My mind is where it bent

"Perhaps ... but when I went up I did not know she was alone. Jigano and Phoebe were meant to be with her. I did not think she would need that from me." Remi rubbed wearily at his eyes. Next time I will ask, he might have said, if it seemed like there was going to be a next time in their future. Remi exhaled a long and tired stream of air. Every time his eyes closed his body begged to keep them that way so that he could pass out into unconsciousness. His mind and soul needed time to recharge and digest all that was happening. But no. Some things could not wait. He knew that, just as he knew that if he asked Sam to just come to bed with him, to put off this talk for one more day, that it would be too late. Sam would say no. The bookmaker needed answers now. Only Remi didn't have them to give. "No." Remi agreed softly, in a voice that was wounded and low and hurt. "I did not say anything.." The alchemist couldn't tell if this was easier or harder for not being able to see Sam. In the darkness even with his hawk-eyes, the most he caught was a glint of copper here and there. He could hear the sniffles and sense the tears on Sam's cheeks, but all Remi could see were crates and cabinets in a fortress around Sam. "Sam..." Remi tried, leaning against the wall with one of his hands gently massaging his brow where a thunderstorm of bloodloss and exhaustion had begun to erupt in a pounding drumbeat.  "You asked me once, about Loren. I told you that I had fallen in love with him, shortly before we came here. But that was not so long ago Sam. Just a season, really. I never allowed myself to love anyone before, but then it happened and.." The hand on his head lowered to his chest, rubbing against the muscles there as if his heart literally heart.  His eyes closed and he sighed. "And then he was just gone. One day he was here and we were together and the next...well like I said before, if Edy is to be believed, he quite literally moved on with someone else." Peering into the darkness, both hoping and not to see Sam, Remi took a beat before continuing. "I had no closure. For a long time I just expected him to appear, to walk into my shop as he once did and..." Remi trailed off, tears biting at the back of his eyes, but he was far too weary to keep them from falling. "Sometimes I still expect that." Remi admitted, his accent contorting the words into some sad melody that he almost couldn't even understand. "Do you know what a rebound is, Sam? When you try to move on too quickly? I..." Sighing into the familiar sting of tears, Remi rested his head fully against the wall and wrapped his arms around himself. "I do not want that to be what this is."  He concluded, voice and posture resigned. remi Too long till I drown in your hands

Frey Beholders beware, there are no safe words They had asked for passion and meaning and despite all the tears and long and lingering stares, the boy had delivered. Making an ascended orgasm? That was certainly a new trick, one that Frey was impressed by. A little sexual ingenuity could go a long way, though those tracks seemed currently derailed. If the god was going to get anything more interesting out of the alchemist other than the boring kind of fluid coming from his eyes, apparently he needed back what Frey had taken. But that was fine. He had delivered and so Frey would as well. Remi's feelings have been returned!

Remi spoke and spoke, and it grew worse by the second. Sam curled up as tight as he could on the floor, put his hands over his ears. He didn't want to hear this. Excuses, mentions of the others who had come before him, who had been so much better... He caught the word rebound and couldn't help the sob it brought from him. He felt so immensely stupid. He had let Remi take him at his most vulnerable, let him into his bed, let him see him...and this was how it had paid off. Hiding under some boxes in a dark room being told he was a rebound. "Just. Just go a-away, Remi." He said softly at first, speaking more into the floor than anything else. But saying it once almost opened up a dam in him, cracked into the immense desire to just be alone right now. "G-GO AWAY." He repeated, louder, starting to sit up. "Just l-leave me alone!! He yelled, his voice beginning to crack at the end. Samuel Skin too tight and eyes like marbles You spin me high, so watch me as I glide Before I tumble homeward, homeward

—Just. Just go a-away, Remi "Sam, I—" The alchemist began, feeling the time in which he could properly explain begin to expire. "I do not want you to be a—" —G-GO AWAY "Sam. It —" has only been four dates. A few weeks. You can't lock me out for one misunderstand and not being ready, and— —Just l-leave me alone!! The alchemist felt everything so keenly now. The pain ricocheting through his chest as he stared helplessly at the fortress before him. He could knock it down in seconds he knew, but in its place Sam had seemingly erected something so much stronger than cabinets and crates. Something that sounded very much like hate. Remi thought he'd been right when he said he had seen Sam, that he understood him. But when the man had reciprocated, there had been doubt in the alchemist's mind. Now he knew that doubt had been warranted. He'd only tried to be honest. Tried to protect something that could be something if given the right circumstances, if only because it was happening too soon and Remi just needed time. A mistake made with Isla perhaps, but not borne from a place that deserved this surely. The love Sam had (once? still?) felt for Remi might be a cold thing within the ascended now, but it had sliced through the raw and mending parts of Remi that he had allowed Sam to nestle against. Sam was after all the only man to ever tell the alchemist that he loved him, and now the tides had turned so quickly Remi couldn't tell which way was up or down. The sea in which he was drowning was so dark he didn't know how to reach the surface anymore, how to reach Sam. This is us, Remi had pleaded. But apparently it wasn't. Apparently it was fine that he was drowning. "I am so sorry Sam.." Remi whispered brokenly through a waterfall of tears. Shivering, feeling hollow and abandoned, the alchemist slowly slipped from the room. remi Too long till I drown in your hands