i don't know where home is, but i suppose it's anywhere i go that's any good at all
Nate is quiet, for a short moment, though it feels longer, maybe just to him. He knows, knows, without the shadow of a doubt, that Sunjata needs him. That they're tied together, by choice, by circumstance, by something beyond themselves it feels like some days. It's the kind of feeling that Nate can't even think about too much, because it's so big, so deep, that he doesn't actually know how. But it's not enough to stop this. It's not enough to know, because whatever has bubbled up is beyond it, is senseless and cloying and ridiculous.
The simple, stark response he gets when he says he'd be dead in Korofi makes him actually pause for a second, breaks through his struggling, through everything, and has a cough of a laugh leaving him. It's not a point he's going to argue, but if he wouldn't be dead, he's sure he'd be good as. Problems with authority, with keeping his head down, with being subtle, about the things he needed to be.
His head tips, cheek resting against the other mans crown now, listening to the words that leave him, how they seem to be just as forced out, but so much more helpful than Nate's have been so far. And it does, in some small way, for some short moment, help. "I didn't... I knew that, but I didn't notice that... it hasn't happened since." So much else has happened, and, for most of it, it's been so much happier, so much easier. A low hum leaves him, as he thinks about the words, casts his mind back to everything that had happened between them, from the volcano to now. Moments he can pick out as getting close, but nothing breaking apart, threatening to leap off ledges, since his initial confession, that first time, when he'd refused to leave.
"I don't know." Nate admits softly, one of his hands swiping down, along Sunjata's spine, still trying to offer comfort, to make up for the fact that it was him breaking down this time, that he was fracturing. "When... you came home, that night, and I stitched you up, all I could..." A pause, so he can swallow, force his voice into something neutral again, instead of the tight, shaking thing it had become. "I just thought about what I'd do if I lost you. If I did everything I could, did it all right, and it wasn't enough still. And there's this... this part of me, that thinks if I could keep you... here, or... somewhere else, somewhere with me, all the time, it'd be fine. And thats..." Another little, hysterical giggle, his voice actually cracking here. "That's fucking crazy. Right?"
The simple, stark response he gets when he says he'd be dead in Korofi makes him actually pause for a second, breaks through his struggling, through everything, and has a cough of a laugh leaving him. It's not a point he's going to argue, but if he wouldn't be dead, he's sure he'd be good as. Problems with authority, with keeping his head down, with being subtle, about the things he needed to be.
His head tips, cheek resting against the other mans crown now, listening to the words that leave him, how they seem to be just as forced out, but so much more helpful than Nate's have been so far. And it does, in some small way, for some short moment, help. "I didn't... I knew that, but I didn't notice that... it hasn't happened since." So much else has happened, and, for most of it, it's been so much happier, so much easier. A low hum leaves him, as he thinks about the words, casts his mind back to everything that had happened between them, from the volcano to now. Moments he can pick out as getting close, but nothing breaking apart, threatening to leap off ledges, since his initial confession, that first time, when he'd refused to leave.
"I don't know." Nate admits softly, one of his hands swiping down, along Sunjata's spine, still trying to offer comfort, to make up for the fact that it was him breaking down this time, that he was fracturing. "When... you came home, that night, and I stitched you up, all I could..." A pause, so he can swallow, force his voice into something neutral again, instead of the tight, shaking thing it had become. "I just thought about what I'd do if I lost you. If I did everything I could, did it all right, and it wasn't enough still. And there's this... this part of me, that thinks if I could keep you... here, or... somewhere else, somewhere with me, all the time, it'd be fine. And thats..." Another little, hysterical giggle, his voice actually cracking here. "That's fucking crazy. Right?"
NATE
