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

[plaguedrat]

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."

Comments

[pontmercyfriend]

"'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.

[plaguedrat]

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."

[pontmercyfriend]

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.

[plaguedrat]

"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.

[pontmercyfriend]

"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.

[plaguedrat]

"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.

[pontmercyfriend]

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.

[plaguedrat]

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.

[pontmercyfriend]

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.