Work Text:
I want to say: I only love you,
And I cling to you
Like the peel clings to a pomegranate,
Like the tear clings to the eye,
Like the knife clings to the wound.
- I AM ACCUSED, Nizar Qabbani
“You didn’t have to do that.”
In the distance Kant can hear the waves hitting the shore. The sea has stayed pretty calm the entire time they’ve been on the island, barely even making a splash as the tides came and went. Over the past hour or so, though, the water’s turned a little choppy, the waves big enough now that the spray they’re casting off can be felt yards away from the waterline. Kant’s trying not to think about it too hard.
Instead he’s turned his attention closer: the sound of something sizzling just beyond the trees, the metal of pans and utensils scraping together. Fadel had insisted on cooking, even after everything. After what had just happened, no one had put up any real protest. Style seems a little worried Fadel’s had some kind of mental break, but Bison had waved it off. You’ll get used to it, he’d said, and tugged Kant back towards the house.
Bison had sat him down on an old stone bench, not very far from the house but so overgrown you wouldn’t find it if you didn’t already know it was there. He’d told Kant to stay put, disappearing for a few minutes only to come back with the first aid kit they’d used to patch Style up. You’re bleeding, he’d said. Let me clean you up.
That’s where they’re still sat: enclosed in this space that feels private despite the fact that Kant can hear the sea and the popping of hot oil and voices – Fadel’s, and Style’s. Mostly Style’s. It’s familiar in its own way, like hearing people talking in another room in the house. Babe has always been a quiet kid, but Kant remembers what that was like, from before. Hearing those voices. Knowing you’re not alone. It’s comforting, even if one of the people attached to those voices just had a gun trained on your head 10 minutes prior.
“Do what?” Bison eventually asks, pressing the cotton pad a little harder to Kant’s lip. Kant briefly thought about telling Bison to go and talk to his brother, that he was more than capable of patching himself up – he’s been through more than his fair share of scraps through the years – but it felt important, whatever this is. Like letting Bison clean up his blood meant more than it did. Like maybe Bison just wanted to be close to him.
So Kant sat still, didn’t flinch. Let Bison fuss over him. Let the feel of his hands on his face settle his racing heart.
“You didn’t have to defend me like that,” Kant says, doing his best not to dislodge the cotton too much. “You pulled a gun on your own brother for-”
“He pulled a gun on you.” The protest comes surprisingly quick, almost as if Bison had just been waiting for the opportunity to bring it up, to defend himself. The hand holding the cotton falls away, and he takes a breath like he’s about to say something more, but all that comes is a long, annoyed sigh as he looks towards where the ocean is.
Kant locks his legs around him. Bison's stood in between them, making no effort to leave, but Kant locks them around him anyway, just in case. There’s something too tense about him now, a twitch in his hands that echoes an anger Kant will never allow him to feel again, not while he’s around to dispel it, so he takes both of them in his and presses kisses to his knuckles until he feels the trembling settle.
“I know,” he says, barely moving his lips away from Bison’s skin. “I know. I kinda deserved that though,” Kant makes sure to keep his voice slow and low, like he’s trying to talk down a hurricane that hasn’t quite committed to being more than just the wind yet. “I deserved that much, didn’t I?”
When Kant pulls back, he sees a smudge of blood on Bison’s skin – left hand, third finger. He quickly wipes away with a thumb.
Bison he’s already looking at him when Kant tilts his head up to look at him, his eyes searching, a frown tugging on his brows. Kant has Bison between his legs, their bodies all but pressed together, but suddenly the distance between them feels like too much – Bison too high, Kant too low. Kant thinks about standing up. He thinks about pulling Bison down onto his lap. He thinks about tying their wrists together so Bison will never have to be further than an arm’s reach away again, that way if anything ever makes him frown the way he is right now Kant can be right there, ready to smooth out the creases it cuts in his perfect face with his fingers. He thinks maybe he might be going a little crazy.
“That doesn’t matter,” Bison says, pulling Kant out of his thoughts. “That wasn’t his choice to make, it was mine. He knows that. He knows he had no right to try and take that from me.” He shakes his head, leaning away from Kant to swap the bloody cotton pad with an alcohol wipe. Kant holds onto his hips to steady him. “And even if you did deserve it-”
“Which I do.”
“-then shouldn’t it have been me? If anyone was going to kill you, then it should have been me. You’re my boyfriend. I’m the one you betrayed, not him. If he wants to kill someone’s lying boyfriend so bad, then he should kill his own. ”
Kant does his best not to laugh as Bison huffs and flops down on the bench beside him, leaving his legs hooked over Kant’s thigh. Despite his clear annoyance, Bison is gentle as he takes a hold of Kant’s neck and wipes at the cut on his lip. It stings, but Kant holds still, doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t speak until Bison puts the wipe down and reaches for the antiseptic cream.
“I did fuck his life up too, Bison.”
“I don’t care,” Bison says, then pauses, sighs. “That’s not- I do care. But it’s just- he’s a hypocrite. Style lied to him too, but there was no gun pointed at his head.”
“There definitely was. Style told me he had the gun pointed at him the entire drive up here. And anyway, Style only lied to him because of me, so really-”
“Will you stop doing that? I’m trying my best to defend your honour here, and you keep ruining it with your logic,” and he shoves Kant, who makes a show of flinching away and pretending he’s scared. It lasts all of about two seconds before he’s laughing, his smile pulling at the wound on his lip. Bison tuts when he notices the blood starting to bead there again. “Now look what you’ve done.”
His thumb comes up to wipe it away regardless, much like Kant had done earlier. He’s so gentle it doesn’t hurt at all.
“You’re so cute,” Kant turns just enough so he can wrap his arms around Bison’s waist and pull him a little closer without dislodging his legs. “It was so sweet of you to defend my honour like that, I truly have the best boyfriend ever, thank you, Bison.”
Bison whines. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not!” Kant tries his best to wipe the grin off his own face, wanting Bison to understand just how serious he is. He’s mostly successful. “I’m really not. It meant a lot that you would do that for me, especially with your own brother. Though I don’t know if Fadel’s ever gonna let that go, because I know if Babe turned a gun on me over some guy…” Bison huffs a laugh, like he’s annoyed at himself for finding Kant amusing, but his eyes are so bright. Anger has been chased away. Now it’s just the two of them, and the voices on the wind, “but as your boyfriend, well. Let’s just say it certainly stroked my ego.”
Bison’s face fidgets with a smile he clearly doesn’t want to give Kant the satisfaction of letting out. Kant knows it’s there though, just under the surface. That’s all that matters.
“That’s the only part of you getting stroked any time soon, that’s for sure.”
Kant wonders if Mr Maew can hear his laughter on the other side of the hill.
There’s something about the dull lamp light that makes Bison look younger. Or maybe it’s not the light at all, maybe it’s just being here, in Bison’s old bedroom, surrounded by remnants of the boy he once was. Mostly it’s bare, packed away in boxes so Bison didn’t have to look at them, but the boxes are open in the corner now, bits and pieces strewn across the room – a frisbee leaned against the wall. A picture frame facing the ceiling. A rosary Bison keeps playing with when he thinks Kant isn’t looking.
Kant knows intimately what that’s like, that desire to hide it all away, believing that if you can’t see it then it won't hurt so much. He also knows that that's not how it works. Things are only things; it’s the memories that are barbed, that cut you open when you least expect it. And memories will always defy any kind of trap you try and catch them in.
Kant thinks they’re both learning that there are certain things you have to just let haunt you.
Bison’s sitting on the edge of the single bed, leaning back on his hands with his shirt off. Kant’s sitting on the floor between his legs, elbows on his thighs. Up this close Kant can smell him – fresh and a little sweet from the shower, but the ocean has permeated everything, the salt of it undercutting the smell of the soap they’ve been sharing. A few days ago it would have made Kant sick to his stomach. Now it’s as familiar as home to him.
Kant wonders if that makes him a bad person. He wonders if his parents will be mad at him, wherever they are, that the very thing that took their lives is the thing that Kant is slowly coming to associate with the person he loves more than anything. He hopes not. He hopes that they get it. Kant hopes they know that ever since that day he has never been able to look at the ocean and not see bodies floating face down in it - not until today, when he’d looked over at Bison, waist-deep in the water with him, holding his hand, promising that it's fine, that he's safe, that he won't let go. After that all he could see was him.
He hopes they're not angry. Even if they're not quite happy for him either, he really hopes they're not angry.
Kant stops thinking about it.
Like this, with his hands on Bison’s belly, Kant can feel every breath he takes. He can feel every word he says too, the vibrations of them buzzing ever so slightly through the tips of Kant’s fingers. Bison had been speaking lowly, mindful of the late hour and the guests they now have in the room next door, but he was meticulous as he gave Kant his instructions: here, like this, gently, don’t be too rough, ok?
He’s not talking now though. Now he’s sat quiet and still as Kant wipes around the gnarly scab on his stomach as lightly as he can. The rubbing alcohol stings his eyes a little; he knows there’s no way it doesn't burn when he dabs at Bison's skin, but if it is, then he shows no sign of it. He’s just watching Kant, his breathing even as it comes.
The wound is smaller than Kant thought it would be, considering how much blood came out of it. It doesn’t look too bad, either, all things considered – it’s scabbed heavily and turned a little red around the edges, but not to the point that it’s a cause for concern. Kant knows what an infection looks like – has seen his fair share of them after a client has failed to look after their fresh tattoo – and considering Bison has no other symptoms, Kant’s not exactly worried, but still-
“You need to stop getting this wet,” he tells him, swapping out his cotton pad for a fresh one. “You need to stop moving around so much too. It’s a miracle you haven’t popped your stitches yet. From here on out, if you need to do anything, tell me first, I’ll do it for you, ok? And for God’s sake, stop going into the ocean-”
“Yes, dad,” Kant looks up just in time to catch him rolling his eyes, but when Bison catches him looking he smirks, tongue darting out to wet his lips. “Or should I say daddy?”
Kant slaps his thigh instinctively. It’s loud in the small room, but Bison lets out this delighted sound, caught somewhere between a shriek and laughter. It presses so close, bright and giggly and Kant has never heard a more beautiful sound, has never seen a more beautiful boy than this one, this Bison, breathless and happy and his. Finally, finally his.
“Mm,” Bison hums as he settles, head cocked to one side as he stares down at Kant. “I love it when you fight back, daddy.”
“Stop it, behave.”
“Or what? You’re gonna punish me?” He sits up a little straighter. “I’d like to see you try.”
Kant discards the cotton pad and starts rifling aimlessly through the little pile of medical supplies on his left, praying the low light is enough to hide his blush. “C’mon, Bison. I’m done cleaning it, what’s next?”
Bison doesn’t answer him, not until Kant looks up at him again. Only then does he smile, like he just heard the punchline to a joke no one but him knows, and says, “Nothing. Give it a few minutes to dry out a little, then you can put the gauze on it.”
A silence falls upon the room then. Like everywhere else on this island, the sound of the ocean filters in through the open window – every room upstairs gets stuffy quickly with the door closed, Bison said, and the air conditioning hasn’t worked in years, so the windows have to be open. The breeze is nice. The sound of the ocean is, well. Kant still wouldn’t quite call it peaceful, but he can’t say it bothers him anymore either.
It feels wrong to break the easy peace that has fallen over them, but there’s been something playing on Kant’s mind for the past few hours, and he feels like if he doesn’t bring it up now then it might be forgotten in whatever chaos is waiting for them back home. And Kant thinks this is too important to be forgotten.
“Bison, did you mean what you said earlier? About becoming a doctor?”
Bison’s laying flat on the mattress now, arms dangling off the far side. Kant watches the steady rise and fall of his stomach, the pull of his lithe torso, the faint line of hair that darkens as it approaches the waistband of his shorts. Thinks about kissing it but knows if he does then he won’t stop, and then the conversation will be over before it’s even begun.
“I don’t know,” Bison answers after almost a full minute has passed. His voice is a little strained, but Kant can't tell if that's from where his head is tilted over the edge of the bed or something else entirely. “I’ve never really thought about it. What comes after. I always wanted it- freedom, a life of my own. I wanted it more than anything, but it’s one of those things, like the way you go to bed hoping when you wake up the next day your parents will be there and everything will go back to normal, y'know? I wanted it, but you don’t expect to actually get it.” A pause, a breath. “It’s like the sun. You need it, y'know, something to help you get by, to keep going. But if I looked at that life for more than a second or two then it just… hurt. So I never did.”
Kant can’t help it – he presses a kiss to Bison’s inner thigh, a second, a third, rests his temple against Bison’s knee. His hands itch with the need to make it better, to fix it somehow, but he can’t fix it, not this, so he settles for closing his eyes and taking a deep breath in. All he can smell is Bison.
“For what it’s worth,” he says after a moment, “I think you’d make a great doctor.”
Silence falls over them again for another few minutes. This time Kant leaves it alone.
“I think I like the thought of being a doctor in theory, but I don’t know if I’d actually like it in reality. I think maybe I’ve seen enough blood for one lifetime. And besides,” he sits up with a little grunt. Kant starts to pull back, but a hand slides into Kant’s hair, keeping him in place, “even if by some miracle I managed to get into medical school, there’s no way in hell I’d actually make it through. I barely even made it through high school.”
And Bison laughs a little, like what he’s saying is anything to be laughed at, and Kant feels an immediate fierceness well up inside him. “That’s not your fault. You were going through a lot. I mean, what normal kid would do well in school, given your circumstances?”
“Fadel,” Bison says with a grin. “Fadel always did well in school.”
“Yeah, well,” Kant shrugs, “maybe Fadel’s not normal.”
The grin widens. “I’m gonna tell him you said that.”
“He should know that already. He’s dating Style.”
“Who’s your best friend.”
“I’m already well aware I’m not normal,” Kant assures him. “And anyway, stop changing the subject, we’re talking about you right now.”
“What if I don’t wanna talk about me?”
“Too bad, you’re my favourite subject.” Bison’s laughter is like sunlight through the trees, practically sparkling in the air. “I think every conversation I ever have should be about you, actually. I’ll keep a picture of you at my workstation and show it to every client that comes in. It’s a perfect plan, really. They’re a captive audience.”
“Yeah, it’s a perfect plan for going bankrupt within six months,” and he’s shaking his head, but Kant can tell by the look on his face that he’s charmed nonetheless, which is exactly what he was hoping for. “You’re such an idiot, you know that?”
“An idiot for talking about how my boyfriend is so cute, and he’s so sexy, and he does this thing with his tongue that makes me-”
“Enough, oh my God.” Bison takes a hold of Kant’s hair and shakes him a little as he forces him to look at him. Kant just grins lazily, allowing himself to be dragged like a dog by the collar. “What is wrong with you today?”
“I love you,” Kant tells him simply. It’s the truth. “And I want you to know that I’m serious. You don’t have to make your mind up now, or tomorrow, or next week. But that life that you wanted, the one that hurt to look at? You can have it. Whatever you want, whoever you want to be, you can do it all. I truly believe that," he tells him. "And if you decide you want to become a doctor, then I think any patient would be lucky to have you looking after them. Or if you decide that isn't for you and and you'd rather do something else instead, then I know you’ll be amazing at that thing too. You can do anything you set your mind to, Bison. And I will be there every step of the way, doing everything I possibly can to help you get there.”
Bison has gone still and wide eyed, but then he’s huffing, shaking his head to himself even as he tries to hide the smile on his face. The hand holding Kant’s hair loosens, slides down to his neck where he starts playing with the long strands of hair at his nape, twirling them between his fingers even as he refuses to look at Kant. It doesn’t matter; Kant can see the twinkle in his eye anyway.
“And what if I said it was my dream to join a travelling circus and become a clown?”
The answer comes without a moment’s hesitation: “Then I’d be first in line to honk your nose, Mr Clown.”
Bison’s laughter is sharp and loud this time, startled out of him as though even he didn’t see it coming, and the sound of it bursts warm and fizzy through Kant’s guts. He hasn’t felt this feeling in a long time; this excitement. The kind that has you smiling into a pillow, that has you too giddy to sleep. The kind that makes you wanna bite and never let go.
“You’re out of your mind,” Bison tells him. His face is flushed slightly. The realisation makes Kant’s stomach flip.
“I did try to warn you.” Kant wills his voice to stay steady, but all his organs feel buoyant inside him. If Bison lets go of him, he might just hit the ceiling.
“You did,” he says with a final little giggle, and then his face settles, eyes drooping in a way that has Kant’s stomach roiling with a different kind of excitement. “Well, if I’m playing doctor today, then I guess I need someone to play nurse for me, hm?” And his hands become a little rougher in Kant’s hair again, pulling his head back a little. Kant’s own hands fly up to Bison’s thighs, finally sinking his fingers into that soft flesh the way he’s wanted to all day. “What do you say? Is Nurse Kant going to help me take care of the patient, or do I have to do it myself?”
“Of course, Doctor,” Kant doesn’t miss the little shiver that passes through Bison’s body at that name; tucks that information away to come back to later. For now, he just slips the tips of his fingers up under the hem of Bison’s shorts and squeezes. “Just tell me exactly what you need me to do, in explicit detail, and I’ll get right on it. We can’t leave the patient suffering, can we?”
“No,” Bison says with a devious little smile. “That’d be terrible.”
And then he pulls Kant up by his hair, and shows him exactly what to do.
(Kant does bandage Bison’s wound eventually – later, when Bison has all but passed out, face still stained with flush. Kant cleans it again, exactly the way Bison had told him earlier, only working at half speed to avoid waking him. Once he’s done, he covers it the way he’d cover a fresh tattoo, only with bandages instead of plastic wrap, figuring if it’s safe enough for one type of open wound it’s safe enough for another.
Afterwards, he presses a gentle kiss to the fresh white gauze, then half a dozen more as he trails back up Bison’s body, where he presses two final kisses: one to each of the red apples of Bison’s cheeks. Then he curls himself around him in the tiny single bed, and falls into an easy slumber to the tides of Bison’s breaths as they come.)
As eager as Kant might be to get home and see his little brother, he also can’t pretend that his feet don’t drag as Fadel herds them all into the house to pack up.
There really isn’t much to pack – all the clothes he’d been wearing since he arrived were either Bison’s or his father’s, which Kant has been trying his best not to think about too hard, but Bison had a few changes of clothes in his go-bag that Kant offers to help fold and organise.
They both move slow as they gather things from around the room, almost as if they’re thinking the same thing: that the minute they step off this island, things might never be the same again. Between Christ and Ruerat and Lilly, there’s just too much waiting for them back home, too many unknowns lurking around every corner. There’s too much that could go wrong.
Kant’s mind spins as he folds Bison’s t-shirts. It’s second nature to him – he and Babe had moved around enough as kids to warrant getting good at it: folding, packing. He knows all the tricks, knows exactly how to fold something until it’s as small as it can be. That way you can fit more in your bag, and Kant had always needed to fit as much in his bag as possible – they couldn’t afford to leave anything behind back then, not even a single pair of socks.
Kant had always thought it was a bit like a jigsaw: there was a place for everything as long as you knew exactly where to put it. And this is no different, he thinks, he just needs to try harder. If he does, then he can figure this out, he can figure a way to get them all out of this, he just needs more time – not much, another day or two, a few more hours even, then he’ll–
“Hey,” Bison says, startling Kant out of his thoughts, “can I ask you something?”
The spinning stops, but the momentum continues to carry him in circles for a few more seconds, so he waits until his mind has finally come to a complete standstill before he answers.
“Of course, what’s up?”
Bison doesn’t speak right away; instead he stares down at the rosary beads he’s playing with, holding them over the top of his open bag. He’s kept them close since he pulled them out of the box, but he keeps going back and forth on whether he’ll actually take them home with him. He wants to keep them, he told Kant, but he feels like they aren’t his to keep. I know it sounds silly, he’d said, but I just feel like if I take them out of this house my mom will be upset with me.
Kant had told him it wasn’t silly at all, that he still thinks his mom will get mad at him sometimes too. That didn’t seem to make him feel any better.
“Why did-” he starts, stops, takes a breath and tries again. “When you- I mean, earlier, when we were all at the beach together, you-” he looks at Kant, looks away, “you called Fadel brother-in-law.”
It’s not a question, but the way the words hang in the air between them certainly make it feel like one.
“Did… that bother you?” Kant asks, unsure of what exactly Bison’s trying to say, of what he’s supposed to say. “If it bothered you, then I won’t-”
“I didn’t- it’s not that, I just-” Bison’s stuttering through his words in a way Kant’s never seen before, all of his usual confidence suddenly gone. Kant hates it, “why?”
“Why did I call him brother-in-law?” Bison nods, head lowered so deeply he’s practically got his chin to his chest. “I don't know. It’s-” just a joke, Kant almost says, but realises with a start that that would be a lie. It’s not a joke, not at all. Maybe it started that way – a quick, offhanded way to get under Fadel’s skin a little – but not anymore. Now he says it because-
“He’s your brother. And you're my boyfriend.” Bison finally lifts his head then, looks at Kant in that wide-eyed, young way again, like that wasn’t the answer he had been expecting. “That makes him my brother-in-law, doesn’t it?”
“But we’re not married,” Bison says, as if he’d been waiting for this, as if he’d been thinking about it, and the pieces fall into place inside Kant. “Why would you-”
“Bison, I’m not going anywhere,” Kant tells him. He can see it now: he had thought they had been worrying about the same things, and maybe they were, but there’s more with Bison, there’s always more with Bison – thoughts telling him that this is all fake, that Kant is tricking him again. That he’s going to leave eventually, when it gets too hard or he figures out just what kind of monster Bison really is. Kant has no one but himself to blame for that, he knows, but it's alright. That just means he’s the one who gets the privilege of fixing it. “Married, not married, that’s all just semantics. I’m in this for the long haul, Bison, no matter what happens. No matter how hard it gets.”
Kant rounds the bed to the side where Bison is and sits himself at his feet. They keep ending up like this, he realises – Kant sitting down, Bison looming over him. He’s hardly looming now though – in fact he’s all but curled up on himself, his hands in his lap as he rolls the beads of the rosary between his fingers. But that doesn’t matter. Down here, Kant can catch his eye easier, can make sure Bison’s looking right at him as he says “I’m not going anywhere, Bison.”
Bison’s body twists, just a little, like he’s in pain. “How can you say that?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
It almost feels like a threat, when Bison’s lower lip begins to wobble. Surely, Kant thinks, surely they both know if Bison starts to cry then it’ll be the undoing of him.
Kant decides to change tact, trying to prevent the disaster he can already see unfolding in front of him. “What was it you said about Babe before?” He asks, swallowing back his own tears. “‘Your brother is my brother’? Well that goes for me too, you know? And ok, Fadel might be five seconds away from blowing my brains out at all times-”
“He’s like that with everyone, he usually doesn’t mean it.”
“-but that doesn’t mean I’m not still going to look out for him like I look out for my own. That doesn’t mean he’s not still my brother-in-law. I mean,” and he gestures towards the wall, towards where he knows Fadel and Style are in their room packing up their own bags, “after all of this, are we not all some fucked up kind of family?”
“But what if I don’t know if I know how to do that?” Bison asks, practically whispering the question in the space between them. “Be a family? I haven’t had a proper family in a long time, Kant. Mother only gives us attention when she wants something, and Fadel is just as fucked up as I am, so what if- what if I fuck it up? What if I ruin it? What if I hurt you, or Babe, or I-”
“Bison, Bison, listen to me,” Kant cuts off Bison’s ramble before he can work himself up into even more of a panic. “You’re not gonna fuck it up, alright? You’re not. And even if you do, you cannot possibly fuck it up as badly as I have up until now.” That gets a wet little laugh out of Bison. Kant immediately feels some of his tension dissipate. “Actually you know what? I take back what I said. You probably will fuck up. And I’ll probably fuck up too. We'll both probably fuck up all the time. But when that happens, we can fix it, can’t we? The way we’ve fixed this? I mean, surely if we’ve managed to fix me working for the police and you almost feeding me to the local aquatic life, then I’m sure we can fix whatever else life might throw at us, right?”
It takes a couple of seconds, but eventually Bison nods, his gaze still worried but fixed on Kant now, and he’s smiling – a tiny, fragile thing. A tear slips out of his eye. When Kant reaches up and wipes it away before it reaches his chin, Bison takes a hold of his wrist, holds his hand there.
“I know this is hard. It’s hard for me too. I’ve spent nearly my whole life having to prioritise Babe. Having to make room for someone else in my life, caring about their well being just as much as I do his, it’s weird. And it’s hard. But it’s worth it. You are so, so worth it, Bison.”
Bison makes this sound – a whine, distressed enough for Kant to start to worry that he really is in pain. But he’s pressing his cheek harder into Kant’s palm, his other hand coming up to hold onto his forearm as if he thinks Kant might try and pull away, and his eyes are still fixed on him, his attention solely on the words Kant is saying, so he forces himself to continue.
“And when I stumble,” he clears his throat, trying to steady his voice; it’s wobbling so badly he can barely get the words out, “when I stumble, I know you’ll be there to help me up, right? Just like I’ll be there to help you up when you stumble. So whatever happens, no matter how hard or complicated it gets, we will figure it out together, won’t we? Whether that means planning how we’re going to run away together without being caught, or just what we’re doing for dinner that day.” Bison’s tears are coming faster than Kant can wipe them away now, but he tries anyway. “I know it’s scary now, Bison, but we’ll find our way, I promise you. Even if it takes us a little while, eventually we’ll get there, me and you.”
“Kant,” and he sounds so scared as he says it, but there’s so much hope there too, a light in his eyes even as more tears tumble over the edge, “Kant, when you say things like that- when you say things like that it almost sounds like you’re gonna stay forever, and if you don’t- if you don’t mean it then please, please, you can’t-”
“I mean it, of course I mean it. You think I come this far just to come this far? Bison,” and Kant can barely see his face through his own tears at this point, but he can’t calm down, not anymore, so he just blinks and swallows and tries to catch his breath enough to say, “you’re it for me. Wherever you go, I go. Whether that means we’re here on this island or sharing bunks in a prison cell, it doesn’t matter to me.” Their shared laughter is like balm on a burn, as are Bison’s hands on his face, wiping away his tears with his beautiful fingers. “I love you, Bison. If I’m not by your side, I’m not anywhere.”
Bison makes this little gasping sound, sometimes, when Kant touches him in certain ways: fingers on the thin skin behind his ear, or hands running along his neck, over his Adam’s apple. At the bowling alley, the night before it all started to go wrong, Kant had kissed the inside of his bicep, just shy of his armpit, and Bison had gasped so loud Kant had to stop and make sure he hadn’t hurt him by accident.
That’s the sound he makes right now, as soon as the words reach his ears. As if Kant had touched him just right. As if it felt so good it almost hurt.
“Do you really mean that?”
“More than I’ve ever meant anything.”
Bison breathes in so deep, holds it there for a moment – almost as if he wants to take the words themselves inside him, absorb them into his bloodstream, make them a part of him forever. He lets it go. “You really won’t leave?”
“Not as long as there’s still air in my lungs.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
Kant’s got a lapful of Bison before he’s even finished getting the word out. One arm instinctively curls around his body, the other slamming against the floor to stop them from toppling backwards under the force of him. Once he’s steadied them, the hand cradles the back of Bison's skull, sliding through his soft, unstyled hair, gripping onto the back of his neck. He’s holding him too tight, he knows, especially with his wound, but he can't help it. Even having Bison wrapped around him like this doesn't feel it's close enough. Kant thinks Bison could live in his heart and it still wouldn’t be close enough.
“I love you,” Bison says, voice muffled by Kant’s shoulder but still crystal clear, “I love you, Kant, I love you, I don’t- I didn’t think it would feel like this, I don’t-” Kant shushes him, worried about how fast his breathing his coming, but Bison settles a little, shivering sporadically in his arms. “I think I’d die if you left me, Kant.”
Kant wonders if Bison notices the nails that dig themselves into his skin. Wonders if he knows that not even death could take Bison from him now.
“It's a good thing I’m never leaving then, hm? That way you’ll never die.” Kant rocks him a little, though it’s more to soothe himself than it is for Bison’s benefit. “We’ll grow so impossibly old together, just me and you, all white-haired and wrinkly on this island. Or wherever else we end up. But the walls- the walls will be covered in pictures, Bison, I swear. Covered in them. Of birthdays and Christmases and weddings. Anniversaries. Graduations. There’ll be pictures of us in this house and in Style’s garage and under the northern lights. And there’ll be so many people, Bison, so many people in our pictures, I already know- Babe, Style and Fadel, whoever else we meet along our way. And there’ll be kids too. I don’t know whose they are yet,” Bison laughs, a stuttery little thing, “but I’m sure there’ll be kids at some point. And maybe eventually those kids will have kids too. But regardless, me and you- me and you, Bison, we’re gonna make sure they have the best life, aren’t we? We’re gonna give them everything we never had, right?”
Bison finally pulls his face away from where he’d had it pressed to Kant’s neck. He’s still crying, but he’s smiling too, even as he asks “You really want that with me?”
“I only want that with you,” Kant assures him, cleaning his damp face with the backs of his hands. Bison lets him, even when Kant pulls the hem of his shirt up to wipe his nose. “If it’s not with you, I don’t want it.”
The smile widens, just a little. Kant sees ten thousand sunrises all at once, ten thousand more laid out in front of him, and thinks you’re my home too.
“If it’s not with you, I don’t want it either.”
For a moment Kant can’t speak, can’t even breathe as this new reality starts to form in front of them, spinning like a brand new star. He looks up at Bison’s face – his beautiful, beautiful face, flushed with tears and smiling, smiling at Kant, because of Kant, for Kant – and thinks this is the face I will see every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to sleep; this is the face I will know better than my own, that I will always look for in every crowd, that I will never forget for as long as I live. This is the face my heart recognized straight away, as if it had finally looked in a mirror and said ‘there I am’.
Kant thinks thank God, thinks, I’ve been waiting for you for so long, thinks, never ever leave me again.
Kant takes Bison’s hands in his. He kisses the backs of both of them, every knuckle, every finger. Lingers a little too long on one of them, thinks please, please, thinks not yet. When he looks up, Bison’s got this peaceful, hopeful look on his face, warm as the rising sun. Like he knows. Like he’s thinking it too.
Kant pulls Bison into his arms again, holds him tighter than he should. Bison holds him just as tight.
He looks at his own hands and thinks soon.