Work Text:
Pulling himself from a drowsy haze, a ghostly apparition of exhaustion, eye scanning the ornate tiles, the light Anglicism of the room, a depressive silence filling the pit of his stomach.
He pinched the small glass he held between his pointer and thumb at the neck of it, turning the spindle of it's axis in his hand, the ambrosia of his labor, or lack-there-of, long drunk. A sigh settled itself in his lungs, blowing out with a breath of steam, watching it fizzle to the curved, upholstered ceiling fresco.
He spent a lot of his time here, Nowadays. Most of his time, In fact.
Was it a necessity to wallow here? A self-loathing, hyper-empathetic mess of a man, of a god, putting the power he once held, that he was meant to hold, to damn shame.
He pulled himself up more, the water of the large, glossy bathtub sloshing over his skin, the warmth it held long reduced to the temperature of the room. How tired he was of this. How tired, how dreaded, how yearned.
He shivered a little. Not much, just enough for his body to shift the water, and for his eyes to squint closed. What an objection to his own work he was. To his morals, his own obligations, his own idealistic views.
Nero hadn't been in for awhile, it seemed. Oftentimes he'd come in, stand in the doorway, chat a little. He was always excited about something, perhaps something he'd seen, all with this perverse, manic and spastic wording, posture, control, to himself.
More often now he would just stand in the doorway. Some concern bridled under his skin, some sense of pity, bubbling under that sinister form of his. He wouldn't speak, but just look on in silence, assuming a slumber that befell him. Logos was a light sleeper, however. He'd always peek back through squinted eyes at the shadow of his work, staring like a kid, a neglected visage of childhood.
Logos was unsure if he too had lost things to speak about, or if the sight of him there, laying like a jellyfish on a freeform wave of water, unmoving in the values of mind and body, only drifting — had become a discomfort, something he as well as Logos had given up on, that being he himself.
There were a few times he'd bring in orange peels. Sprinkle them in the cooled water with a silent acknowledgement, leaning on the side to watch them drift like a boy watching ships depart off a dock. The moments like those needed no words. Just a mutual knowledge of how fleeting this all seemed, yet how permanent.
They were always a pain to clean up. I'd fumble them on my thick, now clumsy fingers, losing that nimbility, nobility I whence had in those times before.
It seems in my permanence, as a being, my constants, my hyperbolic forever, everything I make seems to get away from me. Nothing can last as long as I can. It falls through my fingers, sometimes shatters, sometimes melts away in a slow, grueling display of nostalgic dread.
I hope he does not crumble, too. No matter the resent he can feel for me, no matter my definite mistakes in socializing him, I hope he stays. I hope he's set in stone. If not, I'll just have to carve him from marble and try again. And again. until my hands bleed, My eye aches, and my tears are run dry.
I'm no Father. But I so ache to be a figment of one. I hope that one day I won't have to pick up all the orange peels from the basin, put them in a basket, and finally get the releif I so needed in that moment from the fresh air outside scattering that comforting, faded orange color across the garden,
For the last time.