hold me like we're dying from the liquor that we drank

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

In reality… What was a home? In Sunjata’s experience, he’d found a home with people more than tangible places. He’d had homes before, a vast vibrant one in Korofi with white walls and blood inside. He’d had a rapidly shifting room in the Rebellion when they had to leave at the drop of a hat. He’d danced between beds and couches when he fled his father’s reach. And he’d done much of the same here. The house by the ocean was just that. A house. They could always have another.

His home was with Nate.

It doesn’t take long – or maybe it takes an eternity, he can’t tell – before they’re stumbling into the Slagveld, slipping up familiar stairs to a door that’s locked, a key swiftly (and fumbling) in his attempt to unlock it. And once they’re inside? He locks the door again, gives Haai a lot of scratches behind the ears and wings for her work, before depositing the items he’d brought from home atop the makeshift dining table within the main room.

And then he turns to Nate, exhaustion finally weighing heavy in his bones and his mind, adrenaline lost. He reaches out for his fiancé, to bury his head into Nate’s shoulder, the scent of woodfire smoke and cigarette smoke thick within both their bodies. At least there weren’t any shadows here, not yet anyway. "Thank you... For getting Luci's lantern." He murmurs against the Ascended's skin and hair, simply taking a moment to breathe.

SUNJATA