you're paralyzing me, any

[isakov]

throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

How strange it is to feel so empty when he is not touching him. When he is not curled sweetly around him. When he is not softly breathing the dark things he swears he can smell of Sleaze’s skin. It makes him tremble, just enough to disturb the surface of the water, and he makes no effort to hide it.

He wants Sleaze to see it. He wants to say, ‘look what you have done to me, isn’t it remarkable?’ But he says nothing and listens instead. Listens with some breathless wonder and imagines what it might be like to die. Or, even more than that, to die and then to come back.

He studies the stallion’s dark face and cannot ignore the fish hook in his chest. He cannot ignore the mournful sound his heart makes and closes up the distance between them again, ducks his star-dappled head to lay it against Sleaze’s shoulder. Closes his eyes and releases a long, shuddering breath, as if the gesture could bring either of them any comfort.

He has never had his motives questioned, Isakov. And he blinks open those pale gold eyes but does not lift his head. It stings somewhere deep in his chest but he will not let it turn him cold.

“Because you are kind,” he murmurs, “because you are good. I can smell it on your skin.”

isakov

@[sleaze]

[sleaze]

I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife

He considers the answer. Sleaze does not think himself particularly good, or kind. He certainly isn’t cruel – to anyone but himself, at least – but kind? He has never held close friends, has never served a kingdom, has never left any kind of legacy that might be called good. Or any kind of legacy at all. For what could he be remembered for? A boy who had been dragged into another reality and emerged changed with another lifetime grasping at his throat?
No. When he goes, he does not think he will be remembered.

“You’re kind to say such things,” he says, and he lets his muzzle drift across him. He doesn’t know what this is, what any of it is, but it feels good in a way Sleaze hadn’t known existed. He doesn’t know if it’s the boy himself or the quiet he brings, or maybe both, maybe both things are wrapped so intangibly in one another that Sleaze cannot untangle them.
“I didn’t know miracles such as you existed,” he says. It’s heavy, to say this, but he can breath for the first time in so long and he uses this breath to gush, “I had forgotten, what the quiet is like.”
He doesn’t ask his next thought - what will happen when you leave?
Because they do leave. His father taught him that. They all leave.

Sleaze

@[isakov]

[isakov]

throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

He does not argue.
Isakov knows that he is not kind. He knows that his motives are selfish. He wants to silence the clamor in Sleaze’s head simply to soothe his own heart. Because the heart aches for the dark stallion. Aches to think that there is some chaos that Sleaze cannot escape.

He wants to be the calm in all that storm for his own benefit. So that the heart will not twinge and spasm to think of the way Sleaze suffers.

It is enough, for now, to simply touch and be touched by him. But for how long will this be enough, Isakov wonders. How long before he craves something deeper. Something more profound. The quiet consumes them, drowns out the sounds of the river and the distant din of conversation until all he can hear is Sleaze’s breath, the words he murmurs into the charged air between them.

How it thrills the boy to be called a miracle. How it thrills him to hear the beat of the dark stallion’s heart and know that he has created the calm. He is to thank for it. He has brought him a glimpse of peace. He has done this.

He lays his star-strewn head against Sleaze’s dark side and it is only a moment before they are breathing in time.

“It will be here for you,” he murmurs, but what he means to say is I will be here for you, “whenever you need it.” He draws back his head then, skims his mouth across Sleaze’s forehead, lingers there for the space of a breath. “Find me and I will give it to you.”

isakov

@[sleaze]