to commit fully to a life lived in anger.
Perhaps it's the same for Gaelio. He can't figure out how to commit to what is owed to him by his own unique circumstances. His eyes lid again, to hear a laugh as bitter and contorted as that expulsion of breath. More pain than anger, always more pain than anger with Gaelio.
McGillis had called it unfortunate, that expressions of friendship, love and trust could not touch him. He understands: those are missing pieces. It deforms him. And yet he only understands through Gaelio, only has context through meeting him, only has context of himself as an outsider after entering that new world.
He listens to the far-away reply, the entirety of it, and tries to piece it together. He watches a fixed point over Gaelio's shoulder as he listens to him speak -- of his punctured revenge, of the difference between need and want. His confession of not understanding either of their needs, each word a separate twinge, a separate ache, the floodgates open.
What we need, I've imposed too often. I've the right, but it isn't an answer.
Here, McGillis had understood Gaelio's straining through an entirely different context: that he can be satisfied by besting him. Doubt infests his mind. It's simpler to understand Gaelio when he discounts the basis of their friendship -- that an enemy always lurked there. That enemy was simply ignorant of his own capacity to become one. The truth of McGillis would be the thing to transform Gaelio's affection into hatred, regardless of anything else.
But if he speaks true here, that cannot be true.
I think I need you. Truly you.
McGillis lifts his chin. His hands shift and tighten once again as he pulls up and back, enough to meet Gaelio's eyes, enough to linger close. He searches through the depths of blue, pupils flicking. No shroud to an expression that lacks true comprehension, staring at Gaelio as if he were a puzzle with one hundred missing pieces.
Fingers loosen, and travel, and land against scarred cheek.
In his entire life. ]
I don't always know who I am.
[ Begun, with words pulled from pits kept inside of him. Their exposure to air shocks him. A quick inhale, before continuing. ]
There was a time when I knew. Without being trained, without being owned. I think I've been searching for that version of myself, only stronger. Strength that belongs only to me. Your place...
[ A tiny caress, here, a twitch of his palm. Searching, searching, pulling at truth. ]
Your place is difficult to understand. From the very beginning, our friendship was based on a fabrication. It began without a foundation. Even so... I thought that I could allow myself to have it. It was the first time I understood something like happiness.
[ Unique to Gaelio, the first one to enter his life with consistency. The lasting mark that dug deeper than any other and of the few he could truly count as marks. ]
I told you that nothing you'd offered had ever reached me. That was a lie, one that I told to myself, as well as you. But what I've done cannot be undone. I thought I understood you and the reasons for your pursuit -- but I don't understand you, not at all. How --
[ Harsher press, palm drifting to jaw. ]
How am I enough? How can you be satisfied with that?
[ Without understanding, nonetheless effort. Steps ventured in the dark. But if they are blind, unable to see despite looking, the darkness cannot impede that much further. If they are blind, but feel their way, hand in hand, hands learning by touch the shape of the other -- together -- he can speak like so. Uncertain, giving voice to uncertainty. To the decades long ache, to yearning strangled into hurt, and reaching through it.
Without his eyes, but with his weight, his exhale, both against his neck and felt in the lift of his chest.
Then, with his eyes. Reception and reaction, to the trail Gaelio accepted to weave through their underbrush. Head from shoulder, neck, cool air a shock where warmth last breathed. Gaelio's fingers slacken to allow it, slip through strands to settle against the base of his neck. Blue-green, darker in the night, without the moon. Fixed, seeing and unseeing. Look at me, the plea and cry and song and hope and dream and want and lust and need and shout and deathknoll and deathstrike, look at me for sixteen years, and two though masked, look at me, and he does.
Earnest. No shutters, no masks, no aversion. But earnest in bewilderment. Finally, finally, but still unseen. Which cut deeper: to strive for sixteen years and have them, at last, certain in it, only to be as certain that without understanding, he looks without seeing?; or, to look and seek and gaze for sixteen years, only to understand that without understanding, he, too, looks without seeing -- and had done for the whole of that time.
Which was the greater betrayal? But this is not McGillis's betrayal. Not this vision, not this blindness. But if betrayal in incomprehension, then together. They struggle together, as near sworn, and stare together.
Whatever the answer, his eyes transfix. Gaelio gazes, the singed and savaged muscles beneath disfigured skin unable to respond to fingertips alighting, that touch, but above his eyes, a tremble. More glass to fracture, to crumble, to dust. Though he would tip into it, press them firmer and feel them better through less sensitive skin, but that McGillis speaks.
Confessions. Truth that needs the bracing of more air, of bolstered lungs.
Unknown, so perhaps Gaelio had little chance of it, but he cannot hear in that an excuse. He cannot craft it for himself, will not, pushing his own place in this farther from the center as he listens, intent, white rimming more of his eyes.
A time before Iznario, that much he can parse. Gaelio flounders with the fragments of that picture, gathered over a time too long to understand the fit of each. That McGillis had not been born Fareed, discovered with Rustal. That his feelings toward that man he called father were complex and dark, gleaned over years of dropped eyes and subtle tensing. Iznario Fareed, a cold and terrifying man, whom Gaelio could amuse with easy self-deprecation, but would not himself long keep by.
In a dream, contusions sprawling down a boy's neck. A memory in that. Squashed and placated inquiry.
Whatever Gaelio believed of birth, if a child not of astral blood was introduced as, conscious of the falsehood, developed disconnect and complex, he could understand that, the likelihood and logic in it. The psychology. Yet, the weight of that does not balance the scales, nothing slotting. A piece crafted that does not yet fit.
Palm shifts against his cheek. Here, Gaelio tilts, a fractional canting. His middle finger flexes, dragging tip along neck.
Friendship without foundation. A lie that he would nonetheless have. Whether Gaelio would resist it or not, he has no opportunity, swifter than reflex, than nerve and muscle snap: the compression of his features, crumbs and powder. Hurt like lightning in his eyes, a flash that spots and blinds and leaves the space thereafter darker.
But McGillis wanted it. But it reached him, but he'd lied as to that while rending them asunder, cutting them completely apart, whatever tether Gaelio had hooked and clung to.
Yet, now they cling.
The pressure of McGillis's hand keeps him. His other arm, though reluctant to lose the last of their embrace, lifts. Unsettled, drifting fingertips against McGillis's elbow, wrist, until settling, cupped against the back of McGillis's hand. Hand framing hand framing jaw. ]
I can't be.
[ Strange, the waver in his voice, as if wet. ]
But I can't not be. McGillis...
[ It isn't as though he understands himself well, feeling what he should not. What he must do, what he cannot do. A different must, an overwhelming must, with McGillis gazing like this, holding him like this. ]
It wouldn't have mattered to me, your blood. Not long ago, I would have agreed that our friendship must have been fabrication. How else could you have done it? Only your actions removing the foundation, letting us drown. But if you wanted it, if you wanted me, if we were happy, it was real. You were --
[ The rippling in his voice carries and he blinks, quick, against build up. ]
-- my friend. That's all that's needed. To be together, to want to be together. To mean what that should.
[ Status, blood, meaningless things, and so Ein, too, had been his friend. Therein his penance, without resolution. One way or another, he will be doomed to that. ]
I wanted to reach you. I wanted to be acknowledged by you, for you to be with me without the masks. I wanted to stand at your side.
[ Echoes, but how changed the tone, how much softer, when they stand so entwined. ]
It can't be undone. I can't forgive you, for them. I can't believe you, I can't understand you, but still, I...
[ Hands shifting, whether to squeeze against hand, or curl fingers back toward hairline, twist. ]
...want to. I wanted, I needed to understand why.
[ Why Carta, why Ein, why piercing him as enemy in coldest blood for a small void in inheritance. After sixteen years, after calling him friend, after they stood together. ]
I wanted you to look at me. I think I wanted...
[ As if understanding through speech, drawn out by the string on his tongue, and it's faint, the surprise speckling his eyes to voice it, the shame beneath it, because if this the core, a core, selfish and caught up in them, McGillis and Gaelio, not them. ]
...you to recognize me, if the only way, the only thing you understood, was power, was to kill you. If that's what it took, if then I'd mean something to you, if only as the man who killed you, then I had to for that reason, as well.
[ can it have been that? as small as that?
Carta, Ein, respectable emotions To recognize them, or was it pretext? An unknown, confusion thick and thickening. They still stack upon his shoulders.
but with McGillis's eyes on him, he less remembers the weight. An unforgivable man. Will they share it? ]
Because I've always wanted you, McGillis. I don't know how to stop.
[ Long defined by this man, what would become of him without him? McGillis had not been eveything. His family was not nothing. Carta, Ein, they were not nothing. But, McGillis was... McGillis is... hopelessly foolish, despicably naive, to speak without understanding, yet there's no other truth. There's nothing else. His eyes, their eyes. ]
It's more than satisfaction. Or less than. If you mean it, if it's you, you're enough. Because I can't let you go.
[ Giving him pieces without giving him the full picture.
Tentative steps into the clearance. A skeleton of his truth, because Gaelio cannot possibly have room left in his heart to accept the full picture -- past revival, grasping for Bael, McGillis continues to make sure to sever that possibility without actualizing it, committed to burning alone. Committed, except the eyes across from him remain serious and engaged as he tests stepping on a different path. Breadcrumbs to follow in a dark forest. A cheek tilting into his palm, scar tissue rubbed against callouses, more than receptive to each clumsy offering.
Hurt, flashing through those moonlit blue eyes, to hear McGillis speak of the lack of foundation. A bridge built over a pit, with only one of them looking down, waiting for the support structures to give. Despite the number of years, a temporary joining. The longer they went without addressing it, the more convinced he'd been.
It wouldn't have mattered to me, your blood.
A cloud permeates the film of his eyes.
That was what he'd strove for, with every inch of strength he could muster and build upon; the new world where it wouldn't have mattered. Each individual's version of happiness would be reachable there. They would only need to want it for themselves. No barriers, no scripts, no decrepit ruling class, no iron fist. In a larger context, it's the dream that mesmerizes, soothes and envelops him warmly, close to what he imagines a parent's warmth might be. In this shrunken version, where Gaelio tells him there was a smaller world where that was already true, a clicking sound in his mind begins as he struggles to sort the response.
if we were happy
Click. Fog, and hurt, matching his counterpart. Lines crinkle about his eyes. A moment of distraction, pained exhaustion blotting out surroundings.
Happiness? Something like it. Something missing. Fingers drift against the nape of his neck, light and distracting. How the flesh he thought was dead would wake whenever that animated presence would lean against his shoulder. A clicking sound, sorting through the years against the backdrop of Gaelio's voice.
The fog abating, as his voice winds around to words already once spoken. McGillis's eyes darken to life and hook to the sound, a knowing exhale given, lightly expelled through the nose.
Yet he will be mesmerized by what follows: if the tone is true, a new realization that speaks to complex facets that had gone unnoticed. By the both of them. His eyes widen to hear it, surprise for the breadth and the depth of meaning. For how it sprawls into life and takes form in front of him. Gaelio latching onto the only way he thought he could remain a fixture at McGillis's side, a sharp ache forming in the wake of those words -- his fingers shift in sync, pads pressing harder against bone structure.
He swallows. It's more than he was prepared to take.
What he has done to Gaelio is more unforgivable than he knew -- trapping him in this cage. The only way to loosen the bars will be to meet him at the middle and to begin to remove them together.
Do they begin?
Swallowing the pocket of air in his throat, he moves his hands, disrupting Gaelio's perched one. Fingers climb around to pull from the back of his head, from the width of a shoulder-blade, McGillis stepping in to hold him closer. Stepping into a hold that resembles a cradle, temple sliding against temple. ]
You've already reached me. I've already acknowledged you. I see you, I've seen you. For two years you've remained at my side, ghostly, but present. Always there. You're always there. I --
[ Until the ghost became real. Until he rose to life.
Straining, understanding that it would mean his destruction, straining against going after him a second time. Not until Gaelio came to meet him at Bael. Not until Gaelio found him again on the battlefield. Not until Gaelio locked him into the necessity of it -- deal with this, deal with him, or else cease moving forward.
The sound of Isurugi's voice in his head, reporting on Gaelio Bauduin's last known status. Low and unspoken in his tone had been the expectation that the general would comment aloud and begin to plan their next move. ]
Should have told you sooner, shouldn't I have?
[ The weight of realizations, like creaking hinges. His voice strains against it, exhaustion bleeding at the core of everything.
Everything he strove for, everything he strove against. Gaelio at his side the entire time, neither of them aware that they continued to move in sync while they separated out as far as they could possibly separate. ]
I should've told you what you meant to me. I couldn't let go either, not even after what I'd done. Where does that leave us now?
[ An honest question. Too much blood spilled, thick in the air between them, yet they cling and cling.
Gaelio chasing him for reasons that cause his heart to stir anew, however bloody the path. ]
What you call masks -- it's skin. I had to live through it. I had to breathe. Can you understand? I still breathed you in.
[ Shucking past the layers, the skin that kept him safe, to the person that kept him safe. His heart thrums in his ears to speak as much, his grip shifting against shoulders. His fingers buried against hair -- a grip forming there too, twisting. ]
I wasn't happy. It was real. You were my friend. My only friend.
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To be with McGillis, in any capacity, spikes delirium. More than lapping tides, instead tsunami. Dream, nightmare, dream. To be with McGillis, his heart's deepest core, cored out. Left with a space into which flooded abandonment and retribution, fury and aggression, and pain. All that, but never filled, the trench too deep, the fit too particular then savaged by the coring -- yearning and bliss torn out, crumbling the foundation, jagged splits and cracks down the side, distorting the shape.
Nothing could have, should have filled it. Pour in enough sand, the shifting of irresolution and revenge. Pave it over with veneers of respectable emotion, and weigh it down with, the ground sinking beneath, all that his shoulders bore. And aggression bubbled out, acid geysers, and the aching reverberated within marrow, within cardiac valves.
The aching, reverberating now against tongue, syncing to the sound that rocks through him: McGillis groaning, low and sated, sating, wanting, a hum against his mouth that shivers down his throat and plunges. Unfurling and heating in his gut, sparking through the grasping of his fingers and the curling of his toes. Such a sound must be true, and there, too, pursuit.
In his lifetime of reaching, Gaelio had not clawed like this, had known but suppressed hunger like this. Scratching out of the grave, scratching after him, had born aggression that lives even here, like this, a ready boil. Beneath his hand, beneath the breadth of muscle and sinew, beats McGillis's heart. He presses his palm as though he could feel it, could cup against, could hold and squeeze and core.
No, not core, because the fact of it, the fact of beating, the fact of his tongue between Gaelio's lips and learning against Gaelio's tongue, might prove that core, might stay the blade. An impossible betrayal, but that he might permit McGillis his, the same hold, a belief that he would not again crush it -- struggle together, work together, understand together, exchange Fate on breaths passed between their lips, share misery with the bittersweet taste of each kiss.
Impossible to trust him, to believe it, but chasing as though. But inviting as though. But assertive, as though. Chasing what he'd missed if not what was missing, what he should not miss, what he cannot be permitted to miss, McGillis --
wrenches back, gasping.
Gaelio cannot yet recover, dazed by the spots in his vision when he opens his eyes, the wet swell of his lips, the sound that clipped out of his throat in breaking, baffled protest. Then, all too quickly, recovery: because McGillis does not see him. Smolder doused by ice, by the renewal of that terror, bunching up in brow, as much contorted by confusion as fear. But he holds him still, hands against shoulders, fingernails still just digging.
His name, and focus, and his eyes.
Gaelio gazes, his own eyes bright with the question, his breath in uneven, faltering gives and pulls. Though his eyelids would flutter for the smoothing of McGillis's hands, firm and grounding, he resists it to keep his eyes.
He doesn't understand. Of course he doesn't understand: that he should expect. He doesn't understand why McGillis reeled back, why he rushed in again to assuage, why his hands soothed but then hesitate, why his eyes edge away, and why now, he slips and folds in, a deliberate and stroking embrace that settles him tucked, half-vulnerable.
To think, that McGillis could be vulnerable. Disbelieved. Haunting words that crack and deteriorate in their regular circling through his skull: soft-hearted emotions unfortunately will not reach me.
I'm sorry, now breathed half against his neck, a warm and tickling contrast to the near winter's chill around them. An apology. An apology not contained to this moment, to whatever spooked and changed this.
Only a little disturbed by the motions, Gaelio's hands press still against chest and shoulderblade. A touch awkward, but slow to yield to the natural rearrangement. Gravity encourages it, magnetism, but for a moment he stands still and unresponsive, feeling the portions of McGillis's exhale in goosebumps along his neck, feeling the feathering of McGillis's hair against his jaw, less felt where the scarring cuts.
An apology, elicited and soft. Inexplicable for this, unacceptable for the rest. Gaelio stares along the shore, the paler sands yet dark in shadow, the moon caught still by clouds. His heart lodges in his throat, dribbling blood with each unsteady beat, with inquisition. With indecision, with a hundred and a thousand impetuses, with a hundred and a thousand accusations against this man and himself, with a hundred and a thousand questions. Which to ask -- where had he gone? why? why had they collided so absolutely into that, a rush and a song, a humming that still thrums in his chest, with every breath? Though he has the right to a hundred and a thousand demands, should he apologize for the kiss, though McGillis had agreed, had it been assent born on the delirium of compromise and implicit oath? Apologize, if not to McGillis, then to them -- but that no answer to the retreat.
Why do his arms so ache to settle as is natural, that he must oblige, that his hand shakes while trailing in the close space between, mirroring paths along ribs, around back. His arms curve, pull, answering the embrace. Tremulous and slow, his right hand flutters higher, hovering before rounding over the back of McGillis's head.
On this beach, with McGillis. With McGillis in his arms, with McGillis breathing apology against him. The man he had to kill, but cannot kill. Not this man. Instead, the man he'd press against and ache for, and if he forgives but cannot forgive him, then that they share, too. ]
McGillis.
[ Eyes shut tight, into red. Teeth grit, cannot swallow around heart, slow to loose, the ache now in his jaw. Thumb circles in fine strands, his chin begins to dip toward. ]
We needn't be owed that. There's enough. This is enough. You --
[ if you mean it, and like this, like this, he must, he must, he must, together, a start, together, murderer and traitor and friend, together, first steps toward finding it, together, he must, ]
-- you're enough.
no subject
With Gaelio, there is justice in it, in allowing consumption. In allowing himself to be consumed by perplexing fires and in handing that over to this man -- one of his most precious guards torn down, exposure and lit by suppressed desire, and Gaelio can reap, sow, take, reject, kill -- whatever he pleases.
Bearing any and all as an expression of sincerity. A betrayal, then, that his reflexes betrayed him.
Another betrayal that he could not keep himself open and allow Gaelio access to the places where he could've done the most damage. Could not risk damaging himself with too much fast flooding.
Would that not be an act of proof, after the damage he's done? They've agreed to try to understand one another, but one fact remains: Gaelio can't believe him. McGillis rendered his own words meaningless with his betrayal, meaning he must act, meaning he must give something to prove himself. Meaning he must give into want and allow it to guide him, for the first time, for any of it to have any sort of meaning.
But he'd failed. He succeeds only in stacking betrayals one on top of another. He catches the bright confusion on those features once he sees him again, the edge of fear in his eyes, before he buries himself away in his neck, shame warming his own skin. An exhale equally buried, following his strange apology -- understanding that it will be meaningless, inapplicable, peppered with frustration aimed at the self. A creature of rage and resentment, and unfit for this and for that.
A hand squeezed against his fast beating heart. Gaelio is slow to react. McGillis opens his eyes to thoughtful slivers and takes in the glitter of moonlight against metal at the edge of his spine, wondering as to its construction. How was it built into him? How long did it take? What was his state upon waking? What was told to him? What was the look on his face back then?
His palms squeeze once in their hold, curled above hips, a strange hint of inadvertent possession overtaking hand muscles as the questions beam through his thoughts.
Unfit, except Gaelio finds a fit for his arms, talented as he is. He finds a way to hold, though his hands tremble to hold. Cheek brushing against the curve it found, McGillis closes his eyes again to map it out internally, each tremor laid over his ribs and back, and the shock of a hand nestled against the back of his head. Eyelashes flutter open and ghost over skin, surprise catching him -- for that and for the words that follow.
Enough?
He senses his brow wrinkling, senses the haze overtaking and the struggle -- already struggling to understand. Something warms over inside himself to hear words like those, but he doesn't know why. How can anything be enough, let alone --
A break in the response that bubbles to the surface, hands clinging tighter to Gaelio's back. Drawn into warmth, leaning in. ]
A lie told in revenge?
[ He bleeds to hear something so foreign, as though Gaelio had pressed against inflamed infection with his reply, pressure that oozes through the warped note in McGillis's tone. ]
If so, you've hit the mark.
[ It stings to think that it will be taken away from him eventually. Teasing a monster with such an absurd concept; enough. ]
no subject
How appropriate, that as familiar frustration begins to clash against McGillis's exposure, Gaelio has no awareness of it: that they struggle together. That McGillis, too, wrestles with incomprehension, born of words and gesture. Enough and an embrace, his cupping hand; apology and an embrace, and hands that clutch, tighten. It would comfort to know, perhaps perversely, as had witnessing the crimping of misery unmasked. Yet, unknown.
Instead, left to further wonder, as McGillis accuses him of dishonesty. Too raw in it, too raw in ceding to what such would, has done to him, for what kicks up within Gaelio to become a proper storm. Though his fingers begin to curl in fine hair, begin to clench, not yet hard enough to pull or hurt -- it might feel on the brink of it, the suggestion of violence. Intended or not; he's less sure, again both adrift in disconnect and taut in suspension.
His voice drifts, strange. Far, but contorting. ]
A lie?
[ Hypocritical, as he veers without consciousness of his double standards, too entrenched in his entitlement to them: that he can and will and does levy such charges at McGillis, but bristles now to hear them returned. He has the right, though bleating that with each shallow wound, each deeper thrust, dilutes it. Only one had betrayed, piercing Kimaris to kill, discarding their friendship, a friendship born of a lie, as soft-hearted emotions could not and had never reached him.
Or not.
What would, should, does begin to flare, stoppered by admitting the mark, by how McGillis clings, by his breath on his neck. In the absence, in the hollow so charred by conflagrations of rage, jury, and frustration, he's left to question. ]
Revenge, huh... I wonder.
[ It should be. The thought of that, of what is owed, ever on the periphery, ever seeping out, ever a pressure against what cavity they've clawed into here, together, hands clasped, eyes meeting, the thought of that wrenches him farther, as immediate and jarring as McGillis's separation. Which? This and that and every.
Pulled back farther, pulled in closer, by breathing, by hands, by fingers that would press marks through cloth. A new and fast old mantra: must kill, for them. cannot kill, if this. unforgiven, unforgiven, unforgiven, both. It should be, but even if he could still manage it, this revenge would not be deliberate, unable to understand the how and why of its efficacy.
What expels from his mouth is harsh and short, a breath, but with sound enough to venture at a laugh. Too bitter and pained for it, or too bitter and pained to be anything else. ]
If that's what it took, then I have no revenge.
[ If words could strike McGillis. If words could knock him from power, into dirt, grinding his face into the emotions he had buried there in his climb. If the monster could be made to bleed by so simple an utterance, so simple a truth, then he had been no monster. Then those words reached, the emotions not buried beneath but hidden within, inadvertently cut loose.
Impossible to have revenge on a figment, to enact the method, to wring honor from what had not, truly, been dishonor.
Impossible to have revenge on his friend who holds him like this, who falters to be told enough, though Gaelio little understands the difference, the significance, not having intended to ask more, to supplement, a flesh compromise with his kiss.
Impossible to explain, without understanding. Gaelio speaks, in an effort to keep from spinning out farther, in an effort to grasp at it through these faltering steps. ]
Need isn't want.
[ Mad, after all and everything, for that want to be so. Yet, it would be blinding to refuse to acknowledge it with the taste of him lingering on tongue, on lips. That he wants him, a different want, sequestered and primal. ]
What you need, I don't know. I never understood you. I don't know how to ask. What we need, I've imposed too often. I've the right, but it isn't an answer.
[ He cannot alone supply the missing piece. ]
What I need... I don't know that, either.
[ Faint, realizing, his arm tugging McGillis tighter against him, as though he could shield himself from it. How perverse that his instinct, even now, is to reach for him. ]
But, I think I need my friend. I think I need you.
[ No masks. No effort beyond that of honesty, whether Gaelio can believe it so soon or not. No actions, though actions are simpler until they aren't. Simply him, if true. If true in speaking friend, if true that in a dream shared, his boy heart swore he'd meant too much and cradled him against time and bloodied Fate. ]
Truly you.
no subject
He can't conceive of a relationship without some element of aggression present, either hidden or bared out in the open. If Gaelio pursues him out of a violent need, out of a need for revenge, he can fathom it. If Gaelio pursues understanding and confesses to needs that are not as simple as violence led by honor, it takes straining effort to wrap his mind around that, to double back to his own feelings of earnest warmth towards this man, this man he has tried to kill who must also kill him, and untangle where they begin and where they end.
If they kiss upon their renewed oath, all the more confusing, all the more soothing.
If he asks Gaelio, if he prompts him to lie, it amounts to another confession of not understanding him. It's painfully difficult to understand, after injury, personal and proximal, after lying, abusing trust, using, painfully difficult to understand Gaelio's straining, the effort he puts into McGillis still. It forces him to reexamine what he'd failed to bury completely, those soft-hearted pieces that had only been shorn into being by this man, new layers of sediment discovered, eroded into existence by more than a decade of attachment --
The reason why he fails to commit fully to a life lived in anger.
Perhaps it's the same for Gaelio. He can't figure out how to commit to what is owed to him by his own unique circumstances. His eyes lid again, to hear a laugh as bitter and contorted as that expulsion of breath. More pain than anger, always more pain than anger with Gaelio.
McGillis had called it unfortunate, that expressions of friendship, love and trust could not touch him. He understands: those are missing pieces. It deforms him. And yet he only understands through Gaelio, only has context through meeting him, only has context of himself as an outsider after entering that new world.
He listens to the far-away reply, the entirety of it, and tries to piece it together. He watches a fixed point over Gaelio's shoulder as he listens to him speak -- of his punctured revenge, of the difference between need and want. His confession of not understanding either of their needs, each word a separate twinge, a separate ache, the floodgates open.
What we need, I've imposed too often. I've the right, but it isn't an answer.
Here, McGillis had understood Gaelio's straining through an entirely different context: that he can be satisfied by besting him. Doubt infests his mind. It's simpler to understand Gaelio when he discounts the basis of their friendship -- that an enemy always lurked there. That enemy was simply ignorant of his own capacity to become one. The truth of McGillis would be the thing to transform Gaelio's affection into hatred, regardless of anything else.
But if he speaks true here, that cannot be true.
I think I need you. Truly you.
McGillis lifts his chin. His hands shift and tighten once again as he pulls up and back, enough to meet Gaelio's eyes, enough to linger close. He searches through the depths of blue, pupils flicking. No shroud to an expression that lacks true comprehension, staring at Gaelio as if he were a puzzle with one hundred missing pieces.
Fingers loosen, and travel, and land against scarred cheek.
In his entire life. ]
I don't always know who I am.
[ Begun, with words pulled from pits kept inside of him. Their exposure to air shocks him. A quick inhale, before continuing. ]
There was a time when I knew. Without being trained, without being owned. I think I've been searching for that version of myself, only stronger. Strength that belongs only to me. Your place...
[ A tiny caress, here, a twitch of his palm. Searching, searching, pulling at truth. ]
Your place is difficult to understand. From the very beginning, our friendship was based on a fabrication. It began without a foundation. Even so... I thought that I could allow myself to have it. It was the first time I understood something like happiness.
[ Unique to Gaelio, the first one to enter his life with consistency. The lasting mark that dug deeper than any other and of the few he could truly count as marks. ]
I told you that nothing you'd offered had ever reached me. That was a lie, one that I told to myself, as well as you. But what I've done cannot be undone. I thought I understood you and the reasons for your pursuit -- but I don't understand you, not at all. How --
[ Harsher press, palm drifting to jaw. ]
How am I enough? How can you be satisfied with that?
no subject
Without his eyes, but with his weight, his exhale, both against his neck and felt in the lift of his chest.
Then, with his eyes. Reception and reaction, to the trail Gaelio accepted to weave through their underbrush. Head from shoulder, neck, cool air a shock where warmth last breathed. Gaelio's fingers slacken to allow it, slip through strands to settle against the base of his neck. Blue-green, darker in the night, without the moon. Fixed, seeing and unseeing. Look at me, the plea and cry and song and hope and dream and want and lust and need and shout and deathknoll and deathstrike, look at me for sixteen years, and two though masked, look at me, and he does.
Earnest. No shutters, no masks, no aversion. But earnest in bewilderment. Finally, finally, but still unseen. Which cut deeper: to strive for sixteen years and have them, at last, certain in it, only to be as certain that without understanding, he looks without seeing?; or, to look and seek and gaze for sixteen years, only to understand that without understanding, he, too, looks without seeing -- and had done for the whole of that time.
Which was the greater betrayal? But this is not McGillis's betrayal. Not this vision, not this blindness. But if betrayal in incomprehension, then together. They struggle together, as near sworn, and stare together.
Whatever the answer, his eyes transfix. Gaelio gazes, the singed and savaged muscles beneath disfigured skin unable to respond to fingertips alighting, that touch, but above his eyes, a tremble. More glass to fracture, to crumble, to dust. Though he would tip into it, press them firmer and feel them better through less sensitive skin, but that McGillis speaks.
Confessions. Truth that needs the bracing of more air, of bolstered lungs.
Unknown, so perhaps Gaelio had little chance of it, but he cannot hear in that an excuse. He cannot craft it for himself, will not, pushing his own place in this farther from the center as he listens, intent, white rimming more of his eyes.
A time before Iznario, that much he can parse. Gaelio flounders with the fragments of that picture, gathered over a time too long to understand the fit of each. That McGillis had not been born Fareed, discovered with Rustal. That his feelings toward that man he called father were complex and dark, gleaned over years of dropped eyes and subtle tensing. Iznario Fareed, a cold and terrifying man, whom Gaelio could amuse with easy self-deprecation, but would not himself long keep by.
In a dream, contusions sprawling down a boy's neck. A memory in that. Squashed and placated inquiry.
Whatever Gaelio believed of birth, if a child not of astral blood was introduced as, conscious of the falsehood, developed disconnect and complex, he could understand that, the likelihood and logic in it. The psychology. Yet, the weight of that does not balance the scales, nothing slotting. A piece crafted that does not yet fit.
Palm shifts against his cheek. Here, Gaelio tilts, a fractional canting. His middle finger flexes, dragging tip along neck.
Friendship without foundation. A lie that he would nonetheless have. Whether Gaelio would resist it or not, he has no opportunity, swifter than reflex, than nerve and muscle snap: the compression of his features, crumbs and powder. Hurt like lightning in his eyes, a flash that spots and blinds and leaves the space thereafter darker.
But McGillis wanted it. But it reached him, but he'd lied as to that while rending them asunder, cutting them completely apart, whatever tether Gaelio had hooked and clung to.
Yet, now they cling.
The pressure of McGillis's hand keeps him. His other arm, though reluctant to lose the last of their embrace, lifts. Unsettled, drifting fingertips against McGillis's elbow, wrist, until settling, cupped against the back of McGillis's hand. Hand framing hand framing jaw. ]
I can't be.
[ Strange, the waver in his voice, as if wet. ]
But I can't not be. McGillis...
[ It isn't as though he understands himself well, feeling what he should not. What he must do, what he cannot do. A different must, an overwhelming must, with McGillis gazing like this, holding him like this. ]
It wouldn't have mattered to me, your blood. Not long ago, I would have agreed that our friendship must have been fabrication. How else could you have done it? Only your actions removing the foundation, letting us drown. But if you wanted it, if you wanted me, if we were happy, it was real. You were --
[ The rippling in his voice carries and he blinks, quick, against build up. ]
-- my friend. That's all that's needed. To be together, to want to be together. To mean what that should.
[ Status, blood, meaningless things, and so Ein, too, had been his friend. Therein his penance, without resolution. One way or another, he will be doomed to that. ]
I wanted to reach you. I wanted to be acknowledged by you, for you to be with me without the masks. I wanted to stand at your side.
[ Echoes, but how changed the tone, how much softer, when they stand so entwined. ]
It can't be undone. I can't forgive you, for them. I can't believe you, I can't understand you, but still, I...
[ Hands shifting, whether to squeeze against hand, or curl fingers back toward hairline, twist. ]
...want to. I wanted, I needed to understand why.
[ Why Carta, why Ein, why piercing him as enemy in coldest blood for a small void in inheritance. After sixteen years, after calling him friend, after they stood together. ]
I wanted you to look at me. I think I wanted...
[ As if understanding through speech, drawn out by the string on his tongue, and it's faint, the surprise speckling his eyes to voice it, the shame beneath it, because if this the core, a core, selfish and caught up in them, McGillis and Gaelio, not them. ]
...you to recognize me, if the only way, the only thing you understood, was power, was to kill you. If that's what it took, if then I'd mean something to you, if only as the man who killed you, then I had to for that reason, as well.
[ can it have been that? as small as that?
Carta, Ein, respectable emotions To recognize them, or was it pretext? An unknown, confusion thick and thickening. They still stack upon his shoulders.
but with McGillis's eyes on him, he less remembers the weight. An unforgivable man. Will they share it? ]
Because I've always wanted you, McGillis. I don't know how to stop.
[ Long defined by this man, what would become of him without him? McGillis had not been eveything. His family was not nothing. Carta, Ein, they were not nothing. But, McGillis was... McGillis is... hopelessly foolish, despicably naive, to speak without understanding, yet there's no other truth. There's nothing else. His eyes, their eyes. ]
It's more than satisfaction. Or less than. If you mean it, if it's you, you're enough. Because I can't let you go.
no subject
Tentative steps into the clearance. A skeleton of his truth, because Gaelio cannot possibly have room left in his heart to accept the full picture -- past revival, grasping for Bael, McGillis continues to make sure to sever that possibility without actualizing it, committed to burning alone. Committed, except the eyes across from him remain serious and engaged as he tests stepping on a different path. Breadcrumbs to follow in a dark forest. A cheek tilting into his palm, scar tissue rubbed against callouses, more than receptive to each clumsy offering.
Hurt, flashing through those moonlit blue eyes, to hear McGillis speak of the lack of foundation. A bridge built over a pit, with only one of them looking down, waiting for the support structures to give. Despite the number of years, a temporary joining. The longer they went without addressing it, the more convinced he'd been.
It wouldn't have mattered to me, your blood.
A cloud permeates the film of his eyes.
That was what he'd strove for, with every inch of strength he could muster and build upon; the new world where it wouldn't have mattered. Each individual's version of happiness would be reachable there. They would only need to want it for themselves. No barriers, no scripts, no decrepit ruling class, no iron fist. In a larger context, it's the dream that mesmerizes, soothes and envelops him warmly, close to what he imagines a parent's warmth might be. In this shrunken version, where Gaelio tells him there was a smaller world where that was already true, a clicking sound in his mind begins as he struggles to sort the response.
if we were happy
Click. Fog, and hurt, matching his counterpart. Lines crinkle about his eyes. A moment of distraction, pained exhaustion blotting out surroundings.
Happiness? Something like it. Something missing. Fingers drift against the nape of his neck, light and distracting. How the flesh he thought was dead would wake whenever that animated presence would lean against his shoulder. A clicking sound, sorting through the years against the backdrop of Gaelio's voice.
The fog abating, as his voice winds around to words already once spoken. McGillis's eyes darken to life and hook to the sound, a knowing exhale given, lightly expelled through the nose.
Yet he will be mesmerized by what follows: if the tone is true, a new realization that speaks to complex facets that had gone unnoticed. By the both of them. His eyes widen to hear it, surprise for the breadth and the depth of meaning. For how it sprawls into life and takes form in front of him. Gaelio latching onto the only way he thought he could remain a fixture at McGillis's side, a sharp ache forming in the wake of those words -- his fingers shift in sync, pads pressing harder against bone structure.
He swallows. It's more than he was prepared to take.
What he has done to Gaelio is more unforgivable than he knew -- trapping him in this cage. The only way to loosen the bars will be to meet him at the middle and to begin to remove them together.
Do they begin?
Swallowing the pocket of air in his throat, he moves his hands, disrupting Gaelio's perched one. Fingers climb around to pull from the back of his head, from the width of a shoulder-blade, McGillis stepping in to hold him closer. Stepping into a hold that resembles a cradle, temple sliding against temple. ]
You've already reached me. I've already acknowledged you. I see you, I've seen you. For two years you've remained at my side, ghostly, but present. Always there. You're always there. I --
[ Until the ghost became real. Until he rose to life.
Straining, understanding that it would mean his destruction, straining against going after him a second time. Not until Gaelio came to meet him at Bael. Not until Gaelio found him again on the battlefield. Not until Gaelio locked him into the necessity of it -- deal with this, deal with him, or else cease moving forward.
The sound of Isurugi's voice in his head, reporting on Gaelio Bauduin's last known status. Low and unspoken in his tone had been the expectation that the general would comment aloud and begin to plan their next move. ]
Should have told you sooner, shouldn't I have?
[ The weight of realizations, like creaking hinges. His voice strains against it, exhaustion bleeding at the core of everything.
Everything he strove for, everything he strove against. Gaelio at his side the entire time, neither of them aware that they continued to move in sync while they separated out as far as they could possibly separate. ]
I should've told you what you meant to me. I couldn't let go either, not even after what I'd done. Where does that leave us now?
[ An honest question. Too much blood spilled, thick in the air between them, yet they cling and cling.
Gaelio chasing him for reasons that cause his heart to stir anew, however bloody the path. ]
What you call masks -- it's skin. I had to live through it. I had to breathe. Can you understand? I still breathed you in.
[ Shucking past the layers, the skin that kept him safe, to the person that kept him safe. His heart thrums in his ears to speak as much, his grip shifting against shoulders. His fingers buried against hair -- a grip forming there too, twisting. ]
I wasn't happy. It was real. You were my friend. My only friend.