but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams

"Are you trying to seduce me?"

Yes.

"Should I start paying you nightly visits?"

Yes.

"I’m not sticking to you with all that shit also stuck there."

Then we should take a bath together.

But he didn't say it. d'Artagnan played along, and Mauja smirked—his heart thundering in near-terror and elation, a powerful, intoxicating mixture. It threatened to shred his nerves, to crack open his mind and spill his thoughts like blood on the sand—

In the end, he didn't say it, because he had already said enough. If they had the time, they could sit on the beach a whole night and trade insults and innuendos, and gods how part of him wanted that—just him and d'Artagnan, and their barbed words and their warm breaths, and whatever weird thing the Doctor could find for them to eat, and.. just, the beauty of the world, the proximity to another (to him—), with nothing but the whisper of the ocean and .. icy, sleety spring night winds?

Maybe it was better saved for the long, mild nights of summer, when the sky wasn't quite so dark and the breeze just a cool and silent thing. Part of him could see it—him and d'Artagnan, the owls and the hound, the dark sky studded with stars, maybe a bird of fire in the smallest hours for lazy warmth and light...

Mauja was a hopeless romantic; he loved and loved and loved until he'd bled himself dry, and still he kept on loving, as whimsical as the wind, as deep as the oceans. He loved more than a single being. He loved much, but he lost—as much as he made himself lose, he also lost. And in that sense, he feared the day in which a single being would realize what he gave and return it.

"Queen? Did you misplace your crown jewels by any chance your majesty?" He snorted. But what else had he expected? Magical and immediate understanding of the complex inner workings that drove him towards identifying with the female title? It had started as a joke of sorts, after all, between him and Torleik (so odd to think, a joke of sorts between them, as much vying for power as mocking the other). Torleik had said Mauja would be Queen—and Mauja had simply.. gone with it. Tried to take it from Torleik and own it.

And to his surprise, it had felt good.

"They were still there last time I looked," he responded tartly. What was wrong with him tonight? He had had a thousand other words upon his tongue, ranging from serious to .. well, things that were terribly inappropriate. It was nearly frightening, a tingle going through his gut, a shiver across his skin, a fervent light in his eyes—what are you doing to me?

And just as easily as Mauja wanted to be able to sum his life up with I just exist d'Artagnan rejected it. At least the Doctor hadn't upped and left him on the spot for daring to not hate hornless anymore, but.. after all that he had felt—all that he had been through—how could he? After all he had felt for Ophelia? After the kindness Kahlua had shown him? After having, so easily, melded against her side, and stood so close to her?

But where is she now? It hurt a little, his heart gasping for a breath that wouldn't be found, but what she now did to him.. he had probably done a thousand times to her—and others.

(See now what I mean, with how he loves, and loves, and loves?)

"Of course it's the latter," he said teasingly, as much for believing it as for wishing it to be true. If d'Artagnan could not live with hornless .. he could not live with Mauja .. and if Kahlua ever returned, could not see him stand next to Kahlua. His 'brows drew together and his face fell momentarily, until the Red scooped up all of his fear, all of his vulnerability, his insecurities and his glass soul, and dumped it back into the ocean of playfulness. Because how else could they ever interact? How could d'Artagnan somehow face all the darkness in Mauja, if he was broken too? Neither of them were strong enough—maybe not even together, and part of him wanted to look aside, mumble that it wasn't a joke, wasn't something to jest about, but.. in the end, he just kept looking at the cherry bay, eyes gentle as they leaned closer. Conspiracies. The corner of his mouth tugged into a half-smile as he sat there in the sand.

"Everything," he whispered dramatically, knowing it to be an exaggeration of the truth—and yet, it still was the truth.

For those he had left to love, Mauja would set the world on fire if he had to.

man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same