you're trying not to tell him you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling
”Apparently, she doesn’t have to ask you! She can just tell you to, and you’ll do what she says without thinking about it.” A high, hysterical note enters Nate’s voice, mocking and panicked all in one. ”I am, because Safrin cursed me, and it was how we fixed it. I am, because it’s the only way I can keep a whole group of people safe when no one but us seems to give a fuck!” Why he didecided to carry all of that, he couldn’t say, but it’s another burden he has to deal with, another thing that he can’t put down. ”The Voice has never lied to me. She’s never tried to manipulate me. She was nicer to you than Safrin ever was to me. She never,” Nate very nearly chokes on his voice, on a sob, ”never had you try to compete with her.”
A tremor starts in Nate’s hands, wrapped tightly around himself, crawling up his spine and his neck. He wants to flinch away from the words, from the repeated point, but that’s all they are. Words. It’s all every ‘I love you’ is, it’s all marriage vows had been. Just words, that he’d put so much faith into they’d started to feel real.
There’s something new in Nate’s eye when he looks up again, something wild and terrified and glassy. Something that’s shattered to a thousand pieces, soemthi that the ascended can no longer hold onto. ”What do you mean you don’t know? How can you not know?” A breathless, hiccuping sob coughs from him, garbling the words that he can’t stop. ”...ow to fix you every time you came home broken! I didn’t know how to wait for you to be spit up by the ocean!”
Rage flows out of him once again, the ascendeds head ducking so his face can hide behind his knees, his hands. So he doesn’t have to look up at the kneeling attuned to see broken promises and breaking love, so he doesn’t have to widen the cracks of his being. He pulls himself tighter while his husband speaks, as if he can deny the words by shutting himself up tighter, as if he can still change their reality.
But it doesn’t change. They’re still so different, despite all the pieces that mesh together, they are fundamentally different. A handful of quick, panicked gasps leave Nate, before stopping altogether. He wishes that stopping in this case meant something dramatic, wishes it had the same kind of punch as standing on the railing of a bridge and being talked down, but it’s just one more kind of reality, the push that drives him back up to his feet, opening space between himself and the attuned.
”No. No. It’s isn’t, it wasn’t a lie. You made it a lie. You broke it, and, and...” Broke me, the stark panic on his face, in his voice says. Fluid tears run down his face freely now, leaving behind shimmering tracks that Nate scrubs away roughly as he paces around the garden, unable to fall still for an instant. Unwilling to let himself be still.
A tremor starts in Nate’s hands, wrapped tightly around himself, crawling up his spine and his neck. He wants to flinch away from the words, from the repeated point, but that’s all they are. Words. It’s all every ‘I love you’ is, it’s all marriage vows had been. Just words, that he’d put so much faith into they’d started to feel real.
There’s something new in Nate’s eye when he looks up again, something wild and terrified and glassy. Something that’s shattered to a thousand pieces, soemthi that the ascended can no longer hold onto. ”What do you mean you don’t know? How can you not know?” A breathless, hiccuping sob coughs from him, garbling the words that he can’t stop. ”...ow to fix you every time you came home broken! I didn’t know how to wait for you to be spit up by the ocean!”
Rage flows out of him once again, the ascendeds head ducking so his face can hide behind his knees, his hands. So he doesn’t have to look up at the kneeling attuned to see broken promises and breaking love, so he doesn’t have to widen the cracks of his being. He pulls himself tighter while his husband speaks, as if he can deny the words by shutting himself up tighter, as if he can still change their reality.
But it doesn’t change. They’re still so different, despite all the pieces that mesh together, they are fundamentally different. A handful of quick, panicked gasps leave Nate, before stopping altogether. He wishes that stopping in this case meant something dramatic, wishes it had the same kind of punch as standing on the railing of a bridge and being talked down, but it’s just one more kind of reality, the push that drives him back up to his feet, opening space between himself and the attuned.
”No. No. It’s isn’t, it wasn’t a lie. You made it a lie. You broke it, and, and...” Broke me, the stark panic on his face, in his voice says. Fluid tears run down his face freely now, leaving behind shimmering tracks that Nate scrubs away roughly as he paces around the garden, unable to fall still for an instant. Unwilling to let himself be still.
& you're trembling and he reaches over
and touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist
NATE
