WHAT IT MUST BE LIKE TO BE GENTLE
to reach out and not want to hurt
to reach out and not want to hurt
Eyes narrow as his partner is quick to his feet, a threatening stance even in his weakened state. He looks a mess: bony, scraggly hair, unkempt. He knows that look, the light in his eye shining fury, glittering rage, and the stallion smiles inwardly. This is his Mattie - his Mattie - not Adriana’s “monster”, her poor excuse for a weapon. Look how he has withered without love, how frustrated he is without a simple, kind touch; he forgets how to take care of himself without a steady, patient presence at his side. She has failed so miserably in her endeavor that Sam hopes she is rolling in her rotten grave, half-decayed, wailing songs of despair to gods that no longer care. He has braced himself again, catching his lover in a damning embrace as he lunges, and too late he feels Mattie’s teeth tear into his tender flesh. A gasp as the scent of blood fills his nostrils, the searing pain sending a sudden rush of chemicals to his brain. He feels malice, but not toward his love - toward those that had spurned and misguided him. Mattie’s words ring in his ears, a bittersweet melody stinging as sharply as any blade, and he sets his jaw, relentless. He understands, just as he always has, that these thoughts, these words, are not from Mathias himself, but the ghost of someone that loathed him, and wanted nothing more than for him to loathe himself as well.
He throws his weight forward, using his height to his advantage as he tries to unsteady the scrawny fighter that his lover has become. Dislodging himself from the tangle of their messy intimacy, he lunges and then dodges to Mathias’ blind side, teeth snapping at his neck - but he does not bite down: he is teasing, taunting him, finds a pressure point and drags his teeth across it. He kicks up sand as his dancing feet bring him ever closer until he is in the air once more, pressing his knees into the shoulder of his beloved. His neck arches, a solemn bow, as his black lips caress a torn ear. “I followed your scent,” he laments, and for a moment, he touches his cool lips to the vulnerable skin of the self-destructive wreck he has chosen to call his own. He shoves hard, then backs off again, circling, the strength of his conviction pooling in the cooling embers of his firelight eyes. “I know she came back.” He won’t say her name again, won’t bring up the fury he still contains, pent up for the day he meets the bitch in hell himself. “I know you stopped her from hurting anyone else.” This is important phrasing. He is reinforcing something he has always believed, but has never been able to convince Mattie of. You have done the world a service as only you could, is the unsung ballad of his words. You are not what she made you. “Elysium found you - you were together again, until you weren’t.” He still doesn’t know what happened, who left when, only knows that there were others involved, and can only assume it was Mathias who had chosen to strike out on his own, because Elysium knows - knew? - better than anyone the damage done to her brother, and would follow him to the ends of the earth even if it killed her - and he had a reliable source that said it just might have.
“You had children ... and left them,” he says then, softly. It is not an accusation: he understands, and there is an apology hidden in his voice. Mattie cannot care for himself, this much is plainly evident, and it was a kindness he showed to them by allowing them to have their own chance at life without his destructive tendencies. “You never stayed in once place. I get it - believe me, I do. But don’t …” He shakes his head, catching Mattie’s eye and holding his gaze, a brief interlude between clashing titans. “Don’t ever, for even a moment, think that I could be capable of giving up on you. Not you.” Blood trickles from his open wound, the scent still making him feel dizzy, making him want more, but he is suddenly so very tired of bloodshed. Mathias is weak, and if he wanted to hurt him, he could - but he doesn’t. He wants absolution. He approaches: slow, measured movements. Sam is persistent, has always been, will always be. He loves with his whole heart and hates even harder, and the thought of Mathias has consumed his every waking moment since the instant they met, two strangers in the night with nothing to lose. He reaches out, then, a tempered touch: muzzle to muzzle, he confesses his deepest secrets in hushed tones. “I have been lost without you, and you’re lying to yourself if you think you’re fine on your own. I know you.” He steps into him, lightly brushing his lips over the bridge of Mattie’s nose as he comes, up to the peak of his forehead, and then, ever so gently, back down. “If you feel you must be a monster, then let me be one beside you. I will build the fire while you strike the match to burn the bridges we leave behind us.” He dips his head down low now, submitting the dark heart of his forehead to Mattie’s lips. “Understand me … to have the Volta blood is to possess a loyalty like no other. Those that came before me were bred with one goal in mind: single-minded destruction, directed by one master only. Our master was whomever held the Northern throne. This was our purpose …” He has spent countless hours under the knife receiving history lessons from a deranged demigod about his birth family, and he shudders weakly at the memory as he explains it.
He pauses then, feeling his heart stuttering in his throat, but knows this is his moment. He has waited so long, has survived through so much, and now is his chance. Mattie has to know. A soft sigh leaves his lips, and he looks up at him through long, dark lashes, the evidence of his love a bloodstain in the sand, a glimmer in his eye. “All the times I promised I would never leave you …” He feels his heart swell in his throat, but still his words come, tasting like years of loneliness and love he was incapable of giving to anyone else. “That was my vow. I have sworn myself entirely to you and to you only, until the end of my natural life ...” In this moment, he has carefully and deliberately put a noose around his own neck, and handed his lover the end of the rope. He has effectively given himself up, admitted the fatal flaw of his character. A choked laugh breaches him then, a pain in his chest aside from his wound.
“I would have kept searching for you until the day I died.”
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