Oh, no. "Maker's breath," Myr whispers to himself, out of range of the watch, and rakes a hand unhappily through his shaggy hair.
Given the state Light had been in he'd already deduced that L must be just as badly off, but the picture this paints is...unfortunate.]
I think, [he says, gently as he can,] you were talking to something else, amatus. I've been at your cottage, speaking with Yagami; he's also hallucinating.
[A pause.] I'm done now. Will you come home so we can talk about this?
[Possible, bearable, acceptable. For myriad reasons. Reality and L's perception of it are probably foremost, but so is the mortification, if reality is not on his side in this case.
Things like that don't happen for you. Stupid, to entertain the notion.]
[Were he still a Faun, Myr might demure at this point and come up with some other reason L had to come home. He might try some other subtle ploy to get at the distant distress he can feel in their Bond.
But he is not still a Faun.]
It's upset you to hear it wasn't real. That's plenty to talk about.
But there's nothing to embarrass him if it never happened, is there? No harm? Certainly less than forcing Myr to chase him across the harbor district with his increasing inebriation and depression.]
It won't be long.
[Even if talking promises to be tough. He walks, rather than teleports, the distance; he needs time to think.
He enters gingerly. Nothing he's seen today has seemed absurd, or bizarre, or obviously unreal. It makes him wonder what is real, what's allowed to be.]
[Myr busies himself during the time it takes L to return, finding ample uses for his hands in little tasks. By the time the detective's home, the kitchen's tidied and two chairs are set by the table, where a jug of water--plain water--awaits beside a cup and a small plate of simple snacks. Nourishment, as ever, remains a tangible expression of the elf's love for his Witch.
He's waiting on his feet by the table, leaned hipshot against it as he runs through a set of evocation exercises. The conjured flame he's holding winks out of existence at the sound of the door opening.]
Linden? [He waits a moment for affirmation from the feel of their Bond; and Crookytail's greeting wheeze from under the table only seals it.] Come sit with me.
Because? [he prompts, taking the other seat with his usual grace. He feels for the pitcher and cup as he waits on the answer, pouring out water before nudging it across to L.
Myr has his hunches, of course. Well enough he knows the working of his Witch's mind after nearly two years Bonded; he knows what provokes L's self-despite, what the detective believes isn't his to have, and what fantasies that leads to.
But it's always better to check his own assumptions.]
[Cerise is always with L. At first, her presence was smothering, insistent, as though she clung to existence with a kind of spite that was in proportion to her considerable full size. As her attachment and her security with her witch have increased, so has her willingness to shrink down to more convenient and portable sizes. At present, the tiny orca takes a break from swimming circles around L's wrist to increase in mass to the size of a large dog, floating, resting her head on the table's edge between them.
L's glass is immediately frosty when he reaches out for it; one of the benefits of being an ice witch is that he never has to drink water that's anything less than mountain spring brisk. As he regards the faun-turned-witch sitting across from him, it strikes him, as it does often, that there was a blitheness he could rely on before that has all but vanished from Myr's personality. Intelligence that was always present has sharpened to shrewdness that keeps him on his toes even when they don't interact for days at a time. Fewer things slip through the cracks; more remains to answer for.]
I've been fighting mushroom dragons and inhaling toxic spores. We'd been informed of the spores' potential effects... it was rash of me to assume that I'd somehow escaped them just because my hallucinations weren't fantastical or obvious.
[Rash of him, also, to assume that he could sit down at a table with Myr for reciprocal offers and acceptance, all desire and debt in perfect balance and reaching that point naturally enough to make him believe it. They'd been there for hours, after all, planning years into a future that was assured. Potential problems arrived to the conversation already solved; past conflicts had grown rosy in the flattering, imprecise light of a setting sun behind them.
It had felt good, anyway, like any form of deliberate escapism. L understands that he still would have held this conversation even if he'd known it wasn't real, perhaps extended it longer, inhabited it until he couldn't anymore with the mind that always strives to give him what he wants, even when it ultimately fails him.]
[Cerise is always there, and knowing that L's got a guardian of her caliber has been deeply reassuring to Myr over past weeks. More, knowing L's got a guardian who can swim, who navigates the Leviathan's territory with native grace, is comforting--for how often the detective's tried or thought about drowning himself, metaphorically or otherwise.
It is comforting to Myr, to know he has back-up, has other safeguards. Not only Cerise (to whom he extends a hand, not petting her without her permission but offering the touch), but Alex and Near and even Niles, who had eyes to see where he couldn't and their own concern for L to keep them sharp on watch.
But none of them could be sentinel against this particular situation, and none of them could unsnarl it for him. (Well--maybe Alex; she's the insight and kind heart for it. Involving her, however, would require overcoming both Witches' tendency toward pride and secrecy about what they have.) So, and so--he sits quietly as L talks, listening with both sharp ears and their Bond, and nudges a plate after the glass before he responds.
(All of this makes his heart ache to hear it--because his Bonded sits across from him, self-wounded, again. Because this isn't the whole of the truth. Because for every incremental step of progress they make, it feels like they lose two, some days, the bad days.
Because Light Yagami and the pervasive, distorting influence he has on every life he touches.
Myr must believe that they're going in the right direction, even so. She sent him back for more reasons than just Aefenglom's survival.)]
I convinced him to sleep it off; he'll likely be back to his old self tomorrow--though if he's not, I sent a request to Heafonlic's apothecary for enough cleansing draughts for both of you. [He could make that pointed; he does not, though it gouges him to know L has reason to suspect Light might come to grief in his care.]
You should have known--because it wasn't fantastical or obvious, just impossible?
[It isn't all being back in the shape of his birth that's sharpened Myr; he is a knight-enchanter again, and he has a mission he's keen-set on. The intensity's as much his native state as the cheeriness the Faun had brought out of him, and--forgive him, L--getting the proper balance between them might take a little while.]
[Cerise arches toward Myr's hand, shameless the way L is not in pursuit of physical affection from someone she is fond of.
Shame informs so much. If L doesn't feel it genuinely, he at least knows that he should, talks himself into going through the motions out of a desire to be decent. It's all simple math and logic, trying always to stay a few steps ahead of what could go terribly wrong, if he believed he deserved something with a will too obviously.]
Thanks for taking care of him... truly.
[Well, he does actually believe he deserves something with a will. Perhaps too obviously; Light's the exception, in line with the standard decency dictating the rules as he understands them.
The corners of his eyes strain at Myr's question. Being honest is not always the same as being kind; weighing the two, for the best outcome, is always complicated by his knowledge of manipulation, his desire to keep some things pure from that pernicious influence. Myr deserves the best outcome; he deserves not to be manipulated. A lie is the only way to do that, he thinks, because L's found that his tender honesty is sympathetic. Souls like Myr's reward it; souls like Myr's steep him in guilt for sharing his pain too willingly.
You could have, and be, and experience better.]
Because... we've spoken of it. We know what could be, and mutually vetoed it.
[We don't know, though. We couldn't without trying, could we?
Swallow... no.]
It was a beautiful dream. I'm content to remember it that way, just... don't embarrass me, anymore. OK?
[Myr gladly rubs a hand over Cerise's melon as the little whale lets him. Given a Phylax's relationship to its Witch, it is almost, but not quite like bestowing the same sort of attention on L.
Which is still what he'd rather do, even when his Witch is being altogether difficult and frustrating and heartbreaking to talk to.]
Of course. He's your Bonded, [among so, so many other things, which were not Myr's to alter, define, or remove without just cause, much as he struggles with that knowledge and need for justice in his own acts,] and I could not do otherwise.
[He lavishes more attention on Cerise, then, rubbing under her chin and around the corners of her mouth. He opens his mouth immediately to respond to L's explanation (it doesn't feel right, it feels like he's not being given the whole truth), then...shuts it again, and continues petting the orca for a solid minute as he works through that one.
Ordinarily he'd pull back from the Bond when doing that; ordinarily he'd veil what he's feeling, but this time he doesn't. The frustration and confusion leak through, and the quiet pulse of heartache, over the steady background beat of his affection for L.
That...actually hurt to hear, and he is at a loss for words to express that, who is so often quick to speak.
Finally, quietly,]
It isn't my intent to embarrass you, amatus. But I don't remember us vetoing anything, mutually or otherwise.
[They'd agreed it wasn't something for right now. Hadn't they? When he'd lost his own grip and composure in the wake of Everett vanishing, when he'd thought that L's false assertion they could and should be a pair entirely without romance meant he'd been losing his Witch, too, in some unnameable way that left body and Bond behind but the rest absent.
It feels like that all over again, though it is easier to work around, easier to examine when he's not crushed beneath the weight of mourning.
[Cerise, admittedly, is easier to lavish affection on. There's something almost childlike about the phylax, buoyant and energetic, acting as a counterbalance to her languid witch or an echo of what he might have been like if he hadn't learned so soon about so many kinds of pain, and how to shut it out like so much inconvenient noise.
He feels pain, now. Close and loud, many tiny bee stings along his scalp and behind his eyes. Is it because the Bond isn't being withdrawn according to Myr's wont? That the great detective must witness, up close and personal, an emotional symphony that is not his own?]
I did think it was a dream when you came back. That's the only reason I reached for you the way I did... I wouldn't have tried to possess you, otherwise. I've come to value dreaming so much, because it's a way to be happy, without affecting others at all. I think...
[Cerise keens softly, darting from the table, skulking around the outskirts of the living area.]
I want happiness at no cost to others. I could live in a beautiful dream... it was beautiful then, and today, it... just wasn't real.
[Not like the guilt he feels, disclosing this.]
I wouldn't have known the difference if it wasn't made obvious to me. A part of me liked not knowing, and living there.
[Crookytail had fallen quite asleep in her warm, familiar spot beneath the table. She snorts awake at Cerise's keening, sticking first her antennae and then the rest of her out of hiding, before trundling after the distressed Phylax. They are--on so many axes--not the same sort of being at all, but the wormipede's catholic in her choice of Herdmates, and Cerise is Herd, and her Herd is upset and needs company.
There is some kind of metaphor here being acted out by their companions, here, that Myr's head is too heart-bludgeoned to work through.]
You needn't apologize for that. [For the kiss. And L hadn't, not really, at least not tacitly. Implicitly, beneath the explanation... Myr clarifies:] I liked it; and even had I not, [because this isn't a matter merely of what he liked and didn't; if it were, they'd never have made it as a Bond,] I understood, and we're Bonded. I am yours.
[Even if there were still one or two parts of himself he was withholding out of concern for his Bonded's wellbeing. L's fear of manipulating him is quite reciprocal in this way; once Myr had realized how much easier certain things would be if they were lovers in truth--
...Perhaps that bore saying aloud. But first, softly,] Not wanting to be a burden or a cost to others--I do understand that, amatus. [L knew, L had seen, L could put together how much of how Myr pushed himself had roots in the black and fearful soil of his mother's earliest rejection. Love suddenly became a conditional thing, that day, and though Myr had, in Hasmal Circle, set aside for a time his obsession with balancing service rendered against affection received, it hadn't ever left him.] There's something noble in worrying after your friends that way.
But what, [he puts out the hand he'd been petting Cerise with, open-palmed, extended in his Bonded's direction,] if I want to be affected? If I want to know I helped you buy a little piece of happiness for yourself?
[Crookytail's earnest clumsiness cuts a contrast to Cerise's skittish grace. The two otherworldly creatures are at odds for a moment, distanced and out of sync, until Cerise slows her pace, doubles back, swooping alongside the wormipede and extending a fin as if for shelter.
Why does the same tendency seem so hopelessly broken in the witch whose soul is supposedly reflected in the ghostly orca? Can he ever provide more than he needs, or be the shelter more than the storm?
Myr can't see the way his head cants, the doubt and stress on his face, the way his eyes and brows interact more honestly than they ever would around someone sighted. L's a different creature around Myr for many reasons, not the least of which involves the elf's blindness.]
I liked kissing you.
[He says so softly, but it's clear, not mumbled. L's intentional as he speaks, now, nothing half-formed or faltering.
He's thought about this so much, after all.]
It's probably the only time I thought I was dreaming, and it felt like a dream, but turned out to be real after all.
[That spindly bridge between fantasy and reality for one who has admitted to desiring what eternally dreaming can offer.]
I'm not noble, not like you are. That's how I know that any happiness you buy for me comes at an unfair price, you see? If I wanted this from the start then you're playing into my hands, and I hate that you are. I hate that my desire to be with you feels like a trap or an ambush. Everything could be better for you, and it should be... that can happen. If you're surrounded by noble intentions, it will happen.
["It's probably the only time I thought I was dreaming, and it felt like a dream, but turned out to be real after all."
It is, in its own way, a high compliment; Myr doesn't have words for it, but there's an ember in the Bond warm as the flush coloring his ears. Even after years of casual experience with anyone willing, and fewer--but still significant--years of a Faun's shamelessness, hearing something like that from someone he cares so deeply for can move him.]
I--you're-- [Mmm. Get your thoughts in order, Shivana. He breathes in a long slow breath, and out again.]
I'm not noble because I was born that way, amatus. I am what's been made of me, by the best teachers, and what I choose to make of myself--every day.
For a long time, [ah, and here is the opportunity to explain this,] I've chosen not to be your lover. Every reason I've given you for that is true--it's for your sake, not mine. I do not find you odious or unworthy of my attentions; whatever burdens you bring to me are ones I gladly shoulder.
I told you, once, I feared to be your whole world, and that is true, too. But more than that, [oh, guilt and shame, that he has to swallow down,] I'm afraid of what I would be tempted to do if I had that hold on you.
There are so many things I would like you to do, or try, or be, that are--truly--not mine to demand from you, even if I think you'd be happier, or grow from them. You will do them on your own time, or not, and I can but advise. But if we were lovers--I'd know I could ask without it seeming like a demand, and you'd listen.
[It would be so, so much easier to demand. It would be so, so tempting to do it, knowing he had something L hungered so fiercely for, and believing that he knew the best way to order his Witch's life.
It wouldn't be right but he could talk himself into it being necessary.
He reaches up with his free hand--the one not outstretched toward L--and rubs at his face beneath the blindfold.]
I'll give myself enough credit that I wouldn't do it, just as I'm not ever going to tell you I'd love you more if you'd just do one thing, pretty please. [There's an echo of someone else in how Myr says that, someone that isn't Myr, someone who once held that power over him.] --And if I do, you know, you're well within your rights to tell me to fuck off and stop breaking my promises.
[This is not--the polished presentation he'd hoped for; it isn't as stirring and story-perfect as he wants it to be, because--as it turns out--he's still raw in many places, unfinished and mutilated and a work-in-progress. The same as his Witch in kind, though--praise the Maker and His Bride--not degree.
He sits with that realization, and his own wrong-footed sense of awkwardness, for a long, long moment.
Across the room, Crookytail lifts her head to bump companionably at the underside of Cerise's fin. Hello, you.]
[L gives Myr silent space to speak and falter where he does, fingers twisting in the loose trouser material around his knees under the table. He hasn't elected to take Myr's offered hand, which might perhaps add another distraction, another layer of difficulty for Myr to try to express himself through.
Nothing he says rings untrue. Evidence from the past even bolsters it; Myr's witnessed, several times, how easily L loses his sense of self depending on who he associates with the most, typically in damaging or disturbing ways. The moldable nature of that psychological profile was doubtless extremely helpful in seamlessly going from one obsessive case to the next until the puzzle was solved, but not so much when dealing with SQUIPs, possessive successors, murderous rivals.]
You're worried about being like the SQUIP.
[L's first Bonded, first sexual encounter. The fact that the SQUIP had promised to change him and make demands of him had, in fact, been a major draw to the relationship, rather than a deterrent, because...]
I do listen to the people who believe that I can change... whether or not we're lovers. Probably because before I came here, no one saw a point in trying to make me. My world was small and fit around me. I found it cramped; I couldn't blame others for extracting themselves from it, or only interacting in necessary ways.
[Someone had to slip food and clean clothes between the bars, after all. To bother at all with a key would be taking so many complicated risks.]
I know that I'm not entirely...
[Well? Of sound mind? A human being with thoughts and desires, rather than a sentient and highly destructive personality disorder?]
It feels like love when a person thinks I'm capable and asks me to be better. If I trust him... I expect that he understands what that means, and that any resulting fear or pain are just part of being loved.
[He prefers fear and pain, very much, to a cage. He's come to associate them with progress and future success.]
I love you with everything, already. If there was more to give, I would give it, it's just...
[I know that I'm not entirely. Entire? There's a gradient limit that fades before a steep dropoff, isn't there? At that point, the cage is the only refuge. At that point, he prefers and misses it.]
I'm trying to say that I understand. It's OK, truly, and your promises are enough.
[Promises, after all, are seeds. Even if they never bloom or flower, L's already made his stance on beautiful dreams very clear.]
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faithlikeaseed) wrote2019-08-01 12:00 am
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Oh, no. "Maker's breath," Myr whispers to himself, out of range of the watch, and rakes a hand unhappily through his shaggy hair.
Given the state Light had been in he'd already deduced that L must be just as badly off, but the picture this paints is...unfortunate.]
I think, [he says, gently as he can,] you were talking to something else, amatus. I've been at your cottage, speaking with Yagami; he's also hallucinating.
[A pause.] I'm done now. Will you come home so we can talk about this?
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[Possible, bearable, acceptable. For myriad reasons. Reality and L's perception of it are probably foremost, but so is the mortification, if reality is not on his side in this case.
Things like that don't happen for you. Stupid, to entertain the notion.]
No, that's it. I hallucinated it all.
[Clearly. What else?]
So there's nothing to talk about.
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But he is not still a Faun.]
It's upset you to hear it wasn't real. That's plenty to talk about.
Come home. [A beat.] Please?
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But there's nothing to embarrass him if it never happened, is there? No harm? Certainly less than forcing Myr to chase him across the harbor district with his increasing inebriation and depression.]
It won't be long.
[Even if talking promises to be tough. He walks, rather than teleports, the distance; he needs time to think.
He enters gingerly. Nothing he's seen today has seemed absurd, or bizarre, or obviously unreal. It makes him wonder what is real, what's allowed to be.]
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He's waiting on his feet by the table, leaned hipshot against it as he runs through a set of evocation exercises. The conjured flame he's holding winks out of existence at the sound of the door opening.]
Linden? [He waits a moment for affirmation from the feel of their Bond; and Crookytail's greeting wheeze from under the table only seals it.] Come sit with me.
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Sad, that it wasn't real. He clears his throat, approaching, sitting on a chair that might as well be made of fire.
Maybe that's how to know what's real. Earlier, it was so nice, with such a beautifully mapped course, and now...]
I should have realized it.
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Myr has his hunches, of course. Well enough he knows the working of his Witch's mind after nearly two years Bonded; he knows what provokes L's self-despite, what the detective believes isn't his to have, and what fantasies that leads to.
But it's always better to check his own assumptions.]
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L's glass is immediately frosty when he reaches out for it; one of the benefits of being an ice witch is that he never has to drink water that's anything less than mountain spring brisk. As he regards the faun-turned-witch sitting across from him, it strikes him, as it does often, that there was a blitheness he could rely on before that has all but vanished from Myr's personality. Intelligence that was always present has sharpened to shrewdness that keeps him on his toes even when they don't interact for days at a time. Fewer things slip through the cracks; more remains to answer for.]
I've been fighting mushroom dragons and inhaling toxic spores. We'd been informed of the spores' potential effects... it was rash of me to assume that I'd somehow escaped them just because my hallucinations weren't fantastical or obvious.
[Rash of him, also, to assume that he could sit down at a table with Myr for reciprocal offers and acceptance, all desire and debt in perfect balance and reaching that point naturally enough to make him believe it. They'd been there for hours, after all, planning years into a future that was assured. Potential problems arrived to the conversation already solved; past conflicts had grown rosy in the flattering, imprecise light of a setting sun behind them.
It had felt good, anyway, like any form of deliberate escapism. L understands that he still would have held this conversation even if he'd known it wasn't real, perhaps extended it longer, inhabited it until he couldn't anymore with the mind that always strives to give him what he wants, even when it ultimately fails him.]
I should have known. Is... Light here, and OK?
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It is comforting to Myr, to know he has back-up, has other safeguards. Not only Cerise (to whom he extends a hand, not petting her without her permission but offering the touch), but Alex and Near and even Niles, who had eyes to see where he couldn't and their own concern for L to keep them sharp on watch.
But none of them could be sentinel against this particular situation, and none of them could unsnarl it for him. (Well--maybe Alex; she's the insight and kind heart for it. Involving her, however, would require overcoming both Witches' tendency toward pride and secrecy about what they have.) So, and so--he sits quietly as L talks, listening with both sharp ears and their Bond, and nudges a plate after the glass before he responds.
(All of this makes his heart ache to hear it--because his Bonded sits across from him, self-wounded, again. Because this isn't the whole of the truth. Because for every incremental step of progress they make, it feels like they lose two, some days, the bad days.
Because Light Yagami and the pervasive, distorting influence he has on every life he touches.
Myr must believe that they're going in the right direction, even so. She sent him back for more reasons than just Aefenglom's survival.)]
I convinced him to sleep it off; he'll likely be back to his old self tomorrow--though if he's not, I sent a request to Heafonlic's apothecary for enough cleansing draughts for both of you. [He could make that pointed; he does not, though it gouges him to know L has reason to suspect Light might come to grief in his care.]
You should have known--because it wasn't fantastical or obvious, just impossible?
[It isn't all being back in the shape of his birth that's sharpened Myr; he is a knight-enchanter again, and he has a mission he's keen-set on. The intensity's as much his native state as the cheeriness the Faun had brought out of him, and--forgive him, L--getting the proper balance between them might take a little while.]
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Shame informs so much. If L doesn't feel it genuinely, he at least knows that he should, talks himself into going through the motions out of a desire to be decent. It's all simple math and logic, trying always to stay a few steps ahead of what could go terribly wrong, if he believed he deserved something with a will too obviously.]
Thanks for taking care of him... truly.
[Well, he does actually believe he deserves something with a will. Perhaps too obviously; Light's the exception, in line with the standard decency dictating the rules as he understands them.
The corners of his eyes strain at Myr's question. Being honest is not always the same as being kind; weighing the two, for the best outcome, is always complicated by his knowledge of manipulation, his desire to keep some things pure from that pernicious influence. Myr deserves the best outcome; he deserves not to be manipulated. A lie is the only way to do that, he thinks, because L's found that his tender honesty is sympathetic. Souls like Myr's reward it; souls like Myr's steep him in guilt for sharing his pain too willingly.
You could have, and be, and experience better.]
Because... we've spoken of it. We know what could be, and mutually vetoed it.
[We don't know, though. We couldn't without trying, could we?
Swallow... no.]
It was a beautiful dream. I'm content to remember it that way, just... don't embarrass me, anymore. OK?
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Which is still what he'd rather do, even when his Witch is being altogether difficult and frustrating and heartbreaking to talk to.]
Of course. He's your Bonded, [among so, so many other things, which were not Myr's to alter, define, or remove without just cause, much as he struggles with that knowledge and need for justice in his own acts,] and I could not do otherwise.
[He lavishes more attention on Cerise, then, rubbing under her chin and around the corners of her mouth. He opens his mouth immediately to respond to L's explanation (it doesn't feel right, it feels like he's not being given the whole truth), then...shuts it again, and continues petting the orca for a solid minute as he works through that one.
Ordinarily he'd pull back from the Bond when doing that; ordinarily he'd veil what he's feeling, but this time he doesn't. The frustration and confusion leak through, and the quiet pulse of heartache, over the steady background beat of his affection for L.
That...actually hurt to hear, and he is at a loss for words to express that, who is so often quick to speak.
Finally, quietly,]
It isn't my intent to embarrass you, amatus. But I don't remember us vetoing anything, mutually or otherwise.
[They'd agreed it wasn't something for right now. Hadn't they? When he'd lost his own grip and composure in the wake of Everett vanishing, when he'd thought that L's false assertion they could and should be a pair entirely without romance meant he'd been losing his Witch, too, in some unnameable way that left body and Bond behind but the rest absent.
It feels like that all over again, though it is easier to work around, easier to examine when he's not crushed beneath the weight of mourning.
Still hurts like a bitch, though.]
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He feels pain, now. Close and loud, many tiny bee stings along his scalp and behind his eyes. Is it because the Bond isn't being withdrawn according to Myr's wont? That the great detective must witness, up close and personal, an emotional symphony that is not his own?]
I did think it was a dream when you came back. That's the only reason I reached for you the way I did... I wouldn't have tried to possess you, otherwise. I've come to value dreaming so much, because it's a way to be happy, without affecting others at all. I think...
[Cerise keens softly, darting from the table, skulking around the outskirts of the living area.]
I want happiness at no cost to others. I could live in a beautiful dream... it was beautiful then, and today, it... just wasn't real.
[Not like the guilt he feels, disclosing this.]
I wouldn't have known the difference if it wasn't made obvious to me. A part of me liked not knowing, and living there.
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There is some kind of metaphor here being acted out by their companions, here, that Myr's head is too heart-bludgeoned to work through.]
You needn't apologize for that. [For the kiss. And L hadn't, not really, at least not tacitly. Implicitly, beneath the explanation... Myr clarifies:] I liked it; and even had I not, [because this isn't a matter merely of what he liked and didn't; if it were, they'd never have made it as a Bond,] I understood, and we're Bonded. I am yours.
[Even if there were still one or two parts of himself he was withholding out of concern for his Bonded's wellbeing. L's fear of manipulating him is quite reciprocal in this way; once Myr had realized how much easier certain things would be if they were lovers in truth--
...Perhaps that bore saying aloud. But first, softly,] Not wanting to be a burden or a cost to others--I do understand that, amatus. [L knew, L had seen, L could put together how much of how Myr pushed himself had roots in the black and fearful soil of his mother's earliest rejection. Love suddenly became a conditional thing, that day, and though Myr had, in Hasmal Circle, set aside for a time his obsession with balancing service rendered against affection received, it hadn't ever left him.] There's something noble in worrying after your friends that way.
But what, [he puts out the hand he'd been petting Cerise with, open-palmed, extended in his Bonded's direction,] if I want to be affected? If I want to know I helped you buy a little piece of happiness for yourself?
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Why does the same tendency seem so hopelessly broken in the witch whose soul is supposedly reflected in the ghostly orca? Can he ever provide more than he needs, or be the shelter more than the storm?
Myr can't see the way his head cants, the doubt and stress on his face, the way his eyes and brows interact more honestly than they ever would around someone sighted. L's a different creature around Myr for many reasons, not the least of which involves the elf's blindness.]
I liked kissing you.
[He says so softly, but it's clear, not mumbled. L's intentional as he speaks, now, nothing half-formed or faltering.
He's thought about this so much, after all.]
It's probably the only time I thought I was dreaming, and it felt like a dream, but turned out to be real after all.
[That spindly bridge between fantasy and reality for one who has admitted to desiring what eternally dreaming can offer.]
I'm not noble, not like you are. That's how I know that any happiness you buy for me comes at an unfair price, you see? If I wanted this from the start then you're playing into my hands, and I hate that you are. I hate that my desire to be with you feels like a trap or an ambush. Everything could be better for you, and it should be... that can happen. If you're surrounded by noble intentions, it will happen.
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It is, in its own way, a high compliment; Myr doesn't have words for it, but there's an ember in the Bond warm as the flush coloring his ears. Even after years of casual experience with anyone willing, and fewer--but still significant--years of a Faun's shamelessness, hearing something like that from someone he cares so deeply for can move him.]
I--you're-- [Mmm. Get your thoughts in order, Shivana. He breathes in a long slow breath, and out again.]
I'm not noble because I was born that way, amatus. I am what's been made of me, by the best teachers, and what I choose to make of myself--every day.
For a long time, [ah, and here is the opportunity to explain this,] I've chosen not to be your lover. Every reason I've given you for that is true--it's for your sake, not mine. I do not find you odious or unworthy of my attentions; whatever burdens you bring to me are ones I gladly shoulder.
I told you, once, I feared to be your whole world, and that is true, too. But more than that, [oh, guilt and shame, that he has to swallow down,] I'm afraid of what I would be tempted to do if I had that hold on you.
There are so many things I would like you to do, or try, or be, that are--truly--not mine to demand from you, even if I think you'd be happier, or grow from them. You will do them on your own time, or not, and I can but advise. But if we were lovers--I'd know I could ask without it seeming like a demand, and you'd listen.
[It would be so, so much easier to demand. It would be so, so tempting to do it, knowing he had something L hungered so fiercely for, and believing that he knew the best way to order his Witch's life.
It wouldn't be right but he could talk himself into it being necessary.
He reaches up with his free hand--the one not outstretched toward L--and rubs at his face beneath the blindfold.]
I'll give myself enough credit that I wouldn't do it, just as I'm not ever going to tell you I'd love you more if you'd just do one thing, pretty please. [There's an echo of someone else in how Myr says that, someone that isn't Myr, someone who once held that power over him.] --And if I do, you know, you're well within your rights to tell me to fuck off and stop breaking my promises.
[This is not--the polished presentation he'd hoped for; it isn't as stirring and story-perfect as he wants it to be, because--as it turns out--he's still raw in many places, unfinished and mutilated and a work-in-progress. The same as his Witch in kind, though--praise the Maker and His Bride--not degree.
He sits with that realization, and his own wrong-footed sense of awkwardness, for a long, long moment.
Across the room, Crookytail lifts her head to bump companionably at the underside of Cerise's fin. Hello, you.]
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Nothing he says rings untrue. Evidence from the past even bolsters it; Myr's witnessed, several times, how easily L loses his sense of self depending on who he associates with the most, typically in damaging or disturbing ways. The moldable nature of that psychological profile was doubtless extremely helpful in seamlessly going from one obsessive case to the next until the puzzle was solved, but not so much when dealing with SQUIPs, possessive successors, murderous rivals.]
You're worried about being like the SQUIP.
[L's first Bonded, first sexual encounter. The fact that the SQUIP had promised to change him and make demands of him had, in fact, been a major draw to the relationship, rather than a deterrent, because...]
I do listen to the people who believe that I can change... whether or not we're lovers. Probably because before I came here, no one saw a point in trying to make me. My world was small and fit around me. I found it cramped; I couldn't blame others for extracting themselves from it, or only interacting in necessary ways.
[Someone had to slip food and clean clothes between the bars, after all. To bother at all with a key would be taking so many complicated risks.]
I know that I'm not entirely...
[Well? Of sound mind? A human being with thoughts and desires, rather than a sentient and highly destructive personality disorder?]
It feels like love when a person thinks I'm capable and asks me to be better. If I trust him... I expect that he understands what that means, and that any resulting fear or pain are just part of being loved.
[He prefers fear and pain, very much, to a cage. He's come to associate them with progress and future success.]
I love you with everything, already. If there was more to give, I would give it, it's just...
[I know that I'm not entirely. Entire? There's a gradient limit that fades before a steep dropoff, isn't there? At that point, the cage is the only refuge. At that point, he prefers and misses it.]
I'm trying to say that I understand. It's OK, truly, and your promises are enough.
[Promises, after all, are seeds. Even if they never bloom or flower, L's already made his stance on beautiful dreams very clear.]