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What exactly is the "self?" Take a moment to think about it. To really think about it. Many philosophers have tackled the concept over the years, trying to force something too personal to be conveyed into their intellectualized definitions of psychological phenomena. Sometimes, they describe it as something beautiful; they describe it as a soul, a consciousness that will subsist after death, pure and eternal. More often than not, however, the "self" is boiled down to a cauldron of chemicals and neurotransmitters. A series of actions and reactions that comprise the being known as "you."
They are wrong, of course. Selfhood is far too complicated to be understood by the human mind, as plagued with hubris as it is, convinced that it can understand the complex inner-workings of a universe that doesn't belong to it in the way it tends to think it does. Consciousness, desire, limitation, hope, fear, thought, feeling, so and so forth— each description of you, each label plastered on by both yourself and the people that surround you, none of it is you.
You are not what they think you are. Hour after hour, day after day, buried deep in the confines of bookshelves and files, the only glimpses anyone gets of you are so obscured by mystery that you know they have no idea what they are actually dealing with. You think back to the people who had seen you in your entirety. What words had they flung at you? Rich in the nutrient known as "fear," they had screamed as if it possibly could have saved them: "Monster," "freak," "demon.”
"What the hell are you!?
The questions are your favorite. You like the people who can figure out in just a few terror-stricken seconds that whatever their conception of the world is, there is a colossal gap in their understanding of it. Things that lingered right under their nose, just beyond their ability to comprehend. You drink in their realization. It nourishes you, and you do not hesitate to feed.
You knew that the man they called "The Archivist," was different from the moment you laid eyes on him.
A thick scent of awareness clings to his every action. Tinged with fear, it shows in the way his narrowed eyes snap from face to face, searching for even the faintest sign of suspicious activity, the way his slender fingers clutch at a tape recorder as if it were his lifeline, the way his muscles tense each time someone new enters the room. He betrays himself each time his paranoia seeps into his words like a self-sabotaging venom. You can see his knowledge in the way he isolates himself, in the way he pushes anyone who gets too close far, far away. You delight in it. But you aren't stupid enough to not see how dangerous he is.
To put it simply: you liked him too much to kill him at your earliest convenience. Opportunities presented themselves time and time again, but you always ignore them, choosing instead to observe as the Archivist and his "friends" ruin their plans over and over again due to their amusing inability to trust one another.
Alone, vulnerable and confused, you watch him with great interest. Some days, you linger at his side, close enough to taste the stress that emanates from him like a radiation, but most days, you simply wait. You lay your traps and wait for his ever-insatiable need for knowledge to draw him closer. You dangle your enigmatic nature in front of him like a lure. He leans in to see if he can snatch an answer from your actions, but you pull back just before he manages to learn anything of use. The two of you dance your game, the way a sculptor will reshape his sculpture again and again and again until it finally bends just the way he wants it to. The shapes finally blur into one another, melting into place.
You were busying yourself pretending to read when he approached you. Out of the corner of your eye, you see him shift his weight from foot to foot, fingers skimming over his scars as an anchor to the present— you don't have to ask to know what he is repeating in his mind: you are safe, in the heart of the institute, nothing can hurt you.
But it can. You can. And you force your eyes to express nothing but placid curiosity as you tilt your head up to meet his gaze, even though you can feel yourself twisting inside with anticipation.
"I, er—" He stumbles over his own unprepared words before sucking in a breath of air through his teeth, and bluntly stating, "We need to talk."
You can't help yourself. "Do we now?" You tease, but your tightened muscles— if you can even call them muscles— betray your intense attentiveness. What does he know? You think, and before you can speak again, he gives a sharp nod.
"We do. Preferably alone."
The soft whirr of the tape recorder hidden behind his back catches your interest, and the way the corners of your mouth curl into a smile sets his nerves on edge.
"What are we going to be talking about?" You ask, purposefully stirring his discomfort, basking in it— but he straightens his posture with a forced composure, and shakes his head.
He doesn't care about being overheard. The tape recorder indicates that, but the topic of interest is for his and The Eye's listening only. No Elias, no Martin, no one else. Your smile widens as you realize what this is: a confrontation.
"Have some choice words for me, do you?"
"Just—" The way his nose scrunches in exasperation is just so pathetically adorable. "Just come with me."
And you do, without a word of complaint. There is no need to argue with such an enticing opportunity. The thought of him knowing you stirs a pit in your stomach— hunger, no doubt— but something else claws at your insides as well. Just a tinge, but it disgusts you to even recognize it. An unexplainable fear.
He leads you down to those swirling tunnels that make you dizzy with vertigo. The walls press in on you, but not nearly as much as the archivist's eyes do when he turns around to face you. Obscured by the darkness, you can only make out the faintest glimmer of anxiety before he masks it in a tone thick with feigned confidence.
"There. Now no one can hear us."
You take a moment to drink in the atmosphere. The cold air brushes against your sculpted skin, but it fails to send any chill down your spine. Silence hangs thick and heavy. The only sound you can hear is the archivist's quick breathing and the erratic thump of his heart. In darkness as tense as this, you know he cannot see you— but you can see him. You fight against the urge to laugh at the irony.
"Not entirely true." You lean forward, and tap a finger against the tape recorder. The noise the movement makes sounds nothing like skin on plastic. It's too hard, too rough a sound; the archivist shivers when he hears it.
"N-No, but... nothing human is eavesdropping, at least."
Your teeth itch with the urge to sink into him.
"What did you want to talk to me about?"
His lips part, hanging open as if the question came as a shock to him, as if he himself had forgotten, but he quickly manages to recover. "Well, uh... I always listen to any tapes left for me, and the other day, one appeared that wasn't mine."
You nod your head even though he can't see the gesture.
"—and I... I listened to it, of course." He pauses. You can't help it; you let out a sharp laugh as you realize the implications. He knows. Whatever he heard, it has to do with you. He heard you doing something, heard you saying something— you don't know, but you speak before allowing him to reveal it.
"Shame," You murmur. Your voice, raw and grating, distorts into a thin blur. Inhuman. "What will you do with this information, little archivist?"
He surprises you, then. His eyes widen near-imperceptibly, and he makes no move to run, or back away, or anything of the sort. Instead, with only that high-pitched note of terror betraying his inner turmoil, he says simply, "I don't know."
You pause. And then you laugh. The fear from earlier inches its way back into your metaphorical heart in the form of confusion. Whatever this was, it certainly wasn't normal. Normal people run and scream and flail their limbs as you rip apart their insides. They don't stand there. They don't force a look of stoicism. They certainly don't lead you into a dark series of tunnels to ask you questions.
"Huh." Is all you can manage. Baffled, he catches your curiosity more than the currently-growing itch to maim, and so you go ahead and ask: "Why?"
He knows what you mean without your elaboration. He knows without any guidance, you mean to ask, not "why does he not know what to do with you," but the "why's" to the other questions— the unspoken ones. And your chest swells with a discomfort that you should not be feeling.
"Well," He begins. "I considered telling the others, but I have no idea what I would tell them. I have no idea who you are— what you are— so I tried to investigate you. I could barely find anything. You don't exist, not in any legal or social sense, and so... All I could do was get you alone to interrogate you, and—"
He cuts himself off, but you connect the dots well enough to fill in the blanks. "—and to kill you privately and safely without catching anyone's attention. Great. Lovely. By all means, you should flay him wet and red.
So why do you hesitate?
Upon hearing his answer, your fingers ache with the suffocating need to kill. To wrap around flesh, to squeeze and reshape until the skin and muscle melt away and leave you with the bone, to break and crush and snap until all that is left of him is his soul, and you want to peel that open too. You want to stuff his consciousness inside your incomprehensible self, you want to consume him, to gnaw on his mind, to press him into the folds of nerve endings and clay that make up your real essence and digest everything that he is.
...But you're also curious. And something else: excited. Not just sick with the growing anticipation of an inevitable kill, but something softer, far softer than anything you can ever remember feeling before— and your cheeks flush with shame as you take a step back from him.
"Do you plan on killing me?" You laugh, your words lavished with malice. At that, he too steps backwards, but makes no move to do anything else.
"That— That depends on what you want." He says, and after that, he decides to split you open: "What do you want?"
A direct question, and your body moves to betray you. A force, all-knowing, all-seeing, pries open your mouth, the words flowing out of you with such ease, such simplicity, regardless of the fact that you are seething inside.
"I don't know. I'm conflicted. I can't decide between a few options, many of which do involve your death. I do want to kill you. But I also don't. I don't know why I don't, but it might be because I'm curious about you. But now that you've used that on me, I may just kill you outright."
"Don't." He says, a simple, foolish, pathetically human pronouncement. As if it will save him. A part of you finds amusement in his naivety, but a part of you understands that his statement, shaky with what you can only assume to be fear, also snaps with a curious desperation. A plea. For some reason, you heed it.
It reminds you of something.... human, you suppose. Some long-abandoned part of you perks up, foreign and forgotten, and your own terror shatters back into control, and you bare your teeth, but nothing more. Your silence allows him time, and he understands what you want him to do, even if you refuse to say it.
"What are you?" He decides to ask.
"Beyond your understanding." You think. Instead, you decide to do something far crueler, and ask him, "Do you want to see?"
He nods, and your body quivers as it opens to show him.
You are hungry.
You are raw
You are unknowable.
But you know him.
You bloom, almost like a flower, skin and flesh opening away to reveal an amalgamation of wet clay and exposed nerve, pulsing like an artery, flowing into his consciousness like blood from an open wound. Even in the darkness, he can see this. The image appears in his mind as sharp as if the darkness had been peeled away. Clay should not look like flesh, he thinks, but your matter blurs into skin. A mass that ebbs and flows with the rhythm into being deconstructed into something worth knowing. There is life in the sediment, synapses firing and neurons alight, and as he loses himself in your gaping maw, you feel every part of him, and it is...
It is terrifying. It is terrifying to taste the pressure that leers above him. Terrifying to know, to understand all, to see all. The knowledge flows into you as it flows into him; he sees you. He sees you for what you are. You feel it as the archivist's thoughts merge into yours, and you ache for the taste of his terror. He also aches for yours.
He should hate you, be disgusted by you, but he's not. Not when he can understand the very fiber of your being. At the core, the terror of the parts of you that absorb the flesh you consume. The agonized strain of panic you feel whenever your body screams for identity, longing so intense it fades into hunger, dissolves into dust. The loneliness of being known, the loneliness of knowing. He sees the parts of you that you hate, and he stares with a wide-eyed awe.
It is mutual. It is immediate. You understand his own fear, so alike yours, but so opposing in nature. He runs from his inhumanity but you know, you remember, there is no escaping. No matter how far you try to run or how patiently you wait in hiding, there is no way out. Not one. Marked, there is nothing to do but give oneself up into the unseen, the forces that weave their way through both of your beings. It is too artistic to call it a soul, too vague to call it a self. They claim everything you are, and everything you ever will be.
You also feel his hunger. Deep, like a gnawing void, it screams to be filled. Your fear feeds it, in the same way his feeds yours.
You should kill him, you should devour him. You do neither, because you see his own self-hatred burn, as strong as yours, as a sharp fire through his mind.
His body is his enemy, his most hated aspect, and he hates all of it. He hates the scars that brand him as a victim of what he cannot understand, hates the stress that writes itself in his face, hates his dependence on his physical form, but most of all, he hates that his body is not his own.
Not in the usual sense. He is owned by The Eye, yes, but that is not the source of his terror. Abyssal, deep and almost innate, this is revulsion. His eyes snap wide as your thoughts brush up against his, searching for the explanation hidden within them. He tries to worm his way out of it but you push deeper.
Your understanding of the twin scars on his chest is enough to set him aflame with fear. The terror is so strong but you understand it so well that all you can do it force the knowledge in his mind, that you understand it, that he has no need to fear your knowledge of it— but he rejects your comprehension. He runs from it. In that moment, he reminds you of a cornered animal, and as much as you want to give chase, you also want to confront. You don't want to rip into him, not physically. But you do want to see him tremble.
As easily as you initiated the connection, it shatters.
You fold back into a shape that forms something that can pass as human. The archivist lets out a strangled cry and stumbles, falls to his knees. A few moments pass in silence, spare for the panic of his labored breathing, before you let out a decisive breath of your own, and murmur, "Do you understand all of it?"
The soft sound of wet rock statics in the back of your throat. Your tone is not readable in your voice, strengthened by his fear, but you still force it to be soft, and so the archivist simply nods. He doesn't speak, and so you sit in silence once again, both digesting the meal. Both riddled with some chilling sense of unease, but intoxicated. Lost in a haze of hunger, appetites not fully satisfied.
He understands you. And your stupid, foolish penchant for humanity bends you to a softer approach. Maybe it's the skin you're wearing. Maybe it's the soul stirring inside you.
"I have decided like you, archivist."
The look on his face is priceless as his expression contorts— fear evidently replaced by sheer confusion, but even that confusion isn't entirely real— he knows what you mean, he understands that you understand, but at this point neither of you can make much sense of anything.
Hunger. Connection. Ineffable, you want to stop thinking. Inside you, a feeling you don't want to put a name to. You are so, so foolish, to try and understand something when it can look right at you and understand you right back. But you knew this, and yet you did it anyway.
"Wh... What are you..?" All he can do is repeat his previous question. You answer in a way he can conceptualize, without any inner complaint. It is not The Eye that compels you to answer.
"A sculpture. A stranger."
He nods. Sweat sticks to his brow, and you feel the urge to lean forward and press your tongue to his temple.
"I'm..." He breathes, his body shaking. He doesn't need to finish the sentence. He's starving. And you are, too. The hunger chews at your insides with ragged teeth and begs you to prey on the man before you. Your mouth twitches as you fight your desperate desire to bite.
"I want to feed on you." You confess, and he looks up at you with eyes far too soft for the situation, and he nods, but you interject. "Not just on your fear. I want... I want..."
What do you want?
To... To kiss him, you think. You can't understand why. This is your enemy— this is someone that should revile you, and yet you feel the tug of an attraction, an inexplicable ache for more of the understanding that he offered. That soft warmth of being known, barely seeping through the horror of being seen. He feels what you feel. The warmth touches his body the same way it touches yours.
"That was intimate." He whispers. His eyes connect with yours, and you decide to take a risk, to damn the both of you.
You press your lips to his, and you lose yourself instantly. Already a blur of fragmented strangers and mysteries, it doesn't take much. All it takes is the way his voice quivers as a noise escapes him The way his eyes widen, shame burned into his cheeks as he realizes what you've done— all it takes is him, and you forget all about the parts of you screaming to recoil. He should be an enemy, but then again, he shouldn't be kissing you either. And yet his lips taste like burnt coffee and desperation as he keens into your touch. Absorbed with you, he doesn't care about the repercussions, much less the off-taste of ceramic powder on your lips.
You remember thinking, "Silly archivist. Don't you know your own death when you see it?" You probably would have spoken it were your mouth not so occupied pressing against the taste of your own undoing. Your condemnation— for to be so close to someone is to be perceived.
To be touched, to be felt, to kiss, to consume. Wrapped up in the missing pieces of yourself, his understanding of you threads you together. When you place one hand against the small of his back, the other busy angling his mouth to meet yours, you feel him. Not the flesh, not the fear. You feel a connection far deeper lull each of your actions. You kiss him not out of hunger, or even lust. You kiss him because you want to. Out of some desperate need to be comprehended by somebody and accepted. Out of true longing.
The archivist doesn't move to reconnect when you eventually pull away. His brows knit together, mouth hanging slightly open as he breathes.
"What—" He cuts himself off, disoriented, feeling the dull beat of his heart as a distant ache in a body screaming for attention. Starved, it leans towards you, almost imperceptibly, as he struggles to tie his confusion into coherence. "What is—"
He can't find the words, so you find them for him. You press your voice into something composed, smooth as glaze, but even something as inhuman as you can be affected by wants so fundamental. Soft. The aching void inside you thrums with the possibility of being filled.
"Touch." You murmur. "Do you like it?"
He stays silent, teeth clenched, and you assume him to be weighing the pros and cons. You don't blame him.
"Why?" He asks.
You think to yourself for a moment. You delight in the knowledge of what you feed off of— not just his fear, but the faint flames of your own. It curls in your chest hotter than a kiln, and flows out distorted. Too exposed, but you find yourself feeling glad as his question forces coax the answer from your lips.
"You know what I am." You admit. "And that should be enough to make me kill you, yet I'm being... soft. Because you are knowing. But also because you are warm. Real."
Is that the appeal? You don't know anymore. You hated to admit it. You did not like the feeling of the endless sight prying sensations you hadn't even really stopped denying yet out of you. But you wanted the archivist to know. For reasons that were being revealed to you, you wanted the archivist to know, and you were almost certain it would be worth it.
"You're..." He tilts his head, squints his eyes as if examining you. "Aren't you an aspect of The Stranger..? Why— Why do you want to be seen?"
Your whole body seems to unwind when you think of the consequences you might receive if you tell him the answer to the question. For a moment, you try to really consider the possible repercussions, but you don't get to pause. You don't really mind it though, you think. This is the price you have to pay, but you have endured far worse.
"It's... It's complex. Very hard to explain— I can't really put it into words in any simple way."
The words are not yours but they do come from your soul. Your mouth moves, and that all-knowing compulsion weaves your complex feelings into sufficient sentences. Language, serving as a tether to humanity, draws that ineffable feeling out of you.
"It's not just the fact that it's thrilling. I mean, it is thrilling. Dangerous. But that's not... That's not the point."
Even with The Eye pulling the words out of your mouth, all the unknown aspects of you curl and shimmer inside your mind, masking the knowledge just enough for the sentences that matter to die on your tongue.
"I don't... I don't know where to start?"
A sudden awareness of your vulnerability stabs through you like ice, and you snap silent. Even under the weighted fear of the unknown, the archivist treats you gently. He does not even react to your sudden tension, and instead just stares at you with hazardous understanding in his eyes. It tempts you to continue even without a guiding plan, but you manage to purse your lips tightly shut. A few moments lapse in silence before he speaks up in a voice far too soft for him.
"Do you want to make a statement?" He asks. You almost laugh. He must be joking, you think. But something about the way he waits expectantly for a genuine answer tips you off to the sincerity.
And you do consider it.
"Would you like that?" You ask, and he nods.
You don't really want The Eye to know the depths of your complicated relationship with identity. Even with your ability to think absolutely uprooted by the archivist and his confusing ability to appeal to your human senses, you still have enough composure to recognize the significance of what a statement means.
Your entire self, peeled bare for the archivist's prying eyes to see, absorb, and feed on. This is not a simple conversation, not an exchanging-of-information that constitutes normal discussions, but an unveiling. If you give this statement, you will be lifting the lid off the platter and displaying a meal, and he will devour. You know this, and yet... You want to risk it. It defies all logic, and you hate yourself for it, but these statements feed Jon, and you want Jon to know. So, you hum your slightly-reluctant agreement, letting out a shaky chuckle.
"Okay. Sure, yeah. I'll make a statement."
The genuine gratitude is so subtly laced in the crease of his eyes that you barely catch it, but it intrigues you, the way he responds to his hunger being fed in a way so similar to your own.
He clears his throat, and— not sparing an introductory statement— speaks in that controlled voice he uses in all of his tapes.
"Statement of—?" He pauses to allow you the chance to fill in the gap. He may know your "name", know you, but he is curious to see how you choose to label yourself.
"It's complicated. You'll see.."
You see his fingers twitch as you leave him hanging on an edge. Awed, you watch. He practically salivates as he waits— too ravenous to even finish his introduction. And so, you begin:
"...I don't think I'm human anymore. I mean, I can't be. Even with the fragility of what defines a 'human,' I know fully well that I do not fulfill several of the obligations. Only recently did I even begin considering trying to use logical thought to try and string together any semblance of truth. All I know is that my perspective is so small, so condensed, so pathetic in its ignorance. I know nothing except what I do not know, and I do not know myself."
You pause to regain your breath. Jon says nothing, but his eyes say everything. For a moment, you think you see more than just the two— but you blink, and the picture before you sharpens into focus. You continue before you can think better of it.
"I know I was human once, but I can barely remember it. All that remains is a slow drifting downfall of ash that I can't see anything through. It still lingers. Memories that pass through obscured by that thick haze— like a wall. I am almost certain that, at the very least, it is supposed to be one. The beings that toy with us can't feed on us unless they keep what we chase right out of reach. For you, an endless string of knowledge. For me, just that one singular piece.
"I have to try and explain what I am now before I can explain anything else. If anyone can understand, its you. You see, I don't exactly.... exist. That is my curse, my condemnation for something I can't even remember, and probably never even deserved. I stand here before you, and am tangible in your reality, but my mind, my 'self' does not exist. Not in any human sense. I don't belong to your— I don't belong to their world anymore."
Jon suppresses a bitter laugh at your correction, but he doesn't interject. He can't argue, not when he knows just as well as you do that he can relate to the core element of what you say: you were both human once, and you never will be again.
"It was The Stranger that claimed me, of course. I barely remember how. All I remember is a blur of images that I can only put together because of hindsight. Sculptures, made of clay, resting on cheap plywood shelves. A face dissolved into wet earth, totally unrecognizable as human except for the fact that it had the expression of utter terror carved into its malleable skin. I remember the metallic taste of tearing flesh, the sight of dried blood crusted on silver tools. And that is it. That is literally it. All that I remember of being human are those brief images, and even then I am not fully certain that they are real and not just dreams I cling onto, desperate to have something— anything, no matter how horrible— as a tether to reality."
As you remember the subject, your voice begins to bristle with a faint static. Discomfort, coiled like a tight wire, nestles in the pit of your stomach. You can see the memories right before your eyes— anyone else would have tried to tear themselves from The Eye's grasp, but you make no such attempt. It would be pointless to even try. Instead, with your own gaze fixed on Jon, you try to take advantage of reliving it, elaborating on the images that position themselves like models, begging to be noticed, begging to be seen.
"I do, however, remember what happened after. Contrary to most people when faced with their fears, I have no desire to forget it. It was my becoming. My birth."
Jon's expression shifts, understanding that it wasn't a metaphor. He doesn't pale, doesn't move— his eyes simply widen with drunken wonder. You continue, doing your best to describe something so utterly beyond description.
"Thick pink walls, like the inside of an organ, pulsating like a living heart. Contracting, twisting, bending. It... constructed me. It chewed. It ground and bit down and it was far too hard to be made of flesh— hard like a rock, like clay— one big mass crunching me as if it were all one big tooth.
"It crushed my bones, and as it did so, it sculpted me. It sculpted me into a human shape, my insides made of outsides and my outsides made of earth, cooked solid, as if I were being born into something with a soul. I do have a soul. Or at least, I like to think I do. By "soul" I mean consciousness separate from the body. I know fully well we're all probably just chemicals. Of course I know that. We are probably just our brains, consciousness just one process of an organic mistake.
"I just... I wish I wasn't thinking about that when it happened. I couldn't think, I didn't exist, I was just material earth, but I could still feel. I could process information, so in a way I could think. And I was hungry to think. I was hungry to know myself even though I do not have a self I can know. The clay re-sculpted so easily, forming thick nerves, walls of neurons and brain matter. I was a pulsing mass just like the thing that was eating me. And then, it let me go.
"I was starving, so, so hungry I couldn't see anything in front of me but the identities I could become. I confronted one person. I wrapped myself around them, and I consumed them. In every way. I absorbed their fear, but I also absorbed their body, their soul, their everything. And the worst part of it is that I didn't even... I didn't even get to feel full. It didn't satiate my hunger. It wasn't my identity, and that was what I craved.
"But... I am not what I wear on the outside. This body is not mine. It is merely a tool, the limb through which I perceive the world around me. This is just—"
You gesture to your body. The current flesh-like form fits you only somewhat. You can't even describe what's off about it. It's just wrong, because it's not yours.
"I understand." Jon murmurs, his voice so soft you barely hear it, and you know he does. He really does understand.
You notice the way he seems to brim with some energy. It is an odd sense, something almost imperceptible, but you know your statement has served its purpose.
Jon relaxes in his position, as if drunk on the words, on the knowledge you had given him. Intoxicated by the fear as if it were his addiction. You suppose, in a sense, it is.
You don't know how to explain it, but you do feel it, too.
"We are... alike in more ways than you know." He tries to speak strong, but he trips over his words, jumbling their syllables together. The corners of your mouth twitch into a smile.
"Your turn." You say. But what you really mean is almost a plea, a prayer. You want to hear his secrets. You want to pry his defenses away from him and see him raw and bare, soul exposed for you to drink in. You still want to kill him, but the itch has faded into a residual murmur. You hunger for something deeper, now, and he does too.
"...My turn?" He straightens his posture, doing his best to regain himself. "Yes, yes... Uh..." His hands tremble as he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "What do you want to know?"
The question on the forefront of your mind slips off your tongue before you've even realized you were being compelled to answer his.
"Well, did you like kissing me?"
Jon stiffens. His cheeks flush a dark shade, and he turns his head to the side, trying to look at anything other than you, ironically uncharacteristic, and give you your answer: your unspoken yes. He sucks in a sharp breath of air through his teeth, and admits it.
"Yes. I— I think so."
Good. You move just a step closer to him, and the atmosphere changes in an instant. The air of exposure, of wild vulnerability, shifts just a shade closer to intimacy— and once again you can taste Jon's emotions. Anxious, half-drunk off of hearing your story. He doesn't move away, but he doesn't move any closer, either.
"You know what it feels like to be seen by an entity," You begin. "But do you know what it feels like to be seen by something like you?"
He hesitates, and then shakes his head.
Not human. Neither of you are, but equals— the idea of unfurling yourself for him to see had been enticing enough, but now you want to see him.
"I am something other. Otherworldly, supernatural, whatever word you want to use— I am something that can look like them when I want to, but really, I am nothing they can understand." Your voice softens as you lean in closer to him. Your breath brushes against the side of his face, and a shiver runs up his spine. "You can understand. You. Jonathan Sims. People rarely call you that these days. You barely call yourself that these days. Nobody knows you, either. You don't exist in any way that belongs to you. You are only "The Archivist," as I am only something other."
His eyes flutter closed as your nose bumps against his jawline.
"It's thrilling, to be seen. Dangerous. And being seen goes both ways. I can feel everything that you are, everything that makes you, and I can taste it. The parts of you that you try so desperately to hide— your inhumanity, your fall from morality, your biology—"
You take note of the way his breathing hitches, eyes snapping open and the blood rushing from his face.
"It's okay," You murmur, soft, and press an open-mouthed kiss to his throat, and he whimpers as he relaxes back into you. "You... You are familiar. Your essence is deep, complex, but it tastes vulnerable. It tastes like the fear of making the wrong decision, the fear of being betrayed, the fear of letting anyone else know the depths of what you do."
You take note of the way he shifts forward rather than backward. Instead of moving away from you, he understands what you mean, trusts in your willing honesty. His fingers curl into your clothes, but he keeps his gaze averted.
"I like your curiosity." Your own breath catches in your throat, emotion beginning to overwhelm you. "I like your complexity. I can see in you a reflection of myself."
You shift upward, and you run your fingertips over his face. Press them to his forehead, run them along his temple, down across his cheekbone, his jawline, the bridge of his nose. All sharp angles, all human in the way his skin warms yours.
"Wh—" He tries to speak, his voice weak with an emotion neither of you want to name. "What do you want from me?"
"Want from you?" You repeat in an amused tone. You've already told him— or at the very least, shown him— but his mind loses itself to the way you make him feel with each kiss to his burning skin. "I'm not certain. I want you, I suppose, whatever that entails."
He swallows rough. "What does that entail?"
You lean up to look at him. You see his eyes, wild and untamed, staring back at you in the darkness, his expression a mix of longing and terror.
Fear. Different from the anxious anticipation that chills your veins. His is deeper, and you know exactly what it feeds. Instinct almost overwhelms you, but you resist the urge to kill.
"I don't know." You no longer know if continuing with your flirtation is the right move, but the starved need for whatever he's offering pushes you onwards, and so you risk it, and add a note of seduction. "Whatever you're willing to give."
He stays silent for a moment. "Can I—" He cuts himself off, then whispers. "Can I be selfish?"
Your mouth settles into a smile, and you nod your head without asking for him to elaborate. He trembles as he takes your face into his hands. You allow your eyes to close, the absence of visual stimulus intensifying the way the touch soothes you. It feels familiar. Not like your absent memories, but like you were always meant to experience this. You feel his breath ghost against your lips, but he hesitates, and starts with something simpler.
His touch is so gentle. You can hardly believe that you ever saw him as a threat as he moves his hands from your cheeks to your shoulders. And then, he embraces you. He does it such with a profound tenderness that your heart catches in your throat— and slowly, as though you fear he might shatter, you hug him back.
The silence does not feel thick. Laced with soft and quick breaths, it acts as a blanket, and the warmth that radiates from Jon floods through you. Skin chilled by the dark quickly gives way to heat and his hands burn as he squeezes you tight, and you dissolve into him. You don't want to speak. You don't need to. Everything that needs to be said shows in his grip and the way you let him cling to you.
He's terrified. Not of you, but of what you represent. The mortifying prospect of having something you can lose. The fear of the risk, the near-certainty that one day, you will leave, or you will die. It's inevitable. In this world, victim to enigmatic beings and terror, he knows that everything he ever gets close to will be ripped from him.
Selfish. He chose to call it selfish. He wants this. He wants intimacy, the unfathomable softness. The scent of you, so close to him, feels both as tantalizing and as dangerous as an addiction. You understand it, and you understand it well. But for this moment, even amidst the hell that owns you, you choose to be soft. You choose to be human.
This will end, yes— perhaps soon, perhaps not. But it is better to have risked tenderness and lost it than to not have risked it at all.
You lean back, and as you do so, Jon lets out an exhale you can only interpret as pained.
"Sorry—" He begins, but you interrupt him, asking him a question soft enough to seem truly kind.
"Did you like that?"
He pauses, hesitates, but nods his head. Shame makes itself known on his face, that sickened look of embarrassment at the notion of being weak. Of actually still being human enough to want affection. If he didn't know you so well, you might have felt the same, but understanding and acceptance are two sides of the same coin, and so you feel no shame hidden within the rest of your fear.
"I think I'm... I think I'm leading you on." He whispers.
You look at him, shocked. That was the absolute last thing you expected him to say.
"What?" Your stomach drops a little as you force out a laugh. "What do you mean?"
He seems to sink into himself. His fingers pluck at the hem of his shirt but he doesn't seem to notice as the threads unravel and fall to the floor. He can't look at you, and you realize that he not preparing to reject you— he's preparing for you to reject him.
And suddenly, it all slots into place.
Selfish. He had called the hug selfish. Although your interpretation of his word choice had been accurate, it goes deeper than that. The fear, the hesitation, the shame, all of it comes from scars you cannot see, something marred into his soul, and you begin to realize what the problem is.
"What are you scared of?" You ask, shaping your voice to something smooth, something gentle.
His heartbeat is so loud that it cuts through the silence. It thrum-thrum-thrums as he struggles to answer. He opens his mouth, then closes it, and opens it again before stopping on the edge of a word— and then he tries to lighten the mood, trying to shake the guilt off of him.
"I've never wished that someone else could force answers out of me before." He fakes a smile. Instead of playing along, you simply shake your head, but your eyes are soft. You know what it feels like to be terrified of the answers to the questions directed at you. He was patient with you, so you are patient with him.
"Are you afraid of me?" You ask, just to clarify.
"No—" Jon quickly refutes the question, shaking his head rather frantically. "No, not you, it's—" Once again, he falters just before he gets the words out. Fear won't let him say it. "It's..." He forces out a sardonic laugh. "It's me, it's completely me, I just... I don't know how to say it. I'm—" He takes a moment to inhale. "I'm scared of saying it."
He expects admonishment, but you have no intention of brewing any more discomfort in him. A silent offering, you reach forward, and you brush your fingers against his. He clutches your hand as if it will disappear forever if he lets it go. You know he expects it to.
"Jon," You murmur his name, a tether to the present, and he looks up at you with those all-seeing eyes. "I won't make you do or say anything you don't want to, but if it's something I should know, I would like to know."
You think of each possibility. Some secret as deeply buried as a forgotten grave, some well-hidden danger to the institute he'd been trying to manage on his own, some concealed fact that could change everything— You think of each worst-case scenario, digesting the information, preparing your mind for anything you might not expect. Jon notices the shift in your demeanor, your transition from soft earth to defensive rock, and he squeezes your hand a little tighter as if pain could draw either of you back to somewhere safe.
"It's nothing like that!" Frantic, his shout echoes through the endless tunnels, and he recoils from himself. "...Nothing like that." He repeats in a smaller voice. "It's not about the institute or anything related to that, it's related to this." He gestures to the two of you.
You still aren't entirely sure what this is. Although you have done well to repress your hunger, it still boils inside of you like water ready to overflow, and a part of you worries that your inhuman tendencies might make this not the best time for this conversation. But there is no good time. The hunger never leaves, and so you instead take a moment to distance yourself from it before speaking again.
"I haven't exactly processed whatever it is I feel for you." You run your thumb across the back of his hand in a gentle caress. "Emotions are complex enough to begin with without all the complications of being a 'monster' added to the mix. I think I understand—"
But he shakes his head.
"That's part of it, but... not the immediate problem."
You pause, and tilt your head to the side. "I can't... I can't know things like you can," You explain with care. "So if you want me to know, you have to take the risk of telling me yourself."
"I know, I know." He lets go of your hand to rub at his eyes, as if wiping away at a veil to make the situation clearer. "I don't want this to mean something it doesn't."
"I don't think it means anything yet."
"But it does, doesn't it? It already means something— I liked kissing you, I liked it a lot."
You smirk, a little proud of yourself. "Good."
"It might not be."
"Why not?"
"Because there are risks! There are complications, things that neither of us know about each other—"
"I don't think that's exactly out of the ordinary."
"The severity of it is."
You can't exactly argue with that. It's true. Not only because of the external issues, but the internal ones as well.
"Are you worried about me coming with baggage, or with you coming with baggage?"
His mouth opens, but no words come out. He seems more surprised by your calmness than anything else. "...More myself, I think."
As he answers. you know what dots to connect. You know two things are irrefutable, and you know they are irrefutable thanks to the ever-clearer awareness of the distinctions between the known and unknown: he wants you, and he is afraid of something else. You nod your head along the flow of his words, and do your best to understand.
"Then it should be fine."
Your words impact him harder than you expected them too.
"Why? Not to sound, weird or anything—" He hastily corrects himself. "I just don't understand it, I can't. You— You see this, and you decide that's what you want?"
"Pretty much."
"But you don't know everything—"
"Then tell me."
He falls silent. He doesn't have to speak for you to be certain of the thought that festers in his mind like a disease: "if I tell you, you won't want me anymore."
"Jon..." You pause, and then try again, gesturing to yourself. "Neither of us are human. I know you come with baggage, but—" You bark out a laugh. "I don't even remember what it means to be normal. I have no idea who I was before this. I wouldn't— I wouldn't want someone normal."
His eyes close as he thinks, processes, and then nods.
"I come with baggage that makes relationships in particular complicated."
You assumed as much, and so you simply wait for him to continue, but once again, he doesn't seem to know how. As if the very knowledge of what he has to tell you is too much for him to even admit to himself. You understand self-hatred— you know it well— but the way his expression curls with disgust makes your heart ache.
"I don't want to have sex. Probably ever, not just because we're in these tunnels—" He won't look at you, but you can still see the discomfort in his eyes. "—And it's not because of you or anything like that, I just... I just don't want to."
"That's fine—" You try to start, but he cuts you off.
"It's not fine! It's not something that I think will ever change, and I'm not going to do it, so if that's not something you're okay with..." He seems more tired than anything, ashamed and exhausted of feeling ashamed.
"...I'm okay with it." You try again. "Really, I am. I won't force you to do anything you don't want to or make you feel guilty because you don't want to do it."
You both go silent. You, to collect your thoughts, and Jon because he can't fathom this any more than he can fathom the entities that feed on his fear. He stares at you so wildly you finally understand the phrase "a deer in the headlights." That dumb-founded gaze of shock when unable to process the thing in front of you.
"What?" He speaks slow, the word stressed and astonished.
"What?" Confused by the severity of his confusion, you have no idea what aspect you're supposed to elaborate on.
"Wh—" He shakes his head, runaway strands of hair falling into his face. "I'm sorry, I just don't— I don't understand why."
"Why I'm okay with it?"
"Yes!" His voice raises on a note of suspicion. "I mean ever. This isn't something that will change in a month, or a year, or a decade, if I even live that long. I never want to have sex." The way he works frantically, as if trying to get you to understand a missing piece, causes you to move forward to catch his hands in yours.
"What am I not getting?" There is no anger in your voice. Only a gentle curiosity and a permeating concern, and Jon's freezes. He stares at you with a look you've only ever seen before in the eyes of former victims. There's an absence in his eyes, a space between himself and the reality around him, the state that one only enters when they feel like their entire reality dissolve around them as if it were built on pillars of sand.
"Hey," With a special degree of care, you take his face between your hands, and turn his head so that his eyes lock onto yours. "It's okay. I don't care about sex, that's not why I'm asking."
He trembles beneath your fingertips, his skin damp with stressed perspiration. You run your thumb across his brow, and his eyes close as he relaxes into the comfort.
"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, either." You continue the motion, the tender back-and-forth pulling him back to the present, back to you. "But I would like to ask for an elaboration, if that's okay."
"You too," He murmurs as he opens his tired eyes. "Why don't you care?"
You shrug, and think for a moment before deciding on a simplistic explanation of "sex is weird."
He laughs, and the sound rekindles a warmth that ebbs from your chest to your fingertips.
"Indeed it is, but... I don't know, most people see that physical attraction as an obligation."
"I am physically attracted to you, but sex is different." As you speak, your hand slides down to his jawline, and you settle for cupping his cheek. "This is physical, but it isn't sex."
"Most people would want to go further than this."
"How far do you like going?"
He doesn't answer immediately, and your heart pangs at the realization of how starved for affection he must really be.
"Let me rephrase that," You try again. "How far have you comfortably gone before?"
But even then, all you get from him is a long period of silence followed by a deeply exasperated exhale. "I don't know. I've never gone all the way— I would always find some excuse to get out of it before it went that far, but I've always... I've always been too worried about what all the other intimacy was leading to."
You try and think back to any times that you had been intimate, but outside of this, nothing comes up. A splinter of fear juts into your nerves every time you try to remember, and so you give up that approach. Instead, you try and think about what you would want in a situation like that. Would you want sex? Would you even feel any sexual attraction, or would you just want that closeness? That sense of trust, of being seen, of being wanted.
Where is the line drawn? When does the aching need for comfort turn into something more carnal? When does desperation begin to manifest as lust? When is sex actually sex and not just an act to obtain the other kinds of intimacy? When does it become a performance? An obligation to be fulfilled?
Jon notices the way your brow furrows as you lose yourself in thought, and he moves to sit up.
"Is it really that bad?" He asks, but you shake your head.
"No, that's not what I'm thinking about. I was just trying to conceptualize what sexual desire even is."
"And?"
"I have no idea. Perhaps that's why I don't think your lack of it is that big a deal."
"It's more complicated than just that."
"I'm sure it is." You falter on a word, and take a moment to prepare a question before asking, "What do you feel when you think about initiating sex?"
"I've never tried to initiate it."
"When someone else initiates it, then."
"Discomfort." He waits, and then reluctantly adds, "Fear."
"I wonder what entity feeds on—" You realize it, then, as the words leave your mouth: the entities wouldn't feed on the fear of sex specifically, but on the underlying ones, the fears of deeper things that also manifest as repulsion. It wouldn't be one entity, but a collection. Perhaps the answers to your prior unspoken questions are closer than you anticipated. "—What exactly are you scared of?"
Understanding your train of thought, Jon answers with only the slightest tinge of disgust visible in the scrunch of his nose. "A lot. I— I couldn't tell you why, but it's hard to think about—"
You nod your head, digesting his words.
"The fact that it feels like an obligation?"
His lips part on a labored inhale. "Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Also—" He gestures to his body. "I don't like the idea of anyone seeing this."
Having worked out the majority of the issue at hand, his introduction of a new but related one has you entranced with curiosity— you can't help but notice just how badly you want to know. The Stranger cares for the unseen, the uncanny, and you suppose there's little as physically unnerving as inhabiting a body that you hate, but you can feel the other force— guiding you, like a wisp— to the truth. You want to chip away every fact Jon lays out for you the way an artisan chips at marble. You want to see everything he keeps buried within himself.
You already have an inkling as to what he wants to keep hidden, and you can guess as to the why, but you want to understand him completely.
"What exactly are you worried they will think?"
It is easier to talk in the third person, as if he's not terrified about what you will think, but some observing other— staring, judging, condemning him for the things he struggles to express. It provides a safety net. An additional layer of disconnect that makes it easier for him to answer.
"I don't want to be seen as something I'm not."
That you understand well, probably better than he does himself. You push away the curdling sense of snide amusement and instead choose to offer your insight.
"Your body is not a reflection of who you are."
"But it i—"
"An aspect of it, yes. But it does not define you, and anyone remotely worthy of seeing you for who you are will understand that."
He tries to interrupt you, but you firmly continue.
"Wait, please. It is essential that you understand this— or at least understand that I understand it. I live it. I am it."
Silent, looking like a guilty child, he nods. "I know, I know... It's just... It's hard to believe that I'm not... It's hard to believe that you understand. That we experience the same thing."
"I know. That can be partially attributed to how hard it is to put into words, but it's also not a common experience."
He lets out a small but bitter laugh, and the whites of his teeth catch in the faintest haze of lingering light, flashing almost as if with malice. "You're the first. Of course, I've met other people that should have been able to relate, but..."
"The intensity you feel is stronger, and that makes their experiences seem infinitesimal."
Fascination washes over his face. Awed by the notion that you could truly understand him— not just understand the general concepts, but truly understand, feel what he feels and experience what he experiences— it would be overwhelming if it were not for the extreme tenderness with which you handle him. Each word carefully stripped of judgment, each phrase another brick of the safety you try so hard to build for him.
"Most people experience some sense of dissatisfaction with their body at some point or another, but on this level?" You toss your head back as you laugh. The agony of your misalignment is quite literally irresolvable, and in a very similar way, so is his. "I am starving for identity— my identity— and that is something I will never get back. This body is no more "me" than the clothes I wear. It is just a vessel that I am trapped within."
Bitter about the concept, the way you gnash your teeth together looks nothing like a smile. In spite of that, Jon looks at you not with fear, but with admiration.
"It feels like a cage, doesn't it?" He murmurs in a near-whisper. As his eyes cut into you, you begin to become painfully aware of how constricted your tongue feels in your mouth.
"Yes," You force yourself to swallow. "It does."
Your conclusive tone results in a tense silence. Pierced from perception by all angles, the tunnels begin to feel like an iron maiden waiting to snap shut, but the sensation doesn't fit. You don't understand the growing sense of dread that gnaws at you until Jon opens his mouth, and that fatal question tumbles from his lips.
"Without the body, what are we?"
The hunger crashes into you at full force, so intense that you recoil. Every part of you screams to feed. Starving for the taste of his fear, that sickly sweet unease that stems from the suffocating realization that he knows his self as little as you know your own. You see the faint gleam of sweat shimmer on Jon's neck and you want to rip out his jugular and taste the iron, the body may not be the identity but it is the physical representation of it, and to consume him is to absorb him, to become him, and he understands you, he mirrors you.
Who are you?
You are hungry. You have always been hungry. The body is all you have, all you can touch. You dig your nails into your skin and claw but it doesn't bleed; the chipped pieces simply flake off, the dust blown away by the movement of you twisting to get away from Jon before you hurt him.
You open your mouth only to snap it closed like a trap— the words you want to force out retreat beneath bared teeth and all you can force out is a sound that sounds more like a scream than a snarl. The frenzy is lethal. You do your best to force what you cannot say to show in your eyes. The hunger threatens to eat you. It threatens to become you.
Without the body, what are you?
Hunger. Fear. You are the dread of being no one. All that you know about yourself is that everything you once were was torn away from you and all that remains is the desire to become. You squeeze your eyes shut tight, as if the single desperate act could shut the world away.
Jon does not move to flee. He sees you curl in on yourself to avoid ripping into him, but he does not fear you. He fears the sickness that sinks its teeth into you, but not enough to stop him from taking a very uncalculated risk.
You feel his hands, warm and tangible, press against the sides of your face. You try to repress a growl but it comes out as a pathetic whimper. Firm, gentle, real.
"Without the body—" You try to begin, but your insides convulse with such intensity that your vision cuts to white.
"Focus." Jon speaks with such a stern tone, devoid of any infliction except for faith. No, he doesn't fear you. He expects you to win.
"—I don't know who I am." You gasp, contort, but Jon does not let go of you.
"I do."
"Who am I?" You cry, and your flesh splinters to reveal that gaping maw of rock and nerve. Unfurling like a lick of flame, your synapses connect to his. His skin against yours a gateway to that torn space in your existence where things that don't exist do and things that do exist don't. Everything blurs into edges of red and brown and purple, mutating you into something beautiful.
Beautiful?
That thought is not yours, but his.
Shaking as the horror of it all really takes hold, he does not let go of you. Even as your consciousnesses blend into one beating heart, he clings onto you, his touch an anchor, not to reality, but to what matters. And then you begin to realize the error of your thoughts.
Unspoken, it floats between you like a dream, but you both grasp the significance with equal intensity.
Who are you?
No one. Nothing. Nobody.
Who are you?
A husk of flesh and bone. A mind. A collection of thoughts and feelings. A collection of organs reduced to tissues reduced to cells reduced to organelles reduced to atoms reduced to something.
Who are you?
Something. Someone.
Who are you?
A thing. A concept. A memory. A state. A condition. A product of chance. An effect from a cause that began long before a thought existed.
Who are you?
Who am I?
Who are you?
Comprehension. Sensation. Perception. An experience. A part of a whole. Too small to matter, but big enough to understand.
Who are you?
An existence. A manifestation in space and time. Perceivable to those around it, perceivable to itself.
Who are you?
An "I." A "me."
Who are you?
Everything. All of it. Paradoxically, nothing. None of it.
Who are you?
Fear. Hunger. Here and there, human and not. Split between what exists and what doesn't. Intangible.
Who are you?
At least part of a person. At least the memory of it. Is that enough? Can that be enough?
Who are you?
Who are you?
Who am I?
Who are you?
Who are you to ask a question?
I want to know myself. Reality is rooted in experience. To experience is to watch. I experience, I watch. I see and I know myself. Who are you?
The experience. The observation. What knows, what sees. What are you?
A what is equal to a who. What and who are only separated by a consciousness to back them. Who are you?
Consciousness. Aware. Always. Everywhere. Watching. I know you.
I know you. I want you to answer the question. I want to observe you saying it. Digest it. Comprehend it. Who are you?
Beyond your comprehension.
As I am beyond yours. It's the next best estimation. Force it into words. Force it into what the human mind might have a chance at comprehending. Even if it's just as an emotion, just as a whisper. Who are you?
There are not linguistic equivalents for everything.
I understand you. I know you. The known and the unknown are dialectical.
I understand it. The unknown, the unseen, it is everywhere. Comprehending the scale is difficult, but beyond even the remotest hope of human comprehension.
Comprehending the absence. I am an absence made physical. A gap in your knowledge. I am something obscured. Everything you do not see, you do not know. I see you. I know you.
I know of the gap in my knowledge.
You do. Therefore, you know me. It is abstract because it must be. Abstraction is the only substitution for comprehension. But you understand it, because you are aware of me.
Just as everywhere. Closed eyes, absence in the knowledge of what is in front of you. Darkness, who knows what is in the dark?
I know what is in the dark. You understand. You can find it there too.
And yet, in spite of all that unknown, I know you.
And I know you.
In the terms that the human mind can understand, we are one in the same.
Only then do you understand what the touch signifies. Only then do you fully realize it— this is what humanity is. Comfort, the negation of fear. Light and love, dark and fear. You aren't too surprised, you can't be, not when for once, the fears have finally worked in your favor.
Your body comes back to you, then. Just as much of a mystery as you are, but touch of skin against yours feels right. Jon's hands have grown hot in accord with the intensity of what the two of you just experienced. They stick to your face as he finally lets go. The cooler air of the tunnels feels like ice, and tangible reality snaps back into focus.
The first thing you notice is the sound of Jon's ragged breathing. The calm, rhythmic lull of it draws your focus. You are reminded of lungs, but yours have never really needed to breathe. The second thing you notice is a stinging pain in your arms, where your nails had dug into clay. It shouldn't hurt, and yet it does, like the burn of a cigarette butt in five long lines on each arm. The third thing that you notice is that you are strangely calm— you by all means shouldn't be, but you are— and other than the pain, your eyes feel heavy, and your limbs feel strangely hollow, and you are tired. The exertion of what you just experienced settling into your bones and dragging you down onto the earth. You think of trying to breathe like Jon, as if it would help, but you decide not to bother.
Several long minutes pass. Finally, you try and speak and find that your voice works fully well, but the words resound in your skull so loud it hurts.
"....Are you okay?"
Jon sucks in a deep breath, and then breathes out in one quick go, "Out-of-breath..." before lapsing back into silence.
He's so beautiful. That's really all you can think of as you give him a few moments, the rapid ride-and-fall of his chest slowing to a calm pace. You don't think you've ever seen anyone or anything more beautiful in your entire existence.
The hunger has faded, satiated— temporarily, at least— by reciprocal consumption. Your stomach feels full and your eyes hang heavy with the weight looming inevitability of sleep. You have so much to process, but all you want right now is to rest. To lay your head on his shoulders, close your eyes, and succumb to something peaceful, for once.
You move forward. Your fingers brush against his arm, and he looks up at you. Those eyes, a reflection of everything you hold dear, draw you in. You lean forward with every intent to press your lips to his, but he cuts you off.
"Wait—"
"Yes?"
"I'm nervous."
You stifle your laugh, but you cannot hide your smile. "But why?"
"I don't want you to think I'm—" He falters, hands gesturing as if through movement he could convey the complexity of the issue at hand.
"What?"
"I don't want you to think I'm not a good kisser."
"Oh, for fuck's sake—"
You catch his mouth with your own, pressing your lips to his. Your fingers rake through his hair, cold against his scalp, and he shudders at the sensation— his lips parting as you coax a soft noise from them, a small one, and you relish it as you kiss him a little harder. It feels nice. His skin burns hot against your palms.
"You're doing fine," You murmur, and he laughs at that.
"Just fine? Not g—"
You cut off his sarcasm with another kiss, and he melts like putty, so starved for gentle affection that he loses all recollection of his former anxiousness.
"Better than fine." You murmur, and he hums his satisfaction.
When you do finally move to pull away, he clings onto you as if you meant salvation. Even with his eyes closed, you can tell that he is aware of each and every action. You press your lips to his eyelid, and he gasps, flushes a deep shade, and tries to nestle closer to you.
The instinct of exhaustion, to curl into your comfort.
It's so human, all you can do is smile.