[P] ninety-nine problems

[Andras]

and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

Pilate grins, when he laughs, like it is a precious thing, one to be held carefully, and close, and Andras has never felt longing so great or so terrible in his life, an ache straight down to his marrow that is not asking to touch him so much as it is begging, like a sinner at God's feet. At first it confuses him, the intensity with which it hits him, as if he were standing in the tide with the waves all around him and he is struck in the chest, the shoulders, the stomach, until he is lost in the undertow. He swallows again, an attempt to untie the knot in his stomach, but it sticks in his throat and comes out as some strangled, helpless noise that is too quiet to hear across the room.

Oh fuck, he thinks again, oh no, as if he does not drop his own voice down to little more than a murmur, heavy with the weight of whatever it is with its hands around his throat. "Do you think so?" he asks, lingering a little too long on the legs that draw Pilate closer, inch by painfully slow inch. Andras tries to will his muscle to uncoil, tries to think warm thoughts, calm thoughts, tired thoughts, but finds that all that is there is eyes like a snake's hot and bright, and a heat that pools in the dark of his black, black pit.

There will still be poachers when he wakes from this stupor. There will still be their powderkeg council and their king with his ghosts. There will be murder and strife in Delumine and it will all still be singing his name as if Andras is a warden worth his title and not a miserable little rat with a bad attitude. It will hunt him until either he finds it first or he is so tired that he can no longer see the path he treads. It is not going anywhere. It will not wait for Andras, standing on the opposite side of a long walk with his eyes trained on Pilate's throat, savage as he has ever been. 

Sleep can wait a little longer. One more minute. One more hour. One more day.
Time can have it all, he doesn't care.

Andras steps forward now, one slow motion at a time, graceless in a way that only the truly feral can be, until he has halved the distance and can see whatever it is in Pilate's face that spurs him on. When Andras grins it is not like the sun, it is like caves and dark holes and wicked things. He huffs. "Prove it."

@Pilate <3