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Fingers played in a lazy pattern through Orion’s hair, blending the ink with the light of it that drifted further and further away from his initial shade of highlights with each warden slain. He could dye it, but something told him it wasn’t worth the trouble. What was worth the trouble currently laid next to him, eyes half shut in a fight against sleep. It made Orion purse his lips in a kept laugh, smiling tightly against his cheeks. Granson’s gaze flitted up to his, lids fluttering before he rolled them.
“What are you mooning for, sinner?” Granson murmured.
“You’re tired,” Orion provided softly, rolling up onto his side to face him better. “Take a nap, I’ll be here.”
Granson shook his head against the ground, huffing in argument. “Can’t nap out here.”
“Something gonna get you?” Orion crooned.
Shifting further, Orion swung a leg over Granson’s hip to straddle him before falling forward to press himself into the earth next to Granson’s head. That same ink now dangled down around his face, a veil of night not unlike that which he returned to the area not too long ago. Granson’s brows raised, not in surprise or disinterest but an emotion Orion wasn’t quite familiar with. Furrowing his own, he leaned in closer with a hum of interest.
“What are you thinking about in there, my blade?” Orion asked quietly.
“What are the odds?” Granson asked and when Orion’s expression shifted into further confusion, he huffed out a laugh. “What are the odds that we met like this? You’re from three hundred years ago. Born in another world. Another life. Yet here you are, leaned over me as certain as the night is long. What are the odds of that?”
Orion blinked, slow as his own thoughts wrapped around the concept as best as he could. He never thought about it like that. There was simply here and now, wasn’t there? Nothing more or less. If he spent too much time thinking about it, then he would be forced to reckon with the fact that he didn’t belong here at all. Lips pursed, he sighed through his nose with a soft shake of his head.
“No odds, I think,” Orion murmured, lightly touching the end of Granson’s nose with his and felt his heart flutter at the feeling of his breath brushing up against his face. “Fate. Just fate.”
“Fate?” Granson echoed. “You think all this was part of some grand design of the universe?”
“What else could it be? I don’t like thinking meeting you was just dumb luck. That there is a life out there where I wasn’t needed, that I never was pulled here, that we never met. Do I wish it could’ve been with a bit less grief for you, absolutely, there’s no denying that.” Drawing hair back from his forehead with a single nail, he pinned it with the back of his hand before leaning to kiss the exposed skin. “But yeah… I think we were supposed to meet. Anything else is a bonus, but I can’t look at my life and call it complete if I hadn’t met you.”
Gazing up at him, Granson stared with a stilled chest, swallowing after. “Orion.”
“Do you disagree?” Orion asked, eyes widening. Never had he been so… afraid. Afraid he was alone in this feeling, in this want, in this reality. “Do you?”
“I…” Granson sighed, glancing off with a grimace. “I don’t like believing in fate. Means she was always set to die like that. Always. I can’t accept that. Even if it means I was always meant to have you after it… I can’t.”
Eyes lulled, Orion nodded. He knew many who felt this way. That Nymeia spun naught a weave of fate but a web. Tangled in choices that they felt as if they didn’t get to make. If everything was destined, nothing was free. Your heart had no matter in the life you lived. He didn’t think about fate that way himself, but he understood where it came from. Anxiety of tied wrists was never his concern. It was more like a storybook with options for paths that could be taken. There was no one road anyone walked. Fate had many shades, to him.
He just happened to like this one.
“I understand,” Orion offered, kissing his forehead once more before starting to shift back off of him only to be stopped by a grip on his hips. Snorting, he looked down at Granson. “Yes?”
“Didn’t say move.”
“Didn’t say anything.”
“Well, don’t move,” Granson clarified, huffing with a grin, “Stay where you are.”
“And why should I do that?” Orion asked, voice pitched with a haughty air. “You’ll get me if I don’t?”
“Nah, you’re just blocking the sun,” Granson answered.
Swatting at him, Orion laughed only to hear Granson’s echo his in a round that he rather liked hearing. Fate or not, grief or no, there was one truth above all that remained. Beneath him laid a man who needed him like no one else ever had and that he needed in equally rare measure. Whatever series of events led him here, blocking out the sun against his hips, he was fine with it. Life was going to hurt whether they wanted it to or not, that much was clear.
But the moments that didn’t, he wanted to be carved in stone all the same. For what good did marking sorrow into their life and nothing else do? Fate might be fickle, it might not even be real, but Orion wasn’t worried about that definition at all.
Sure as the sun rose and fell on a land that could once more breathe in night, he would make Granson smile. He would make him laugh. He would make him as many good things as he could while he was here. While he was still fine.
“We should get up,” Granson argued, curling a hand into the front of Orion’s shirt. Pulling him down, he pressed a single kiss against his mouth before starting to shift him off haphazardly. “Come on, sinner. The day waits for no one, not even you.”