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“Thin’ll n’hance et, axchuly–” commenting on the loftiness of Faustites buoyed reputation while sucking on ice chips, and oh the cold water felt so damn good! It was habit at this point, to fill all the little white baggies with the blue snap tops n strings to the brim, to eat the overflow of ice when he wasn’t pressing it to his most recently swollen places.

Primarily his jaw–

The residual wince n urge to press it anywhere else was just phantom pangs at their finest, he’d be fine, his junk’d be fine, his teeth—The boning had done its work real good!

Didn’t mean Albite wouldn’t need a dentist somewhere down the line, shame the soonest availability of the man who handled more car-crash victims than falcon-punch freaks was three weeks out *at least*. That too, was fine, and Waru had insisted he could wait! That he didn’t mind a few soft meals and sippy cup based purees for a while; he could play up the wounded badly bit to the tune of a teams worth of sympathy. Maybe he’d stock up on melted ice cream? It was an entire crawl of a thought, one that he followed the instinct of as he slunk down into the recess, muffled groans and stiff limbs splaying out till his feet were nearer Faustites hands and his hands were nearer Faustites feet – such sharp little toe claws, so cute when they curled n caught on anything.

“N’iss a gooh euphmsm, mma’h use ih!” he swallowed enough melt-water to choke, to laugh messily for all of Faustites bright irritation and ire, took his own joy in the scene. His pantless patron, fresh stitches across a hip that Waru was ten seconds from slapping a clawed hand away from! The only drawback to it all was that Waru couldn’t actively claim any of the prizes he currently wanted to claim. Not for losing, not for winning. He could only admire the visual and want endlessly— “Bllegh–and if any way I’ve ever shown up to that infirmary–to that hospital!? Has those people thinking this is your version of nice? Then I’m the sanest person in this place, and that thought alone terrifies me.” the words fear-tinged n chased by a solid shudder that had nothing to do with the cold he was sucking on, when things were numb enough he resealed the pack, pressed it back to his left eye.

“I think–maybe? They're just gently padding my fat, wounded pride. I am *your Senshi* afterall. Gotta kiss up to the King by making his ho’sband look a little less incompetent than – freaking – idunno – actively taunting all of the Rift and you! Ooh-oh-ohhey–I want that in my obits, wanna be barbecue flavor, the mesquite kind. That's the snack I wanna be, like a bunch of burnt rib tips. Maybe black pepper–like your fire–though, from my end? The blaze didn’t seem so bad. I kinda liked surviving it!”

One little, two little, three little toe claws—

Albite couldn’t resist the urge to reach out and touch, however gently, just the one foot. To run a finger up a prominent bone to black daggered point, knowing Faustite couldn’t go far in his position. Knowing too, that the internal garbage would only be sorted with time n research, so long as it wasn’t killing anyone? Albite considered it a backburner topic to be explored in depth at a later date–once they were both healed up enough to play with sharp s**t again.

“Now…..about your mom?”

He gave Faustite the benefit of not meeting his gaze directly, kept his own dark eyes focused on where his hand lay still, in kicking range if need be. He hadn’t yet forgotten his earlier question, and this time? He wasn’t sure he wanted to let it lie…

Good— it was a winding, self-satisfied thought and Waru hummed happily for the idea that he carried that label with him, ‘moron’ was a whole badge of honor as far as he was concerned!

Because being so meant everything was exactly as Waru wanted it to be; perceived as little more than an over-large manchild with the I.Q of a toddler—-A toddler left holding several large knives in a room filled to the brim with high volatile sockets. Best he be pacified and entertained and attended to, then ever left to his own highly questionable devices. When told to write a will? He found a reason to try for Faustites calves—knowing how ticklish he was—that he hated it—loving the little chuckle n hiss he got for his efforts.

A shame that Faustite wiggled his lean legs just out of reach at the last second, not that Albite was going to complain! He preferred a lap-cat to a toe-dog. Liked Eions close enough to where he could imagine feeling it beat.

“I care more about how *you* felt than how *she* felt—but if the two things are tied to each other? Then m’sorry…” sorry that he still had to ask at all, and sorry that knowing the answer was hard wouldn’t stop him from asking for it altogether. Thankfully, Eions hair was there for him to sink his fingers into, to find places unmarred by their tryst and pet the pads of his thick digits over. “Eion, I will always take ‘traumatic s**t happened and now I can’t handle this particular thing’ for an answer, you know that right? M’only bringing it up cause it’s something that’s happened too many times now for me to not *note* it—“ the words somberly sighed in time to his petting, falling in line with the shifff and shuffle of him dragging his nails gently over his loves inhumanly warm scalp.

If it’d only been the one time?

But it wasn’t just the one time. It was more than the fourth or fifth time he’d caught that ‘panic turned fight for my life’ look in Faustites eyes. That look was an old thing, something Waru thought he could put on review and play over other instances from other moments in time. His boy allowed him so many graces—let him play vampire and bloodhound and all manner of hungry, mouthy shark; just aching to chew and swallow all he could whole. Made clear in body what he did and didn’t enjoy; like being tied down, or being choked, not even the threat of a thing—

And Albite couldn’t stand to make Faustite flinch anymore, especially not because of his own careless accidents. Faustite was far too precious to him to be un-careful with, to hurt casually in any manner and go on pretending that it didn’t matter just because he didn’t know any better! It mattered, he cared, it was important!

Too important to trample over foolishly—

“And when I start to notice things? I want you to know. S’like the cops all over again, yeah? That ten thousand yard stare you’d sometimes get, til it seemed like you got it alluvthetime—-and I just wanna make sure you’re good…” determined even as he pet the shell of Faustites ear. Because someone had to make sure Faustite was doing good, because everyone needed someone like that, even people at the pinnacle of their power peak.

Like how Jet had Aqua—it was the best example he could think of, one of the better ones at least! Because Axinite had…what? Who? And Lepidolite had…a family, maybe? Seemed more well rounded n most. Hess had….skeletons…so many skeletons…and Laurels seemed to be alone save for Metallia, and maybe that was enough for her? It would never have been enough for Albite though, and knowing with some deep intimacy how Faustite worked. How touch starved and human hungry his boy was, still to this day—filled himself and his surroundings with people en masse — even if they were boy shaped and boy adjacent — they were people still. It was an unmissable fact, so glaringly obvious that it must have been a necessity!

Albite liked seeing those kinda of needs met, craved that sort of service with every fiber of his being! If he could do this one thing for Faustite and make it a little easier? Make it good?

“Only way to make sure you’re good is to make sure I’m the last thing on this Earth making you ‘not good’, yeah? Cause people ask me all the damn time not to use my magic on ‘em, n I respect that for total strangers even! I think I owe my husband at least the same courtesy!”

“Might come as a surprise, but it’s really not all that apparent, Ei. You don’t wear it like some red letter pinned on your chest—you’re not bleeding it all out at the edges,” remorseful tinged with frustration, and Waru had waited patiently, let the time pass over and tried his damndest to pluck some tangled resistance gently free; found little knots in singular strands that he could ply with thumb and forefinger, before going back to methodically petting. Wishing he could’ve just given Faustite his fingers to chew on, shoved through all that stark confusion n wounded grimace with a strange action in order to get a better expression than the one his boy looked up at him with.

Nothings ever so easy…

“Traumas just my lazy guess—could be anything, innocent or otherwise, and for all I know? You closelined yourself playing red rover as a kid n now you’re not fond of having my hands right *here*—” a flinch of fingers in the direction of ‘there’, and Faustites eyebrows were too tempting, he had to press a thumb over one, the other, try and smooth out lines that would never form on his beloved's eternally youthful face.

He was telling the truth, wasn’t he?

It could’ve been a million things, a tonsillectomy gone wrong, that he was just real particular about the particular types of touches n textures he allowed *there*, could’ve been he was ******** ticklish choking as he was having his calves pet, right?! And even Waru wasn’t sure, sometimes, how he could breathe through all the bullshit he tried to make himself swallow. All those things were true though! Could’ve been true!!

*Except——* anything else, from anyone else? In his core he hedged the reaction from Eion would’ve been different, the excuse would’ve come easier, there would’ve been excuses ready— ‘Dont touch me there, because’ and not everyone in the world was Sylvite who’d been so very clear ‘bad s**t happened, please keep your magic to yourself’ — knowing she had been tortured didn’t mean he needed to know the how of it in any sort of detail. He just needed to know how not to remind her of it like some clodding, hapless donkey.

All a**, no thumbs…and ******** him for wanting to do better by other people, n then later they changed their minds on a subject n wanted him to be some b*****d of an oath breaker!!

‘But that’s their right too, they get the right to change their minds! I don’t get the right to decide how or when or if they do that!!’

And Waru was, sometimes, frustrated at himself for being an over-emotional a** even when he knew the truth of a thing. When that truth collided so harshly with his own personal desires, his deep seeded need to keep…

“M’not a mind reader—I don’t think you’re ******** up—and I’m just about ready to start tearing the word *broken* outta people with that memory hunting toy! ********, you’re a *whole* ******** person, Ei. I haven’t forgotten that,” keyword whole, and the twist of some ragged bit of mental block ran sharp beneath his skin, dredged up irritation, anger. All residual runoff from dealing with Helio.

Those frustrating feelings didn’t belong to or for Faustite. Helio didn’t belong here, not in this, not right now…

“I just don’t wanna hurt you stupidly. Not. Like. This. N’you know me—context is just the thing that helps it stick in my head, yah? Like—back then I asked if you were good, you let me know it wasn’t a *me* specific thing, that I had no control over causing those feelings in you, but *knowing* that thing about you made me more *careful*. I took notes, decided I should spill less people out on the damn pavement in front of you like that, even on ******** accident.” It hurt sometimes, how Faustite asked him the most unfair questions in the most heartbreaking ways, tough things he didn’t readily have answers for. He couldn’t define what good was supposed to mean, would’ve needed Faustites baseline for it, wasn’t sure the man even had one. What even was ‘good’ relative to being ‘forever on fire’, and if Faustite was by his own definition good? Then who was he to tell him his definition of that thing was wrong! He wasnt ******** all, and if Faustite felt he was good— it was a schism of a thing to untangle. An ouroboros of thought, snake eating its tail insanity—Waru dropped it all and skirted his fingers to frame Faustites perfect jaw, smoothed the mans sharp cheekbones n cradled his head better in his lap—

“Maybe—it’s not about you being good—maybe you’re already good n’im just wanting to hear you say it? Maybe I just wanna make sure I’m good too—to you, for you, for myself?“ That sounded right, felt right, and it was even less fair that Faustites face was so perfectly kissable. That the act of kissing all those perplexed frowns away would’ve been much easier to do than talking.

“You’re perfect, Ei.”

It would happen again, the sun would rise and set and this same song situation would, undoubtedly, happen again. Sure as the tide ebbed n flowed with the moon, and when this same sort of scenario did inevitably happen once more? They would talk, always they would talk, always they *could* talk. Same as they always had! No matter how badly Waru knew he’d trip at the finish line, eating dirt and scraping his knees the whole way across it, the point remained that never would he ever feel like he was unable to talk to his boy.

It could be convoluted and messy, and Eion would suffer the mess of it with him. He could lose the ******** plot, and his boy would forgive him for that too–

Albite shifted slightly, aimed to make himself a more comfortable lap pillow, to bracket Faustite with his ridiculous curtain of hair, to let Ei give him as much of his solid, warm weight as he dared.

“And I love that you’re trying so hard for me.”

His boy wanted an example though, and he could try with every last simmering, shriveled cell in his head, to give him something close enough to right–

“Good is—the days I wake up and I don’t feel hunted, or rushed, or like the world is about to fall out from beneath my feet. Good is every day you're alive, and every day the team thrives. The way that makes me feel–idunno–safe n happy inside? The ******** funny part is? That this here, right now, this is good too. Getting to sit n talk with you, getting to have this moment where we c’n just be – it’s messy, n rough, n perfect. It’s good—and earlier in the Rift? I thought that was good too–in a really ******** ‘me’ kinda way.….” laughing awkwardly through his attempt at giving anything like a straight answer, the grin he held wrinkling his nose, his brow. He knew he was the worst example giver in the universe, it was true, but he couldn’t think of anything immediately ‘ungood’ about his current situation.

He knew he felt bad when—when Faustite met with Jet in the Rift and all he could do was stand idly by, trusting and hoping that things would work themselves out. He felt bad for what he’d done to Muri, how selfishly he’d put his foot in Faustites endeavors. He felt *wrong* about how he’d handled Fulgurite that night, but only because he believed he should’ve been able to do better! More than wrong, because it’d caused a ruin he couldn’t repair – a necessary thing, maybe, but still a ruin.

“Can I ask…earlier,” softer now, shadowed words as his hands slid down Faustites face to his sharp shoulders, tracing covered, slender muscles, testing how they felt like steel beneath his palms, “in the Rift, did I scare you?” following bicep, to elbow, and back up to catch the threatening crescents within the confines of his own rough hands. If he could do little more than kiss each of Eions fingertips, each knuckle, find the place where the coloring on his wrist was ever so slightly different and kiss that too—

“I don’t want to think I could’ve—I was so focused on the one thing, and there you were trying to save my a** even as you were trying to beat me! I saw this look on your face, n once I could think straight again? I thought maybe I’d ******** up badly–even if it was just for a second.” he always wanted to be able to apologize properly, to know what he was apologizing for. The apology he’d offered earlier seemed like such a small and offensive thing, because he wasn’t sorry about asking Eion for his past, he was, however, sorry for having hurt him with it. Even if he didn’t understand the machinations of that thing–

“That ********’ Captain was wrong, by the way, you definitely won. He just doesn't understand the circumstances out there….” The dangers of being a snack, and maybe another Senshi would’ve understood it better? But what sort of Senshi would so brazenly walk into the lions den–and then kick every ******** lion in the place awake! He didn’t know if it was his unwavering trust in Faustite, or his unwavering confidence in his own abilities. Some comingling of the two feelings dolloped with a heavy dose of danger being such a major turn on. His desire to have and hold and touch everything that had warning labels on them and make them his. He was a Senshi of the Negaverse and he would traverse the Rift if he damn well pleased, and he’d marry the youma, ******** it, he’d marry their king! N let that king *have him* in every way that mattered.

“You never did seem to like surprises,” a passive observation, non-accusatory, and Waru understood at a base level that what Faustite probably didn’t like had nothing at all to do with the act of being ‘surprised’, so much as it had everything to do with his boy’s past experiences. Waru could link it jaggedly in his mind—Nembus being kidnapped, unsummonable, and how that led to him getting a face full of cellphone for upgrading without giving some forewarning about it. A bad surprise, a good surprise, and who was to know which was which until the big reveal?

He felt latent remorse–a twinge of assishness for being the cause of such things, however innocuously. Cause how could Fuastite know if the people he cared for – loved – had been purified, or were trapped in a void, on another planet, dead? A realm of uncertainties existed for ‘bad s**t going down’ that rivaled all possibilities of ‘good times ahead’, a thousand instances that spiraled into terrifying outcomes. More n Waru could ever imagine, but maybe Faustite could? Maybe his boy’d lived such a life where imagining all the bad that could come was easy as breathing—maybe his boys’ ghosts were too corporeal to hurt him physically, but mentally? <********, but I hate hauntings, houses, ghosts of all kind, burn’m all I say.

A hard thing to say aloud when his boy was the house they haunted, and he burned for the faults of others already, eternally so.

It’s so ******** unfair—

“N’yet here you are, being surprising. M’proud of you for that. That you’ve found a way to cope even if it’s just long enough to get through it. That you keep your s**t together, Ei. Keep me feeling ‘good’, like nothing could ever go wrong, even when s**t’s long since dried on the fan it hit three days ago,” the metaphor messy, ugly, the way the words slid out equal parts soft and serious. How sure he was of his own sense when speaking of anything at all, even about the things he had little to no detail on. Not that he needed much in the way of detail for this! The trauma existed in the way he’d touched Eion, how it’d dredged an unexpected ghost free to flash-bang and blindside them both. That ghosts name was *mom*—

Albite wasn’t sure he wanted to *know*, not here and now, not like this; with Faustite freshly stitched, on his back, throat and belly bared enough to be bitten into — vulnerable.

He’d *just* gotten his husband back! It felt like that every damn day, now with Aelius in the mix? All the Bluenette’s seeping wounds gone poisonous and black—internal things Waru couldn’t see, but oh — ohohohooo—could Aelius make sure he n everyone who mattered felt that they were there.

Yeah, imma keep mine to myself.

His deeper questions, he could keep them quietly to himself till someone, everyone, all the people! Put the damn knives away!

“That you can admit when it has hit the fan—Cause it must be exhausting, right? Havn’ta keep that ironclad grip, white-knuckling it all the time?” releasing Faustites delicate wrists to lay atop his fine-bone birdcage of a chest, petting them there till the pulse of midnight skin beneath his own human tones felt indistinguishable. Albite would’ve kept it up forever, leaving the tender bruised spots be, pleating the webbing with his own prints, pinching the tension out of his husbands thin palms. Cause Albite didn’t blame his Ei’ for not being good, no one could be good all the time, it wasn’t something to be expected…

But maybe Faustite didn’t know that? Maybe Albite should’ve said something sooner— that his love didn’t just need to be in dire straits of the most physica kind — to only express unease when a breaking point was tilted into a shattering one.

“It’s not anything you have to do with me, tho, kay? How you’re feeling—how I make you feel? Most days, s’all I need to know...” and Faustites face was even more adorable from an upside down vantage, especially if he bent himself enough to press a kiss between his boys brows, at the edge of his pitch-to-fire hairline. Faustite was not good — an acknowledged thing — spoken, alive as the fire that suffused the air around them with wefts of smoke.

Albite didn’t worry so much for the why anymore, the why would come another day, when he felt up to pressing that hot button a little bit harder than he had. It would come on a drunken night, in a whisper with all the lights off, would come the way any other reveal had. Faustite would tell him his s**t, or? They’d hit a boiling point and it would spill over regardless…

Or——

Or he’d find some nice easy third way to help Faustite feel good, one that wouldn't destroy both them and their home in the process. It was all he ever wanted to do most nights, be good to Faustite while finding ways to help him feel good in turn. He knew the limits of that in his flesh, though, in his bones. Had learned them in ways maybe Aelius hadn’t had time to yet? Or if the bluenette had learned them? Maybe they stuck differently in him, the ways he’d push and the ways he wouldn’t because *he* wasn’t going to be the one ******** Faustite up without so much as a ‘do your worst albutt’—

He could wait, there was time.

“Just like I want you to know, that if you ever need to talk about it? I’m right here, always.”

“I know—“ he didn’t really, wanted to, but could never truly know unless he lived it. He could empathize though, could put acceptance and apology into his voice without pitying his boy one iota. Could love Eion even more for opening his mouth at all. There would be no undoing all the ways life had been unkind, no unshaping the responsibilities Faustite carried on his narrow shoulders, things weighty enough to crush him down if not for the crown's power to support them.

Thanked Metallia for the granted power nice n quiet in his own head, and just as quietly lauded praise in Eions direction. Thought it hard enough that he hoped his boy felt it pulsing through his thigh.

Waru would always be proud of every admission Fauatite allowed him to hear. It felt like privilege, like trust, like his hard work n love were being returned tenfold. Even if he couldn't spell ignorance well enough to try and split the burden of being blessed by it properly. Just knowing the burden existed was enough to make him want to strive for the sort of power that would allow him to someday convince Faustite he’d be fine beneath it, the ******** else was his thick a** good for? If not hauling the heavier bits of brain-n-body-troubles that befell his love.

He pet that pride into Faustite’s captured claws where he held them in the one hand, raised those fingers again to kiss a new apology into obsidian skin, let Faustite have his whole thigh, his entire form, like a nice easy body pillow ever at the ready to be snuggled into.

“Awck!!” the sound muffled into the back Faustites hand, and he nearly licked a stripe there out of surprise, his desire to assuage any of Faustites down-ness tempered by wanting to keep his face attached! “********, Ei! How would I suck you off if I didn’t have a lower jaw anymore?! Punch me through mountains–s’as likely to take off my head! You cuteass, violence-gremlin..…”

Next time though? He’d untense, would let Ei send him flying as far as he ******** pleased. Would hope his boy didn’t b***h about having to pick what was left of his body out of some poor, pissy youma’s belly. The hit had caught him hard enough by surprise — if he’d had anything in his head worth rattling? It would’ve been centrifuged into a thin layer of paste by now. Thank the stars his insides were airy and light!

“But maybe we go back again sometime, I ******** around less, you ******** me up more. I’ll bring a pearl just in case I damn-near-die…” hiffed teasingly as he finally let the hand go enough to give Faustite his comfortable position. To let his fingers wander as was his want and whim. The back of Eions neck, the softness where his hair lay splayed out and tangle-free, he liked watching his fingers disappear into it over and over again while he searched for answers that made sense to Eions deep questions.

They were good questions. There were no right or easy answers to them. He didn’t want his boy thinking he had to talk about anything he didn’t want to—to dredge up stuff he was well beyond wanting to keep reliving over n over again.

“Sometimes? You bring it up—so people can feel like they know you better, the bad parts and the good. Then they feel like they can share the same parts of themselves that hurt that way too, only differently—“ this was easier, to talk softly over the occasional pop-crackle of flame, to eye with lowered gaze the fresh new stitches in Faustites hip, and wonder when they’d break out the e second skin for it— those gory yellow bandages that made it all hurt less—sept that’d probably have to wait till the stitches were dry and removed?

He always forgot the order to that—-creams and bandages—or none at all—and it was hard to remember as his mouth wove on automatic. As close to a whisper as he could ever be, feeling safe in the cocoon of their bedding.

“And then? They feel less alone because they’re not the only ones who’re ******** up in the same ways—or they share it because it doesn’t hurt to share anymore—-it is—It’s a really human thing, huh? The collective of that all. Like—I’ve kept in touch with my mom, yeah? But I think sometimes, maybe Aelius and you got to have your moms *longer*, right?” He realized belatedly the twist of hurt, the gentle bite of sadness in his soul, that sometimes his throat and eyes did feel tight if he ever thought about anything for far too long. It wasn’t even anything terrible that came to mind, it was just better not to think, that was all. “And then I wanna ask more about what that’s like—but not if it’s something that ******** either of you up— and leme tell you? With Aelius, the s**t I can’t talk about with him, but don’t know why we can’t talk about it is — there’s no end to it and I don’t know how to bridge that gap. I honestly just shouldn’t talk about things I have no idea of..”

—because I don’t deserve to have the idea—

That wasn’t fair to Aelius, Waru knew the man had a right to what was in his own head, to summarily be able to tell him to ******** off and stay outta his personal kinda anything from ********. Didn’t mean it didn’t sting to know there was a threshold lined with caution tape that he probably would not ever be allowed past—-

No—to know that the only way in was through brute force, that he’d have to push on all the places he’d deemed sore in others. The hard task that he’d avoided doing for as long as he humanly possibly could.

“Maybe, some people? They need to talk about it just because they need to. Some people don’t, because like you said? It’s over n done with and you’re over it—there’s no wrong answer, and you’re not wrong for not wanting to dig up the past. That—it—it’s probably that?” Waru snorted at himself, features corkscrewing into something both derisive and bemused as he realized late that he could’ve said in three words what he’d tried to say in a hundred. It was too funny, that Faustite let him go on for so long at all!

Ei must really, really love me.

“Awwwhhh…” He mourned the loss of that hand for moments, did it with a heaved sigh and further shift to accommodate Faustites movements. To stay as nice and cushy as he could so those stitches didn’t completely unwind from his loves flesh—If they ended up back in the infirmary again, on the same damn day they’d left!? Helgan would beat him with the nearest freezer instead of offering him freeze pops outta it—he’d hear no end of it–and this time? There would be no more talking his way out of it, no new ways to feign the injured winning party.

He was mouthy, it couldn’t be helped, all the most oral of ways he liked to solve problems while having a tongue, teeth and throat in good working order. He wondered if ever the day would come he’d be insensate to all that he loved most about having this body; marred and flawed as it was. If he’d lose pieces of his mind all slow and pudding-like. Probably not, for all that he n Faustite joked of wills and what he’d personally want in his own obit, Waru didn’t plan on making one anymore than he planned on discussing its non-existent contents with his husband. He wanted to live, yes, but to outlive what made his life worth living? Not nearly as much—

Sept maybe the Negaverse had a good retirement plan? One that didn’t involve walking straight into the Rift—he’d ask Laurels about it someday, but not today.

Today? He was very busy enjoying his husband's compliments, wanting to lap them up even after Faustite pulled his hand free. He had the innate desire to pin Faustite down, if need be, and chew more of those nice words out of him so that he could keep being whatever it was that other people saw in him: eternal, creative, handsome, loyal–Sometimes he thought he knew, but just couldn’t put the words to it? Other times he didn’t have the fondest of clues, just that warm clench of feeling that told him he was something good, and right, and worthy of being placated in the moments he failed, for those moments when he’d inevitably succeed at whatever praise-worthy thing he’d done the first time around.

Of course Faustite’s insight made everything brighter, clearer, sharper. The figurative light bulb that’d gone on in his head so megawatt high that it’d burst in the middle of Aelius’s apartment hadn’t quite yet quit sparking off just yet, leaving all the ideas in his brain buzzy if also slightly charred. Faustite gave him something to reconnect him to, groundlines and fixtures, new ******** bulbs—Faustite made more sense of Aelius than Waru could make of the man all by himself, while also reminding him that he should be happy he had a mother to at least talk to, since Faustite clearly didn’t anymore.

‘I hope Jollene hugged Aelius often—I hope Eion got to say goodbye—-’ Fifteen wasn’t nearly long enough, and he was quietly sorry–for both of them. That so much of the pairs entwined pasts was beyond ********, and in his sadness for them both, the wide cocooning thing that he could wrap like a warm throw about his far smaller sadness for himself, there was also space to be reminded that he couldn’t change that past simply by feeling a certain way about it.

Now, right now, that was what he had to work with. Aelius was the big, menacing, iron maiden shell he had to crack before ever getting to the soft center that’d once been Rowan; open and willing to hold hands and go to museums while playing nice in company….

“See this, this right here is what I needed! Just talking with you…you make all this s**t make sense,” the words were dappled with praise and spoken warmly. Of course the ******** would’ve been nice if the fighting had gone differently, but Waru lamented nothing. Spending time with Faustite and just – doing this – piecing bits together was its own reward! Getting to have Faustite in his lap while doing it was even more a reward, meeting that one, solid, burning eye with his own thoughtful amber. Picking out his words carefully as he found unbruised places on Faustite that he could put his fingers to, the jut of an elbow, the tip of a shoulder; petal light and dragging until he could smooth his whole palm there.

“You let other people ask their own pointed questions—you tell them you prefer that. Then you can decide how you answer them, if you choose to answer them at all? You let them know when you’re at a stopping point. That a stopping point does ******** exist—” and the parts of him that wanted to hammer that concept home at the end of a snarl were the same that wanted to soothe, to finish the job of hiding Fausties gaze so that he didn’t have to meet it with his own while picking words out of his landfill of a mind. “You’d be surprised though, all the times a person says they ‘can’t’ talk about something, while talking about it all the same. I hear it gets easier over time–or not at all–I’ve heard with truly awful stuff? S’probably best to have someone there to ground you—so you’re not left feeling like you’re living in it. I bet Aelius can probably pick up on context clues a helluvalot quicker n’ me…that he’d be grounding.....” sometimes he felt like he and Aelius were speaking two different languages, and that only by frustrating the man *enough* did he ever get the answers he was seeking, when Aelius finally got fed up enough of hearing him drone on about topics he’d long since skipped through that he just had to say what was finally on his mind. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn’t pushing the man nearly enough–if it was right to push at all with someone who clearly didn’t trust him to stick around and pick all the rest of the pieces he’d so carelessly scattered right the ******** back up again.

“Course, unlike him? I can infer on s**t without needing those details…If ever I’mma push you? It’s towards a certain mood, n’not some big reveal. Though…” That wasn't to say he’d never push him at all, that the urge to do so didn’t exist. For all the times he felt like he was walking up to that bright red line that screamed ‘do not touch’ and eying it hungrily. For all the times he saw Faustites clear distress, his anguish, the flash of it there and gone like a shooting star—how he wanted to bleed it all out with words so that he could put a name to it instead of simply stepping in it and making a mess of it all; like a clumsy child with too many paints at his fingertips and not nearly enough paper.

It was instinct enough to recoil from that urge, it was the same damn instinct that made him notice any ******** thing at all! That made him bother to ask back in the Rift. To ask again at home and be relieved and appalled that the hurt wasn’t something he’d had any control over, that it went well beyond the physical…..

“Mmhn...can I ask.….it doesn’t seem right that I’ve got Aelius’s moms name memorized, but idunno if we’ve got each others families down? Like, we’ve mentioned ‘em before, f’sure! Feels all bits’n’pieces sometimes, n’i’m not married t‘him’---” he let his shrug be one sided as his voice trailed off, realizing it could’ve been a privilege for others. That it would’ve made more sense for the people who knew Elex before, who were closer to Eion for longer. Like Yuuri–like Rowan—-That he hadn’t brought up any of this except sparingly; during their initial engagement and his brief fiance days, or while talking about escaping to the sea.

If he knew Jollene better by name alone? He could cut himself some slack, it was probably because she did famous fashion things, right? Or because of Trey! But it felt like Faustite should’ve known Sheabell, that his husband had more than earned the right to be on calls with her at Christmas—The same way it felt like he should’ve been going with Faustite to visit his mom, too! If that was something his boy would ever want his company for.