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“Tell me how you know that,” he says, hollow as the words rip from his throat. “Tell me how…”
Then it’s dragging off, silence deafening, shiny in the glint of those wide stellar blue eyes. Dell gives him a look that says nothing of hate. Perhaps expectation is for fools, but he has always tended to be most foolish in these moments. “Alain,” Dell says quietly, the name a gaping maw before the abyss of identity. A prayer in the most gentle of ways, asking for nothing but a moment. Perhaps that is what all prayers remain; asking for half a moment of acknowledgement, half a moment of being known. Alain, the name a curse and a sickeningly comforting weight all at once, shudders in the face of it. How gentle the hand is that breaks him apart. The strikingly familiar knowledge that he could be slaughtered by it carved deeply into his bones. For men like him, identity was death.
Dell looked at him for a long moment, all of the wretched trembling parts that make his body, and reached out. A metal hand, articulating and strange, clicking softly in the quiet with each little movement. With it, Dell took his hand. The steel was impossibly gentle in that moment, so strange compared to what he was used to. Yet, as it touched him, his breath came explosively from his lungs. A fragile sort of steadiness rose within him and stopped only some of the trembling in his hands. Alain feels the burn of his gaze in moments that stretch on and into eternity.
“You’re going to kill me,” he says, unable to tell if his voice has any emotion, hollowed out as he feels. Dell was no stranger to Alain’s trade, knowing that a life like his was a life of blood and loneliness. What else could it ever be? There was nothing else he could be nearly as well. His suffering was as familiar to him as his loneliness. Hand in hand, Alain looked down at the indescribable, inexplicable thing named connection. Metal against flesh, capable of crushing the frail bone and yet remaining terribly gentle. He opened his mouth and the words came out with painful certainty, “You’re going to kill me.” He says it, knowing that the words are true. They are perhaps the most honest he has been to himself in years.
Those stark blue eyes close for a moment that seems to be eternity. They are so beautiful that he fears the world being deprived of them. The first time Alain had seen Dell without his goggles was years ago and still he recalls the strange awe he felt, as if he’d seen a mythical beast in passing. For only a moment he’d been frozen in place by the sheer vividness of the blue, vibrant and icy. A man like Dell had no right to be so keen, so sharp, when every other aspect was rounded at the edges. Dangerous and gentle in equal measures. After that long moment, he’d spoken on as if nothing had happened, yet he knew Dell’s observant gaze missed nothing of his hesitance.
Time begins again when Dell opens his eyes. For half a moment, Alain feels as he did all of those years ago, standing before a dangerous and intelligent stranger who had eyes sharper than the edge of his favored balisong. The fragmentary illusion vanishes the moment he blinks it away. Dell leans in, intent and dizzying in his own conviction, unfeeling prosthetic hand inexplicably human in Alain’s own as it curls around the frail flesh and bone. Dell’s words drive any of the remaining haze back into eternity. “I know,” Dell rasps, “I know I’m going to kill you. It’s gonna be the worst thing I’ve ever done,” and Alain is drowning in the words, something rising in his chest that he has no name for, and Dell keeps speaking–utterly merciless. “But before that,” Dell keeps uttering words Alain can hardly hear through the rush of his own heart, keeps filling Alain’s lungs with something not entirely air, keeps holding his head beneath the churning sea of his words, “Before that, I’d like to spend the rest of my life right here.”
This is where life ends for Alain. A strike, like the light of a match. Emotion flares and dulls as quickly as it dares to exist. Dell keeps speaking, voice heavy with emotion he is afraid to name. Alain’s world ends and begins within simple words; “I would like to wake up with you. I would like to tell you good morning each morning, and say goodnight each night. I would like to ask you how your day has been for the rest of my life. I would like to know you.” Dell spoke so firmly that it could not be denied, voice so gentle that the creature within Alain’s heart does not know how to exist anymore. How else does something live, if not wildly? Yet, he is cowed by words alone, drawn viciously towards worn hands. It is a terrifying thing, to be tamed.
Here is the end of loneliness, Alain thought, carefully turning the words around in his mind, half-terrified. Here is the end of loneliness. Dell wants to spend the rest of his life with him. How petrifying, to know that he is loved so dearly. It is foreign and never before has he known something like this.
The words Alain wants to say never even form in his mouth, do not turn in his mind as a tumultuous gust of wind. Instead, lips parted for half a moment as if he were about to speak, he found it within himself to squeeze the solid steel of Dell’s hand. Perhaps the man will not even feel it–but there was always the chance, fleeting and rare as it may be. Alain was never as lucky as he wanted to be. “Dell,” Alain’s voice comes from him as a ghost leaves its body, soft as sunlight. He is mortified to note that it feels like a prayer, yearning and wonder condensed into a single word, a single name, unknowing of whether the other will ever respond. Perhaps he is the fool for even thinking that Dell wouldn’t know him to his bones.
Dell, you can’t do this to me, Alain wants to say, You can’t do this to me. You’re going to kill me. What’ll you do then, Dell? What’ll you do when I'm dead? I’ll be dead and you’ll have killed me. Is that what you want, Dell?
Dell looks down at their hands, at the inexplicable thing they’d made together. He could see this lasting for a very long time. “Fear is real easy to feel, Alain,” Dell whispers back, because Alain has always been afraid of voices that held too much emotion, and Dell could understand that–what could anyone do against words gentle enough to hurt? “Fear is real easy to feel,” Dell murmurs again, steadier this time. “You’re good at running. All I ask is… don’t run from this.”
It was easy for a moment in time to stretch into eternity. Alain understood this in fragments, felt the tear sting in his eye and glide down his skin only to soak into the fabric of his own balaclava, there for a moment and gone the next. Hiding, he was always hiding. That was easy. And yet, he didn’t want to hide from this; never before has being known been so lovely. He closes his eyes and remains quiet. What do you want this to be, Dell? You’re going to kill me. You’ve always been the one that’s going to kill me. I’ve known this for years, Dell.
You took one look at me. I took one look at you. I hardly remember when this started, just that it did. Just that, one day, I’d looked you in the eyes across the battlefield and knew.
Alain had forgotten that things like this could exist. The strange, foreign warmth of steel pressed carefully into the flesh of his hand. A silent, unneeded comfort. Air shuddered within his lungs, fragile and strained. He couldn’t bear to open his eyes, to see the look on Dell’s face. “I won’t,” Alain said hoarsely, hardly a whisper almost as if to spite of his years of acting. He could’ve made the words strong and sure–but he found he had no desire to feign confidence. To lie to Dell in regards to matters of the heart felt like a sin worse than any other. “I won’t,” Alain repeated again, a thin nature to his voice that he couldn’t quite escape.
It was strange, how eternity continued to be a man-made creation. In his heart of hearts, Alain finds it in himself to wonder at the oddity of it all. Dell crafted eternity with ease, rough hands molding it into a shape that comforts rather than frightens. Those eyes, sharp and bright and everything Alain has been afraid of these past years–Dell looks Alain in the eyes and Alain doesn’t know how to feel anymore, doesn’t know when a gaze stopped being mere sight and started being something else. Dell looks him in the eyes and Alain chokes on it, swallowing back sweet ambrosia as it rises threateningly within him.
All of this time, words left unsaid. Dell looks Alain in the eyes and he has a moment to understand love, why it scares people so terribly deeply. This is the essence of martyrdom, this is the essence of sacrifice. Far simpler is–this is the essence of reaching out and knowing that someone will reach back. It is impossible to understand the world in moments, as they are human and know nothing besides the moment they themself reside in. But here, Alain dares to think he could; Dell is a piece of his life and that has no definite end, an infinity that twines around Alain’s own without hesitation, so close that he fears what would happen if they became more than tangles and became, instead, the same string. Look at you, says the world-renowned spy within himself, ashamed at his own existence. Look at you, dear monster; you’ve been domesticated. The fiercest creature alive, and you have been tamed by a man who knows not of your strength.
A falcon and its falconer; unafraid of the hand that feeds.
Something frail rises to the surface of his heart. Alain does not know how to give it a name; he’s only ever known how to reach, never grasp. “You’re going to kill me, Dell,” Alain whispered, strangely dissonant. His words are and are not his own; a ghost’s words echoing from his lips, a shadow’s sigh, a wind’s whisper. His existence has always been as fleeting as it needs to be–he’s not used to staying. Why would he? Identity was to beg death itself for a hand to hold. He could not have done that to himself, not for little to no reason.
The world is lonely. Alain, he has spent his loneliness alone. What is he to do when another offers their hand? What is he to do when Dell, who offers his hand once, twice, a dozen times, remains ever-patient through these years? It is the destruction of a self cultivated with care. Dell has always been good at destroying things–but he’s even better at making them.
Hand in lonely hand, Alain thinks of calluses, so rough in comparison to his own hands. He thinks of two shapes, one tall and slim and the other short and wide. He thinks of the image they make together, contrary in many ways and yet complimenting in so many more. Dell’s steel hand curls around his own. He can’t pry his eyes away from the image they make, together. I could see this lasting for a very long time, Alain thinks distantly, something utterly enormous rising up within his chest. This could last for a very, very long time.