"Don’t listen to them. Don’t you EVER listen to them." Leslie/Props, "Look at me - just breathe, okay?" Antinous/Hadrian, "You don’t have to stay." Hipster Wrenches
LESLIE AND PROPS - “Don’t listen to them. Don’t you EVER listen to them.”
"…They don’t know what they’re talking about, Props."
Leslie stays on the other side of the bathroom door, even if it’s unlocked, and this is just one of the many little things that makes Prospero listen to Leslie when he spouts banalities and sometimes looks at him as if he loved him.
"They called me a freak. Pretty self-explanatory."
There’s a pause, and Prospero is sure that Leslie is biting his lip and cradling his fist against his chest, just like the last time, after he’d told him that punching walls did a jeweller no favors. What did Prospero know about jewellers, though? Leslie still listened.
'You're beautiful', Prospero recites in his head.
Outside, Leslie says, “You’re Prospero.”
ANTINOUS & HADRIAN - “Look at me - just breathe, okay?”
Recently, whenever Hadrian remembered, he would fall into fits that aped drowning in the most difficult sense. Antinous is almost pissed at how he’s the one suffering, but that’s largely because Hadrian suffering is upsetting and not because he’s feeling entitled to the lot of suffering their house has to bear with.
"Hadrian," Antinous snaps, authoritative and commanding even at 4 in the morning on a Thursday, wearing nothing but Hadrian’s crew sweater and sitting on the linoleum floor of their kitchen. "Hadrian, look at me."
Obedient to a fault, Hadrian does, and Antinous bites back bile at the paleness of his face, the sweat that has broken over his brow, the look of fear in his eyes. The man who’d deified him never deserved to look so pitiful.
"Just breathe - okay? Just breathe. Breathe with me."
Antinous would be damned if he’d let mere nightmares steal away his king.
HIPSTER WRENCHES (JULIE/SPANNER) “You don’t have to stay.”
This time around, Julie goes first.
Spanner holds his hand, feather-light in his own and murmurs, “You don’t have to stay.” He knows it hurts him to try, and Spanner is brittle boned and couldn’t bear to see him die without a smile.
Julie laughs a dead man’s rattle and reaches up to trail his fingertips over the curve of Spanner’s cheek.
"Can’t be leavin’ ya, when ya look that sad, now can I?"
