Your move

Itching at the stubble on his chin, Ronin furrowed his brow. If not nervous, then what? Even so he couldn’t help but smile at Remi as he tried to dispose of the feathers, the hunter reaching out to rest a hand over the alchemist’s, like that might save the pillow from his fidgeting. The candidness in return brought heat to his cheeks, Ronin sighing deeply and hearing Remi out, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips despite himself. ”I died,” he said, like the gravitas of what had actually happened still hadn’t quite sunk in. ”And when I was brought back it was... it was more than I could ever have expected. I promised myself that I would never forget to just appreciate being alive, no more, no less. Being able to draw breath for Aoife was everything to me. It’s all I wanted, all I needed to exist for. Power, romance, honour, heroism... I didn’t care about any of that.” He scowled. ”And then there you were. And all I wanted was for you to be happy too, Remi. I told myself that even if it wasn’t with me, it was okay. Except now, even though there’s Ianto... you’re still here with me.” RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving

The hand over the pillow, over what the pillow was meant to conceal only made Remi sip in a breath of air and close his eyes, as if resigning himself back to the darkness might still the flutter he felt inside. Still, he didn't move Ronin's hand, but instead let his fingers relax and spread slightly so that the hunter's could slip between the spaces he made.

Tilting his head slightly, not expecting whatever it was Ronin may or may not stay to begin with his death, Remi opened his eyes to listen. The corners of his lips twitched upwards at the mention of Aoife, Ronin's dedication to his daughter being one of the traits he cherished most about his friend. But the smile disappeared swiftly into a look of confusion at first. It wan't to resolve into understanding, but whether it was fear or true naivety that prevented it from doing so was hard to say.

"If it was not with you." He repeated, not quite a question, but as if tasting the words on his tongue would help his mind understand them. The alchemist knew how he felt about Ronin...but truthfully he'd never given his mind (or heart) much time to think about how the hunter might feel about him. It was a hangover from Northaven probably, to always assume his feelings weren't reciprocated.

"I am still here with you." Remi agreed, swallowing unsteadily as feathers began to ripple down his neck and onto his shoulders. "I have always loved you, Ronin. I have never had a friend like you. And then you did die, and.." Remi's voice broke then and not even his melodic accent could save the way the words twisted his lips into a shaky frown. "...when you came back.." Tears prickled stupidly at the back of his eyes as he took a quick sip of air and looked up at the ceiling. Shaking his head and holding onto the breath, Remi bit the inside of his cheek as he let his eyes drop again.

i fell for your eyes

Coding base by Sky!

Letting his thumb ghost over the back of Remi’s hand, Ronin glanced away, as if the fact that the alchemist was still there even now, inviting and accepting further comfort from him, made things simultaneously easier and more difficult. ”Yeah, if not with me. I expected you to go, when Ianto invited you. I was preparing myself for it, but... then you didn’t. And I was selfishly pleased. I don’t think I ever gave myself permission to be selfish, since coming back.” It just hadn’t felt right. Ronin had been given the impossible and he had to be seen to be making the most of it, right? To be noble, generous, kind... but not selfish. Which made things like wanting Remi to stay with him all the more troublesome, especially when there was someone else’s heart and happiness on the line too. Someone who deserved it more than a man who had been given a second chance at life. A man who had already been given enough by the world. Swallowing hard, he glanced sidelong at Remi and for once there was no humour, no banter to make it less difficult to deal with. ”I’m sorry I left you, Remi.” RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving

Biting back a smile, Remi shook his head. "No I...I did not know you ever considered, well." The alchemist swallowed. "—us." He said, jaw clenching as his eyes focused on the thumb trailing along his hand. "I suppose I knew it for sure then...when Ianto asked. I should have been excited. Thrilled, I suppose. A little hesitation at leaving you to fend for yourself as the only man in this house, but.." His smiled faded. "But I did not feel happy. Just...conflicted." Remi ran a hand distractedly across his forehead and then through his curls, still not looking towards Ronin. "I thought maybe it was too fast, too selfish to leave Aoife, too..something."

No humour, no banter? Well, that couldn't stand.

"Oh shut it." Remi groaned, mistakenly lifting the pillow to hit Ronin with it. Realizing the error in this, through gritted teeth he placed it back as quickly as he could, schooling his face into something as far from embarrassment as he could (and obviously failing). "You died Ronin. That is very, very different."

i fell for your eyes

Coding base by Sky!

”I don’t think I ever had to consider it, Remi. If... well, to put it bluntly, I’ve been living it since I got back, waiting for something to make it all change... and secretly hoping that it wouldn’t.” Ronin smiled sadly, humming in agreement at the feeling of being conflicted. He glanced across at the alchemist at precisely the wrong moment (of course), cursing dramatically and pretending to be mortally wounded by the pillow, though that didn’t stop him from catching on to the embarrassment that Remi was apparently not trying to hide at all. Ronin blinked, raising his eyebrows up at the alchemist. ”There are a lot of things that are very different all of a sudden,” he remarked gently. RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving

Remi chuckled low beneath his breath and nodded. "I know what you mean." He equally confessed. The ... whatever it was that had followed their fumble in the kitchen and thrown their relationship into a level of comfort and ease that Remi would be hard pressed to break.

But that didn't mean he didn't think about it. All the time.

Clearing his throat, the alchemist merely flattened the pillow down further (or at least, as far as he could without guillotining anything) and hummed a bashful non-response. "I..it is not..." But lying, even to cover up something as embarrassing as an erection when you're on the verge of confessing being in love with your best friend, was not something Remi found he could do, and so the words died on his tongue.

Glancing over at Ronin, flushed cheeked, feathered-haired, and bright if not pale eyes, Remi couldn't help but smile. "You are the only one I never forgot." Maybe that meant he hadn't loved Ronin..or maybe it meant he had simply loved him enough. Enough to thwart curses and godly-rage. Enough to endure death and then second life.

But enough to risk what they had?

"So has it all changed, then?" Remi asked, repeating the hunter's original worry.

i fell for your eyes

Coding base by Sky!

Unable to help himself, Ronin pinned Remi with a wry smirk and waggled his eyebrows at him suggestively. ”Oh I think it is,” he countered, though his smile softened. It was an unexpected awkwardness but Ronin couldn’t deny that he probably would have had the same reaction, if he’d seen Remi after being apparently permanently blinded. And it didn’t have to be awkward. It never had been before. Inhaling shakily and letting the breath out again, it was impossible to hide the flush of pleasure at being the one Remi remembered. He smiled to the other man, flushed and feathered and all, and considered his question. ”I think so,” he said. ”But... not in the way I expected. And not very much has changed at all, really. We’ve just... stopped lying to ourselves.” And whilst his body knew exactly what it wanted to do with that information, he still hovered, hesitant, waiting for Remi’s input. RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving

With a puff of laughter he couldn't help, Remi gently punched Ronin's arm with a disbelieving shake of his head. "You are the one who said you had no evidence to compare it to." Remi shot back, his voice somehow staying somewhat steady.

"And each other." Remi said with a raised brow that arched more playfully than his twitterpated state of mind seemed capable of. Uncertainty was apparently rife in the room as Remi turned to look at Ronin. Just the sight of him made the alchemist's heart speed up and the pleasantly unpleasant coiling low in his gut feel unbearable to ignore. Remi's fingers clenched together as his toes curled and his eyes rose towards the ceiling and squeezed shut.

"I...should go." Remi said, biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to make himself wince as feathers floated down his back.

i fell for your eyes

Coding base by Sky!

Ronin was only able to shrug and grin in response to Remi’s comment, wondering whether or not he ought to mention that he very much wanted to find that evidence now. Instead he merely nodded in agreement with the alchemist. ”And each other.” But then something changed and Remi was talking about leaving, prompting a dozen questions to fight for dominance on Ronin’s tongue. Why? Why now? Go where? What was that meant to mean? And so on. But given that, for the first time since they had fallen into this strange arrangement, Ronin wasn’t deceiving himself that this was nothing, he merely shook his head and shifted his weight to lean over Remi, cupping his cheek in his hand. His lips were on the other man’s before he even gave himself permission, as if he could convince him with something other than words. Eventually, though, he managed to draw back enough to whisper, ”If you want to go, then go. But if it’s just what you think you should do, please don’t. Please stay.” RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving

He needed to go, just as he had once needed to go when Loren had him corned against a wall, and when Ianto had said he'd like to spend his evening hours kissing Remi. He needed to go, because for once, it wasn't a law he was going to break, but a heart.

He needed to go because if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to stop. He didn't want to, and that was precisely the problem. Willpower was once something Remi had in spades. But now? Now the world had taken so much from him, and he found it all too easy to want to cling to the things that he had left.

Eyes closed, Ronin's touch came as a slight surprise, causing the alchemist to draw in a swift breath and open his eyes. But all he saw in the darkness of the room was Ronin's blue gaze and then—

—it all went dark, because Remi was kissing Ronin back. Unbidden a hand went into the ex-captain's hair, curling there and somehow both pulling him near and holding him at bay. Fireworks sparked as bright and hot as any Remi had made for Ronin's training exercises, and as Ronin pulled back Remi was merely left gasping in the wake of the hunter's lips. Eyes still closed, the hand in Ronin's hair trembled with the inward battle raging in the alchemist; to stay, or to go?

"You know I do not want to go." Remi whispered, his forehead against Ronin's, toes curling with indecision. "But..." Inhaling a staggered breath, all Remi could smell and taste was Ronin, and it made his senses blur. "..Ianto.." He managed, the hand in Ronin's hair tightening. "I should.." go. "I won't be able to make myself stop—"

But his hand stayed, and for a moment, so did the rest of Remi.

i fell for your eyes

Coding base by Sky!

The fingers in his hair sent crackles of pleasure and anticipation down the back of his neck and the length of his spine; the thrill of wanting and being wanted in return was something he had told himself he had given up by coming back from the stars. And yet, here and now, was Remi, and Ronin couldn't help but smile as the other man began to speak. It was the fox's name, though, that threw ice water over the entire situation, the smile fading from the hunter's lips. Horribly, Remi was right. And Ronin would not hurt another unnecessarily. "...I'll go, tonight," he said slowly. "You stay. If you try to leave you'll probably fall on your face, so it's safer this way." Carefully Ronin disentangled himself from Remi, feeling thoroughly chastised and ashamed of letting himself get in over his head too quick. RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving

Selfishly Remi was happy to let Ronin decide the direction of his moral compass. The exhaustion from his magical escapades earlier in the evening, the revelation of being able to see (even if it was 'only' Ronin), and the fire roaring through his system were enough to make him weaker than he'd ever felt before, mentally, emotionally, and physically. He would have given in, would have been swept away by the man he'd deep-down always known he wanted, and he would have hated himself for it in the morning.

"If you did not leave your clothes everywhere, there would be nothing to trip and fall on." Remi said in a low voice, his smile colouring his words but not so much as the heat that still remained. As Ronin pulled away the alchemist felt his departure keenly, and he scrunched his eyes closed, clenched his jaw, and curled his toes in the wake of overwhelming want to reach out for him.

It was for the best, he knew it was for the best...but it was the worst.

"You know...I have never broken up with someone before." Remi murmured, more to himself than to Ronin, knowing that the hunter did in fact need to leave the room for any of Remi's senses to have a hope of returning.

i fell for your eyes

Coding base by Sky!

"Listen, I just make sure that our lives here are a constant training exercise. I just want you to be prepared, Remi," Ronin objected with a sly smile, despite the fact that his friend had been blind and the guildmaster had still been leaving his clothes where he dropped them. Oops. Ronin didn't want to go, but it was the right thing to do. And fuck, but if he was notorious for doing the right damned thing. Standing by the doorway to the bedroom, he smiled weakly over his shoulder at Remi. "I don't want you to have to break up with anyone..." He sighed deeply. "Unfortunately I also don't want to have to walk away from you again... I guess... whatever happens, I just... I'll be there for you, okay?" RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving

"You can take the captain of training out of Northaven and all that." Remi said, laughing despite himself.

Nodding, the alchemist glanced towards Ronin who looked impossibly like some sort of angelic beacon standing in the doorway. This of course owed to the fact that he was in shocking prismatic colour juxtaposed against a room that was only a shade above invisible to the alchemist's eyes.

Picking up a pillow, Remi tossed it towards Ronin (aiming for his head of course) as a shiver of appreciation ran down his spine. "Thank you." The alchemist murmured, thinking briefly about saying sleep well, but knowing that neither of them likely would tonight.

i fell for your eyes

Coding base by Sky!