...Now What?

[Aurin]

40 Frost 120
Afternoon

...continued from So...

Well, fuck.

Aurin froze, eyes lost in a thousand-yard stare. In his mind, he relived their meeting and then many high and low points in their friendship. That first few hours had been a template of sorts, though it didn't always start with Arry pushing a boundary — then the boundary of personal property. It did usually end in a fight. Usually, Aurin became vicious. Now, perhaps, he was trying to break that cycle.

A hundred hurtful things came to mind to say. He wouldn't need his trick to make Arry feel worse than garbage. And he was angry or, at least, anger was part of his reaction to the situation. Why did Arry want more than he could give? Why wasn't what he gave enough? He didn't ask for much. At least, he didn't think he did. Did he think he was in love with Aurin? As if that were possible. Did he think they were going to get married and move into a bigger house and adopt pets and children together?

And Aurin would admit to being a shitty person, but he had tried to be up front with that. With Arry it was always don't say what you want and then wait until he started getting catty to find out what had flown up his skirts this time. It was like he thrived on dramatic displays, as if he wanted to live on a theatrical stage. But Aurin didn't want to. He wanted his spartan safehouse with bars on the window and a lock on the door. He wanted to bullshit with people in the Cabaret and then set that role aside and go back to the darkness.

Arry's words were cutting, but he didn't flinch. Maybe it was all in his head. Sometimes he thought he was properly mad.

"All right," he said finally, his voice devoid of emotion. His eyes fell to the pie Arry hadn't wanted and he began to dig in.

[Arvælyn]

As soon as the words had slipped loose of his tongue, Arry knew that he'd gone too far. He wasn't sure he had a right to react to any of this at all, but he was absolutely certain he'd crossed a line on this count, and one which he might not be able to return from.

He wasn't the same helpless creature he'd been a year ago. He'd been alone but for Aurin, and wholly reliant upon him for food, shelter, social interaction- Everything. That was no longer true, although Aurin remained on an unassailable pedestal in Arry's eyes.

Breathing through his teeth, he stared down at the tabletop. He was still angry and, even if some of the ire had redirected to aim at himself, the bulk was still firmly planted upon Aurin. Perhaps the best move would be to double down and let what he'd said lie between them. He couldn't undo it, so it would linger between them like scar tissue no matter what he did now. But no...

"I'm sorry." Arry rasped, quietly. I shouldn't have said that, I..." He felt his eyes welling up, but he tried to will the tears away. Surely Aurin would take it for a manipulative move, at this point, rather than a genuine response to being emotionally overwhelmed, "I drew a conclusion, and now it seems I've rendered it foregone." He closed a fist around the handle of one of the mugs Aurin had brought over. He brought it to his lips and tipped it back.

"I'm sorry that I care enough to wreck things before the wreck me, but... You don't deserve-..." He shook his head, "I don't deserve owt, but what the gods granted me." His nose wrinkled, as his eyes won out in spite of his will, forcing a tear past the well-guarded gates of his eyelids.

"I can amputate it, so it don't 'urt either of us anymore."

[Aurin]

The bad man ate his food in silence for a while because he didn't know what to think, what to say, or what to do. Whatever had tugged at him in Antiris, he had tried to follow through on. He offered escape and refuge. It took Arry a while to take him up on it, but he had given him that. Arry wanted a life on the stage, and he helped him get that, even now encouraging him toward grander stages if that was his ambition.

He ate his food because maybe if he swallowed enough, the ache at the back of his throat would go down, too. When it became clear that wasn't going to work, he set his fork down. He looked up. His eyes were a little bit haunted, a little bit hollow. And he still didn't know how to proceed, but he had to do something.

Of course, he had warned him. In the end, it didn't matter. He tried to show him that he cared with actions, with words of encouragement. Romance wasn't really a thing he felt; not with Arry, not with Torin, not with anyone. Perhaps parts of him were absent or atrophied.

"You do what you have to do to be happy," he said, his voice strained. "I'll stand by what I said."

It wasn't what Arry wanted to hear, but then Arry hadn't really articulated what he wanted. It had taken the appearance of someone else on the scene to rile him up, someone who wasn't going to replace him, at least as far as Aurin was concerned. But he didn't know how to communicate that clearly, it seemed. They were apples and oranges insofar as he saw things.

Arry knew him too well. It was like going to the theater. If one sat too close, it ruined the illusion.

[Arvælyn]

Arry stared at Aurin for a long moment. It wasn't daunting to do, when the man wasn't looking back. The sense of guilt and regret that had begun in his stomach were now creeping up to his chest, as if creeping toward and eventually encircling his very heart.

An errant thought flashed into his mind about how his wide-eyed younger self three years earlier had sat across a similar table at another pub and gorged himself unabashedly on the fare. He'd gone from mortified to more hopeful than he'd been since childhood in that hour. In this moment he felt like he'd dashed some of those dreams.

Glancing down at the pie he'd rejected, which had ceased to steam between their scant words and pregnant paused, Arry felt another pang a guilt pile on with the rest. Aurin had invited him out for a nice dinner and an evening of theatre, and Arry wasn't even eating it. He felt like an ingrate.

"We don't..." He drew the plate back in front of himself, breaking off a corner of the crust with his fingers, "...We don't have to go to the theatre this evening, if you're keen to be free of me." After a beat he added, "...for the nonce." If Aurin was in earnest, and Arry believed he thought he was, then he still felt responsible for his half-Hytori. Surely, in time he would think better of that- or maybe he already was, and it was an overweening sense of duty that kept Aurin's attentions. Perhaps they were granted grudgingly. Surely they would be ere long.

"I want you to be 'appy more than me. May not seem that way, just now. I oughtn't've balked at summat- er, someone who makes you 'appier than I do. Can't 'elp meself, sometimes."

[Aurin]

"I don't want to be free of you," he said quickly. There was a hint of exasperation, or perhaps it was desperation masquerading as exasperation. He looked up, then down at his food again.

"I don't really do happy... but it sounds like you might get there someday. I hope so."

Aurin didn't really know how that all worked. His parents hadn't been happy. His childhood hadn't been happy. There was no real understanding of this nirvana stories and songs talked about, no blueprint or map. But other people seemed to find it given the right circumstances. They found a job they liked, a person they loved, or some sort of order for their lives and it just seemed to happen. He had seen it. A courtesan would marry and their life would change into something they wanted it to look like more than it already did. He had never felt that way about a person. The closest hint of that had been poisoned, weaponized against him, a long time ago and far away from here. He had come what felt like a million miles to try to keep himself, but all he could do was try.

He was self-aware enough to know, to have known even when they first met, that saving Arry from Antiris was, on some level, an attempt to save himself from what he had survived. It had seemed as though Arry still had a chance at some kind of normalcy. Perhaps not, but that had always been his hope. He wasn't good at talking about it, obviously. But he had offered a foundation to build on, support, and such. Perhaps, like a father, his goal had been for Arry to thrive and move on, to survive him.

"I thought everything was all right."

[Arvælyn]

"I don't want you to be free of me, either..." Arry replied, with a wan, sorrowful smile. His fingers idly turned a bit of pie crust in slow, thoughtless rotations as his eyes remained fixed upon Aurin's darker pair, even when they were averted. Arry felt abject. His heart was now consumed by the grasping tendrils of guilt over the past and worry for the future. As that tension built up a fortress in his belly with towers that peaked in his chest, his ears perked at a silent tone. But it wasn't the sort of tone one heard with ones ears.

"You didn't say you can't do 'appy." Arry noted, as he listened more carefully until he could hear the nuances of the tone- And realise it wasn't a single tone at all, but a chord. "Only that you don't." A dissonant chord of dejection that shifted to another- consonant, but dark and minor. His eyes began to blur as he gazed upon the visage of the human, and he could see small tendrils of something incorporeal emitting from Aurin's flesh. It was only in that moment, that he felt a pulsing from beneath the brace that bound his left wrist. Glancing down, he saw thicker, brighter tendrils flowing out from the fingers that toyed with the pastry. He dropped it back to the plate, and his eyes rose to regard Aurin once more. Perhaps he recognised what was happening... It was not familiar, but neither was it unknown to him.

"Perhaps..." His voice sounded normal to the ears, but it reverberated with ethereal overtones that were tuned to complement the chords of Aurin's despair. "...you will learn to allow yourself happiness." The melody of his eldritch descant urged the chord progression toward consonance... toward major harmonies.

"Because everything is all right. And this 'as been such a pleasant dinner. I am very grateful to you for inviting me out, Aurin."

[Aurin]

Aurin listened, of course. He ate his food for something to do, for something to focus on while he listened. It wasn't so much that he was worried he would be overwhelmed in public, but rather that negative feelings would transmute into anger and he would unleash that upon Arry. But as he listened, he was mesmerized. It wasn't that he was weak-willed, but perhaps because he trusted the elf more than just about anyone else in the world. Perhaps because he was listening to what Arry said, hoping he would offer words that led to a return to their status quo that it circumvented his critical mind.

Arry was right. Had he ever actually tried to be happy? He had only allowed himself a diet of crumbs in order to protect himself from disappointment and harm. Everything he tried to do, nothing seemed to turn out right. He was even cocking up his grand rescue of poor Arry of Antiris.

He took Arry's hand. Closing his eyes, he brought it up to his cheek and just held it there for a moment while he inhaled gently through his nose and felt some of his tensions release.

"I've tried to make Kalzasi better for you than Antiris was," he murmured. "I'm not much of a white knight, but I've tried to be a rung on your ladder. I just wanted to give you some space and time and opportunities so you could start writing your own future without worrying about where your next meal was coming from. I..."

Aurin opened his eyes. They shone. But whatever latent sense his rune gave him told him that something was off, and when he looked more closely, he could see Arry arrayed in power. He blinked, freezing.

"What...?"

[Arvælyn]

Arry's expression warmed. He was consoled by his own consolation and eased that Aurin's ease had returned. He let out a silent sigh of relief as the human reached for his hand and closed calloused fingers around the tender, smaller counterparts. His lips parted as he watched Aurin draw his hand up to meet his cherished face. It was so beautiful, when his words seemed to shift the shade and pulse of the tendrils he could vaguely see emanating from that pale flesh. From out own his own hand thicker, more vibrant lines wound with Aurin's. They'd turned to a deep, rich shade of pink- A colour of warmth and adoration, and as they coiled amongst Aurin's, they were starting to paint him in their own hue.

"You have." Arry projected his caring for Aurin into his words, "It is better here." His wrist hummed with an arcane warmth, as something novel took place- The tendrils seemed to turn to tentacles, stretching further than he'd seen and growing thicker as they wound around Aurin's form, like invading vines making their incursion into a forest of sovereign trees that began to bow to their strangling advance.

"You are much more than a step on my path, Aurin, you are..." A flash of gold pulsed through the pink, as the harmony shifted to pulse a power-chord in sforzando, "My saviour."

Suddenly Aurin's eyes shot open, and the winding path of the tentacles streaming from his left arm seemed to freeze in place, as if they knew something Arvine didn't. He tilted his head, curiously as a dissonance intruded upon the lovely movement he'd been conducting in the symphony of their evening.

"What's the matter?" The overtones were absent from his voice, as the energy stream seemed to ever-so-slowly make their retreat back toward the hand upon Aurin's cheek.

[Aurin]

The ginger's mind wanted to go back to the moment before when Arry's voice took on a lulling timbre and painted a world more perfect than this one, where he was Arry's hero instead of the man who had groomed him for the sex trade, where there were no jealousies because they were content where they stood with each other, where he was more than the collected weight of his sins. But another part of his mind struggled to stay in the stark reality where his care was insufficient, where Arry was jealous, and where his wrist had bloomed with grasping tentacles like some creature from the depth of the seas wrought in the aether.

Aurin closed his eyes. Hooding one of his senses allowed him to focus on the arcane one.

"A trick?" he asked, faltering. His voice was off-kilter with a seed of bitterness that had not yet taken root, but would. His eyes opened, and for a moment, before his walls came back up, his hurt was naked. "You're... You would use a trick on me? Now? Like this?"

He had Arry's wrist in his hand still, and his grip tightened, bringing it down so he could fumble at his cuff to find the rune that had to be behind the little star of power that had blazed there. It might occur to him later that this was a similar picture to their first meeting when he caught the urchin nearly grown to manhood picking his pocket, only this time, it wasn't Aurin using the trick to reach in and pull out secrets to manipulate him into stillness.

It didn't occur to him yet that perhaps the pattern of their relationship had been encapsulated in that first meeting and they were just playing out variations of it now.

[Arvælyn]

Arry looked perplexed into Aurin's eyes, until the man shut them from his view. In that moment, the vines loosened their grip on Aurin and withered back to slinking tendrils that whipped free and slithered back to their source. Instantly, Arry felt nauseous, but Aurin's indictment was enough of a stimulant to stay the bile. At that accusation, they snapped away at breakneck pace, like the limbs of an octopus shrinking itself down to escape into a crack in some underwater reef.

"What?" He knitted his brow, "What are you talking about? Ow!" He cringed as Aurin's clutch tightened and his hand was slammed down onto the table.

"That hurts! Let go!" His right hand whipped over and attempted to free the left from Aurin's grip, but the human was stronger. When he'd loosened the straps that bound the cuff to Arry's wrist, the red rune was plain to see.

"It's not a trick!" He protested, "It's just summat that 'appens, sometimes! I just... I just really wanted you to feel better and for us to be all right, and it started-..." He realised he'd raised his voice, and it was peaking above the ambient noise of the pub. He leaned forward across the table, and lowered his voice- Desperation in his eyes.

"I wasn't even thinking about it! I was just thinking about 'ow unhappy you looked, and 'ow much you deserve to be happy and 'ow much I want to make you happy and- and- and..." His face contorted toward abjection, "I'm sorry. Please don't 'ate me?" He shook his head as the tears began to fall,

"It weren't a trick, Aurin, I swear." He uttered through a sob, moving quickly to cover the mark on his wrist with the palm of his other hand.