we can't make any promises now

Watching Loren flinch backwards, hiding the skin he'd deigned to reveal with such swiftness made the alchemist internally tremble with remorse. It wasn't that he'd wanted to touch the librarian's arms in so many words, nor that he wanted the skin to remain bare, so much as it was merely one step forward and two back. Then again, had he remembered anything of their intertwined past, he'd have been reassured that such had been common place with them anyhow. "Well, you are meant to be quite the clever man." Remi said, tone light and accent easy as he tried to leave behind the awkwardness his hands had caused. Just as the alchemist was about to offer some boyish and breezy hand wave—Ahh just another pact with a god I likely cannot keep. What else is new—the mention of Ronin immediately pulled the smile from his lips. Gravity seemed to pull the levity from his expression, rendering the alchemist entirely solemn and earnest as he nodded. For a slow moment, Remi's eyes searched Loren's face, the corners creasing inwards as his shattered stare narrowed. I know about Ronin. As my husband? As the king? As a man dying? "Mmmm." Remi hummed, a low and discordant note. "We have been told Vi has a plan, so..." He added rather lamely, his downcast eyes and hollow voice suggesting the alchemist wasn't holding out hope for divine intervention. Drawing in a breath through lips slightly parted, the alchemist again thoroughly roamed over Loren's face, his words reverberating as both a question, a warning, a threat. Within arms reach now as necessitated by his magic, Remi blinked uncertainly, the blue of Loren's eyes quite clear now amidst the de-saturated tones the alchemist's strange vision painted him in. He suddenly both did and didn't want to close his eyes; not seeing might still some of his anxiety at having not just someone, but Loren so near, his fingers on Remi's face, but it would also open up a world of other worries. If the Launceleyn ever did care for the alchemist, did he now? Did he want him still? Would he try? And so, trembling only slightly as the mage's glowing fingers pressed against his temples, Remi indeed kept his eyes open, fixed on Loren's. Feathers fluttered in his curls while at the same time, a claw grew from one of the alchemist's fingers and was pressed deeply into his palm hard enough to draw blood. It was on the prickle of pain he focused, for anything else would lead to madness. REMI Loving you was sunshine, but then it poured & I lost so much more than my senses 'Cause loving you had consequences