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Low grumbling carries through the gap in the door as Zenos exits the bathroom. His beloved, sitting on the bed where he had left him in wait, has gone through a whirlwind lately; these bursts were to be expected from his man liable to emotional overreaction. As always, he would be his rock. He would not waver as the storms whipped them, and thus Laku too would stay moored.
“Plotting or brooding, my dear?” he calls out before he turns the corner. The response is unexpected, soon fully in his view: Laku’s back hits the headboard, he tucks his knees to his chest, and a hiss whistles through his teeth. On the sheets lies the memoria from their last visit to the Void, sloshing with the faint sound of waves hitting the coastline.
This is not Laku at all, is it? Slit pupils like a dragon’s glare at him. Such a strange sight, loathing for him on that visage. Zenos may have stoked it once; in his folly, he thought it easier to vivify than the unknowns Laku had felt during their games of chase. The opposite of love is not hatred, after all, but indifference. Any way he could facilitate rancor like in the garden was good enough for him. But that was then. Laku is his husband now, their bond forged in the purest of adoration. This guardedness, the tension in those muscles… his partner for life should not regard him so.
“So it is you.” Disappointment seeps into his voice. He’s long past the fallacy that a parasite inhabits Laku’s body, but how else is he meant to react to this display? “The cowering of prey ill suits the skin you wear.”
“I’m no prey,” Kirimu snaps, yet every ilm of his betrays the instinct to bolt in three directions at once. His claws score tears into the fabric beneath as he fights the urge. “What do you want?”
Zenos settles down at the edge of the bed. When these shifts became more frequent, Laku warned him to tread carefully with this wounded part of him. He sees no point in coddling a warrior, so he cares not if Kirimu protests feeling his radiating heat, or that naught but a towel covers him. “Conversation,” he states blankly. “Would you grant me the privilege?”
Claws flex against the ruined sheets. “I’ve nothing to say.”
“You react to me as if I’ve risen from your past.”
Kirimu’s body locks tight under his scrutiny, the crawling of his skin apparent. He averts his gaze, but cannot do so for long as he must keep an eye on the predator in the room. For a beat, Zenos thinks he’s about to retreat back into Laku’s mind. An acceptable conclusion if not for his risen intrigue. But Kirimu forces more words through his gritted jaw instead.
“Your face isn’t the problem. It’s the way you look at me.” Like he’s peeling back skin to count the bones underneath.
Zenos tilts his head. “Should I look away, then?”
Kirimu squints. “Would you?”
Zenos smiles. “No.” He reaches out slowly, half-taunting, half-tender. His fingertips ghost along Kirimu’s arm, tracing cracks in the marble until the smaller hand rests in his—to a surprising lack of resistance. He presses his thumb where his sword once carved a crevice into the palm, soft enough to avoid hurt but hard enough to make it felt. Kirimu flinches at the touch, but does not pull away.
“This fear…” Zenos murmurs. “How deep does it course? Does it taint your blood? Does it stop you from seizing what you desire?”
“So what if it does?” Kirimu bristles, but it’s the very same way Laku did when he still resisted being seen. “You’re not much help, mate.”
Zenos’s fingers trail back up Kirimu’s arm; he delights the shiver that follows them. “So you want my help, then?”
Like it’s overdue, Kirimu yanks his arm away. “No.”
“Very well.” Surprise blooms on him as Zenos stands up, gives him space, fixes the towel around his waist. “Tell my love to call when you’ve returned his faculties. I shall wait outside.”
No response follows, so he takes his leave. Yet something compels him to linger by the doorway. Though the other magnet now tries to repel him, they’ve been attached for too long for him to stray far. Laku will be back. He will love him when he does. For now, Zenos cannot let this interloper get under his skin.
It’s difficult. That glare, like he wished he would fall off the face of the star…
He’s sunken deep into his conflicted thoughts and the nearby plush chair when the door creaks open. The steps taken still too timid to be Laku’s, they approach him like walking over hot coals.
“You’re still here,” Kirimu mutters. His shoulders hunch inward and his clawed feet scratch at the floorboards like he could bury his reservations there. This all Zenos sees when he turns his way to assess one more time if it could be who he hoped for.
“Did you expect otherwise? When I’ve spent years cherishing every scar, every nerve of that vessel?” His resounding sigh reveals his yearning. “How disappointing to see it used so inelegantly.”
Kirimu scowls. As if to prove him wrong, he straightens his posture and steps closer, much closer than Zenos thought him able to. “Hopeless,” he grumbles, but doesn’t refute the insult.
Zenos lifts a hand; not reaching, just offering. Kirimu stares at it like it might bite, until courage finds him and he takes it with a huff. This time, Zenos’s fingers keep still for Kirimu to inspect like a wild animal should he need to.
“This is a hand soaked in blood,” he speaks slowly. “You know this. I won’t deny this.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Kirimu takes his time examining the strong knuckles, the large scar on the palm that mirrors Laku’s in placement but clearly differs in cause. “I know exactly how this hand has been used.”
“You speak from experience,” Zenos replies. He has seen the evidence. “Experience which your pain reflects onto me, a stranger.”
Kirimu’s gaze lifts from the scar, cool and steady. “I do.”
In the following pause, not even Zenos’s own breath reaches his ears. The hand he holds flexes in his grip. Curiosity overflows and he cannot help himself. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Everything.” Zenos’s gaze bores into Kirimu, seeking every fine detail that differs from how Laku holds himself with an intensity that borders on unnerving. “Every struggle. Every triumph. Every kill. I wish to know you as intimately as I know a sword.”
“... As you know him,” Kirimu rasps out.
“No.” Zenos’s grip tightens, his expression sharpens like a blade unsheathed. “You are not his echo. You are yourself.” His thumb finds Kirimu’s wrist, pressing just enough to feel the rapid flutter underneath. “I would learn the shape of your fury, your grief, your hunger, separate from his.”
Kirimu has no retort that can pass through that dried-up throat.
Zenos leans in to coax one out with a taunt, his voice dropping near a whisper: “Unless you worry I’ll find you lacking?”
That does it. Claws dig into Zenos’s skin; not to draw blood, but to signal his displeasure. “Try me.”
It does not cause Zenos to pull away. If anything, his eyes gleam with new interest, the look of a man given a fresh challenge. “Then show me your worst moment.”
Kirimu’s eyes darken in an insidious sort of bitterness. The kind that stays in the pit of the heart long after wounds heal. “Pick a different moment,” he demands.
“Why?” Zenos asks, a challenge and question in one.
“There are too many worsts.”
“Pick one.”
Kirimu stares at their joined hands. Stubborn pride tears at him. Zenos stays steady and unyielding as ever as he waits, never wavering. “... When I woke up without my eye,” he finally mutters. “Knowing my father had been devoured. Never seeing the future again. Not being able to prepare for anything that would come.”
The Resonant flashes. Zenos sinks into the memory to see it first-hand, drowns himself in that moment in sharp-edged detail; savors the taste of loss, the ache of the empty socket. Through it all, he never lets go of his hand. He stays stoic save for the slightest tightening in his brow. The intensity of his focus consumes all as the memory unravels like a spool of thread.
He understands the weight, how Laku too relies on the power, how its misplacement in enemy hands would kill him within. The hollow of Draugr’s love in Kirimu’s heart takes a similar shape to those moments when Laku seemed lost to the arms of death; how Zenos felt as though he’d been ripped in half. He knows now the sorrow.
“Next,” he murmurs, “show me the first time you fought after that. The moment you saw you still could, despite your loss.”
Kirimu’s breath hitches, but he allows Zenos to read him once more. The next memory surges forward, of him stumbling into battle half-blind, unsteady, furious. The way his remaining eye had strained to compensate, how every lunge seemed a misstep. The lance in his grip both weapon and crutch, his strikes grew reckless, desperate to prove he was still dangerous. Zenos absorbs it all. His free hand flexes, testing the shade of that old grip on the spear.
The scene ends as abruptly as it started. When Zenos returns to himself, he’s lighter from the weight of this trust he’s been given. The silence does not break just yet; it needs time to settle like ashes after war.
“Well?” Kirimu shatters it with a wavering voice like he doesn’t know what to ask himself. Clearly, he expects something.
Zenos’s eyes return to blue, but pupils stay dilated. “You fought like a warrior,” he praises with a smile. “Like a true beast of battle.”
“I fought to win,” Kirimu corrects, bristling. “But I didn’t. I had loss after loss after loss. Where did any of that fight bring me but back to Amon’s table?”
Zenos’s eye twitches at the name, but never leaves Kirimu. “You still fought.” He intertwines their fingers, the way he has with Laku so often; Kirimu does not reciprocate, but the gaps in-between still welcome him so perfectly. “Defeat does not erase defiance. You clawed your way forward each time, drenched in blood and suffering. That is worth knowing.”
“Knowing changes nothing,” Kirimu mutters, the failure still sour on his tongue.
“Does it not?” Zenos challenges his pessimism. “The scars you bear—I see them. And I see the will behind them.” He watches the sparks of relief awaken in Kirimu’s widened eyes, in his caught breath, in the fingers that finally curl around his hand. “You are not what was done to you.”
Kirimu’s pulse hammers in his grasp like he’d physically hit him. His hand jerks to retreat for a split second, but doesn’t; he freezes, staring Zenos in the eye seeking malicious motives where there are none. Just another flash of red as Zenos plunges into the mystery of what goes on in that head: Weak. Pathetic. Failure. Enuo’s words like a knife in the chest: You still remember how to break.
He recoils with strength that pulls Zenos out of the vision and leaves scrapes from his nails on his wrist. “I’m not some toy for you to—”
“Look at me.” Zenos resists grabbing onto the man when he’s already one step away from taking flight. “You are not broken. You are a threat. I saw it, hence my attempt to cut you out.”
Kirimu’s hands ball into wrists, one shaking like trying to expunge the tingling remnants of Zenos’s hold, the other reaching for where his lance should be. Alas, even Laku’s Wrathgrinder lays in wait in the bedroom. As he curses his unarmedness, it takes more effort to force out his response. “You didn’t succeed.”
“I didn’t.” Zenos smiles proudly. “Because your will to survive proved stronger than my intent.”
“Flattery won’t make me forgive you,” Kirimu snaps. The raw scraping edge of vulnerability carves his throat open.
Zenos leans back, unbothered. “You may comprehend my reasons. You may not. It will not change my refusal to try again.”
“Reasons?” Kirimu’s chest rises and falls unevenly. “You don’t have reasons, you have whims.”
“If you insist.” Zenos’s intense gaze never wavers, but his new position signals his unwillingness to partake in this particular fight. Like a beast with its belly on show in submission. “But know this: had I succeeded, you would not remain to argue the point. And that,” his voice softens, “would have been a loss.”
“Tch.” Kirimu has no answer but to turn on his heel and return to the bedroom, doubtlessly to spend time moping with that cursed purple crystal.
All progress made with this rescue cat comes with equal backtracking, it seems. Zenos sighs deep as he stares up at the dark sky outside the window. Laku will have stern words again, though he’d tried his best. So be it. He knows this ridiculous dance will yield fruit before long.