love and violence

the kettle begins to hiss, and charles gentle extracts his hand from luke's to attend it, lifting the kettle off its hook with a cloth around his hand, and pouring two the steaming water into two chipped cups that he'd already prepared with herbs. he takes them to the bed, and offers one to luke.

" drink. you lost an ocean of sweat overnight. " his thoughts still. charles knows what comes next. he can see in luke's face the question that his lover cannot quite form on his tongue, and knows that he does not want to answer it. is it for luke's protection or his own that charles wants to delay? he's never been afraid of confrontation, of course, but the horror of what had happened last night hasn't stopped aching in his center.

he looks at charles when he finishes as much of the acrid taste as he can stomach, leaving space for his love to explain. an echo of their conversation reverberates through luke’s shrieking headache.

you don’t know what I feel. I wish you did, charles. I wish for just a moment, you could feel an ounce of what I feel, and even that might be too much.

“ I lost my temper with you. ” he says this quietly, as if only just remembering and does not follow with an apology. he does not recall saying anything he regrets. he searches with wide, grey hues for answers. charles looks ragged, carved with exhaustion and grave as if luke is already dead.

winter. luke does not disagree. his friend is winter repelling everyone around him back into the safety of their homes, by choice whether consciously or not. sylvain is spring, warm with every type of love but too shy not to be frozen over by a harsh cold. perhaps luke can bridge the gap enough to create some tolerance.  

“ well, I think it says something that siggy is willing to be my friend at all. he likes to look a certain way, and is super worried about how he’s perceived by other people, but he still comes to see me just to see me. he doesn’t want anything, and there’s nothing I could give him that he’d want anyway. he just likes my company. I think that’s sweet. ”

and sad, of course, but he doesn’t mention that yet. besides, it might already be obvious.  

the start does not visibly faze her - she is quite used to this from people, if anything finding it far more uncommon when they do not flinch away or recoil or spit.

oh, and his hair is somehow so much softer than she imagined pressed into her hand, like thread. deep red eyes peer through gnarled oilslick tresses tangled in the brush and brushing the ground, and a wide, toothy grin splits her expression. between filthy fingers, she delicately rolls the golden strand of split dead ends forth and back, reverent of its difference to her own.

" there he is, " charles murmurs, brushing the damp hair from his lover's cheeks. this ( their argument, but also, luke's mortal danger ) isn't over yet, he knows. but they've passed through the first night. even he can be grateful for something as small as that.

charles gently takes luke's reaching hand, and brings it to his lips to kiss. his lover tastes of sweat and pain. once again, he must swallow down and lock away the anger he feels for whoever did this. as much as his insides boil, on the outside, he must be cool, caring, calm. he places down luke's hand, for he needs both his own, and draws down the covers a bit to see how his lover's bandages, charles' shoddy handiwork, had withstood the night.

his grasp is weak, but with the strength he can conjure he remains anchored to charles’ hand. he’s uncertain whether the reek of blood comes from his aching wound or leaks from his nightmares.

he wants to ask charles if he thought about things, but he can’t string the words together in his head much less enunciate the unformed thought. dazedly, he lifts his glassy gaze to search for mismatched eyes.

( he feels just a little like the child he'd been once, being told he shouldn't wear trousers, or shouldn't talk to the sailors on the supply ship, even if they were nice to him, and especially if any of them said he was pretty. )

" i didn't think you or siggy really cared if i wasn't there, " sylvain says, which is true, as far as he knows, but is not the reason that he manages to slip away every time with ' suddenly remembered ' holidays and ceremonies that he'd just made up, the way his mother had sometimes done when she grew tired of his father's presence.

years of experience have not taught him proficiency : the bandages that charles ties around luke's wound will keep the blood in his body, but they are, by no means, beautiful or elegant. the sheets are ruined, even so, and the old bandages have stained charles' hands with red and the scent of iron. he cannot help but choke on that bitter truth as he lays luke's unconscious and tended body in the woolen blanket that will have to do for sheets until they can wash them down at the river.

and then charles sits, not in bed, but beside, as one does with the ailing. he has been instructed to think, and so he thinks. he thinks about how much it would hurt to lose luke. he thinks about the hole he would tear in the world as revenge for that loss. he thinks about how stained and red his body is with blood, with luke's and others, and how he could bear to stain it again and again, to save someone he love, or to protect those who couldn't do it themselves. he knows this is not what luke wants, and he knows that the violence he chooses is, on its face, an evil. but what makes an action good or evil beyond its outcome? hasn't that always guided him : strife, his mother, is evil because the violence she does is for no one and nothing but the sating of chaos. charles has tried to be good, and do good, with the instinct that his blood had given him.

he knows luke will never agree with his methods, but never before has he been forced to make a choice between what he knows and what he loves. it is not worth losing luke to another's violence . . . but it is also not worth losing luke to his own.

when the morning comes, charles remains in turmoil. even so, the days must pass. as the the sun rises, charles goes to pump water from the well, and the activity makes his head feel less foggy. having brought the full jugs of water into their hovel, he pours some of the water in the kettle and sets it to boil over the fire he'd maintained in the hearth, before going back to the bed and nudging at luke's shoulder.

he does not wake like snapping fingers, but instead like he is a body being dragged from a lagoon, heavy and cold. heavy eyes drag open by willpower alone. It quickly becomes clear that the adrenaline masking the pain of ripping open the halves of his wound has vanished. He feels it fully, a horrible crawling, itching sting. 

luke does not believe himself brave about pain. he can swallow it down like hard alcohol, but he hates every second of it. 

he drips in sticky sweat that beads his bare chest and makes his hair stringy. He feels his stomach, delicately examining the swelling beneath the gauze with his fingers.

Mary Oliver, from Swan; "More Evidence"