moony wanted some holiday softness from him, as if the tree pieces and mention of cider were going to change who he was, what he’d done, the man who showed up blood on christmas, sober again once, and on his doorstep. he’d call it a short-lived new years revolution, come and gone before new years itself.
his eyes had been closed until the glasses clinked down and he looked at moony while he lied, eyeing him as if he didn’t google him the first week they knew each other. no family now, which was almost healthily in part why ezra came, but a family before, which ezra would no doubt hold over his head like moony’s persistent rain cloud. with ezra perched atop it, controlling the weather, thunder deafened the other and lightning sent surges through his body in suffocating in ezra’s smoke, forcing to choke on him. for him.
a hand found his hair, grip tight, but loosening upon moony moving. ezra did the same before he caught on and drank half the glass, sitting back to wait for the buzzing. the second half of the liquor was downed, then the glass placed haphazardly beside him on the sofa.
ezra couldn’t resist him like he used to be able to. moony had found a way to imprint himself in his muscle, slowly but surely there on days where he felt this burning in his skin. they didn’t seem to exist t the sight of the other on his knee, looking at him like he deserved love. it stung all the same, but maybe he was too tired to fight and maybe he was allowed to be.
he had had traditions. for a couple years, he swore he’d visit her. instead, he drank. he kept it stored away in his memory for the day she died, another unexpected place to find fault.
“ since my mom’s been gone, i usually only keep one tradition. “ fingers found moony’s hair again, sliding into it, but brushing through his scalp instead of taking control like he wanted. “ a family. “ he didn’t say anything. would let moony put it together, would let him yank his head out of his grasp. he wasn’t trying to push him this time, tone calm and tired instead of the threatening. he highlighted not what was inflicted, but what stuck with him. ” had a good christmas before, i think. …kept asking me why today. “ still, his fingers moved in the other’s hair, the smallest glimmer of hope that it wouldn’t scare moony away. it was trust ezra was allowing, making the words more important than the feeling of moony’s lips and hands.
‘ a family ’ ezra said, hand carding unexpectedly gently through moonjin’s hair. and realization hit him like a tidal wave.
there were things that moony had come to expect from ezra. the steady, aggressive pace that bruises claimed inch by inch of his skin every time the other man came around. the hollow ache that swelled in the pit of his throat every time the other made to push him away. the sting of biting words at every turn, genuine or not; creating gashes and trenches moony would have to leap around, ignore, reopen, or bleed for so much as a RESPONSE. and he had learned to LOVE each and every wounded move.
and then there were the things he’d always WANTED. fingers through his hair. the honesty spilling not easy, but open from his lover’s lips. a soft caress of hands too in LOVE with his body to wish to kill before maim. rings made of bone and stained viscera-red to sit heavy on their fingers alike; to scream MOONY’S in every hyper-visual sense that his own skin was drenched in EZRA. half of which he knew had come, would come, could be managed. half which he held stale on the back of his tongue; never asking, merely trying to EARN.
but learning how to give what he was getting in return was something else. how to navigate the heady trade off between what was, what wasn’t, and what NEVER would be. and ezra had made a point of telling him once that he was little more than a HOLE. holes don’t have opinions, or thoughts, or ANSWERS. or hair to run your fingers softly, comfortingly through. but moony did. and ezra had. and now the clash of touch and want and will had left him breathless.
silent momentarily in the wake of the admission of a massacre.
if moony had had it in him to care about the PROPER things, he might have been disgusted, instead of only distantly sad. pulled himself from ezra’s deceptively soft touch, and holed away from the other entirely. but ‘ why today ‘ rung familiar in his ears, and then there was nothing but the rush of MEMORY; pinning him there by obligation.
“ because you knew it would hurt more. ” he huffed, voice cracking. and climbed his way into ezra’s lap all the same, forehead coming to rest against the man’s collar. year after year of HER suddenly present in the conversation. and that’s why the house hadn’t been decorated. why he’d only hung the sticky pines in an effort to look ALIVE for his lover. because the smell clung to his fingers. corroded at his determined ignorance, plastic and sap and cider in a flood.
“ it’s easiest to desecrate things with visible value. ” he pressed a kiss to ezra’s neck; tongue darting out to lick a stripe along the skin in it’s wake. and it was SHITTY, HORRIBLE coping. but wasn’t that what ezra had come here for ? his skin tasted nothing like vomit or crisco. burned hot under his tongue with the same intense heat his mother’s palms had carried. and moony bit down HARD on the spot; whining more than moaning into the gesture. pressing his face into the juncture in the aftermath. running his hands absent across ezra’s chest. “ holidays, birthdays, beds, bodies. none of you know what to do with a corpse. ”
it came quiet, like more of a confession than he’d meant it to be. “ just don’t get yourself caught. ” no one to hold the puppet strings in ezra’s absence. but the thought stirred immediate guilt. “ it doesn’t bother me, what you do. it’s only jealousy, you know. i hate when you look away. i don’t know how not to. ”
and though it was a lame excuse, there were no words for the tangled, incomprehensible truth.
