He wasn't going to sleep in Orev's room; he was tempted to stay in the tavern until the proprietress cleared him out - and sleeping anywhere else wasn't an option, no matter what he said to Orev. Draža made sure of that more than a year ago.
(Not that Jack intends to tell Orev. That, or much else. Or. Much else other than what he's already put to paper. Probably.)
It's the darkest part of night, just before dawn, when he picks the lock on Orev's door. He creeps in, stealthy enough not to stir the other man regardless of whether he's awake or asleep. When he reaches the bed, he pauses, watchful, then sheds his coat, vest, gun, and hat onto a nearby chair. He toes off his boots, quieting their muffled thuds on the floor. Without a word, he slips under the covers and lies on his side, watching Orev's silhouette in the darkness.
He keeps a few inches between them, careful not to do more than barely breathe. Careful not to think about how any of this feels. <.>
He wakes only when the mattress dips, when he knows the presence of a familiar/unfamiliar body suddenly drawn very near. (Not so very near. He feels the inches as a gulf, abyssal.)
Orev doesn't open his eyes. Schools his breathing to retain its steadiness. And— Listens. Feels the subtle warmth of another body. (Feels how little he recoils from this man's nearness. How he feels nothing but welcome; something like (peace?) (safety) an absence of hazard.)
He hadn't thought Jack would return. He doesn't want to scare the boy away. He's... Very, very certain that if he speaks, he'll shatter whatever this might be.
So he lets a moment, a minute pass. Waiting. Then opens his eyes slowly, and extends a hand toward Jack. <.>
Jack thinks Draža would have woken immediately. He would have grinned his feral little grin and pressed Jack into the mattress, a winged shadow that towered over him and filled his vision, blocking out all the light.
Mostly. More often than not.
(There were times, though. Softer moments, just like this, when Draža waited for Jack - Gideon, Puppy - to come to him. A hand extended and patient, gentle silence.)
Salt tears sting his eyes and he crams them closed, jaw clenched, turning his head towards the pillows. (He can't help but think -) (Better not to think it. He's getting out of that contract, getting away from Orev-Draža-Daddy forever.) (But for now...?)
He sniffs quietly and forces himself to relax, then edges closer. He had meant only to bring himself nearer, maybe slip his hand into Orev's, but the nearer he draws, the less he can fight the pull. Jack presses himself to Orev's side, he rests one hand on the other man's stomach, head on his shoulder.
<.>
[ insight: 15
Orev recognizes the scent of Jack's hair and the weight of his hand, the perfect fit of their bodies together. Even the way the mattress holds their weight together. He can't remember specifics, but he knows he's spent many, many nights like this. ]
He’s done nothing to deserve this.
(A catch in his throat.) (Something flushed and burning at the edges of his mind.) (He knows this man.) ((Why can’t he remember? Why these glints and these obscure sensations only, taunting, gnawing at him?))
If Orev can’t say why Jack draws near, he senses need in it, something like compulsion, or— Something deeper than that; something that echoes in his own chest.
It’s simple, so simple to shift himself onto his back, even as an arm draws itself around Jack, following his movement or guiding him, or it’s both at once. To feels the man’s hand settle, head settle, and think only yes, that yes, Jack has found his rightful place. To breathe shallow but steady, steady, as if to ease Jack toward calm.
He draws one claw along Jack’s cheek, catching a tear and caressing. (He doesn’t notice the burn at the back of his own eyes.) He ducks his head toward Jack’s hair and— No, he won’t follow the urge to settle a kiss, not yet, but he’ll nestle his cheek and breathe deep, breathe steady.
Thinking, yes. Thinking welcome. Thinking, this is where you belong.
<.>
If he shudders, it isn't revulsion. It's against the urge to sob for everything he lost, everything that is and isn't quite here, now. It's the feeling of a tear traced away, the scent of (Draža) Orev against him, holding him and breathing steadily. It's the feeling of arms, wings around him and a cheek at his hair.
(Why couldn't we keep this? he wants to ask, but asking means breaking the silence. It means inviting conversations he doesn't want to have. It means Orev might stop.)
Drawing his hand upward, he smoothes it into the feathers at Orev's chest, touch delicate and certain because he has done this a thousand times, because he does know how to touch this man. He never forgot. (How could Draža forget him? How? Did he want to be rid of Gideon that badly?)
He matches his breathing to Orev's, in and out, listening to the steady-wild beat of his heart. (Thinking, it could have been like this always.
But Draža didn't want him.
He doesn't belong here anymore.
It's nice to pretend, though.)
<.>
There are things he knows, has begun to piece together about the man he just have been. The journal tells a scattered, broken story, a man bitten by inferno, seeking some manner of exit and given to destruction. A man given to spilling blood, to sacrifice, to words writ in howling and little to suggest softness.
He knows there was something that man wanted, badly.
He knows there was one name repeated, repeated, and redacted.
(What was he trying to lose.) (And.) (What might he have tried to (protect) save?)
Orev can’t understand why he lost this. Why he would have left this. (He must have hurt this man— Oh, infinitely.) (Why. And why. And why?)
There’s so much he can’t put into place, but what he knows in this moment, what he feels with settled certainty (a wild forest stricken with warm light; a breeze speaking home, and a hand gentle, settled at his heart) (Jack touches him now, and something eases in his lungs; it’s so careful, familiarity he knows he ought to recognize), is rightness.
He wants to say—
(How can this thought, the feelings behind these words, exist?)
I’ve missed you.
Instead, he catches his breath gone staggered and once again calms it steady. (Calms it by following the rise, the fall of lungs so near his own.) He shifts, just a little nearer against Jack. Draws his arm closer in hold, and shifts just slightly to his side, the better to curl against this man. And he does speak, soft, nearly inaudible—
“Thank you.”
And he thinks: Puppy.
<.>
Orev turns and Jack moves in tandem, shifting his hand down and around to loop around (Daddy's) the azureborn's back, finding a familiar path through feathers. (He learned so quickly where to touch carefully, where to pull and where to place his palms, his fingertips. He remembers Draža wincing with a too-rough caress that pulled at the feathers of his upper arms.
He remembers Draža's contented, heavy-lidded eyes at the scratch of fingertips at the base of his skull. It's a memory that inflicts itself so strongly, Jack's own breath hitches.)
He breathes in deeply and exhales with a little, lost sound.
Before he drowns in memories, a voice eases against the silence and Jack acknowledges it only with a small shift of his head against downy feathers, a barely-there nudge of his nose upward at Orev's jaw - then stillness. Then a reply equally soft, just as quiet.
"What for?"
Maybe, maybe if they whisper, the illusion won't fall away.
<.>
For everything.
For not fleeing with the train’s crash.
For the surety and softness of his touch.
For speaking in kind; Orev hadn’t anticipated Jack’s voice. Had half-expected the boy to flinch from Orev’s words, and had been readying himself to calm Jack, to press forehead to forehead and hold there until ease was restored.
“For being here.”
He thinks he means ‘for coming back to bed.’ He thinks he means, ‘for returning,’ and that returning means a good depth of other things, and Orev knows a rotten wrenching somewhere in his soul.
(He doesn’t deserve this. But gods, he (needs) wants it.)
Careful, slowly, he draws two fingertips through Jack’s hair. (He thinks about that sound - small, conflicted; miraculous - from Jack.) (He thinks there was history rung deep through that sound.) (He wants to know it. (Knowledge bears a cost.) (He’ll pay it.) In time. In a moment less strung with quiet; he doesn’t wish to disrupt this.) Tilts his head just slightly, to press Jack’s nose, Jack’s cheek. And he dares, now: He sets the lightest kiss to Jack’s hair, not pressing to his skull, only offering, only taking in the presence of this man.
<.>
Jack's answer is a catch of breath, not at the words but at the lightest pressure of a kiss against his hair. Lingering? Offering? He can't tell and he doesn't dare move. He doesn't want to risk shaking Orev off, making him think it's unwelcome.
He's not sure if it is or not. (That's not true.)
If it had been only the words, he thinks he might have been angry that Orev would thank him for being here when Draža left him in the first place. Orev doesn't know, can't possibly understand how it feels. But he's being so careful with Jack, caressing so softly with fingertips and the brush of his cheek, that Jack thinks maybe, maybe he understands very, very well that something important was lost.
Given up.
He wants to say, I never left, but he knows how it would sound; he knows the accusation it would carry. He wants to say For now, but he doesn't want the moment shattered by what the future will hold. Instead, he waits, letting Orev draw out the kiss as long as he likes, before lifting his chin and answering, "Where else would I go?"
Where else but home? he thinks, but doesn't say. He'll never say that. (Look what speaking love lost him.)
His lips brush Orev's jaw when he speaks and linger there, not quite a kiss, for a staggered heartbeat or three afterward.
<.>
‘Where else would I go’; another question sparking countless could-be answers. Because he might be anywhere, anywhere away from Orev. Because there are countless places that might hold existence, here or beyond the shade and shield of this realm’s veil. Because Orev doesn’t know where else Jack might have gone, who and what he’s been, so how could he guess where else Jack might have gone?
(No, he— Knows well enough. Hasn’t he heard it in this man’s voice, seen it in the sadness of his thoughts? Heard it in the music drawn from a harpsicord’s keys. Something profound; something irrevocable and bleeding, lost and too far inflicted to be healed.)
‘Where else would I go,’ another phrase that holdings meanings unsaid and more precise. (What might the boy have said, if he’d felt freer, safer?) (If Orev, if the man Orev was and can’t remember, hadn’t… Done. What he did.) And—
Where has this man had to go, these past nine months.
What has he had, since Orev—
Left him. Abandoned him.
What has existence been for Jack, that he came to Orev’s room and slid so quickly, quietly into bed. That after nine months of absence, of nothing (of being told (Orev had said—) (Orev told the boy he’s missing something, told him—) he wasn’t (how could it ever be true?) wanted, needed; not enough), he moved to the offer of Orev’s hand, and holds (clings) so close to him now, lips light like grace at Orev’s skin.
Orev has closed his eyes. He’s counting, rhythmic, in silence. Trying to sustain. Trying to hold this moment, and not to—
Shatter it. He’s marred enough for this man already; he won’t let this night turn rancid.
He’s like to respond to Jack’s words. He’d like to say, You won’t need to go elsewhere. He’d like to say, I’m here, I’m here, I’m not going to leave.’ And, ’I’ve been waiting for you, my—‘
My Jack. (My Puppy.) ((My Dearest.))
He breathes, and he nestles his cheek against Jack’s head. Nudges, nuzzles against his hair. And says— “The night has been long.
“It has been so long.”
Then softly, deep in his throat, at his chest, he hums. Not thinking, not allowing thought to enter in with questions that might break this song he knows, though he doesn’t remember it. This song that’s gathered somewhere in his bones, and yes, and yes he hums it now, gathering Jack close against him, offering the song Jack played to a haunted parlor, the song they both witnessed on the train, the song connected to a hand at his waist, and a smile from this beautiful, matchless man.
<.>
"Every night," Jack answers. He doesn't need to explain, he thinks, how every night crawled across his skin with Daddy's absence. He doesn't need to explain how he tried to find relief in gambling, in drinking, in walking dark streets, trying to escape that last conversation.
He hates himself for how his voice breaks, but doesn't hate that maybe, maybe, Orev feels it all, too: the absence, the wanting, the sorrow. (Right now, the relief.)
Because Orev is humming their song. (Theirs, when he was Gideon and Orev was Draža.) (Theirs, now? Maybe tonight, at least? Please?)
Jack clings tighter and nuzzles his face into the crook of Orev's throat, eyes closed, feathers tickling his nose, and for just a moment, he's not Gideon. Orev isn't Draža. They're just...them, together, and it feels safe. It feels like someplace he could have stayed once. (Think of Orev's grin when Jack obeyed him and sat. Think of the steady beat of his heart and the lead of his lungs. Think of the ways he reaches. (It's not enough, but it's something for now.))
(Just listen. Just hear the familiar tune and feel Orev's cheek a comforting weight against his head. Just feel the warmth of their bodies, the bed, the blankets.)
Slowly, he relaxes against Orev, and Jack eases into a dreamless sleep.
<.>
He doesn’t sleep.
(He’s slept enough, for the night.) (He’s been— Gone. Far too long.) ((How do you miss what you can’t remember ever having?) (How else to explain the leaden weight in his chest, how he’s known it since awaking without memory, how it’s light now, or simpler to bear?))
Orev hums until Jack’s breath turns to the tidal fall of sleep, and continues humming long after. Picks up the song again, again, throughout the waning night, the growing dawn, as his hands continue in careful soft caressing, as he gazes on the wonder of this man’s face, lit in time by distant purples, rising oranges, softest, growing gold. (How many nights, how many dawns did he watch this way, stricken?) (Perhaps the count is hundreds. Or. Perhaps he never saw. (Perhaps he never stayed.))
Once or twice, he dares another press of lips against Jack’s hair. Still soft, still without claim. Only wondering. Only wanting to, trying to recall, and if not that, if memory won’t come to him, then at least taking in these moments fully, and keeping them for always.
(His, his, his.) ((This man is his.) (And doesn’t he belong… Here. With Jack.) (To. Jack?))
‘Every night,’ Jack said, and those words grew a stone in Orev’s chest. Seep through him as the hours carry onward, and yes, and yes, there’s more aching to those words than can be fathomed in a word or an instant or a march of days, of years.
(Orev would like to mend— Something. (Whatever he’d done.) Everything.) (He doesn’t know whether it’s within his right, or power. Or whether any attempt to mend might only hurt this man deeper.)
The hours pass, and though he doesn’t sleep, he begins to drift within a pleasant haze. Not entirely real. Not needing (not wanting) what’s only real, the convolutions and conundrums of existence that wait yet to be solved, eased. Only knowing Jack is with him. Only knowing steady breath and heartbeat, and the brush of skin beneath his hand, the soft give of blond between his fingers.
Whatever Orev has been, whatever he has done, he knows that here and on this night, he has been blessed.
day 2-3: Where you belong. // Daddy and Puppy
(Not that Jack intends to tell Orev. That, or much else. Or. Much else other than what he's already put to paper. Probably.)
It's the darkest part of night, just before dawn, when he picks the lock on Orev's door. He creeps in, stealthy enough not to stir the other man regardless of whether he's awake or asleep. When he reaches the bed, he pauses, watchful, then sheds his coat, vest, gun, and hat onto a nearby chair. He toes off his boots, quieting their muffled thuds on the floor. Without a word, he slips under the covers and lies on his side, watching Orev's silhouette in the darkness.
He keeps a few inches between them, careful not to do more than barely breathe. Careful not to think about how any of this feels. <.>
He wakes only when the mattress dips, when he knows the presence of a familiar/unfamiliar body suddenly drawn very near. (Not so very near. He feels the inches as a gulf, abyssal.)
Orev doesn't open his eyes. Schools his breathing to retain its steadiness. And— Listens. Feels the subtle warmth of another body. (Feels how little he recoils from this man's nearness. How he feels nothing but welcome; something like (peace?) (safety) an absence of hazard.)
He hadn't thought Jack would return. He doesn't want to scare the boy away. He's... Very, very certain that if he speaks, he'll shatter whatever this might be.
So he lets a moment, a minute pass. Waiting. Then opens his eyes slowly, and extends a hand toward Jack. <.>
Jack thinks Draža would have woken immediately. He would have grinned his feral little grin and pressed Jack into the mattress, a winged shadow that towered over him and filled his vision, blocking out all the light.
Mostly. More often than not.
(There were times, though. Softer moments, just like this, when Draža waited for Jack - Gideon, Puppy - to come to him. A hand extended and patient, gentle silence.)
Salt tears sting his eyes and he crams them closed, jaw clenched, turning his head towards the pillows. (He can't help but think -) (Better not to think it. He's getting out of that contract, getting away from Orev-Draža-Daddy forever.) (But for now...?)
He sniffs quietly and forces himself to relax, then edges closer. He had meant only to bring himself nearer, maybe slip his hand into Orev's, but the nearer he draws, the less he can fight the pull. Jack presses himself to Orev's side, he rests one hand on the other man's stomach, head on his shoulder.
<.>
[ insight: 15
Orev recognizes the scent of Jack's hair and the weight of his hand, the perfect fit of their bodies together. Even the way the mattress holds their weight together. He can't remember specifics, but he knows he's spent many, many nights like this. ]
He’s done nothing to deserve this.
(A catch in his throat.) (Something flushed and burning at the edges of his mind.) (He knows this man.) ((Why can’t he remember? Why these glints and these obscure sensations only, taunting, gnawing at him?))
If Orev can’t say why Jack draws near, he senses need in it, something like compulsion, or— Something deeper than that; something that echoes in his own chest.
It’s simple, so simple to shift himself onto his back, even as an arm draws itself around Jack, following his movement or guiding him, or it’s both at once. To feels the man’s hand settle, head settle, and think only yes, that yes, Jack has found his rightful place. To breathe shallow but steady, steady, as if to ease Jack toward calm.
He draws one claw along Jack’s cheek, catching a tear and caressing. (He doesn’t notice the burn at the back of his own eyes.) He ducks his head toward Jack’s hair and— No, he won’t follow the urge to settle a kiss, not yet, but he’ll nestle his cheek and breathe deep, breathe steady.
Thinking, yes. Thinking welcome. Thinking, this is where you belong.
<.>
If he shudders, it isn't revulsion. It's against the urge to sob for everything he lost, everything that is and isn't quite here, now. It's the feeling of a tear traced away, the scent of (Draža) Orev against him, holding him and breathing steadily. It's the feeling of arms, wings around him and a cheek at his hair.
(Why couldn't we keep this? he wants to ask, but asking means breaking the silence. It means inviting conversations he doesn't want to have. It means Orev might stop.)
Drawing his hand upward, he smoothes it into the feathers at Orev's chest, touch delicate and certain because he has done this a thousand times, because he does know how to touch this man. He never forgot. (How could Draža forget him? How? Did he want to be rid of Gideon that badly?)
He matches his breathing to Orev's, in and out, listening to the steady-wild beat of his heart. (Thinking, it could have been like this always.
But Draža didn't want him.
He doesn't belong here anymore.
It's nice to pretend, though.)
<.>
There are things he knows, has begun to piece together about the man he just have been. The journal tells a scattered, broken story, a man bitten by inferno, seeking some manner of exit and given to destruction. A man given to spilling blood, to sacrifice, to words writ in howling and little to suggest softness.
He knows there was something that man wanted, badly.
He knows there was one name repeated, repeated, and redacted.
(What was he trying to lose.) (And.) (What might he have tried to (protect) save?)
Orev can’t understand why he lost this. Why he would have left this. (He must have hurt this man— Oh, infinitely.) (Why. And why. And why?)
There’s so much he can’t put into place, but what he knows in this moment, what he feels with settled certainty (a wild forest stricken with warm light; a breeze speaking home, and a hand gentle, settled at his heart) (Jack touches him now, and something eases in his lungs; it’s so careful, familiarity he knows he ought to recognize), is rightness.
He wants to say—
(How can this thought, the feelings behind these words, exist?)
I’ve missed you.
Instead, he catches his breath gone staggered and once again calms it steady. (Calms it by following the rise, the fall of lungs so near his own.) He shifts, just a little nearer against Jack. Draws his arm closer in hold, and shifts just slightly to his side, the better to curl against this man. And he does speak, soft, nearly inaudible—
“Thank you.”
And he thinks: Puppy.
<.>
Orev turns and Jack moves in tandem, shifting his hand down and around to loop around (Daddy's) the azureborn's back, finding a familiar path through feathers. (He learned so quickly where to touch carefully, where to pull and where to place his palms, his fingertips. He remembers Draža wincing with a too-rough caress that pulled at the feathers of his upper arms.
He remembers Draža's contented, heavy-lidded eyes at the scratch of fingertips at the base of his skull. It's a memory that inflicts itself so strongly, Jack's own breath hitches.)
He breathes in deeply and exhales with a little, lost sound.
Before he drowns in memories, a voice eases against the silence and Jack acknowledges it only with a small shift of his head against downy feathers, a barely-there nudge of his nose upward at Orev's jaw - then stillness. Then a reply equally soft, just as quiet.
"What for?"
Maybe, maybe if they whisper, the illusion won't fall away.
<.>
For everything.
For not fleeing with the train’s crash.
For the surety and softness of his touch.
For speaking in kind; Orev hadn’t anticipated Jack’s voice. Had half-expected the boy to flinch from Orev’s words, and had been readying himself to calm Jack, to press forehead to forehead and hold there until ease was restored.
“For being here.”
He thinks he means ‘for coming back to bed.’ He thinks he means, ‘for returning,’ and that returning means a good depth of other things, and Orev knows a rotten wrenching somewhere in his soul.
(He doesn’t deserve this. But gods, he (needs) wants it.)
Careful, slowly, he draws two fingertips through Jack’s hair. (He thinks about that sound - small, conflicted; miraculous - from Jack.) (He thinks there was history rung deep through that sound.) (He wants to know it. (Knowledge bears a cost.) (He’ll pay it.) In time. In a moment less strung with quiet; he doesn’t wish to disrupt this.) Tilts his head just slightly, to press Jack’s nose, Jack’s cheek.
And he dares, now: He sets the lightest kiss to Jack’s hair, not pressing to his skull, only offering, only taking in the presence of this man.
<.>
Jack's answer is a catch of breath, not at the words but at the lightest pressure of a kiss against his hair. Lingering? Offering? He can't tell and he doesn't dare move. He doesn't want to risk shaking Orev off, making him think it's unwelcome.
He's not sure if it is or not. (That's not true.)
If it had been only the words, he thinks he might have been angry that Orev would thank him for being here when Draža left him in the first place. Orev doesn't know, can't possibly understand how it feels. But he's being so careful with Jack, caressing so softly with fingertips and the brush of his cheek, that Jack thinks maybe, maybe he understands very, very well that something important was lost.
Given up.
He wants to say, I never left, but he knows how it would sound; he knows the accusation it would carry. He wants to say For now, but he doesn't want the moment shattered by what the future will hold. Instead, he waits, letting Orev draw out the kiss as long as he likes, before lifting his chin and answering, "Where else would I go?"
Where else but home? he thinks, but doesn't say. He'll never say that. (Look what speaking love lost him.)
His lips brush Orev's jaw when he speaks and linger there, not quite a kiss, for a staggered heartbeat or three afterward.
<.>
‘Where else would I go’; another question sparking countless could-be answers. Because he might be anywhere, anywhere away from Orev. Because there are countless places that might hold existence, here or beyond the shade and shield of this realm’s veil. Because Orev doesn’t know where else Jack might have gone, who and what he’s been, so how could he guess where else Jack might have gone?
(No, he— Knows well enough. Hasn’t he heard it in this man’s voice, seen it in the sadness of his thoughts? Heard it in the music drawn from a harpsicord’s keys. Something profound; something irrevocable and bleeding, lost and too far inflicted to be healed.)
‘Where else would I go,’ another phrase that holdings meanings unsaid and more precise. (What might the boy have said, if he’d felt freer, safer?) (If Orev, if the man Orev was and can’t remember, hadn’t… Done. What he did.) And—
Where has this man had to go, these past nine months.
What has he had, since Orev—
Left him. Abandoned him.
What has existence been for Jack, that he came to Orev’s room and slid so quickly, quietly into bed. That after nine months of absence, of nothing (of being told (Orev had said—) (Orev told the boy he’s missing something, told him—) he wasn’t (how could it ever be true?) wanted, needed; not enough), he moved to the offer of Orev’s hand, and holds (clings) so close to him now, lips light like grace at Orev’s skin.
Orev has closed his eyes. He’s counting, rhythmic, in silence. Trying to sustain. Trying to hold this moment, and not to—
Shatter it. He’s marred enough for this man already; he won’t let this night turn rancid.
He’s like to respond to Jack’s words. He’d like to say, You won’t need to go elsewhere. He’d like to say, I’m here, I’m here, I’m not going to leave.’ And, ’I’ve been waiting for you, my—‘
My Jack. (My Puppy.) ((My Dearest.))
He breathes, and he nestles his cheek against Jack’s head. Nudges, nuzzles against his hair. And says— “The night has been long.
“It has been so long.”
Then softly, deep in his throat, at his chest, he hums. Not thinking, not allowing thought to enter in with questions that might break this song he knows, though he doesn’t remember it. This song that’s gathered somewhere in his bones, and yes, and yes he hums it now, gathering Jack close against him, offering the song Jack played to a haunted parlor, the song they both witnessed on the train, the song connected to a hand at his waist, and a smile from this beautiful, matchless man.
<.>
"Every night," Jack answers. He doesn't need to explain, he thinks, how every night crawled across his skin with Daddy's absence. He doesn't need to explain how he tried to find relief in gambling, in drinking, in walking dark streets, trying to escape that last conversation.
He hates himself for how his voice breaks, but doesn't hate that maybe, maybe, Orev feels it all, too: the absence, the wanting, the sorrow. (Right now, the relief.)
Because Orev is humming their song. (Theirs, when he was Gideon and Orev was Draža.) (Theirs, now? Maybe tonight, at least? Please?)
Jack clings tighter and nuzzles his face into the crook of Orev's throat, eyes closed, feathers tickling his nose, and for just a moment, he's not Gideon. Orev isn't Draža. They're just...them, together, and it feels safe. It feels like someplace he could have stayed once. (Think of Orev's grin when Jack obeyed him and sat. Think of the steady beat of his heart and the lead of his lungs. Think of the ways he reaches. (It's not enough, but it's something for now.))
(Just listen. Just hear the familiar tune and feel Orev's cheek a comforting weight against his head. Just feel the warmth of their bodies, the bed, the blankets.)
Slowly, he relaxes against Orev, and Jack eases into a dreamless sleep.
<.>
He doesn’t sleep.
(He’s slept enough, for the night.) (He’s been— Gone. Far too long.) ((How do you miss what you can’t remember ever having?) (How else to explain the leaden weight in his chest, how he’s known it since awaking without memory, how it’s light now, or simpler to bear?))
Orev hums until Jack’s breath turns to the tidal fall of sleep, and continues humming long after. Picks up the song again, again, throughout the waning night, the growing dawn, as his hands continue in careful soft caressing, as he gazes on the wonder of this man’s face, lit in time by distant purples, rising oranges, softest, growing gold. (How many nights, how many dawns did he watch this way, stricken?) (Perhaps the count is hundreds. Or. Perhaps he never saw. (Perhaps he never stayed.))
Once or twice, he dares another press of lips against Jack’s hair. Still soft, still without claim. Only wondering. Only wanting to, trying to recall, and if not that, if memory won’t come to him, then at least taking in these moments fully, and keeping them for always.
(His, his, his.) ((This man is his.) (And doesn’t he belong… Here. With Jack.) (To. Jack?))
‘Every night,’ Jack said, and those words grew a stone in Orev’s chest. Seep through him as the hours carry onward, and yes, and yes, there’s more aching to those words than can be fathomed in a word or an instant or a march of days, of years.
(Orev would like to mend— Something. (Whatever he’d done.) Everything.) (He doesn’t know whether it’s within his right, or power. Or whether any attempt to mend might only hurt this man deeper.)
The hours pass, and though he doesn’t sleep, he begins to drift within a pleasant haze. Not entirely real. Not needing (not wanting) what’s only real, the convolutions and conundrums of existence that wait yet to be solved, eased. Only knowing Jack is with him. Only knowing steady breath and heartbeat, and the brush of skin beneath his hand, the soft give of blond between his fingers.
Whatever Orev has been, whatever he has done, he knows that here and on this night, he has been blessed.