Cassian is quiet for a minute or two, digesting this. Despite the evidence he's been picturing the other, the stranger, as a stranger: a tall menacing shadow to match his K-bot, a faceless invader from that other, nightmare world.
Easier, less threatening, than the image Bodhi builds for him now of a too-old twentysomething, a scared, scarred kid unwilling to hurt kids even younger. A human being open to reason, capable of compassion. Defensive among strangers.
And therefore not, perhaps, a stranger at all.
I'm afraid, he wants to say. Afraid I really have gone crazy and I'm dragging you both with me. That this has been inside my head all along, that I'm making it all up, that I'm lying to myself and I don't even know it. I don't want this to be real and I'm terrified that it's not.
"I love you," is what he says aloud, abruptly, against his husband's neck.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2019-10-10 05:40 am (UTC)Easier, less threatening, than the image Bodhi builds for him now of a too-old twentysomething, a scared, scarred kid unwilling to hurt kids even younger. A human being open to reason, capable of compassion. Defensive among strangers.
And therefore not, perhaps, a stranger at all.
I'm afraid, he wants to say. Afraid I really have gone crazy and I'm dragging you both with me. That this has been inside my head all along, that I'm making it all up, that I'm lying to myself and I don't even know it. I don't want this to be real and I'm terrified that it's not.
"I love you," is what he says aloud, abruptly, against his husband's neck.