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

It feels like something sacred, the breath Sleaze draws in the quiet. It feels like something to be worshiped. It will almost certainly echo for weeks (or months or years) in the chambers of Isakov’s heart. It fills him up with something he does not immediately recognize.

Gratitude, perhaps. But it feels even more profound than that.
It is not as dark as power but it is every bit as intoxicating.

It beckons him closer. Closer still until their chests are pressed flush and Isakov touches his mouth to Sleaze’s spine. Like he will curl himself around him, insulate him in the quiet, protect him from the things that plague him. As if he is capable of these things.

The most he can offer, in truth, are these brief glimpses of silence. Real or imagined, he doesn’t know which. But it doesn’t matter when Sleaze touches him in turn, calls him a miracle. It kicks a shuddering breath out of him and he withdraws then, uncurls himself from around the darker stallion.

“Tell me why it’s loud,” he murmurs into the quiet. “Let me help you.”

There is some kind of wild wonder jammed in his windpipe. Because he is a thing whose magic is born from love but this is the closest he has ever come to feeling selfless.

isakov

@[sleaze]