"who said i was german?" for a moment, he lets it linger, long enough that maybe some seed of doubt begins to bloom before he tramples over it — stallion in a china shop, wolf in the henhouse, "i'm kidding. i am. mostly. glad to see you pay attention sometimes. maybe you really do like me after all, papa!" catered to and satisfied, he is far more jovial than when he arrived, his barbs blunted into idle, harmless jabs. when he tries to picture home, it is never quite right : perspective all askew, the colours all wrong ; the timber fronts of fairytale houses imposed over the weathered husks of the village, flowers growing between the images of painted saints the land did not worship, the shadows of kings stretched out from some unknown source. that is how all his memories play out, the recollections of mind only ever paying half attention, a poorly put together film reel. perhaps they too were another thing he abandoned when they served no purpose — he does not miss them.
that is the difference between he and ethan, one of them at least. there is no yearning in him for the familiar, only that which was taken from him. an undefinable something stolen. the years he had not yet endured, the life he had not yet lived. all the possibilities that lay before him, dismembered until only two remained : servitude at the feet of mother-god and freedom, wild and vast.
he is so, so close to freedom, he has begun to taste it. bitterer than he thought.
"you'll get what i give you, papa," he does not bother to argue the point that there is very little to offer here outside of ancient relics which hold little meaning to those who they would be given to or the results of his manic tinkering, hand-crafted contraptions that he knows would be rejected. the heart was a necessity, the appreciation for it as fickle the mood of the man whom it is buried inside : idly, his eyes follow the path of ink that stains his lovers skin, the only evidence that remains of the brief, spiteful attempt to claw it out. he does not make trinkets and ethan would not keep them, leaving little else but his company to offer and most days, that is not wanted either. "i get to - there's a sawmill the other side of the village," no one left to run it, of course — there hasn't been in a long time — but that detail is irrelevant, as is the fact he has enough stockpiles of coal to last a lifetime or three. "my, my, ethan -" head canting, his grin spreads wide enough to display all his teeth, crowded and overlapping, jutting through his gums at awkward angles ; too many to count, too many to maintain the facade of something human, "i'm not a piece of meat."
lighter stolen from his pouch, he is drawn back into reality : this little room half-cast in shadow, herbs hung overhead, hot iron still tainting the air — from the cooking of the meal or him? both? — and the idle hum of electricity. "could at least -" he mumbles, thumb and forefinger dipping into the pouch to retrieve a new cigar, before setting it to his teeth, quicker than any knife or tool he can summon, biting the cap off and turning his head just enough to spit it out onto the floor. he does not ask ethan to light it for him, only waits. ever a dog at his masters heel.
"don't know," it sounds dismissive, delivered in the same disinterested tone that seeps into many of his words — habitual, not intentional — but it is an honest answer. time slips away from him, coils of smoke his hands fail to grasp and so, he stopped. days elongating into some amorphous, undefined period, the start and end of them marked by some unforgettable incident. ethan winters being one of those. that is how he categorises the years ; how many months have passed since mother-god was ripped from her throne irrelevant, only the fact she was deemed important enough to remember. the issue of his age only a fact he knows because they have spent this last period combing backwards throughout history, but he has no dates to cling to like the man beside him. somewhere, along the line, he got old — he feels no different, though his body does, with all the aches and pains that his mother gave him — but he cannot recall when that happened, does not know the year he last looked into a mirror and found the man looking back unrecognisable. when was the last time he slept? he has been running on steam for so long, it is only when he is empty with nothing left to burn that he finds the reprieve of reverie. he cannot give an accurate answer, attention caught on the edge of the stolen lighter, flip, click. flip, click.
"can't, most of the time," an admission he makes in the effort of connection, a paltry reward for ethan's curiosity ; he wants to be known and yet, when asked, has little to offer. sometimes, it seems like ethan only asks the kind of questions he has no answers to. before, he had to be useful — now, he tries to be interesting. "too much…" left hand raised beside his ear, fingers flexing open, shut, "noise. you wouldn't either, with a battery in your brain." spoken of with the same idle mundanity reserved for the weather, matter-of-fact, no attempt to elicit sympathy or worse, pity. flip, click. flip, click. he takes ethan's empty hand, guiding it through unruly curls and presses it against his scalp. overlapping palms, ethan's fingers longer than his own but thinner, trapped between flesh and hair, "listen." when they touch, he can feel the thing inside ethan, the imitations of the mold preforming as if they’re real — all the little sparks, snapping the way they ought to. he can feel it when they aren't, too, a song that lingers along the waves of his field, background noise he does not dwell on despite the desire to know ethan's thoughts before he verbalises them. could ethan do the same? hear the raucous chaos of his brain? understand the complexities of his body without the need for the operating table? he prefers to be the surgeon, not the subject.
his hand slips away from ethan's, leaving the other's behind, no longer pressing it to his skull nor guiding it away. free to move wherever ethan wishes. "i try not to, anyway -" the paranoid buried three-hundred feet underground in his bunker, a sanctuary turned fortress, comprised of concrete and solid steel between landmines and dragon's teeth : the threat of someone making it past all his defences irrational but no less demanding. still, he invited in the only man who knows that he exists ; the only man who is a threat to him.
"do i - " a scarred brow raises, amused, perplexed. what does it matter? the absurdist works of an unconscious mind have no bearing on reality, but proximity has already proven ethan to be a dreamer. had he always been that way? "maybe. hard to tell - dreams, memories, things leaking out through the network. if i do, i never remember them," lost beneath the static, radio signals full of noise, indecipherable. even if he did, there is no guarantee that the visions playing out inside his skull are figments of his imagination and not the echoes of a signal transmitted, unknowingly, by the other. broad shoulders rise and fall, hands gesturing outwards, indifferent, before he encroaches further into the other's space. inhaling the others exhale — this is how they work, the rhythm they fall into, taking from each other until one of them comes up empty. personal space the price paid in return for a warm spot in the middle of the frostbitten winter. hands along the outer length of thighs — his, ethan's — with the same gentleness reserved for hauling meat, which is to say, none at all. he's all force, moreso when he tries not to be. there was never any need to learn a soft touch. still isn't. "so, no, you don't have to worry about sharing your bed with me, papa. it's all yours. those ten, eleven hours of beauty sleep wouldn't do me any favours anyways."
