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There is little memory in Granson’s mind of what happened after his scars were drawn but during it was nothing if not crystal clear. Each harsh and indelicate line drug across once perfect skin, blood red against it and the sight made him ill in a way he didn’t anticipate it would. For hers wasn’t red when she died. Hers was white, pristine and glistening in sunlight that showered them the same way on a day that should have been pitch black by the tragedy of it all.
A curve fell beneath a steady hand as he traced against his side carefully, following a line she used to kiss in those lazier mornings before they started. It would live on this way, Granson thought. He could look at these lines and with them take memories out one by one like tomes from a shelf. Be it to mourn or to motivate, it held power either way. What amount he was allowed in a world that took so much from him and so many others like a guillotine above bared necks each minute they breathed that sickly bright air.
He recalls stopping halfway, breathing weakly as his eyes wept along with his wounds and blinking quickly to clear his vision again. Could he tolerate liquor, this might not be so bad. Lost to the drunken stupor that plagued so many that felt the same pain he did, numbed beneath rich touch. Granson wasn’t lost. He was sober, devastatingly so, and with another deep breath he continued his record on skin.
Eyes opening slowly, Granson stares at the ceiling for a moment before recognition sinks into his frame with a weight that rivals the leg thrown over his hip. His gaze falls to the pillow and finds another destined dagger still asleep.
Starlight paints against the ink of night, draping effortlessly across a pillow and beneath its blanket, a constellation rouses to shine another day. Orion’s eyes open slowly, thin slits taking in nothing at all before a yawn pinches them closed again. Granson smiles despite himself, lifting a hand to draw hair from Orion’s face to reveal what markings so often stayed cloaked. Little pieces, he realizes, are the biggest things someone could ever give you. Things unseen by others lest you want them seen, handed over with a promise of safekeeping.
The night before, Granson handed over a little piece. He exists in full cover most of the time, scars hidden for himself alone. They weren’t for the world to see, to understand, to question. Lines carved into his flesh for a purpose and until his was complete they would remain something his eyes saw at his most vulnerable state and nowhere else. That is until he pulled the curtain back just a touch and softened when a new gaze laid on his bared arms.
Orion was no stranger to scars. A man like himself made dozens by the day. These weren’t the same as the rest and both of them knew it with a weight that drew Orion unnaturally still. How careful his touch was as it crested the one against Granson’s shoulder, light as if it still might bleed if he pushed at all. The lines on Granson’s skin no longer wept blood but they still wept. His eyes took to them every morning when he got dressed and every night as he went to sleep, serving their proper purpose as a reminder, but the way Orion held them then did no such thing.
There was nothing to be reminded of when it’s all he knew and something about that brought relief he wasn’t prepared for. Relief and something else he couldn’t place fell over his frame as Orion kept moving against his skin. Whiskey swam in a soft glisten as he stopped at Granson’s collar, nail curled against a more crooked gash.
“You’re here,” Orion murmured.
“Yes?” Granson asked quietly, gaze fixed as Orion continued to linger on the mark.
“You’re alive. After all this. You’re here,” he continued, brows flinching to sliver his tattoo between. Looking up to meet his eyes, Orion again stilled beyond prior belief. “Is it horrible to say I’m glad?”
The room felt as if it had ticked up several degrees all at once, heat enveloping Granson whole consumed as he might be by flame. There was a part of Orion he glimpsed the first night they spoke that was present once more in this moment. A quiet honesty from a man so often loud, unshrouded without prose. Like a soliloquy on stage, uncaring if anyone was watching him perform it at all, Orion spoke. His thoughts were merely made manifest and it was as simple as that for a complex world.
Lifting his hand to curl around Orion’s, Granson pressed his palm flat to his chest and held them both there until he knew what he wanted had registered. A heavy wounded heart continued to beat beneath his ribs and for the first time in a year, he acknowledged it only to show it to someone else. This hardened heart, calcified by grief and anger, was slowly softening. Layer by layer crumbling away, chipping off beneath Orion’s very presence.
“No… that isn’t horrible,” Granson offered, curling around Orion’s hand a little harder.
That same weight seemed to linger in his chest even as they laid next to one another touching only just so. Understanding that was now present that couldn’t be rescinded. Lifting his hand, Granson traces a line down Orion’s shoulder to follow the muscle down to his elbow. There he lingers a moment until Orion’s eyes again open. The color of them seem dampened from the night before, or rather their vibrancy is different. A sheen not of grief and relief but something kinder than that. Better.
“You’re here,” Granson murmurs and smiles at the small one that pulls to Orion’s lips.
“Yes?” Orion asks. Stretching with a small shake to his frame, he settles back against the mattress and nuzzles the pillow with a soft groan. “You going to tell me you’re glad I’m alive?”
“Wouldn’t be untrue, but no. Just… didn’t think I would wake up like this again.”
“With someone?”
“Happy,” Granson answers, watching Orion’s eyes flutter open as he fights to wake up faster than before. “Easy, Sinner.”
“Easy, he says. Easy. You tell me you woke up happy for the first time in Gods knows how long and I’m supposed to be easy?” Orion prods, voice groggily forcing itself clear. Shifting up onto his elbow, he studies Granson’s face. “You’re serious?”
“Think I’m willin’ to joke this early?”
“No, but stranger things have happened to me in bed.”
A snort presses from Granson’s nose. “I don’t think I want to know. Doesn’t matter anyhow, does it?”
“Not at all… now, are you going to tell me why?” Orion asked a little quieter, looking up at him through ink and Granson could nearly hear the beat his heart raced at in the moment. “Please?”
“A please… it’s real serious…” Granson sighs and a huff leaves him when Orion’s hand connects to his chest. Reaching up just as quickly, he grabs Orion’s wrist and presses his hand to the same place as he had the night before. “This.”
“This?”
“You touched me last night and I didn’t feel… empty. Broken. Jagged.” The words leave his mouth for the first time despite being on his mind for nearly a year now. When Orion doesn’t speak, he continues. “Felt good. Normal. Warm.”
“I like those adjectives,” Orion offers with a tightened breath that he exhales after with a forced push. Glancing to their hands, he curls his nails into Granson’s skin. “I like you.”
“I know.”
A smile fights on Orion’s face. “Cocky.”
“Cocky or just correct?”
“Cocky,” Orion reiterates, tilting his head with a soft sneer.
Sharpened teeth bear themselves for a second before hiding away again and so goes his touch as he falls to the bed once more. His toes point in another stretch and the groan that leaves him echoes in Granson’s mind in a way he would likely think about for the rest of the day. If it was shifted up slightly, drawn out a bit… What would that be like? Orion glances at him and Granson stills as if he could read his mind. Hells, he might be able to. Gods, the man did many impossible things after all.
“What’s the plan today?” Orion asks and Granson releases his held breath through his nose.
“More of the same, I figure. Nearly have him hunted down, don’t we?”
“Yeah, we do,” Orion says, distantly for a second before pursing his lips. “Granson?”
“Yeah?”
“When we get him—when this is over—will you…” Grimacing, Orion seems to fight his words. Granson pushes his knee between Orion’s legs in a pointed demand and the Miqo’te nods to himself. “You’re gonna stay, right?”
“Do you want me to?” Granson asks and his expression eases when Orion nods against the pillow. “Then I stay. I was going to anyway, things aren’t finished here yet with the light and you can take all the help you can get. Even so… if I had planned on leaving, know I would’ve stayed if you asked.”
Orion seems to process the concept like one might a good wine. The taste of reality, a rich one lingering on his tongue before eventually swallowing it. Rich and red much like the thread Granson felt was tied to them both if such a thing could even exist. Fate was hard to believe in for the bad, but easy for the good. Regardless of the glint that the light cast off of Orion as yet another dagger, Granson couldn’t call the other man anything other than what he was. Easy and good.
And perhaps—if the world was so bold to do it twice—his.