all this work gone to waste

[lipochrome]

Who: gideon nav and cr
What: a july catch-all
When: mid-late july
Where: the beach, cobra kai, gaze

Content Warnings: marked in comment headers, but expect death, grief, corruption, religious and family trauma

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

[ The first times Paul had let anyone touch him again, in those cold winter months, he'd thought he'd understood how vast the gulf of need for it could be. Gideon clutches him now, and he knows he stood by a tidal withdrawal and imagined it a drained ocean. He presses back, resolute. ]

None of us are going back there.

[ He shakes his head, a little rocking motion that never fully levers him away from he enclosure. He's sick of ghosts too, sick of fighting for space among them, sick of them painting the walls and creeping along the floorboards. ]

Come to the dojo. I'm there. The Ninth, Johnny.

[ He flattens his palms on her back and pushes down, grounding, anchoring. He still doesn't want her to go, and fear trembles hotly in his fingertips, a familiar burn, but something between understanding and intuition stills his protests. This is going to happen. This was always going to happen.

And even if it wasn't - even if no gravity of fate drags them on this collision course - Paul remembers another night on this beach, when he asked her if she thought he played games with people. ]

Whatever you do. It doesn't matter. [ If she kills him, if she doesn't. ] Not to me.

[lipochrome]

Okay.

[ Gideon whispers, the closest she's ever been to obedient. Crux would be proud, except no he fucking wouldn't. Fortunately, this isn't about him.

Gideon doesn't want to go, either. She wants to stay on this beach. She wants to crawl back into the sea. She wants to feel the warmth of blood on her hands, and the thought of that makes her sick.

She wants Paul to tell her he loves her, again. She wants God to hear that. She wants him to know what he's missing.

In the end, Paul helps her out, one more time. It doesn't matter. A balm, a relief. Gideon stays in his arms a long, long while, listening to the sound of the waves and trying to get warm, before she says: ]

Yeah, well. It's time for me to live up to my family name. [ A lopsided grin, like a bandage. ] And he's gotta face full life consequences.

[ Said like that, Gideon almost believes she's making the right choice. ]

I'll come back afterwards, though. Don't worry.

[ Even though she knows he will. It's an I love you, all over again. The weird thing about those words is that there's so many ways to say them. ]

[terriblepurpose]

[ It's still horrible to laugh. He still does, nuzzling into the breadth of her shoulder like a second home before he draws back with damp, boreal green eyes, his inhale suspiciously close to a sniffle, but that's all right. It's all going to be all right. ]

You have more than one.

[ He touches his forehead to hers more gently this time. He runs his thumbs over her collarbones, cradling the moment for another string of heartbeats, and then pushes up to his feet unsteadily. He could be the one who just washed back up on the shore even when he reaches down to offer her a hand up. ]

Don't forget that.

[ He's serious with that, but he follows it with a smile to match hers, a crooked, binding thing. It gets into his eyes and bruises them, but it's the good kind of bruise, the tender ache of knitting whole. ]

And don't be too long, so I don't worry.

[ But she'll come back. That's I love you, too. That's the curl of his fingers around hers when he helps her up, the brush of them across her back when he'll see her off. That she will - that he believes it - that he'll worry until she crosses the threshold, but he won't stop waiting for her, for as long as it takes her to get there. ]