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.