SEND ‘KISS’ + A NUMBER TO KISS MY MUSE…
…because you missed them.
@vardr ║ accepting ! [ and not to be continued!]
World War 2 AU, BECAUSE REASONS
The nurse lays a hand on his shoulder, feather-light, like she’s trying not to be obtrusive. The fact is, he’s the one impinging upon their space, resting like a wraith in the corner of the infirmary, where Zack lays in some sempiternal slumber from which Gladio waits for him to wake.
Gladio hadn’t left his side since he’d found him in the basement of that castle, half dead with whatever ungodly experimentation they’d done on him. He could still remember the dullness in those eyes that had been nearly incandescent in his memory of his best friend, how hollow they looked as they blinked up at him when he lifted his body from that worn cot.
Did he recognize him then? Does he recognize him now? Zack had yet to speak a word to affirm. It was enough that he woke for the few hours a day that he did, long enough to sallow down some tasteless gruel and a paper cup of vitamins Gladio was sure was doing fuckall. Not that he’d been doing much better.
Gladio stares helplessly at the half-parted lips that he can still remember whispering his name, that last time he’d dropped Zack off on his stoop, stealing a kiss he knew would be his last (and only), before he snuck off like a thief to do his part with the war effort. He’d turned away, then, too scared to see the sure rejection illuminated by moonlight, and left without a proper goodbye.
That same terror seizes him now, even as Zack lay sleeping in his bed, hands at his side above the perfect arrangement of his thin covers. He wishes he had the gall, but he doesn’t. Not to take something twice that never belonged to him. No matter how desperately he wants to.
Gladio entwines his callous fingers within his, staring at the constellation of scars that adorn his knuckles. They’re more obvious at certain angles against the firelight, when the amber glow illuminates every ridge and hollow, and Gladio counts with compulsive disconcert each errant wound by pressing his lips fervently to them. He curses every weapon, every man that had a hand in marring the beauty of those hands, who he can remember from more halcyon days, when they were as soft and smooth from the luxury of disuse, when the worst hardship they’d known was the grip of a pen to crawl out arithmetic homework.
He kisses each scar in a methodical ecliptic, until his lips taste of his skin and salt and an indescribable, palliative scent that has the curious effect of slowly recovering the rift in his riven heart.
It’s a bittersweet farewell, one he repeats like a tortured samsara every night before he leaves him for his own bed. A ritual that grants him less conciliation than it should, for how deeply it wounds him. But still he does it, believing in its influence. Because it’s the only hope he has left. Because all he needs is for Zack to return to him.
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