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i.
Many years ago, in the space before history began, a boy was born in a small town perched on a rocky cliff by the sea.
The boy’s mother knew that he was special the second she looked at him. Not in the way mothers always know their children, down in their bones, but in a different way. A more urgent way. This child had history written in the shine of his eyes, in the curve of his cheek, in the upturned tilt of his smile. There was something singular about him. He had the bright-burning energy of the gods. And when his mother took him into her arms for the first time, she hid her tears in the soft slope of his shoulder and the press of his open palm.
She knew, after all, that the gods did not take kindly to comparison.
As the years passed, the boy grew. And, just as his mother had expected, his beauty flourished with time. He was strange and lovely, hair silvery and soft, eyes large and sharp with the feeling that they were looking right through you. And word spread slowly but steadily, no matter how desperately his mother wished it wouldn’t.
Elegant Sugawara Koushi.
He was newly 18 when they began to compare him to the god of love and beauty.
ii.
Sawamura Daichi sometimes wondered if this whole immortality thing was worth the hype.
It wasn’t that Daichi was ungrateful. As Kuroo was constantly reminding him, the offerings and reverence were well worth doing the occasional divine dirty work. Plus, Daichi was good at what he did. Mortals didn’t pray to him out of fear (unlike certain ridiculous-haired cat-eyed war gods he might mention). They prayed to him because he was effective and efficient and prided himself on a job well done.
It’s just that when every meeting Daichi had with his boss ended up like this, he really wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just become a farmer and then die like everyone else.
Across the table, Oikawa Tooru drummed his fingers on the polished wood and said, sickly sweet: “You’re not saying much, Dai-chan.”
“Just for the record,” Daichi said, his eyes on the book he’d been reading before Oikawa sat down, “I don’t think this is a particularly good idea.”
Oikawa shot Daichi a sharpened smile. “I don’t pay you to critique my ideas. I have Iwa-chan for that.”
“I can’t imagine Iwaizumi would be in favor of this, either. Also, you don’t pay me at all.”
“Oh.” Oikawa paused. “Should I? Are you unhappy with your benefits, Sawamura?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Daichi said, with just a touch more exasperation in his tone than he’d intended. “My point here is that unleashing the fury of heaven because of a thoughtless comment made by a few provincial villagers-”
“Hardly thoughtless,” Oikawa interrupted, and Daichi realized with a sinking feeling that he recognized the expression on Oikawa’s face; he’d seen it most recently in Crete, and that particular incident had ended spectacularly awfully, if Daichi did say so himself.
“You have heard what they’re saying, haven’t you?” Oikawa continued. “They’re saying he’s some sort of… second coming or something. That he’s the new me. Or that I’ve been bestowing my divine beauty amongst the populace. As if I would ever-”
“Okay, not thoughtless, stupid,” Daichi interrupted, before Oikawa could build up enough steam to keep him going all afternoon. “Ridiculous. Absurd. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Honestly, Sawamura,” Oikawa said, lightly, with an undercurrent running under his tone that screamed of imminent physical violence. “It isn’t that difficult of an assignment. You just have to find this Sugawara person and get rid of him. Make him fall in love with - oh, I don’t know. A bull? That one was fun. Or perhaps a statue, or his own reflection? Be creative. I just want him out of the way.”
Daichi sighed and pushed his chair away from the table. “Don’t you think this is a little bit petty?” he asked.
Oikawa gasped in an approximation of shock.
“Petty? Me? Listen, it’s not like I’m smiting the kid.”
And that was true, Daichi reasoned, as he hoisted his quiver and bow over his shoulder and turned to leave the dining hall. It wasn’t like Oikawa was smiting him. It never was. Smiting wasn’t his style.
Oftentimes, Daichi felt this way was worse.
Daichi put the job off as long as possible. It was partially distaste for what he was supposed to be doing; Daichi’s purpose was to bring people together. This kind of thing might be Oikawa’s style, but it wasn’t his.
It was partially something else, though. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A weird, half-formed sense of dread floated to the front of his mind whenever he thought about Sugawara Koushi.
Oikawa was nothing if not persistent, though. It only took a couple days of insufferable needling before Daichi gave in. He left Olympus with his arrows on his back, figuring that the least he could do for Sugawara Koushi was to make him fall in love with something particularly deadly and bring the whole situation to an end.
Daichi arrived in the town on the cliff with spring in full bloom. The town was lovely - all cobbled stone and creeping vines and a riot of color, blossoming like spilled dye across the landscape - but Daichi kept his head lowered. He stuck to the side streets as he wound his way up to the market in the center of town. Even disguised and wrapped in layers of cloth, it was difficult to mask the aura of a god, and Daichi more than most.
Anyway, he wasn’t in this place to sightsee, no matter how blue the ocean was.
Once he reached the market, it didn’t take Daichi long to find what he’d come for - or, rather, who he’d come for. He followed the tug in his chest, something like raw instinct leading him to a market stall selling fresh-cut flowers. Behind the stall, his slim shoulders draped in colored fabric, sunlight catching silver in his hair, sat the mortal boy who’d managed to incur the wrath of a god.
Beneath his cloak, Daichi’s careful hands found the shaft of one of the arrows he carried on his back. He didn’t draw it yet, though. Instead, he waited.
And watched.
He wasn’t the only one. Townspeople turned to stare at Sugawara Koushi as they passed him by. He smiled at them patiently, dipping his head in greeting and pressing the hands of the aging women who reached out to him. Girls hid their faces as they walked by his stall, boys lowering their gaze to stare, baleful, at the ground. Whispers floated around him like a cloud.
Sun-spun Sugawara Koushi, who was, they said, more beautiful than springtime. More beautiful than the flowers he sold. More beautiful than the lord of love himself.
Daichi had to admit, he sort of understood the threat Oikawa had seen in him.
Sugawara had not surpassed Oikawa. Oikawa was immortal - he was born from the waves of the sea, glorious and eternal and undying. He was love itself. As long as human connection existed in the world, Oikawa would, too. No mortal, no matter how beautiful, could compete with that.
Sugawara was beautiful, though.
It was something more than the delicate bones of his face and his quick and easy smile, though. More than the way his hair looked like starlight under the dizzyingly bright, noontime sky. More than the way he carried himself, open and honest, like his kindness cost him nothing.
There was just… something in the air around him, half-golden and effervescent and charged . Daichi had seen this kind of energy before, in people who were very much in love. Only, Sugawara wasn’t in love with anyone in particular. It was more like he was in love with the world around him - with the promise of it.
Daichi looked at him, sitting among the technicolor flowers, and something inside him that he did not have a name for went, oh.
His hand fell away from the quiver on his back.
As if he’d sensed the motion, Sugawara’s eyes lifted from the elderly man he was wrapping a bouquet of hyacinth for and landed on Daichi. His head tipped, slightly, to the side. For a long, breathless second, their gazes caught.
Then Sugawara directed a fleeting smile in Daichi’s direction and went back to helping his customer, laughing at something the old man had said.
The smile sank into Daichi’s skin like a knife.
He didn’t want to go through with this.
He didn’t want to watch this boy fall into madness and misery, cursed to long for a wild animal or an inanimate object or his own reflection in still water. He didn’t want to be the reason for the world to lose the rarest kind of smile, the kind that gave of itself without asking for anything in return. He didn’t want to do this job.
You just have to find this Sugawara person and get rid of him, Oikawa had said. And then he’d added: I just want him out of the way.
Out of the way.
Huh.
Daichi could make that work.
With one last, long look at Sugawara Koushi’s sunlit smile, Daichi turned and left the market.
The plan he eventually landed on wasn’t what Daichi would call smart, or even good. It was, in fact, mostly insane.
The first thing he did was hunt down Sugawara Koushi’s mother.
She was on her way back to town, returning from one of her seed suppliers. Daichi made his way down the cobbled road that led to the lowlands and purposely stumbled into her when they crossed paths.
As soon as he touched her hand in apology, Daichi felt her worry. The fear she carried with her. This type of love wasn’t exactly Daichi’s wheelhouse, but he was still attuned to it - attuned to the way she cared about her son furiously, wholeheartedly.
He felt her fear of Oikawa, obviously, but running below that was recognition of a secondary danger: that Sugawara would spend the rest of his life like a priceless trinket, lovely to look at but not to touch.
She feared for him - for his future, for his happiness, for his heart.
“I can sense agitation in you,” he told her. “A burden you have carried for a long time.”
“Not a burden,” she corrected him, but her eyes were desperately sad.
Daichi nodded. “Of course. Forgive me, but have you tried consulting the Oracle at Delphi? It might point you in the right direction, and a little direction can go a long way towards easing your mind.”
He gave her shoulder a small squeeze before turning and disappearing into the stream of people along the road. She called after him, offering him free flowers from her stall for his trouble, but Daichi was careful not to let her see him slip away.
She left for Delphi the next morning, leaving her son to tend the market stall and praying to the gods that this trip would give her answers. Daichi felt her prayers acutely, under his skin.
That evening, he paid a visit to the temple of the sun and cashed in a longstanding favor with Delphi’s lord, who barely hesitated before promising to include as much detail in his prophecy as he could. “Anything for my favorite god of love,” Hinata said, beaming at Daichi a little too knowingly.
That day, the Oracle at Delphi didn’t give Sugawara Koushi’s mother the hope she’d longed so desperately for. Instead, it foretold a long journey to a distant mountaintop, a life in hiding, and, though Daichi did not know it at the time, something even more nightmarish than angering a god.
Loving one.
The second part of Daichi’s plan was a little more complicated.
Daichi was proud of the villa he built on the mountainside. It wasn’t an idyllic town by the sea, but it was beautiful and more than comfortable. There was a stocked kitchen, a garden in full bloom, and the most attentive, least intrusive staff magic could conjure. The views down the mist-shrouded, deeply green slopes of the mountain were enough to make even a god take in his breath. Daichi knew, because he had.
It wasn’t a bad place to hide for your life, he reasoned.
But it wasn’t home, and he knew that, too.
About a week after his mother’s trip to Delphi, Sugawara Koushi arrived at the villa. The morning was very gray; the brilliant color that had infused Sugawara at the market seemed to seep away, drained like water cupped between palms.
Sugawara was crying, silent tears carving tracks down his cheeks.
Daichi watched from a distance and waited. At his perch, high up the mountain, he got to his feet without really realizing what he was doing. His fingers itched with a nervous energy he didn’t recognize.
Sugawara let himself into the house.
Daichi began to pace.
The day passed painfully slowly. Daichi watched Sugawara unpack the single bag he’d brought with him. He watched him fold and unfold the letter his mother had written him, watched him pick at a dinner laid out for him by invisible hands. Daichi watched him explore the marble halls, thoroughly inspect the flowers in the gardens, sit out on the front stoop with his face tilted upwards towards the sky.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and then, finally, set.
Under the deepening cover of night, Daichi shook the nerves out of his hands and took flight.
He arrived at the villa just as the stars began to blink into visibility. Sugawara had long since retreated into his room, so Daichi let himself in, glad for the cover of darkness. When he reached Sugawara’s room, he paused for a long moment before knocking.
There was a long beat of silence, a couple rough breaths and frantic sniffles. And then the door swung open, and Sugawara was standing in front of him, close enough to touch.
The first thing Daichi thought was, oh, he’s shorter than me.
His next thought was, he’s about to brain me with a candlestick.
Daichi dodged out of the way as Sugawara took an off-balance swing at him with the object in his hand - not a candlestick, Daichi realized. A wooden branch he must have broken off one of the trees in the garden.
“Who are you?” Sugawara hissed, squinting in Daichi’s direction in the darkness. Daichi could barely make out the shape of his face. “If you’re here on behalf of Lord Oikawa to kill me-”
Daichi lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not, I promise. I’m the owner of this house.”
Sugawara froze. There was a long beat of silence, and then he slowly lowered the stick.
“Oh,” he said. “Well. I’m really sorry for trying to bash your head in.”
“It happens,” Daichi said, even though it didn’t, usually, happen to him. “I hope the house has been suitable so far. I’m. Um. My name is Daichi.”
“I’m Suga. Are you named after the god?” Sugawara asked.
Daichi made a sound like, ack, before settling on answering with a nod. Sugawara let out a tiny laugh. “Well. I guess between the two of us, we’ve got sacrilege on lock.”
“Guess so,” Daichi mumbled, thinking, if only you knew.
“Well,” Sugawara said. “Since you’re here, we might as well discuss how this whole co-habitation thing is going to work. Have you eaten dinner? I’ll light the lamp-”
Daichi caught Sugawara’s wrist, gently, in his hand. Sugawara made a frightened sound, low in his throat, so Daichi let go immediately.
“I’m sorry,” Daichi said. “Just… please, leave it off. You can stay as long as you promise never to look at my face.”
“Oh,” Sugawara said, surprised. “Is… is that your only requirement?”
“Yes.”
“Are you terribly ugly?” Sugawara joked, stepping away from the lamp. “You don’t sound like a hideous monster.”
“I don’t,” Daichi agreed, but he was thinking about Crete again. “Please trust me.”
Sugawara nodded.
Daichi frowned. “Thank you,” he said. “And I’m sorry that refuge is all I can offer you. Your life for your freedom. What kind of bargain is that?”
“Ha,” Sugawara said, and then he began to cry, curling over himself, his hands clutching at his chest. Daichi stared for a long, shocked moment before stepping closer and crouching down next to him, hesitating for the length of a heartbeat before reaching out with a cautious hand to wipe tears from Sugawara’s cheeks with his palm.
“It’s okay,” Daichi said, even though he wasn’t sure it was.
“I’ll protect you,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure he could.
It didn’t Daichi very long to realize that he had no idea what the hell he was doing.
Before Sugawara - Suga , as he kept reminding Daichi to call him - had arrived at the villa, it had been easy to pretend that this whole endeavor was an act of charity. Benevolence, extended to a mortal by a god. It wasn’t uncommon; Kuroo sometimes lent humans extra prowess in combat and Hinata often gave more information in his prophecies than he was strictly supposed to.
Time passed, though, and Daichi began to realize that he’d started something that he might not be able to finish.
During the day, Daichi did his job. He brought mortals together and tore them apart, saved marriages, ended them, toppled kingdoms, etcetera. He told Oikawa the mortal had been taken care of, and smiled thinly when Oikawa thanked him.
“Good work,” Oikawa lilted, sending a wink in Daichi’s direction. And Daichi grinned back, hoping it didn’t look like he was about to throw up.
Then, when night fell, he’d slip away from Olympus and knock on Suga’s bedroom door.
It was a little awkward at first; Daichi hadn’t needed to get to know someone in millenia. Suga was kind, though. He never laughed at Daichi when he stumbled over his words. When Daichi stuttered nervously through explanations about his past and his family, Suga would fill in the gaps; he told Daichi about his hometown, about his mother, about how he’d always dreamed of becoming something bigger than his beauty.
“When I was a child, I thought maybe a general,” Suga said, with both humor and an undercurrent of hurt. “Or a poet. Someone very grand and impressive, you know.”
Daichi tried to offer honesty in return, where he could. His job was difficult but rewarding, his boss sometimes drove him up the wall, he didn’t have many hobbies outside of work.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a. Um. Matchmaker,” Daichi said, because it was sort of true. Suga laughed, and called him mysterious, and asked him if that had anything to do with being named after the god of desire. And because Daichi did not know how to answer that honestly, he said nothing.
The fourth night of Suga’s stay, they ate together at midnight, spiriting dates out of the kitchen and onto the lawn in secret, even though no one could stop them from eating until their fingers were sticky and their mouths were stained. The fifth night, they walked through the garden; the sixth, Daichi tried to describe his hometown without giving himself away.
Suga smiled at Daichi without knowing who he was. He leaned into Daichi’s touches, though they were few and far between. He laughed at Daichi’s jokes, even when they were terrible. He was beautiful, even when Daichi couldn’t see him at all.
When Suga finally leaned forward one night and pressed his lips to Daichi’s cheek, Daichi was not surprised. He’d long since figured out the name for this thing, stretched taut between them.
After all, it was as familiar to him as his own.
“Is this all right?” Suga asked, in a fragile whisper, and Daichi, not trusting himself to speak, nodded.
Suga leaned close to him, then. Reached out blindly in the dark to touch the line of Daichi’s jaw with trembling fingers. Daichi held himself utterly still as Suga tipped forward, close enough for Daichi to feel the warmth of his breath against his mouth. A second passed, and, to Daichi, it felt longer than all the years he’d been alive.
Suga released a breath and closed the distance between them.
His lips pressed, tense and precise, against the corner of Daichi’s mouth. Just for a half-second, more the memory of a kiss than anything else. He was gone again before Daichi could say anything, sitting back on the bed.
For the first time, Daichi found himself wishing that he could see Suga clearly.
He leaned forward and pressed a palm to the nape of Suga’s neck.
“Okay?” he asked, and Suga heaved a deep, shuddering breath.
“Yes,” he said, a ragged whisper, and so Daichi closed the distance between them again, breathed prayers of his own into the warmth of Suga’s open mouth. And Suga made a sound like a sob and let Daichi guide him backwards, onto the bed, let Daichi disassemble him piece by piece.
iii.
The god of passion fell in love like the rain.
He fell in love the way people did at the end of his arrows, like dawn breaks over the ocean, like the sun shatters through clouds after a storm. It was the sort of love the poets wrote of, the sort of love mortals experience perhaps only once a lifetime.
There was only one problem.
The boy he loved so desperately did not know that he was a god.
The god knew he walked a precarious line. The danger they were in grew greater with every stolen moment, every night spent together under the cover of darkness. As long as the boy did not know who he was, the god could keep him hidden from the rest of the immortals. So the god let his lover trace the lines of his face with gentle hands, let him map the planes of his body with his mouth, let him touch and taste and feel. He knew, though, the second that the boy looked at him and knew who he was, it would all be over.
But mortals are not perfect, and no secret can be kept between lovers forever.
One night, in a moment of curiosity, the boy reached over and lit the bedside lamp as the god slept beside him.
For a second, the only thing the boy felt was surprised relief - the man in his bed was not a famous murderer or an old man or a charlatan. And then the relief faded, and he realized that his lover’s face was familiar; that it featured on statues, carved into altars and temple ceilings.
The man he had slept beside for months was not named after Desire. He was Desire.
The blood inside the boy’s veins ran cold.
The god’s eyes opened.
For a long second, they stared at each other in silence, bathed in the lamp’s golden light. And the boy recognized what this was. What it meant.
The god got to his feet and left without a word. Sugawara Koushi made it to the window in time to watch him take flight, wings blooming like flowers out of the smooth skin he had once mapped with his hands.
iv.
Daichi understood, now, why Oikawa sent him after his enemies instead of killing them.
Love like this felt more like cruelty than kindness.
When he arrived back at Olympus, Oikawa was waiting for him.
“I just felt the strangest thing,” Oikawa said, voice light but poisonous. Deadly. “The oddest prayer, you know. It seems a mutual acquaintance of ours just realized they were in love with you, Sawamura. It’s funny, though. I could have sworn you told me he was gone. ‘Taken care of.’”
Daichi winced. “I. Listen, Oikawa-”
“No,” Oikawa said, baring his teeth in a grin that was closer to a snarl. “I don’t think I will. I should have known that if you want something done, you do it yourself.”
Before he could help himself, Daichi bit out a ragged, desperate, “No.”
Oikawa shot him a long, appraising look.
Daichi repeated, softer, "No. Please."
“I won’t touch him,” Oikawa said, his voice disdainful. “But only because you’ve already done more than I could have hoped for. Worse than an animal or a monster, you made him fall in love with a god. You’re crueler than I am, Sawamura.”
And then he scowled, and turned, and Daichi was alone.
In the following days, Daichi retreated. He poured himself into work, ran himself ragged with it. Took every job Oikawa tossed his way, even though they were menial and messy, far below his pay grade. He felt Suga’s voice in his head. Felt his prayers, soft and gentle and desperately familiar, like he was still breathing them against Daichi’s skin. Daichi, please. I know I made a mistake, and that you’re scared. Please, come back. We need to talk about this.
I love you.
The truest thing in the cosmos.
Daichi closed his eyes.
Time passed. It passed and passed and passed and passed.
Daichi did his job, and watched the turn of the earth, and tried not to dream.
It was nearing winter, frost settling in the air, tangible in the way only cold can be. Daichi was in the mortal realm on a job. Something simple, a boy-meets-girl cliche that hardly required his help at all. Routine.
He was weaving his way through the outskirts of a crowd, when he felt a tug on his arm. Surprised, he turned to see Hinata at his side.
The day was rainy and cold, clouds flat and heavy and obscuring the sun. Daichi didn't think he'd ever seen Hinata outside in less than perfect sunlight.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Hinata said, his face very serious. “I just... thought you'd want to see this.”
Daichi looked down at Hinata for a long second before shrugging and allowing himself to be drawn away from the town square. He followed Hinata in silence through the winding side streets, until he realized where they were headed.
The town's temple of Oikawa stood, imposing, at the end of one of the narrow lane. It was quiet, mostly empty.
Daichi was halfway up the steps before he spotted what Hinata had brought him to see. A single figure, knelt on the marble floor. Head bowed low, shoulders hunched.
Sugawara.
Daichi’s world narrowed, focused. The temple’s ceiling was open, exposing the sky, and the rain had long since soaked Suga through, turning his white chiton dark. His shoulders trembled, curved inwards. He looked small, and delicate, and mortal.
He looked beautiful.
Daichi felt perilously undone.
“What is he doing ?” he choked, turning to Hinata.
Hinata hummed and said, “He’s trying to win you back.”
“How exactly does he expect-”
“Oh,” Hinata said, serene. “It’s because Oikawa told him do it. He’s been there for about ten hours now.”
Daichi moved.
He was rushing to Suga’s side before he could think better of it, legs moving without his conscious direction. Suga was shivering, tremors raking through his body. He had dark circles under his eyes, a hint of purple in the curve of his lips.
It was the first time Daichi had seen his face in months.
Daichi stepped next to him and held his cloak out, covering Suga’s head against the rain.
Suga stirred, blinking raindrops out of his eyes before looking up at Daichi. It was a long second before recognition dawned on his face and emotions began to cross his features, rapid-fire.
“Daichi,” he said, his voice raspy with disuse.
Daichi said, in a voice just as broken, “What the hell are you doing? You’re going to catch your death.”
“You wouldn’t answer me,” Suga mumbled, a little petulantly. “I had to try an alternative route.”
“So you went to Oikawa?”
“He said he’d help,” Suga said, with half a shrug that morphed midway into a shiver. “Well. He said if I prayed very, very hard and did a bunch of errands for him, he would consider it. I was desperate.”
“Why would you-”
“Because,” Suga said, like it was obvious. “I am in love with you.”
Daichi’s heart shuddered and seemed to stop.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, quietly. “My direct superior wants you dead. I… I kept the truth from you for weeks - months .”
“And I didn’t trust you,” Suga answered. “I broke your trust in me, too. We both made mistakes.” He heaved a quiet laugh that felt more like a sob. “I couldn’t let you go, though. Not without trying.”
Daichi said, “Get up. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Suga stood, slowly, on wobbling legs. He was terribly pale, almost blue from the cold and the rain, his eyes red with tears, his lips trembling. Daichi thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.
“I don’t know how to be good for you,” Daichi said, quietly.
Suga huffed the barest breath of a laugh.
“Come back to me,” he said, a whisper. His hands closed, still shaking, in the fabric of Daichi’s cloak. “We can work on good later.”
And Daichi stepped forward, palms flat and steady on the line of Suga’s jaw, and brought their mouths together.
v.
The god of love and beauty was not, generally speaking, merciful.
He was, however, admittedly fond of a sweeping, romantic confession. He was also fond of his partner, despite his poor taste in men and general lack of enthusiasm about doing the god of love’s divine bidding. And so, despite his distaste for the whole, ridiculous situation, Oikawa Tooru brought the case up to the king of the gods. Sawamura Daichi, he said, had fallen in love, and Oikawa would very much like it if his lover would be made immortal.
If the king of the gods was surprised, he did not show it. Instead, he thought about it, carefully, before nodding and proclaiming, “Let it be done.” And, at that moment, standing in the pouring rain with his face buried in his lover’s neck, Sugawara Koushi felt something burn in his veins - something brilliant and golden and brightbrightbright.
“You are psyche ,” the king of the gods whispered, inside his mind. “Soul, breath, spirit. Where you are, so too is love.”
And that was true, Suga thought to himself, as Daichi made an odd, concerned sound and said, “Suga? What just happened? Why are you glowing?”
Where I am, so is he.
He laughed and drew Daichi's face to his own again. After all, they had all of eternity.