[When Teacher puts his hand on Paul's shoulder, his breath doesn't hitch. It implodes, a sucking vacuum collapse that forces his spine straight and ribs wide as he tears at the air like there's not nearly enough of it. It clarifies, scours. It focuses him back down to a single fixed point in space and time, the one his mind keeps trying to wrest him away from.
He's nowhere but here, all control slipped from his grasp like water, his wrist an abbreviated blunt ring of agony, weaving to and from consciousness like a punch-drunk pit fighter, exhausted and undone. He's so tired of always having to be the one who thinks about what happens next, who traces actions and their consequences in spiraling outward echoes. Lazarus, so clever, couldn't see past the end of his rightness to its inevitable outcome, reliant on the mercy of a man who has no reason to give him any.
Except one, and in the pit of this vulnerability, there's nothing gentle or sentimental about that understanding. It's a welling tide, an inexorable pressure that bears down on hairline fractures and wrenches them open. If he looks up, his eyes bruised and ruined with reprieve, he thinks something in him will shatter like so much sun-slicked ice.
Paul's empty left hand rises, barely tremulous, and curls loosely over Teacher's as he turns his still-hanging head, his temple grazing the worn sleeve of Teacher's shirt. He takes another breath, quieter and unforced. He nods, mutely, then lets gravity grip his hand to pull it away.]
Thank you.
[Words as soft and drifting as smoke, but meant, genuine, unmitigated. He's grateful like a surrender.]
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He's nowhere but here, all control slipped from his grasp like water, his wrist an abbreviated blunt ring of agony, weaving to and from consciousness like a punch-drunk pit fighter, exhausted and undone. He's so tired of always having to be the one who thinks about what happens next, who traces actions and their consequences in spiraling outward echoes. Lazarus, so clever, couldn't see past the end of his rightness to its inevitable outcome, reliant on the mercy of a man who has no reason to give him any.
Except one, and in the pit of this vulnerability, there's nothing gentle or sentimental about that understanding. It's a welling tide, an inexorable pressure that bears down on hairline fractures and wrenches them open. If he looks up, his eyes bruised and ruined with reprieve, he thinks something in him will shatter like so much sun-slicked ice.
Paul's empty left hand rises, barely tremulous, and curls loosely over Teacher's as he turns his still-hanging head, his temple grazing the worn sleeve of Teacher's shirt. He takes another breath, quieter and unforced. He nods, mutely, then lets gravity grip his hand to pull it away.]
Thank you.
[Words as soft and drifting as smoke, but meant, genuine, unmitigated. He's grateful like a surrender.]