wolves in the middle of town | october catch-all

[acidjail]

Who: Mercymorn the First, Paul Atreides, and you
What: October catch-all, open and closed prompts
When: Throughout October
Where: Various locations in Trench

Content Warnings: Depression, suicidal ideation (passive), body horror, memory loss

Comments

[peripheries]

The look on Paul’s face cuts his heart like the drop of a guillotine blade and any pleasure he would get from anger evaporates. Kaworu steps forward, cradling Sophia, and faces Paul.

“I know. I’m also sorry for…” For wishing Paul had hurt him on purpose in order to find refuge in simplicity. For what he just said. For his skin suddenly being fragile.

“I say I understand and I do… but not everything about you. And it makes me angry that I can’t understand all of you even though I want to.” He raises a small hand, ignoring the pain that screams as his skin is tugged by the movement. He doesn’t extend the hand towards Paul but keeps his palm facing him as though touching his own reflection in a mirror.

“I hate that this” -Love. Relationships.- “Can be so easy in one moment and feel impossible in another even though we haven’t changed.”

[terriblepurpose]

The fire cannot be quenched fully with its roots so far down in Paul's soul, wicking up the iridescent black pools of fear and rage that lie there. But it may be tempered and guided, if he exerts enough will. If he sets his shoulder against the door and leans until it grinds his bones to aching, if he closes his hands around his own throat and squeezes until sparks fly cold at the corners of his eyes. It's an effort. Anything worth doing is.

Paul raises his palm to match Kaworu's, a span of mere inches separating them. His skin glows like a newborn star. He remembers what it was like to be cold.

"I wish I knew how to be all the things you need me to be." Sophia nudges the blunt tip of her snout into Kaworu's chin, a rasping, shivering noise emerging from her that's almost like a purr. "I wish I knew what they were. But I want to keep trying."

A half-hitched breath, too much and not enough: "If you want me to."

[peripheries]

"Always."

Paul glows and the light is beautiful. Kaworu can imagine it's warm and gentle, like the heat he feels from Paul when they curl close together, chest to chest, given physical form. The cat omen presses itself against Paul's legs encouragingly.

"I wish I understood the things that mean so much to you. Duty... Honor... Your House. I do not know if I can ever understand but I will try."

He remembers what it was like to not fear Paul's touch and then closes the distance between them. The gentle darkness of the depths of space consume the sun just for a moment.

"I love you."

[terriblepurpose]

Paul needs touch like water. He learned this in its absence, learned to dread it as he dreads thirst, and the whisper-thin scars already mostly faded on his joints mark the memory of the first time anyone here gave him relief like this.

He had been so reluctant to let anyone touch him. Like he knew that when they did, it would shudder something in him apart, open up a vulnerable need he would never staunch, and he was right. Kaworu's hand presses innocently and sweetly to his, and it strikes Paul like lightning.

He knows it doesn't burn. He can feel that it doesn't. But his eyes do, salt-stung, and his heart does, splitting apart.

"I love you," he breathes back, and he presses his palm against Kaworu's for one more stolen moment before he pulls it away.

"You understand more than you think you do."