—— IT IS MOMENTS, and he melts, exhales a breath he could not recall keeping, could not recall taking, heart beating a mad battle cry in his chest and limbs heavy, heavy, heavy like the weight of the world or the dense pressure of lacking atmosphere or the mass of mountains crushing down on his body. It burns, and it burns him bittersweet and kind, the screaming ache in his chest ripping his mad-beating heart into shreds to heal it instantly and mend old wounds he could not remember getting. He is starved and his skin is parched and at the moment of contact it is the oasis in the desert and a fire in the darkness and never has he felt so warm.
Perhaps there is a part of him, somewhere, that refuses it, refuses it all - but it is drowned and exiled by the whole; the whole that presses against that touch as if he would die without it, turning his face to breathe against the roughness of a palm, breathing in deeply all that he swore he would never have again: the warmth, the coarseness, the scent he had grown to know as so familiar, such a comfort. Runs his tongue against the callous to taste the salt, taste the skin, breathes out shaky and reverent. Nomad, he without place now without ambition or place in a world he does not recognize, finally returned to all that which he can call a home.
And yet he needs more — closer, closer — and raises himself to meet unseeing eyes, holds the broadness of the hands that ground him. It is still not enough. And he leans, leans until he feels a forehead against his own and retracts his horns before they stab into cloth. Roaming hands, hands that begin joined and then explore the memorized curves of forearm and bicep, slipping under the barrier those arms give him and trace fingers up the chest before they settle, finally, on either side of the column of the neck. Feels the warmth, feels the strength - and only inside does he clench and shake and burn. His mouth is open as he breathes, now so, so shallowly, and even the taste of the air is more nourishment than a thousand armies.
“ Never wait again, ” he breathes, like a promise, like a prayer that stings his eyes until they close. “ I will never make you. ”
Then - silence, as if his words fail to plumb the depths of their meanings, fail to match the dearness which he says them. Silence for no words need saying, not anymore. In past lives, thousands of years past, there would be weeks, months without a word spoken between them, and even if that voice sounds so to him like the rarest commodity, he will not force it, not when bonds are deeper — not when he need only feel every word that need be said. Words are trivial, meaningless. The silence is broken only in brief.
“I thought you dead. ”
The preamble is but one touch, just to feel his skin under his fingertips and know without a doubt that this is truly the man he hoped for, beyond a voice and beyond a language. With contact, all doubt is shattered and in floods relief, only more so when the other leans into his touch, pressing cheek flat against his palm. It would seem that Kars too had similar ideas.
In a mere moment, he went from a total lack of what he craved to soft skin, heated breath, and more and he knew for a fact that this was exactly what he’d needed. What both of them needed now more than ever, more than when they’d first met or first left - they’d never been apart so long since initially coming together.
Esi may have waited decades in what they might have called a home, but it was no home without the presence of the other. The space must be occupied by two, or it may as well remain unoccupied.
Among the blackened stillness of the dark room, the very quiet sound of what little clothing the other wore and the shift of curls made him aware of Kars raising himself, becoming more level with his great height and leaning into a familiar gesture that Esidisi moved to meet him in until their foreheads touched. Cold hands, cold only in comparison to the heat within him, laid on his before traveling, up, up.
He could visualize it, each individual movement, in the lack of light and he stands still, receptive to his roaming touch until it paused and he inhaled slowly, exhaling hot air in one measured breath.
Only when words broached his lips did Esidisi open his eyes once more, finding them ironic in perhaps the most harsh unintentional way. Before his wait was the other’s, the crucial call that was never delivered when all others had never so much as been late. The words echoed in his mind, prominent and unwilling to be ignored until he spoke, quiet but firm. “Neither will I, not again.”
Then, silence.
I thought you dead.
Those too began ringing in his mind, prompting him towards an automatic response. “I nearly was.” Despite the lack of information it really gave to the fuller story, he stopped himself there for now, hands tracing down along the other man’s jaw, then neck, mirroring Kars’ destination in a shorter route and light touch.
“I’d no idea where you’d gone when I returned.” It is embellishment, and only that. Wishful thinking over some few decades that kept him from saying that which Kars had - he’d thought him dead too but he wouldn’t allow himself the thought proper. Even so, it has sunken in whether his mind called it as such or not and it showed when his muscles relaxed against his touch, finally able to breathe and truly feel relief without the ache of total loss.
