you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
with your bones and your flesh
His grip on the necklace only becomes more sure as Toro protests, fastening the delicate chain so that the iridescent scale falls just-so in the center of Toro’s chest. Perhaps the horned man might have no need of lended courage -- perhaps he has too much of his own -- but it is a gesture the antlered man will make nonetheless.
“No one has ever protected me,” There’s something soft and sad and vulnerable in the shape of those words on his tongue, but the corner of his lips pulls up into a smile that defies everything he has just said, forms a secret between the two of them. For a moment, he is the boy whose father might have wanted him at one time, a man who might still pray to gods who listened to his pleas -- for a moment, he is not broken but he is golden beneath the sun.
“I’m still standing, aren’t I?”
Today, he isn’t a boy with constellations of bruises across his skin, and he dares to step forward and brush his muzzle across Toro’s cheek, as light as a breath of wind.
“I trust you to return it.”
I hope you’ll return to me.
@El Toro
you were only a boy,
when you were thrown into a war.
when you were thrown into a war.
