i guess that's why they call it the blues

i wish I could say I am a light that never goes out.
but i flicker from time to time

Remi wakes next to Ronin, naked as usual, and feeling all the more guilty and uncertain for it. Smelling of the sea and sex, the alchemist pushes back the covers and flees to the bathroom. Ronin nearly always wakes up when Remi uses his dreams as an anchor for travelling, and so while he tries to be as quiet as he can, he also realizes that his efforts are mostly in vain.

With knees scraped and raw from fucking kneeling in tidal pools and his back pink and suggestive of having been ground repeatedly in the sand, Remi closes his eyes against the minute aches and pains in his body, grinding the heel of one of his hands into his eye while bracing himself with the other on the edge of the sink. The alchemist has never dealt well with situations such as the one he's just come from, where promises tug in opposing directions such that all his thoughts seem to fall unhelpfully on one side or the other.

Turning on the water in the shower, the alchemist lets it run quite cold before stepping in.

run away and take me with you

Ronin does indeed awaken as Remi appears, but rather than being able to roll over and curl around his husband to go back to sleep, the alchemist is simply gone. Blinking himself into full wakefulness, the Star automatically slips out of bed to follow after the fleeing Lullaby; he has no empathy magic, just all the knowledge collected from a veritable lifetime with his partner. And that's enough, in this case. "It smells like sex," he mumbles, hiding a wide yawn behind his hand and shimmying out of his sweatpants as Remi turns on the shower.

Because obviously where the other man goes, Ronin follows. He doesn't count on it being freezing cold, though, Ronin hissing in a breath and letting it out again with a shudder. It doesn't stop him reaching for Remi though, calloused hands seeking out the warmth and familiarity of a body he knows very well indeed. "I'm here," he murmurs. "Do you want to talk about it?"

don't let go, i need your rescue
 

RONIN