evil tagged by @peg-the-empire (ty ily)

go my gillington

“Sit.” James commands. Andrew does.

Someone who would bend the knee to him, for a change. That was what James had been missing.

And it had been right in front of his face all this time.

He reaches a hand out, hesitating when he remembers his fingers are rough with work that never ends, but Andrew doesn’t pull away or complain. He allows James to brush the pad of his thumb along his bottom lip, almost experimentally, so carefully one would think he was handling something fragile. James is afraid to meet his eyes but he can feel them, deep brown and searching, hoping.

Shame settles in, finds comfort in his conscious. What was he doing to his subordinate—his friend? But it does nothing to wane him, not when Andrew was looking at him the way he was now.

“You’ve wanted this for a while, haven’t you?”

Andrew scoffs. “Need me to spell it out for you, Commodore?”

James draws his hand back like he’s been burned. “How long?”

“Long enough.”

the purpose of creating art is to make yourself sad. The purpose of successful art is to make everyone else sad as well.