and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

Closer still, he can see the things that he could not: the dark cup of Pilate's ear, the mottled brown of his coat stretched over each curved muscle--not the muscles of a warrior, or a beast, but beautiful in the way that Michaelangelo's statues are beautiful with their bodies of smooth rock. For a moment he's a little breathless, taking it in, and his longing grows deeper and deeper still.

He wants to touch him, more than he has wanted many other things. The thought is in him bigger than Warden, bigger than Delumine, bigger than his singing rage and the endless thunder in his heart. He wants to touch Pilate so badly it aches in his jaw, his knees, a warm pain that radiates in every direction. Oriens help him.

Andras grins like a punch, wild and bright.
He is a living verb, a compass needle always spinning wildly with no true north: immense anger, immense joy, immense boredom and here in the hazy winter light and the fist of some nameless desperation he is filling with immense need that crashes into him over and over like so many stormy, gray-green waves.

He is impulsive. Savage. Reckless. Explosive in every direction--even this one.

Or what. Pilate asks, dark and vivid but so, so quiet that he almost cannot hear it over the blood in his ears. It sounds like rich chocolate. It sounds like the color of fat, juicy strawberries. Andras does not feel his whole body shiver until it is sprinting over the hill of his shoulders.

Pilate touches Andras, a warm breath on his dark throat and far warmer lips on his shoulder before he leans back, smiling the way Andras imagines that he must be smiling--like it's a challenge, a dare, a command--with eyes so deep and so patient that it makes the warden angry. His heart beats so loud and so fast he is dying, surely. There is no crime, no duty, no old library, just him and his racing heart and this big dark hole that he didn't realize he had until it was out in the open--

--and a pool of lava, daring him to jump. Andras looks at the many pairs of eyes that look back at him, all gold, all smug, like they've known all along he would jump. He would. He does.

When their lips touch new electricity crackles out of his skin.

and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

Impulse is a strange thing: cunning, often unkind, always blinding. 

And it is loud, with their lips presses together, all crackling lightning and heat and he hates it, the way Pilate smiles, the curve of his mouth, the hissing snakes--but he has maybe never known hatred in his life, not suffering, not rage, until Pilate leans back and he looks-- something. Whatever it is, it isn't good.

Andras can't think, not that there is time to, because the air is sucked out of his lungs when he sees--really sees--the lopsided smirk, as if barely held together. His rage is asking if Pilate sees it too, reflected in the shine of Andras' glasses, cold as as the icy woods. It is too close to fear to be anything but.

Andras knows because for perhaps for the only time since Isra, and her festival, and her beastly, godlike magic, his fear is a sinking feeling, not one that sets him on fire.

Pilate steps forward. When is tail stings the Warden's chest it is worse than any broken bone. He feels something in him, breaking for the first time. Breaking like waves. Breaking like glass.

Andras watches him go. The library is colder than he remembers. Colder than he has ever been. He thinks, out loud: "Coward."

Andras walks to his room, a long walk with his head down and face burning. His steps sound so, so loud in the suddenly far, far too crowded hall. He steps through his door, throws his glasses on the table, and sinks into a bed of pillows.

He does not fall asleep.