we can't make any promises now

The tears the alchemist had cried. The hours spent trying to replicate the blue of Loren's eyes, only to find himself awash in a sea of paint that could never recreate what it was he had once seen there. The pieces of himself he'd given up for Loren and the parts he'd opened to him. The Launceleyn had once been the biggest part of his life, and his absence the most crushing. While it wasn't true that Remi had moved on so much as he'd been irrevocably denied closure, things were different now. Something it seemed both men were and simultaneously were not acknowledging. "Loren, I...I only know what it is like on this side. Only what it is to know some of my past, but not all. To feel..." Not wanting to break his gaze from Loren, fearing that it would give the other man discourse to look away as well and disengage, Remi merely sighed and settled into the discomfort. "...nothing close to what I should." Feathers appeared in his hair, but Remi simply let them. "Pretending it is fine, does not make it so." He continued in a voice rife with experience. Sam after all, had simply pushed on like the pair could simply fall in love again after what had happened. That it could all just be fast-tracked to how it was: it had ended in one of the most painful moments of Remi's life. "Nor does not acknowledging that things have changed." More clarity brought on by experience. Finding Ianto again had been so sweet and needed. But the fox and hawk pretended both that they might simply live in the skins of the men they were, and ultimately that too crumbled. Tears prickled the back of Remi's eyes to remember it all now, but still his all-too pale sea-foam stare remained on Loren. The former duke wasn't the only one with hard truths to speak. "You were the first man I ever loved, Loren." The alchemist's arm twitched as every muscle in his body suddenly tensed beneath the weight of hearing the sentiment spoken, especially to the man in question. "When you left..." His lips rose in a sad smile as his head tilted gently to the side. "...I was told there were months that I looked for you. Months I waited. " Pieces of the Launceleyn remained still even when memories of him were taken: telescopes in his shop. A pair of copper cups made so long ago on a beach in another world. Remi pulled in a breath and held it for a moment. "But I am not that man now. My memories were taken and with them...it all changed. I am not the man you knew, at least not entirely. This world has been anything but kind to me, but it has been good too." Steadying his gaze, Remi bit the inside of his lip for a moment, studying Loren. The soft blonde hairs dusting his cheeks, the depth of eyes growing ever more blue by the moment. The ruffle of pale hair still sticking up from where Loren's fingers had disrupted it earlier. "You..cannot keep looking at me like you do." He said in a voice only just above a whisper, holding it gently like mere shards of glass that might shatter at any moment. "I am not the one you hurt, and I am also not the one..." Remi hesitated; feathers sprouted and softly his fingers flexed at his side. "..I am not the man who loved you. Like I said, I only know what it is like on this side. But I know if we are to ever be...anything, it cannot start like this." REMI Loving you was sunshine, but then it poured & I lost so much more than my senses 'Cause loving you had consequences