WHAT IT MUST BE LIKE TO BE GENTLE
to reach out and not want to hurt
to reach out and not want to hurt
The ghost says something Sam has ever only dreamed of hearing before, and he cannot control the soft inhale, the shock that overcomes him, if only for a moment - a sudden lightheadedness that ceases the second Mathias returns to his old self. Ah, that old familiar ache, the challenge in Mattie’s voice, the raw wrath in which he speaks the accursed name he was doomed to carry with him for the rest of his life. Jetsam. It is spat in his face like a curse word, as if he finally believes that Sam is what he was first named after: something useless tossed overboard, washed ashore, waterlogged and worthless to any and all. It sets a fire in the kindling of his soul, and he is already bracing himself before Mattie springs to life, immediately raising up on his hind legs to meet him. He is expecting the apparition to simply fall through him - from years of research he knows the dead cannot mimic the feeling of flesh-to-flesh contact - yet the blow strikes him square in the chest, forcing him back in the sand and turning his mind from fire to pure burning, savage rage. His lungs empty of air in a high squeal, and he rears up higher, crashing down in the sand with a leg on either side of his beloved’s astonished face. “Don’t you dare use my name against me, Mathias Blackwell,” he snarls back, ferocity underlying in his bitter, biting tone. I know who you are, he is saying beneath this jarring flirtation. I know you like no one else can ever know you. In the heat of the moment, Mattie has made clear two things: one, that he is absolutely, completely and irrevocably real; two, that he is still as stubborn and stupid as the day Sam first fell in love with him.
The taller stallion looms, a harsh snort released from black nostrils as punctuation of his grandstanding. He raises a hoof delicately before gently pressing Mattie’s face into the sand, pressure increasing bit by bit, his own lips curling back to reveal bloodstained enamel. “If you think I left you,” he whispers, something feral slipping into his eyes, pooling warm and wet in his chest. There is a Darkness within him now, something he knows he cannot cut out, drink about, wash away. He is Unclean, and he will never be forgiven. “If you think, for one second, that after everything we had, everything we went through, that I would do that to you …” He leans down, wolf-yellow eyes glimmering, voice a quiet hiss full of contempt. “... Then you never knew me at all.” A rough shove then with his hoof - let Mattie feel the scratch of the sand against that devil-soft flesh, he thinks, let him have a taste of his own fucking medicine. I love you, he is not saying. I have loved you every day we’ve been apart. How many years has he spent alone, searching for a bastard’s bastard child? How much time had he spent loving a memory? A brutal dance is all they have now, in the dangerous garden of the desert. Their own intricate, terrible way of loving one another. His heart beats, a drumming staccato rhythm filling his eardrums, muscles tightening in preparation - for what, he knows not. He can never know - part of the excitement of this is the unpredictability of his partner. He turns away, allowing Mathias a chance to gather his feet, to parry, if he can.
He has always preferred a gentle hand to Mattie’s flash fury, but time has hardened him. He knows this is the only way to prove his love now. “Get up,” he commands. A disdainful tone drips from his voice like acid, a counter-challenge. Show me how much you want me, he is saying silently, speaking to his lover with his body. A flicking tail accentuates his elegant pivot as he squares himself again, patience thin and ebbing by the second. There are things Mattie does not know. There are things he will not understand. Sam has feared this part of their reunion for many years, afraid that he will be unable to convince his lover of the truth, afraid they are beyond repair. But he knows Mattie. He knows every beat of this dance, every step burned into his memory alongside his incessant, consuming guilt. But here, here in this place now, in their own private Hell, he is free from it. Mathias released him from his bonds with a single jolt to the chest, an electric pulse that woke him from some deep internal crisis that he could not resolve. “I was tricked,” he finally admits. “I was controlled. I was drugged, abducted, experimented on and tortured for years before I broke free, but the damage was done.” His jaw sets, stubborn. He still refuses to show how these events affect him, hides his vulnerabilities like one does when the need is dire. If he has it his way, Mattie will never know. “You were gone. Adriana was dead. You didn’t wait for me to come home, you ran. You ran from me, thinking I’d abandoned you, thinking I was like all the rest, even though you knew I made a promise to you. You knew I would never do that to you. How could you not know?” His voice rises with each word, and while he feels a burning in the back of his eyes, he refuses to cry a moment longer. There will be time for that. A fury is budding in him now, a flower of desolation a bright, burning blossom as he lights it with the matches Mattie’s supplied him with. He laughs, the laugh of a person who has seen more than they should have, the laugh that borders hysteria and gut-wrenching pain.
“You didn’t even look for me, did you?” He whispers the question into the air between them, not wanting to hear the answer.
art // background
