[open post for real]

[onthewillowsthere]

When the burning stopped he found himself alone. His memory of what happened is hazy -- aren't all his memories hazy? -- but he remembers the light and the fire, the way his hands and mouth were blazing, and even if he didn't remember the scorching on his blue tunic would tell a tale.

He remembers enough.

He can't seem to get warm now, despite the perfectly pleasant climate, and he builds a fire in one of the mansion's many sitting rooms with fireplaces, and then he huddles in front of it, his knees clasped to his chest.

Crowley couldn't make him Galahad again, but he doesn't feel like Damien any more. He remembers enough to know what he had wanted to escape -- whatever purpose it was that made him like this, capable of subsuming into flame or holding a brand-new weapon like a familiar part of his body -- but not enough to know why he's like this, and not enough to be the person Claudius is waiting for. He feels like stone, but a stone that has lost all the earth's heat.

If Crowley, who changed him in the first place, can't change him back, then can he be changed back? It seems to him from what Lan Wangji said that this is all there is now. He's incapable of being loved, incapable of knowing himself, incapable of the lit path that Lan Wangji exhorted him towards.

He stares into the fire, his fixed blue stare that might as well be a stranger's, and wishes he had been rendered in his own bonfire.

Comments

[wickedwit]

“Kiss thy lip? Thy throat?” His hand slides once more to the nape of Galahad’s neck, then down again the plane of his back, both deliberate and gentle — a soothing, stoking touch. “Or any part of thee?”

[onthewillowsthere]

He had been working around to the idea of trying again to tell Claudius who he is -- but that touch unravels him. He surges forward into Claudius' lap, burying his face in his neck, pressing open-mouthed kisses to his skin.

[wickedwit]

Already sweet words are spilling from his lips, Sweet Galahad sworn like an oath, thou lovely man as he arches and bares his neck to be kissed, willing to be marked, to be burned, murmuring praise and encouragement, come, take thy fill, kiss me harder. One hand comes up to tangle in Galahad’s hair, nails light but sharp enough against his scalp to add a new sensation, a new urgency to their touches. The other smooths it way along his side with a seeking pressure — seeking to know more and more of this man, to find what touches will make his breath catch or his body tremble.

Galahad would not do this with him. Claudius has to know this, somehow — but he saw so much of Galahad, then, the Galahad who so tenderly admitted that at times he questioned his purpose, and looked at Claudius with longing in his eyes and face flushed from some inner fire. It should be proof enough they're not the same, that he could speak those questions aloud. Why make me like this? Galahad spoke of his path, the path that was written, what was set and foretold for him, with no doubt or deviation, but there must have been some question there. Why?

And Claudius has no answers. But whoever this man is, it's someone he wishes to protect, to protect from himself before he kills all the man in him with self-denial and self-martyrdom. He can't bear to watch Galahad hurt himself anymore, can't add any longer to his suffering. So he urges Galahad to want, and to take all he wants, before some fresh flare of pain starts, before the final one comes without warning and Claudius has nothing left to give.

[onthewillowsthere]

His inexperience is balanced by his fervor; each new touch from Claudius, the hand in his hair and the hand on his side, stirs fresh hunger in him. He didn't know these were things he could want. He didn't know that when he kissed Claudius' neck he would taste salt and the taste of it would rush from his tongue to his groin, that heat would pool between his legs so suddenly he'd think he truly was catching fire again.

He brings his hand again to the placket of Claudius' shirt, but this time he wants to get beneath it. He wants to know what Claudius looks like, beneath the silk, if their bodies are the same. He wants Claudius to look at him too, and to admire him? To think him enough, no matter who he is.

He is already on fire, he thinks, so what does it matter? He is burning, burning to be seen.

[wickedwit]

"Wait --" It isn't stop, but wait, his hand catching on Galahad's wrist. "Any could walk in. I wish to give thee all the luxuries of privacy ..." With his other hand, he tilts up Galahad's head, searching for his eyes for any sign of fear or regret or hesitancy, anything that would need to make the wait a stop. "How dost thou?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He swallows, brought up short. His eyes hold Claudius', but the only thing there is longing. His pale face is flushed as fever, his hair a tangle, his mouth a little bruised from the ferocity of kissing. He laughs, wondering. "I am afire."

[wickedwit]

The laugh catches in Claudius like spark and tinder, the wonder alighting his face as he stares at this beautiful, disheveled man, this debauched saint, this unnamed mystery. “And yet thou hast not burned me. Dost see?” He takes the bandaged hand and holds it to his chest, his heart. “I am whole, and wholly thine.” For at least a moment longer.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Wilt show me thy rooms?" It doesn't even hurt when Claudius holds his burned hand. He feels delirious with joy and hunger, ready to be taught anything or to try and take it himself, even with his clumsy knowledge. "And-- I will show thee me."

[wickedwit]

And Claudius is all too eager to see this man and know him, to learn him as he learns himself and all the joys his body can bring him. “Come with me,” he says, and he rises, hand still in hand.

[onthewillowsthere]

~~~

Afterwards he sleeps deeply. He's so tired, tireder than he's ever been within his remembered brief history, exhausted from the day and now satisfied in a way that his body has never conceived of.

When he wakes he starts up in bed, searching for Claudius, as if he might now be alone.

[wickedwit]

Claudius hasn't gone far, in fact. He's at his desk, where he keeps his alembic and his collection of distillations and compounds in gleaming glass vials, labeled and arrayed on tiered wooden shelves. Besides them sits an intricate brass microscope with several small glass slides, a point of blood between each like a pressed red flower. Claudius awoke first in the canopy bed, shaking off his wonder at the close warmth of his companion, chest rising and falling in sleep. Then he put on a long robe for lounging, and set to work.

At the sound of stirring in the sheets, he looks up, and his expression shifts from concentration to a fond, spreading smile. "Sleep well?" he asks. Claudius certainly did his best to tire him, and speak all the sweet words he promised.

[onthewillowsthere]

He has no skill at hiding his emotions -- why would he? -- and relief crosses his face. He nods.

His burned clothes were cast aside somewhere and the idea of putting them back on makes him a little queasy. Besides, he has no reason to be self-conscious; Claudius approved of his body well enough last night. He gets up and comes over to the desk naked to look curiously at Claudius' instruments.

"What dost thou?"

[wickedwit]

There are far worse things than having a naked young man with you while you make scientific observations. "Seeking a cure for my condition -- the one in my blood." Claudius spreads his hand at the little glass plates to illustrate. "These are samples. I've been told the blood of another Heavenly Demon can counteract what's killing me, but first I'm studying how this blood behaves outside the closed confines of my body. Grim work, but fascinating. There are whole worlds within a drop of blood if you know how to look."

[onthewillowsthere]

"What do you see?" dropping a little shyly from thou.

[wickedwit]

"Mainly red corpsucles ... that's a meaningless word to you. I don’t think it was any more meaningful when it was coined. Mainly red bits that make up blood, the way that a piece of fabric is made of many fine threads." Claudius offers the sleeve of his robe, patterned with subtle purple and gold paisleys, to be touched. “The lenses of a microscope — the device you were examining — magnify the threads, make them appear larger. So instead of seeing a smooth piece of fabric, you see each thread individually, the fraying ends, the chasms in-between them. It’s the same with blood. And my blood is mainly many red bits, but some bits behave very strangely, like ill-suited spies trying to blend in with the rest. At times they’ll toss off their disguises, twist to shapes blood should not, and I’m sure there’s some witchcraft that explains their movements. But after a while, the sample goes inert, as though all the spies went back to sleep.”

[onthewillowsthere]

His fingers sink into the sleeve, rubbing the pattern against his palm. "Is the pain better when your blood rests?"

[wickedwit]

"Yes." Somehow, through the whole explanation, Claudius hadn't mentioned the trivial reality of his pain, or his promise that if the pain started again he'd seek out Lan Wangji directly. It hasn't, not anything like at its original intensity, just enough to confirm the earliest experiments -- and he hasn't felt it again in some time. "But I did note that the oldest samples would stay at rest regardless, which suggests there's a limit to how long they can act outside the body. It gives me an idea of what to attempt when I ask Crowley for help with the cure. I've no wish to grieve thee, if thou wouldst grieve my death ... so I can do little else but try."

[onthewillowsthere]

He is not, truth be told, all that excited about the idea of Claudius being helped by Crowley -- Crowley was certainly not able to help him -- but he's not in a mood to argue with Claudius. He rubs the sleeve between his thumb and forefinger. "Thy pain, too, not only thy death. I would grieve anything that hurt thee."

[wickedwit]

"What a sweet man thou art," he laughs. He lifts a hand to touch the man he thinks of as Galahad's cheek. "Yet I feel the same for thee."

[onthewillowsthere]

He covers Claudius' hand with his bandaged one, which prompts a wince: it still throbs, duller and deeper now. "Thou saidst thou knowest who made me like this-- wilt tell me?"

[wickedwit]

."Of course," Claudius says. He tilts his head back towards the bed. "Come sit with me?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods and lets Claudius' sleeve drop, perhaps reluctantly, and goes to the bed.

[wickedwit]

But as they sit, Claudius draws Galahad to himself, naked skin against lush patterned fabric, so that he can touch his fill.

"You," he says, switching back to the idly formal, "were made by God. Fearfully and wonderfully, as the psalm goes. We all were, but some of us are made as aimless amalgamations of dust and breath, and some of us have purpose. Like the purpose of a sword is to cut, or the purpose of a torch is to burn. You were one of those, I think. You didn't believe you were allowed to live like other people, who stumble through and decide their desires for themselves -- you believed you were something for God to wield. And God is ..." He looks up at the draped canopy and laughs. How to explain? "Our Lord, Our Creator. The one who started all life. And He has rules for how we should live those lives, rules we have to follow to be good. The people who break the rules are called sinners. When they die, the sinners are sent to somewhere called Hell, where they'll suffer for all eternity. The good are redeemed -- because even the good still need redemption -- by being sent to Heaven. That's more or less how it works. What I did to my brother, that's one of the first and worst sins. It's what Cain did to Abel. There was no murder in the world before Cain killed his brother, so we all like to blame him for it. When I was younger, I wondered how Cain even knew what he'd done, if it never happened to anyone before." But he must have known, because he tried to hide it -- Claudius doesn't say it, but he's just the same. If he weren't ashamed, he wouldn't spend his time lying to everyone he knows.

That's hardly relevant here.

"But you weren't a sinner like me. You were still living a terribly strict life where you tried to follow God's rules completely. Because God had a plan and a purpose for you. You were prophesied, you told me. To find the Holy Grail and heal the Fisher King, and I'm afraid I don't know what either of those are -- I don't know why they were worth finding, or needed healing, or why they mattered to you. But that was the plan, and you intended to follow it, and never divert from it. You'd do anything God asked, and even when God was silent, you said it was a test. I think you were afraid of what would become of your life if you'd ever diverted from the path, afraid there was nothing outside it. Or afraid of yourself, and what you wanted. And I was ... genuinely afraid of what would happen, if you'd followed God's plan to the end. People die for God. We call them martyrs, and if you martyred yourself ... I'd grieve you." He grows very quiet. "As I told you, I'd grieve anything that hurt you."

[onthewillowsthere]

While Claudius talks he settles against his side, draping the hem of the robe over his lap so he can stroke it. He's fairly sure he understands... well, nearly none of this, except that God is who crafted him into a shell around a fire, and that his purpose ultimately would have been to die.

At the end he ventures, "If I no longer want that, do you think I am still enough the same for you?"

[wickedwit]

“I’d be relieved, in truth. I wasn’t waiting for you to become the exact same as you once were — no one is. I’m not, or I hope to someone other than God I won’t always be. I hope to change, and not always want the things that destroy me. The loss of your memories is something that changed you, and … you restored what could be restored. Thou art who thou art. Knowing all that thou know’st, dost thou still care for me?”