Over the years, he's improved to match their lead: to respond in kind, or respond in backwards accord as one might follow musical scales, until there is no constraint of one language or another. They slip in and out, symphonic and harmonious, choosing language to suit thought as best applied, until what they speak is their own secret communication.
A language of thought put to word, understood only by Rin and Senan.
He loves this. He loves that every language he knows beyond that of his birth, he learned from them, or for them. He loves that his native language is theirs, as well. And that the language most comfortable to him is the one that will die with them.
(With him. Rin won't speak this way to anyone else. He knows for certain that this game of chase, of picking fruit from linguistic trees and creating something new, will be unendurable for them with anyone else, when Sen is gone.
Rin is not his.
But this is theirs, together. A house divided (against itself) (in the absence of half its foundation) can't stand.)
Their words and his own bleak encroaching thoughts turn his smile wistful, melancholy. He turns his hand under theirs and clasps, draws it back to his kiss. (He came so close to them, they could whisper now between them and be heard. He holds so near, conspiring, and catching their eyes is a boundless intimacy.
And it's impossible to hide much, here, an arm wound around them, their heads inclined and nearly touching. Impossible for them not to have seen that flicker of Something at the thought of dire ends, and of the application of that quote.)
He lowers their joined hands but doesn't release this time. Instead, he holds on - tight as he dares, for as long as he can - and whispers in their non-cacophony of languages: ]
False nothing. I cannot heal a broken heart. Imagine the fortune I could make if I had such a capacity. No - I can break, because destruction is autonomic for a man. I can wound, because we were bred to war. We learn peace, with time and tutor.
I can't heal.
But I can do this - offer you an imperative. I would have you consider it well now. There may come a time when such a demand is crucial.
[ He laughs, mirthlessly, and flickers his eyes to theirs. Then down again, speaking to their hand. To his hand, his thumb brushing their skin. ]
If my arms signal a dire end, and my hand inflicts some hell upon you - or, in thoughtlessness, in my absences, I have wounded my Rin. If ever my absence causes the heartbreak I try so desperately to avoid. Forget me.
Better that I vanish from your memory, and so from the memory of the world, than for you to love, and die by, my hand.
Forget and live. An imperative vital to the perpetuation of Rin, who must always endure - because there is no world I can countenance that exists without them.
I think the universe may well cease, and fall into void, without you. Out like a light.
[ He's speaking too near to words he never wished to say. But they're near, and he wonders if their heart beats the same heady rhythm as his own. But they're near, and they are, have always been, his world. ]
Or I wish it would. The hopeless mundanity of tomorrow, if you ceased tonight. How dull dawn would be. How lacking, every hour until nightfall. And the evening would be a fall of dark without enchantment. Every star boring, a speck of light like every other, hanging uselessly in the sky. The whole magnificence of creation, rendered an abandoned theater. An empty stage where once Rin laughed, and spoke, and danced.
I'd rather cut off the offending hand than permit so wretched a world as that.
[ Another low laugh, self-effacing. Sen chances another look at them, and looks too long. Far too long.
He loses the thread of any language but his own by birth. (And it's his own blush that rises now, suffusing his skin with something like health.) ]
A problem engendered by all this talk of dying, and heartbreak, and absence: how can I swear to cut off my own hand before it harms you? How could I harm what you love?
[ A quote, and nothing more, he tells himself.
A paraphrasing.
And even if his hand is somehow (fortunately!) loved by Rin, they don't love him.
(But he's near, and his forehead presses theirs, and there are truths he doesn't like to believe: that the world will go on without Rin. That Rin will be broken when he dies. And for all that, Rin does not love him.) ]
Perhaps I'll tell my hand to love you in return, and render it incapable of harming you.
[ Drawing up their joined hands again to his lips (now attempting a cocksure smirk) (failing), he holds their gaze with his own. ]
Sen's hand - listen well, you filthy, blood-stained shit: love Rin. Love them so that their pain is yours, and their joy is your delight. Be consumed with the longing to touch their cheek, and let it be anathema to strike them with any manner of harm.
no subject
Over the years, he's improved to match their lead: to respond in kind, or respond in backwards accord as one might follow musical scales, until there is no constraint of one language or another. They slip in and out, symphonic and harmonious, choosing language to suit thought as best applied, until what they speak is their own secret communication.
A language of thought put to word, understood only by Rin and Senan.
He loves this. He loves that every language he knows beyond that of his birth, he learned from them, or for them. He loves that his native language is theirs, as well. And that the language most comfortable to him is the one that will die with them.
(With him. Rin won't speak this way to anyone else. He knows for certain that this game of chase, of picking fruit from linguistic trees and creating something new, will be unendurable for them with anyone else, when Sen is gone.
Rin is not his.
But this is theirs, together. A house divided (against itself) (in the absence of half its foundation) can't stand.)
Their words and his own bleak encroaching thoughts turn his smile wistful, melancholy. He turns his hand under theirs and clasps, draws it back to his kiss. (He came so close to them, they could whisper now between them and be heard. He holds so near, conspiring, and catching their eyes is a boundless intimacy.
And it's impossible to hide much, here, an arm wound around them, their heads inclined and nearly touching. Impossible for them not to have seen that flicker of Something at the thought of dire ends, and of the application of that quote.)
He lowers their joined hands but doesn't release this time. Instead, he holds on - tight as he dares, for as long as he can - and whispers in their non-cacophony of languages: ]
False nothing. I cannot heal a broken heart. Imagine the fortune I could make if I had such a capacity. No - I can break, because destruction is autonomic for a man. I can wound, because we were bred to war. We learn peace, with time and tutor.
I can't heal.
But I can do this - offer you an imperative. I would have you consider it well now. There may come a time when such a demand is crucial.
[ He laughs, mirthlessly, and flickers his eyes to theirs. Then down again, speaking to their hand. To his hand, his thumb brushing their skin. ]
If my arms signal a dire end, and my hand inflicts some hell upon you - or, in thoughtlessness, in my absences, I have wounded my Rin. If ever my absence causes the heartbreak I try so desperately to avoid. Forget me.
Better that I vanish from your memory, and so from the memory of the world, than for you to love, and die by, my hand.
Forget and live. An imperative vital to the perpetuation of Rin, who must always endure - because there is no world I can countenance that exists without them.
I think the universe may well cease, and fall into void, without you. Out like a light.
[ He's speaking too near to words he never wished to say. But they're near, and he wonders if their heart beats the same heady rhythm as his own. But they're near, and they are, have always been, his world. ]
Or I wish it would. The hopeless mundanity of tomorrow, if you ceased tonight. How dull dawn would be. How lacking, every hour until nightfall. And the evening would be a fall of dark without enchantment. Every star boring, a speck of light like every other, hanging uselessly in the sky. The whole magnificence of creation, rendered an abandoned theater. An empty stage where once Rin laughed, and spoke, and danced.
I'd rather cut off the offending hand than permit so wretched a world as that.
[ Another low laugh, self-effacing. Sen chances another look at them, and looks too long. Far too long.
He loses the thread of any language but his own by birth. (And it's his own blush that rises now, suffusing his skin with something like health.) ]
A problem engendered by all this talk of dying, and heartbreak, and absence: how can I swear to cut off my own hand before it harms you? How could I harm what you love?
[ A quote, and nothing more, he tells himself.
A paraphrasing.
And even if his hand is somehow (fortunately!) loved by Rin, they don't love him.
(But he's near, and his forehead presses theirs, and there are truths he doesn't like to believe: that the world will go on without Rin. That Rin will be broken when he dies. And for all that, Rin does not love him.) ]
Perhaps I'll tell my hand to love you in return, and render it incapable of harming you.
[ Drawing up their joined hands again to his lips (now attempting a cocksure smirk) (failing), he holds their gaze with his own. ]
Sen's hand - listen well, you filthy, blood-stained shit: love Rin. Love them so that their pain is yours, and their joy is your delight. Be consumed with the longing to touch their cheek, and let it be anathema to strike them with any manner of harm.