He might as well have said something fucked you up. And he’s aware of the fact as much as he is aware that the mark on his skin is, despite everything—despite anything—something he’d once still wanted, above all else. More than anything else in the world, enough to surpass dying. Enough to distinctly cement a place away from saints and the pearly goddamn gates.

Thian’s jaw clenches as he takes a second to consider response. He thinks he preferred it when Garnier’s dealing with his own traumas. He thinks he preferred that not talking, keep to your own devices level of routine bullshit. He thinks he prefers it when he’s not holding the metaphorical knife.

”You done?” becomes the starting point of discussion, flat and deadpan and disinterested and stewing in that quiet above all else, and he’s self-aware enough to recognize he’s not answering the goddamn question. ( Stifling the urge to throw all Valiente’s hard-earned research down the nearest bin and drop a match for a final touch. Don’t some cultures find burning the best way to host a funeral? ) ”This the part where I should thank you for checking up on me or confess some shit like ’I’m not okay, I didn’t know you’d notice that’ or ’I keep thinking about the people I’ve lost or failed or every single fuck up and find that playing king of emotional unavailability makes it easier to bear’ or the ever-pretentious ‘action makes me believe I can still be worth something’? Feel free to take your pick and we can end the counseling session there.”

There is an old nursery rhyme that feels like an apt descriptor for the situation at hand: the boat is sinking.

”That isn’t love.”
It’s moving—

—as water rushes into the surface as she stands up—

He tries to ignore every instinct that demands action—ingrained wiring of a long conditioning. It makes him wonder if Sascha can notice whenever he tries to keep his distance—before a dagger can seal the deal.

( How did that one Shakespeare sentiment go again? The warnings of a friar to Romeo and Juliet before their death.

Lucas Hathorne has seen enough of the play to know the turnout. )

"Oh," is the first thing he says, while the music begins to slow. He'd promised the girl in the blue mask a dance—but Liem wants to talk, and Lucas wants to run, and the very thought of anything more than the present is a drowning man's fall. He's not too selfless to accept the kindled crash. ( Ashes, ashes, so the nursery rhyme goes. ) 

He looks down at his drink. Wine stained red; look once, and it's poison in a goblet, promised destiny at sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen. Turn the angle, and it's blood against teeth—fangs sinking into skin, a buzz in your head, Sascha Levay hungry and needing—

He wonders why the realization—to be caught in the act—feels more like a long foregone conclusion than fear.