Work Text:
After the last stone falls into place with a clack, there is silence. Feinberg's chest raises itself with quick breaths of dust in the air, so close that it meets Couri's when their breathing cycles overlap.
He breathes in again.
"What the hell was that?!", Feinberg yells. The dust-clouds still blurr Couri's features below him as Feinberg gets to his feet. His shoulder hurts. Certainly one hell of a bruise. He stomps, paces, the energy boiling in his veins as Couri slowly picks himself up. Feinberg watches and meets Couri's eyes when he finally raises his gaze.
"Your reaction time isn't that bad. You definitely had enough time." Fein knows his voice is harsh, yet he can't bring himself to care. Couri could have died there. Would have died there, if not for Feinberg.
He shoots a glance back at Couri.
Oh. Looking at the guilt on his face, Feinberg realizes.
Terribly, terribly realizes. How could he have missed this?
"But you weren't going to leave."
Perhaps it should be a question, perhaps Feinberg shouldn't jump to conclusions. But the only path he can see is this one and he sees it clear as the bastion route in his mind's eye, clear as an ocean exposed portal room.
So really, in Feinberg's mind, it really isn't a question at all.
and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you
Couriway flinches away. His dirty glasses slip down his nose as he lowers his head, looks away. His arms come up in the loneliest version of a hug, his wings hidden away underneith the ripped fabric that used to be a shirt. Making himself small.
"Fuck."
Feinberg doesn't know what to think. Except:
"Fuck."
"Couri", Feinberg is breathless, he feels shaky. The leaving adrenaline. The horror dawning on him.
"What the fuck."
Couri stumbles back. His eyes dart up to meet Feinberg's. They widen at whatever expression Feinberg must be making, it can't be pretty. Couri's doesn't look it either.
Feinberg sinks onto one of the boulders now strewn around. His shoulder hurts like hell from being hit by one of them on the way down. He reaches up to massage it. His eyes close of their own accord. What to do? Couri...
"Fuck", Feinberg says again. And again, "Fucking hell."
Couri kneels down onto the stone behind him. His cold hands replace Feinberg's own, rubbing circles against the gap between his shoulder blade and spine.
He relaxes in Couriway's skilled grasp. If only it could be this easy.
"Say something", Feinberg demands. Couriway stays silent.
Feinberg sighs as he opens his eyes, turning around to look over his shoulder. Immediately, Couri's hands fall from Feinberg's back.
Just as immediately, he misses them.
Feinberg takes a moment to look at Couri. His lip still bleeds sluggishly, so does his temple. Hair sticks to his face with it. Couriway's widened eyes flick back and forth between Feinberg's eyes and the ground. A certain guilt rises in Feinberg at the fear in Couri.
Still. "Say something."
Couriway's shoulder's rise even higher, shielding his head. Feinberg sees them shake, once, twice, barely trembling. Couri's bottom lip follows, his nose twitches, his eyes grow glossy.
Then he cries.
His form falls in on itself, sinking down onto his arms where he is kneeling, as if praying to Feinberg. Feinberg, who can only sit on the stone edge and stare as Couri falls apart.
The world is silent except for Feinberg's laboured breathing and Couri's quiet, muffled sobs. His wings are filthy, covered in grime; they twitch atop Couri's back yet refuse to profide him the instinctual shelter they would any other avian in distress.
Couri stays visible in all his vulnerability.
Refuses to give Feinberg an excuse to look away, to ignore the helplessness he feels, the frustration. Feinberg doesn't know what to do. What to do, what to do?
So he just stares. Stares at Couri crying, sees all the pathetic details, so close, so terribly, impossibly far away.
Minutes must pass or hours or perhaps merely a single blink of his eyes, glued to Couri's blood-crusted crown of hair, until Feinberg reaches out.
The angle is awkard, Couri bend over himself behind Feinberg, who still sits on the boulder's edge, legs hanging over the ledge and head turned over his shoulder, along the arm he now stretches out.
His hand crosses the sheer endless distance between Couri and him to land softly on a shaking right shoulder.
Feinberg remembers to breathe, and Couri gasps, startled. His head snaps up. His cloudy eyes stare right into Feinberg, unfocused, unseeing. He scrambles back, except: There is not more stone below him.
Couri falls.
He hit the ground on his back, one more panicked breath knocked out of his chest as he lands, a crunch as another fragile wing bone breaks or cracks or shatters.
Feinberg, too, panics, jumping of the boulder and running around it.
He stares again, straight into Couri's eyes.
Their chests move up and down as if in sync, Couri gasping out choked sobs and Feinberg heavy with worry. Feinberg sinks down into a squat.
He forces his voice calmer than he feels.
"Couri", he says, trying for soothing, and failing. "Couri, it's allright, it's allright."
Feinberg's heart clenches. That he has to even say this...
"It's allright", he repeats again, "I'm not mad."
Feinberg tries for a smile. He hopes it seems steadier than he feels. Fuck. He shouldn't have been so harsh. "I'm not mad, Couri, I'm not mad."
Except well, he is, of course, and Couri would know. Does know, by the downwards twist of his lips as he curls up on himself. Feinberg is mad that he missed this, is mad that Couri didn't tell him, is mad that someone as- as good as Couri would have to feel this way. In a way, he is mad that he has to deal with it now, is mad he can't just ignore it, is mad Couri won't wipe away his tears and tell Feinberg he's fine and they can move on and forget about it. Fuck. Why can't Couri just be allright?
And then Feinberg is mad that he feels this way, mad that he blames it on Couri, even though Couri is the one lying in tears on the floor, mad that he let it come this far.
Or perhaps Feinberg is just scared. Perhaps Feinberg is simply and horrifically, truly and for the very first time, so hopeless, so helpless, that there is nothing he can do except being angry. If he wasn't, he would just sit here, forever, until Couri got his shit together enough to drag Feinberg away.
And Couri shouldn't have to do that. And so Feinberg is mad but that's bad too and—
What can he do?
Couri's tears have trakked shiny paths through the layer of dust on his face. A map of rivers, their spring Couri's eyes, Couri's sadness, Couri's fear.
Couri's fear of Feinberg.
Feinberg wants to wipe them away, yet as he raises his hand, Couri flinches. His eyes press shut, more tears squeezing out. Feinberg, too, flinches. He pulls away as if punching a blaze bare-handed, and the burn in his heart stings just like it too.
"I'm not going to hurt you", Feinberg says. He hopes it is the truth. He hopes. Though, he supposes, he already has, hasn't he? Still: "I promise." And hopes he can keep it.
The silence lasts a moment more.
"Can I touch you?", Feinberg asks. He tries softly, but well, Feinberg has never been particularly good at being sensitive.
Just as long as Feinberg has been bad at being sensitive, Couri has known this. So perhaps it shouldn't come a sa suprise that Couri gets Feinberg's intention despite it. His eyes open, clearer than before, blinking up at Feinberg through his lashes. Tears cling to them like snowflakes in winter, glittering like gems in candlelight, those are happy memories. Not like here: drops salty and muddied brown and grey with dust.
Couri looks at Feinberg with longing, with hesitance, with fear, with want. Feinberg does recognize what Couri needs here. He opens his arms, and Couri scrambles into him.
Now they both lie on the floor, Couri's tears soaking into Feinberg's shirt and Feinberg's hands massaging the joint where Couri's cramped wings meet his back. If the tears hadn't had, the tension in Couri's back would tell him.
"I'm sorry", Couri mumbles into Feinberg's chest.
What to do?
Now Feinberg has to lie. He can't say 'I forgive you', because if there was anything to forgive, he wouldn't have yet, but really Couri hasn't done anything in ened of forgiveness, and it's just Feinberg being stupid. He can't say 'it's allright', because it really, really, isn't.
Instead of either he says, "I've got you, Couri. I've got you" and means 'I love you, how am I meant to live without you?'
Couri's arms clench even tighter around Feinberg's back, and Feinberg squeezes tighter in response. It draws a wet chuckle out of Couri as his glasses dig into Feinberg's cehst, and surely too into the bridge of his nose. Feinberg chuckles too.
"I would miss you if you died", Feinberg says. Is that the right thing to say?
"...I know", Couri answers. He sounds guilty, guilty and sad, to Feinberg's ears, but perhaps, but maybe hopefully, that is only the fact that he speaks through Feinberg's shirt and torso too. And Feinberg is gald that he is doing that, the hot breath is a reminder that Couri is indeed still breathing, that he hasn't been burried underneith a hundred tons of stone, that Feinberg pushed him away in time.
"Then why?", Feinberg asks. Couri tenses again.
"Am I not enough?", and wants to say 'Is it not enough that I love you?'
Couri head shoots up. "No!", Couri protests, a fire in his teary eyes, "You are! I'm...I'm the problem. I know you would miss me and- and all the others too. I'm just- I'm just selfish and- i'm just selfish. I'm sorry."
Feinberg doesn't care if Couri is selfish, he cares that "I love you, Couri! How can I help you?"
And Couri stares at him. His eyes widen with suprise for a long moment, then Couri smiles sadly. "I don't know", he averts his eyes, "I don't think you can. But-", his eyes dart back to Feinberg's, "no"
"What?", Feinberg asks. If there is any way, anything at all he can do to keep Couri in his life, fuck, Feinberg would. "Do you want to move away, live on a farm, speedrun duos forever? Build a house, stop running altogether? Please, Couri?"
Couri's eyes are searching. "You would be miserable, Fein."
"You are miserable!", Feinberg argues, "You tried to fucking kill yourself!"
It's the first time either of them has said it outright.
"I would do anything to help you", Feinberg continues, softer.
Couri's tears start falling again. Lying as the two of them are, the tears run over the bridge of Couri's nose and down into into other eye, before rolling over his cheekbone and dripping onto the floor.
Feinberg fights the urge to kiss them away.
"Please!", Couri gasps out and smushes his nose against Feinberg's cheek, rubbing dirt and tears and snot against it, smearing both of their glasses with dirt and with grime, but Feinberg can't bring himself to care, "Stay, I love you!", Couri cries, presssing the entire lenght of his body against Feinberg, "Please, Fein, just anything else. I don't want to live like this anymore! Take me away and let's run together or build a house just— stay?", Couri begs through his tears, and Feinberg responds by hugging Couri back just as tightly, whispering again and again and again all over, "I will, I will, I will, promise, I love you I will."
and the universe said you are not alone
If Couri will have him, Feinberg will stay forever.
and the universe said I love you because you are love.