tampered | ⚚ ongoing ; closed

⚚ ongoing ; closed

When; 06 January, late evening.
Rating; PG-13 for now
Characters;

gilthart
Summary; Baby, let's talk about not ORPHAN-WIDOWING ME
Log;

A surprising factoid regarding Elliot - and completely separate from the ones he throws all willy-nilly into his regular conversation - is that he knows how to make hot chocolate without the aid of a microwave and Swiss Miss. (Although he does, of course, have trivia: for instance, 'Dutching' sounds a lot filthier than the actual process it describes.) This involves a whisk, constant attention, and meticulously measured chili powder, because the latter goes from 'huh!' to '...whyyyyy did you do this' in seconds. Other possible additives exist, or none at all, but Elliot likes the throwback to the Aztecs as well as occasional fits of experimental cooking. Peppermint is also good, but the chili powder adds an element of additional warmth to texture and taste, and 'warmth' largely comprises the ambiance he is going for.

Which also explains the soft sweater and corduroys, along with why the whole apartment smells like ginger and roses courtesy a small candle on the table in the kitchenette. If asked he would say that these things were less detrimental to good tenant status than setting random fires, because he is only a romantic where no one else can comment. Although that implies erroneously that all of this is a setup tantamount to seduction, and it is ...not, to Elliot it feels more like an ambush. He's mindful of certain recent echoes, and it is perhaps telling of how spectacularly good he is at hypocrisy that somehow Sage making tea and setting him down to discuss his lifelong not-just-moodswings reads differently. Not an ambush, just care. But if he dwells on that long enough he'll put this off, and holding back words rarely crops up among Elliot's many-splendored problems. Analytical as ever he reflects maybe they've just never had the time before - at home their lives are so marked by the immediate reality of hovering death that discussing as much was like discussing an event rescheduled for rain. Dammit, Seth was ripped apart by zombies, now we'll have to find someone else who can read Coptic.

...it's never really like that, except when it is. But even that's only at Elliot's most blackly macabre, and this is another reason why 'try not to die' as a precept sounds so--terrifying, because he knows what it looks like not to try. Don't jump in front of the bullet, but don't try to dodge, either. On this auspicious note the mixture at hand comes to its desired melting point, but fortunately Elliot is perfectly capable of woolgathering and virtually any other activity at the same time. He lids and transfers the pot for cooling purposes and otherwise ...putters, which beats lurking as an activity. Or so one hopes.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Sage spends more time at the Deities' offices than he first expected he would, between paperwork and orientation, but he told Elliot he didn't know exactly when he'd be back before he left, so it's in only a mild rush that he enters the apartment, tucking his key back into his pocket and smiling beatifically at Elliot as he toes out of the shoes he wore to work--he's going to have to wear shoes every day for six weeks, but it's tolerable.

"Kian will be here in the morning, they said--you're making hot chocolate." Most people would phrase that as an up-pitch, but Sage just states the evidently pleasing fact of the matter as he all but glides from the doorway to embrace Elliot tightly, tucking his face into Elliot's chest and breathing deep of the mixed atmosphere of roses, ginger, chocolate, and--the best part, in his opinion--Elliot.

"I love you." There is a general suspicion in the world that repeating that phrase often in a relationship makes it reflexive and routine, but with Sage, like words of thanks and praise, he's always wholly mindful of its meaning, and he says it often like he often demonstrates it in other ways. A bit devoted, to quote a reputable and correct source.

Elliot thinks the deities drive a fairly capricious bargain, but - that doesn't really change his perspective on godlike beings in general, and he puts that aside in favor of being warmed much more effectively than any of his own efforts by Sage's obvious pleasure at them, which ...is sort of the point. "Scalding, currently - your sense of timing is sublime in that way--" because it provides a window for feathery hair petting? yes, "--and I love you, too. You prevailed against the necessary evil of signature in triplicate?"

He is a university professor, he knows from paperwork. Also, he has never lived with a pet more involved than the cycling succession of iguanas, so this will be a new experience, to say the least, but no one is in a better position to know how much Sage misses those dogs, so it wasn't like he was going to put his foot down there. Although he did quietly (trollingly) purchase about twenty of those sticky sheet roller things, because ...seventy percent of his clothing is black.

But that's in the abstract, currently he tucks Sage a little tighter into him and strokes his back in long sweeps; it's been almost a week since the Great Maze Adventure, and the increase in Elliot's tendency to do things like wake up for no reason and listen to Sage breathe for a while or thumb his wrists to remind himself of the thrumming pulse points there could easily have gone unremarked in the usual storm of affection plus the reestablishment of a semi-regular schedule on Elliot's part, but it's still been there. "And--Kian is the one who bites my shoes?"

Troll.

Sage has noticed, in the way he notices the rhythm and cycles of everything Elliot does, but what he's noticed--of the things he's been awake to notice--hasn't struck him as more remarkable than a sign of worry he's tried to assuage without bringing attention to it. The chalice of blood he gave as tribute was the most he'd bled all week, and while it wasn't a negligible quantity (as that would have defeated the purpose of making the offering at all) it was what a typical morning on the farm would have looked like back in their world, voluntary or not. So it's improvement, and since he half-thinks, when he even goes so far as to try to imagine specific cause in the miasma of things Elliot has to worry about as much as Sage has his own comparable cloud, that's what Elliot is looking for, that's what he's trying to put out there for him to see.

"One time. And she's still sorry. She won't do it again, I promise. So did she." He doesn't reflect on that long now as he tips his head back, snuggling into the increased support of Elliot's arms as he stays lit subtly by this elation--he remembers the nights before his mother would come home from a trip or his brother back from boarding school almost like this feeling, the anticipation of seeing his much-loved family again, with an extra surprise in store for next week that he currently has no idea how he's going to keep to himself.

"This secretary put X's next to where I had to sign. No blood ink. It was fine." He takes a breath, flattening his hands on Elliot's back, and...just keeps smiling. "And I think I can work another job for money too. So we can feed them. But I wanted to ask you first before I thought about it, it'd be--more time away."

"I'd manage," intones Elliot gravely, freeing up one hand to run the backs of his knuckles along Sage's cheekbone, as he is basically compelled when his features are illuminated like this. As far as he knows there he's being truthful and not just putting on a brave face; up until fairly recently he's chosen solitude the vast majority of the time, seeking out aloneness rather than having had it imposed on him and therefore becoming accustomed by necessity. And the thing is that the ticking currently bothers him less than it should, for that reason; although its initial presence had grated on his nerves it's almost soothing now.

He ...needs to make more friends. But all things in time, and that time is not tonight. "We aren't exactly bound for destitution regardless, but you'd know better than me the financial perils incurred by housing the harbingers of Ragnarok. For the record I'll be certain to impart they weren't my favorites, lest I be subject to enormous liquid sorrow for the rest of my days." Puppy eyes. "From one or the both of you," he teases, fondly, and it can pretty much be surmised that no matter how effective Kian's wibbling obular majesty might be, Sage's is uh, more so. "In summary I suppose my thoughts are that I imagine it to be fairly obvious I find your presence when I come home appealing, but we've done all right so far. And gods know in Chicago it's not absence via vocation that occupies the most of our respective time."

Witchery isn't a job, it's an adventure! Uh. Right, anyway, Elliot disentangles briefly to judge that his culinary marvels have cooled to a point where no one will lose the roof of his mouth, and fusses around with mugs and pouring. "Do you think you can clear your evening, however? Unless you need to spend the night personally shredding reams of newspaper--do dogs nest?"

Just. Levity.

"In six weeks I'll get a job during the day," Sage says, with perhaps surprisingly confidence for someone who hasn't had a steady, 'normal' form of work with the entire production of a paycheck and regular hours since his sixteenth summer--and he left that after two weeks because between it and volunteering he was rarely home, which interfered with the summer plans of quite a few people. But he's still flushed with the success of the deal he struck today, and for a while that glow will linger on all of his plans, at least until the first stumble reminds him that he is still frequently and painfully limited by a whole host of things. That's not present in this moment, and that's at least one of the advantages of being a creature of the now: he can sit at the kitchenette table and wait for Elliot to bring him this bounty of hot chocolate without casting his mind out to worry about anything else.

"I'll tell her, and yeah. I don't have plans. Even for nests." So he's still smiling, propping his chin in one hand and watching Elliot go about this tiny domestic tasks with complete enthrallment, his eyes crinkling at the corners in his amusement at these spurious allegations about the sleeping habits of puppies. (A puppy still big enough to sprawl full bodied over most of Sage when they play, it should be noted.) "What do you want to do?"

"Talk," responds Elliot with a decisiveness both gentle and deliberate, proving that he can be succinct at least ...one time out of a hundred when opening his mouth. This is accompanied by indeed bringing mugs over to the table, but without much flourish; their presence is not intended to distract or gloss over what Elliot wants to talk about, but make it easier. In theory, which goes to show that far from all rhetoric is verbal, and he could tell himself he's not employing that kind of strategy here, but that's the way he thinks; whether or not it's justifiable - or needs to be justified - is ultimately not up to him. He settles his absurdly long legs under the table - where brushing knees is as much just inevitable as for the sake of mutual closeness - and loops the fingers of one hand through Sage's over its surface, putting the idea of 'beverages' somewhere down under the immediate reach of his thoughts basically instantly. He has this terrible habit of neglecting consumables at hand, and usually that is because they are an affair he is prone to talk through when in company, and when he's alone he reads while he eats. How he manages to sustain a frame as broad and tall as he is remains a question for the ages.

Although the obvious answer is 'badly,' but moving on. "I do realize that roughly approximates that I'd also prefer the sun come up tomorrow morning, but--I should prioritize before any other matter my observations from the week previous." This definitely fits under the umbrella of much easier to approach, so beginning as follows could be rhetorical too but isn't, Elliot just means what he says. "To denote said interim as an extraordinarily challenging creature would be to artfully understate, yet you've achieved so much, and I wonder if you've had time to think on that, or that I'm proud of you. In case I haven't been clear, I have--noticed. You've been working."

He will just let that rest, beaming in his subdued and arched brow way.

Edited 2011-01-07 22:27 (UTC)

Sage hides his face behind his untangled hand, ducking his head down as a new warmth suffuses his smile; when he drops his hand and looks up again he's still half-shaded by his lashes, shy as per usual in the face of praise.

"I have," he affirms, squeezing Elliot's hand and shifting his legs underneath the table to hook their ankles together like the clasp of a jacket, lifting Elliot's hand to his mouth to press a kiss to it before resettling them on the table. "Is that what you want to talk about?"

Sage has the inkling that it's not, at least not in the whole, because Elliot inferred as much, and furthermore because that simple fact that Elliot says he's proud of him is the best thing Sage can imagine in that vein (a joke he can make on his own after Elliot did it the first time) of discussion, so he's content with that. The idea that a positive opening like this is a learned skill doesn't occur to him, even though last week he started the same way, albeit with less finesse--he doesn't think that way even when he does, however clumsily, employ a much less polished version of the skills he admires in Elliot's speech but still often doesn't recognize unless Elliot deliberately points them out. It maybe doesn't mean much, because what Elliot is doing would be effective either way, but it does mean Sage doesn't see where this could be going - he just trusts, as ever with Elliot, that it's safe.

"In part," Elliot confirms, which is truthful even if only in the so declared vocalized portion, as it's just as important to acknowledge that he isn't taking for granted - among everything else that's gone on this week - the dedicated lack of uh, arterial geysers.

"But don't rush me when I'm complimenting you." His expression hikes into a lopsided arched grin, the tandem bumping of knees and returned pressure of his fingers testament to the presence of no real chiding whatever. "I assemble these in meticulous precision during the long dry hours of my commute, it would be a shame not to employ them to the fullest. Additionally, since neither of us is pressed to rush off at once," which is a wonder mostly induced by the City, "we have time. Unless the suspense is simply too much for you to bear," he continues teasing, this time with lashes winging down over the rim of his mug in fully conscious tangible cuing.

It's notable that safety is exactly what Elliot is trying to establish; if Sage cuts right to the heart of a thing from out of that dark fear fed ocean, that time is too short to communicate in any other way, by dint of shared awareness Elliot can't avoid - and has sometimes dived headlong into - knowing that possibility exists, he just doesn't want to encourage it.

Edited 2011-01-08 23:27 (UTC)

"It's not that hard, I just--stop." Sage says, with a lopsided shrug held down on one side by a reluctance to move his hand--despite not being truly ambidextrous he's good enough at off-hand use to manage all the complexity of a mug of hot chocolate without untangling their fingers, so he does. He's meanwhile oversimplifying how hard it actually has been to avoid those gushes of gore he's used to applying to everything, but not so much deliberately as by reflex: it's not, technically, physically hard not to cut into himself, not like he has to pin his hands down to keep them from picking up knives, but he doesn't quite connect the way he's felt as bloated as a tick on the edge of bursting all week with this resolution being difficult to keep. What matters is that he is keeping it, and he's happy with that: he expects the feeling will pass on its own as he gets used to not being almost always bled out to one degree or another, and there are times when he feels the new vitality he has like bright fluttering wings more strongly than he feels the dark and clotting heaviness of its source.

"But I can wait. This is really good." He sets his mug down and licks the film of hot chocolate left above and on his lips away with a sweep of the pink tip of his tongue, a movement maybe not meant to be provocative but also not meant not to be, per se.

Elliot ...watches this through lidded eyes, because while there are other issues at hand that does not mean he does not have blood still flitting wildly around in his veins. But as they are in fact speaking of blood, in a totally different capacity, he hikes an eyebrow again and takes his hand back briefly to steeple his fingers together, which due to the fact that Sage has met Elliot ever will be indicative of his gearing up for gods know what - or it may be obvious, given Elliot's inclinations toward the analytical, and how he does view this as something slightly more involved than 'not that hard.' "Thank you, my feeling is that as a ploy for your attention it ought at least to be palatable."

So he's casting his own actions in a different light there, but never mind, they aren't talking about him. Rather than re-appropriate Sage's hand he carefully unhooks their ankles and shifts out from behind the table to cross around its relatively small circumference and settle both hands on Sage's shoulders, looking seriously at him from this height before it strikes him as ill-fitting and he sinks to his knees instead, leaning with one arm on Sage's leg and palming his cheek with the other hand. "There is no 'just stopping' a thing you've done daily for nearly eight years. I asked you for this, and I don't reiterate in the hope of incurring intense welling resentment on your part or to instill the idea that you should be suffering in some way, but--the simple fact of an effort not synonymous with agony doesn't mean that it isn't hard, or that it doesn't mean a great deal to me."

Speaking of ways of getting Sage's attention, touch has historically been one of the most successful ways of doing that: you could say Topher's name five times before he'd realize you were trying to talk to him, but brush your hand over his and he'd suddenly be tuned in. Sage was already paying attention, in this case, but when Elliot comes around to put his hands on his shoulders he catches and locks the whole intensity of Sage's ability to focus--which varies, and it's worth noting that if someone with a shadow and any other name adopted that posture Sage would have probably knocked his chair over in pulling away. With Elliot, there's familiarity and a large missing piece of his triggers that means that doesn't happen, especially after he goes to his knees. Sage leans forward and slips his arms inside of the span of Elliot's, interlinking his hands behind Elliot's neck and resting his forearms lightly on top of the lean but present muscularity of Elliot's upper arms, bringing their faces into close proximity as Sage tips his face towards Elliot's cradling hand.

"I mean I--don't mind. I'll get better. You know I'd do anything you asked me to?" He brushes his mouth over the corner of Elliot's in a quick but gentle dive, and lingers to breath across Elliot's cheek as he nuzzles him in reassurance before he pulls back far enough for renewed eye contact. "As long as--it's not the hard kind of math. Or something else that I wouldn't want to do. You just don't ask me to do those things."

It's half a joke, as denoted by 'the hard kind of math', but even with the rarity of how often Sage talks about his prior relationships--romantic or otherwise--there's probably some awareness on Elliot's part the qualification and boundary setting is something Sage had to teach himself to do. He's serious about that, but equally heartfelt when he says Elliot doesn't ask him to do things that wouldn't be good for him--and if Elliot did ask for something like that, for any of dozens of innocent reasons, he'd understand if Sage said no.

"It's felt good. Healthier. This is a good idea and I'll keep doing it. For both of us." He smiles, a tad crookedly. "And it's good, the hot chocolate. Thank you."

Because Elliot hasn't done this since Sage came in the door and its lack obviously presents an oversight, he curls his fingers into the soft hair at the nape of Sage's neck and presses up as his spine allows to kiss him extensively on that note, open mouthed to contrast the faintly constricted skein winding in his throat - he puts these requests forward with confidence, but it certainly doesn't hurt to hear that what he asks hasn't caused undue strain, or even feels good along with the obvious health benefits of not constantly ebbing gashes. His tendency to push lightly below surface remarks aside, he has no reason or inclination to assume this is anything other than true, so Sage is thoroughly welcome, as ever.

"Were you besieged by complications so petty as those the weather can inflict it would be more appropriate, but," he straightens back enough to shrug his resting shoulder, "call it principle. You're welcome, and I am--aware, accordingly I endeavor to be aware of what I ask, hence the litany of inquiry and dearth of endomorphism." ...never mind what endomorphisms are, although Elliot of course thinks the concept is just beautiful, like marrying math and topography. He's ridiculous.

More relevantly, the awareness he does have darkens his eyes for a second, and the palm he kept cupped on Sage's cheek curls into the long brush of his thumb from the corner of Sage's mouth outwards. "That's what isn't hard, from my vaulted and implicitly objective perspective - at least it ought not to be, for Ma'at's sake." He doesn't get less subtle than that, and given the way the ancient Egyptians threw the responsibilities of their deities around like the snow they ...didn't have, he could be choosing at random, but is not. Which neatly implies everything about hearts and lead and unfavorable weighings therein when it comes to the prior connections Sage rarely mentions. "But we'll see, I shouldn't assume as much on my own behalf."

Given the immediate future and everything. Now he just has to get off of the floor! Creak, creak.

Edited 2011-01-09 11:24 (UTC)

Sage fills their kiss with a soft, lilting murmur of pleasure, meeting Elliot's open mouth with the skimming exploration of his tongue and the gentle edges of his teeth thrown in for spice: he's getting good at kissing Elliot, specifically, specializing in the last person he ever intends to kiss with vigor and a singular focus that might unnerve anyone...not Elliot, but of course the fact that this is Elliot is the whole point of the endeavor. He stays peacefully in the curve of Elliot's hand, listening to him speak with the lightly clouded eyes Elliot so often gives him after they kiss, like catching storms.

"I said it." Sage slips his arms underneath Elliot's to help him to his feet, first with hands at his back that slide easily into hands at his waist, while Sage stands in front of him looking up with undisguised admiration--for a whole wide series of things, but in this particular moment for his thoughtfulness.

"Do you want to go to the living room with these?" He tilts his head at the mugs besides them, evidently still not needing...any prompting at all to want to relocate to softer, warmer positions that allow for more touching, although they're very good at figuring out ways to turn a kitchen table into less of a barrier and more of a structural feature of their entwining.

Edited 2011-01-09 22:10 (UTC)

Once his feet are firmly under him again Elliot pushes back his hair and grimaces - at his skeletal structure, not Sage, ideally made obvious by how his expression is directed somewhere ceilingward in the affect often adopted by persons conveying as much when lacking a mirror. "That you did, and until evidence proves otherwise I have the luxury of taking you at your word. Fuck's sake," he adds ...fervently, "remind me the next time I attempt a romantic gesture the difficulties posed therein for an octogenarian; if there is a next time--" there will be, at least for romantic gestures, "I'll boost you onto the countertop."

So that's ...innuendo-laden, which Elliot considers for a second and leaves as is, the corner of his mouth tilting into exactly the appropriate countenance before he acknowledges the uh, imminently more practical idea that is the living room. "Should I entertain you with some fastidious pretense about upholstery? I could, one assumes such picayune apprehension befits my overall deportment--mmn, on second thought I can't summon the necessary effort when I'd never convince you anyway."

Probably the only thing he would succeed in there is convincing Sage that an alien had stolen his body. The same kind of alien who freaks out at feet on a coffee table, which ...fine, usually is behavior Elliot avoids, but cuddling frankly supersedes the usual rules of decorum. Also, the theoretical coffee table would have to be about ten feet away from the couch--shutting up about furniture now; Elliot will just kiss Sage briefly ('briefly') again and adjourn to the living room to locate coasters.

....still Elliot. Not an alien.

"Any counter," Sage says, his smile tipping playful--and that skimming brush of his hand across Elliot's lower back, and then even lower, is in the same stream of innuendo-that-is-barely-innuendo. He collects both of their mugs as he follows Elliot to the living room, and gingerly sets them down on the coasters Elliot so diligently rustled up to protect the coffee table from unfortunate rings. That accomplished, Sage sits - or rather sprawls, comfortably, like a great cat sunning itself - on the couch, smiling up at Elliot.

"I could do things. For your knees. You know that." Magically and otherwise, since so much of the Verbena ethos doesn't draw a wide distinction between forms of healing and care: the categories spill over and into one another, endlessly messy and living. He tilts his head without expanding further on that simple offer and holds his hands up to invite Elliot's increased nearness to him, still smiling.

Edited 2011-01-09 22:59 (UTC)

"Any surface," amends Elliot airily, so at this point 'innuendo' probably only applies to like ...Victorians. ~~Like Elliot!~~ He sits initially on the edge of the couch, twisting to look back at Sage in some quietude after that, suggesting - only slightly erroneously - that he is devoting a lot of time to thinking about his knees before shifting so that his spine aligns with the back of the couch, taking up Sage's proffered hands with the intent of just drawing his entire sprawling self into Elliot's lap, if Sage may be so coaxed. In which case - or otherwise, Sage can settle himself as he will - once increased nearness has been accomplished, Elliot returns to the topic at hand, segue drifting on the periphery.

"My inchoate impulse was some--half-frivolity roughly orbiting the idea that I have no time; it occurred to me in the offing that's barely applicable to our present surroundings. Aside from the odd curse and necessity of composing an entire new curriculum--" and don't think he isn't hacked off by that, "I appear to be made of nothing but. Although gods know if I let you anywhere near my knees next you'll want to start on my spine, and my shoulders, and I'll wake up some morning under the absurd impression that I'm in my mid-twenties. With what complaints will I indulge myself then, I ask you?"

He will find something, surely. Probably starting with grammar. Segueing gently, and with as much full-body entangling as possible: "There's no good answer to that. But if you're proposing to attend my physiological wreckage with any approach more subtle than an Exacto knife, you must be aware that is an investment of significant time - and here ends the suspenseful portion of the evening - what concerns me is the likelihood that you'll cling to the mortal plane for as long as it takes to do as much. For all that immediate peril seems to be in relatively short supply here, I note it appears to find you with expedience."

It's lightly phrased, and the curlicue quirk of his lips marks a genuine smile, but the ...absolute terror cutting the warm, dark color of his eyes in ice-rimmed striation is real, too.

Edited 2011-01-09 23:48 (UTC)

Sage recomposes himself in Elliot's lap, where he'd had the perhaps less than hidden intent of ending up all along, his knees on either side of Elliot and denting the cushions of the back of the couch in his efforts to be as close and face-to-face with Elliot as he can be in this moment without pushing them off the path Elliot has been gently guiding him down to whatever is on his mind.

So he keeps listening, smiling gently through most of it with a small breath of laughter at his rhetorical question--a construction he's mildly surprised to be able to name immediately--and his hands interlocked at the back of Elliot's neck again. For once, his slowness to comprehend the last thing Elliot says isn't that he's caught on a word or somehow distracted, but the enormity of what he's expressing, and the quick breath in that marks his understanding is like a clean, sharp knife drawn to his lungs.

"Elliot--love--" words fail him briefly, there, like they tend to when he has to speak of death around Elliot, and he leans forward, curling his tongue against the roof of his mouth and subtly wide-eyed as he cups Elliot's face in both of his hands. "Why are you thinking that? I'm--getting better, you said so, you don't--why are you still worried?"

Proving something about the longterm effects of propinquity, Elliot's immediate physical response is uncannily like Sage in the mannerism it displays: he scrapes his bottom lip with the top row of his front teeth hard enough to interrupt the flow of blood in white blots that flood pink again once his expression resettles into briefly closed eyes and the turn of his cheek into Sage's palm. "I--misspoke, to say that I'm worried would function synonymously if 'concerned' were the best lexical choice, but ah--the limitations of language, in truth if there's a word for what I am I don't know it, at least not in English. If you--gods beg you indulge me here, as you possess the somewhat singular ability of rendering me utterly fumbling for words. I don't mean to rescind what I said regarding your recent effort; that remains wholly sound."

Elliot lifts his own hands here to cradle the back of Sage's head and draw him in long enough to touch their foreheads together, lashes brushing down again. When he tips back enough for eye contact he seems to have centered what he wants to say, which as Sage will be used to by now usually means some framing device. "The trouble with our first tongue is the imprecision of a language composed nearly entirely of borrowed words - the Latinate 'anguish' lends itself as such, but in a number of other languages its closest meaning is more similarly a kind of fear, if--fear can rend a person from the inside out. Angst," he almost smiles, given the modern ...ridiculous connotations there, "inner turmoil, I'm--losing my train of thought. You are getting better, Sage, you're getting so much better, but--in the maze, whatever you saw--I knew what it was to feel that."

He stops there and just...clings for a little while.

Sage often offers his best comfort in quiet (not silence, when he can hear their breath quickening and the couch shifting under their weights, and all the tone of Elliot's voice that shades and illuminates his meaning at the same time) and now isn't different: he half-rises up on his knees to pull Elliot's face to his shoulder, stroking his hair in passes he counts off by the beating of their hearts, laying kisses along Elliot's temple like he's strewing flowers across it. He doesn't quite rock him in his arms like this, but it's close, accompanied after what feels as long as a full fistful of minutes by meaningless lullaby murmurs that prelude him actually saying anything.

"I'm okay. And you're okay, and--I'm sorry." He keeps petting Elliot's hair, and now he is rocking them, however slightly, because he's at a loss as much as Elliot is and this seems like the best thing he could be doing - it's a complicated kind of pain to think that Elliot had to swallow that fear, even with Sage's efforts to protect him from it, or so his thoughts run now, and he wonders if one of the words Elliot used could resonate with this feeling.

"I don't know how to help you feel better," he says, after another space of quiet, tilting his face into Elliot's hair as he continues to smooth it in wave after dark wave. "Can you tell me? If you can think of a way."

These circumstances present another instance where English limits in all its cobbled together structure; 'funny' isn't really the word here, but it's as good as English has, whereas in German there is komisch and then the other, which is closer, if it can be said to be funny at all. Specifically: Elliot reacts in much the same way to being rocked as Sage did Elliot putting his hands on his shoulders; if it were anyone else he'd have hurled himself off of the couch to get away from that. But as things are he absorbs all of this with a relief like the first dizzying gulp of sand clotted air after a near-drowning experience, in an appropriate visual locking his arms around Sage's back with a grip that same tumbled swimmer might apply to a life preserver.

"I--yes, I'm coming to that, but don't stop what you're doing, please." He's ...ever so polite. And clingy. "It's a point I might have stated initially rather than drowning you in etymology, although one supposes you might take some comfort in the idea that you aren't the only one on this couch who struggles to form sentences on the occasion where there's little to no room for error. I understand I can hardly ask that you take up residence in an ivory tower where nothing can ever hurt you; our lives don't allow for it, and I know that as well as I know there was nothing I could have done from where I was, but--Sage, as tenuous and imperfect as connection on the Network is, it was the only one I had. If--" and here words fail him entirely, for once, his tongue still sticks like torn skin to frozen metal on this phrasing, "Eden told me you were still alive, and I knew that, but--if you weren't, I--"

He doesn't go into that, they both know what it feels like. "Not seeing wouldn't have changed anything, except that I would never have stopped looking for you."

Sage is very quiet, still, after that, so quiet it does approach a silence except for how he imagines the sound of his own heart would be a tearing if his blood were flowing fast enough to be heard. But tears heal cleaner and faster than cuts do, and he knows the heart is a muscle even when he puts these dreamy idealizations on it. Muscles are meant to be damaged, from time to time, and as long as it's the right kind they heal stronger than they were before, and that's what this hurt torn open between them will be if Sage has absolutely any say at all in how it knits together. Healing is a thing he's good at, after all.

"I was trying to protect you. I--know you know that. And it's not--an excuse. It's not. I'm so sorry." He closes his eyes and breathes deeply in the down-soft depths of Elliot's darkly rich hair before he kisses the top of his head, ceasing none of his rhythmic soothing. "I didn't think. I won't do that again. I promise."

And on that he only keeps doing what he already was in a shallower quiet, waiting as long as Elliot wants to be quiet as well, with the exception of this small and truthful postscript of a separate reassurance that he doesn't see the irony in being the one delivering: "You said everything fine. No mistakes."

Elliot's sense of irony - literary and otherwise - is as finely tuned as a seismograph, but the sliver of his smile like a warm autumnal moon has nothing to do with as much; in this midst of this he finds some previously unexamined facet of his churning insides lulled by Sage's conviction that his language is free of mistakes. "Thank you, none of this means much otherwise."

He fumbles slightly, with a sound he half-muffles in Sage's shoulder. "Comprehensibility, at least, if not perfection, but--I do know. It was done out of love, and I'm not--I want to be sure this is clear, that you know I'm not angry? I've been weighing the ramifications of what I might say, but if I were suffering some fit of temper doubtless you'd have heard about it earlier."

...levity. Which is as much a sign of anything that all of these soothing ministrations are effective, as is the soft, formless sigh in Elliot's hitched shoulders before he shifts up just as far as he needs to move to press his spine to the back of the couch again, bundling Sage to his chest with both arms looped around his shoulders; this would be patently impossible if there were less differentiation in their relative sizes and involves some adjustment regardless, but it's a sacrifice Elliot is willing to make if Sage is. He furthers this by resting his chin on the crown of Sage's head, closing his own eyes for several beats of restful, if not contented quiet after that; Sage is warm and resonantly alive, the way he always seems to burn brighter, like the only breathing body in a wax museum. "I've never--I never know what I ought to say to an apology. It's enough to promise, can we leave it at that? I trust you, and I don't--gods know I'm useless with guilt, I only--I want you safe. Or a near approximation thereof."

"We can leave it there, and I'll be safer," Sage assures Elliot, spoken directly over his heart as Sage readily folds into the security of Elliot's embrace, tucking his hands and forearms against Elliot's side as he exhales and unmistakably settles in. He rubs his cheek against Elliot's sweater and lets the knowledge that Elliot isn't angry (and he would have had a right to be, if he felt like it: anything he feels is all right with Sage, even when it's hard for him to take, but that's not the case here and he thinks he's allowed to be glad) suffuse through him like warm chocolate laced with prickling snaps of summer heat.

"You could be mad at me, if--you ever need to be. That's okay. I'm still happy you're not now." It's one of those thoughts that bears saying out loud and not taking for granted--like asking someone to stay safe in a different way, with less chance of actual bloodshed but still a thing like vines choking in the poisonous shade if left alone and not brought into the sunlight to let them grow the way they should.

"But you're right, I would know if you were mad. You shoot steam out of your ears." But then responding to levity in kind, with his bitten lip helpfully hidden by the angles they're respectively at regarding one another.

Elliot's muted laughter rumbles through his chest like the kind of storm that will wear itself out in the clouds before rain can fall, fractured tension blunted at the edges. "I transmute kinetic energy into a living advertisement for fabric softener, it's hardly the same principle. Although if I extend the metaphor any further we can't avoid slotting you into the position of that--doe-eyed bear creature, I've no idea how it's called."

Snuggle Bear. That's right. (Elliot totally knows that.) He resettles slightly to tug one of Sage's hands free, curling it in the much larger frame of his own to kiss Sage's fingertips, then his knuckles and finally the soft, fragile skin over the veins at the pulse point in his wrist. "That aside, if I need to be you may rest assured it won't sit for a week. It--festers that way," he unknowingly paraphrases narrative, "I've had the experience, I don't want to have it with you. Not that you'd set fire to my book collection, in any case, it just doesn't serve either of us. Or so I feel, but then I do need a therapist."

Levity. "May I ask what you were thinking? If you recall, not--only on that particular occasion, I think--this may not be the first instance of that kind."

"Sunshine Bear?" Sage lifts his head from Elliot's chest laughing quietly to watch Elliot trace his hand so delicately; it's one of those instances where his memory blends two similar but distinct things together to form a whole where what he has otherwise is incomplete, and somewhere between static he got to lightning and then to a blue bear with a storm cloud on his chest, and associations with Elliot and matching shape the ways he recollects things. On it's own it's not significant, and certainly not different on the surface from what almost everyone else does with their memories.

On the more solemn tone that comes up, however, his hand curls even more inside of Elliot's own, his smile fading into a neutral line as he tips his head and keeps his shaded and quiet eyes on the places where their fingers touch.

"I wasn't thinking a lot. I just--didn't want you to see. If anything happened. I didn't think you'd want to--hurt." He rests his head back against Elliot's chest, as if it's suddenly become too heavy to hold up, and he doesn't speak for long enough that it seems like he might just be done talking before he starts up again with one softly-spoken question: "Do you remember when we were little?"

This is, for better or worse depending on interpretation of the context Elliot doesn't have, one of those instances where he chooses not to correct specificity of memory; it's not particularly important that Sage differentiate between two smiling lovely stuffed bears when the connotations of joy and comfort remain roughly the same, at least in principle when Elliot didn't correlate as much even as a child. There was no face on the sun any more than there was a man on the moon; his capacity for that kind of figurative imagination was stunted by literal magical thinking, as it were. He also doesn't point out that it would have hurt regardless of his wants, Sage knows that without having to infer or be told anything: again, they've both already been through the kind of unmistakable bloodless severance that can sever and cauterize arteries across continents in one heart-stopped gasp that froze solid in the lungs, a breath in that would never exhale.

Instead of any of that he wraps Sage tighter in his arms, tangling their fingers together where their hands are curled; since his memory is (as of ...now) essentially perfect, he really only needs one word to cover this, the phrasing of the question itself implying as much: "Yes."

Because he does literally remember everything, and so.

Sage is still for a while, and when he stirs it's like the wind brushing through dry leaves with a lightly scraping rustle of rise and fall, tumbling fitfully but all in one direction--that direction being closer, slipping his free hand between Elliot's shoulder blades and the back of the couch as he looks off at some point distant from either of them.

"You were always so sad. Underneath, you know? And your parents, and Brittany's, and--it was hard for you. I don't...remember them ever hugging you. Not really. And there was magic and school and..." he shifts in Elliot's arms again, not to go anywhere, but apparently just for the sake of moving. (For the sake of feeling the pliancy of his hold and letting that soothe him: no bars, no ties.) "I didn't want to make it harder. Or make you try to care about things that--didn't matter as much. So I didn't...tell you things."

And that's a concentrated burst of speech from him, and apparently enough to settle on for the moment, lightly but not entirely at ease.

Elliot makes a motion that almost seems like a shrug at first, the caul he pulls over his face whenever his parents come into the conversation, but this turns into slipping his hands under Sage's shirt with no more directional motion than there ...ever is with them, just to feel the closer comfort of skin on skin. "I wouldn't have let them if they'd tried as much, it doesn't matter."

Which is not--true, exactly, but it is for Elliot currently, and he moves on rather than let that hang in the air. "But I remember--I remember the Indian head penny." Found in some ramshackle place where children are definitely not supposed to be unsupervised but somehow get into anyway, even in cities. "We were eight - the summer Brittany moved --" he doesn't per se have to place that in context, but it's the useful kind of memory device for someone who uh, isn't Elliot, "and I suppose if asked to define why now none of us could say how it became the talisman it did, but--" he slips there, 'none' as opposed to 'both,' and doesn't go back to correct himself, breathing into Sage's hair for a second instead, "be that as it may."

The coin in question had gotten lost, somewhere between passing it amongst the three of them; one holding it one day and another the next. "That rote was the first I ever knit together on my own, I don't know if you knew that. And I'd tried before, it was--trying to learn to read all over again but learning something I already knew, only inverted and impossible to give shape until the need I felt coalesced into something living, something--already there, waiting to be found. Which is a fitting metaphor, if I may momentarily break from my own conventions. But it wasn't the coin that mattered, not even then, it was--you, you wanted it back. It meant something, that was what mattered. There's nothing in you that doesn't, and there is by the same token nothing to make me care about, I--if it comes from you, then I care already."

He smiles, lopsidedly. "Like divining, just waiting to be found."

"I remember. I was trying not to cry, but you could tell." It might be an odd thing to say limned with the fragile return of his smile, but of course the memory they're touching on has a happy ending, and that's what matters--then and now. "And then you found it and mom put it on a necklace for us."

And then what catches him is that he doesn't remember what happened to the penny after that: who ended up with it and where it went, or when they stopped passing it around, or if someone lost it where they couldn't get back from. It's like finding a sudden hole in his cheek when he passes his tongue over it, slippery in a way far from spit that gapes and splits at the pressure, and the thing he doesn't know (can never know, he thinks) is how much he forgets because people forget this kind of thing and how much was disappeared--but he's already circling the wasteland at the center, and he shies from following the thought with swiftly quelled anger that doesn't even have time to find expression in his body, let alone his voice. What matters is that the coin meant something, to all of them, and this memory is one they still share.

"I didn't know that was your first rote. But you were--always doing things like that, all your magic. I--" And he hesitates, muscles in his back tensing underneath Elliot's hands and not at all from their presence; more like Sage is getting ready to dive, but--first testing the waters, where ice and dead weeds are always waiting. "--when I woke up in the snow I wondered--if it felt the same for you. Like the world tearing open."

It's a fairly innocuous set of words, on its own, and to an outsider it'd sound like a non sequitur, but of course there's that very specific sense of waking up they both understand, and this is the most Sage has ever said about his personal experience of it.

Elliot's hands move in lightly pressured circles instinctively anyway, which implies less that the water is fine than who is the life preserver has shifted, and he'd wonder how they got here from being rocked against Sage's shoulder except that this is the way the tide works with them. "It was like lightning."

Which would be a little too pat in its aptness if it weren't simply true, and maybe as simply as Elliot has ever said, uh ...anything. "Cloud-to-ground: what the human eye perceives is the return stroke from the object about to be struck - two paths meeting in less than a millionth of a second."

The trouble there is that that's fine for oak trees, but Elliot was--a three year old, and what he doesn't go on to address because as far as he can tell it's immaterial, was that in that instance he had also felt singularly and utterly alone: he understood that this made him more like the two strangers in his house than any of the people outside of it who weren't per se comprehensible in toddlerhood but close nonetheless, and then impossibly far. He kisses Sage's hair, manner not absent, just abstracted. "Yes. It felt like that."

"You made the flowers glow for me." Sage sits back enough to smile up at Elliot, bringing their entwined hands up to caress Elliot's face. "After. It was so pretty."

'Pretty' not being a word often found in Sage's vocabulary these days unless he is talking to flowers, or trees, or any other living thing that won't speak back in a human tongue, but when Topher was three it was one of his favorite words after 'yes' and 'please-thank-you'--the latter always strung together in a slightly breathy rush, his eyes gleaming with trust and openness that had to serve for all three of them, with Elliot's wary skittishness and all the shadows layered around Brittany's. So the glowing flowers were pretty, like Elliot was (and is) pretty, with pretty hair and pretty eyes Topher labored to reproduce in the crayon picture he drew to commemorate the event.

"And we're here now." With that statement of fact, with the quiet connotations it carries in validating the things that came before now and here, Sage rises up to kiss Elliot if not dissuaded. His mouth is soft and still a little needy, slipping into the calming oasis of these types of moments.

Elliot answers this with a murmured pleading sound that shades too low to be a sigh, but--no, there's no dissuading, not even when he slips his hand free, since that just goes to cup the back of Sage's head immediately. This goes on long enough that Elliot could lose himself in its warm sun-spangled water and nearly does, a state seemingly not altered much when he pulls away just far enough to utter, "You are so pretty," from a distance of ...none at all, a turn of diction Sage can basically pride himself forever on being the catalyst of, since if that particular descriptor is rarely found in Sage's vocabulary it certainly less frequently appears in Elliot's.

"We are," he continues without moving much, and if this slips what he's actually saying in and out of kisses, well, that's not so terrible, "and I want you to stay, as long as you can. For all your fearlessness, I--that's what frightens me, if I--" and there he moves back far enough to pass his hand over his face before shifting around to take Sage gently by the upper arms; it would be so easy just to let this go when that's what would be the most comfortable if the situation were reversed, but--it's not. "I told you when I feel--far from you, it isn't because I want to be, and I know, I trust that you don't--think of leaving, that that isn't what you want, but you may--"

Another stop, and a muffled 'godsdammit' from under the hand that's found his way back to his face. "What I see is that you put things ahead of your safety--you prioritized not hurting me over that, for one, and I can't say enough that your life is worth more than that, not only to me, but intrinsically, and I--think, as loathe as I am to say it, someone better equipped than me ought to tell you that."

When Sage can no longer lace Elliot's mouth with kissing between words he mirrors Elliot's hold on his arms, albeit his hands close below Elliot's elbows and not above him, and when his one hand slips from the arm raised to Elliot's face it braces him against Elliot's shoulder as he assembles what Elliot has said into a meaning. Part of the trouble he has is simply that Sage has difficulty imagining anyone better equipped to tell him anything than Elliot is, and he has to step outside of language to get at what he's really suggesting.

"You mean a therapist?" He asks, in a rare instance of saying something aloud to help him work through what it means--he'd do it more often except he worries about sounding dense, as Elliot knows, but apparently this is hard enough to be an exception.

"Or--someone like that?" He strokes his thumb over Elliot's sweater at the crook of his elbow, worrying his lower lip as his brow creases lightly. "Elliot, I don't know. Even--even if I am more careful?"

"I won't ask you for anything you don't want to give," Elliot reiterates immediately from not so long ago, "but I speak from the vantage point of knowing there have been times--not recently," he hastens to redress, "when the bloodier aspects of the struggle for ascension have found me places from which I knew I might not return. It's a usual consequence, and hardly limited to me, only--the exceptions where I stopped thinking, stopped--considering, what will I do in the next second, and the one after that, I couldn't--it wasn't in me to care, if there ever was a next second."

He stopped making eye contact in there somewhere, focusing with fierce dark eyes on a point somewhere over Sage's shoulder. "I'm not accusing you of that, I understand the difference in intent. But for a parallel example although I never intend to wreck my car into a bridge abutment," again, not ...recently, "Sadie still won't start up until I've got on my godsdamned seatbelt. You don't--wear yours, and I don't know if starting to do that negates what made you stop in the first place. Nothing says you need to form a definite answer in this moment, but--consider it?"

A revelation like that, even quiet and made distant by Elliot's gaze going elsewhere, even if Sage could have already guessed if anyone had pressed him and he'd been inclined to answer, even if he's known with growing certainty ever since he came back--it's one thing to know and another to hear it that directly from Elliot's own mouth, like a hammer slamming into bone, and his reaction is nearly as starkly reflexive as it would be if these words were really hammers, although that's where the hypothetical similarity ends. There's nothing violent in how Sage first cups Elliot's face, paled and silent, and then casts his arms around Elliot's neck and hugs him so tightly that it has to ache in both of their bodies. He lingers there for a long time, his breathing hitching ever so subtly, and when he speaks at first it's half-muffled by Elliot's shoulder.

"I know. I know, I know, but you're--" he closes his eyes and loosens his embrace to something less approximating the grip of a vice, pressing his forehead to Elliot's shoulder in lieu of his mouth and thereby almost hiding this face entirely - and it's a little funny that with the two of them not even raised in any Abrahamic environment Sage should look so much like someone crouched in supplicant prayer, but there it is "--you are braver than me. You don't--you have no idea how much, I just--I want to get better, I--try, just--"

He makes a sound through his teeth like a curse, not in the sense of profanity so much as an assault: historically that's what curses were most often used for, by people with no other avenues to strike back at someone who they saw as having harmed them. "I can't even--listen to me, I can't even--talk to you. I can't even make fucking sense."

Elliot's corresponding embrace has the same fervor to it - he's sorry for a whole host of reasons for bringing that into the conversation, for one thing, even if it's the smallest factor in the way his longer arms wrap around Sage's back to cross forearm over forearm, leaning up to tilt his forehead into the crook of Sage's neck for as long as it takes for all of that to stagger out, like bruised steps toward a finish line that seems to ebb further and further on a shrinking horizon.

But when he raises his head his demeanor is sure, if not calm, and the hand he slips around to stroke the back of Sage's neck doesn't shake like he thought it might. For once he doesn't have a carefully structured host of reason and evidence both credible and sufficient to support an argument like a house of cards, just the oft-cited fact that Sage is good at believing him. "I am listening to you," he murmurs, the quality of his voice as even as the back and forth brush of his fingertips, slowly encouraging Sage to lift his head up (but that's all, just encouraging), "and hereby refusing to have an argument over who's the more courageous; there's no good answer to it. I'm--not a therapist, Sage, gods know, but--listen to me, I am a layperson who's taken--one one hundred level psychology course mostly to sleep through the greater part of a soft sciences credit, and I didn't even need that to understand that trying is brave, or even wanting to try. You make sense. You--consider the words that come out of your mouth before you say them, I see you pick each one with more dedication and focus and clarity than a significant number of people I see everyday, and I am surrounded by people who talk for a living, myself included. And the summation of all of that is that I promised to listen to you, and I intend to do as much, but--I'm afraid that that's all I can do, and it's--inadequate when there's so much that I don't understand."

For one of the very first times in any of their mutual history since birth, Sage is reluctant to follow Elliot's gentle coaxing: it's not safer in the dark, he knows that perfectly, but it's harder to be seen, and even if Elliot can trace the shivers rippling harshly down his spine like a burning trickle of caustic runoff he's not sure if he could meet his eyes, even if it wouldn't tell him anything except that they've started burning behind his eyelids. He cries more easily than most men do, he knows this. It's genetic as much as a holdover from his youth, and he still hates it helplessly, hates that these things stagger and tear through him even when he tries as hard as he can just to find one level to stay at. To be still, for a while.

"I can't even tell you. That's--the problem, I can't--so how could I talk to anyone else? I don't--it doesn't matter how I talk if I don't even have the words, it's--" he does lift his head, eyes still shut, and presses blindly up to the side of Elliot's face, the heat of his flushing cheek against Elliot's suddenly relatively cooler one "--I'm sorry, I'm--fuck. Fucking fuck fuck."

He clutches Elliot a little closer, if that's possible, and starts to time his breathing even if he threads those breaths through his teeth: one in, one out, counted off as slowly and steadily as he can. He thinks of matching them to the pace of Elliot's soothing, and it helps, to center himself in this most safe of homes that Elliot has built of words and body for them.

To say that Elliot is--startled by this would be a remarkable understatement, except that hasn't he had any number of neon arrows serving as prologue to this point? Their blinding bloody light arcs out into an unfathomable darkness, that's the problem, but it doesn't mean that they haven't been there, even if nothing tells him how he should react, just--carefully. So he's slow when he turns his head, and slower still when he runs a thumb under the hollows at the corner of Sage's right eye, but turn he does; even if Sage can't look back at him that's not the point, the point is that he's looking. "Sage."

There's a beat there, just--that, ragged and helpless and quiet before he starts again. "You do. And you haven't done anything wrong, nothing--nothing to be sorry for. It's--giving yourself time to find them, and I'm not going anywhere, as long as that takes, if you--can ever tell me, I'll be right here. But, Sage--sweetheart, my heart," he presses one palm over Sage's steadying heartbeat to demonstrate, "there's a right kind of doctor for this, and it's not in Egyptology."

That phrasing is ...for once not a joke of any kind. "Please. I don't--know how to help."

Edited 2011-01-12 07:41 (UTC)

Sage lets his eyes open in a slim, careful crescent--careful because when he blinks, and he does, he has to watch that the mercifully receding blur in them doesn't spill over despite his best efforts. He turns his face towards Elliot's palm, his mouth parting in the same way as he breathes through Elliot's fingers instead of through his teeth, a much softer kind of respiration as his heartbeat slows even more.

"This is helping. You help me. Okay? And I'm sorry--" his eyes flutter lightly as he catches his breath short of shivering again "--I'm just sorry. Even if I don't need to be, I am. And...I'll try, and I'll take better care of myself until--until I can see someone. I don't want to hurt you, I--love you so much."

He kisses Elliot with his eyes still open. It's a gently pressed kind of kiss, open-mouthed but openly slightly so, and he slides one hand into Elliot's hair as the other fans between his shoulders. When he parts from Elliot he smiles, and even if it looks as fragile and heavy as a bruise on a peach it's still there: "It'll be okay, Elliot."

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