plaguedrat | Too much to believe, too much to deny, you fool me again to quiet my pride

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Too much to believe, too much to deny, you fool me again to quiet my pride

He'd stubbornly avoided the city's latest mischief. Any glimmer of glass or crystal had sent him walking in the opposite direction, determined not to get involved. Didn't want to see his future, didn't trust destiny or fate or any preconceived future.

But lately it seemed as though the damn things were following him. The more he walked away, the more Rat found the glinting spheres in his other directions. Apparently, they had a message for him.

"Fuck you," he muttered, even as scooped the stone into his palm.

Grey. Grey back but his rat tattoo nowhere to be seen. Grey who lounged by Curtis, exchanging lazy kisses with the devotion he used to think he would enjoy forever. Now he had no interest, no memory of Rat. All he wanted was Curtis.

Curtis pinning Grey to the bed with his good arm, forearm across his shoulder blades, marking him up with bites. Kisses. Fucking him.

Rat, unloved, alone.

Snarling, Rat threw the crystal aside. "It's not real."

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"Dimera," he agreed, drained of energy in the moment. The thought of going home, of seeing all those reminders of Grey cast into strange doubt, made Rat ache and he nodded, gesturing bleakly for Marius to lead the way.

For a second, he allowed himself the luxury of closing his eyes and leaning into Marius' hand.

"Good," he says, letting his thumb brush across the back of Rat's ear briefly as they remain like that for a moment or two. "It's not too far, I promise."

He moves to help the other man up, moving his arm to around his shoulder to keep him steady. If Rat wants, Marius is prepared for him to lean on him the entire journey to his apartment.

Exhausted as he was, head hanging low and shoulders slumped, Rat still walked on his own. He had only leaned on someone when he was in the worst of pain and would only do it again for the same reason.

Every now and then, as he walked, the back of his hand bumped against Marius'.

Marius keeps his pace slow and steady, well aware of Rat's exhaustion by the way he carries himself, head low as he slouches forward. It looks to Marius like a defensive stance; he aches to see the other man in such a state.

He takes him down a narrow side street, much how they used to build roads in Paris. It's filled with shadows and garbage, and, truth be told, it's one of Marius' favorite routes for how much it reminds him of home.

He glances down when Rat's hand bumps against his; he doesn't even think when he reaches out, taking Rat's hand in his.

Nor did he think to resist. He'd already cried his heart out into Marius' shirt. What difference was there in letting their fingers twine? It was too late to prevent this moment from becoming another chip on the pile of emotionally charged memories of people he shouldn't care about.

"Trying to remind me of home?" he asked, recovering some of his sarcasm as he gestured around him. "It's missing a few prostitutes and dead animals, but it'll do."

It wasn't very funny.

Marius lets his thumb stroke across the back of Rat's hand briefly, as they walk. He knows, from past experience, that he shouldn't pour himself so readily into caring for another person. But from the warmth that radiates between their entwined fingers and the way he yearns to help Rat take his mind of the stone, Marius knows, without a doubt, that he is already in deep.

"Actually," he mentions, relieved to hear the familiarity of Rat's sarcasm. "I was thinking of mine. Only without the parade of gamins."

Not funny, perhaps, but true enough.

"Of course," he said. For Marius' sake, he'd held back on discussing how many of his old streets had often had dead prostitutes too, just for color.

Quietly, he swung their hands a little between them. He'd forgotten how that warmth could feel.

"And the criminals making deals out in the open," he remarks, recalling his old apartment and the adventures he'd had living in it. He could have also mentioned the beggars and those slowly dying of consumption, but though he could make a bleak observation as much as the next person, he still has some tact.

"We're almost there, anyway," he mentions, nodding towards the next alley. "Dimera's not far from here."

The corners of his mouth twitch as their hands swing together. It's a small, simple gesture, but it makes him feel bubbly.

"The abandoned crying children, the dumpsters picked clean of anything with value." That was the West District, a place of hard living, of violence, hopelessness. The world had birthed Rat into a different life, but all hope for it had died with his old name.

It was a weakness, the way he craved Marius next to him. In sane moments, he knew the whole thing was doomed. He didn't care. He just wanted to curl up for a moment, to forget the things he'd seen.

"We didn't even have dumpsters, in Paris. People just threw their waste out into the streets," he replies. He can still recall the smell of his old neighborhood, especially when passing through narrow alleys such as these. He'd left his grandfather's apartments for a life of poverty, and even after everything he's lost because of said choice, he does not regret it.

Marius' tendency towards opening himself up for love probably does make him a masochist, if he stops to think about it. But he doesn't, because gravitating towards love is all he knows how to do, in the wake of a cold childhood and a failed rebellion. He squeezes Rat's hand briefly, because he yearns to. The other man next to him makes him feel less alone in the world, even with all his sarcasm and bitterness.

They meander out into a larger street then, where Dimera sits just across the way.

"I'm on the fifth floor," he says as they cross the street.

Rat nodded, glancing between the elevator and the stairs, letting Marius be the one to decide. After he'd been shot, after he'd seen Shion's face in the elevator, he had found himself preferring to climb, even when he knew it pushed the limits of practicality.

"People in the West District did that too. The dumpsters were mostly for show." His expression turned grim. "And the dead."

Marius, ever since he began walking without the use of his cane, has preferred the stairs. He dislikes the crowded nature of the elevator; the thought of winding up trapped and suffocating within it generally keeps him well away from the device, unless he has true need of it. He leads them up the staircase, still holding Rat's hand.

"Well, I suppose dumpsters make better burial spaces than in the open street," he replies, thinking of the instances he's stumbled upon corpses on his way home from delivering translations.

It doesn't take them long to reach the fifth floor and Marius' apartment; he fishes for his keys in his pocket before managing to open the door. He moves aside to gesture Rat in.

"Make yourself at home," he says as he follows him in. Even after a year in Darrow, he still hasn't done much in the way of decorating: a comfortable, green blanket draped over the couch and a few prints of paintings he'd admired once in a museum constitute the bulk of it. In one corner stands his bookshelf, overflowing, though his collection is not nearly as large as Rat's. Books in French, German, and English line the shelves; his favorite, a volume of Romantic poetry, nearly falling off one corner. Elsewhere, books and notebooks alike sprawl across his floor. He winces a bit at the sight of it, wishing he'd had the presence of mind to tidy a bit that morning.

The most recent addition to his apartment rests on one of the end tables; a small, but reliable cd player, with a few cases around it: classical, mostly, with the exception of a couple of folk albums, including one by George Glass and the Sure Jans, one of the local, Darrow musicians he actually likes.

He moves to head toward the kitchen, when he catches his cat playing with his old cane in the corner of the room.

"Courfeyrcat, how many times have I told you that's not a toy?" He sighs, but there's no real weight to it as he moves to pick up his ridiculously large cat away from the wooden object. Courfeyrcat mews and paws at him, and he grins. He is absolutely devoted to his cat.

"I have tea, coffee, wine, or something stronger, if you'd like," he says, putting his cat down and turning back to Rat.

The messy apartment was surprisingly familiar to Rat; his own was just as bad with books strewn willy nilly, picked up and dropped as he felt like reading them. "Just like home," he said, voice still drawn and hoarse. Marius had seen his own apartment and Rat didn't see why Marius wold feel any need to compensate. Better messy and alive than sterile.

"No alcohol," he said. Did it even need saying that the last time Rat had gotten drunk had ended up with him attempting to bed Marius. "Don't care otherwise." Little things like the flavor of beverage or even type at all, still didn't weigh on him, bouncing off the numbness outside.

Courfeyrcat. Rat looked him over, brows raised. It really was too much like his partment, except that the cat, in this case, was openly loved instead of tolerated for the sake of show.

Rat picked up the discarded cane, knowing why Marius had it but still unable to reconcile the object with the man across from him. "You got hurt?"

"'A room without books is like a body without a soul,'" he quotes, recalling Rat's apartment and how the books within it helped make it seem cozy. Even back in Paris, his small room had overflowed with papers and what books he could afford; he supposes his urge to clean stems from an urge to impress the other man. "I can't imagine not having books in one's home."

Briefly, he pets Courfeyrcat before setting him down on the floor. Instantly, the cat makes his way over to Rat, sniffing curiously at his heels. He glances up to give the man an expression as if to ask why he didn't bring his own cat with him. "Don't mind him," Marius says, shaking his head. "He's got quite the personality for a cat. Just like his namesake."

"Right," he says, a pinkish hue flashing across his cheeks as he recalls what happened the last time they'd drunk together; a memory stubbornly embedded deep inside his thoughts. He considers the cold day outside and thinks that the occasion calls for coffee; caffeine offers its own comforts. "How do you take your coffee?" He asks as he moves to make a pot.

He watches the other man pick up his cane; the sight stirs an odd mixture of emotions in him. He hasn't required the cane to walk for months now, thanks in no small part to the miracles of modern medicine. He suspects he would still need it, were he back in Paris. Now, though, he can walk fully unaided, even if an occasional hard step makes him wince.

Every time he glances at his old cane, he remembers; the state of himself upon arriving in Darrow, having just awoken to discover all of his friends dead in the wake of the barricades. Even now, separated from the events by centuries, Marius still feels the familiar tug of guilt and sorrow in his gut at the thought of it.

He closes his eyes briefly, letting out a shaky breath. "I was. I had just woken from a fever after getting shot at the barricades when I arrived here. I needed it to help me walk." He leaves the question of 'I don't know how I even survived' unspoken.

Sometimes he still can't escape the irony: that he, the one who went to the barricades with the hope of dying, wound up the sole survivor.

Again, Rat was struck by that unfair sense that he knew more that Marius did. In some, or many, universes Marius was a creature of fiction. In this one, no one could even say for sure what they were. The thought that he might be fictional himself was too troubling to consider. "Maybe some good Samaritan came to your rescue," Rat said, shrugging. Certainly, Jean Valjean hadn't been the one to heft Marius up and carry him safely away for the sake of his daughter's love.

"Bullet wounds hurt like hell," he agreed, not quite aware of the fact that he'd admitted it out loud. Marius had seen his scars, though he'd only asked about the puffy, swollen keloids that would forever mar his back.

He set the cane down, remembering he'd been asked a question and still catching the blush on Marius' cheeks. "With milk," he said at last. "Don't worry, it takes more than coffee to persuade me to take someone's virtue."

For as much as Marius likes to spend his spare time losing himself in other people's words, he has never once considered the possibility of himself being an author's creation; the thought has never crossed his mind. If it ever were to, Marius would not know what to make of it, apart from incurring an existential life crisis. "Someone must have," he ponders, gathering the coffee into the pot and turning it on. "I don't know how I'd have survived, otherwise. I remember...bits and pieces." Odorous smells; sludge dripping off every inch of his body, including his gaping wound. The feeling of a broad shoulder digging into his stomach. Footsteps resonating through his still, half-lifeless body.

He looks up from getting the milk when Rat makes his statement; considering what he remembers of the sight of Rat's back, and from what Rat has told him of his own life, he shouldn't be surprised that the other man knows what it is to be shot. But it catches him off guard, nonetheless. "Yes, it does," he replies. "When were you shot?"

His blush only increases at the remark; his hands make themselves busy pulling mugs, sugar, and utensils from his cabinets. He wonders if he can still be considered virtuous, with how clearly and often he recalls Rat's hands. His mouth. "Duly noted," he replies, beginning to put together their drinks with a tremor in his hands he hopes is barely noticeable.

"Once when I was twelve," he said, tapping his left shoulder. "Three times when I was seventeen." He tapped higher on his left shoulder, then on his side, then his thigh. "It never hurts less the next time around."

To a skilled reader, his body was a map of trauma. Of fire and pain and misery. It was the life he'd lived. "I haven't lived an easy life, but you knew that." Nor had Marius, not really. Again, that advantage he shouldn't have had.

Again, he watched Marius. Pretty men who went to my head, he silently recited. Lonely, tired, he came up behind Marius and wrapped his arms around his waist, head dropping to Marius' shoulder.

"Jesus," Marius says, gaze following to where Rat points out everywhere he's been shot. He'd been lucky enough that he'd fallen unconscious almost exactly when the bullet hit him; he could only imagine enduring multiple shots at once and being awake for it. "No, it doesn't, does it? That's incredible that you survived all that."

But then, as Rat has told him before, that's what he does; he survives. And he can see it in his body, in the bullet wounds he reveals to him, and in the memories he has of the scars on his back. "Yes, I did know that," he replies, watching the other man. His life hasn't been easy, either; not as harsh as Rat's reality, no, but brutal in other ways. Not that he ever openly discusses those aspects with anyone. "And you've never let that hard life defeat you."

He sinks back against Rat when he comes up behind him, coffee all but forgotten; he leans his head against Rat's, savors the warmth of their skin touching. He moves his arms to cover the other man's and lets the embrace wash over him. Just being held like this is intoxicating on its own; he revels in it.

"I got lucky." He'd had help from Sion, from Elyurias. Otherwise he would have certainly succumbed to those wounds long before the end of the Holy Day. Instead he'd survived and walked away, stained and bloody, but whole. "Luckier than I deserved."

Sion had deserved it. Other, better people had deserved it. Rat had simply been gifted in enduring here better people couldn't.

He tilted his head thoughtfully, dropping a kiss on Marius' neck before he could think with his brain. When they'd crashed into that room at Kagura, they'd been clouded and lusty but they'd felt so very alive despite it. Even if only for a moment, he wanted to feel that alive again. He wanted to feel Marius.

Marius wants to tell him that of course he deserves to be lucky; to be lucky enough to survive multiple bullet wounds and survive the hell of his own life. But he knows that the other man would just protest at any verbal attempt of convincing. Instead, he rubs soothing circles on the man's arms locked around his waist, putting as much warmth as he can into the touch.

They've both endured where others have fallen, and they both, in their own ways, bear their own guilt about it.

He feels Rat tilt his head; his skin tingles from the motion of it, and when the kiss lands on his neck, his breath catches in his throat. That night at Kagura lingers in his mind, even fogged as it was by lust and the desperation to escape loneliness. Rat's touch illuminated him like a spirit then, even as it does now. He'd felt alive for the first time in months; he feels alive now and he yearns for Rat.

Moving his own head and bringing one hand up to cup Rat's jaw, he pulls him in for a kiss, slow and deep like a growing flame.

Rat wouldn't have agreed, probably never would, but hat was why neither of them said anything. He could feel Marius' intent over his skin in those tiny, comforting circles. The touch was no panacea but it was at least a balm on the freshest wounds.

And it felt so good to be kissed. There was no hesitation, no attempt to Push Marius away as Rat leaned back into the kiss, enjoying the sounds and touch of a person becoming more and more familiar every day whether he tried to stop it or not.

He wanted this warmth, this memory. Rat leaned forward and returned the kiss, his skin thrumming with the chance to love someone else.

The silence between them settles like candlelight; even without saying anything, warmth permeates between them, sparking between fingers and skin as Marius continues his soothing motions as they kiss. Just being able to provide such a simple touch thrills Marius and opens his mind to all the ways he'd like to show the other man his affections.

He gasps every time their lips part, always wanting more. Kissing, such a delicate, seemingly simple art; yet with Rat, Marius finds himself caught up in the intricate dance of their mouths moving together, colliding and recoiling with the sanguine, serpentine ease of the tide. He shivers a bit at the lack of hesitation, letting his hand curl into the edges of his hair.

He turns to fully face Rat, bringing his other hand to grasp the other side of his face. Everything about the other man begins to feel familiar to him, and he relishes the sensation, his nose brushing against Rat's as they continue to kiss. He feels illuminated in his presence.

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Too much to believe, too much to deny, you fool me again to quiet my pride

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