WHAT IT MUST BE LIKE TO BE GENTLE
to reach out and not want to hurt
to reach out and not want to hurt
“Teach me,” Mattie says, and for a moment, Sam’s sides still as he scarcely dares to breathe. He is silent, the thrumming of his heart the only betrayal of his confusion, his mind churning. The words are so surreal to him here, these are things he has only ever imagined hearing come from those cracked volcanic lips. He has only ever known the brutal side of love since their initial union - what Mathias asks for now could mean the end of an era. A hushed sound, muffled by his own shoulder: a show of emotion that is so foreign to him it takes him by surprise, so new it takes a moment to register it. His touch is feather-light as he reaches out, the movement to comfort instinctual as he brushes velveteen lips over the hardened ridge of his lover’s withered shoulder. Every caress is unspoken reverence, a quiet worship of something as fragile and holy as the Eucharist. Behold, the body of the broken man, not yet sacrificed. How many died for Adriana’s sins? Yet, this one lived, the one she poured hate into, spit venom at, condemned then to years unloved and lonely. Blessed be the living, that they have seen the light of love, at long last. Sam cannot promise now that he is the same gentle soul he once was, cannot pretend that there are not scars across his body that Mattie will not recognize having not put them there himself. There is much to be explained, but this, this present moment, is so timeless, he thinks, that nothing might matter ever again but this.
The embrace of two twin souls, torn apart when they needed each other the most and finally, tempered, soured, bittered and bruised, reunited with one another. Sam doesn’t feel the few tears he has left slide from his cheeks, is too busy pressing slow, deliberate soft kisses down a foreleg, dragging back up. The sight of each rib wrenches his heart again, and Mattie smells of heat, of desert debris, of unwashed indifference. Sam makes this his first lesson. “You must be gentle with yourself, first,” hushed syllables as he begins to do what he has always done. His work begins with a steady hand, a loving touch, and has only ever waited on Mattie to be ready to accept it. “You need a bath,” he adds gently, unobtrusively observant, and gingerly, he touches his nose to Mattie’s barrel, a huff of frustration at the ribs protruding, hard ridges pressing firm beneath his tender touch. “When was the last time you ate anything?” In this heat, he knows logically water is the most important thing, yet it all seems so damn far away. He finds himself wishing he hadn’t abandoned his belongings in the hidden pathways of Viride before he’d made his pilgrimage to the canyon where he’d hoped so eagerly to find nothing but desert waiting for him beneath the moonlight. He could do with a canteen and some herbs right now, or even his dagger if they could find a cactus, but there was no sense wishing for things that they did not have.
He turns himself around, shoulder-to-shoulder with Mathias then, unwilling to leave any space at all between them. Sam is still learning this new land, but he knows enough about recent events to know that there is no chance of finding the resources he needs to help his lover here. “This is no place for us,” he reasons. “Raum won’t show us mercy.” What little he knows of the Solterran sovereign is enough to boil his blood, but he is still recovering from the Full Moon: he is in no shape to storm the court, to reveal himself as a war machine and demand sustenance for a man with no name - if Mattie had sway here, finding him would have been so, so much easier. Raum would likely care little for Sam’s interference, anyway. What made Mattie and his dog any different, any more special, than the rest of the nation he sought to make beg? And then, what of his own court? What if Raum were to take his threat as a threat from the Dawn Court itself and take set fire to the forests, threaten the knowledge of the Library that Delumine held so dear? No, it was too much of a risk; Raum would be protected, too, and Sam is only one man. Mathias need not suffer more violence, he decides, let him breathe peace if only for a moment. “I know somewhere.” A coaxing murmur in his lover’s ear, more things left unsaid. Come with me.
art // background
