Dima speaks and with each sentence, steps forward until Faolan has no choice but to back up, back up, until he meets solidity.
He speaks and Faolan sees him burning with shadows, shades that writhe about him and threaten to lash forward.
Faolan sees visions of cities fallen to dust, their destruction marks of Dmitri's passage.
He's barely breathing because the space between his heart and lungs feels compressed. Because he smells smoke and charred bodies. Because the man before him wouldn't only live for him, but die and return in perfect infinitude; he would kill and raise armies from the bones of Faolan's enemies.
(He sees a god in ascension or a man rising toward his own fall, toward corruption, and beckoning Faolan to walk in step with him no matter the outcome.)
He isn't barely breathing. He hears sharp breaths, shuddering, smiled, baffled (Where have you been all this time -) , and the problem isn't breathing. The problem is he's been suffocating all his life. The problem is, there was never anyone who could walk him back into a wall and hold him pinned there with a hand tented against his chest.
He's dizzy, but that isn't a problem at all.
There's fire pouring molten through him, rushing in his veins and burning his cheeks, agonizing him with need.
(Dmitri called him 'my Faolan'' and then 'my Fae' and he thinks he meant to nod or say something, but he got lost in consuming, burning blue, he started thinking that it wouldn't matter what Dmitri might say or do hand-in-hand with him in Morovsk because there's no one else. Dmitri sees him, wants him, wants to belong to him, and giving up everything isn't a sacrifice at all because the only 'everything' is Faolan.)
He believes every word not because of the conviction behind them, but because it's dangerous not to believe. Because he's pressed against a wall and feels unearthed, long-banked fires flaring to life. Because Dmitri speaks softly and the world burns.
This isn't tentative imploring. He doesn't ask to claim Faolan. He doesn't request to belong, in turn. He takes and gives, speaks the world, shapes it to his truth.
Shapes Faolan's place beside him.
It's terrifying. The thrill of that terror squirms in his stomach and sends static down his arms and thighs. Without the hand pinning him, he might fall weak-kneed to the ground.
Whatever condemnation he braced himself to unleash, he forgets it now; all he can manage when he parts his lips is an unsteady, “Oh.”
Oh, he sees.
Oh, he didn't understand, but now all is clear.
Oh, was this there all along?
Oh, Dima. (My Dima, yes, that too, and it's worth everything because Dima could be everything.)
"My Dima."
His words become a delighted smile around his lower lip, caught between his teeth as though he can taste the last two syllables. As though he can keep 'Dima' on his tongue.
<.>
He would raze the world for that smile. Gladly. He could (will?!) live upon that smile.
And on the unsteadiness of Faolan’s breath, the catch of a lip between (perfect) (oh, how they could sink into his skin) teeth. That breath of an ‘oh,’ and though Dima holds himself straight-backed and steady, he knows the cascading shiver in his heart, knows fire turning bright and brighter in his veins.
He didn’t know a god could speak love; he didn’t know he could be both— Himself in riotous, continual ascension, and himself in this new love. Didn’t know that anyone could wish his uproar, or that he might inspire, might encourage someone’s own. He didn’t need to curb his speech, and though care is needed - oh, Faolan should have, will have Dmitri’s attentiveness just as well as his mad-swirling tempest - there was no need to contain himself to quiet, to caution. (He ought to have trusted Faolan to welcome wildness.) (Dmitri knows now, and he’s lucky - or it’s a grace of fate - that he’s found a fire to meet his own.)
They could burn together; burn the world together, and remake what stands around them. Turn ruin into rapture; turn what’s broken into something more than whole.
One hand holds yet against Faolan’s chest, tented upon his heart; the other moves to Fae’s cheek, a tender settling, an unyielding hold. His fingertip brushing precisely, precisely, a promise of collision and vicious care.
And Dmitri speaks, leaning inward, chin tilting up, his smile a sharp, omnific thing. (Omnific because he knows now he can love this man in his own wholeness, can give him all.) (Omnific because his Faolan said ‘’My Dima,’ as if the words held all the world.)
“Yes. Your Dima.”
His smile turns sly, crooked; his palm shifts to cup Fae’s cheek, and his thumb brushes the curve of Faolan’s lip. “Say it again for me, won’t you?
“Speak my name, and call me yours.”
And, lingering upon the name, tasting the draw of every syllable and speaking this luxuriating pleasure as an offering to Fae—
“Faolan.
“Fae.
“My own; there’s no mistaking.
“Place your hand on my heart. Settle your palm to my chest, and feel it—“
A caught breath as Faolan’s hand takes its place; a pleased flash of teeth from Dima, and a toss of his hair.
“Yes. There. Well done; that's very good
“Feel the staggered racing of my heart. The rush of blood rejoicing.
“Feel what you do to me, my Fae. Who eases and rouses me in equal measure. Who holds the whole span of existence, of its wild span of feelings, in his soul.
“No more hiding, Faolan; if what I am won’t wound you, then your Dima won’t shy from sharing with you everything I am.”
At Faolan’s cheek, his hand tents once again, to brush with fingers, to know the warmth of Fae’s skin. “Show me your fury, my Fae; let me always knows your smile, and know your burn upon my skin.”
And Dima leans upward, leans in to kiss this man.
<.>
Someone calls for Dmitri. Faolan hears it distantly, but the beating of Dima's heart under his hand is so much more than anything the world's ever offered him.
He talked of love. He didn't say the words, but he spoke of it, of loving, and of 'yours' and 'mine', and everything starving inside of Faolan wants it to be true. What would life be like to walk the world beside Dmitri, to belong to one another? (What would it be like to live together with Rose and Thorn, with the wolf and Liviana, and be called 'Fae'? Somewhere and some time far away from Faolan Rhys and all the beds he's known, where 'Fae' only knows the bed he shares with Dima?)
(In Morovsk?)
(Wherever they want. Wherever they choose and please.)
(Dima would shun Morovsk, but what about Dmitri?)
He leans into Dima's touch, his own free hand echoing the caress, each of them touching heart and heart and cheek and cheek. The brush of Dima's thumb along his lip draws a sigh from him, shuddering with relief and want and the words my Dima.
(Dmitri Voronin.)
(Maybe also his?)
Someone calls again, shouting both of their names joined together, and it's beautiful to his ears. Dima and Fae, known to be together and off somewhere, alone.
Dima knows the depths of him. The aching places in his soul where fires turned to embers. Dima knows how to resurrect, how to control fire, how to reach inside Faolan and not only ignite, but incinerate, and all it'll take is a kiss. (Existence could end and begin anew on a kiss; he won't be Faolan Rhys ever again.)
It almost comes.
But several someones are shouting now and Faolan realizes there's a risk here. (There are...a lot of risks here.) That possible first kiss might be interrupted; that's the immediate hazard. He stops Dima with a gentle thumb against his lower lip and a melancholy little frown. A tilt of his head indicates someone's approaching.
His hand presses against Dima's heart as though Faolan means to remind himself of how wildly it beat.
He feels as though the fires that sprung to life a moment ago are burning lower again, making room for all the chaos around them, the unfinished tasks, the worries. (The reason and rationality.) In a tired, low voice, he says, "Another time and place. Not today, not standing so close to where I saw a sword swing down on you. Not with so much left undone."
Faolan pauses, then smiles ruefully. "Not with Sen shouting his head off."
A brush of his fingertips learns the angle of Dmitri's cheekbone, of his jaw. "Take time to think about it, not just as a wish. Think of it knowing who I am and what I'm saying now.
"You'll be my last - oh, Dima, I'll put all my faith in you. I won't survive you if you turn on me," Faolan warns, his eyes imploring, pleading for something more than understanding. He closes the space left by an unshared kiss and brushes cheek to cheek, speaking low - lover's tones - in Dima's ear, "You won't survive me, either. If I'm yours, I'm either your last and only - or I'm your end."
He draws back with a warming smile just as Sen rounds the corner and calls back across the ruins, "They're over here!"
<.>
It almost, almost happened.
(Sen, your fucking timing.)
But suspension isn't an end, and kiss or no, what's happened between Dmitri and Faolan writes itself momentous into time, into the core of Dima's bones, his racing blood. It's already more than he could have thought to ask (it's worlds, rejuvenating and revelatory) (the chance to have, the truth of possibility in someday having both godhood and this man; to walk the path of divinity, of devastation with this man) (gods, it's delicious) (gods, he aches to linger here, sing fire here with Fae), and Dmitri's existence will be something new from this day forth.
Ah, but; ah, and: His existence was altered in the light of a campfire, the lifting of an unknown (awaited) face and honeyed eyes, the spark of fire at a not-quite-stranger's palm.
He tilts his head into the brush of Faolan's touch; feels that touch again, again in echoed knowing. And though he knows what he wants, though he feels no need to take his time, he also knows there needn't be a rush: They've written their fate together here, today. And Faolan's words—
O h. Faolan's profession (his plea, and Dmitri wants to tear out the lungs of every man who gave Fae cause for wariness), his offering of vulnerability, and then his not-only-a-threat, a vow spoken soft, like velvet, tingled and caressing through Dima's soul. (Ah, Fae. Vicious, astonishing man. The fire burning at the forest's heart.)
There's coiled exhilaration at those words, a pinprick networking of breathless fear and ice-hot shivers in his chest, at the base of his spine. Because this man could kill him; this man would, were Dima to bring him to betrayal. It won't happen; Dmitri's certain of himself in this regard. But gods, it's a beautiful sight, the way Faolan brings death to living bodies. It's enthralling, electric, to think just how he would usher Dima to a violent end.
(It's a fantasy. It isn't what Dima wants, not when he desires the alternative with such fervor, such— Such love.
And anyway. Oh, anyway, he's certain Faolan could, will carry him through rush and wildness without needed to reach an end.)
There's a soft-huffed breath from Dima, a nudge of his nose to Fae's cheek before the man can draw away. And speaking low, between them, he speaks: "I understand your meaning perfectly, my Fae— And I would expect no less.
"Be my life's match or be my ruin.
"Though really, there's only one answer. I know what I mean to do with you—" There's a little smirk, a punctuated brush of his thumb down Fae's arm. "—What I mean to do for you, and at your side.
"I'll have that kiss, Fae. And you will have my own.
"You'll see, my Fae. I'll show you."
And Dima lingers in gazing upon Faolan, reluctant to rescind his sight or touch, unwilling yet to let the sight of others enter in.
no subject
He speaks and Faolan sees him burning with shadows, shades that writhe about him and threaten to lash forward.
Faolan sees visions of cities fallen to dust, their destruction marks of Dmitri's passage.
He's barely breathing because the space between his heart and lungs feels compressed. Because he smells smoke and charred bodies. Because the man before him wouldn't only live for him, but die and return in perfect infinitude; he would kill and raise armies from the bones of Faolan's enemies.
(He sees a god in ascension or a man rising toward his own fall, toward corruption, and beckoning Faolan to walk in step with him no matter the outcome.)
He isn't barely breathing. He hears sharp breaths, shuddering, smiled, baffled (Where have you been all this time -) , and the problem isn't breathing. The problem is he's been suffocating all his life. The problem is, there was never anyone who could walk him back into a wall and hold him pinned there with a hand tented against his chest.
He's dizzy, but that isn't a problem at all.
There's fire pouring molten through him, rushing in his veins and burning his cheeks, agonizing him with need.
(Dmitri called him 'my Faolan'' and then 'my Fae' and he thinks he meant to nod or say something, but he got lost in consuming, burning blue, he started thinking that it wouldn't matter what Dmitri might say or do hand-in-hand with him in Morovsk because there's no one else. Dmitri sees him, wants him, wants to belong to him, and giving up everything isn't a sacrifice at all because the only 'everything' is Faolan.)
He believes every word not because of the conviction behind them, but because it's dangerous not to believe. Because he's pressed against a wall and feels unearthed, long-banked fires flaring to life. Because Dmitri speaks softly and the world burns.
This isn't tentative imploring. He doesn't ask to claim Faolan. He doesn't request to belong, in turn. He takes and gives, speaks the world, shapes it to his truth.
Shapes Faolan's place beside him.
It's terrifying. The thrill of that terror squirms in his stomach and sends static down his arms and thighs. Without the hand pinning him, he might fall weak-kneed to the ground.
Whatever condemnation he braced himself to unleash, he forgets it now; all he can manage when he parts his lips is an unsteady, “Oh.”
Oh, he sees.
Oh, he didn't understand, but now all is clear.
Oh, was this there all along?
Oh, Dima. (My Dima, yes, that too, and it's worth everything because Dima could be everything.)
"My Dima."
His words become a delighted smile around his lower lip, caught between his teeth as though he can taste the last two syllables. As though he can keep 'Dima' on his tongue.
<.>
He would raze the world for that smile. Gladly. He could (will?!) live upon that smile.
And on the unsteadiness of Faolan’s breath, the catch of a lip between (perfect) (oh, how they could sink into his skin) teeth. That breath of an ‘oh,’ and though Dima holds himself straight-backed and steady, he knows the cascading shiver in his heart, knows fire turning bright and brighter in his veins.
He didn’t know a god could speak love; he didn’t know he could be both— Himself in riotous, continual ascension, and himself in this new love. Didn’t know that anyone could wish his uproar, or that he might inspire, might encourage someone’s own. He didn’t need to curb his speech, and though care is needed - oh, Faolan should have, will have Dmitri’s attentiveness just as well as his mad-swirling tempest - there was no need to contain himself to quiet, to caution. (He ought to have trusted Faolan to welcome wildness.) (Dmitri knows now, and he’s lucky - or it’s a grace of fate - that he’s found a fire to meet his own.)
They could burn together; burn the world together, and remake what stands around them. Turn ruin into rapture; turn what’s broken into something more than whole.
One hand holds yet against Faolan’s chest, tented upon his heart; the other moves to Fae’s cheek, a tender settling, an unyielding hold. His fingertip brushing precisely, precisely, a promise of collision and vicious care.
And Dmitri speaks, leaning inward, chin tilting up, his smile a sharp, omnific thing. (Omnific because he knows now he can love this man in his own wholeness, can give him all.) (Omnific because his Faolan said ‘’My Dima,’ as if the words held all the world.)
“Yes. Your Dima.”
His smile turns sly, crooked; his palm shifts to cup Fae’s cheek, and his thumb brushes the curve of Faolan’s lip. “Say it again for me, won’t you?
“Speak my name, and call me yours.”
And, lingering upon the name, tasting the draw of every syllable and speaking this luxuriating pleasure as an offering to Fae—
“Faolan.
“Fae.
“My own; there’s no mistaking.
“Place your hand on my heart. Settle your palm to my chest, and feel it—“
A caught breath as Faolan’s hand takes its place; a pleased flash of teeth from Dima, and a toss of his hair.
“Yes. There. Well done; that's very good
“Feel the staggered racing of my heart. The rush of blood rejoicing.
“Feel what you do to me, my Fae. Who eases and rouses me in equal measure. Who holds the whole span of existence, of its wild span of feelings, in his soul.
“No more hiding, Faolan; if what I am won’t wound you, then your Dima won’t shy from sharing with you everything I am.”
At Faolan’s cheek, his hand tents once again, to brush with fingers, to know the warmth of Fae’s skin. “Show me your fury, my Fae; let me always knows your smile, and know your burn upon my skin.”
And Dima leans upward, leans in to kiss this man.
<.>
Someone calls for Dmitri. Faolan hears it distantly, but the beating of Dima's heart under his hand is so much more than anything the world's ever offered him.
He talked of love. He didn't say the words, but he spoke of it, of loving, and of 'yours' and 'mine', and everything starving inside of Faolan wants it to be true. What would life be like to walk the world beside Dmitri, to belong to one another? (What would it be like to live together with Rose and Thorn, with the wolf and Liviana, and be called 'Fae'? Somewhere and some time far away from Faolan Rhys and all the beds he's known, where 'Fae' only knows the bed he shares with Dima?)
(In Morovsk?)
(Wherever they want. Wherever they choose and please.)
(Dima would shun Morovsk, but what about Dmitri?)
He leans into Dima's touch, his own free hand echoing the caress, each of them touching heart and heart and cheek and cheek. The brush of Dima's thumb along his lip draws a sigh from him, shuddering with relief and want and the words my Dima.
(Dmitri Voronin.)
(Maybe also his?)
Someone calls again, shouting both of their names joined together, and it's beautiful to his ears. Dima and Fae, known to be together and off somewhere, alone.
Dima knows the depths of him. The aching places in his soul where fires turned to embers. Dima knows how to resurrect, how to control fire, how to reach inside Faolan and not only ignite, but incinerate, and all it'll take is a kiss. (Existence could end and begin anew on a kiss; he won't be Faolan Rhys ever again.)
It almost comes.
But several someones are shouting now and Faolan realizes there's a risk here. (There are...a lot of risks here.) That possible first kiss might be interrupted; that's the immediate hazard. He stops Dima with a gentle thumb against his lower lip and a melancholy little frown. A tilt of his head indicates someone's approaching.
His hand presses against Dima's heart as though Faolan means to remind himself of how wildly it beat.
He feels as though the fires that sprung to life a moment ago are burning lower again, making room for all the chaos around them, the unfinished tasks, the worries. (The reason and rationality.) In a tired, low voice, he says, "Another time and place. Not today, not standing so close to where I saw a sword swing down on you. Not with so much left undone."
Faolan pauses, then smiles ruefully. "Not with Sen shouting his head off."
A brush of his fingertips learns the angle of Dmitri's cheekbone, of his jaw. "Take time to think about it, not just as a wish. Think of it knowing who I am and what I'm saying now.
"You'll be my last - oh, Dima, I'll put all my faith in you. I won't survive you if you turn on me," Faolan warns, his eyes imploring, pleading for something more than understanding. He closes the space left by an unshared kiss and brushes cheek to cheek, speaking low - lover's tones - in Dima's ear, "You won't survive me, either. If I'm yours, I'm either your last and only - or I'm your end."
He draws back with a warming smile just as Sen rounds the corner and calls back across the ruins, "They're over here!"
<.>
It almost, almost happened.
(Sen, your fucking timing.)
But suspension isn't an end, and kiss or no, what's happened between Dmitri and Faolan writes itself momentous into time, into the core of Dima's bones, his racing blood. It's already more than he could have thought to ask (it's worlds, rejuvenating and revelatory) (the chance to have, the truth of possibility in someday having both godhood and this man; to walk the path of divinity, of devastation with this man) (gods, it's delicious) (gods, he aches to linger here, sing fire here with Fae), and Dmitri's existence will be something new from this day forth.
Ah, but; ah, and: His existence was altered in the light of a campfire, the lifting of an unknown (awaited) face and honeyed eyes, the spark of fire at a not-quite-stranger's palm.
He tilts his head into the brush of Faolan's touch; feels that touch again, again in echoed knowing. And though he knows what he wants, though he feels no need to take his time, he also knows there needn't be a rush: They've written their fate together here, today. And Faolan's words—
O h. Faolan's profession (his plea, and Dmitri wants to tear out the lungs of every man who gave Fae cause for wariness), his offering of vulnerability, and then his not-only-a-threat, a vow spoken soft, like velvet, tingled and caressing through Dima's soul. (Ah, Fae. Vicious, astonishing man. The fire burning at the forest's heart.)
There's coiled exhilaration at those words, a pinprick networking of breathless fear and ice-hot shivers in his chest, at the base of his spine. Because this man could kill him; this man would, were Dima to bring him to betrayal. It won't happen; Dmitri's certain of himself in this regard. But gods, it's a beautiful sight, the way Faolan brings death to living bodies. It's enthralling, electric, to think just how he would usher Dima to a violent end.
(It's a fantasy. It isn't what Dima wants, not when he desires the alternative with such fervor, such— Such love.
And anyway. Oh, anyway, he's certain Faolan could, will carry him through rush and wildness without needed to reach an end.)
There's a soft-huffed breath from Dima, a nudge of his nose to Fae's cheek before the man can draw away. And speaking low, between them, he speaks: "I understand your meaning perfectly, my Fae— And I would expect no less.
"Be my life's match or be my ruin.
"Though really, there's only one answer. I know what I mean to do with you—" There's a little smirk, a punctuated brush of his thumb down Fae's arm. "—What I mean to do for you, and at your side.
"I'll have that kiss, Fae. And you will have my own.
"You'll see, my Fae. I'll show you."
And Dima lingers in gazing upon Faolan, reluctant to rescind his sight or touch, unwilling yet to let the sight of others enter in.
<.>