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But death replied: “I choose him.” So he went,
And there was silence in the summer night;
Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.
- Siegfried Sassoon, The Death Bed
It’s dark within the confines of their shared tent, but the blaze of emotion sitting high in Jean’s throat flares so unbearably bright that he can almost believe that it casts fireborn shadows, abhorrent in their malformation, onto the thin canvas walls.
“Jean, it’s okay. I’m here. I’m here,” Marco murmurs, hands attempting to bridge the gap between them in a gesture that is clearly meant to placate, but which only inflames something greater inside him, furious and wretched and so damn fearful that Jean can barely breathe with it.
He almost lost Marco today, not to the jaws of a titan, or to the callous violence of a targeted hit, but to the cruel and impersonal bite of a bullet shot by the impulsive hands of a child, and the thought has bitter sickness crawling up his throat, tongue growing thick and woolly in his mouth. His skin burns, feverish to the point that he thinks he might disintegrate with it, the sheer horror of what could have been driving sharp into the hairline cracks that litter his flesh, wrenching wider and wider until all that holds his ragged parts together is sheer force of will. And yet beneath his skin he is glacial, the fretwork of veins branching beneath the surface carrying nothing but icewater, and the contrast has him shuddering all over, nausea swimming heavy in his gut. He thinks he might vomit, gorge rising fast and bilious in his throat, but he swallows it down, the effort forcing a throbbing heat into the backs of his eyeballs.
“Jean?” he hears, and it’s absurd how that single word has all of his carefully-constructed walls crashing down about his ears.
He brings his hands up to his face, leaflike in their trembling, and lets out a noise, somewhere between a groan and a wail. It’s clawed up from the deepest wells of his own animal self, guttural and agonised, and he feels stripped raw.
“You could have died.”
“But I didn’t,” Marco replies, and that’s not enough, not nearly enough.
He thinks if he were to cut himself open here and now, right down to the quick, he would find wet clay in place of bones, groaning soft and malleable beneath the pressure of ‘could haves’ and ‘almosts’ that bears down upon them. He wonders if Marco can see the evidence of it in the way his frame gradually warps, close to breaking, his skeleton quietly crumpling in on itself.
Jean can’t afford ‘could haves’, nor ‘almosts’. Can’t afford to even contemplate the sick thought of losing Marco.
He doesn’t hear the other man move, so caught up he is in the battle that rages between his ears, but the arms that encircle him are warm, and solid, and the pulse that beats against his neck is strong. He sighs involuntarily, and he finds himself once more drawn into the other man’s orbit, long arms snaking about Marco’s back and crushing him close, as close as he possibly can around the unwieldy contours of their ODM gear. He’s still shaking, but Marco holds him firm, holds him steady, keeping all those shattered pieces together with nothing but his own gentle hands.
“I’ve got you. I’ve always got you, you hear me? Always,” Marco whispers, the words coming upon the tails of soft kisses placed against his temple, his cheekbone, the sharp jut of his jaw.
Jean’s breath hitches, but the tears refuse to come, stuffed back down his throat and into that dark, untouchable place that he usually does his best to avoid. So he just presses closer, nose buried into the soft strands at the side of Marco’s head, and he focuses on breathing, words hushed into skin and hair and the heated dark between them ever so slowly beginning to unravel the snarl of terror sitting in his gut.
He isn’t sure how long they stand, huddled into one another beneath the silvered veil of early morning dimness, but finally Marco murmurs, “Let’s try to sleep, yeah? We still have a few hours before we move.”
Jean hesitates, unwilling to disentangle himself from this hallowed proximity, but Marco just smiles, softly highlighted by the pallor of dawn, and finds Jean’s hand in the dark. Lacing their fingers together, he brings them up to his lips, pressing unspoken words into Jean’s knuckles. The heat of his breath sends gooseflesh rippling across the surface of his skin.
“Okay,” he creaks, voice wrecked.
The apples of Marco’s cheeks are kissed pale by the encroaching sunrise, but his one visible eye is dark, darker than Jean can remember having seen it, sweeping the steadiness from his legs. But there is comfort to be found in that specific brand of darkness, a blessed solace that comes with the knowledge that, against all odds, Jean has been granted yet another sunrise with this man at his side, and he relinquishes control to it willingly.
They leave the majority of the gear on - no time to be strapping oneself in once the camp has to get going - and yet Jean shivers a little as Marco detaches the ODM mechanism from his back and chest. He feels lighter without it, finally able to breathe without that heinous burden of steel and war. He knows Marco feels it too, sees it in the subtle squaring of broad shoulders as Jean returns the favour, freed at last from that terrible weight. His fingers trace the even sweep of Marco’s collarbones, sharp even through the sturdy material of the gear. He marvels at the sensation, relishes it, knowing that in no time at all they will be up and moving again, forced to cram themselves back into the rigid moulds of leadership that they have embodied for years now, and that intimacy of this sort will become little more than a distant dream.
Marco seems to understand, of course, one hand drifting upwards to skate across the plane of his cheek. His fingers barely brush the delicate skin beneath his lash line before they curl back around the nape of his neck, tangling in the long strands they find there. The touch sends frissons of warmth fluttering down the length of Jean’s spine, and Marco must see something change in his expression because there’s softness swept into that miscible darkness now, fond and achingly tender.
“Bed?”
Jean nods, just barely, and allows himself to be guided forward. He pouts when Marco shifts his hand from the back of his head, but the other man only snorts a laugh and shakes his head, muttering a quiet, “Spoilt.”
On another occasion Jean would have some witty retort at the ready, but he finds that this time he can’t quite muster the strength. So instead he quirks a small smile and files the moment away for future perusal, safe among the innumerable others that populate the rugged terrain of his bruised heart.
They collapse onto the bedroll together, their shared exhaustion swift and absolute. Jean feels greyed-out, chalky and immaterial in his fatigue, and suddenly all he wants is to sleep. Yet he knows all too well that the chasmic oblivion that he craves is the last thing he will be granted once he closes his eyes, and he shudders at the reel of afterimages, stained ruby-dark, that flickers unprompted at the back of his mind.
He does his best to ignore the most recent additions, of that small, wide-eyed face, twisted by a kind of hatred that no child should ever have to feel, the rifle’s barrel yawning vast and abyssal, a hemorrhage of incarnadine spilling across the boards underfoot.
He squeezes his eyes shut, tight enough to hurt, and forces them back into the murk where they belong.
Not now.
Marco faces him, expression barely discernible in the gloom, but Jean can see that his lids have begun to droop, and knows that he’s scarcely hanging onto wakefulness himself. He feels a sudden inexplicable surge of panic at the sight, at the thought of being left alone, awake and inextinguishable while Marco slips into blissful unconsciousness.
“Please...please don’t leave me,” he blurts out, and is distantly astonished that his lips moved at all.
Marco’s eyes snap open at that, instantly alert. For a moment silence reigns, interposed by the gentle noises of the camp at night - horses huffing and shifting in their slumber, the muffled conversation of soldiers on patrol, a particularly loud snore from some lucky soul who has been able to secure a few hours of dreamless sleep. When he finally speaks it’s little more than a breath, and there’s the tiniest waver to the words that betrays just how shaken up he really is.
“Just...hold me.”
Jean drags in a breath, frayed at the edges and all too telling of how close his seams have come to bursting. His pliable bones press painfully against the skin that swaddles them, but he nods nonetheless, and when Marco leans forward, his lips are scalding against his own. It’s brief, searing sweetness into the curves of Jean’s mouth, and nowhere near enough. But it seems that their weariness has finally caught up with them, because one moment they’re gasping into each others’ mouths, teetering on the verge of something more, and the next Marco is drawing away, shuffling downwards until his forehead is pressed tight to Jean’s chest.
“Try to rest. Please. We can...we can think about what to do in the morning.”
It’s barely audible, an infinitesimal susurration on the still air, and yet it permeates the smoked-out wasteland of Jean’s smouldering thoughts with the intensity of a fog lamp, drawing him in with its guiding brightness. He hums his acknowledgement, knowing Marco will feel it, and pushes his face into the soft hair at the top of his head.
He inhales a precious lungful, holds, and slowly, reluctantly, releases.