Mickey Doyle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
byanyname) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
kingdomsofrain2016-12-01 03:31 am
byanyname) wrote in kingdomsofrain2016-12-01 03:31 am
tfln open post
***
either leave a message (or set of muses) for one of my assholes, or request a message from one of them. choose messages from the classic source, from your own skull, or whatever you may please.
no subject
Sen, who appears the same, and altered. Diminished; unwell. (Sen who never should have been taken, or kept away, but there's no altering the fact now.) (He is here. That's something. He's here, and just might stay.) Sen, whose presence still alters the light of any room, and whose words bring relief with every winding phrase.
What happened.
What is happening? It isn't Rin's business, and if Sen wished to share, he would.
Still, half-formed worries nag. (And so, Rin nags. Not precisely intending to, and almost surprised at themself, but unable to wholly refrain.)
Still, Rin would like to... Fix it. To ferret out some solution, and there must be a solution; with enough determined seeking, there always is. Rin’s brought together so many broken pieces, fragments of self, of half-cocked business plans, of improbable dreams. They've turned the tail ends of nothing into a properly legitimate business, a nightclub and a haven and the nearest thing they’ve known to a secure place in the world. Why, then, should this problem be beyond them?
A trouble is, Sen hasn't asked. Or responded well to Rin’s attempts to pry. And Rin is reluctant to push harder (and risk, perhaps, pushing Senan away).
There will be time. (There has to be time. Please.) There will be time, and talk, and perhaps the problem and solution both await within the near-oncoming future.
Sen’s message catches them watching, attention perhaps yes, a little bit too fixed on Sen. And after reading (a series of emotion registered quietly, without outward show and difficult, oh, difficult to piece apart) they make a show of rolling their eyes, head shaking once. Expression studiously neutral, they raise a finger, wag it twice at Sen. Shift into a grin and remain right where they are, beginning to type. ]
Sha’n’t. c:
It is the purview of a Pissbucket - particularly when they preside over a premises - to hover as they please.
Perhaps I am only overlooking the floor, hm? Perhaps I’ve come to gauge the mingled crowd, or greet the night’s opening act.
Or is it that I wish to remind you how adamantly I - your Rin, or/and this other Rin, or/and any guise of Rin that might exist - remain within some form of reach?
An object lesson, Sen; an incontrovertible display. Your fate on-view: a pretty picture, eh?
I allow that time and circumstance work changes on us. Certain alterations are no more than glancing; the back alley encounter will fade quickly, its ripples scarcely amounting. Others… There are influences that might be called endemic. Unforgettable. Present in their reach through every iteration.
(You do my past self too much credit if you think some form of me hasn’t considered the questionable merits of dealing in any substance you can picture. The road between then and now has been paved with plenty of mis-starts and dubious intentions.)
I must insist upon one certitude: You are not and never have been a mongrel. You know I don’t keep dogs, and therefore I refuse to allow that you might be one.
No dog could manage such eloquence. Nor any mere man. No, such wild and resolving ramblings are the purview solely of a Sen. [ … ] My Sen, if I may speak so bold.
Or, perhaps, my once and future Sen.
[ ’Familiar as a childhood home,’ Sen had written. A phrase that fluttered warmth in vines on reading. A phrase that recurs now again, again, firefly gleaming recurrent, soft and beguiling. ]
no subject
The catch of breath and furrowed brow. The closing of his eyes and hard swallow.
How he sets his phone aside, face down, at one point, and feigns needing his drink as he looks anywhere, anywhere, but at his "fate on-view". (Yes. Yes, they're a pretty picture.) He closes his eyes and sees them there, too. (His Rin. A thought not unaccompanied by a faint twitch of a smile.)
There's untold warmth in this. The texts alone could sustain a starving man for years. (Nevermind that there have been other things. Conversations long into the night. Rin leaning against him, their back to his side, his arm slung around their waist. Several times - an undiscussed occurring. When it was late, when the conversations had worn through to their natural conclusion, when Rin was leaning and Sen was arm-slung beside them.
Without passion, or intent, he tells himself.
Friendly. Just - friendly. An offer of something possibly needed, intimacy afforded without expectation or price - those occasional kisses. One does need intimacy. (Who between them needed it, though?)
Nevermind that Rin has ever been close and constant.)
(Nevermind that the starving man hasn't got years.)
He reads the last line, unaware that he's nodding, assenting silently, because his Rin is not his Rin, but he is their Sen. He has been. Will be until the day he dies.
Which is looking to be another fate on-view, a not-so pretty picture: soon.
Which is why there's no approaching them with any of this. Ever.
But - ]
Not a mongrel, no. I merely liken myself to the habits of one.
For instance, a mongrel dog will form an attachment to the being that shows it such depths of fondness. Have you read - I'm sure you have. The MRI studies, dogs shown photographs of their people. A dog's brain will prove to spark alight at the sight of its human companion, much in the same way said human's does when they experience happiness.
The same regions of the brain activate for a mongrel. They feel pleasure at the sight of their singular, select companion.
You might find a similar reaction from me. Little happiness that I experience. But here is a singular, select companion who hovers, and gives me shelter, who ensures I have eaten when I forget, who plays games both absurd and elaborate with me.
The fate on-view does spark me alight.
A pretty picture, indeed.
Prettier than any, a view to inspire two years of yearning[...]
Pookie, are you fishing for compliments? If you want your vanity stroked, stop playing helicopter null, and I shall aspire to render unto you no less than three compliments, one of which is sure to draw a blush to your (youthful!) visage.
(Your past self, by the bye, is held immaculate in memory, and I will not permit you to besmirch my Rin. Shh, new Rin! Shh! Their hands were pure as fresh fallen snow, and one may be permitted to entertain fancies of criminal mischief.)
no subject
(What, precisely, caused Sen to set down the phone. And what catches his breath, or closes his eyes? And why. And what can be done?)
What can Rin do, save watch, and suppress a flickered worry - flickered sorrow - and allow themself the slightest smile at the sight of Sen nodding, reading, nodding.
There is no other like him; truly. ]
My past and present selves thank you.
Incorrigible, loquacious man. Luminous in all of your ragged glory.
Forever welcome in my home.
[ Looking at their phone or a moment, head cocked and again, smiling slightly before adding a line— ]
Which is, as well, your own.
[ They send the message, pocketing the phone and looking up to face a query from a passerby. It's a matter regarding the latest shipment of liquor, quickly relayed, pleasantly address. And after, Rin moves - step light, step purposeful - toward the couch on which a certain not-mongrel is currently ensconced. Places their hands at the back of the sofa, arms spread, posture easy, smile now more than slight, smile now tuned with the mischief of a grin. ]
That it should come to this!
How far have I traveled, to meet you here, on this sofa? What hardships have I endured for the sake of fishing for compliments? Ah, Sen, you bring me low.
I believe it is the birthright of every null, to have their vanity stroked. Would you deny me this privilege, Senan? Could you act so in opposition to fate?
[ They are very, oh very much enjoying themself. And fixing the fullness of their attention on Sen, and on Sen only. ]
no subject
Trying.
He isn't a sentimental man, or prone to emotional reaction - except when it comes to Rin. Except when the conversation turns, as the conversation inevitably does, to these small comments that serve only to highlight his own fortune in having met them. (That they believe simply and wholly in the rightness of this, their home, being his home as well.) (It is his home. Simply and wholly and rightly.)
(Rather. Rin is his home. And they abide here. So will he.)
When Rin approaches, he has made several aborted attempts to reply (what on earth can he say? "Thank you"?) The weight of their presence behind him is relief - always. Never does he find them burdensome. (Troublesome, yes; particularly when he tries to shake them and vanish from Null Set to meet with doctors.)
He tilts his head to look upside-down at them, his smile gentle and eyes assessing, approving. Appreciative.
How he loves their grin. And the face that bears it. And the form that accompanies both face and grin, nearly as familiar as his own: an oft-regarded work of art. ]
Doubtless you have crossed oceans of time to be here, and endured more trials than even one such as myself might have words to describe. Not only is it your birthright, your privilege, to access more store of compliments than mere mortals, but you've striven to earn them. Faced all manner of horrors so that you may be here, in all your vainglorious radiance, to receive them.
They'll require some effort.
Let's see about stroking that vanity.
[ He extends a thin hand, and when they take it, he, in minimal and courtly manner, guides them to come around the sofa to a place he has come to conceptualize as accustomed (rightful) (perfect): at his side, perhaps leaning against him, with his arm wound casually around them.
(Friendly. Of course.) (His heart never beats faster or more erratically than normal in their presence.) (Granted, he is rarely not in their presence. And his heart has always beaten fast and erratically.) ]
One each for your birthright, your privilege, and to appease fate, then. The first compliment - birthright.
[ He looks at them for a long space of thought, and then inclines his head, having apparently decided what to say. ]
The world, in all its uniform monotony, has never seen the like of you. Your existence from first breath to last has been, is, and will be anathema to normalcy. What conservatives will deem obscene, what even the most liberal amongst us will eschew as theatric; in all its vivacity, you exude the radiance of technicolor where all else is monochrome. You are a starburst amid fireworks. No less fated to end, but longer enduring, brighter, more cataclysmically destructive, and by far more memorable.
And your eyeshadow is very clever today.
[ He holds up a finger with a smirk. ]
That was the first. How fares your vanity thus far, Pookie?
no subject
All these years and all of that striving, across the borders of a dozen different countries and through nights lit with fire, through days defined by flight and fight and disreputable enterprise and a thousand attempts at self-discernment, and there was always this: Sen adamantly present, Rin leaning against Sen in perfect trust, Sen’s arm reflecting accord, and the world brought to stillness in their resting.
They’ve missed this. This foolish, brilliantly voluble man. Whose words are never empty, never fruitless; whose words tone the atmosphere toward warmth and vibrance. Whose words make a splendor of everything static. There is nothing, no, nothing prosaic in the presence of this man. There is nothing that can remain dull, and no part of life that doesn’t gain a greater shine.
They feel Sen breathing against them, and they allow themself a traquil exhale, an effortless, unguarded contentment clear in their expression, in the softness of their eyes.
(What is unnerving: How Sen’s form against their own is less substantial. How there’s a sallowness toned through his skin. How something, something vital and enduring has been altered.
A word for it: frailty. In traces, in hints, in expressions wavered, sorrowful, gone distant.)
(What is unnerving: The recurrent questions. The recurrent, quiet, gnawing certainty that time - this time, their time together, …Sen’s time - is limited.)
Hard not to think about this now, when held so near. When their hand lingers, brushes light along Sen’s forearm.
And, as well, best not to miss the contentment of this moment and its every iteration. Best to let themself drift along the current of Sen’s sun-struck, wholly gratifying discourse.
(Sun-struck, ha, well, Rin is Sen-struck. A thought that quirks a further grin from them, and sets them nestling a little closer against Sen’s side.)
Sen holds that finger, and Rin watches, smile brightening faux-arch approval. ]
These are perilous waters, Senan.
Oh, this null’s vanity flourishes with every slip of silvered phrase. You, as ever, speak with grace unparalleled. Unimaginable, beyond the context of you. Unmatched by any would-be courtier.
Who could hope to meet you, pace for pace, in a contest of wits or words? The answer, dear Sen, loquacious Sen, is ‘no one.’ You speak to the very core of this null’s pride—
And therein lies the trouble.
You see, your praise may hold an overabundance of power. Beneath the application of acclamatory terms, my vanity may grow insatiable. And what then will be done? What a creature will have been created?
I don’t mean to suggest a cessation of praise. No, oh, far be it from me, and never! Only you must think what you are doing, hm? About the responsibilities you incur.
no subject
It doesn't help that he tsks and bends his head to press his cheek to their forehead, ostensibly teasing, though lingering too long in the nearness of it even when the contact ends. ]
What then will be done? I shall endeavor to speak acclaim daily, to sate your lust for praise. What harm is there, if the words are only truths about which this prideful null must be made aware, lest they think themself anything other than resplendent. Anything other than incomparable.
[ His heart aches. Sen is glancing away from them as though gathering his thoughts, but the truth is. The truth is, their smile is a near-molten knife bypassing his outermost anatomy and neatly incising his most vital organs. The truth is, their smile is a brand pressed to his heart, marking him as theirs.
The truth is he wants, badly, to capture their smile in a kiss.
And he won't.
But he will return his attention to them, his smirk firmly placed, and holds up his finger again as though he means to indicate his first compliment; instead, he taps it quickly against the tip of their nose. ]
No trouble at all. No peril. I am in the safe harbor of your friendship and indulgence - indeed, I am ensconced within a kingdom of your own creation, where I am pleased to serve my monarch. As their guardian at the gates, as their courtier, as their fool. Whatever my sovereign bids, I shall endeavor to achieve.
Now. Compliment the Second, owed to your privilege, which is that of a null. The nonbinary, the neither-nor. By birthright, you are unmatched for radiance. By privilege of your self, as you have determined said self to be, and impressed upon the world the importance of such a distinction, you are owed - yes, owed! - praise of your character.
You are, my Rin, who is not my Rin, by far a more courageous soul than I, or any I have ever known. You tread where few others dare to go, across uncertain paths, laying foundations upon which you make your stands. You are resilient where others quail.
You have created a bastion for others, a place for them to turn when the world is cruel to them in ways you have keenly, painfully known. You fight silent battles armed only with words - and those, in far shorter supply than my own.
In the years I have watched you, and been most fortunate to know you, I have seen you grow to manage such battles with pragmatism and g-
[ He falters, his voice catching on a waver, on a strangle of emotion. It was sudden, the overwhelming pride, and stopped him abruptly. His smile hesitates beneath too-rapid blinking (oh, and didn't mean to get so enmeshed, and it's true. He believes every word.) And it returns, gentle, just as his voice returns.
Gentle. ]
With grace, Rin. With grace.
[ Here, he pauses, looking down (not intending to look at their hand on his arm, but looking nevertheless at their hand on his arm.) He sniffs, clears his throat, and adds softly: ]
I could speak unceasing praise of you. To others. To you. To empty air. I would commit myself to do so for a lifetime. It would be my privilege. What good are my words, otherwise? What good would they be, without you? if they were not spoken for the sake of one I so admire? Useless sounds to fill the vast emptiness of a world that never knew, never so much as conceived of the possibility, of Rin.
no subject
My heart overflows. You wretch of a man. You’ll undo me.
…Sen.
[ What can they possibly say? To all of this, to talk of grace - what would have seem so ill-applied until recently; what feels not-inapt, and absolutely gratifying to hear now - that settles warm within their chest. To praise from the one who matters most, and who has known them, always, deepest.
What can they say, or, what can they do, save to speak, and to follow what their heart tells, what their knowingness has always held? ]
You have ever been my strongest proponent. When all else swayed bleak. When all the world was teeth and fangs, still, you were there.
Here.
[ Rin presses Sen’s arm, brief and heartfelt, focus fixed still on his eyes, the worried and wonderful map of that intricately-known face, that compulsory, that necessary face. ]
Where would I have been, without Sen to rally my waning spirits and draw me back from peril, often by the scruff of my overzealous neck? Where would I be now, had forces cosmic - or less fantastic, but no less vital - not drawn our stars together, and taught me of the unsuspected harmonies this world can bear?
Assuming that our stars ever existed apart, which is a point I might hotly debate—
Another time. When I am less determined to pin you in my sights, Sen, most rambling philosopher, emperor of germinal space and wild confabulation.
[ There’s a finger lifted; a brow arched. Rin shifting straighter, half-admonishing, expression at once warm and wry. ]
Mein Dummerchen. Persist in these self-abnegations and I will be forced to compel your silence. Speak one word that paints you any less than dire - as anything less than, if not a monarch yourself, than a consummate, devastatingly dashing rogue equally matched in capability and right - and I’m afraid the floor for speaking will be all mine, and wholly dedicated to a lecture on the subject of your worth.
Yes, at the expense of receiving and reveling in my very own praise! Would you take that from me, Senan? Would you leave this null’s vanity only two-thirds attended, with one-third left to languish? Would you leave your null to wilt, Sen?
[ Their expression shifts a smirk, and their finger is withdrawn, their hand returned to its place on Sen’s arm. ]
I won't hear you speak so slightingly of your gifts. Your talents. These words you orchestrate with such elan.
Who could spin a world out of verbage, or spin my head, my amazement through a mere collision of sounds, hm? I am no easily dazzled creature, and yet you draw my notice unfailingly, and you entice my thoughts away from daily currents. From business, from anxieties, from each anticipation that fades before your fantastical breath.
Fantastical, and yet there is more reality within one glance of you or from you than in the whole of this wretched country.
So please, I implore you - I beg of you, in fact - speak well of my Sen.
no subject
He read once that some faiths held that hell was not a physical place, but rather the removal of a soul from the innermost circles of their god's presence. Felt keenly, felt like loneliness, like despair, like rejection. To be so far from blessing and benevolence. Hell is the distance from god.
He has no particular faith, but he has gleaned some understanding of the meaning of that form of hell. There were many unpleasant aspects, granted, making his incarceration seem a very real and physical hell, but the worst of it - oh, the worst was his distance from Rin.
He could sit here for hours and listen to them chide him.
He's not thinking about how such notions (or reactions to their words) might flit undisguised across his face. When Rin says your null, his breath catches and his smile turns faintly wistful, and immediately he shakes his head - no, never, he would never leave them to wilt for want of praise. Never languishing.
(See how happy it makes them, to hear him speak? (See how happy it makes them, to simply be here beside him?) (Wishful thought?) (Maybe. Maybe not.))
By the time their (beautiful) tirade ends, he's nodding, smiling ruefully but nodding not in agreement that he will speak well of himself, but, as before with the text claiming the same, that he is ever and always their Sen.
In whatever form they would have him. Fool or guardian or friend.
On impulse, he lets their words settle, then presses a kiss to their temple. Chaste, gentle, and lingering long enough for him to draw breath, to absorb the scent of their hair, the warmth of their being deep into his own.
And as he often does, he withdraws with his eyes turned to some other quarter as though it never occurred. (And as he often does, he holds that breath in his lungs until they burn with it. Slowly, slowly exhales.) (How deeply they inhabit him.) (How difficult it is to think of anything but them, when they're here at his side.) ]
Your debate on the matter of stars would be built on the fallacy that there are two at all. Harmonies exist, true, but such harmonies exist between stars and the lesser celestial bodies in orbit around them.
[ He speaks musingly, eyes flickering down to his empty hand, where his fingers shift a twitch in search of a cigarette. But he doesn't need - or indeed particularly want - to smoke. It's simply something to do with his hand, movement by movement an occupation for the restless soul. ]
You'd make a star of the solitary moon, the asteroid glowing only with the reflection of its sun's light. You'd make a monarch of the jester. I am unscathed in your eyes. Imperfect though I am when I leave the gravitational pull of my Rin, I have boundless perfection in their company. No matter what I seem to the observing eye, I feel my own...contented peace. And that is perfection enough.
[ He looks at them again, thoughtful, thinking he ought to feel melancholy. Thinking he doesn't feel melancholy at all.
Being here is (nearly) being at peace.
He had thought he would tell them, somehow and someday, how much he loved them. But there's beauty in the longing, and this has always been enough. And if they wanted him -
What could he give? What could he have given before, and what can he offer now but a handful of months?
No, he'll fill the remaining time with words. ]
Your third compliment was to be thematically tailored to your fate, but perhaps it's more appropriate to oblige your request. I shall speak well of your Sen, for whom you are fate-on-view.
He is not so wretched; he has learned to speak with tempered words, with patience, with utmost care. Where others would fall to old, habitual rages, or lay curses for the misfortunes they encounter, he has found within himself a reserve of humor. He has emulated resilience, and applied the pragmatism of cooler heads.
And for all that he is unwise, he knows - with blind, unerring faith - that he is fortunate in his one truest companion, whose face is more dear to him than any other. Whose words render him silent and wondering. Your Sen - yours, loyally and to his bitterest end - is intelligent enough, has common sense enough to know that he needn't be a king, an emperor, a star. He is content with the riches at his side.
[ Another faint lift of a smile and a look that trails too long: their eyes, their mouth, their form against his own. Appreciative and delicate in the gazing, without force or invasion. As though this is all he could ever wish. ]
If I must speak well of your Sen, then I will say of him -
Of myself. I am happy, and you have been the cause.
no subject
This, they think, composes the core of a finespun, crucial universe.
The strands of which sway with every inhale, exhale, voice and word. The strands of which sway perdurable, drifted gentle yes by whim and circumstance, and ever, always holding to their gossamer, their intricate-webbed radiance.
The strands of which waft nimbly now, buoyed by the breath of Sen upon their forehead, Sen’s breath along a quiet (and acute; and indelible) kiss. Again they think: how simple it is. To welcome Sen’s fondnesses. To know that every gesture, every touch and every eyebrow quirked rings resonance through their own being. To know that every sign is granted to the Rin they are at heart and in intention; the Rin - intrinsic self of new and old alike - that Sen has known unfailingly to look for and to see.
Sen kisses Rin’s forehead - kissed Rin’s forehead, but the act repeats itself in knowing, the act spins recurrent as the moment multiplies out infinite, through every iteration of Sen and Rin reclined together - and their eyes slip shut, reveling in the gentle pressure, consonant breath. Sign of this enduring, this crucial man.
Rin could, they know, linger here until time’s dwindling. Long past the fall of twilight, aglow and in serenity with Sen, with Sen, until the deep night overwhelms.
All of which makes it difficult to gather words in argument against Senan’s talk of lesser celestial bodies, of meteors and jesters. Would-be-arguments that in any case disperse when Sen obliges, and speaks of fate; speaks of himself.
Rin could, they think, kiss the man in return for this alone. For favoring their wish with descriptors that settle aptly (if insufficient; oh, but there are scarcely words enough to compass all that Sen is, has been, has always held and hummed with), descriptors that warm their eyes and bloom hyacinths beneath their lungs. This, yes, reflects images of the man Rin has known and how gratifying, how vivifying it is to hear.
They place their hand against Sen’s chest and press, once, softly. Head cocked in faux-admonishment. Grin warmed by pleasure at Sen’s speaking. ]
Don’t think it beyond my influence to form you to a star.
With a wave of my hand, I create galaxies, hm? With words, I readily reveal the splendor held in Sen.
This once, I’ll spare you the theatrics, as well as the lecture. You’ve obliged me, and illustrated Senan - my Sen, as I have known him and as I constantly feel him to be - to my satisfaction.
[ Now holding up their hand, forefinger extended, slightly cocked. ]
For the moment! Just as my vanity requires regular maintenance, I will wish always to hear well of Sen. There, too, I am voracious.
To hear you have been happy…
[ There’s a hummed sound, a space of thinking, of seeking expression, and then, in Spanish— ]
What more could I ask? What better than to see my vagabond philosopher ensconced within content, in happiness.
I could like nothing better. He is owed nothing less.
You, whose wonder has ever been both admirable and dire. You, who know to see so well in all the world around you.
[ And, as they tilt their head further against Sen’s chest, still watching Sen, they continue in French— ]
I am here because you knew me. My capability grows from your admission and from your esteem.
What can I say? I am I because I have been known by you.
[ A soft smile, and - deftly, deliberately - they tap Sen’s nose with their forefinger. ]
Senan, Senan.
[ Shifting to Russian, voice half a resigned sigh— ]
Splendorous fool.
no subject
Rin says I'll spare you the theatrics and Sen grins, a gleaming slash of stark white in sallow skin that challenges their vow; Rin couldn't stop their theatrics if they tried, and he doesn't expect them to try. In fact, he thinks that comment is a prelude to some grander display of them.
The problem with smiling. The problem is, it's an open door through which so many things might escape. It's a vulnerability. His lips quirk and his eyes brighten, and he settles his head against his hand, elbow propped against the back of the sofa, and all this openness allows for a slant that might be taken for adoration. (It allows for a warmth to fill him. In his midsection, a flutter familiar as an old friend - as familiar as Rin themself, truly.
He could be twenty-something again, rescuing live lobsters to impress this neither-man nor-woman, shouting "Swim for it, you ugly cunts!" at the crustaceans as he and Rin and Darius dumped them into a fountain. And Senan, twenty-something, casting glances when Rin wasn't looking. Hoping Rin was looking.
He could be a later twenty-something, sitting beside them in a place not so different from this, drunk (but not that drunk) (not really drunk at all) (not on alcohol), matching their pace as they rifled through languages the way one changes the channel on a television. Desperate to impress them, laughing uproariously when he stumbled from his own minor race. Forgot a word. Forgot a conjugation. Accidentally called their apartment a brothel.
He could be thirty-two, and it could be 7:34 p.m. on November 2nd, and outside it could be raining bitterly cold not-quite-sleet, and maybe the power's been shut off again. Maybe Rin has lit candles around the flat, and they've huddled together (almost exactly like this, in fact) against the cold. Sen could be wearing an aftershave Rin has deemed an olfactory assault (and which he will promptly throw out in the morning, to be replaced by something he knows Rin won't detest.) And Rin, like now, like a confluence of past and present, could be in his arms. (He could know it's 7:34, because he looked at the clock and thought, At 7:30, I'm going to tell them. And the minutes ticked by without speech, because the quiet was better, their own beautiful, poverty-struck world of candlelight and blankets.)
Senan, smiling happily, could be thirty-two, and his world could unmake and reform into something like enlightenment, because November 2nd, at 7:34 p.m., (a Tuesday) was the first time he kissed Rin Renault.
A note regarding the difference here, between the recollection of joy and the recollection of sorrow, and how that crucial moment sits reflecting his joy in the present, is that Rin Renault kissed him back.
And after, they never spoke of it. After, there was no apology, no recrimination. It sits in his memory untainted by any flicker of regret. A perfect encounter, crystalline and ethereal. (Though, in truth, Senan can't remember whose idea it was. He can't recall moving toward them; all that holds in memory is that they were there, and their kiss traced his own with exploratory grace. That there was nothing fierce or demanding, neither of them taking. If holy communion is the plea of a god's blessing, this was how the other side must feel: to give, and give, and feel oneself replaced by what's been given in turn. Maybe neither of them started it that night. Maybe it was an inevitability from the moment he first saw them. Maybe it was inevitable from birth.)
(They make a romantic out of him. He wishes he could have done more to make one out of them.)
With the smile he entertains - that quickly dissolves into laughter as they do, indeed, begin to further their theatrics with language shifts as natural as breathing - he could be any age, at any time, because his whole life (or so it seems) has been filled with moments just like this.
They have been his life.
And it's this openness, this stupid moment of vulnerable joy, that almost makes him forget why they can't know. (He can't do that to them.) (What this is, as it is, is perfection enough. If he tried to unmake and reform their world again, what would it mean? A heartbreaking refusal, and their remaining time spent with a new, uncomfortable distance?
Or worse. Worse, what if speaking means they are his Rin, and there is a chance, after all? Will it mean the chance has been there all along? Will it mean something changed without his notice? Will it mean Rin was always his?
And he'll leave them. Either way, unless there's a goddamn miracle to buy him ten, twenty years - he's leaving them. He can't break their heart when he goes.)
(He still forgets.)
He catches their hand post-tap to his nose, his smile softening but undimmed, and only for them. (Rin is beautiful here in this light, with that atrocious purple eyeshadow (Rin ages better than any of them, he thinks, without giving himself permission to wonder if they have in fact paid to age better) (which would be an ungentlemanly thing to wonder.)) Sen holds their hand there just below his chin, stroking his thumb across their fingers, and he wishes distantly that he knew what time it was.
In Russian, he answers. ]
Let me swear it. On the grave of any misery I knew: I have been happy. The truth is I am no fool at all; I play the part, it's true, but I have a deep core of wisdom that belies my absurd nature. What adventures we've had, hm? You and I, together?
Your Sen -
[ A chagrined sigh here. Well. Let it stand.
He transitions to French. ]
Your Sen.
He knows well how lucky he is to have known this maker of stars, this creator of galaxies. This unparalleled wonder - this 'null' who is far from such a concept. Who is so much more than can be contained, possessed, described by any single world or gender or name.
[ ...Or man, he adds silently, without rue or bitterness.
And, in Spanish now: ]
You worry for the two years of my life that describe unhappiness. I know you do. But think of it as I do: I am forty-five. I have known you since I was twenty. Two unhappy years seems such a paltry sum afforded for the other twenty-three, which have been -
[ He falls silent, cants his head and lifts a shoulder as though this is a word, itself. Then draws their hand to his lips - chaste, again. Devotional. Grateful. And he eases into English. ]
Rin, have you known me to be anything but content? Consider that it isn't because I am by nature an easily-appeased man, but rather that I have been granted everything I've ever dared to ask. And I have known you.
Be content, yourself, hm? Let me exist in my own contentedness, with you. If I have had some hand in the shaping of this masterpiece before me, then it has been an honor, and a joy, because it occurred in stealth as I was enjoying the thrall of your company.
All the world is right with you - you, at your most theatric, ever leading me on a chase through our common languages, or speaking nothing at all. My world is right, with you inhabiting it.
no subject
They let their hand hang in the air in the wake of Sen’s kiss, fingers gently flexing, as if the motion could capture further the impression of that kiss, as if Rin could feel and know the feeling of that press deeper and deeper with every shifting muscle. They let their hand linger, and they smile, nearly laugh, teeth briefly visible. Noticing the way Sen’s mirrored their language shifts in reverse. Knowing the way that mirroring echoes through the years, as well.
Knowing they’ll remember the impress of this kiss, and the sense of Sen against them, of Sen’s arm around them. The way they’ve always remember moments or hours spent with Sen. The ways scenes write themselves into Rin’s being, every raucous venture and quiet respite marking upon the walls within their veins.
They focus their attention on their hand, studying the site of the kiss, smiling and flexing their fingers again, again. Then, looking up at Sen— ]
Forty-five years? Tsk, imagine my surprise, to find I’ve been communing with an old man.
[ A wink and a gentle poke, and never mind that Rin’s got three years, give or take, on Sen. ]
And yet, to look at you, I never would have guessed.
[ A statement spoken in plain truth: it’s difficult to look at Senan and not recognize the youth within his heart, and the trace of every younger self he’s been. And now, even worn as Sen seems (worrisomely worn; not altered at heart, but something is flagging, dragged ragged in Sen’s wake), there’s captivation in those eyes, in every sprawling gesture and subtlety of ticked lip or softened brow. This man moves with a rhythm of his own, familiar to Rin and tangential to the world. This man is the being, the voice, the sight they’ve sought again and again, constancy in a far-flung, scrambling life.
They reach up, and set the backs of two fingers against Sen’s jaw, tilting gently upward, just enough to shift the fall of light and shadow, just enough to tilt their own head and feign to study - and in fact study, eyes tracing stubble and contour and all the way time’s touched (and incarceration touched, and the unknown trouble’s touching) that cheek - expression a scrutinizing neutrality, then blooming into a sudden, beaming smile. Their hand twists lithe, forefinger tapping twice against Sen’s jaw, then withdrawing to rest upon his chest. ]
What a rogue and pleasant sage you are, hm?
[ In Greek— ]
I could look upon this ragged jaw in perpetuity, and never ask a better show.
[ French— ]
No pageantry could gleam above the sight of Senan Wilkes with his well-regarded stubble.
…Strange to think you have a surname. Strange to hold it on my tongue. I’m afraid, mi pensador, I’ll have to dispense with that ‘W’ appended to your name, and call you ‘Sen’ alone, rascal of your own creation.
[ Without a beat, they plunge onward in Italian, and yes, they are flaunting, preening a little, relishing this chase through language and favoring Sen with a pleased and decidedly shit-eating grin— ]
You make an art of cultivated bristle, an aesthetic of polished impishness. To look at you is to recognize some glint of devilment, yes, but who outside your acquaintance could guess the depths of your commitment to roguery? Who could be so privileged to know how well you are you, a confirmed Sen’s self straight to your core?
What I mean to say is I am fortunate. Blessed, it might be said, and I might say, and I, in fact, do claim. And I am pleased, Senan—
[ A pause, and, in French— ]
I am gratified, to find you here again.
[ For a moment - passing, yes, but in this moment as if snared in amber - their smile flickers vaguely troubled, traced in sorrow. Because that ‘again’ conjures the time that wasn’t. Those two years out of twenty-five (they’ve known him, and he’s known them, for over half their lives) where Sen was distant, or Rin was distant, or in any case space and circumstance intervened.
(Hard now not to know how the world felt in Senan’s absence. How daily living hummed along, how life thrummed vivid all around, and yet some core was ever absent. And yet there was a hollow at the heart of things, and Rin felt at every step a little bit - a lot - like haunted. A little like a ghost, themself.)
They won’t dwell on that. There’s no good dwelling on that, and in any case, just now they feel warmed through and through. Just now, they feel at-home, and easy. And, smile turning fully to pleased appreciation, Rin presses a kiss to their fingertips, then sets those fingertips against Sen’s jaw, and lets them linger. ]
Never doubt that I am anything less than contented in your presence.
My life lately has been less harried. It surprises me, sometimes, how well I’ve settled into relative ease. And yet.
It is only here, beside my Sen, that I find complete tranquility.
no subject
There is always something otherworldly about Rin. And Sen, in Rin's presence. Before their irreproachable and unapproachable beauty. The glow of candlelit poverty and time that ceased, never to be a moment past 7:34 on November 2nd. The dance of their hands in the air now. Rin is a daydream.
Rin is every dream.
(What is Rin thinking of now as their fingers flex? Does some part - does any part - of them feel singed by his kiss? What would it be like to set them on fire?
Senan believes they're merely charmed; that they love beauty, they love works of art. (They don't love him. Not the way he'd like them to.) They are enamored of the idea of their hand having been kissed.) (He's pleased by this.)
His eyes shift past their hand just as it leaves the company of his own, seeking the familiarity of their face, and is delighted - faintly surprised, to feel the press of their fingertips to his jaw. He permits (conspires with) the silent direction of touch and angles his head, his eyes slipping close. Written in the lines between pleasure and mischief and contentment is something euphoric - the way he looked when that first kiss ended.
(He doesn't remember who began it, be he remembers who ended it. He remembers he had to end it, for fear of a ruptured heart. It would have been the most lethal dose of pleasure he'd ever found, if he hadn't drawn away. He had spoken, too, hadn't he? Oh, Rin, soft and smiling and rueful, and between all those lines, there had been perfect (but not lethal) bliss.)
He loves when they touch him. When has there ever been anything but appreciation in their (caress) touch? Along the unkempt grain of two days' growth, and it's a wonder they think him attractive. It's a delight of its own, and their multilingual praise summons another low laugh from him.
(Privately. Privately, he thinks - he would dispense with the Wilkes, given the chance. But only for an upgrade. Only if leaving behind his name meant taking theirs. (A dangerous thought he doesn't consider often.) (Has only dared to approach it a handful of times, drunk or high and alone long after everyone - including Rin - has fallen asleep. It's a dangerous set of words stolen in the dark and whispered to no one, just so Sen could hear the sound of them. So Sen could taste it. His own name, appended to theirs. A warmth in his chest, verdant blooms of longing and satisfaction. Senan Rinault.)
(In this far-off daydream where he appends and Senan to Rin, he has tested the weight of their name with his own, and found Rin Wilkes to be distastefully common.
Which says something. About the likelihood of Rin in conjunction with Sen. He is, himself, distastefully common.)
He senses the shift of their mood as surely as a change in the weather, and his eyes open, himself falling still from the was-inclined angle of his head, the invitation for further trespass of their fingers. They look troubled.
They're thinking of the two years without him.
(They're blaming themself? Or, like him, they dislike the distance? Hard to say.)
He shakes his head minutely at them - it's so much nothing, those two years. When he's lived more than half his life with them. When he survived the separation on the notion that he would come and find home.
It happens in a perfectly formed crystal of time, slow and rapid, unmoving and bolting forward, all things occurring at once and all things frozen: they kiss their fingertips and the kiss is given. Sen's hand drifts across theirs, finding it still at his jaw, hearing words (my Sen) (tranquility) resound in gentleness.
There's a kiss on their fingertips. It's a thought snagged on a nail in his mind, and he can't help himself. He draws their hand, their kissed fingertips, to his lips again. (How many times has he kissed the air and watched them feign tossing those kisses aside. Batting them away. Dodging them. How long has it gone on, that now it's simply a game they play: Senan kisses, and Rin avoids, and Senan pretends there's nothing more to it? That he doesn't wish they would just catch one.) (They have to catch this one. Or, at least, let him take the trace of their lips against his own, conveyed by fingertips.)
Over the crest of their hand, he offers a quiet reply. ]
Another role I am glad to play, for the sake of Rin. Be at peace with me; be tranquil and happy. These odd hours when you and I may take refuge from the world together are precious - incomparably precious to me. What more could I ask than this: to hold you near and steadfast, and know your heart beats contented - to watch the play of movements, a shift of hand, a smile, a gestures, a fluttering hand, and know in each is the same note of tranquility?
[ He releases their hand in favor of brushing their own cheek in the same manner they offered, fingertips light as a breath.
Exploratory. ]
But.
There is a problem you and I must address, Pookie:
[ His smile turns impish, just as he's been so sorely accused of impishness, though he quickly recovers and affects a somber note. Feigned concern. ]
I promised to give you cause to blush. Are you so inured to compliments that they no longer give you cause for such an absurd reaction?
Or perhaps you don't feel the flush of pleasure as mere mortals do?
[ He shifts, settling lower so that his eyes are level(ish) with theirs, and draws nearer - inches away and conspiratorial. His language shifts, following the backwards track of their own. ]
Or am I to blame, hm? Do you require more praise, until your heart splits apart and all your lifeblood burns crimson?
[ Another shift of language, another fine-honed, pleasant smirk. ]
The problem is, you see: if I did employ the most incisive of compliments for my Rin, how on earth could I mend their heart after? Poor Rin, bled out by pretty words.
True words. Pretty, and true. But though I can give you tranquility, and I can perform open-heart laudation, I am no healer.
[ His hand drops, and presses their chest above their heart (his smile returning, fond, terribly fond as he regards his hand against them.) And again, he veers from one language to another. ]
No. Better to leave it unscathed. It wouldn't do to break it, when there is no other like it in the world.
[ A tsk, and he chucks them under their chin gently, affectionately. ]
Keep your blushes, then. Miserly null.
no subject
Who else echoes their mood and language with such clarity or depth? Who else both receives and reflects their every twirl and whim?
Who else could hope to keep up— A moot question, because Rin would not entertain, and has not entertained any other person’s presence in this way. Because no other’s being has called like to like. Because no other person has echoed the timbre of their heart.
Rin doesn’t often dwell in particulars of memory. There isn’t time, or their energy is needed elsewhere, and anyway, they’ve no need to go digging through old archives. And anyway, most memories linger near and always in brief but potent impressions, reminders that flicker through like vivid shivers. Everything and every place they’ve been lingers with them, inevitably resurfacing. Beautiful sensations briefly crystalline, then receding once again.
A recurrent, a consistent presence in these recollections: the knowledge of a name and face and voice, a form that’s been with them for years. Brilliant oddity of a man who has almost from the start felt as natural as breathing. So that Rin regularly feels a sense of—
Damp grass under a moon grown full, a night fuzzed with whiskeyed haze; Sen’s voice spinning discursive on constellatory misapprehensions. Letting their clothes soak in the damp and fading in and out of consciousness, returning over and again to the sound of that habitual voice, and Senan lounging long against them.
And.
Scent of smoke and sweat, distant sirens, panting ragged breath, the ground rough beneath their feet and Sen beside them, grinning wild, conspiratorial, his laughter strung along the lambent sky.
And.
Cold candlelight on a rainy evening, in a flat perpetually haunted by chill and thawed by twined camaraderie, the rough of a woven blanket, the scent of bergamot stinging their nose, and an unexpected grace of soft lips, warm breath, a feeling of dawn mingled with dusk, epochal and then ended. Ever lingering in memory, in the charge of neural knowing and through the paths of every vein.
If they could live in time forever, it would be with this man. If time could be cast truly in a spell, held captured in a moment and another’s breath, it would be for and because of Sen.
Now, they huff a small breath at that ‘Pookie,’ as if so very affronted! Now, their smile belies any show of irritation.
Now, they drift their hand to cover Sen’s above their heart, pressing briefly, glinting a pleased grin. As if to suggest, ’Caught you now!’ As if to suggest, ’Look at us fools.’
Now, they smile at that ‘tsk,’ that soft gesture. Warm with joy, caught in the light of Senan’s smile. When they speak, it’s through a fluttering of varied languages, shifting from once to the next when a thought catches them, or to underline the import of a phrase, finally landing again in English. ]
Audacious, most admirable poet.
Perhaps I am too staggered to cultivate a proper blush, hm? What am I to say, when you dizzy me so? How is my being - this form of mine, in its chemical components and every stuttered electrical impulse - to function when my Sen speaks such fairness into being? Perhaps my every atom has frozen, and I have turned to truest null!
You speak ‘fairness,’ I say, when even ‘transcendence’ could scarcely describe what words and consequential images you’ve wrought. You, yielding gardens from your vivid visions. You, Senan, possessed of a mind unblanched by forty-five entire years of persistence in this grating world. Few people could know your years and still hold an ounce of insight or artistry. Mm— Few people could know half our years and possess as much.
It is not only my vanity that flourishes under your depictions, étrange poète. The whole world blossoms from your speech.
[ And, back to French— ]
And you, oh! You dare to claim you cannot heal? False modesty, or a dire mismeasure of your gifts!
All that you say, every breath you afford fortifies my heart. Who could mend me but you, hm? A question lacking answer. A question whose answer blinks static, bleats nothing. There is no balm better suited to this null’s existence.
Well, and if I were to fold myself into the dire end’s arms, could I ask any better agent than dire words, your words?
What is it? Oh, half the line’s not relevant, never mind that, I’ll twist my liking through the line and say, I’ll take thy words, and never mind the brush of hell, to die upon the hand I love so well.
[ (A bright and flickered thought: how well it feels to speak of love. (How the word resonates through with implication.) They don’t linger on the notion. They don’t question the form of their fondness, or any piece of its meaning. They and Sen have always been part of one another, so why not speak in every form of care and closeness?)
They press Sen’s hand again - feel the pressure of his hand against their heart again - and cock their head, voice theatrically hushed. ]
I warn you, though, Sen - or do I promise? - you are mere steps from driving this null to a desperate blush.
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.
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. ]
no subject
Every time.
He might have been thrown by their words, and perhaps if they were anyone else, if they weren't Rin, who from the moment he met them has been central, primary and as compulsory to his own existence as he is to theirs, he might have been staggered enough to fall motionless. To stare, wide-eyed and wondering, that anyone could hold such lofty notions of him.
But of course Rin does. Of course Rin speaks this way (as no one else on earth would speak, because people don't talk this way - earnest, heartfelt, theatric) (no one but Rin and himself, to one another, in a language all their own, as though they carved this cramped and wretched world into a space for themselves.)
Move past wonder and staggered stillness, and after comes relief. When he does pass from their sight (where he has existed, where he has been grateful to persist), pieces of him will remain held enshrined in the mind of the one he loves so well. No matter the pain. No matter the devastation of his end.
And he will. Pass from their sight. End. What a stark reality it is, encroaching on the dreamlike thrall of his forehead to Rin's, their hand in his, their breath as familiar as his own. How bleak. How unacceptably, horribly mundane - to die. But he can bear it, he's sure, knowing they'll remember him.
- Had he doubted it? Had he believed a moment ago that Rin's memory was an insubstantial, gossamer thing, composed of impression and snatches of conversation? That someone like Rin could hardly be expected to remember in detail the press of a hand or every last word he ever spoke?
It's criminal. It's a miscarriage of justice. It's a betrayal. Fucking look at them, hear their voice; if a man could be reconstructed from memory, Senan would live again as wholly as he does now from the precision of their mind's eye. They see him. They forget nothing.
(And.
What he was avoiding. His avid refusal to speak the future to them, to protect their heart. Oh, look at them, with such wide, keenly bright eyes.
They suspect.
And their heart will break.)
He believes it all.
And if it hadn't been Rin, he would be dumbstruck to see how deep he's been driven. How important he is, to anyone at all, nevermind to the one he loves.
Instead, his mouth twists in a baffled smile, and his breath hitches; what follows is as simple as any other inevitability.
Senan can never judge who moves first (though fancifully, he thinks it's never either of them, and that they find themselves caught in a natural force like gravitational pull, like magnetism, like a swift-flowing current.) Someone is kissing, and someone is kissing back; Rin is gentle and soft, and Sen is restrained, reverent, lingering through each rise and fall because it could be the last.
Because they were never his (they were always his, weren't they?) and because these were stolen moments slipped sideways from time - or, because he has so little time left - he has always kissed them like it might be the last.
It might be.
His hand eases from theirs to caress their cheek (his hand, that he ordered to love them, and long to do just this), then settles with delicate presence at their jaw.
They've done this together more times than he should count (but he does count them - reconstructs each one in savored memory, holds them in his mind like small sanctuaries), and the world still blazes from the smallest brush of lips. His chest shudders with the hammering of his heart, and he could laugh - wildly, wickedly, freely - if it didn't mean sacrificing any part of this.
There is no drug as potent, no joy so complete, no perfection of art or nature in all the world. If prison, his separation from Rin, was hell, this is a paradise. This is heaven. (When he dies, if he somehow earned a ticket through someone's eternal gates, he hopes this is how it feels.)
What alters this instance from any other: he has always restrained himself, and for all that their kisses have been what they are, they have remained innocent. (Friendly.) But what if this time really is the last? The thought is a distant, incoherent cry that presses him nearer, draws his arm tighter around them.
There's a language here all their own, and without words, he offers (what you love) more, and anything at all, if they want (him) it. A hand. A kiss. A heart. Says without words, I think and Maybe, bereft sentence starting toward a notion built from the brightness of wide eyes and the consecration of memory.
Could you.
And.
Because I do.
And.
I have, for so long.
(Oh, relief in that silent admission. Relief in the conveyance, in not taking it to his grave, in knowing there is nothing about him hidden from Rin. Twining the direst confession of love with a kiss is as good as any absolution.)
With a kiss that happens as it always happens, but now (for the first and possibly last time) reaches new, unimagined heights, he asks without any sound at all if they might try to love him for the rest of his life. ]
no subject
What Rin holds stock in: Taking hold of any chance that comes your way. Listening for places where your voice is at once entertained and echoed back. Watching for the ways people do and don’t receive you.
What Rin knows: Those who resonate your song are rare. And vital. And clear in all their presence. You will know, Rin feels - Rin thinks, Rin knows - the ones who recognize you. The ones who share any portion of your wavelength.
So.
So of course Rin felt Sen’s presence from the start.
So of course Rin believes in Sen, and in their shared, their critical collision.
So this kiss soars elative, and this kiss thrums overdue, and this kiss has been, and this kiss is, and the silent vows offered and exchanged have always been oncoming.
(To think, they might have missed it.
To think, they might have spoken, oh, years ago, and brought this tidal warmth toward its unmasked cresting sooner.
But with or without these silent promises and professions, Sen and Rin have been together, unbreaking.
And now. And now that subtle muffled veils are being brushed aside, this feels like consummation, like relief, like vows renewed and strengthened.)
And when Rin moved, they found Sen there, as well. So perhaps they two moved as one to share their breath. So that now, when Sen pulls closer, Rin’s shifting near as well. So that Rin’s breath nearly mirrors Senan’s rise and fall. So that they two are in every motion harmonious: Sen and Rin, aware always of a current strung between them. Rin and Sen, joined through eternal, ephemeral convergence.
Their hand at his chest sets splayed and deftly pressed. Their breath shudders, and they hum, and twine their hand with Sen’s, a subtle grasp. Again, again and softly, they brush their lips to his (and there has never, oh never been a kiss to match Sen’s), with each shift offering and asking more.
They know the words unspoken, ringing. And their soul sings in time, in tune with Sen, lungs aching with the simple direness of words so long unspoken. Words known without hearing their form; truths known before their shape was granted conclusive outline.
Their own silent promise sings in kind—
Of course.
And.
For years. From the start. Before I knew the words for it. Before I knew I could.
And.
Forgive me my wordlessness, won’t you?
There is no try about it; there is no need for effort or attempt. There is only the certain knowledge: that they love Sen, heart and soul and wholeness. And they always, yes, they always will.
For they have always known Sen, and held Sen. For Rin has always felt half their heart held in his hands, and felt the life of him within their own.
When they draw back just slightly - after a thousand thousand shared breaths, after time has winnowed into nothing, after Sen’s silent voice and Sen’s lips and Sen’s touch and Sen’s pulse have formed the whole world and firmament beyond - it’s to find familiar eyes and watch, and offer in this way a furtherance of vows. Their own eyes wide still, soft now, wonderstruck and eminently pleased.
Then their voice, soft and unmuddled, equally wonderstruck and, at once, toned with simple sensibility— ]
I am your Rin, you know.
For now and always, my Sen.
no subject
There's nothing to forgive.
(One might ask what became, in the space of several moments, of Senan's convictions. How is it he could be so easily deterred from his belief that he could never let them know the deepest and fullest measure of his heart for fear they might not reciprocate, or that he might leave them wretched when his days reach their certain and none-too-distant end?)
He asks himself what became of his convictions.
Well. He loves them. He might have been born to that purpose. He might have been - was - born to bloody his knuckles across the teeth of anyone who transgressed against them. To lie beside them in fields at midnight, watching stars and thinking only of the rise and fall of their breathing. To run wild and grinning, hand in hand with Rin, from the wail of sirens. To see the world hued differently with their presence, made softer and clearer and sensible.
And if he wasn't born to it, he lived it nonetheless.
So he answers himself. He, Senan Wilkes, has only one conviction: Rin Renault.
They want him. He'll give them all he has, for as long as he has. It's what he whispers now, answering their simplicity, their beautiful clarity of self and thought, with his own softness. (He, quixotic. He, ever the romantic. Funny, that Rin, living work of art that they are, should be the pragmatist. Funny that Sen, accented a classless chav, the rough-bred scholar - intellectual, true, multilingual and philosophizing, but a thug nevertheless - should be the romantic.) ]
Tous mes jours. Tout mon couer.
[ These words, familiar, engraved into his skin - a declaration made more than a decade ago, when he knew for certain where his heart lay.
As if he didn't know from the moment he saw them.
He, seated with an arm slung over the back of a chair, spread-legged and unkept, a twenty-year old foundling from Yorkshire jabbing his cigarette emphatically to make his point about something ultimately unimportant, to a listener now faded from memory. Someone's (Darius's?) flat, where he'd been invited to talk some scheme or another and now frequented for the conversation. Sen had taken a drag from said cigarette and his eyes had tracked movement at the front door.
And heralded by the curling exhalation of smoke, a surly Rin walked into his life. He remembers them angelic, sexless, wreathed in tendrils of white. (His first thought, without derision, toned wondering: My god, what are you? A thought that echoed through time, through his years, even to this moment. A question direly in need of an answer - that Senan would try hungrily to pursue. What are you and can I know you?
What are you, and can I keep you?)
(The answer is simple, and given here, tonight, in their embrace: I am your Rin. And the rest follows.)
The tattoo came a decade and a burst appendix later. (Rin, fussing over him. Rin had made sure he went to the hospital. Rin had helped him through recovery, fed him, helped change the bandages, smothered him with coddling.) Rin had, by then, broken his heart by announcing they believed neither in romance nor monogamy, that they would never enter in to such a wretched state of affairs as marriage. He had decided, finally, it didn't fucking matter what role they held in his life, so long as they were in it. So long as he could be their Sen, profoundly loyal.
Not that he ever mentioned the tattoo to them, or its meaning when inevitably they did catch sight of it.
But they're certain to comprehend the resonance across decades, the implication, the simple meaning.
All his days, from one smoke-filled room twenty-five years ago, onward. All his heart, for them.
Of course he's their Sen. He always has been.
He's smiling lopsidedly - looking buoyantly daft and starstruck. The smudge of purple lipstick at his mouth doesn't help. (It doesn't matter, either. What shame or hurt can touch him now? What disease? Is he terminal, is death waiting for him in ten months, eight months?
Fuck it. Rin loves him. He'll live whole lifetimes. He's untouchable. He's immortal.)
He catches his lower lip between his teeth and tastes them (and the traces of lipstick); his smile is relieved, grateful, a perfect gleam of happiness. As though to be sure (he's never been more certain of anything in his life as he is of his own conviction - or that Rin, miraculously, perfectly, utterly loves him) he raises his brows questioningly (there's no question, there's nothing to question ever again) and- ]
Yes?
[ The shortest sentence he's ever spoken, containing more in a single syllable than all his meandering, hours-long soliloquys. Yes, us? and Yes, you love me? and Yes, we're a 'we'? and I got this right, didn't I? I didn't mistake or misunderstand, and my god you're the most beautiful thing this universe has ever turned out, so confirm for me, please, that I am in fact the luckiest man in said universe. And, of course. Yes, I'd like to be your Sen as I've always longed to be: completely, and for the rest of my life. Yes, and yes again. ]
no subject
Of course, the ink-inflected, lasting words. Should Rin have known? Did they know? There’s a distance - vast, they’ve always felt - between knowing and suspecting. Knowing and half-guessing, or seeing how pieces could amount, without proof of their connection. With a time marked 7:34, and though Rin can’t place the meaning at first—
Could it have been.
That night. Early evening, dusk coming on, and candles. The first time, most vivid time they’d met beneath the protective warmth of a blanket. When a kiss first felt like heaven, and when it ended far too soon.
The tattoo had appeared not long after that night, hadn’t it? (And hadn’t the time had always strung a distant bell? Inconclusive, but somewhere attempting to amount. If only they’d seen the pieces. If only they’d known the connection.)
It had, yes. And they know now. And Sen is here now, and always has been wholly present.
And look at him: this gleaming smile, this relief. This recognition and acceptance. Belief because of course he must believe; because he’s always, perhaps, felt Rin beside hi, the way Rin has always known Sen at their side. And a question that isn’t a question, really; a word that only pleads for confirmation, certainty at the culmination of so many ambiguous years.
A word Rin is happy to meet. A word that draws Rin’s smile, and an answer spoken without need for preparation. ]
Tous mes jours. Tout mon couer.
[ Thinking as they say it: ’Oh, of course.’
Thinking, planning, to take on a new and overdue tattoo of their own. (What might it look like? How best bespeak Sen, and mirror Sen’s own mark?) ]
Yes.
Of course.
For always, and with everything I am.
Yes, how can I tell you…
[ A slight hiss of air between their teeth as they cock their head, nod to themself, then speak in French, then English— ]
I love you. And I love you.
[ Then a kaleidoscope of their shared languages, all expressing love, speaking variations on a core-deep truth punctuated with kisses drifting and pressured, with caresses, with Rin fixing their eyes on Sen and smiling, nearly daft. Speaking again, again, again that they love Sen, they adore Sen that their love belongs to Sen, that Sen’s heart holds their own. ]
Tous mes jours. Tout mon couer.
My philosopher.
My brilliant, subtle fool.
My Sen, my Senan, my Sen Ben Benice. Of course I love you dearly, with all the not-insubstantial conviction that I own. With every ounce of heart and blood I have. I adore you, I love you, you absolute absurdity and beauty of a man.
no subject
Rin echoed his words back. Rin spoke the words forever marked in his skin (for them) (always, for them) and meant them for him. All their days, all their heart, his own now.
He would speak, but they're speaking, and he never has liked to interrupt them. He would let his expression contort with agonized bliss, shed tears, swear profusely at the momentousness, the blessed shower of mercy the universe has afforded him with the resounding return of his own vow. But Rin is not a hopeless romantic, and they don't linger in the same moments as Sen.
He thinks.
He's wrong.
Because what follows is more. Oh, it's so much more. It's his own words, preceded by love, and preceding love, and there are kisses garnering stunned movements from Sen, his hand trembling at their cheek, the lights in his vision flaring and blurring around Rin (also blurring) (a fate-on-view so transcendent, it hazes wet and stings with salt.)
They said.
They said.
He closes his eyes and whispers their name, devastated. He opens his eyes and Rin is still there, and Rin still loves him.
And.
And suddenly sharp in motion, he jerks his shoulder back and slaps his hand on the sofa, searching without tearing his eyes from them. His expression slowly lapses between bemused smiles and that same shattered disbelief.
This is what it is to be undone, they've fucking undone him, and because he's loquacious, because he speaks at length about nothing and everything, and speaking is like breathing, as his hand goes about its scrabbling business, he says softly -]
Fucking undone, me.
[ His hand meets solidity and he grasps his phone.
He needs to know. It's the only sensical thing his mind can produce in this moment: what time is it.
He needs to know the time. The date. The day.
His brows have knit helpless, and he has to drag his gaze from their face to look. (And laughs. He laughs, a choked sob of a sound, a noise issued at the end of the world when its curtain falls and all is revealed to be a joke of the highest order.) (A noise which, from Sen, is appreciative. Of course. Of course. Of course.)
Tilting the phone so they can see the backlit screen, Sen - wet-eyed and gleaming with joy, dazed and a little daft with it, with faint purple along his mouth (and cheeks, and anywhere else their lips met his skin) - murmurs a broken, baffled (happy): ]
Seven thirty-four.
[ And his smile returns, adoring and transfixed. ]
The best moment of my life.
no subject
They’re watching, dazed and a little bleary-eyed, as Sen seeks something. They’re smiling, baffled, in awe of every movement because everything within this man’s reach and capacity draws wonder, is worthy of a thousand thousand words of ecstatic discourse and of every speechless thought no word can compass.
Sen, speaking soft and stricken, clutches Rin’s heart.
Sen, reaching half-wild and sightless, trills Rin’s joy in watching, their eyebrows raised, head cocked, smiling beyond pleasure.
They could watch this man forever.
Just now, they watch him grab the phone, and eye the phone; watch laughter brush him, and—
And they know. A compulsory piece sliding into place, or the revelation of a connective piece that’s been here all along. A piece verified when they managed to turn their eyes from Sen to the screen, back to Sen again with renewed awe (isn’t it always, with Sen, renewal and awe and everything turned vivid, verdant, lovely? this man is the very font and center of everything beautiful; this man is the locus of fondness and ardor and, yes, and always, time itself).
7:34. Of course.
Of course, of course it is.
Because the only form of fate is Sen, and every point (infinite, eternally renewing) where Sen and Rin intersect and overlay. Because time is bound between the two of them and cycles on their axis, so of course there would be one recurrent, perfect time. So of course all of time would echo with its count, would ripple outward from its central pulse. Shared heartbeat. So of course all myriad potentialities of sequence would fall away beyond this single explicit moment: 7:34.
7:34. Then, and now, and always.
It is perfect, and perfectly logical, and they know they’re smiling. Know they must be smiling, dizzy and fuzzed to blooming, suffuse with heart-struck wonder as they reach gentle to brush the edge of lipstick smeared delicate at Sen’s cheek. Shifting to brush the purple trace at Sen’s lip, then letting their thumb trail the edge of that incomparable mouth. Reeling, feeling the world reel away.
They, driven dizzy. Feeling if they look away from Sen they’ll be lost, overcome by all the wild longing and so-long-knowing around them, by words so long held and lived by and finally, oh finally spoken. It’s Sen who keeps them anchored here. It’s Sen who keeps them, always.
Sen and Rin, within their perfect, their eternal moment. ]
All of time and all the world.
It’s always been ours, hasn’t it?
[ Shifting from French to English— ]
What do you think, my Sen? 7:34 spells a beautiful eternity.
[ Which necessitates - which absolutely necessitates - a soft leaning in and another dire, loving kiss. ]
no subject
And now, Rin said they love me.
It doesn't mean anything.
It means everything.
It indexes where the memory can be summoned again. It holds the symbology of a crucifix: the item itself is not what matters. What matters is that it represents a turning point in the history of Senan's own humanity. Here, at 7:34, is a crux of existence. Here is an axis. Here is a lynchpin. A watershed moment. And what occurred?
Rin loves him.
Rin fucking loves him, and he feels the boundaries of his skin perilously insubstantial. He feels his heart thrumming itself to death in joyful pulse.
7:34 does spell a beautiful eternity, but it's only a handful of letters. It doesn't compose the entirety of the sentence, because thousands of 7:34s have lived and died without rising remarkable.
Rin said.
And Sen hasn't waited to hear those words, but he's longed for them in dark and lonely hours. He hasn't watched Rin with yearning, wishing for them to be anything but what they granted the world, but in dreams - oh, in dreams, Rin looked at him just as they do now. (Is he dreaming?) (Is he dead? Did he fucking die?) Rin smiles like the first time, and love follows, and it could be 7:34 or lunchtime or 5:52 in the morning, what the fuck does time matter if they love him?
It's a moment burned in memory.
7:34 is the torch he carries for Rin Renault.
At 7:34, Rin said they love him - and damn it all if he didn't say it back. But he can't speak. (Novel, to be incapable of speech. To find himself awed to silence.) He doesn't have to - he doesn't have to speak, or cohere, or wonder anymore. Rin is kissing him because it's 7:34 and Rin loves him, and if he doesn't kiss back, he might sob.
So he does: he gathers them close and gives all he has to them. Sen, with nothing to prove and no one to impress, offers only what he's held reserved from anyone but them. If Rin wants him, then they deserve the rawness of himself, the undoctored glimpses of soul, the slow and shuddering passage of his lips over theirs. They deserve the honesty of himself, and how much he loves-
Oh. Oh, he didn't -
Fuck.
He cups their cheeks in both hands and draws back with a sharp breath, a swimmer surfacing for air (a dead man resurrected.) He has to say - he needs them to hear.
The first time, with their beautiful face framed by his just all right hands. Their lipstick miraculously unsmudged, their eyes depthless and familiar. He looks hungrily. He looks like a man who has discovered the Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth - all the lost treasures together in a single form.
His Rin.
And softly, slowly, ensuring every word holds its own traction and sinks its weight into Rin's awareness, he speaks. ]
I love you. I have loved you all my life, at times so much I could hardly breathe. Always so much that my heart beats unsteady in your presence. I love you purely, and without demand. I haven't longed for more than you ever gave, but my god, I loved you utterly from the moment I first saw you. Not from the first kiss, and not from this moment. My comprehension of 'forever' has been spun from the night when Rin Renault walked into a flat and brought me to my knees.
I love you - not some moment, indifferent and fleeting. I like the coincidence of it, the unlikelihood, the seeming predestination. It suits my more fanciful moods.
But I love you. Inevitable, wonderful, undefinable Rin - a mystery and an answer to chase for all my days.
You, Rin, are my beautiful eternity.
[ He lowers his chin and raises his brows as his thumb sweeps a slow arc, as if to ask, Okay? and Do you understand? Sen watches them, searching their eyes - and for all that, looks like a man close to sundered, and well beyond undone. A man who can't bring himself to disbelieve the paradise laid before him. ]
I meant it, when I said I have been happy. Do you know lucky I've been, to have been welcomed so near, and always, to the deepest pleasure of my soul? Twenty-three years, I've been at the gates of my own heaven, and I have been happy.
no subject
What can they do save remember to breathe, to swallow, and fall into Sen’s eyes, the adoration that spells a perfect correlation to their own. What would they care to do just now, save to meet his ardence with the wholeness of their rapt, their overflowing tenderness?
Those eyes, softly lustrous, infinitely expressive. That lip that cheek that jaw smeared soft with purple, with the brush of Rin’s affection (and oh, oh, they are going to kiss that man so many times, infinite kisses before even this day’s run through; they’d kiss him now if they weren’t thralled attentive to his speech). And the touch of rough hands - esteemed and dearest hands, exquisite hands, articulate of worlds, a match and complement for Sen’s cavorting speech; with these hands, with those words, what couldn’t this man say? - at their cheeks.
The only touch they’ve cared for. The only touch that’s ever been welcome, or felt congruous, offered restoration and connection with their self. The only touch they want to hold.
From the start, Sen’s hands held Rin’s fascination. Gesticulating at turns graceful and cleverly crude, perfectly underlining and explicating each soliliquous word and absolute cloudburst of phrases. Rin had never met anyone so adept in expression, tuning symphonic words from a single sentiment or chance idea. That man, they’d thought held - and still, and always holds - the keys to everything that can be spoken or expressed.
The stranger - soon to turn familiar face; soon to turn friend - had introduced himself: Senan Wilkes. They’d worked the name over in their head, prodding its potentials for sonorance and malleability, then speaking it aloud twice, thrice. Head cocked curious, eyes chasing some half-formed thought along the wall.
Listening to Senan Wilkes, voice thick with an accent Rin had, at the time, been unable to place. The voice pleasing enough that they’d tried it on, mimicking the rhythms, a few phrases (a habit they’ve since learned to indulge only with care, or with intentional abandon) before deciding they liked the rhythms better in the not-so-stranger’s voice. Decided they’d like to hear more of that voice and all the words it cared to share.
Listening to Senan, who asked once about the recurrent question - ’hard to tell these days,’ wasn’t that it? - then let them exist without further query. Who never begged for or demanded explanation, explication. Who was an oddity in an unkind world. Senan Wilkes, rough at the edges and utterly gracious in manner.
It’d struck Rin that very night that this was a gentleman. Strange thing to find in a den of shitheads and dealers and thieves. Strange thing to find anywhere, in their experience, and if ‘gentleman’ wasn’t a term traditionally consonant with Sen’s mien, Sen’s voice, Sen’s likely history, still it rang throughout his being. Still the word settled upon him like certitude. And Rin had known they didn’t feel unsafe or even quite so guarded around Sen.
Toward the night’s end, Rin - historically reluctant to touch or be touched; historically fixed on keeping to themself - had gestured for Sen’s hand. Had held it briefly, head cocked, the back of that hand in their palm and their thumb brushing along the unfamiliar fingers. Searching without quite formulating questions. Wondering without precisely knowing what or why. Then releasing Sen’s hand and offering a cigarette from their swift-dwindling store.
The next time they saw Sen Wilkes - another night, another den of thieves, another gathering arranged by Darius Scarlett - they’d drifted to him, and they’d lingered near until the evening’s end.
Funny the way roads add up. The way signals link into signposts turn into meaning that, in retrospect, shone clearly all along.
Funny how intuition strikes true.
There is no one on earth so brilliant as Sen, and no one who has been so good, so generous, so utterly and always necessary. And Rin has never ceased to revel in Sen’s winding words, or in their luminescent truths. In the ways Sen lights brilliance out of mundanity. In the ways Sen’s words reveal truths that have always been present.
As Sen’s words do now, speaking of love and inevitability. As Sen’s words do now, humming decades of vibratory strands to life, turning unspoken knowings into clear-writ truths that brook no doubt and erase ven the scantest cause for question.
Rin’s hand moves to cover one of Sen’s. To drift lightly, to press, to know Sen’s nearness better still.
And, reeling still, dizzied and hazy and feeling that the world is spun from love, from knowing, from this man’s absolute belief and from Rin’s own enduring, boundless adoration, they speak, hearing their voice as if from a distance, stricken and soft and stirred to the core. ]
Then I am fortunate… Oh, beyond all talk of luck.
My Sen. My Senan. My beautiful aegis, my poet.
And I am pleased, I am gratified. My life glows, to know and hear at any turn you have been happy, and that I have made you so.
As you have turned me to a bliss unending. As you ever ever tuned me radiant and - ah! - rendered your Rin riant.
I, who began a null of thorns and bruises, turned by and with my Sen into this null of boundless hope. Of contentment, struck by wonder.
I could live and die on your words, my love.
[ There’s a quirk to their smile, a moment as they linger in the feeling of those words, that phrase - ’my love,’ yes, yes, indeed - and settle in its rightness. And their thumb brushes Sen’s hand at their cheek. And their hand finds Sen’s jaw, drifts back to brush and linger at Sen’s neck. ]
My love.
My brilliant, brazen fool, and all of my fondness.
no subject
He is a talker.
Not such that the conversations turn monotonous: his patter, his engagement with the listener, his accent and inflection all lend themselves to his ability to hold his audience. He isn't (as the kids say) a mansplainer, either; there is little authority of subject in his speech. Sen is eternally a philosophizer, leaning in deeply to the acknowledgement that there is much he doesn't know. (And indeed, he often will ask for clarity from anyone in his vicinity.)
He, gentlemanly and still disreputable, gentle but still relegated to the ranks of thieves, dealers, and lowlife sinners, is a conman with a gift. He belongs in the company of evangelists, of black market dealers, barkers and carnies, beat poets, hype men, street magicians, and radio personalities (or Podcast hosts. Take your pick.)
Years ago, he felt trapped, uncomfortable when there was nothing to say. He felt uninteresting, dull of any sheen, and presenting to others only a decent face, only cheap clothes: another wasted boy in a seedy underworld. But if he could talk. If he could wrap words around each and every listener like ropes and leash them, if he could make himself invaluable through speech, why, he was a king in a court of rogues.
So he commanded a room and laid waste to debates. He ran verbal laps around academics and meth addicts alike. He charmed them. (Or agitated them to fighting. Or confused them to silence. Facets of a useful skill.)
None of them could keep pace if they wanted to.
No one but Rin.
And no one but Rin could render him speechless. Only Rin could make Senan love his own silence, because in the silence, there is either the breathtaking flow of Rin's words, or a shared quietude. Blessed, his own silence in Rin's company.
He is silent now, permitting every word to glint like diamonds across his own stillness, in which he does not feel lusterless at all. He has never felt anything close to cheap, or uninteresting, or crude in his silence before them, and he doesn't feel so now.
He feels -
Oh, he feels everything. Warm and satisfied from his chest outward, as though from a shot of good whiskey. He feels charmed by Rin (he has always been charmed by Rin, by their whims and odd notions, by their languages and mimicry, the singing and narrations of others' actions, the way they carry themselves unaffected when they are, in fact, deeply so.)
He feels not-so-madly in love, where the madness has been perhaps a symptom of the not-having. The madness abates, and allows for, ha, stark raving sanity.
He feels - overwhelmingly tender. And gentle. Protective of this seemingly fragile miracle. (It isn't fragile. It's had two decades and change to take root, to grow, to become dauntless and fortified.)
His thumb brushes another slow arc as his smile softens - to think. To think Rin speaks these words. (He can't argue that Rin was indeed what they say, a null of thorns and bruises: he recognized that from the first, and informed every word and action upon this foundation. They had been wounded, and were prone to wounding, and he - talkative, rough, crude, cheap, but aware and capable of his capacities to be a gentleman - always offered them sanctuary.)
(They needed an ally. They needed a friend.
Truth be told, he had needed one, as well.)
(He's gratified. Struck by wonder, himself, to think he had some hand in brushing away the thorns and easing the bruises.)
This moment is prodigious. Miraculous, yes, he thinks the word again and again with every clench of his heart and every robbed breath, his eyes slipping closed and his head bowing a little - they called him 'my love'.
Not even the mention of dying catches at him. It seems impossible to him just now that anyone at all, much less Rin, much less himself, can die. Death feels so distant from the vibrant joy of those two words. He echoes them wonderingly.
Love and a caress. (Rin has touched him many times, but this is new, tingling and almost possessive - a claim he's happy to feel staked along his neck. At his jaw. Against his hand. What he has been, what he became, what he will be, he'd like to have lovingly held by, devoted in word and deed to, Rin.)
There's a false start at words, but he finds he doesn't want to speak. He doesn't want even one syllable to follow their love, their fondness, until the echo dies from his mind.
He's smiling again, bright and hopeful, looking far more himself than he has in months, years, and, with an unspoken question in his nearing, in the pause before connection and inquiring raise of his brows (Can I -? (Kiss you.)(Know you.)(Keep you.)), he offers another soft brush of his lips across theirs. ]