As though he wished Dima into life, he's here beside Faolan, speaking Fae and stating (not asking, oh, and doesn't it send shivers through him even now?) he'd like to sit, and the seat is taken without objection from him.
This is why he needs Dima to tell him to go. Why Dima has to be the one to run him off, to dismiss him: Faolan can't turn Dima away.
(At war with this need is the knowledge of why he didn't come creeping into Dima's bedroll last night, or invite the man into his hammock: the terror of being refused. What if Dima had sent him back to his lonely bed, where he would be just as cold as before, but now lonelier still, heart frozen with the knowledge that Dima didn't want him?)
He doesn't move. He feels Dima's thigh against his own, more real than the ground below him or the crackling fire, more needed, more consequential.
He can feel Dima watching him, the weight of his gaze both condemnation and sunlight, and Faolan can't decide whether to hide his face in shame or turn it toward that warmth. So, he stares at the fire, at the middle distance through the fire, and his tongue won't shape words now. (Fae Voronin, he'd have liked that shape to be the last he ever said.)
He doesn't deserve to speak, anyhow. Not to the man beside him, who stays doggedly at his side and waits so patiently, loves so perfectly (a sort of perfect that fits only Faolan, the kind that comes only once in an age, bliss in union and harmony, close and warm as home - ah, gods, he's ruined something sacred, hasn't he?)
(He ruins everything he touches.) (He's been ruined by everything that touched him, was ruined long before perfection ever found him, and Dima's going to suffer for it.)
His thoughts sink him further and further from words, deeper into himself until it feels like Dima is beside him but miles away, unreachable now - if he was ever reachable at all.
As beautiful and unobtainable as all those stars above their dock.
<.>
Again, Dima thinks that in a perfect world, they'd be at home; protected, unharried, wrapped in one another's arms. With no chasm of silence between them. With no unknown expanse, no vague-formed threat to haunt them.
But there's no law to say that home can't be found, can't be had in wandering; there's no imperative to stop two hearts from finding home even while harrowed by a thousand threats. And one truth about imperfect worlds is that they're ever-changing, ever-able to be changed.
One truth about imperfect worlds is that total safety, surety, seclusion can't prevent the bloom of joyousness. Can't prevent brighter lights from vining in among the darkness— Can't prevent darkness from turning to a velvet comfort of its own.
That Dmitri and Faolan (that Liviana as well, and Sen and Rin) are in the middle of fuck-knows-where can't alter the fact that they're together, at least. Can't change the fact that Faolan permitted Dima to sit beside him; that if Faolan seems fallen in upon himself, he hasn't slipped or shrunk away. Can't change the fact that Dima may still place a hand upon Fae's arm and press, gently but unyielding, a sign that Dima's present, here with Fae, no matter what has happened.
He does settle his hand this way; he does press, and hold, and hold.
And his other hand finds Faolan's own. Seeks to twine his fingers through Fae's, settling his palm against Fae's knuckles. Again pressing; again holding. Drifting his thumb in slow-rhythmic caress.
And softly, softly - but without weakness in his voice; without a trace of doubt or absence - Dima speaks—
"I've missed you.
"I don't mean to suggest I haven't known your presence; you must have felt the way you anchored me beneath my fears. You must know the way I've watched you.
"But Faolan." There's a slight, slight pause before he dares: "My Fae. We have all endured much; you most of all. What they've done to you, how Loch Bien's overweening counselors treated you is unconscionable. But Faolan,
"You're not alone.
"Your Dima is here.
"And we'll make it through all right; I promise you. I vow it."
<.>
He doesn't withdraw his hand. He barely moves at all, barely breathes, because one careless motion might make the weight of Dima's hand vanish. It might prove ethereal, a trace of imagination carved from smoke. If he so much as looks at it, it won't be real.
But every arc of Dima's thumb sends flutters through him, nervous and warm and pleasant. He doesn't understand how it's possible to feel something so innocent and lovely in the middle of all this ruin.
The arc of a thumb. Skin brushing skin. His insides twist. His heart falls out of rhythm.
He's going to lose all of this. It's not fair to feel it now when he's never felt it before, not really, not like this. Or maybe it is fair. Maybe he deserves to know exactly what he's going to lose.
Dima speaks and Faolan finds himself snagged on a thought, its own arc a counterpoint to the soft brush of a thumb. "How they treated me."
His voice is low and toneless, the words seemingly foreign to him. When he continues, it's with resignation. "Like what I am?"
His eyes briefly find Dima's, then shift away again to seek darkness between flickering firelight.
"What you endured is on my head." He makes the mistake now of looking down at the hand covering his own and finds it hasn't vanished. "I'll only ever bring trouble down on you-"
He breathes, then closes his eyes against the sight of their near-joined hands. "You have too much faith in me. You don't know me."
He winces, though his eyes are closed.
"No - no, all right. I know you do know me. The shape of my soul against yours. The person I am - only with you. Alone with you. It felt like touching truth, like meeting myself -" His voice breaks, cracking with disuse and emotion. "I held still long enough to see myself, when I've been just a blur -"
Shaking his head, he dismisses this thought and doubles back on himself. "I'm trouble, Dima. Rotten. Soiled. Not worth your vows."
<.>
"Oh, Fae.” It's barely a breath; it's an impulse spoken sorrowed and loving, ahead of decision, formed of searing need to share with this man some measure of how deep his faith does run, and how little he believes there's rot, true rot in Faolan.
The hand at Fae's arm moves to clasp Fae's hand between both of his, to draw their joined hands to settle on his own thigh, anchored, unabating. "I know my mind— I know my heart, strange though it is to feel its cry." There's a small smile, a squeeze to Fae's hand as he cants his head, tosses his hair. "Strange because unprecedented. Strange because I've never known this tenor of feeling, but Faolan, I understand its meaning.
"And you're correct: I do know you. I should like to know more; everything you care to share with me, though you need never venture beyond comfort. Every part of you is in my care. No matter what you have been told about yourself. No matter what you might believe is rotten, or—
"Dearest. There is nothing rotten in you. There is nothing soiled— Though I will allow you've been ill-treated, and trodden over.
"Faolan. What you are shines through the names they've given you. What you are can never be soiled, or altered by the pettiness of piss-riddled nothings who think highly of themselves and hold nothing in their knowledge.
"Whatever you have been, wherever you have been, I know what you are. I know what I see in your eyes and your beholding; I know what I feel in your nearness. I know what I have seen you ache for and long toward. The dreams you shared upon the docks; the care you showed" (close, he's so close to saying 'our children') (close, and he can't or he doesn't entirely avoid—) "our Rose and Thorn."
"How long has it been, Faolan, since you were granted space, granted peace to be the man you are?" Still clasping, pressing soft, he draws Faolan's hand to his chest, and holds. "Bring trouble if you will; I call down plenty on myself. Do I seem to you a man unharassed, or free from his own demons?" There's a half-smile, at once wry and warm.
"Far better, my Fae, to face a sea of troubles with you, than to live peacefully in your absence.
"I know what I am equal to. I know what I desire.
"What troubles you may be stricken into ruin. *I* will rend what dares bring threat upon you.
"I will rend what threatened you before.
"What I know, Faolan, is that I cannot abide the thought of a life apart from you, or a world that dares sustain your sorrow."
<.>
Our Rose and Thorn.
He doesn’t hear the rest. His existence feels halted on those words, a betraying catch of breath and cut of a glance to see Dima, see if what Faolan heard was what he thinks he heard, or perhaps just a misunderstanding. Surely that; isn’t it always a misunderstanding?
Our Rose and Thorn. (Our children.)
He spoke it so naturally, as though he meant it only as some figure of speech. (Or as though it’s been in his head all this time, ours, yours and mine, our children our children our children-, as though he’s been thinking ahead from the moment they gathered their bones to the day he and Fae (Voronin) would watch paternally over them. Together.)
Morovsk men aren’t careless with their words. Not like that. There is no “generally” about the things they say and mean. Dima said our and there’s no one else to claim them, no one else who knows about them, and Dima wouldn’t share them, anyhow.
He didn’t have to say it, either. There’s no one to hear but the thieves, if they’re even listening. (But Rose and Thorn can hear, almost certainly-)
There’s only Dima and Faolan, the firelight, their twined hands, and Dima trying to reach him and bring him to something like home.
He’s staring now in stricken silence, his words choked by the same longing written bare across his expression. This is all he wants and for a moment, he can’t hide the depth of his want.
Dima, family, and home. “Our”, implicit with the names of children.
He had been building in his mind some way to twist this, to counter every word with wretched hypotheticals of poison, of who he might have fucked and used, of the possibility that Dima was only ever convenient and willing - but Dima is holding his hand, speaking with wry smiles and warmth, with faith, and whatever Fae might have ruined, he can’t destroy that.
And Rose and Thorn are listening.
“Our” Rose and Thorn.
He draws a shaky breath and tries to speak, then feels himself crumbling, turning raw and new like something born out of ashes. (Dima always was going to be his resurrection, wasn’t he? From the moment they met in that clearing.)
“I didn’t.” He realizes belatedly that this is an ambiguous statement, an anti-confession that had no prologue. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. The poison. That party. I met with Ransome, but not for that.”
He hasn’t spoken in days, not like this, hasn’t wanted to speak, but now it feels dire, now he needs Dima to know and maybe, maybe forgive. Weakly, he presses, “I went with him. I did that. I needed a favor, that’s all. Just a meeting with Alfrig, I needed -“
He shakes his head and tries to look away, but Dima is there and Dima spoke a word he can’t drive from his mind. Dima is holding on and whether Faolan’s worth it or not, Dima is. (“Our” Rose and Thorn - yes, they are. The family that could be, the family that seems almost within reach - that’s worth everything.)
“He wanted - because I’d been with him before. Because it’s what I am.”
“I couldn’t, Dima.” His eyes are wide, imploring, filling with wretched misery, hope - and longing. “I couldn’t.”
The silence feels awful, conjured from the dull thud of those two words and broken only by his unsteady breathing. Both of his hands grip Dima’s now, his thumb brushing the rings, and it feels like climbing out, up, away from a cold void.
“It was easier when I could pretend I might love them, someday. I could imagine the world afterward as something soft instead of what it inevitably was.
“How it was after you and I -
“How it still was, even in that dungeon. How it still is now.
“I couldn’t pretend it would be that way with him. I couldn’t pretend I’d love him - or anyone but you.
“So I left. That’s all, but it felt like betrayal enough, the trying… But that’s all it was. I tried, I failed, I left. That’s all, Dima, I swear. I swear.”
He doesn’t know when he started to cry, but he dissolves now into defeated, quiet sobs, head bowed and forehead pressed to Dima’s shoulder.
His thumb has fallen still against the rings as though he can shield Rose and Thorn against himself. (And all the world besides.)
no subject
This is why he needs Dima to tell him to go. Why Dima has to be the one to run him off, to dismiss him: Faolan can't turn Dima away.
(At war with this need is the knowledge of why he didn't come creeping into Dima's bedroll last night, or invite the man into his hammock: the terror of being refused. What if Dima had sent him back to his lonely bed, where he would be just as cold as before, but now lonelier still, heart frozen with the knowledge that Dima didn't want him?)
He doesn't move. He feels Dima's thigh against his own, more real than the ground below him or the crackling fire, more needed, more consequential.
He can feel Dima watching him, the weight of his gaze both condemnation and sunlight, and Faolan can't decide whether to hide his face in shame or turn it toward that warmth. So, he stares at the fire, at the middle distance through the fire, and his tongue won't shape words now. (Fae Voronin, he'd have liked that shape to be the last he ever said.)
He doesn't deserve to speak, anyhow. Not to the man beside him, who stays doggedly at his side and waits so patiently, loves so perfectly (a sort of perfect that fits only Faolan, the kind that comes only once in an age, bliss in union and harmony, close and warm as home - ah, gods, he's ruined something sacred, hasn't he?)
(He ruins everything he touches.) (He's been ruined by everything that touched him, was ruined long before perfection ever found him, and Dima's going to suffer for it.)
His thoughts sink him further and further from words, deeper into himself until it feels like Dima is beside him but miles away, unreachable now - if he was ever reachable at all.
As beautiful and unobtainable as all those stars above their dock.
<.>
Again, Dima thinks that in a perfect world, they'd be at home; protected, unharried, wrapped in one another's arms. With no chasm of silence between them. With no unknown expanse, no vague-formed threat to haunt them.
But there's no law to say that home can't be found, can't be had in wandering; there's no imperative to stop two hearts from finding home even while harrowed by a thousand threats. And one truth about imperfect worlds is that they're ever-changing, ever-able to be changed.
One truth about imperfect worlds is that total safety, surety, seclusion can't prevent the bloom of joyousness. Can't prevent brighter lights from vining in among the darkness— Can't prevent darkness from turning to a velvet comfort of its own.
That Dmitri and Faolan (that Liviana as well, and Sen and Rin) are in the middle of fuck-knows-where can't alter the fact that they're together, at least. Can't change the fact that Faolan permitted Dima to sit beside him; that if Faolan seems fallen in upon himself, he hasn't slipped or shrunk away. Can't change the fact that Dima may still place a hand upon Fae's arm and press, gently but unyielding, a sign that Dima's present, here with Fae, no matter what has happened.
He does settle his hand this way; he does press, and hold, and hold.
And his other hand finds Faolan's own. Seeks to twine his fingers through Fae's, settling his palm against Fae's knuckles. Again pressing; again holding. Drifting his thumb in slow-rhythmic caress.
And softly, softly - but without weakness in his voice; without a trace of doubt or absence - Dima speaks—
"I've missed you.
"I don't mean to suggest I haven't known your presence; you must have felt the way you anchored me beneath my fears. You must know the way I've watched you.
"But Faolan." There's a slight, slight pause before he dares: "My Fae. We have all endured much; you most of all. What they've done to you, how Loch Bien's overweening counselors treated you is unconscionable. But Faolan,
"You're not alone.
"Your Dima is here.
"And we'll make it through all right; I promise you. I vow it."
<.>
He doesn't withdraw his hand. He barely moves at all, barely breathes, because one careless motion might make the weight of Dima's hand vanish. It might prove ethereal, a trace of imagination carved from smoke. If he so much as looks at it, it won't be real.
But every arc of Dima's thumb sends flutters through him, nervous and warm and pleasant. He doesn't understand how it's possible to feel something so innocent and lovely in the middle of all this ruin.
The arc of a thumb. Skin brushing skin. His insides twist. His heart falls out of rhythm.
He's going to lose all of this. It's not fair to feel it now when he's never felt it before, not really, not like this. Or maybe it is fair. Maybe he deserves to know exactly what he's going to lose.
Dima speaks and Faolan finds himself snagged on a thought, its own arc a counterpoint to the soft brush of a thumb. "How they treated me."
His voice is low and toneless, the words seemingly foreign to him. When he continues, it's with resignation. "Like what I am?"
His eyes briefly find Dima's, then shift away again to seek darkness between flickering firelight.
"What you endured is on my head." He makes the mistake now of looking down at the hand covering his own and finds it hasn't vanished. "I'll only ever bring trouble down on you-"
He breathes, then closes his eyes against the sight of their near-joined hands. "You have too much faith in me. You don't know me."
He winces, though his eyes are closed.
"No - no, all right. I know you do know me. The shape of my soul against yours. The person I am - only with you. Alone with you. It felt like touching truth, like meeting myself -" His voice breaks, cracking with disuse and emotion. "I held still long enough to see myself, when I've been just a blur -"
Shaking his head, he dismisses this thought and doubles back on himself. "I'm trouble, Dima. Rotten. Soiled. Not worth your vows."
<.>
"Oh, Fae.” It's barely a breath; it's an impulse spoken sorrowed and loving, ahead of decision, formed of searing need to share with this man some measure of how deep his faith does run, and how little he believes there's rot, true rot in Faolan.
The hand at Fae's arm moves to clasp Fae's hand between both of his, to draw their joined hands to settle on his own thigh, anchored, unabating. "I know my mind— I know my heart, strange though it is to feel its cry." There's a small smile, a squeeze to Fae's hand as he cants his head, tosses his hair. "Strange because unprecedented. Strange because I've never known this tenor of feeling, but Faolan, I understand its meaning.
"And you're correct: I do know you. I should like to know more; everything you care to share with me, though you need never venture beyond comfort. Every part of you is in my care. No matter what you have been told about yourself. No matter what you might believe is rotten, or—
"Dearest. There is nothing rotten in you. There is nothing soiled— Though I will allow you've been ill-treated, and trodden over.
"Faolan. What you are shines through the names they've given you. What you are can never be soiled, or altered by the pettiness of piss-riddled nothings who think highly of themselves and hold nothing in their knowledge.
"Whatever you have been, wherever you have been, I know what you are. I know what I see in your eyes and your beholding; I know what I feel in your nearness. I know what I have seen you ache for and long toward. The dreams you shared upon the docks; the care you showed" (close, he's so close to saying 'our children') (close, and he can't or he doesn't entirely avoid—) "our Rose and Thorn."
"How long has it been, Faolan, since you were granted space, granted peace to be the man you are?" Still clasping, pressing soft, he draws Faolan's hand to his chest, and holds. "Bring trouble if you will; I call down plenty on myself. Do I seem to you a man unharassed, or free from his own demons?" There's a half-smile, at once wry and warm.
"Far better, my Fae, to face a sea of troubles with you, than to live peacefully in your absence.
"I know what I am equal to. I know what I desire.
"What troubles you may be stricken into ruin. *I* will rend what dares bring threat upon you.
"I will rend what threatened you before.
"What I know, Faolan, is that I cannot abide the thought of a life apart from you, or a world that dares sustain your sorrow."
<.>
Our Rose and Thorn.
He doesn’t hear the rest. His existence feels halted on those words, a betraying catch of breath and cut of a glance to see Dima, see if what Faolan heard was what he thinks he heard, or perhaps just a misunderstanding. Surely that; isn’t it always a misunderstanding?
Our Rose and Thorn. (Our children.)
He spoke it so naturally, as though he meant it only as some figure of speech. (Or as though it’s been in his head all this time, ours, yours and mine, our children our children our children-, as though he’s been thinking ahead from the moment they gathered their bones to the day he and Fae (Voronin) would watch paternally over them. Together.)
Morovsk men aren’t careless with their words. Not like that. There is no “generally” about the things they say and mean. Dima said our and there’s no one else to claim them, no one else who knows about them, and Dima wouldn’t share them, anyhow.
He didn’t have to say it, either. There’s no one to hear but the thieves, if they’re even listening. (But Rose and Thorn can hear, almost certainly-)
There’s only Dima and Faolan, the firelight, their twined hands, and Dima trying to reach him and bring him to something like home.
He’s staring now in stricken silence, his words choked by the same longing written bare across his expression. This is all he wants and for a moment, he can’t hide the depth of his want.
Dima, family, and home. “Our”, implicit with the names of children.
He had been building in his mind some way to twist this, to counter every word with wretched hypotheticals of poison, of who he might have fucked and used, of the possibility that Dima was only ever convenient and willing - but Dima is holding his hand, speaking with wry smiles and warmth, with faith, and whatever Fae might have ruined, he can’t destroy that.
And Rose and Thorn are listening.
“Our” Rose and Thorn.
He draws a shaky breath and tries to speak, then feels himself crumbling, turning raw and new like something born out of ashes. (Dima always was going to be his resurrection, wasn’t he? From the moment they met in that clearing.)
“I didn’t.” He realizes belatedly that this is an ambiguous statement, an anti-confession that had no prologue. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. The poison. That party. I met with Ransome, but not for that.”
He hasn’t spoken in days, not like this, hasn’t wanted to speak, but now it feels dire, now he needs Dima to know and maybe, maybe forgive. Weakly, he presses, “I went with him. I did that. I needed a favor, that’s all. Just a meeting with Alfrig, I needed -“
He shakes his head and tries to look away, but Dima is there and Dima spoke a word he can’t drive from his mind. Dima is holding on and whether Faolan’s worth it or not, Dima is. (“Our” Rose and Thorn - yes, they are. The family that could be, the family that seems almost within reach - that’s worth everything.)
“He wanted - because I’d been with him before. Because it’s what I am.”
“I couldn’t, Dima.” His eyes are wide, imploring, filling with wretched misery, hope - and longing. “I couldn’t.”
The silence feels awful, conjured from the dull thud of those two words and broken only by his unsteady breathing. Both of his hands grip Dima’s now, his thumb brushing the rings, and it feels like climbing out, up, away from a cold void.
“It was easier when I could pretend I might love them, someday. I could imagine the world afterward as something soft instead of what it inevitably was.
“How it was after you and I -
“How it still was, even in that dungeon. How it still is now.
“I couldn’t pretend it would be that way with him. I couldn’t pretend I’d love him - or anyone but you.
“So I left. That’s all, but it felt like betrayal enough, the trying… But that’s all it was. I tried, I failed, I left. That’s all, Dima, I swear. I swear.”
He doesn’t know when he started to cry, but he dissolves now into defeated, quiet sobs, head bowed and forehead pressed to Dima’s shoulder.
His thumb has fallen still against the rings as though he can shield Rose and Thorn against himself. (And all the world besides.)
<.>