[SE] the feel of coldness only water brings

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

"You know," Ronin is saying to Remi from the prow of the Northaven, the Knight busy pulling off his shoes and setting them to one side, "this is apparently monsoon season." He remembers, distantly, when they had first lived in Torchline and before the region had been protected from the worst of the weather, the lashing of the rain and the endless grey haze along the beaches. "Wouldn't think it now, would you?"

Grinning over his shoulder and pulling his shirt over his head, Ronin is left in a pair of swimming shorts adorned with starfish and with the Flowerbirth sun beaming onto freckled shoulders. In the distance, of course, Starfall squats like a monster laying in wait, but the Knight is doing his best to put it firmly out of his mind today. Because today, they have towed the Northaven out into the shallows, and they are armed with nets that they might clear the Longnight debris from Torchline's waters.

"Ready?"

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

"Huh." That's right, isn't it? "Gods, to think of the days back when the weather was one of the biggest things to contend with." Laughing under his breath as he too took off his shoes (far less neatly than his counterpart), his swimming shorts had little seahorses surrounded by small hearts. Which, when you considered how male seahorses gave birth...y'know what? Nevermind.

Theatrically sliding his sunglasses from his curls onto the bridge of his nose, Remi picked up his net and posed momentarily as if he were Poseidon, before giving Ronin a nod.

"Being back in 'Northaven' had me thinking about more of the things I used to make. I wonder if there is something I could work on that would keep the waters clean." Even if it was just a bunch of nets held together that spun with the current.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

"You can argue that it still is," Ronin says with a shrug, picking up his own net and slinging it over his shoulder just in time to see his husband pose. Which, of course, prompts the Knight to slide his own sunglasses down enough to properly admire Remi in his seahorse shorts, looking as gay flamboyant as he ever has done. "If you treat the void as a sort of weather, anyway."

Preparing to vault into the (thankfully warm) water, he raises his eyebrows and grins openly to hear his husband's ideas. "If you keep that up, Flora will have you on her council," he warns. "Environmental officer, or whatnot." With a deep breath, Ronin takes the plunge and splashes into the water, surfacing a moment later and sweeping his dark hair back from his face.

"Though she'd probably just suggest that you be the thing that keeps the ocean clean," he adds.

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

Bobbing his eyebrows enough for them to peep over the rim of his sunglasses each time, the Bastion had the nerve to even purse his lips like handsome squidward some sort of model. "See something you like, good sir?" He wondered with a laugh before allowing himself to slouch.

"How dare you even suggest it." Remi says, looking thoroughly scandalized. "We both know I don't play well with others, least of all when I'm in a position of power. Besides, she can boss me around easily enough now without putting me on her council." Running a hand up the side of his face in mock agony, the Bastion waits for Ronin to surface before launching himself into the air and grasping his knees, hoping to shower the Knight with a blast of water.

"How nice that I have you to help me, then." He says when the water has settled and he's wrapped his arms around his husband's waist.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

Ronin can give Remi an itemised list, in fact, of the things he likes about his husband, but that will probably take longer than the time they've allocated to clean up the shallows, and so it will have to wait (alas). One of the things he doesn't like so much is being sprayed by a cannonball of salt water, and it's with a playful shout and a curse that he tries - unsuccessfully - to paddle away from the other man. "Maybe you play better with others now?" he suggests with a raise of his eyebrows, allowing himself to be drawn closer.

And even if that isn't true (which is very likely), Remi is correct in that Ronin is around to help. As such, he's able to grab a random shred of fabric that used to be someone's shirt as it floats by, stuffing it into his net. "Why are Torchers so unhinged at LongNight?" he says with a soft laugh. "Do they think that no one can see them because it's dark?"

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

"Ehhhh, you know what they say." Remi says before planting a wet kiss against his husband's shoulder. "Old dog, new tricks."

Parting from the Knight, the Bastion also scoops up an article of clothing—a bra, he thinks, only it's basically just string with a few sequins on it. Frowning as he holds it up for Ronin's inspection, Remi just sighs as he kicks up a glass bottle from the ground with his foot and deposits it in his net. "I honestly don't know. For the majority of the year these waters stay clean, and then at LongNight it's like they think the world is ending."

Actually though.."I wonder if it does have to do with the monsoons. If they could just leave their trash during LongNight and then let the storms wash it all away, maybe this is a relatively new issue."

Clearing his throat, Remi lifts his eyebrows as he silently forms words he doesn't quite yet say. Unfortunately, the pair have been together for too long to let this go unnoticed for long, so with a huff, the Bastion turns toward his husband. "You know..speaking of unhinged.." Great segue. "Vai had mentioned perhaps wanting to see Sunjata again, and when I thought of going to visit him, I thought gee, wouldn't it be nice if Ronin came, which led me to wonder how you'd feel if Sunjata thought the same of Hotaru.." Years had now passed between the accidental conception of his twins, and yet for all the hatchets he had seen Ronin bury, Remi knew this was one he still carried around fairly regularly.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

"I wonder how this particular dog would look wearing that?" Ronin smirks at the sight of the sequined string that Remi fishes out of the water, the Knight grinning and leaning in to smooch his husband's cheek, before reluctantly parting that they might be able to skim the waters for traysure trash. "And that's what's strange to me. Arguably Torchline's beaches are never in the dark. It's not like in the Grounds, where the world really might have ended each Longnight."

Disappearing beneath the water briefly to grab another few bottles, Ronin deposits them in his net before surfacing. "You might be right, there. Though as Hadama would likely attest, just because you don't see it any more, doesn't mean it isn't there." Gods, was the Underwater City just one big garbage pile at one point? Yeesh.

But anyway. Unhinged. Segue. Vai? Ronin tilts his head and snags some item or another as it bobs by, brows furrowed to listen to his husband. And at first it doesn't sound unhinged at all - Ronin, after all, had been able to speak to Sunjata easily enough at The Hanged Man, and with everything going on with Starfall and so on--

Ah. Right. The Hotaru of it all.

Instinctively the Knight's gaze darkens, jaw feathering until he can put a purposeful stop to it with a force of will. After what had happened to Melita at the tournament, seeing the Valkyrie hadn't been quite as horrific as he'd expected. Still, he doesn't know yet whether he'll be able to bury that particular hatchet unless it's between her shoulder blades.

"If you are asking me whether I'll be able to keep a civil tongue in my head for all of us to see Vai for a visit... the answer is of course yes," he says eventually.

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

"For all I know there is a giant current that carries it all away. Perhaps that is actually what the Isles are made out of. It would explain why they always seem to move around." Just giant floating islands of trash that some plants had somehow managed to grow upon. "But you're right, it was never like this in the Greatwood or in Stormbreak." Never in the Hollowed Grounds either, but that was likely due to the endless trauma every LongNight brought.

Knowing that there was something to be said for working out complex emotions without having to immediately share them, Remi let Ronin consider his response alone, without the intimacy of his touch. From the feathering of his husband's jaw to the way it suddenly stopped, Remi could all but guess what the Knight's reaction was going to be before he even said it: Yes, but I'll hate it.

With a number of unformed thoughts of his own bouncing around his mind, Remi continued scooping at the water as different conservation paths formed and then broke away in his mind. "Do you think you would ever want to be friends with Sunjata again? The way you were, I mean?"

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

Wrinkling his nose at that - islands made of trash, indeed - Ronin is luckily too distracted by the suddenly serious turn to the conversation to continue on that train of thought. And honestly, it's probably for the best. Instead, taking his husband's lead in that they do not always have to touch and immediately share their flood of thoughts and emotions, especially when they are so complex, the Knight also continues to litter pick his way through the shallows until Remi's question hits the air.

"Not the way we were, I don't think." He shakes his head. "That put our marriage at risk, and I wouldn't ever put myself in that kind of position again." The whys and wherefores no longer matter; they might have been different men back then, and the situation might have been different too, and context is always important, but the result had been the same. Nearly losing Remi is not a performance Ronin is willing to repeat.

"But just... being able to hold a conversation again, or have a beer or two when the world isn't falling apart?" He snorts. "Yeah, that'd probably be nice."

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

"Do you really think we'd ever end up in a position like that again?" Remi wonders, and even as he asks, he isn't sure that he knows the answer either. On the one hand, he wants to say that they've both grown and changed so much that to think he'd find himself on the opposite side of such a stark issue seemed laughable. Even so, it's with a regrettable but entirely palpable clenching of his stomach that he recalls just how he'd felt when his husband had walked away from him to stand at Sunjata's side.

Nodding, the situation Ronin was describing certainly being one he could wrap his mind around, had the Bastion sighing softly. "And if Hotaru comes up as she surely will?" Lifting his eyebrows softly, Remi is trying very hard to tred around the line of you forgave me, why can't you forgive her if only because he already knows Ronin's answer: because I don't love her. Or perhaps worse still: I haven't forgiven you all the way.

"I'm not sure what sort of friendship you could have with him that's anything other than superficial if the thing he loves most in the world causes you so much anger." He continues softly, thinking that something very similar might apply to Ronin's relationship with Flora as well if he wasn't careful.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

"No, I don't think we would," Ronin says honestly, "but that is in large part because I would never put us in that sort of position again to begin with." Hindsight is 20/20, so they say, and Ronin would never again make the series of decisions that would have him stepping away from Remi to stand with Sunjata. 

But that isn't really what they're talking about here, and his hands still in the water as the things Remi doesn't say - doesn't have to, because his husband already knows Ronin is likely thinking them - stagnate in the air between them. With furrowed brows and his gaze dropping away from his husband, it's clear that whatever anger Ronin still balls up in his chest about the situation, it has been nursed and fed enough that the origin no longer really matters.

It's toxic, and yet he continues to feed it, even unintentionally. "I am suddenly feeling as though I am on trial," he admits softly, without anger but with an undeniable tension in the set of his shoulders.

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

Wanting very much to reach out and draw the Knight near, for the first time a long while the Bastion didn't know if what his husband needed or wanted, was space or the responsibility of simply having all he felt brought to light. Glancing down into the water, Remi bit at the inside of his cheek wondering what Ronin might say to him, were their roles reversed.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel that way." Remi says, holding out his hand beneath the water for the Knight to either take or merely acknowledge. "Nor did I mean to spring it on you. I've been thinking about it since I saw Vai and I maybe should have thought about how to bring this up to you a bit more tactfully." It's an easy admission; for all the flaws that Remi had once vehemently denied having, this was certainly not one.

"We just...when it happened we never really talked about it, understandably. And now all these years later..." For all that the restoration of Vanya's place in Mort's halls and Ronin's ascension to White Knight had done for him, there was perhaps just this one last chip on his shoulder that they'd always been too busy fighting for the safety of their children or the entire world, to fill in. "..I just hate seeing you upset. If you want to drop it, there's plenty more garbage for us to sift through."

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

you've long seen your downfall, spelled out in another's bones

Ronin hesitates before taking his husband's hand, but it's not because he doesn't want to; for all that Remi hates seeing him upset, the Knight is equally ashamed to show the other man the dark shadow he still casts at times. Especially when said shadow really ought to have been blotted out a long while ago, by the sands of time or the love he holds for the daughter he'd never known he'd have, or the way the world has kept turning despite all else.

Eventually, of course Ronin lets his fingers slip into the Bastion's, stepping in to close the distance between them and tilt his chin to rest it on Remi's shoulder. "We don't have to drop it," he says softly, "and I'm sorry I still feel this way. I wish I knew what to say to make it better. I..." Really, he knows the answer, because the questions Ronin has are not for Remi at all; they're for Hotaru.

"How do you decide to open a conversation like this after all these years? Oh, hey Hotaru, it's been a while. Just real quick, how come you decided to move to the Greatwood after my husband knocked you up? If it wasn't to rub it in my face, was it just for shits and giggles?"

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

& my heart ran away with me

Clasping the Knight's hand tightly in his own, Remi couldn't have realized that he'd been holding his breath in anticipation until it left his lips in a shivery little sigh. He'd have understood, of course, if Ronin needed to work through things on his own, but gods if the radiance of the Bastion's emotions weren't suddenly sun-bright for their embrace.

"Don't be sorry." Remi whispers, his net utterly forgotten in lieu of wrapping his arms around his husband. Cupping small palm fulls of water and letting them trickle down the muscles of his husband's back, Remi leaned his head softly against the Knight's. "I think maybe it might help to get a bit of that out of your system before hand." The Bastion councils, his voice soft, his words carefully chosen. The line between sounding as if he was defending Hotaru and acting as a light for the shadowed sting of his husband's feelings was silken-thin, and gods but Remi had never had good balance.

"Because were you to put it to her like that, I think she'd only say that she did it partially for you." Where else was Hotaru to raise Remi's twins, if not the place the then-Lullaby lived? Anywhere save for the Greatwood would only see the Bastion away from home too often; away from Ronin too often.

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!