Chapter Text
“Alain,” Dell breathed that name out like a prayer, thick in his mouth like a sweet ball of honey. It was real strange, how things like this happened. Know each other for a decade and suddenly it’s everything in the world to get a name to such a familiar face. The spy across from him seemed embarrassed, averting those striking gray eyes in a show usually reserved for subterfuge. Perhaps it wasn't even a show; even the most steadfast man could waver.
“It’s only a name,” Alain said, quietly. Dell was truly caught in the shine of those eyes.
“Not just a name. It’s yours,” he croaked back, nearly hoarse with the emotion he felt. Really, what could ever be as precious as this?
With desperation utterly foreign to him, Dell reached out and caught both of Alain’s hands, careful beyond reason, the cold steel of his left hand curling terribly gently around those thin, precise fingers. The words tore themselves out of him; “Yours is the most wonderful i’ve ever known,” he said gently, hoarsely, ragged and soft and frightening in his surety. A decade, a century, an eternity. It would be easy to live forever if only this sleek man was at his side. It would be real easy. The easiest thing in the world.
Every bit of Alain was sharpened to perfection; this did not mean that he could not soften.
The smile that appeared on his face was little more than the slightest curve of his lips upward. Years upon years and yet Dell had only wrangled a handful of these smiles out of him, often for the most fleeting moments, wavering in and out of existence as an oasis might within the desert. Oftentimes they meant hardly anything, just the brief yet subtle pride that swelled in his chest each time one of those appeared because of him. Here, now, Dell felt as if he were bathed in sunlight. So much to feel in such a short time, warm skin soft beneath his only feeling hand, the cold metal of the other no doubt shocking.
But Alain didn’t pull away. With that soft, lovely smile still yet remaining, he inclined his head, looked up through his eyelashes for half a moment—a small flicker, a glance—and suddenly Dell was the one struck silent. Alain looked down at their joined hands, one nearly entirely unfeeling, and seemed nearly worshipful of the touch. The scent of smoke was such an indescribably lovely one. “I would share myself with no other,” Alain murmured to him, his voice a lofty, lovely thing in the quiet.
Dell couldn’t do anything else. He held his ghost’s hands as tight as he could allow himself, clinging to something that would never run, should the leash be loosened. But it’s not a leash. It’s just the two of them, taking one another in, wondering if eternity could find the space to fit another person.
_
This was wrong. It had to be. Dell was raised with years upon years of the people around him saying this sort of love was a wretched, evil, and frightening thing. It was sure as hell frightening, but he couldn’t say anything about the others. It didn’t feel evil. It really didn’t.
His ghost–who wasn’t really a ghost but rather another man–held him terribly gently. There was something to be said about the way that Dell flinched and trembled with each reminder that his solace was found within another man. Secondhand disgust in himself, ignoring the sting in his throat. His ghost leant into him, so close that the man’s slim and wiry form wrapped around Dell’s stockier body with ease; a big, loving spider. The words brought themselves to life even though they should’ve stayed dead. “We’re not–this is wrong,” Dell croaked, unsure himself what he’d meant. It was wrong to love another man like he’d loved Alain. It was wrong, to wish for an eternity spent hearing good mornings and good nights and everything inbetween. It was monstrous, this love. Yet. And yet.
“We are not monsters,” Alain murmured, so gentle Dell thought a gust of wind would cut him down. Dell stifled his grief–for what, he didn’t know. “We are not monsters,” Alain whispered again, as if repetition would hammer it into Dell’s mind that the touch of another man, strangled with emotion, wouldn’t get him killed. Belief was a gentle thing in the face of this, dwarfed by fear and its vicious talons. Even so, for moments that became microcosms in their own right, he dared to believe. Believe in Alain. If nothing else, he could try to do that.
To love someone was to risk the death of a self. Never before had a decision been so easy to make.