( Lethe can understand and not understand the grief and ache and apology that comes from Wei Wuxian, the sorrow and anger, and with Five popping out like he pops in, it's Wei Wuxian, in his riding leathers and furs, who slides down, pats his dead dragon's nose, and seems oblivious to the blanket held up like some strange sort of net.
He's awkward about affection. He knows it. He expects hands to reach for his throat first, particularly with men. His husband's face, all the minute expressions that tell him what he feels, what he thinks, what concerns he has and which ones evade him, they're familiar. And he remembers a voice that kept speaking when the tongue had long grown overheavy, in the middle of an ice storm, holding him steady, flying them away.
He supposes he has learned something, and he ignores the faces around them just as readily as they ignore him. Ignores Lethe's great head lifted and turned toward him, sadness in the infinite depths of hollowed, sky-stained eyes.
Lifts his arms and crashes into the blanket and his husband beyond it, wrapping arms around his neck, stepping hard into all resistance to stand equally resisting, stone meeting stone, remembering to be bone and flesh and sinew and hot breath by Lan Zhan's ear as he exhales, voice lacking inflection outside of what's necessary for intonation to carry meaning correctly, a man who knows his words: )
Magnus found an eye. ( Of a dragon, calcified and horrific and true. ) Lethe has not breathed since before we arrived.
( Death has echoed and haunted and felt in his mind with an intimacy he's run from, danced around and between, called on, sung for, commanded. But not indelibly linked, not swaying his emotions where his defenses have not grown, not the tears of distress of the dead hatchlings, dead children, dead parents, and so he speaks into his husband's ears, his almost, only lover: )
no subject
He's awkward about affection. He knows it. He expects hands to reach for his throat first, particularly with men. His husband's face, all the minute expressions that tell him what he feels, what he thinks, what concerns he has and which ones evade him, they're familiar. And he remembers a voice that kept speaking when the tongue had long grown overheavy, in the middle of an ice storm, holding him steady, flying them away.
He supposes he has learned something, and he ignores the faces around them just as readily as they ignore him. Ignores Lethe's great head lifted and turned toward him, sadness in the infinite depths of hollowed, sky-stained eyes.
Lifts his arms and crashes into the blanket and his husband beyond it, wrapping arms around his neck, stepping hard into all resistance to stand equally resisting, stone meeting stone, remembering to be bone and flesh and sinew and hot breath by Lan Zhan's ear as he exhales, voice lacking inflection outside of what's necessary for intonation to carry meaning correctly, a man who knows his words: )
Magnus found an eye. ( Of a dragon, calcified and horrific and true. ) Lethe has not breathed since before we arrived.
( Death has echoed and haunted and felt in his mind with an intimacy he's run from, danced around and between, called on, sung for, commanded. But not indelibly linked, not swaying his emotions where his defenses have not grown, not the tears of distress of the dead hatchlings, dead children, dead parents, and so he speaks into his husband's ears, his almost, only lover: )
Scales tip and tell.