He…he didn’t really shatter when I answered his question—well, okay, maybe he did, but it wasn’t the shatter I had been prepping myself for. But that’s the theme, isn’t it? Me, figuring out everything isn’t ass-backwards like I am; that, sometimes, some things don’t have to make a lot of noise and break a lot of stuff in the path of their bleeding, beating heart. And he laid there and there were still tears in his eyes—but he shifted underneath me, just a little, and he looked at me and he forgave me for pulling his hair so—

--I mean—

--I’m not sure what it meant, let’s be honest. I’m not sure what sort of a sign it was, exactly, but he was still here and his heart was beating steadily beneath me, under his skin, and he looked at me with piercing blue and the shadows in those irises seemed to...well. I dunno about lessen. But they weren’t leaking from his eyes anymore either, suffusing his sight with that panicked terror that I had hated to see settled in his face.

A tension I didn’t even know I had had began to ease from my shoulders and my back—because Leos was relaxing a little underneath me and—and I dunno, maybe I had said something right, maybe not, but the ice was melting from eyes that were already so blue and my own sense of urgency started to melt, too. Leos was gonna be alright--at least, that’s what I hoped, and I hoped I was doing it right by holding onto him, keeping his head pegged to earth so he would fling himself into orbit—

--and my eyes got heavy again, cuz I was still tired, remember? My body still sagged and my bones still ached and I just wanted to sprawl and nap for hours but I couldn’t let myself do that, not while Leos needed…something.

So he started speaking and I was listening and everything was going to be alright, that’s what he said, wasn’t it—and part of my mouth was still buried in his side and I was still breathing into him and sagging way, way too low to be fully awake, and he asked me what was eating me and my eyes were lidded and my brain was slowing down and I almost answered that damn question without realizing what he was asking.

“My Ma—“ I started, impulsive and uncontrollable—until something shocked me into full wakefulness and my eyes opened and they stared out in front of me, at the pale canvas that was Leos’ pelt, and realized what I was about to tell him.

And at first it wasn’t so bad; at first it seemed possible I could tell him, so easy to just …let it slip out from under me, those things I had shoved in the back of my mind out of my crazy fear of losing Lee. I opened my mouth, groping for a voice to speak with—but it wasn’t there, it ran from my grasp with every moment that passed, cuz every moment reminded me of everything that I had tried to shove all the way in the back—

(--even though your mother was raped by a god--)

--and every moment it became that much closer to being impossible to tell Leos these things, because they threatened to shatter everything we had built back up again on this night.

I froze against him, those things swirling in my head like they were, my breath hitched and my voice so dead in my throat, even though he asked me what was eating me. Hadn’t he asked that question before?, my brain spat quietly. And hadn’t I answered it already?

Yes. With half an answer.

Cuz the invasion was only half the nightmare, wasn’t it? And he—well, I guess he picked up on it somehow, I dunno, or maybe he was—he was just trying to make sure I was alright and make sure everything else was square in my life—

--and it wasn’t, oh god it wasn’t, and even sitting there the tension was mounting and the pressure was building and I sat up away from him cuz it felt wrong to be touching him like that, for me to be anywhere in his vicinity, cuz the god-awful disgust was stacking up, ripping me from a dream and plunging me into darkness, just like—like every night before then.

But he asked hadn’t he? He asked twice, and that was the part that scared me. Cuz I had pulled his hair and shouted at him and been so rough with him and he was still here, he could’ve left, he could’ve said “fuck this dumb shit” and walked the fuck out but he didn’t. He was still here, almost as fucked up as I was—maybe more-so, I dunno, I dunno where all this guy has walked.

And I wanted him to know, too. I wanted to…to let this shit go. I was done hiding it in the same place and covering it all up and collecting dust and blood blisters.

I wanted to tell him, finally, what I was.

And the terror was that it might be the last straw that finally made him-- go.

I sighed—well. Not really a sigh, cuz something urgent was falling on my breath and my chest had started to heave thinking about—the Stuff. I was really trying to steady my breathing, to bring some rhythm to it, because at that moment it felt like it could fray apart at any time. “….Lee,” I said, small and…and eerie, haunted by shit I wasn’t really seeing, but seemed to dance among the spots of his body, “Do…you don’t know who I am, do you?”


"talk"