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[byanyname]

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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.

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[ultimatenegative]

[ Ask anyone at all to name the most defining characteristic of Senan Wilkes, and they will immediately respond with varying levels of vitriol, amusement, or aggrievement, that he talks..

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. ]