How his face draws Rin’s attention. How his every motion fosters admiration. Rin knows this face and its shifts so well. Knows where past Sen settles in among the grins and lines of present Sen. Sees how Sen’s expression now is troubled, and how his looking lasts and lasts, unflagging.
Something here is different. The room’s gone dire, the space between their bodies (so minor and so sharply charged) turned from tranquility to something quietly - mournfully? - buzzing. This is and isn’t Sen’s accustomed speech. Wild and whirling, yes, but the gravity outweighs any attempt at lightness. But there’s something like desperation at the root.
And there’s that failed, that forlorn smirk.
And there’s Sen’s persistent grip, holding tight beyond the normal length of any hold, almost as if grasping for dear life.
…And there’s that blush. Not touched sorrowful, but bearing an ache of its own, and still ringing as if it held (does it hold? it might, it might) deepest import.
And of course. And there’s the moment that jars their breath. The moment they have to fight to withold a small and strangled sound. That electric-shock imperative: ‘Forget.’
…Forget?
As if they could ever.
As if they ever would.
(Sen’s speaking dramatically, just as Rin has spoken dramatically. This is true, and it doesn’t tell the fullness of the story. This is true, and can’t account for the way the word hits heavy at Rin’s chest, and leaves them airless.)
(Corollary questions: Does Sen believe they could, or would?)
(Related. Possibly related? Sen echoes Rin’s words, speaks ’How could I harm what you love,’ speaks particularly that ’what you love,’ and there’s a shifting and a softening in Rin’s expression. It means something, to hear those words reflected. It means something, to recognize the layerings of truth and witness that those three words may possess for Rin. May have possessed, in Rin’s own speaking.)
They watch the (idiot man) (strange and wonderful man) (incomparable man) man they’ve known so long, the man lately so markedly worn, thinking ’What is it, Sen?’ and ’Tell me, please.’
And at once, they feel this moment and its weight, and Sen’s arm around Rin reliable as always, offering foundation and comforting as ever, and they feel how near they hear Sen’s beating heart, and the truth that resonates through Sen’s echoed beat and echoed voice and echoed heat and breath and being—
And it’s so simple.
So much else in life, every other thing in life worth chasing turns convoluted. Grates and tears along the soul and mind and body. Demands constant pursuit and sleepless nights and clever schemes and a hundred carefully-kept contacts. Requires jarring calculations that run patience raw and turn the world to shades of noxious, blearing red.
Nothing has ever been difficult with Sen. And the speech that follows flow readily, grown of necessity and wanting. One line given in French - automatic, assertive - before the rest slips into English, following Senan’s final shift. ]
Don’t ask me that.
You, Sen, are compulsory.
You name yourself incapable of mending, and I ask you to consider: if you’ve no voice for repair in the broader world, may you not be capable of healing this one heart? When you have known its tenor for so long. When you have seen it through its wildest desperations. When you have coaxed this heart from deepest keenings and the recurrent knife-edge of despair. When you have seen its joy in every flourishing and flavor.
When you have shared your heart with me and mine, and when ours beat in so much consonance?
You’re no slow study, Senan, and you’ve had plenty of time and tutelage: do not doubt that you may mend, and you do mend this null’s persistent heart.
What’s more—
What’s more, Sen, my Senan.
I beg of you, I insist, if you will grant your Rin any favor at all, let it be this—
Don’t speak to me of forgetting. Don’t believe that I could banish my Sen from memory.
It is, in the first point, impossible. When your every word lives within my veins. You who could burn my lifeblood crimson, hm? You who already have. Believe me when I say that I am half composed out of your pretty words, when I claim your breath is ever in my lungs. When you pass from my sight, when desolate years part us, still I know you in shakes and tones and pieces in myself.
[ They’ve strengthened their grip at Sen’s hand without precisely intending to or noticing the shift. And though their voice has lowered - in register, in volume - it rings no less decisive, doesn’t fall to the soft edge of a whisper. Rings as well with something desperate, a tone they register and make no effort to veil. ]
I would forfeit everything, before I would even think to banish you from any district of my knowing. I will lose all, and begin again from an erratic nothing, before I relinquish one single memory of you.
[ Another press of their hand to Sen’s, their eyes wide and watching bright enough to burn, expression speaking the wholeness of their plea: to stay, to know that Rin will never forfeit him, to comprehend how well Sen keeps Rin’s heart.
And.
And what happens next is simple, as everything with Sen has always, always been. What happens next is motion, subtle and easily drawn, Rin’s hand upon Sen’s chest, and Rin’s lips against Sen’s own, a gentle, wanting pressure. ]
no subject
This remarkable, wandering fool.
How his face draws Rin’s attention. How his every motion fosters admiration. Rin knows this face and its shifts so well. Knows where past Sen settles in among the grins and lines of present Sen. Sees how Sen’s expression now is troubled, and how his looking lasts and lasts, unflagging.
Something here is different. The room’s gone dire, the space between their bodies (so minor and so sharply charged) turned from tranquility to something quietly - mournfully? - buzzing. This is and isn’t Sen’s accustomed speech. Wild and whirling, yes, but the gravity outweighs any attempt at lightness. But there’s something like desperation at the root.
And there’s that failed, that forlorn smirk.
And there’s Sen’s persistent grip, holding tight beyond the normal length of any hold, almost as if grasping for dear life.
…And there’s that blush. Not touched sorrowful, but bearing an ache of its own, and still ringing as if it held (does it hold? it might, it might) deepest import.
And of course. And there’s the moment that jars their breath. The moment they have to fight to withold a small and strangled sound. That electric-shock imperative: ‘Forget.’
…Forget?
As if they could ever.
As if they ever would.
(Sen’s speaking dramatically, just as Rin has spoken dramatically. This is true, and it doesn’t tell the fullness of the story. This is true, and can’t account for the way the word hits heavy at Rin’s chest, and leaves them airless.)
(Corollary questions: Does Sen believe they could, or would?)
(Related. Possibly related? Sen echoes Rin’s words, speaks ’How could I harm what you love,’ speaks particularly that ’what you love,’ and there’s a shifting and a softening in Rin’s expression. It means something, to hear those words reflected. It means something, to recognize the layerings of truth and witness that those three words may possess for Rin. May have possessed, in Rin’s own speaking.)
They watch the (idiot man) (strange and wonderful man) (incomparable man) man they’ve known so long, the man lately so markedly worn, thinking ’What is it, Sen?’ and ’Tell me, please.’
And at once, they feel this moment and its weight, and Sen’s arm around Rin reliable as always, offering foundation and comforting as ever, and they feel how near they hear Sen’s beating heart, and the truth that resonates through Sen’s echoed beat and echoed voice and echoed heat and breath and being—
And it’s so simple.
So much else in life, every other thing in life worth chasing turns convoluted. Grates and tears along the soul and mind and body. Demands constant pursuit and sleepless nights and clever schemes and a hundred carefully-kept contacts. Requires jarring calculations that run patience raw and turn the world to shades of noxious, blearing red.
Nothing has ever been difficult with Sen. And the speech that follows flow readily, grown of necessity and wanting. One line given in French - automatic, assertive - before the rest slips into English, following Senan’s final shift. ]
Don’t ask me that.
You, Sen, are compulsory.
You name yourself incapable of mending, and I ask you to consider: if you’ve no voice for repair in the broader world, may you not be capable of healing this one heart? When you have known its tenor for so long. When you have seen it through its wildest desperations. When you have coaxed this heart from deepest keenings and the recurrent knife-edge of despair. When you have seen its joy in every flourishing and flavor.
When you have shared your heart with me and mine, and when ours beat in so much consonance?
You’re no slow study, Senan, and you’ve had plenty of time and tutelage: do not doubt that you may mend, and you do mend this null’s persistent heart.
What’s more—
What’s more, Sen, my Senan.
I beg of you, I insist, if you will grant your Rin any favor at all, let it be this—
Don’t speak to me of forgetting. Don’t believe that I could banish my Sen from memory.
It is, in the first point, impossible. When your every word lives within my veins. You who could burn my lifeblood crimson, hm? You who already have. Believe me when I say that I am half composed out of your pretty words, when I claim your breath is ever in my lungs. When you pass from my sight, when desolate years part us, still I know you in shakes and tones and pieces in myself.
[ They’ve strengthened their grip at Sen’s hand without precisely intending to or noticing the shift. And though their voice has lowered - in register, in volume - it rings no less decisive, doesn’t fall to the soft edge of a whisper. Rings as well with something desperate, a tone they register and make no effort to veil. ]
I would forfeit everything, before I would even think to banish you from any district of my knowing. I will lose all, and begin again from an erratic nothing, before I relinquish one single memory of you.
[ Another press of their hand to Sen’s, their eyes wide and watching bright enough to burn, expression speaking the wholeness of their plea: to stay, to know that Rin will never forfeit him, to comprehend how well Sen keeps Rin’s heart.
And.
And what happens next is simple, as everything with Sen has always, always been. What happens next is motion, subtle and easily drawn, Rin’s hand upon Sen’s chest, and Rin’s lips against Sen’s own, a gentle, wanting pressure. ]