but a light touch, his own, tracing scars of old and line of beard stinging palewhite fingers, a frown as baby blues looked clouded in worry, lips wanting to part, to give voice to all things flurrying in his tired mind, but never daring to begin ; his heart grieved somehow, already, in the tethering webs tearing apart. no words were needed, in lovetorn concern.
He wants to accept it. He wants to fall into it, to lean into such a touch and become lost amid the comforts of a lover he knows inside and out. But it’s fear that grips him with ice cold claws sinking in beneath his skin. It’s fear that guides his hands to brush comfort aside when he needs it the most. The man before him doesn’t change. Blackwatch’s Commander knows it. Knows it all too well.
Knows that the man before him should know every twist and turn of him. Every scar, physical and emotional, between them is known. Understood. It’s a sudden fear that he himself has changed beyond all recognizability. That if he should let the man before him dig deep like he wants to that he will recoil in disgust of what he’ll find lurking just beneath his skin. It’s in his veins, it exists just in the back of his mind that is no longer his own. It’s a terrifying force, it watches like a hawk and it waits for its moment to sink it’s teeth in, to give the body a drive.
He’s becoming someone else, and he can never remember what this new person does. All he knows is horror stories, an aftermath that he has to navigate. He’s walking on eggshells. If he dare misstep he’ll face the music of actions that do not belong to him. It’s terror that grips him now, and it flashes momentarily in his eyes, taken over in a moment only with an unholy frozen look of what could only be taken as a certain hatred, before eyes squeeze shut, a sharp exhale accompanying as Gabriel stumbles back, holding a hand outward, intending to stop the man in front of him from making any other move. His voice betrays him, as it always likes to around Jack. His tone wavers in that slight manner only his sunshine would recognize. Fear bleeding through the facade in such a minuscule way.
“I can’t.”
@ibellator ♥
