we can't make any promises now

Loren kept his eyes closed so that he wouldn’t have to see the pain on Remi’s face and so that the other man couldn’t see the tears that threatened to fall on the Launceleyn’s cheeks at any moment. But that moment stretched on, with no words from Remi, for an excruciating eternity of torture worse than anything Loren’s family had ever put him through. This could hardly hold a candle to what Loren had put Remi through, but it burned the summoner all the same. And then all he got for it were two words. Two words that were fall too casual for such a momentous occasion, that held confusion and uncertainty and not the pain and anger he’d braced himself for, two words that were probably the last he would’ve predicted hearing from the other man’s lips. Two words. That’s it. Not nearly enough, and somehow too much at the same time. The last remnants of his control shattered and Loren’s eyes popped open, tears falling freely now. He was beyond caring what people might think. And he caught the tail end of Remi’s smile and the feathers fluttering over the other man’s body, and it sent him even further into the abyss that the summoner had often called home and would now once again. Still, naively perhaps, Loren searched those once-green now-white eyes, that face the summoner had spent countless hours studying, the body he’d barely begun to explore before the librarian had tossed it aside for something, any sign that there might be more than this emptiness. But there was nothing there for either of them. Not anymore. Though his cheeks were drenched, Loren’s voice was dead, devoid of any emotion. “I have to go.” He released the door knob he’d gripped until then, and with it, his last sliver of hope. And he turned to leave, intending to depart without a backwards glance. LOREN Not quite an open book