WIP: Darkspace Portent
Pairing: Warren x Thrive
Timeline: god I don't know lmao, Temu book 3???
CW: none
Rating: T
Words: 562
***
Thrive stood at the viewscreen of the Ganymede, arms folded over his powerful chest as he explained in terms nobody but he and Gouna understood that taking the current route through the war zone would be unwise. Warren, Guetry, Osillo, Alec, and Varussa and Emnophene all stared at him in varying degrees of confusion with every word that came out of Thrive's mouth. Guetry looked about ready to either fall asleep or leap over the comms to throttle him.
Thrive knew he lost them sometime around the first word he said, but he continued regardless... if for no other reason than to keep the dreamy expression on Warren's face.
"The perimeter of the active battlefield is approximately fifty-four light-years in diameter," Thrive said, gesturing to nothing in particular on the viewscreen. "Going the speed we are, and with the velocity of the starship, we can expect to experience our transient lag to fall within the—Warren, pay attention—within the zone of equivalence—"
At the direct addressing, Warren's eyes widened. He had given no indication that he wasn't paying attention; in fact, it was the opposite. He was the only one on the entire bridge who watched Thrive every second of his droning.
But he suspected that was the point. Thrive had switched over to spewing absolute nonsense, and Warren wanted nothing more than to jump his bones.
"Because if we divert course at the flux capacitor of the quark revolution to just beyond the parameters of the event horizon—Warren, I see the impulse forming in your brain. Resist it."
"Well what in the unholy fuck else am I gonna do when you're practically seducing me in front of everyone?" Warren chuckled in disbelief. "These guys checked out, like, an hour ago."
Thrive's eyes passed over every other face with a small, proud quirk of the lips. He'd fully stopped talking, and yet they all stared at him, eyes vacant and dull as if pulled under a strange hypnotism. "Fascinating."
"So if I jump-tackled you right now, they wouldn't even bat an eyelid."
"I'd rather not test that theory," Thrive admitted. He crooked a finger at Warren, however, before turning to leave the bridge.
They found an alcove in the corridor directly outside—or, rather, Warren's impulse finally won out. He hip-checked Thrive into the shadowed nook and brought him down to crash their lips together. Thrive scooped him up with an arm and carried him the rest of the way to their quarters.
Roughly ten minutes later, Guetry rejoined the living with an abrupt snort, his boots thudding as they slid off the console and hit the floor. "Jesus, fuck, y'all," he murmured hoarsely. "Who's flyin' the ship?"
"Autopilot," Varussa, the manual pilot, informed him flatly. "I know you're not that dumb, Guetry."
"We're just gonna pretend we were paying attention the whole time, right?" Alec sighed, rubbing her eyes as she started toward the bridge door to return to the engines.
Osillo's eyes darted around the room from their post in the back, searching. "Orthrive'poliea is no longer on the bridge. Neither is Warren."
"If either of them comes back," Guetry grunted, getting to his feet, "we all pull an Orient Express and blow them out the fucking airlock."
The rest of the crew all nodded and vocalized their enthusiastic, if not fatigued agreement as operations resumed as normal.
WIP: Darkspace Portent
Pairing: Warren x Thrive
Timeline: a follow-up to this piece from Kiss Week '23 I had an incredible time writing
CW: none
Rating: T
Words: 830
***
Node security wasn't thrilled that the call to them had anything to do with Thrive and Warren, as evidenced by the deflated expressions adorning their faces when they exited their vehicles.
"Your Highness," Southern District Security Chief Max Spartan groaned to Warren as he met him and Thrive in front of the nuptial hall. "...I can't even begin to comprehend why you would do something as boneheaded as stealing Consortium Delegate DeCosta's car and taking it on a joy ride around the fucking Consortium Node." He gave Warren a quick glance up and down, almost assessing his giddiness. "Though maybe I can."
"The idea was mine alone," Thrive said smoothly, somewhat planting himself between Warren and Spartan. "Warren was... coerced."
Spartan scoffed and parked his hands on his own hips. "Your Majesty, with all due respect, you expect me to believe this man was coerced into doing something reckless and stupid that you came up with? The man who puts his life on the line for you, the man who somehow keeps this man hanging onto every god damn word you say, every god damn chance he gets?"
Warren, who'd sat himself on the edge of the water fountain decorating the space outside of the nuptial hall, carefully stood up. "Uh... maybe 'coerced' is strong, but I definitely did not have this idea."
Spartan's head whipped around to look at Thrive again, and met a very subtle, not-at-all-regretful smirk aimed right at him. "You better get that shit off your face right now, sir."
"Are you going to charge me with something or not, Maximilian?" Thrive asked, his tone even and a little exasperated.
Max took an aggressive step forward, but Thrive, typically, didn't flinch. "What the fuck d'you think I could do to you, Orthrive'poliea? Huh? Handcuff you? Tase you? Get you with a fuckin' lasso?"
Warren barked with laughter at that, earning a sly eyebrow quirk from Thrive.
"If the law requires me to be detained, I'll happily oblige," Thrive purred.
Spartan huffed. "God help me, I'm gonna try."
—
Three hours later—an hour for travel and two for processing—Thrive was released from Node security. Warren stood from the bench across from the door into the station, a smug grin gracing his features.
"Don't get cocky," Thrive murmured as he drew nearer. "It's unbecoming."
"Yeah, I doubt that."
Thrive winked at him as he passed, and Warren inhaled sharply. He followed him to the elevator bank, pausing when Thrive pried the doors of the left one open and used his abilities to raise the car up through the shaft.
"Oh, uh..." Warren rubbed the back of his neck with a cringe. "Wouldn't recommend that, exactly."
"We've just proven that rules here, inexplicably, do not apply to me." Thrive stepped into the open elevator car and faced Warren with an expectant lift of his eyebrows. "You plan to walk back to your apartment?"
Warren hopped inside, and Thrive gestured to close the doors again. The elevator did not move.
"...Well, what's the hold up? We gonna astral project there? I never really figured out how to—ohhhh, okay..." Warren's words dissolved into a breathy cross between a chuckle and a moan as Thrive wordlessly backed him into the wall of the elevator, his mouth finding the sensitive skin beneath his ear. A strong, hot hand sought the small of Warren's back to pull their hips flush together, and the other hand braced against the fabric lining the wall beside Warren's head. "Okay, I get it now."
Thrive's voice was a low rumble as he laughed into Warren's ear and captured his lips in a deep, sultry kiss. The hand at Warren's back moved into his hair and positioned his head to better accommodate their height difference.
When Warren pulled back only to get an acceptable breath, Thrive used his hand to tilt his head down and lick the tip of his nose. A quick flick of the tongue, so completely out of character that Warren wasn't sure of how to react to what had just transpired.
And then Thrive angled Warren's head again and flicked the tip of his tongue over his chin.
"Oh, Christ," Warren groaned through a heavy exhale. "I have no idea what this is about, but it's the best thing that's ever happened to me..."
Thrive pulled his head back, affronted, a direct contradiction to the flex of his fingers in Warren's hair. "On the day of our third wedding," he muttered.
Warren snorted. "You're gonna need to take care of that camera in the corner, babe."
A wicked grin pulled across Thrive's face. "Already done, th'saiya."
He busied himself with Warren, and the feed on the Node security network for Elevator 2A—fully accessible from their comm devices—had not, in fact, been taken care of.
But the deep, guttural scream punched out of Chief Spartan's vehicle several hundred feet off the ground and several hundred miles per hour was the whole point.
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Tagging @space-writes, @pertinax--loculos, @zmwrites, and open tag! You'll be finding:
A line inspired by a song
A line you heard in real life
A line you hate (or your least favorite)
A line describing a terrible noise
✧₊˚.⋆☾☆ ✦ ☆☽⋆⁺₊✧
A line about the sea (Eternal)—
A thunderous shake of the ground, and the ocean erupted. Water touched the sky, pellets of droplets shot at the cliffside, and lightning arced through the clouds, illuminating the roiling, abyssal sea below them and the swelling crest in the distance. Warren was plunged into a cold snap, and he shuddered violently.
"Get to shelter," Thrive demanded of those not directly fighting. He hadn't had the mental capacity to keep himself from getting soaked by the rain. He swept his hands over the ground and fire belched from between his fingers, and he swiped viciously at the Emmuli figures around him and ———, his face glowing with the light from both the flames and his eyes. "Keep everyone safe!"
A sudden rogue wave rushed in from the ocean, taller than the cliff, barreling toward them at a discouragingly fast speed. Thrive planted himself at the edge of the cliff and shook one hand out, casting it upward to encompass everyone and everything on it, quintupling the strength, and he used his other hand to spread the shield behind him—more of the city, more of the residents.
The boom of the torrent impacting against Thrive's shield was colossal and made Warren wince, and he reached up to cover his ears to find they'd been burned to the layer of skin beneath. Thrive almost buckled, but he dug his feet into the dirt to stabilize. White water, dark water, the speed twice that of a raging river over everyone's heads.
This continued for minutes. The light in Thrive's eyes rose until it all but provided those shielded with plenty of it to see the black fog settling on the ground.
Just when Warren began to doubt that and the pain would ever end, the water streamed away, revealing the ocean and the dark clouds once more. The rain had stopped, and Thrive dropped the shield and staggered, breathing hard. Steam rose from his body, the water clinging to his form boiling away.
✧₊˚.⋆☾☆ ✦ ☆☽⋆⁺₊✧
A line with the color yellow (Warpath)—
Thrive swiped his initial message away and pulled up another window, typing so fast his hands were almost a blur. "There's a presence in the world of hacking, one I've heard about in my search for ———. Somewhat the exact antithesis of FaiTh. They may have similar mission statements in that they wish to take control away from the Consortium—and possibly me—but their approaches couldn't be more different."
Warren glanced down at the desk.
"The Encryptic," Thrive continued, zooming in on a logo—an elongated rhombus of gold circuitry, with an "E" of negative space in the center. "I don't know their true identity, but I'm certain that Scot can help you find it."
"The Encryptic," Warren echoed. "Yeah… I think I've heard of them. But wait, if they want to take control away from you, how do I know they'd be willing to help me?"
"If they have any morals at all, they'll be on board with taking FaiTh down a peg." Thrive laced his fingers together under his chin and gave the desk a thoughtful look.
"What's up?" Warren asked.
"Oh, it's nothing. It's… been a while since we've done something like this."
"Putting together a task group? Yeah." Warren hung his head, laughing softly. "How d'you think Guetry would've reacted to me suing the Consortium?"
Thrive's expression turned wistful. "He probably would've named himself a key witness immediately."
✧₊˚.⋆☾☆ ✦ ☆☽⋆⁺₊✧
A line featuring a weapon (Aurora)—
His door slid open and Mercury stood in the corridor, an arrow nocked and aimed right at Thrive's back, the neon glow of the LEDs in his bow practically blinding in the darkness. "Warren...!"
"No, don't," Warren shouted, but Thrive had already whipped around to blast Mercury across the hall in an explosion of shadow and slunk after him. "Stop!"
Guetry burst around the corner of the hall, armed and peering down the sight of his rifle, as Warren leaped out of bed. "Warren," he called, his aim snapping to Thrive. He sounded strained, his voice fraught with fear as Thrive turned his dark attention to him. "Warren, be smart."
"Guetry, he's in there."
"Can you reach him?"
"I can. I can! Don't fucking shoot him!"
"Sure, big boy," Guetry muttered gravely to Thrive inching his way in his direction, a predator catching the scent of prey. He chanced a quick glance at Mercury to make sure he was okay at face value, then met the obhelian's eyes again. "It'd only be a pinprick to you anyway, wouldn't it?"
"Thrive!" Warren roared.
Thrive halted without hesitation, a half a foot away at most from the tip of Guetry's weapon.
Guetry watched him, intensity in his bedrock gaze, rifle aim true at the center of Thrive's chest, and he trembled but drew no attention to it. Squeezing that trigger would've been the worst thing he'd ever done.
"You can hear me," Warren said, moving to Thrive after carefully making sure Mercury wasn't too hurt. "I know you can hear me. I know you're still in there." He swallowed. "Hey, sweetheart, I'm gonna need you to fight a little harder, okay? We… we're in dire straits here and we need your help. You can't let them keep you. That's not how this works."
✧₊˚.⋆☾☆ ✦ ☆☽⋆⁺₊✧
A line about an injury (Meridian)—
Warren stood by the door of the med fac, hands in the pockets of his jeans as he watched Thrive's vitals monitors blip above the head of the bed. He'd stood there for long enough that everyone else on the ship had gone to sleep, and as he continued to stand and watch, he could feel the tendrils of exhaustion beginning to wrap themselves around his brain and attempt to coax him down with them.
The bandages around Thrive's chest hiding a gaping wound, the dark circles around his eyes, the contusions all along his torso from being hooked up to the cables and tubes in the temple... such vulnerability was a strange costume Warren wasn't sure he could handle watching him wear.
Thrive's eyes opened with difficulty and found Warren. His exhaustion and pain palpable, it only just hid away the immense disappointment present in his stare since departing ———.
"Gotta get home, get that ——— out of you," Warren said. "You need your abilities back."
Heaving a tortured sigh, Thrive allowed a little more of that disappointment to peek through. "Help me understand."
"I'm tired." Warren let the words hang in the air, attaching a half-hearted shrug to them. "I got scared. What do you want me to say?"
"Nobody deserves to die for me."
"No. And you don't deserve to die for them."
Thrive shifted a bit in his bed, turned his head to see him clearer. "Where's your remorse?"
"A little surprising that you can't feel it through our connection." Warren's face went hot from his mounting ire. "I'm practically deep-throating it, actually."
✧₊˚.⋆☾☆ ✦ ☆☽⋆⁺₊✧
A line featuring baking/baked goods (Aurora)—
A little while later found Warren in the dining section of the vessel, picking through a dish similar to the one he'd had on their last visit to R'lis. Thrive entered the room, which had gone dim due to common evening, and straddled the bench beside Warren, staring aimlessly at the plate.
"Want some?" Warren offered a piece of the meat.
Thrive took it and chewed slowly. "It's not happening yet."
"I know it's not happening yet," Warren said, his tone somewhat clipped as he stuck his utensils into his food to spear another bite. "But I'm allowed to pre-grieve over this."
"Time you're spending 'pre-grieving' is time that could be spent taking full advantage of my remaining presence."
"I know." Warren managed another swallowful of starch. He lowered his voice to a near-whisper. "But it's so fucking hard to watch you try to hide the fact that you're terrified out of your mind."
Thrive grimaced, but it was quick and Warren almost missed it. "That's a strong assessment of my feelings."
"Your feelings that I can feel without even having to be close to you, now."
There was a pause. "We always knew, in a way, that this would happen. We've always felt it. We couldn't put a name or a face to it, but my eventual loss was something we both expected."
Warren dropped his utensils with a sharp clatter and folded his hands together. "You cannot be serious," he snapped.
Thrive, unflinching, shook his head. "You knew that ———, Warren. You knew from the minute I ———, but you didn't allow your brain to make the connection because you didn't want to face what your grief could possibly mean."
"And how the fuck would you know that?" Warren whipped his head around to face Thrive, nostrils flared and eyes wild.
Thrive searched those eyes, his soft gaze roaming over his face in the stinging silence that followed his outburst. Reverence and adoration comprised his expression, the ghost of a smile reaching his own eyes. "Because I think I know who you are, now."
Warren's lip quivered but he swallowed his emotion back. His fingers twisted within and around themselves. "Okay," he said, a bitter smile cracking through his façade. "Am I an alien? Am I some kind of god or a demon or something?"
Thrive placed a hand over Warren's joined ones, curling his fingers into his palms. "You're Warren Cougar," he murmured. It was simultaneously not the answer at all... and the answer to everything. "And I love you very much."
Rules: You will be given a word, and you must share 1 sentence from your WIP(s) that starts with each letter in that word!
Tagged by @kingragnarok-writes, thanks!
Tagging @drippingmoon, @space-writes, @pertinax--loculos, @zmwrites, @oh-no-another-idea, and open tag! Your word is PIANO.
EARTH—
E — "Excellent. Now…" DeCosta turned on the tablet and tapped a couple of times before sliding it to the middle of the table, sending a volumetric projection of the Emmuli home world into the air over everyone. Larger and definitely less precise in this iteration of the image, the black planet appeared to ooze smoke from every surface and wrap it around itself. "...This is Torris." (Aurora)
A — And now, as Warren watched that tech prepare the black box beside Guetry's bed, as he watched her press a finger into his temple, as he watched the port pop out of his skin for the final time, he wished more than ever that he could have one last moment to say goodbye, could have one last chance to see him awake. (Meridian)
R — "'Regenerative cellular structure pattern shows promise of extending to the repair of normal chronological degeneration.'" He scrolled to the right. "'Log fourteen. Gestation normal. Nothing significant to record.'" He paused. "'Log eighteen. Embryo has shown signs of accelerated development. Brain growth rapid and blood circulation beyond normal rates for this gestational age.'" (Eternal)
T — Thrive angled his face so he could level the eliyi with a curious, baleful stare. "My oath had sworn me to protect the obhelians your ancestors eradicated. It had sworn me to protect my wards, all of whom you've threatened to eliminate upon attacking our vessel." He stepped up to the viewscreen, lifting his head to look the eliyi right in its several, dripping eyes. "The naivete you must possess not to realize that I've given my soul over to exactly this." (Eternal)
H — His words were abruptly silenced as Warren lunged, throwing his full weight behind a punch that didn't land. Within barely a fraction of a second from the swing, Thrive caught his fist and backed him into the bulkhead, noisily slamming his other hand against the metal beside his head with a deep scowl. (Warpath)
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Tagging @drippingmoon, @kingragnarok-writes, @zmwrites, @space-writes, and open tag!! You'll be finding:
A line your fans would likely quote the most
A line that secretly spoils something
A line featuring the color gold
A line you brought back from the dead
A line you KNOW you're sniping in later drafts
▶──◆─◈─◇─◈─◆──◀
My Lines:
A line describing the weather (Meridian)—
Then Warren felt it. A drastic drop in temperature that pierced his armor and form suit, plateaued through the sweltering heat, then dropped even more. His HUD blinked in alarm, unable to keep up with just how quickly the cold moved in on them.
"Oh, shit," Warren shouted. "We need to move!"
The celebratory air changed instantly. Rescuers scrambled into the shuttles with the remaining qrihk, and as Warren, Thrive, and Scot hopped into their vehicle, Warren spotted frost speeding over the ground, spreading rapidly, swallowing plants and rubble, almost claiming someone's foot as they sprang into their shuttle.
"Go," Thrive demanded the shuttle pilot. "We'll be lucky if we break the atmosphere."
"What the hell was that?!" Warren held onto a handrail as the vehicle began to vibrate, initiating a shuddering takeoff. "Was that normal?!"
"Not for a planet whose sun had gone supernova not even twenty-four hours prior."
▶──◆─◈─◇─◈─◆──◀
A sorrowful line (WASTE)—
A figure caught my eye through the crowd when I turned to leave the dock. Oren watched me from a bench against the wall, facing me directly, and I realized like a punch to the gut that he'd seen Adam, and he'd seen our goodbye. He'd watched us kiss for the last time, he'd watched me let go of the best thing that could've happened to me. He smelled my vulnerability. It stank up the place like reaver smoke.
His head tilted. A solemn expression, strange for him, that didn't change with every person that briefly blocked our views of each other. Almost sympathetic. But I'd seen that face enough to know better. I could practically hear his mind as clear as any silhou within range. His timing was impeccable as always, and if I didn't know better I'd say he'd had eyes on me since I'd left him, staking out for the moment I would be the most exposed, the most raw.
We existed feet apart, worlds apart, and yet his stare burned through me as if he'd held a plasma lighter to the middle of my forehead. He was in plain view of quite literally everyone, and I went numb. My stomach rolled and I tasted bile in the back of my throat.
I let a swell of foot traffic carry me away from the dock, then I let Oren into my apartment before midnight. He said all the wrong things, but it didn't matter. I hardly listened the entire night. He wasn't there to talk, anyway.
I'd never loved myself enough.
▶──◆─◈─◇─◈─◆──◀
A line with a laugh in it (Warpath)—
All Warren could do to begin with was stare. His brain shut down, almost entirely, and he eyed the ———, the ———, the utter lack of mirth in Thrive's expression… and he laughed.
The reaction didn't seem to surprise Thrive, though he looked on with interest as Warren's laugh swelled from a light chuckle into a cavernous belly laugh that rendered him all but asthmatic. Warren clutched his chest and attempted speech between gasps of air.
"Is this a joke? This is a joke," Warren wheezed.
"I can't explain everything to you, but—"
"Oh, no," Warren said, wiping his eyes with his knuckles. "No, no. You're gonna explain."
"Warren."
"Explain," Warren suddenly roared, his mirth gone in a flash, replaced with incandescent rage and uncontrollable trembling. "EXPLAIN!!"
▶──◆─◈─◇─◈─◆──◀
A line thought instead of being said aloud (Meridian)—
Warren narrowed his eyes. "...What do you think about the fact that he gave you a chance to live?"
Scot didn't move or emote in any way, but the seams on his face glowed faint, indicating he was processing. "I resent him."
Though jarring, the statement made sense. Guetry forced Scot to live an existence without him, and if Warren were in his shoes, if Thrive forced him to live without him, he'd resent him as well. "I get it." He sighed. "Well... I mean, your life is your life, now. You can do literally anything you want with it, and doing something to earn money while also fulfilling your purpose is never a bad thing. If you're looking for my blessing or something, you've got it."
"It would mean relocating," Scot said. "Possibly on a permanent basis."
"Nothing's permanent when it comes to ———." Warren smirked. "We'll see each other around. We can communicate. I'm not dumping this friendship, so we're clear."
Scot looked as if he wanted to say something, but refrained, and Warren wondered if he'd wanted to voice his own exact thought at that moment—he was the only friend he had left.
▶──◆─◈─◇─◈─◆──◀
A line said while under the influence (Meridian)—
[Warren] found Thrive loitering in the hallway with Corin.
"Was just asking him how he felt," Corin said, gesturing with his cup of wine. "Why don't you have a constant eye on your husband to make sure he hasn't keeled over?"
Warren quirked an eyebrow and took another deep gulp of his own wine. "Has he keeled over?"
"I'm quite alright," Thrive said.
Corin shook his head. "You see, he says that, but does he really mean it?"
Warren looked at Thrive. "Do you mean it?"
"Yes."
Warren looked at Corin. "I'm pretty sure he means it."
"He's a wily one," Corin muttered, peering at Thrive over the rim of his cup. "I don't trust him."
"Are you drunk?" Warren asked.
Corin nodded mid-swallow. "I should probably go do some critically significant science now."
The future has arrived far too soon for Warren.
Awoken from cryostasis into a galaxy ravaged by war, he finds himself in the middle of the greatest conflict the Milky Way has ever seen. Working with Thrive, he must recruit a team of adept individuals to take down the tyrannical Prince Hyret, whose forces have a ruthless chokehold on the galaxy.
Warren and Thrive's growing bond faces its own trials as conflict rages. Compounded with the Emmuli no longer content to linger in the shadows, grief threatens to tear them apart before they can even properly begin.
The revolution begins now, in the hands of those who've lost centuries…
The Darkspace Portent Series (M31 Arc; Books 1–5)—
The dramatic collision of Orthrive'poliea's vehicle with a nearby lake upends Warren Cougar's life more than he ever expected. Along with conspiracies, intergalactic war, and tumultuous dealings with interspace politics, he has to survive a hostile alien army and a semi-omnipotent sentient darkness doing everything in their power to destroy Earth and the rest of the Milky Way—and Thrive's native galaxy, Andromeda. Navigating their way through seemingly endless battle after seemingly endless battle, Warren and Thrive also find they must navigate themselves as well as their growing relationship with each other.
tagged by: @kingragnarok-writes!!
my words: night, wings, wander, lock
tagging: @drippingmoon, @zmwrites, @space-writes, @pertinax--loculos, and open tag!
your words: child, fern, mask, window, street
night(mare) (Aurora)—
Ommy cleared their throat. "OsilloLotas has expressed an interest in rejoining your party."
"Guetry Sympa is undecided," DeCosta said. "He's got some personal matters to consider."
"I've reached out to Varussa and Emnophene," Sussa said just as apprehensively as Ommy had spoken. "They also need to think about it."
"I have a few dossiers for your perusal," Latx said, taking a tablet from her companion. "I'll send them to you now."
"The rest of your crew will be chosen by the heads of our militaries," DeCosta said.
"I said I would make a team effort," Thrive interjected, "and you may hold me to my word. However, are we all truly aware of what we're asking our loved ones and our people to do?" He glanced around at everyone's faces. "Are we truly aware that we're expecting hundreds, maybe thousands of soldiers to die terribly painful and horrifying deaths at the tendrils of a living despair-fueled nightmare?"
A pause settled over the table, soaking into everyone's flesh.
"Some of us didn't ask," Warren murmured.
Thrive's eyes met his, and Warren witnessed, in real time, the wound opening behind them.
–––☆–::–★–::–☆–––
wings (Eternal)—
The silhouette at the window had his chin tilted upward slightly, just enough to expose the clean line of his jaw. His face turned to the glass, a patch of condensation growing and shrinking as he exhaled, silent. His chest rose and fell so steadily, no one would know he was breathing if it couldn't be seen firsthand. Eyes sharp and focused, pinned to something in the distance, pinned to nothing but the trees that went on for miles into the mountains.
Fat flakes of snow curtained the dismal sky, peppering the porch and accumulating on yesterday's layer of white ice. And on the offering from the day before that, and the day before that. No wind, not a single branch waving in an uninvited breeze or the flap of a bird's wings to rebel against the outside stillness.
Warren watched this as he gave up his posture to the cushions of the couch and kept a tight grip on his own hair. He bored through Thrive's darkened outline with his gaze, his mind a blank slate, dropped to the curve of his throat, stuck there for quite a while. What a cruel god it was that gave him that throat with a body that wasn't even authentic. And who was Warren to claim it? What manner of fate gave him that right?
The false doors in the cabin promised freedom they hadn't seen in days. At that point, probably weeks. Thrive told him to stop counting and he heeded him immediately. Shadows lurked in the corners of the house and they couldn't be shaken away. Bulbs couldn't scatter them and they swallowed the light, rippling into fine mist if agitated.
The times they couldn't bring themselves to speak reeked of failure, of bone-chilling misery no amount of quality time could dissolve. Warren watched Thrive stand in silence by the window. Obhelian spine straight and rigid, bathrobe over the form suit in such a way that hinted at how much he was afraid that getting truly comfortable would cost them their native reality. Lumping the responsibility onto his own shoulders again, dragging himself through a swamp of guilt.
"What is it that we've supposedly failed?"
At the sound of Warren's hoarse voice cutting through the hours-old ringing quiet, Thrive let his eyes fall shut. The condensation shrank and his chest rose.
–––☆–::–★–::–☆–––
wander (Eternal)—
Warren hadn't worn a form suit in so long that he almost forgot what it was like. He couldn't help the smile that crept onto his face as he stretched the glittery lavender material over his arms and throat.
Someone whistled behind him. "If we weren't both in committed relationships…"
Through the bathroom mirror, Warren caught Guetry's wandering gaze behind him as it lingered on the accentuated curve of his backside. "Committed, huh, Sympa?"
"Well, if Adam wants me, I plan to die with the bastard, sure," Guetry said, folding his arms over his own matte navy form suit. "We'll see how things go."
"I wish you two the best of luck. Since you brought up the subject of bastards…"
Guetry offered a knowing nod. "As you know, my mom's a fucking nightmare, so my dad had kind of a personal motto about how to handle a partner being hard to deal with. I don't speak more than conversational French, though, so I have no idea what it was."
"Real cool, Guetry. A fount of knowledge and wisdom."
"It's kind of a third calling, you know what I'm saying?"
"You're the stupidest person I know."
–––☆–::–★–::–☆–––
lock (Warpath)—
Thrive, in the middle of the hallway several feet away. Near his office. Clad in a very loose, airy tunic that looked to be a garment of appeasement than anything else. He regarded Warren, eyes shining with heart and warmth, and happiness.
"How was your trip?" he asked.
"I don't wanna talk about it. It's not why we're here."
"No?"
"No. Holy crap." Warren found he'd been having trouble keeping himself in check, gazing into Thrive's face in person for the first time in two of the longest years of his life. His breath came out strained, almost as if he couldn't physically contain his excitement, doing everything in his power to at least provide some preamble should he scale the distance and jump him on pure primal instinct. "...My god."
Instinct won out, and in perfect sync, Thrive scooped him up as Warren lunged at him, and Thrive supported him with one arm, smiling broadly at him as he carried him through the hall. "I never thought it possible, but you've gotten more stunning."
"Says you," Warren breathed, gripping Thrive's sun-kissed locks in tight fingers. He raked his nails through the beard. "You're glowing."
"I'm sure." Thrive brought him into Warren's bedroom, the lights immediately dimming and shifting colors upon their arrival. "Can't imagine why I wouldn't be, basking in your radiance. I've missed you more than words can adequately portray."
"Don't use words, then." Warren clung to him, successfully assuring that he would be carried to the other side of the room, all the way to the bed. "Tell me in the best way you know how."
