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 Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2022 3:36 am
Months ago, he would never have intended for this to be the way he went about his subordinates.
They were folded together in bed, with Eion's nose pressed to Haru's nape where his hair had been combed out of the way. It flourished on the pillow above him, eating most of the remaining space and seeming content for it. Never one for pillows since the Rift, he used his own arm to prop his head up just so, and his free arm was canted over the side of the boy. He understood, now, why Haru had different curves than some of the other boys he'd been with.
It would lead him to wonder about himself and what that meant for his identity, he was sure, but his mind had been delightfully quiet during the past couple hours. Until he thought of Schörl and what she would say about his omnipresent willingness to sleep with his subordinates.
At the thought, he dislodged himself from being twined with Haru and sat up, letting the sheets pool around his waist. Dead of night meant they only saw the lowlights coiling over each other's bodies until someone turned a light on; it granted him the privacy to rub his own face. His mind volunteered a hundred different ways Schörl would castigate him, and a hundred more reasons that he should've studied under another General when she was presumably pulled for an urgent mission. Without him.
Because he sucked at —
Gritting his teeth, Eion peered through his fingers at the room. Beyond the bedsheets, where was a violin in the corner that reflected light over its lacquered surface. It wasn't a euphemism, then. He scoffed gently. No — it was also a euphemism.
But beyond that, the room was nothing but dark, too dark for Eion's eyes, but it would've been pleasant in his firelight. What a shame, what a pity; the human world had no tolerance for youma in people's bedrooms (though, he supposed Haru did, and Hina did, though he hoped she wore headphones).
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Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2022 7:18 pm
The warmth of being curled up with someone else was, to Haru's mind, one of life's finest little pleasures. It was comfortable intimacy, and a treasure to be held close, especially when it was with someone unexpected.
Haru had, truth be told, not expected Eion to be a cuddler, but it was a pleasant surprise to find that despite the time limit on their interactions and the artlessness of his proposition, he was apparently also fond of shared warmth. Perhaps, though, he should have realized--it wasn't as if Eion's messiness came from lack of care, at least. Just lack of exposure.
He'd drifted most of the way off, floating in the hazy comfort between sleep and wakefulness, and was honestly pretty prepared to lay there until Eion informed him they were out of time--but Eion stirred, and so did he, blinking and turning to look.
"Everything okay?" He glanced at the clock on his nightstand, providing its little bit of digital illumination, and did some quick math in his head. "Not coming up on your time limit, are we?" It didn't seem so, but it wasn't as if he was a master of half-youma physiology.
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Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2022 7:47 pm
Eion grunted, then contemplated what kind of an answer he could give. It was easier, he knew, to dodge the first question. Waru was easily distracted enough that he never noticed Eion's lack of answer, but Haru had a couple brain cells that hadn't been fried out of his skull by joining the Negaverse, and that was a couple brain cells more than Waru could dream of having. He'd notice, Eion supposed.
And he was good at reading people. Better than Eion was at faking a person. Better than Delilah was, too.
"Fine," he offered, which was to say, nothing worse had happened. Which was to say, not fine so much as functional.
Silence settled into the space between them, and he let it, if for a moment. Then he added, "not time yet." Thin hands slid down to his neck and he rubbed absent circles into his own nape, felt the spots of heat from earlier in the night. "Usually feel drained first. Same as if you burned through your magic." Or so he imagined.
Another beat. He listened for breathing. Stared at the wall as he recognized the point where his eyes finally let in more light. A cold blue from the alarm clock cast a solemn mood about the room, he thought. It was different from what he was used to.
"… Promised myself I'd never sleep with my subordinates. Thought it was," he sighed through his nose, then shook his head. "Mm. Never mind."
Haru hadn't moved, so he laid back down, resumed his spot in the residual heat and dip of the sheets that he left behind. Hands found their old spots easily as Eion hoped Haru would let that one slide.
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Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:19 pm
Eion was dodging the question, that was obvious enough, which meant that Haru had guessed right and there was something weighing on his mind. Haru longed to paw around, to pull out answers, but Eion was not exactly one to share, and Haru was also not eager to push too far and end up alienating the very person he had worked so hard to make some form of connection with.
And, in so many words, he really didn't want to ruin the possibility of a round two. Eion had taken him one hundred percent as he was, and that was always something nice. And sure, he had Emmett, but Emmett was more of an entertaining distraction.
Eion....Haru knew that it was sort of stupid to bother getting emotionally entagneld with people. Time and time again, he'd been shown he was better off not doing that. And yet, the desperate horror he'd felt when Faustite was blown apart before his eyes bespoke that he'd already lost the battle against caring.
So he didn't press, just nodded when Eion explained.
"Makes sense," he said. "Since it is burning through a magic reserve of sorts."
So there would be some warning; no midnight ding and suddenly Eion was Faustite again.
He waited, though, as Eion resettled, for the answer to his other question, and when he got it, his lips turned down in a quiet frown. It wasn't as if Haru couldn't see the concerns, but obviously, but...no, there was no way he could just let that one sit.
So as much as he wanted to stay exactly where he was, with Eion's warmth against him, he shifted so he could more easily look him in the face.
"Thought it was what?" He could guess, but he didn't want to aim for the wrong target. No need to create a new set of anxieties just by suggesting them.
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Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2022 3:10 am
Magic to make him mundane. He hadn't thought of it in such terms before, or considered magic in the light of accessibility. Magic allowed him to taste the human realm, if for three hours only, and walk among people unquestioned.
Well. Unquestioned about being human.
Haru moved, and Eion watched him move while staying put himself. His arm was pulled with the boy by virtue of being slung across his waist, and Eion reluctantly moved it to the warm spot where Haru had been.
He watched Haru, took in the meager blue highlights from the alarm clock, noted where they ensconced him, where they ended, where they were absent. He couldn't see much of Haru's features anymore, but he remembered them under his fingertips, recalled them in the cast of firelight when he first stepped into Faustite's office. Haru had an unearthly beauty that most couldn't boast, and he had been a margin more familiar to Eion for that. Humanity claimed a particular set of flaws, after all, and there was nothing flawed about those thighs.
Silhouettes were themselves beautiful, but a silhouette of a lover stirred something in him that he didn't have words for. With youma, it was something like an all-consuming drive, but what would it be for people? So he looked until he shouldn't, or thought he shouldn't, then his attention settled on the clock itself.
"Irresponsible. Gauche." He breathed a soft sigh. "Abusive."
But then he should have died, he supposed, and decided, henceforth, that he would have the things he wanted, regardless of what people thought of them. He was sure there were at least a dozen other Generals who thought poorly of decisions like these. Had they almost died?
Looking up at Haru, he wondered: was it irresponsible toward him? If, one day, he gets blown to hell and there's no Taenite with a strange bone to fix him, would it have been kinder to Haru to have kept to himself? Or was it crueler to have kept denying him? Or was he reading too far into it, and for Haru, this was all a round of fun?
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Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2022 7:33 pm
Ah.
Yes, the objection seemed obvious; still, it was good to hear Eion lay it out. Find the exact words he was using to describe the problem to himself, so that Haru could answer for what he was actually concerned about, and not tilt at assumptions, perhaps fruitlessly.
And as much as the intimacy of shadows and the play of them on Eion's skin made Haru want to stretch the moment out forever, made him want to linger and lay in it, and drop the discussion, because this was difficult and it would be easier to just lay back down, and tug Eion over, and go back to cuddling...no. This was something that actually deserved to be talked thorugh, especially if they were going to do this again.
And Haru very much wanted to do this again.
So he shifted a little more, so he could reach both the switch for his bedside lamp and also his glasses. The light spread a little more illumination through the room, lighting up the spaces and penumbras of a life still adjusting; clothes tossed about, but tables and walls bare of personal touches while Haru tried to determine what he liked now, and who he wanted to be outside the shell of Malachi.
He slid on his glasses, adjusted them into place.
"For what my opinion on the matter is worth, I don't think it is," he said. It was rare for him to be as genuine as he was being now; no barriers of snark or self-protection. Eion mattered too much to him for that. "I want to be here. I'm glad you changed your mind, whatever made you change it. And...us? Whatever this is? I want to keep doing it, and I'm making that choice on my own will, not because I feel like you'd take it out on me if I changed my mind."
Briefly, a cloud flitted over his expression, like he was remembering something unpleasant.
"And in any case...my experience is that the fact that you're concerned is already a good sign. The people that do the real damage....they're the ones that are convinced they could never possibly hurt you, or that anything they do is for your own good. So. There's that bar, cleared."
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Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 2:49 pm
A soft grunt for how light flooded the room, a ghost of a flash of Kamacite's power. Eion shut his eyes to it, watched the floating afterimage flicker and drift across his eyelids. He wasn't interested in moving, even exposed under the glaring eye of the desk lamp. So he continued to lay, with one arm curled into the fading heat that Haru left behind, sheets tangled about his waist, and hair a tousled mess behind him, as he listened to what Haru had to say.
It came from a good place, Eion supposed. But, he wondered if he could be concerned for someone else's welfare while still doing damage to them. He'd read that the abused perpetuate their abuse. He read it like a curse, like an entrapment — that, best intentions aside, he would damage his charges as invariably as Schörl damaged him. Written in the stars, it was.
But Haru wanted to keep going with this, regardless of any damage incurred. Didn't he deserve to make that choice?
What if the people in his life chose damage? What if damage wasn't the evil that he thought it was? What if, given all the hurt and anguish that Umber and Schörl passed on, Eion was improved by his damage? What if Schörl was right?
Breathing a slow sigh, Eion seized some of the blankets and brought them up to shoulder level. Satisfied that his lightning scars wouldn't show, he shifted onto his stomach, and folded his hands for an organic (if bony) pillow to which he entrusted his cheek. He looked up at Haru, at the glasses framing his face. "Wonder if it's that straightforward. Not that I distrust your opinion."
He shut his eyes. Wish I didn't have time for paranoia.
"Your room looks like a fishbowl," he rasped with a little smile. "Staged. Full of those cute nothings that say 'I don't know', or 'I don't want to commit'. Concerns me." Which was to say, are you okay? in the way a wildebeest might ask, or a youma.
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Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 6:31 pm
The act of pulling up a blanket to cover something you didn't want your partner's eyes on was more than familiar to Haru. He'd done it himself plenty of times, and so he wasn't going to prod or peek at what the blankets hid. If Eion wasn't comfortable showing him some piece of damage marked on his skin, it wasn't his business to pry.
Still, he reached over to run his fingers through Eion's messy hair, taking a moment to enjoy the subtle, light contact, and hoping it offered a measure of gentle intimacy.
"It's probably not," he acknowledged, "just because nothing that involves people is ever that easy. But...I trust you." He said it like it was something simple, something easily given or easily received. Maybe if he was casual about it, it would be simple.
As if Haru handed his trust to every beautiful boy that wanted to take him home.
The question gave him a moment's pause, and he glanced around. It was true, there was a certain emptiness to his personal space, a staged quality that he couldn't pretend didn't exist.
"You noticed," he said, and his eyes cut to the top of the dresser, empty and shockingly clean, and drifted to the corner where his violin rested on its floor stand. He considered, briefly, coming up with some platitude or something, but Eion had offered a measure of vulnerability just by admitting to his fears, and the show of concern at all was something that made Haru's heart do things that he wished it would not.
"It's....hard, finally having the chance to decide who I am entirely for myself. I kept my memories of being Malachi, but there were a lot of restrictions I put on myself back then. A lot of things I never did, or never tried, because it was a risk. So I'm still trying to figure out who I am without the weight."
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Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:07 pm
With every touch came a secondary shock of don't do that, you'll hurt yourself. By now, it was only a brief surge, something easily mistaken for a startle. He stayed silent, though he wished he could relinquish that wariness quickly enough to enjoy the contact for what it was.
"Mm." Trust was quite the gift to come by when part of him wanted to hate and eat every senshi to come under his command. He supposed he'd done one of those already, and Haru survived it well enough. He allowed himself a private little smile, hardly a quirk of the lips. It was a hard topic, but one that didn't need an answer straight away; he could let it rest. Percolate. Brew it for the privacy of his own room, where he could suffer through the feelings that were cut by the answers.
Haru's observation was a brilliant one — one he indulged with a roll of his eyes. "Information branch," he pointed out helpfully. "Noticing is my job."
Noticing, but not fixing. Cataloguing, but not confronting. Patterning, but not comprehending.
So he challenged himself. Laid there in the company of a meandering hand as he tried to comprehend, tried to figure something familiar between them. He let the silence lie still, gather like snowflakes. Waited until his tongue could try the words in a more human manner, something wandering and forgiving like Waru's perpetual speech.
"You're an amorphous thing. Lucky in that you remembered the crucible that forged the you that you were, and the crucible that forged the you that you are. That's two different molds you've pushed yourself into and filled. So what's there to figure out?
"You can be you, or you, or you, or you. Tomorrow you're a different you than today's you, and two weeks from now, you're the you you are today. So which you do you want broken open and dashed across these walls? If you can't decide, don't decorate it with you. Use we."
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Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:59 pm
There it was, the little startle at a touch--Haru supposed that Eion must not get a lot of gentleness, and that just made him want to give more, which was a dangerous sort of thing, and yet.
His fingers moved back to Eion's hair, playing through it lightly, and there was the ghost of a smile on his face. Even with all the emotionally revelatory discussions, this was still something nice, something he hadn't thought to allow himself. He wouldn't say so aloud, but he'd expected something of a hit-it-and-quit-it situation, and that he was getting more than that was already a benefit.
Still, the response provoked a brief eyeroll, even as it brought a little more of a smile to his face. True, noticing was Eion's job, but that didn't preclude politely ignoring certain things.
He sighed, and flopped back down on the bed, which made for a nice vantage point to stare up at his bare ceiling.
"It's true, there's plenty for me to start with," he acknowledged, and his eyes flicked along the walls, but only for a moment, before he turned on his side to look directly at Eion, which coincidentally made a much better angle for returning to the soothing nicety of playing with his hair. "Maybe I'll get myself some music sheets, transcribe some of my favorite pieces. Tack 'em up on the walls. It'd be a start." And more than bareness, and emptiness, and if who he was at the center of it all was a musician, at least that was somewhere to start. "...Thanks. I think I've been overthinking it, like I have to make a totally new person, but...I've got the benefit of still remembering most of who I used to be."
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Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2022 5:26 am
Eion shut his eyes to the feel of fingernails in his hair. Letting himself be touched was its own challenge, and he wondered if it was dangerous to get used to it, lest he crave it, and he hadn't the hours to allow himself this mundane intimacy. He knew he could don the cincher as Faustite and bank his flames, but the intimacy he indulged as Faustite took on a different shade than this. Nothing so free of violence.
No — there was a quiet violence, even when Haru bade him none. It was a violence against himself, evident in the audacity he felt that someone would spend this time with him. To share anything was to invest in a person, for however long. Haru had no obligation to that.
And that, he supposed, was where he would stop thinking about it.
"Doesn't it bother you to put a picture of a song on your wall?" Eion was far from a musician, couldn't pretend to be a musician, never learned to sing or read music or hold a note. But he wondered, nonetheless, if sheet music on the wall was like framing a written description of a picture. Maybe he could ask Celadonite to get into interior decorating for the sake of his comrade, or lean on Albite to give Haru some memories of Haru.
Brows furrowed. "… Still haven't decorated mine," he murmured to himself, as he became suddenly and intensely aware of it. Malachi and Haru, then, had much in common with Elex and Eion.
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Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:06 pm
The question made him snort. Not derision, or mocking, just amusement, and he let Eion's hair run through his fingers for a moment before he answered.
"It's a bit more than a picture of a song," he said, "but I see where you'd get that. Especially if I transcribe it myself, it's....a record of effort, yeah? All the time I put in to memorize the piece, to be able to write the notes down myself without checking, or the effort I put into breaking down the melody of some Disney song and figuring out how to play it on the violin, that's what hanging up sheet music would be for me."
He blinked at the admission, though, and hummed. "I don't think I've ever seen your barracks space. I'd imagine it's not exactly the most...personable sort of place. But having ti totally undecorated sounds kind of miserable."
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Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2022 5:22 am
Eion grunted from where he lay, a pile of yearling limbs and stubborn dislike for moving. Felt as though it took effort to look up at Haru, to keep looking, to trace his figure in the lamp light, though he'd wanted to. Maybe his laziness was because he hadn't eaten in a few hours.
"Think you should do it. Write them down, frame them, hang them up."
So that's what it meant to be proud of one's accomplishments. He wouldn't have parsed Haru's reasoning by looking at the things, but he could understand it now. He wondered if he should display all those medals, then, or if that was a moot point. Were they something to be proud of? Did they represent accomplishments? Career milestones, maybe.
He'd rather display all of their medals, though. Assuming the youma rats didn't get ahold of them in a fit of vengeance.
"Don't spend much time there." He rolled over, onto his back, and cast an arm over his eyes. "Youmafied suddenly. Couldn't go back and grab my stuff." He paused, almost chuckled, "then Albite got me pissed enough that I burned most of it. Now neither place is very personable."
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2022 10:23 pm
Haru hummed, thoughtfully. He would, for certain--and maybe he would make and frame an extra, and bring it to Faustite. If it got destroyed, well. He could always create another.
A labor of...
Of...affection, certainly.
There was a stronger word he could use, yes, but it hung on his tongue, halted in his mind. It seemed foolish and overly sentimental to even let himself think it, when he acknowledged that Faustite was obviously fond of him, or something, and this wasn't a hit it and quit ti sort of situation, but it still didn't need...any other, stronger four letter words applied to it.
"Yeah, okay, that kinda makes sense, but you've got time and reason now to try and jazz it up." That was a fun hypothetical teambuilding exercise. Go in and do something with Faustite's dismal, lonely office and undoubtedly sad barracks room. Remind him he had people who cared about him.
Eion was on his back, now, with his eyes covered, and Haru's own gaze couldn't help but drift to his lips.
It was silly and impulsive, but that described a lot of things he did, and at least reaching down to gently press his to Eion's--the angle was a little awkward, but he'd had worse.
"Doesn't have to be all unpersonable and lonely anymore, you know."
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Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2022 3:19 am
"Mm." He didn't try to argue the point — Haru was correct that he had time now. The subordinates under his purview had mostly worked themselves out, and Waru hadn't managed to ******** anything up too badly. No one was in desperate need of his intervention. None of his projects were so pressing that he couldn't set aside time to redecorate his room and office.
Or, in the case of his office, decorate it in the first place.
But, even in thinking about it, Eion hesitated. Felt like it was committing to something, though he wasn't sure what. Then his mind cast back to the battlefield —
Bloody mess he was, painted all over the battlefield, over the grass, over some of his friends and subordinates. Anymore, he couldn't remember who was there, who was looking, who wasn't. Who grit their teeth and kept going. He remembered Taenite, of course — found it hard not to — and that White Moon senshi. Had Haru looked? Was he around for that? Anymore, all he remembered was his certainty. His driven, focused rage.
Felt lips — a feather soft thing, but Eion reached up with his free hand. Reached to curl finebone fingers around the side of Haru's neck to his nape, to stay him for a moment longer. Fleeting, but —
He supposed he wasn't thinking about it anymore.
He moved his arm, sat up. Looked over at Haru, feeling a little bedraggled for how his hair fell about him. "You want me to decorate it." He had a habit of forming his questions into statements, as most of his team had known by now.
Felt strange to think about. He supposed that, if he committed to decorating his spaces, it was like committing to being alive. To expecting that he would come home from each mission, regardless of what that mission demanded of him. It meant more work for anyone who inherited his office, should he fail to come back alive.
But, maybe that wasn't much different from Haru and his room. If he fell in battle, then his sister faced the labor of cleaning out his room. He wasn't expecting to die on the field. By decorating, he was expecting to come back, to keep coming back, and to discover who he truly was.
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