andras
i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.
A
ndras imagines it: reaching across the bar so gently that it falls away beneath him with little more than a sigh, dragging Pilate into the cocoon of his wings and resting the white of his chin on Pilate’s forehead. He imagines it warm, gentle, slow-- everything Andras does not quite know how to be. Everything he had not even considered until Pilate’s eyes dropped from his, all lids and lashes and panicked, hair-thin pupils.Now he cannot think of anything else.
”Should we go?” The voice is thin, tinny, and it sounds like it’s coming from the other side of a thick wall, barely there among the wordless voices of guests and the energetic keening of a violin somewhere behind him. Andras only hears it because he is listening. He is only listening because for the last year he has been haunted by yellow eyes and the hissing of snakes and this well of affection that seems to have no bottom.
--Which brings us back to the white hot panic, and the question, and the corner of Andras’ mouth that are pulled into tight, straight lines. When he turns his head, just a little, the lights bouncing off the face of his glasses shield his eyes.
He’s never been afraid of himself. He doesn’t know what it’s like. As he grew, so did his endless anger, the tight ache in his joints from burying it behind his teeth. It has always been so easy to be exactly who he is: standoffish, vengeful, blunt, tired, lonely. He has always known he is equal parts fear and rage, but that fear has never been pointed back at him.
If he is afraid of anything it is Emersyn, or Isra. He is afraid of blood in the snow, red against the gray and white of the woods, frozen to the trunks of trees. He is afraid of Pilate, and for Pilate, and that is what’s hidden behind his glasses, what pulls him in and pushes him away like an indecisive tide. He would say so if he weren’t so incredibly sure Pilate would construe it as pity.
He tries for silence, since he cannot lie. It works as long as it works.
Should they go? Somewhere? Andras wonders.
He looks back at Pilate, then down into his empty glass, a star-freckled bowl against the swirling marble of the bar’s surface. It is almost too bright to bear. All of it-- the light, the people, the music, the drink, the affection, the constant undercurrent of rage-- is too bright to bear. He nods without raising his head.
Pilate wishes he could love Andras.
Andras watches the blood blooming on his lip as he speaks, a thin sort of red against the black of his mouth and the white of his teeth, and he starts to realize that he, himself, already does.
”Whatever you want,” he answers, and pushes himself back from the bar, setting his empty glass with the others waiting to be cleaned as he does. His heart is racing now that hbe’s moving, now that he’s unceremoniously carving his way through the crowd toward the opening at the side of the bar, chewing the inside of his lip to keep from saying the only thing he wants to. The only thing that matters.
I think--
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
