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The thing about promises made in alternate dimensions was this: Thorne didn't know if they counted here in the real world.

Rain coated the ugly grey dawn, the early September chill cloying the air, rutting up against Thorne's back. He's somehow managed to find his way into better clothes - a faded henley and a black jacket with a stiff furred ruff. He flicks the undone silver zippers in his fingers.

He continues to stare at the ground, the plants, the house he once associated with a secondary home, still as a statue. Hovering, waiting, like a dog out in the rain waiting to either be let inside or sent away.

After all, it isn't a decision he is allowed to make, anymore.

Thorne, Aleksy says, and dumps a dog in his hands, and it is all Thorne can do not to collapse in relief right there.

Laika wiggles in his arms, and he leans down to let her lick his face. He bundles her up in his arms with all of the fragile affection in the world, like he's holding a child or a glass vase, because he isn't sure what he can do anymore with his body anymore. What Melany has made his body do.

"I missed you too," Thorne tells Laika, his tone low and affectionate and so, so, sad. "Both of you. I'm sorry I took so long to come home."

Because this is home. A secondary one, but it is.

He looks up at Aleksy. He feels his heart bend like a new breed of sorrow in his chest.

"I didn't know if you still wanted - " he starts, but he doesn't know how to speak anymore, his heart laid bare on his sleeves. "I didn't know if this was alright. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner."

Thorne wants to tell Aleksy that he does, he has everything to be sorry for, but he doesn't because he doesn't know how. He only follows Aleksy inside, kissing Laika's head when she wriggles close enough for him to blow a raspberry next to her ear before she is let into the backyard.

Thorne moves out of his jacket with ease. He looks at Aleksy in the listless lightning and his chest hurts and hurts and hurts.

"I want to stay," Thorne says, admitting it like it's a sin. Because it's been three months. Because he's not sure he's the person Aleksy would want in his life anymore. Because he can feel the ghost of that person in his bones, but can you ever really raise the dead once they're gone?

He closes his eyes and follows Aleksy, sits down the way he has always done before and lets the slighter redhead adjust himself however he wants. His hands are trembling from Laika's contact, from the overwhelming present.

"Alright," Thorne says, and it's an admittance of absolute trust, resolute and undeniable. He lifts his hand, a question of yes or no in the motion that pauses only a few inches from wrapping around Aleksy's shoulders, keeping him close, just like he used to on nights like these before the world fell apart.

"Alright," he says again, softer this time, and bows his head. "Aleksy."

There is an enormity to his situation, to their situation, to Ashdown itself and all of its inhabitants, but in this house, in this darkness, Thorne can only focus on Aleksy. He is drawn to him, helpless, ensnared, and there is nowhere else he could think of to be. His heart jams against his chest in a jagged rhythm, half-fear that this a dream and half-hope that it isn't.

His breath is even but his thoughts are not. They draw incomplete lines in his head. All he wants to do is stop though. All he wants to do though is curl into the slighter redhead. There is something here and it tastes so much like home that he's afraid it will disappear again.

And then Aleksy speaks.

He speaks and Thorne is burning with a new form of guilt and sorrow.

He can't help it, circling his arms fully around Aleksy, his fingers rutting up against the soft fabric of his shirt and holding. It isn't a vice, Aleksy could get out if he wanted. But it's a grounder. He had been gone when Aleksy had disappeared. But he can already taste the way he would have reacted in his own mouth.

Panic would have dampened him and fear, fear would have turned him wild.

"No," he says, and his voice is ragged and low, wanting, wanting, wanting. He opens his eyes and looks at Aleksy. "I've been away from you for too long. I want to stay - Aleksy. I want to be here."

He lifts one hand. His fingers slide like ghosting touches against Aleksy's damp hair. The scent of soil and earth and rain mixes. It is a scent that burns through him and weighs on his chest more. He is too tired for tears, but the exhibition of sorrow inside of him feels titanic. If he let it, it would crush him.

"I left you," he says, and it blows from his chest like a confession of sin. "I left you, and I didn't even - " he sucks in a breath, sharply. "This is easy," he says, his voice raw like a thunderclap, "choosing you is easy. And I will choose you until you get tired of me. And I'll stay until you want me to go."

Because there had never been a question of what Aleksy was to him. There could be oceans between them - and Thorne would still try and seek him out. A shelter, a home, a salvation just beyond his reach.

Thorne hums, a soft lullaby sound, and tilts his head down, looking at Aleksy. He's hungry for the sight of him, he's greedy and selfish and Aleksy could get hurt because of it but right now, Thorne doesn't care. He's too selfish. He wants to be forgiven, but he knows it's impossible.

You'll hurt him, a cruel voice says inside of his chest, but Thorne can only think that he already has.

"Good," Thorne responds, raw and easy. Cut open, because he couldn't bear to be untruthful anymore. "Keep me, then."

He knows there are things here unsaid. That those three months weren't just fragmentary, a passage that they could simply slide beneath the rug. The repercussions clung to them both, invisible and choking. And Thorne wanted desperately for them to be alright.

"It was not your fault," Thorne responds, and suddenly his voice is low and raw and viciously intense, and he looks at Aleksy and everything in him wrenches violently. "Aleksy. None of this was your fault. You don't need to have an excuse."

I could have fought harder, he doesn't say out loud, I could have tried to come back. But I didn't - I didn't.

"I'm here, now," Thorne says, and bows his head and closes his eyes, "I won't let him come back. And I'll listen. Even if all you want to do is stay here. Even if you don't want to speak. I'll still be here. I won't vanish."

Because Aleksy is important to him. A universal constant. A planet he is happy to orbit around, even if he is never caught in the light.

"I forgive you," Thorne breathes out, because he doesn't want to cast away Aleksy's feelings by telling him that he has nothing to be sorry for, "I'll always forgive you."

Thorne exhales sharply as Aleksy lets them fold into a familiar pattern. Everything is second nature. Every part of this like remembrance. He follows Aleksy's guide and wraps an arm around him, comfortable and solid. He tries to convince himself that if he closes his eyes, the redhead won't disappear.

"What the ********," Thorne remarks, and there is a low, buoyant heat of indignant rage in his tone, "I worked hard on that!"

He growls, a low animal sound.

"Guess I'll have to stay around awhile longer then," he says, "someone has to steal your roses."