Redemption Never Looked So Awful

me: cool I guess

tarot reader: why is every card death, what the fuck, I don't even have that many death cards

His face lit up with satisfaction at the blush he elicited.  “Mm.  Or they’re privileged enough to be on your good side,” he scoffed playfully, gaze lowering as he laughed, kindly allowing Jess’s an opening to slip away in his flush of embarrassment.

“Displeasure?” he suggested with the same easy levity, the same stubborn breeziness despite the somewhat more visceral turn of the conversation.  The rapidly decreasing proximity between them evoked even less response, only an indulgent curl of his lips.

“Betrayal?”  One hand moved to cup the back of the man’s head, felt the curiosity and mystery buzzing within.  No malice, no bloodlust or fury, but those were not always reliable indicators for the Jess.  The other reached out, palm up, a waiting invitation for Jess’s free hand.  Rejection thereof, or any movement otherwise, of course, and he would be gone before the destructive fantasies of his friend wandered any further.

“Ugliness,” he said, simple and direct and calm.  No fear or threat or supposition, but fact.  “I don’t think we ought to find out.”

He raised his hand, hesitating an inch before their palms met. Would this be a surrender? A show of weakness? Alan rarely operated in such a way; he was surprisingly straightforward, or at least he was with Jess. Though the silence under his ear was a reminder that he was not operating on any sort of social rule book that could clue him into the best decision. He hated rules anyway.

“Perhaps not on this evening,” he compromised, closing the final distance. His shoulders visibly slackened, muscles that were perpetually tense born from a life constantly on guard easing slowly to relax his frame. Even the constant buzzing in his head calmed to a quiet hum in the world’s slowest trust fall.

“I hope you mean physically!” he replied with his eternally unshakable affability.  “I like to think I do otherwise.  But physically … ”

The subject, he believed, ought to be treated with some delicacy.  Jess, lovely companion though he might be, did not need to dwell too deeply on what lay on the insides of things.  Of others.  Curiosity was an admirable trait, but Jess’s might be better steered towards subjects that didn’t encourage dissection.

Just a shell.  A pretty shell, but no less false and empty.

“Well.  I suppose I don’t.”   He cupped Jess’s hand in his, thumbs stroking between Jess’s palm and the hollow chest it rested upon.  “I find it imprudent to invest in the more superfluous details when they aren’t necessary.  When I’m safe.”  He lifted Jess’s hand to his lips before resting his chin upon it.  “When I’m with someone who allows me to feel safe.”

He cursed every deity that may or may not exist for the way he could feel his face heating up. He scoffed, trying to cover up his embarrassment before the blush could reach his ears, accompanying the sound with a frankly drastic roll of his eyes. “Anyone who feels safe around me has zero self-preservation.”

His eyes flicked up to meet the other’s for only a brief moment before they dropped again, possibly the first time Alan had ever seen him unwilling to hold eye contact. Jess stepped closer, keeping his palm resting against the demon’s face as he pressed his own cheek to Alan’s chest. He closed his eyes and confirmed with his ears what his hand already told him.

Jess felt numb. Whether that was his emotional state or his physical reaction to the frigid conditions outside remained to be seen. His pants were soaked up to the knee and it was growing more and more difficult to make himself put one foot in front of the other. He couldn’t stop, however, not with only two hours until dawn and with three more pieces of a body in the sac over his shoulder that needed to be scattered. The bog was alive with the sounds of the night and it left his nerves even further frayed from jumping at every noise that seemed close to him.