[ If Sen's expression reads of nothing, it's because he's fallen too stunned to properly -
Anything.
Breathe. Think. Emote. God forbid he should try to find words; what capacity does he have any longer for speech in monosyllabic English, much less his usual forays into lectures, diatribes, multilingual odes?
He can't even move; if he moves, it might not be real.
(It's real. He knows it's real. He can't accept that it is, because accepting that Rin, after a quarter of a fucking century, caught a kiss on their cheek means Sen can't avoid asking why.)
He can't avoid accepting that it happened. He can't stave off the slow crawl of confusion, wariness, bafflement (destruction) in his expression. Sen blinks up at them, in the sunlight of their smile, at the corner of which is the kiss he gave that they didn't dodge, or bat aside, or avoid with laughter he loved and loathed.
With his heart in his throat, he thinks, Rin, you ruined the game.
And he thinks, A curtain's been pulled aside, and a comfortable lie's been called out. The illusion's been shattered.
And he thinks, Rin. What the fuck have you done? What the fuck have I done?
This is what it is to be devastated. To have wanted, and then not wanted, and then learned that there's a way to lie to oneself about not wanting and pretend to not want anyway, for so fucking long. And with a turn of their head, they undo him. They jerk the lifeline away.
(They accepted it.) (They turned aside an admirer, stood leaning over him, and accepted the hundredth or thousandth kiss he's sent their way in jest.) (It was never in jest.) (Neither was the refusal of all previous kisses.)
(If he and Rin weren't playing before with all those uncaught, neatly sidestepped kisses, are they playing now with this one caught?)
It's what they say that drives home a final blow: that the endearment is his alone, untouched even by them. (Fuck, he doesn't know what to make of that. Whether it's a joke, or a bone tossed his way, a scrap of never-was for him to die on. Or whether it means something, and if he should think about it too hard.)
By the time they open their eyes and speak that final pronouncement, Sen has covered his mouth with one hand, horrified or pensive (as though, perhaps, to prevent further kisses, or further utterances of the word that is all his own.) (He will, he knows, beat the living shit out of anyone who encroaches on it. Anyone who tries to call them what they are only to him.) (It's all Rin will ever be to him. Sen's one square inch of heaven.)
I think I'll keep it, they say, and he nods faintly, his eyes a little distant. Please. Please keep it.
He should say something. Lowering his hand a fraction, he manages: ]
Do. Imagine -
[ Faltering, he clears his throat and offers them a rueful smile that dims quickly as he speaks. His words come soft and wondering, the same almost-musing tone from a moment ago (before the world changed kaleidoscopic.) (Before it heaved beneath him yet again.) (Before they let a kiss fall, and gave him one word all his own.) ]
Better that it should have been dodged again - than caught and discarded, unwanted. Imagine the wreckage of me, to see it deemed unfit for even that glancing landing.
[ He breathes out a unharsh snort and looks away. At Andi. At the patron he startled. Down. Finds himself resentful of the audience that is valiantly pretending not to be an audience.
Well. He can't run. He can't hide. He can't retreat. And isn't he, Senan Wilkes, a master of radical acceptance when it comes to Rin Renault?
So he smiles. So he shifts, nevermind the ache in his thighs, nevermind the ache in his chest; he draws his cheek beside theirs - this nearness to afford them both even the simplest privacy, and his hand laid gently at the back of their neck, his arm a shield between him and onlookers. His voice drops to a low murmur (if he gave it thought: a seduction, a coaxing, far more intimate than any flirtation.) ]
Your Sen - your philosopher, your knave, your rogue - speaks of hellfire because he has grown accustomed to being scathed. He knows the agony of every flame - a thousand, thousand uncaught kisses over a quarter century's run. And now he has learned a warmth more scorching than any other: this kiss caught and kept, upon the loveliest cheek he has ever known.
How expertly I've learned the art of burning. How exquisite it all has been at your deft avoidance.
How perilous now.
[ His eyes half-close, and Sen brushes the rough of his jaw against theirs and wishes for the first time that he had thought to shave. Drifts his lips without purpose (without kiss) near their ear. ]
Do you feel springtime in my words, Rin? Truly? No, that's nonsense.
You perpetual youth, you eternal beauty - you fucking fool.
You are springtime. You are dawn, the bright rays of a rising sun on the horizon after unendurable night. You are all beginnings, renewals, and dreaming days. You are resurrection. A man may burn to blistering again and again with a lifetime of uncaught kisses and still stick his own foolish hand back in the flames - and you are both the reason why he does so, and the how of his survival.
My words are just kisses uncaught, cast out in hope that one of those multitudes will chance to be liked, and kept.
[ He stills, then draws back just enough to turn his head and regard them softly, fondly. With faux pensiveness, he draws his hand down so the backs of his fingers trace the very spot where they caught his kiss. ]
Which words do you suppose might fall beside this kiss, and remain? What promise, or thrall, or poetry? Assume that none fall short; assume that there is in all the world even one combination of sounds that could ever do you justice. What would it be? That my fingertips are blackened and my heart singed, but I've forgotten yet again what it means to be burnt?
Or - Rin. Rin, let it be that I've missed you. I've missed you terribly, having been not in any sort of hellfire, but frozen in distance from you - oh, longing to be burned by you. Such a long winter it's been. Such a cold night, aching for springtime and sunrise.
[ (Should he be speaking to them like this. Intimately, intensely, in a tone wrapped in unspoken temptation. Promising.
He wonders it distantly, without alarm or unquiet.)
(They're just words.) (Loaded as any gun ever was.) (Laced like a poisoned drink.) (He's never done this to Rin. He's never done this to anyone; it never took more than a half measure to coax people wherever it was that he wanted to take them. (Where is he trying to take Rin, now?) (Doesn't matter.) (They're just words.) Fucking wonderful, isn't it? To turn the full force of himself on them. To show them how brightly he burns.)
(...Well. It's not smart.
But they started it.) (Probably.)
With a soft tsk, he presses his thumb against their cheek, as though to confirm that it has, indeed, been sealed forever against their skin. ]
How dare you catch that kiss now, and take away the fire I hold so dear. What unfamiliar warmth is it you've given me instead, and what relief is there for it?
no subject
Anything.
Breathe. Think. Emote. God forbid he should try to find words; what capacity does he have any longer for speech in monosyllabic English, much less his usual forays into lectures, diatribes, multilingual odes?
He can't even move; if he moves, it might not be real.
(It's real. He knows it's real. He can't accept that it is, because accepting that Rin, after a quarter of a fucking century, caught a kiss on their cheek means Sen can't avoid asking why.)
He can't avoid accepting that it happened. He can't stave off the slow crawl of confusion, wariness, bafflement (destruction) in his expression. Sen blinks up at them, in the sunlight of their smile, at the corner of which is the kiss he gave that they didn't dodge, or bat aside, or avoid with laughter he loved and loathed.
With his heart in his throat, he thinks, Rin, you ruined the game.
And he thinks, A curtain's been pulled aside, and a comfortable lie's been called out. The illusion's been shattered.
And he thinks, Rin. What the fuck have you done? What the fuck have I done?
This is what it is to be devastated. To have wanted, and then not wanted, and then learned that there's a way to lie to oneself about not wanting and pretend to not want anyway, for so fucking long. And with a turn of their head, they undo him. They jerk the lifeline away.
(They accepted it.) (They turned aside an admirer, stood leaning over him, and accepted the hundredth or thousandth kiss he's sent their way in jest.) (It was never in jest.) (Neither was the refusal of all previous kisses.)
(If he and Rin weren't playing before with all those uncaught, neatly sidestepped kisses, are they playing now with this one caught?)
It's what they say that drives home a final blow: that the endearment is his alone, untouched even by them. (Fuck, he doesn't know what to make of that. Whether it's a joke, or a bone tossed his way, a scrap of never-was for him to die on. Or whether it means something, and if he should think about it too hard.)
By the time they open their eyes and speak that final pronouncement, Sen has covered his mouth with one hand, horrified or pensive (as though, perhaps, to prevent further kisses, or further utterances of the word that is all his own.) (He will, he knows, beat the living shit out of anyone who encroaches on it. Anyone who tries to call them what they are only to him.) (It's all Rin will ever be to him. Sen's one square inch of heaven.)
I think I'll keep it, they say, and he nods faintly, his eyes a little distant. Please. Please keep it.
He should say something. Lowering his hand a fraction, he manages: ]
Do. Imagine -
[ Faltering, he clears his throat and offers them a rueful smile that dims quickly as he speaks. His words come soft and wondering, the same almost-musing tone from a moment ago (before the world changed kaleidoscopic.) (Before it heaved beneath him yet again.) (Before they let a kiss fall, and gave him one word all his own.) ]
Better that it should have been dodged again - than caught and discarded, unwanted. Imagine the wreckage of me, to see it deemed unfit for even that glancing landing.
[ He breathes out a unharsh snort and looks away. At Andi. At the patron he startled. Down. Finds himself resentful of the audience that is valiantly pretending not to be an audience.
Well. He can't run. He can't hide. He can't retreat. And isn't he, Senan Wilkes, a master of radical acceptance when it comes to Rin Renault?
So he smiles. So he shifts, nevermind the ache in his thighs, nevermind the ache in his chest; he draws his cheek beside theirs - this nearness to afford them both even the simplest privacy, and his hand laid gently at the back of their neck, his arm a shield between him and onlookers. His voice drops to a low murmur (if he gave it thought: a seduction, a coaxing, far more intimate than any flirtation.) ]
Your Sen - your philosopher, your knave, your rogue - speaks of hellfire because he has grown accustomed to being scathed. He knows the agony of every flame - a thousand, thousand uncaught kisses over a quarter century's run. And now he has learned a warmth more scorching than any other: this kiss caught and kept, upon the loveliest cheek he has ever known.
How expertly I've learned the art of burning. How exquisite it all has been at your deft avoidance.
How perilous now.
[ His eyes half-close, and Sen brushes the rough of his jaw against theirs and wishes for the first time that he had thought to shave. Drifts his lips without purpose (without kiss) near their ear. ]
Do you feel springtime in my words, Rin? Truly? No, that's nonsense.
You perpetual youth, you eternal beauty - you fucking fool.
You are springtime. You are dawn, the bright rays of a rising sun on the horizon after unendurable night. You are all beginnings, renewals, and dreaming days. You are resurrection. A man may burn to blistering again and again with a lifetime of uncaught kisses and still stick his own foolish hand back in the flames - and you are both the reason why he does so, and the how of his survival.
My words are just kisses uncaught, cast out in hope that one of those multitudes will chance to be liked, and kept.
[ He stills, then draws back just enough to turn his head and regard them softly, fondly. With faux pensiveness, he draws his hand down so the backs of his fingers trace the very spot where they caught his kiss. ]
Which words do you suppose might fall beside this kiss, and remain? What promise, or thrall, or poetry? Assume that none fall short; assume that there is in all the world even one combination of sounds that could ever do you justice. What would it be? That my fingertips are blackened and my heart singed, but I've forgotten yet again what it means to be burnt?
Or - Rin. Rin, let it be that I've missed you. I've missed you terribly, having been not in any sort of hellfire, but frozen in distance from you - oh, longing to be burned by you. Such a long winter it's been. Such a cold night, aching for springtime and sunrise.
[ (Should he be speaking to them like this. Intimately, intensely, in a tone wrapped in unspoken temptation. Promising.
He wonders it distantly, without alarm or unquiet.)
(They're just words.) (Loaded as any gun ever was.) (Laced like a poisoned drink.) (He's never done this to Rin. He's never done this to anyone; it never took more than a half measure to coax people wherever it was that he wanted to take them. (Where is he trying to take Rin, now?) (Doesn't matter.) (They're just words.) Fucking wonderful, isn't it? To turn the full force of himself on them. To show them how brightly he burns.)
(...Well. It's not smart.
But they started it.) (Probably.)
With a soft tsk, he presses his thumb against their cheek, as though to confirm that it has, indeed, been sealed forever against their skin. ]
How dare you catch that kiss now, and take away the fire I hold so dear. What unfamiliar warmth is it you've given me instead, and what relief is there for it?