[ Tommy ducks his head, lips curling up towards his ears again, marveling to himself at how the unintentional mirror of Mark’s words to his thoughts makes something in his chest stutter and shiver. Just as strangely liberating, but so much scarier, those three words: I trust you.
It’s still new to him, the fact that his team trusts him, the fact that all of them more or less understand some part of him due to any number of shared traumas or desires. It’s still a peculiar thing, when an ordinary person accepts his help without much hesitation. His whole life until the team had been a series of instances where he failed, frightened, lost the love and faith of those who, societal norms suggested, should have laid it unconditionally at his feet. And in return, he’d acted out in grander and more horrifying scales. He’d set out to prove that while there were limits to love, disappointment knew no bounds.
Now, here is Mark, who is not in need of any life-saving gestures, and neither is he a member of that little club of monsters-turned-mentors—but he trusts him. Even without the words spoken aloud, the ease with which he fits against Tommy inscribes that open confidence into his muscles like crackling flames, into the air around them both. He feels the chill dissipate from the night, helpless to fight against their simultaneous decision not to run away from something, but towards something else altogether.
Tommy turns his head again, his quiet murmur drifting along Mark’s jaw, ]
Anywhere, it is. Hold on tight.
[ Then he leans low, tilts like a windmill against the dark, and they are flying across the sand. ]
no subject
[ Tommy ducks his head, lips curling up towards his ears again, marveling to himself at how the unintentional mirror of Mark’s words to his thoughts makes something in his chest stutter and shiver. Just as strangely liberating, but so much scarier, those three words: I trust you.
It’s still new to him, the fact that his team trusts him, the fact that all of them more or less understand some part of him due to any number of shared traumas or desires. It’s still a peculiar thing, when an ordinary person accepts his help without much hesitation. His whole life until the team had been a series of instances where he failed, frightened, lost the love and faith of those who, societal norms suggested, should have laid it unconditionally at his feet. And in return, he’d acted out in grander and more horrifying scales. He’d set out to prove that while there were limits to love, disappointment knew no bounds.
Now, here is Mark, who is not in need of any life-saving gestures, and neither is he a member of that little club of monsters-turned-mentors—but he trusts him. Even without the words spoken aloud, the ease with which he fits against Tommy inscribes that open confidence into his muscles like crackling flames, into the air around them both. He feels the chill dissipate from the night, helpless to fight against their simultaneous decision not to run away from something, but towards something else altogether.
Tommy turns his head again, his quiet murmur drifting along Mark’s jaw, ]
Anywhere, it is. Hold on tight.
[ Then he leans low, tilts like a windmill against the dark, and they are flying across the sand. ]