Hijinks Mingle

[potentite]

Who: Everyone!
Where: Anywhere around the hub!
When: Days 103-105
Open/Closed: Open mingle!
Notes: See this post for details on the moon prompt and this one for the telepathy/dream/spirit prompts!



[A | Flower Gleam and Glow]
[The nearby moon is still passing close to the hub island, meaning the effects are still in play. Perhaps now is the time to stop and smell the large lit up sparkling moonflowers that have bloomed? Or be annoyed by the mosquito-like insects that came with them.

Alternatively, the deer seem to draw some sort of energy from the moon's light. Given their size, at least their sudden aggression and proximity to the base camp isn't the worst thing in the world but a kick would still break a rib or other bone so be careful! Possibly help each other deal with these cute but troublesome fauna.]



[B | Eavesdropping]
[For some reason, the telepathy will suddenly get rather wonky. Characters won't know why it's happening, though of course no doubt there will be ponderings, but it means characters won't be in control of their ability to broadcast — or more specifically, not broadcast — their thoughts. Time to find out secrets of an embarrassing nature. Or maybe something sadder is going on in your character's head.

If this wasn't bad enough, the area around the signet might experience burning or tingling. Just try to keep a lid on your brain for the day and distract yourself from any annoying pain.]



[C | Talking In Your Sleep]
[Or maybe your character just doesn't have the most interesting thoughts. Maybe they're busy thinking about pie instead of their upsetting childhood. That's fair. Pie is great.

But surely sometimes it haunts their dreams. With the telepathy running amuck, it's no wonder dreams and nightmares are leaking through, too. Of course, it doesn't have to be an accident. Feel free to grab a friend and share a fanciful dreamscape together on purpose! But for those nuts that are tougher to crack, accidents can and will happen.]



[D | Who You Gonna Call]
[Last but not least, as Friday rolls around, there seems to be something odd going on with the island. If your character is inclined towards the spiritual or supernatural, they'll no doubt notice the strange heavy thickness hanging around. There are whispers in the air and all of new energy just feels solemn. Might be good to give people a heads up and keep an eye on it.]

Comments

[reckoner]

No.

[ Cracked out, a rending like the crash of thunder pursuing a light split sky. His voice ripples like that, ruptures like that, his fingers in the grass, in the dirt, and clawing with a seismic jerk, as if shocked. Heart rumbling in ears, like that.

The boy that becomes the man who kills him blurs, in and out of focus, and if he could wonder at it, he would need assume dilation rather than a wet film.

A violent thing, to lash out even verbally at the boy so small and curled, so retreated, with that so known expression made less familiar by what he cannot possibly feel, and if he does feel it, would and could have felt that, at what point had Gaelio become hated?

At what point had he become meaningless? All that gazing, had he succumbed to the restoring reflex of a blink, and missed the moment McGillis turned away? Closer, and closer after all, to having been able to hold and deliver his heart. ]

You're wrong. Don't say it, if you can't remember, if you don't know. He can't -- you can't -- I --

[ Gaelio swallows, teeth aching with how they grind for gum in his mouth, forcing his face away as he blinks, and blinks, and blinks, refusing the why of the need for it. He does need it. Do not think of illusions, of showing the child. Every muscle taut and tight, every cell in conflict, and he urges his vision clear, the savaged pulp of his heart out of his throat.

Then, only then, can he understand the next answer.

Hadn't he?

Memory, uncertain and doubted and distorted and too bright, too dull. Had McGillis noticed the frown of his prolonged stare, had he tugged up his collar, had the question shivered and stalled on his tongue? He had climbed onto his father's knee, had pestered, had accepted. ]

I didn't ask you.

[ Said to the grass, tone still gnarled and erratic, now precarious, as doubting as the frames skipping through his head, doubting, why always doubting, why still doubting? ]

[finagles]

[ Gaelio's never yelled at him like that before, never spoken to him like that before -- he remains unrecognizable, for the most part. The sky shatters with his voice, then chatters in alarm. Despite knowing what he's done to deserve it, he's not entirely sure what to do next, other than to curl tighter into himself. Everything gets a little colder, around them, within him.

What's left to do other than accept that they weren't meant to be?

Only, if he moves, either away from him or towards him, he has the sense that it would only provoke Gaelio further. If he speaks his mind further, on this topic or the other, he anticipates another poor response. McGillis grows quiet in the wake of those replies, a silence that stretches out.

Didn't ask him.

Wouldn't he be the one to ask?

Shouldn't he be the one -- but, no, his version of what happens doesn't matter. Only their version matters. There's no way to overcome that, or to create something new to replace it. Something beautiful to outshine it. To believe otherwise, even for a second, is too stupid a thought to stomach. It nearly makes him want to retch; vision spotting, he takes a shaky breath. In the blink of an eye, it becomes clear to him -- in front of him is a stretch of road that promises no change.

Nothing changes.

It's an acute realization that pricks sharp. His life hasn't changed all that much since coming here. Even his friendship with Gaelio won't change, except to take a turn for the worst possible ending. McGillis loosens his hold on himself, limbs going slack, feeling himself slip under, into the warm tide.

There's no need to fight it anymore. Here's the new truth, worlds upending: someone important to him will benefit from it if he ceases treading water. ]

Listen, Gaelio... I thought of something. An answer for the both of us.

[ And it's bliss, caked into a light-headed voice. Allow exhaustion to overtake, and like magic, blood filling his mouth and pooling at the corners. He swipes at the liquid when it starts to drop from his chin. A soft, delirious smile, directed at his palm. How warm these dreams become sometimes.

That same look, directed at Gaelio when he turns his head. ]

I can save you from him.

[ And save him too. ]

1/2

[reckoner]

[ The sky itself protests, the world itself recoiling from him. He needn't look to know that the boy coils further, that he bruises as much with his afterdeath and afterlife croaking. He feels he sits in jagged contrast, a stitched together corpse that lumbers with half-life, his rot thick and pungent in the air that would struggle to freeze it out.

If there had been a childhood where beneath that finely chiseled stone, something near to true affection and attachment had blossomed. If that seedling had been ground underfoot by Gaelio's careless heel. Maybe when he permitted fear in his chest and foreboding in those eyes to direct his inquiry everywhere but to where it was most needed. Maybe a later moment, complacent, blind to the heart lost, as if made all blood and dripping through his fingers.

He has asked everything and nothing of this boy, has beat and begged, but never seen those expressions, heard those words, and isn't it incredible, astonishing, the human capacity for a heart to keep breaking, for a body to keep tearing, for a mind to keep splitting.

Isn't it incredible, that after all and everything, that even as he blinks and shakes with the tension of the ferocious and wretched fury, he tightens his fist as much against the compulsion to put a hand on that shoulder, soft but steady, or firm and needing, or too tight but not to bruise but probably despite intention bruising, and -- and --

he doesn't know.

But he belongs less than the boy dragged into their den and raised well enough to kill and kill and kill. Carta, he remembers bleakly, works his tongue as if to make the charge, but it hits teeth and sinks.

And McGillis speaks, and he raises his head, turns his head, because god, he's been seeking an answer, needing an answer, holding and discarding seventy hundred of them. How he's begged and searched and wracked and clawed for it. How stupidly his heart hiccups to hear it, even as a shroud falls, misgiving bred and writhing from that tone.

Gaelio stares at the blood, at the smile, without understanding.

The surprise of it is too deep, too marrow rooting, for comprehension to permeate. Red smears chin, red between teeth and lips, red painting a smile like ghoulish lipstick. ]

What --

[ This boy he has strangled and beaten and clutched at, and begged, and been killed by in every possible imagined way, bleeds without Gaelio's touch or insistence.

Gaelio's knuckles scrape into the dirt again, the grass again, as he rears back, horror splitting a new part of him. It cracks apart his face as he scrambles, half a foot back, shaking through and shaking his head.

I can save you from him. ]

What are you doing?!

[reckoner]

[ But it's clear, it's obvious, he knows.

The boy who becomes the man who kills Carta, kills him, offers this sacrifice. Grasping not at power, surging not with brutish rage, but yielding in quiet resignation to a deeper, unreachable misery.

Unreachable, always that, so why his body, doing as it will, instinctive and panicked flux -- at one breath on his haunches, crawling terror, and at the next, launched through the space between them, hands scrabbling for shoulder and face. The latter he holds as though it might break beneath his coarser touch, because it has, thumb swiping white against the blood, seeping. ]

Stop! Not like this, not you --

[ His voice may never be anything but gravel and torn up conflict, scrunched along with his face, with what again gathers in his eyes. ]

Not you.

[ Who else but him? He doesn't know, but not like this, not like this, not like this. ]

[finagles]

[ Is this his first and only act of love?

Upon learning how to read, how the stories and poems espoused about love, versions that painted pictures without black shrouds, without sickly films. Although, his would ultimately be rejected as closer to the latter than the former. Does it count, if all he does is erase the mistake of his existence? Living inside, somewhere, everywhere, deep stains that can't be removed.

Gaelio, his unsettling and zombified self, lifts his head as if the answer matters. As if it could possibly still matter -- with that, hope flickers. His first and only act. Gaelio clutches at the ground, twitching away, and McGillis can feel it. He sighs, coughing red with it. The air around them coughs, sighs.

He hopes the dark in his vision grows and grows and grows. It grows, pulsing, until the shock of a hand on his shoulder chases it away. Another touch, painfully gentle on his face, forces clarity to the front of his vision.

He looks for him. Green eyes widen slightly to absorb, from this distance, the distressing sheen in those blue ones. White, black, blue. The striking presence of water gathering in them and soon to fall. He was always the type to cry easily -- does that keep? Does that keep about him? Even after that after?

His lifts his fingers to curl onto the wrist that swipes at blood. ]

Why are you crying?

[ Those same fingers graze partly along his sleeve, perching curiously as if they've never found a place to settle. Red imprints left behind on everything, everywhere, as if his flesh itself will become an open and gaping wound.

Is this his only act of love, and so ugly?

Gaelio doesn't seem comforted, nor do the white patches of scars begin to disappear from his face. Nor does he become the person McGillis wanted to revive. He tilts his head, regarding the face in front of him with a more disquieted expression.

His voice is hoarse with liquid. It continues to pool from his mouth, from the corners of his eyes and the bottoms of his ears. From the trail of his palm as it lifts again and seeks to shape itself against Gaelio's cheek. ]

I'm sorry.

[ Scar pulsing beneath his touch. ]

[reckoner]

No, no, not you, please. Don't do this.

[ The boy in his arms, the boy too small for his arms, the boy in his hands. His hands soaked red and soaking bloodier. Gaelio's words stream, inflection earth splitting from a landmine's eruption, shrapnel everywhere. Hysteria bubbling like blood, like his blood, like the boy in his hands, not his arms.

This exceeds him, this swallows him, this a tearing and a tearing and a tearing down his whole. Those green eyes blaze against the blood, against the pallor of dying and death. Those green eyes as fingers flutter, weak, not yet perching, spotting and seeping along Gaelio's arm, this touch, a searching boy's hand and a frantic man's delirious, frenzied grasp.

Crying, he isn't, shakes his head, but he cannot retrieve his hands for the confirmation, for horror or denial, and they cannot surge and fit within the chaos of his head. His breath hitches with a sob, choked back, and a small hand presses wet and red to his cheek. They break, then. Hot streaks, tears, spilling against those fingers.

McGillis apologizes, the boy dying in his hands, the child sacrifice, and he breaks, too. His scar pulses, flared too hot, then opens. ]

Not no not no no not from you, McGillis --

[ And a tearing and a tearing and a tearing and driven into two, and four, and eight, and sixteen, and nothing that blasts through him feels like satisfaction, nothing. He cannot accept this, cannot understand or accept, the boy for whom he'd reached who theorizes true affection before smiling and slitting himself on an altar, the boy for whom he'd reached, with whom every memory confused and shrouded and distorted yet retained, stupidly but inextricably, a precious core, the boy for whom he'd reached who kills him, who kills himself, who kills him, he can't see through the tears must see must stop this not like this but how what answer in this what truth in this in fingers that curled for his no too long on his hand no traversed sleeve cupped scar wished it away gaelio wishes too wishes no

gaelio pleading in wrecked, wrecking sobs holding not shaking only shaking with the shivers through him again the boy dies from his hands and again gaelio claws himself apart but inward out flesh bubbles no worms writhing thick protrusions no five pointed amorphous bulging out moving beneath skin pushing again skin until hooking in the sutures tearing the scars that divide him more of burning metal than gouged flesh but they open so neatly so horribly as if cut as if once stitched as if keeping the thread as if laceration and clawing and thrusting through another hand in the blood another small hand bloodied or clean he falls back collapses back as it pushes past snapping ribs as it emerges as it a boy crawls out of pulp and splintered corpse or he sits still hunched as the boy flickers unmarred beside as the boy shoves him aside or looks at him what did you do or he is the boy and asks himself ringing through his ears piercing through,

it's my fault.

Torn apart for another to breathe or insensibly forced away, or unmoved but shrinking, or his hands are large and they are small, he hulks or cowers as a small boy with violet hair, holds McGillis in his arms, because his are the right size, but he's sobbing, too. His horror straightforward, and his terror, and his inability to understand.

And even as a boy, especially as a boy, Gaelio doesn't know how to love him selflessly. He hugs him frantic against his chest, smearing blood down his white front, red front, white front, clutches needing, begs needing. ]

Why -- why, don't go, don't leave me. I -- [ a hiccuping whimper ] -- want to be with you, please --

[ two sets of eyes one set two hands four hands bigger smaller shattered shell twitching in the grass bent still over dead dying boy pushed aside still bent boy sobbing man sobbing just sobbing has to kill him but not like this can't comprehend killing the boy his heart sings to sit beside and lean as close as he dares then closer but not like this.

This isn't the answer.

Just sobbing. ]

McGillis.

[finagles]

[ Why does he plead against this?

Shouldn't he find safety in it? McGillis can't understand, not the lamentable look on his face, not when he shakes his head against a visible truth, tears breaking and pooling hot and wet against the outline of his hand. So much older and so incredibly broken by whatever McGillis has done to him, why does he still sob like that? He watches him through the tunnel of light fading in his vision, losing hope in his one deed again.

In his short life, he's only known anger, pain -- how to receive it, how to give it. It holds true to the end. He doesn't despair, to find the end. He should quickly search for a way to tell this to Gaelio, so that he won't cry anymore --

Only, the scar held in his palm rips open. Only, he can no longer follow the visions that crowd him, as Gaelio, the one he knows (awful thud in his chest reminding him he's still alive), emerges from the shell of the old, the sickening sound of flesh ripping and bone snapping filling blood-stopped ears, or he doesn't, confusing realities flickering in and out, here and gone.

Confusing and horrific. He holds in a gasp.

But his eyes latch onto one of those flickering realities, the sight of Gaelio small and recognizable to him, his slumped body perking slightly to find him again. To see him again.

Has he done it? Someone holds him, but he can't tell if it's boy or man. His blood dirties the person holding him, asking him not to leave. He exhales, losing strength, and rests his red-smeared cheek against his friend's shoulder. Arms like twigs lift and fingers curl into the fabric of Gaelio's shirt, clutching onto his back.

Cruelly innocent, innocently cruel, he doesn't know what he condemns McGillis to by asking him to stay. Not only does this young version of McGillis cleanse and preserve Gaelio's future with this act, he wipes out his own past and present. He finds a way to veer off the road unchanging, contentment washing over him as the light continues to fade.

It's cruel -- to call his name and beg him to stay, to hold him as if losing something precious, to give McGillis a reason to want to stay by doing that. It's cruel to steal his contentment and replace it with doubt, fear, unspeakable, contemptible grief, his cheek pressing tighter and fingers curling into fists. ]

Don't you understand? I've killed you. I'll kill you. I'm not who you think I am.

[ Closing his eyes tight against it, and is he boy or man now? His voice rises into a more frantic pitch, yet sounds deeper. ]

Please, Gaelio, just -- throw me away.

[ Or else he won't be able to go. Or else, the blood retreats from his frame, responding to the abstract wishes of a boy who dreams. A man who dreams as a boy. ]

Just throw me away.

[reckoner]

[ How many hands how many eyes how could he kill him and kill himself for him it will tear him apart and literally does has does. How could he kill him and kill himself, as though he could save him, as though he accepted responsibility, as though he would mete his own punishment, as though he agreed that only by killing they would understand.

But Gaelio does not understand.

This offering, truth without understanding, death without solace.

The boy that crawled from the fracturing body, the body that appeared and pushed, the boy that he became: if his sleeves are clean and white, but for the seeping, he bunches now carefully into his palms. The boy, tears streaming with such a thick flow as to blind him, mops at that blood soaked face, trying to clean and clear it. How gently he presses the cloth to skin, as though afraid it would stick and tear. ]

I don't understand.

[ Voice warbling with his weeping, strangled and weak with it. ]

I'm alive. Then don't kill me. Tell me who you are and don't kill me.

[ He doesn't want to be thrown away either, his mind rebelling against any shred of comprehension, against how McGillis could kill him, will or had, when he dies in his arms, and dies, and bleeds out dying. The corpse in the grass, rasping and convulsing, knows. Would speak, would say, the man aside and watching, the man gone boy, they know, but they hadn't wanted to discard him, either. To deny is not to discard, to kill with those methods, to understand, it isn't throwing him out.

And he can't throw him out like this, can't see him die like this, without power, without conversion to brute force.

Leave the corpse in the grass and let the boy hold him, the boy not yet dead not yet betrayed, still trusting, still seeking with open face heart hands, still gushing and simmering sincere, still bright and brighter to have been pulled from the orbit around imploding rotten stars to that of the sun.

Leave the corpse in the grass and let the boy clasp this boy and promise he won't look away, he won't let them come apart, he won't let go of his heart. Though they do, though he never had it, not really, or lost it, couldn't save it, saw too late he had to try for that, too.

But --

It's a nice dream. ]

I want to know, it's all I want to know, tell me and I won't let you kill me. You don't... if you want this, then you can't want to kill me. So don't.

[ Corpse twitching, spasmodic snapping, cannot sound the protest against what his erstwhile murderer wants, doesn't want. In that voice. Boy's sleeves sopping, dripping, with all this blood McGillis should already be dead. If he could will him alive, clean, he would, and he tries, he tries, he's trying. Gaelio hugs him again, burying his face in the crook of neck and shoulder, his face coating red, but he's crying too hard to mind, to even feel it. Tears pool in the red. ]

I won't throw you away. Even if you die, please don't die. Let me keep you.

[ Leave the corpse in the grass and be with him, just be with him.

God, but it's a nice dream. ]

[finagles]

[ A bunched, white sleeve passes over his jaw. McGillis lifts his drooping head once he senses that, coming face to face with wet blue eyes as large as discs, and the sleeve wiping over his cheek.

Slowly, slowly erasing the streaks of red, some magical component in the cloth, or in the owner of the sleeve.

Gaelio crying, smeared in blood, one way or the other. He's always kept too close, never to his own benefit. The blood is lifting, though, McGillis's eyes crumpling and clearing when faced with his efforts. The only tenderness known in his life. The first, every first that ever provided a contrast to his overall existence, the fixed point, the gravitational center of it -- but there's a man's corpse on the ground, twitching with the terrible weight of knowledge. After all that, even the boy that emerged from him has flayed and silenced him, for the sake of someone who doesn't deserve the effort. He's always kept too close.

Tell me who you are and don't kill me.

So simple. Tell me who you are but he can't, he won't, he can't, he can't --

McGillis exhales, not with dying, instead with the terrible knowledge that he won't die. That terrible weight. A spark of life returning to his eyes.

But it's a nice thought. It's a nice dream.

It's all I want to know and you can't want to kill me and his fingers clutching, tightening over fabric, holding onto Gaelio when he hugs him and disappears into his shoulder. Hanging on to keep from trembling, a small tremble sweeping through him. Red all over him, red all over the both of them, then -- as quickly, none. As quickly, clean and breathing again, something inside snapping with the violent realization that he, also, wants to keep him. It snaps up all the blood.

It's not fair, it's not fair that he can't, that he won't, though that's too childish, too simple, and there are greater injustices, but -- but why his only friend?

Why be that cruel to the both of them?

He shifts small arms, away from clutching and into an embrace. Cupping the back of Gaelio's head and falling back into an endless, white backdrop, becoming the only shape that has form. Everything else blurs out and away -- tree, skies, buildings, corpse -- eaten up by the white landscape. He floats in it.

He takes the other boy with him. ]

Isn't it too late?

[ Something wet sliding from his eyes into that soft cloud of pastels against his cheek. Trembling that snakes through his young voice, not cracking it. ]

Let's stay here, where it's never too late. Let's not go back.

[ Not to waking, not to their families, that artificial world, that severe existence -- a warm body against his, here. A heartbeat against his.

No need to construct safety through any other methods. ]

Would -- would you --

[ But he doesn't know what he asks, trailing off on a shuddering breath. ]

[reckoner]

[ Relief compounds.

Relief that he could see McGillis's skin beneath the blood, porcelain revealed as his sleeves sopped. Relief that he could then believe it abating, receding. Relief in the force of McGillis's fingers clawing in his shirt, not weakening, not beginning to slip and fall. Relief in holding and being held, in yielding reciprocation, in a tremble answered by one of Gaelio's own.

Relief, though impeded by his delayed realization, that the blood disappears, both unmarried and unmarked, as though it had never oozed. He weeps still, unable to stem the frantic flood, his hysterical terror at losing, at almost losing the dream onto which his eyes had already firmly fixed. At almost losing this boy whose hands and arms shift, hold him soft, softer than Gaelio had thought he could, had thought he ever would.

Grass and root and dirt no longer grind into knees. He doesn't want to disrupt McGillis's hand, but he lifts his chin tentative, peering with bleary eyes at the white, and the white, and the encompassing white.

Patchwork man and mangled corpse, every iteration swallowed and gone.

Though gone, the protest that would sound for too late never reaches tongue, never caught by teeth, dissolving in the acid of his gut. A deeper knowledge, known past him, beyond him, what would cast shadows in the white if they let it. If they left it.

The single tear he cannot feel, but here, can sense, and he gazes at McGillis with eyes still seeping, nose dripping, a flushed and quietly blubbering mess, the convulsions of emotion slow to drain from him, the force of it in a slow fade, accepted into the white.

Let's stay here.

Gaelio gazes, and gazes, no less transfixed, weak with the relief that McGillis lives, stunned by the way he holds him, gentler and closer than he ever has, a boy whose need for space Gaelio could nearly feel, like invisible thorns in the air when he neared. A fairytale castle with the sleeping, distant prince, guarded by thick ivy, the wall of thorns he sought to slip through, wary of cutting them down, but ever pricked and torn.

Dizzied, dizzy, by the conviction that McGillis lives for him, came back for him, took him here, kept him. Holds him. No one else holds him like this. He doesn't want anyone else to hold him like this.

By the heartbeat he feels, by the gradual synchronization of two, a warm pulse through the cradling air. McGillis doesn't finish his request, but he doesn't need to. Whatever it is, Gaelio can have only one answer, one firm in the thrumming of their hearts.

Slipping one arm loose, he wipes at his face with a no longer blood drenched sleeve, and with a self-conscious, timid smile, pads at the tears gathered in the crook of McGillis's neck. Then, with a faint exhale, he curls his arm, arms more securely around that neck, sidling, settling close, closer. How warm, how right this fit. He wants to curl into and against him, to close his eyes, to keep like this until time forgets them.

Time enough for, because it won't ever be too late.

Gaelio keeps his chin high, face a breath from McGillis's, and beams, broad and watery relief. His eyes a sky blue sheen, an ocean blue surface, reflecting sun, his sun. ]

I would, I would, I would. I would.

[ Ebullient, exuberant breaths, and he leans, bumping their noses, tipping, lips brushing just below nose and above lip, tilting, brushing cheek, a vow clumsy and peppered, before with an exanding glow over his cheeks, he cozies his face again into that crook. Heavy and hot, the contented sigh against soft skin. ]

If you're with me, I don't want to go back. Let's stay. I will.

[ Thank you.

Don't wake him. Don't ever wake him. ]

[finagles]

[ If they let it --

Whatever happens in the future, they don't have to let it, if they stay here. As young as he is, the obsessions that bind him to life are still half-formed and forming. As prepared as he was to leave in a different way, he's content to stay in this place with the only company he's ever truly felt the desire to keep. He understands that now, understanding it a little more with each day.

Though it amazes him in turn, to feel his limbs working this way. To feel them clutch and hold the way he holds onto Gaelio.

Who doesn't come apart or begin to bleed in his hands. McGillis doesn't crawl out of his skin from the proximity, the pressure. How starved he's been without knowing, starved nearly to death for something like it.

How he's never known anything like it. How right the fit feels, when there should be no such thing as a fit that feels right.

When Gaelio lifts his chin, his face a mess of tears, there's a smile buried beneath the wet streaks that gives him an answer before the string of woulds do. I would, repetition that cushions like a cloud cover. His own lips turn up at the corners, despite a gaze that remains weighted. With that expression so close --

An expression that snares his heart, each detail absorbed in full. An enthusiastic answer to a question unasked. Close, closer, their noses touching and lips almost brushing, lips that plant against his cheek. A feeling that flowers in place and nearly knocks him dizzy -- a feeling that blooms strange color, shades never seen. He huffs on an amazed sound, almost, but not quite hiccuping on it after he lets it out in earnest.

It's as simple and amazing as this: Gaelio wants to stay in a place like this, kisses his cheek to confirm it, and settles contentedly against the crook of his neck. As young as he is, it amazes him to stumble on something so simple, so free of stain. Changing his hold, he hooks arms over the back of his shoulders, trapping him in in response.

Maybe this is the only place he can protect him.

So he won't leave, or allow him to leave. He'll protect them both. He can protect them both here. ]

We'll stay. We'll stay like this. Thank you.

[ Sealing them into eternal white space, he bumps his mouth to the top of the other boy's forehead to exchange the vow. ]