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oOo
Pheem looks like peaches and cream, thinks Than, but he’s got the fangs and the venom of a viper.
That’s what you get when you’re thrown into a snake pit: Live or die. Pheem, tenaciously, clings to life.
It’s oddly reassuring.
It’s also sad.
It’s sad what it did to the little boy Than met, a lifetime ago. The cracks and twists it’s forced on him. The way it’s ruined him and made him cynical and cruel. Affection, tenderness, love – all but currency to be paid and recouped, everything a deal, a transaction netting profit or loss.
It took him dying to rip all that away, like a thick, nasty scab. Beneath that he was bleeding.
He’s so incredibly strong.
He wanted to come back to Than. But he was strong enough to wait, to put it away whilst dealing with the practicalities that would make it safe for Than, his family, and everyone who’d known Pheem before he died. Pheem suffered because he knew Than would suffer. But he waited, until he’d isolated the poison, until he’d neutralised himself from the venom that clung to him. Only then did he return.
Than loves him. It might be Than’s gun protecting Pheem’s person, but it is Pheem’s strength that shields Than. The steel beneath the silk, the hard, unyielding core of him – the very thing that made him ice-cold also makes him able to give in. To love and let himself be loved without counting the profits.
Than’s heart aches when he looks at Pheem’s smile, wide and shining, and knows what lies behind. How much it costs him to still be like that. To hang on to what’s good in him.
There’s so much. It would be easier if he let go, like his half-siblings. If he were like their father.
If Pheem could do that, he’d have the world at his feet and he’d walk all over it with shimmering ease. Money, power, influence. Being able to do whatever with impunity – the law wouldn’t be able to touch him, just as it failed to reach the rest of his crooked family.
But Pheem isn’t like that.
He can still love. He can still think of others before himself.
He can still throw himself before Than and take a bullet for him.
He can die for Than and Than’s parents and Aunty Nit.
Than envelops him into a hug tight enough to make Pheem grunt and blink at him. Still groggy after a night of loving. Than kisses him – hair, brow, eyelids, nose, lips. He kisses him firmly, thoroughly, and tastes Pheem’s smile.
Bright and happy.
Than’s heart soars.
oOo
END