abraxaslogs | [ OPEN ] the fate of the game is moving my way.

Rhy's heart sinks. Ronan tells him there's something he can give him, volunteers to help, and Rhy's traitorous heart just wants to decline and cling to him instead. He sighs.

"Shall I go, then?"

He is too drained to even insist on asking again what Ronan plans.

"No," says Ronan.

There's nothing that prohibits him from holding Rhy in his arms and comforting him, no need for Rhy to go wandering off and suffering alone. Dreaming will happen when it happens.

He cups Rhy's cheek and gently redirects him, bringing their lips close. "Be with me for a while," he murmurs. Ronan can still taste the salt of Rhy's tears when he kisses the corner of his mouth. "I'll make you feel better for now, and then I'll figure out how to make you feel better for good."

It is not the answer he expected, having already resigned himself to worse-- but it is the answer he'd been desperately hoping for. Rhy kisses back, gentle for now, the need soft and innocent, wanting only comfort.

He still doesn't think Ronan can help for good, but the fact he is willing to try is kindness enough in Rhy's mind. He loops an arm around Ronan's neck.

"I want to stay," he confesses, which is no surprise at all. "Here. With you."

For now, at least. For a few more minutes, or a few hours, or until the morning comes again and chases away some of the pain with time and sunshine.

"Good."

Now that he understands the problem — emotional and metaphysical — he can do a much better job of treating it. It's a relief for Ronan, too, in a way. Everything that had hurt Kylo before isn't an issue anymore. Rhy had never been a real threat to him, but especially not now, especially when Ronan understands there's nothing here that could ever possibly tempt him away from his master.

If it's the energy inside him that's attracting Rhy, then obviously closer is better. Ronan gathers him up, pulling Rhy onto his lap and practically surrounding him in his embrace. Let Ronan be nothing but a fire for him to warm himself beside.

Rhy has had many intimate partners, yet so few who would do this. Hold him like this. He sighs, letting Ronan move him as he wishes, pliant and subdued in a way few get to see. He nuzzles his face into Ronan's throat again, kissing his pulse, curls up in his lap and tucks his arms between their bodies.

It is a few minutes before he speaks again, after basking in the warmth and the steady beat of Ronan's heart against his palm.

"Why do you know all this, Ronan?"

"Because I've made life before."

Ronan has been sitting so still that if not for the beating of his heart and the slow rhythm of his breathing, he could pass for a very convincing Pietà. Now his thumb runs a soft caress along Rhy's jaw.

"Every life I make has a little spark of me in it. And when something happens to me, they can feel it. Like everybody here felt the Singularity dim. We're kind of the same thing, me and the Singularity. I'm just a lot smaller."

Made life.

Rhy has never thought about it that way, what Kell did for him. He'd considered it an anchoring of some sort, something to keep his soul tethered to a body that hadn't died because his is no longer enough. Had Kell actually restored something, using his own life force as magic? There is no way for Rhy to understand that, and likely no way for Kell to either, as the magic had not been his own or even from their world.

He tips his head slowly into Ronan's hand, eyes still shut. If he is shocked at what Ronan has just admitted, he doesn't have the energy to show it much right now.

The Singularity. A source of magic. The proverbial fire keeping all the worlds warm. (Or at least some of them, those within reach, as Stephen had said.) Somehow, it only feels like it makes sense that Ronan is a little piece of the same.

"It's keeping me alive," he finds himself explaining, almost absently. For having been so reluctant to bring it up at first, now Rhy just wants to say it, just let all the words fall out of him and let Ronan do what he will with them, so they are no longer only in his head. He talks without thinking, lips soft on Ronan's throat, long lashes brushing his jaw.

"It's tethering me. The way my brother did. Stephen thinks it's because he can't reach this far, even though his traveling to other worlds has never been a problem before. That maybe this universe is simply too many other universes away. But it is only a rock. I used to feel his heartbeat. Now there is silence. I don't think you're the same thing. You're something more than pure magic with no heart."

But that's not true at all. Calling the Singularity a rock is like calling a ley line an old dirt road. Like calling Lindenmere a bunch of trees. All of them have a heartbeat of their own, though he understands how difficult it can be to hear it. He couldn't do it, either, for the longest time.

"That's not... silence," Ronan begins slowly. "If someone's screaming at you in this room, you're not going to hear someone trying to talk to you from the other side of the door. It's not that he's too far. It's too loud. And you can't tell because you're part of it now."

That finally makes Rhy raise his head. Tentatively, blinking at Ronan like he's too bright.

"...what?"

This would be so much easier to explain if he could compare it to radio or satellite, but Ronan's pretty sure that would only confuse Rhy even more.

"The Singularity's more powerful than your brother," he says, "so it's drowning out everything you're used to feeling. And you think it's silence because, you know, fish don't notice they're wet when they're in the middle of the ocean."

This is possibly the best news Rhy has gotten in weeks. He stares at Ronan with his mouth half-open, everything he'd taken for granted recently suddenly brought back out again to re-examine. All he'd talked about with Stephen. That awful, vicious little whisper constantly in the back of his head reminding him that Kell is probably dead and he's just a stubborn fool not to realize that the most obvious truth is the most likely one--

Rhy breathes in sharply, smothering the voice with this new possibility until it can't reach past it for air.

Then, something else occurs to him. The relief falters.

He sits up on his own a bit more, grabbing Ronan's arm.

"What about him? If it's as you say-- how would this feel to him?"

"No idea," Ronan answers honestly. "Anything I make only takes from me. I don't get anything back. Not even a feeling."

A very rude psychic once compared them to nail clippings: made up of his stuff, yet separate from him. But he's not sure about that. He's not sure about anything. It's very hard to tell where things begin or end anymore.

"He might not have even noticed you're gone yet. Time moves different in all worlds. Sometimes in the same world. Sometimes it doesn't even move, it just sits still or plays over and over. Hell, I've seen it go backwards."

Rhy shakes his head, uncertain.

"He feels what I feel. Same as I feel what he does. At least-- that is the way it was, before I came here."

If time itself moves differently, on top of everything else, Rhy is more lost than ever. Time didn't move differently in the worlds Kell visited, after all. But none of those places had been here.

"There's something else." And this is something he's never spoken aloud, as if keeping it inside might make it somehow not real. He speaks it into existence now, not sure if he'll regret it. "Right before I was pulled out of that pool into this place, something happened. I- I do not know what, exactly, but Kell was upset. He... left. I tried to follow him, and then-- there was pain. It hurt so badly, like I was dying again, like everything inside me was on fire. It hurt so bad I couldn't breathe-- and then I was here."

He meets Ronan's gaze, searching for an answers neither of them could possibly have.

"I thought, perhaps, the summoning had severed or damaged our connection."

It isn't fair to put Ronan in this position, probably. But Ronan knows far more than Rhy does, and he desperately needs an answer, even if that answer is only a theory or even a lie.

"If he dies, I die," he explains softly.

"But if I die, he is free."

Ronan remains unshaken. He's been wrestling with questions like these all his life, and Rhy isn't currently dying in his arms, so there's no point in scrambling for answers.

"'Free'?" he echoes skeptically. "It wasn't an accident, right? What he did to save you."

It had taken so much from Ronan to restore just a single human life. He'd had to sacrifice the thing he loved most in all the world, holding all that intention in his mind and bending reality to obey him. There's a different sacrifice at play with Rhy, but the intention had to have been just as strong. Unwavering.

"Anyone who does that kind of magic has to know what the price is," Ronan continues, running a caress down Rhy's cheek, "and he decided to do it anyway."

Who wouldn't? Ronan barely knows him, but he could see himself making the same sacrifice for Rhy, because a person like him deserves to exist in the world for as long as he can. There's so much about him that's just like the boy Ronan gave everything to save.

"But even if he does regret it enough to wish he was free or whatever, that's too fucking bad for him, because he already decided to be responsible for keeping you alive. It's a no-takebacks situation, and —" He has to stress this by prodding gently at Rhy's chest with his index finger, pointing right at his beating heart. "— you're still here."

Not an accident, no -- of that much, Rhy is sure. The rest? He still does not know. Kell tells him one thing and feels another. He doesn't mean to, but Rhy knows now. They both know.

Rhy starts, blinking down at Ronan's finger a moment when he's poked in the chest. His hand takes it, holding Ronan's palm in his. The things that crawl out of the darkest corners of his mind are words he's never spoken to anyone. There was no one he could turn to with such things back home, where everyone he could have talked to knew Kell and had an opinion that would color what he says now. Ronan is someone completely unrelated, and yet not so unversed in what Rhy is talking about that it feels like he's turning to a wall for empathy.

"The power wasn't his," Rhy sighs, looking down at their hands. "He did not know what he was doing. He only knew he did not want to let me go."

"That's usually how it goes."

Ronan, too, looks at their joined hands, and for a moment his thoughts drift to another life entirely. The corner of his mouth tugs into a frown. He doesn't want the conversation to drift in this direction, where all of his secrets are hiding, but there's a chance he can help Rhy understand.

"When you bargain with magic like that, it's beyond ritual. It's not about knowing what you're doing. Everything in you just screams for what you want and you offer up what you're willing to pay for it. It's simple until it's not."

"I know."

Rhy has to wonder if Ronan is speaking from experience too. But he is selfish (or maybe he is merciful), and he does not ask.

"I know he didn't do it on purpose. I know he didn't neglect to ask me out of a neglect for me. He couldn't have. Besides, even if I'd been around to answer -- I'd have said yes. Of course I would. I didn't want to die, Ronan. I don't want to die."

He squeezes Ronan's fingers, and leans forward to rest his forehead on Ronan's shoulder once again. Voice barely a whisper, laden with grief and shame.

"But now, it is so very difficult to live."

"Yeah," Ronan sighs sympathetically. He brings Rhy's knuckles to his mouth and kisses them. There are no words to ease that kind of pain, waking up every day feeling emptier. Loneliness is a black hole. It's infinite. Everything falls into it and it just keeps taking more.

There's a reason the very first thing Ronan did in this world was seek out a replacement for what he'd lost. Of course, Rhy's doing the very same, isn't he?

"You know what's weird about being what I am?" he muses, his lips grazing along Rhy's fingers. "I get stronger the more people need me. There's nothing to feel bad about when you take something from me."

Rhy stays as he is, closing his eyes, half-curled in Ronan's lap in a way that has made his legs stiff by now and yet leaves him utterly unwilling to move. When he shakes his head minutely, Ronan will feel it, the hint of a motion quickly subdued.

He sighs too.

"The last thing I want to do is take anything from you."

"Then I have one less reason to exist."

Luckily, Ronan doesn't think Rhy means that. He would have gotten up and left the room already if he meant that.

"It's not a metaphor. If everyone decided they didn't want anything from me anymore, I'd die."

It is very slowly, finally dawning on Rhy there are probably many things Ronan says that are not a metaphor. His head snaps up, startled, almost scared. His lashes are damp.

"No. That isn't what I meant. I want you to exist."

It's not that he thinks Ronan is literally in danger of vanishing before his eyes, and yet it slips out anyway, hurriedly, with a childish defiance. Hands gripping Ronan's shoulders, Rhy pulls himself up. It is a little more awkward than he anticipated, trying to rearrange his limbs.

"Whatever you wish to give me, I'll accept. Or do you need me to ask? How does it work?"

He has so much to learn. Rhy manages to straddle Ronan's lap with a leg on either side, folded with knees on the bed.

"I am a quick student."

That reaction surprises Ronan so much, he nearly laughs. As Rhy sits up, Ronan helps him settle into a more comfortable position, one hand bracing his back and the other gripping his thigh.

"First of all, don't panic," he chides.

Nightwash is an awfully dramatic and drawn-out way to die. It would be ugly. It would take hours. Ronan doesn't even have to describe it, because if it ever happens, Rhy will know exactly what he's looking at.

"You don't have to ask for anything if you don't want to. I just want you to know you don't have to feel bad when you do."

Rhy flushes, feeling monumentally silly at his outburst. He'd been afraid that Ronan misunderstood him, and the last thing he wants is for Ronan to think he doesn't want him, doesn't wish to make him happy and feel useful.

His head tips forward, forehead pressed against Ronan's, fingers squeezing his shoulders gently.

"I want to be close to you. I want to know more about you. I want to spend time with you. But as for things that you can give me-- well, I can't say I dislike gifts of any sort. Make me anything you like. And if I need for something, I'll ask, without guilt. Deal?"

"Deal."

Ronan runs a soothing hand up and down Rhy's thigh, pulling him closer and working at the muscle as if that alone can massage away the last of Rhy's tension. Nuzzling nose-to-nose, a smile briefly softens his mouth before he tilts his head to press a tender kiss to Rhy's lips.

All he wants to do is make Rhy feel whole again, the way he wishes someone had been there to make him less empty, when he was trapped and alone.

He is so sweet like this. Gentle, attentive. They are too close, nose to nose, for Rhy to really see the smile, but he senses it, feels the way Ronan's face moves, glimpses the edge of it; it chases out a smile of his own, a little tentative, but hopeful.

Rhy slides his arms up, propping them straight over Ronan's shoulders and lacing his fingers loosely a few inches behind his head.

The kiss is soft and grateful, almost chaste.

"You're sure we can keep doing this?" he whispers after a few moments, reluctant to pull away, but a little afraid to keep going.

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