sixthiterationlogs | [OTA] if you save your soul you will think you're happy now

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[OTA] if you save your soul you will think you're happy now

WHO: Jude Sullivan
WHERE: 6I Canyon and village; The Inn
WHEN: November 19
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Mentions of death/hallucinations in reference to his arrival.

the village

Clary had taken her sketches with her, but not the memory of them, or the conversation. Bad enough for the snows to drift in, bad enough for the feast to set him forward or back in time. Something about the winter air usually made him better. Clear, crisp. Solitude was easy, the mountains seemed to disappear beneath it--and all their spectres, their sulfur vents. Charlie made idle warnings of sinkholes, and Jude wandered out with barely a wave.

Before he got his license he'd walk out of the park into the woods, snow up to his thighs, a sweater under his denim jacket and a scarf on his shoulders. On clear nights with teal skies he'd be the only soft sound beneath trees cracking from ice, and he'd walk a spiral of the valley--daring the ground to swallow him.

No one talks about it, but between the hot spring and earthquakes, the ground here might be just as unpredictable.

Two days in the house proves too much: he finds an early morning lull in which to wander. The trees and snow groan, ice and wood crack, branches fall under the weight of icicles. The cave to the west that he'd crawled out of after the quake has a mouth of clear teeth, and the river pushes displaced ice into piles around the rocks. Jude walks the length of it, deciding at its end between a trek of the western wall, or heading back.

He doesn't want to go home. Even when he isn't sleeping now, something seems to sit on his chest, follow him room to room. He follows the sound of scratching in the walls, breath steaming in the bedrooms he's never used, closets investigated with wooden fingers. When he sleeps, he's back in the valley: the truck is idling out behind him, its front end folded up against the tree, smoke slipping under the hood. His steps go side to side, blood is hot down the side of his face. Footsteps crunch the snow, he lurches along as the ground slopes beneath it. He had to get out of the dorm, he had to get away from the people without faces, knocking at the door. He drove home, he crashed the truck, he walked into town.

When he looks at his hands in the dream, they're cut at the palms and bloody, and the shadows on snow are bodies hanging in bare branches--

So he leaves the house, he walks. He proves to himself that here and now, the trees are clear. His head is in one piece, his hands are clean. And if he falls into a sinkhole, at least he won't have to remember what he's left behind.

the inn

The weather decides him: spotty rain begins to fall, ushering him back toward the village. He doesn't want to go home, but he doesn't have to--there's a fire and company at the inn, and he knows he needs that. Fire, dry, something to eat--but also people. Something by which to measure his own sanity, someone to keep him out of his head.

He'd tried it the other way at school. That dorm would have killed him, he's sure of it. Half a semester without a roommate and he'd covered that side of the room in paper and ink, manifested the eyes he could feel on him. Manifested the teeth.

The dining room in his house isn't covered in teeth. It's just trees, over and over. The slope in winter, bare branches and shadows. He puts them up then he takes them down, afraid of looking up one day and seeing something between them.

By the time he gets to the inn doors, he's soaked through; he should have come straight here while the weather held. Another icy shower puts a shine back on the encrusted village, and all he can do is lean his weight into closing the door, denim and wool hanging heavy and dark from his frame. Jude sways a couple of steps to the right, then left, struggling out of his clothes until he's carrying a coat in one hand, jacket in the other, and aiming for the kitchen.

It's fine: everything is fine. He grits his teeth against a shiver and hangs his first two layers over the nearest chairs to the door, carrying on in until he's out of a sweater and using it to dry his hair, grateful for the fire already started in the grate.

[It's the last day of the ice storm; feel free to meet Jude out early between rain/sleet showers, or at the inn after he's been caught in one. He's starting to remember his arrival point and generally having a bad time, but it's not a bad time to meet him.]

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When Bodhi returns, Jude has one leg crossed over, ankle to knee. His fingers idly peel flakes of blood from his skin, and his gaze is somewhat empty, trained on the fire. At some point he'd left his clothes drying in the kitchen and installed himself at the proper fireplace in the other room, and left long enough, he might fall asleep there.

His other hand holds back the fall of his hair from one side, supporting his head with the elbow on the arm of the chair.

From across the room, he looks bored. Closer, he looks unspeakably tired. In this much, he could be mistaken for Charlie's actual blood. The wood smoke doesn't smell anything like the truck, or the town, and he presses that fact against the low ache in his jaw. He's been grinding his teeth in his idling moments, not realizing.

Bodhi's voice brings him back, and he unfolds - less like a new tree and more like bare branches shrugging off the weight of snow. "It should be fine," he agrees, shifting his knee in to hang his injured leg over it. "I'll keep it clean." Assuming the we is for something after, he holds out his hand for the wash rag.

Bodhi just looks at him for a second, taking in that achy, bone-deep tiredness. He doesn't think it's just the cold. He... He should ask. He will, once the physical needs are seen to. However much he'd prefer curling up and letting Jude fall asleep on him and making sure there was warmth and security enough to last out the night. Those needs are so much simpler.

At least he has to deal with this first. Too wrapped up in psyching himself up to upset both their comfort with potentially important questions, he misses Jude's hand and goes ahead and drops to one knee. This isn't even a gesture particularly meant for Jude. He'd be quite willing to lend anyone his limited first aid skills. "It's--it doesn't look too deep. Um, I think. I'll... try and keep from stinging?"

"It's fine." It's fine; it should be fine; I'm fine; I will be fine. It's almost its own language: the language of the fog, maintained for years. The world can be blurry, and that's far better than the things he sees when it leaps into bright focus. Fine maintains the blur. It keeps people from putting him into focus either.

He shouldn't use it with Bodhi, probably. Jude honestly doesn't know what he should and shouldn't be doing. Bodhi drops and picks him up at the ankle, and there's a little spark in the dull roar of everything.

He thinks he should be on fire. Anything more than the dull curiosity of his free hand, wanting to reach out and tuck back the flyaway hair from Bodhi's rush to accommodate. Fine always drove Parker up a wall. Jude would be fine, and Parker would spit. He could get so angry over fine. Jude tries to say something else, just to stay awake. "I followed the river all the way to the wall, while it wasn't raining. The caves are all sheeted over with hanging ice. Maybe new things will crack open over the winter."

Bodhi is fluent in fine, doesn't generally challenge it if he can possibly help it. He still feels he should, and Jude was talking about the cut, not... other things. It's still a warning sign that he might be pushing against something.

He's definitely pleased to just talk about the caves while he works. He's efficient about it, at least, and he can't help being gentle, shy as he is about any contact. He nods while he cleans the cut. "Once it's a little safer underfoot, we... could go take a look?" He wouldn't blame Jude for never wanting to set foot outside again, but if the cave-in didn't stop him... Bodhi quirks a slight smile. Jude's brave. He knows that. It doesn't make him feel great about his own cowardice, but it makes him fluttery enough to more than make up for it.

"At the very least, we should see if it all cracks the same on both sides," he offers, knowing the symmetry of the canyons is of some interest to Bodhi. He doesn't know what his own interests are, here: they're coming in slowly, trying to anchor him. Need over want, that's how winter goes.

He can't just put his head down and make paper forever.

"Maybe there are tools we could make." His voice is dried as a husk, prompting him to finally sit up, blink away the momentary dizziness of it, and pick up the tea. It doesn't matter what it tastes like: it's hot, it smooths the stone of his throat. "Prepare stuff while we're stuck, like torches, and there's a girl I think, makes rope."

Bodhi finishes cleaning up the cut and, rather than straightening, braces an elbox on the edge of Jude's chair and his chin in his hand and looks up at Jude with a slightly shaky smile. That sounds good in and of itself, even if he can't tell when Jude's indulging his weirdness and when it's actual mutual interest. The caves, at least, he thinks they're both drawn to, if for different reasons and with different baggage. More importantly right now, and what puts the tremor in his smile, the firmer tone suggests Jude's feeling a bit more steady. A good thing, but maybe a fragile one. "It's a good idea. Rope's good for simple surveys, and, well, now I'd have something to write on." Though using paper for field notes seems rather decadent.

If Jude would count anything of himself as fragile, it would be his grasp on what's going on at any given moment, or what the future should hold. Perhaps that's his reason to so clearly avoid them, until it stops being possible. He has a few tics when the things on his mind are weighing too heavily - especially the things he puts very far back and tries not to think about at all.

Grinding teeth, pushing his hair through a series of directions, rubbing his fingers over the back of his head. There's a scar there, that he doesn't remember finding before, and he runs his finger over it now.

"I made a journal for Credence," he says, softer than the rest. Why speak any louder, with Bodhi hovering so close? "I - well, I have it back now. You should use it."

There's a wound that's never healed. Too many people to fret about, too many worries and convictions of the certainty of the worst possible outcome. He never tried to work out how he felt about Credence's loss, the disappearance of someone as dead as he was. It just became a dull ache behind everything else. And that part, at least, he can't bring up to Jude.

Not that he wants to make anything worse. Bodhi shifts inward a little so he's leaning lightly against Jude's thigh. No weight on it, just closer. "I..." He wants to say we should save it in case he comes back, but that's sharing bitterly false hope around. He just privately resolves tht he'll help Jude with a second one if the chance should arise. "If you think--I guess it'd be a good use." He doesn't remember any reason to think Credence cared about the makeup of the place, but he certainly had opinions about the big picture.

Jude doesn't know what would or wouldn't be a good use; he'd give it to Jax, probably. "I don't think it should go to waste, or that he'd want it to," is as much as he knows. He wonders why he hasn't made Bodhi a journal of his own, except for never thinking the man had a use for it. Jax wrote home, Credence liked books, Sam drew. But Bodhi has been helping him make paper for months now, right up until he'd shut the whole thing down for the winter.

There's clearly some weight to it, the way Bodhi shifts and needs a second shot at the words. Jude drops the hand from his own hair, and finally, with his hand approaching well within Bodhi's view, he reaches for the curl of hair escaped from the sweep of long strands at the crown of Bodhi's head. It's an echo of what started this off, a simple and fond gesture he wishes could make up for everything that's happened since. "Here," he adds, his other hand offering down the mug. "You were out in it too."

There's a little strength back in him - from the tea, from the sting of the rag over his shin. It feels like there might be some kind of rest at the end of this, a promise his body is willing to push toward.

"I was out in it for five minutes with the dog," Bodhi mutters semi-intelligibly, taking the tea immediately whatever he says. It's hard to talk around residual shivers. Jude's fingers fixing his hair can't help but be important on its own, and he loves that sensation, has always melted at that kind of attention. And yet it's absolutely the kind of thing he needs to know is coming, needs to be ready for. It's so kriffing unfair that his days in Saw's dungeons intrude this way on something that should be for them.

The worst thing is he could probably say I love it when you do that but catch me at the wrong time and I might curl up in a ball and forget where I am to Jude and receive... Well, whatever the best possible response to that would be. Bodhi never knows what that is until Jude gives it to him.

He'd rather just share a sip of the tea. That's fast becoming a habit and an uncomplicated one at that. He hands it back after a quick pull, though it would be tempting to linger. Jude needs it more. "When you've eaten, um, we can figure out someplace for you to get some sleep."

Having approached with such caution all this time, Jude doesn't actually know what he's being cautious of. Life is usually a trial and error, a long adolescent exploration. How long he can be out in the cold, how long he doesn't have to get up from his canvas, what raw plant pulp does to his hands over time. Nothing's quite come along to tell him no one cares if he holds Bodhi's hand in front of the whole damn village - or what happens when he holds it the wrong way, at the wrong time.

He's much likelier to fuck up while talking, which is a different kind of bad. That's always an uneasy silence that feels like a mutual sinking into tar.

And yet he knows, from observation, how he might approach Bodhi physically. A lot of it is just waiting for Bodhi to approach him, then trying to read the mood. Trying things the smallest bit at a time: finger to chin, a very slow and steady reach for a strand of hair. Tipping his head in when Bodhi kisses him, to see if it's alright to keep going.

Even if, hearing something like the shiver in Bodhi's voice, he wants to slide down his chair and make Bodhi the place to sleep, both of them buried under a blanket by the fire. He settles for shrugging the blanket off his arms to wrap around Bodhi's shoulders, dropping the corners into his hands without a brush of his hand.

"I'll just find a room upstairs," he says. "I don't feel like fighting my way home just to do this again."

He doesn't immediately push back the blanket, though he feels like he should. He'll get Jude back under a blanket soon, he's sure. "Kriff, no, don't walk home. I'm closer." He stops and considers. Even the quick walk between the inn and the door of Kira's project house is cold and wet. And he's less than sure about whether Jude would want to follow him back. He's not in a hurry to risk that no, either. "But. Um. I'm sure they have a spot here. Do... Do you want me to stay?" That's an easier no, if it comes. Not wanting company, just wanting sleep instead, that's totally reasonable.

He hopes it's yes, though. He was restless enough to walk into an ice storm to relieve the pressure. And now he's worried about something specific and important and not just the yawning chasm under his fragile sanity. No way he does anything useful tonight back where he belongs. At least he can look after Jude.

Thoughts about shared blankets may be stirring in his head, too.

"They're big enough rooms," he says by way of a yes. The tea gets handed back to Bodhi, but this time it's to free his hands, and to make sure they both have something warm while he dips his bread in the stew and tears a piece off with his teeth. "Aurora can stay too."

After his bite of bread, he divides the remaining piece into halves, dipped in the savory broth before being distributed between man and dog alike. The stew he eats, sparing only a few bits of meat for Aurora.

He almost feels like a person again, when he's done. "Thank you," he says again. There are a lot of things to say it for today.

Bodhi watches him a moment and then straightens to lean against the chair and drape half the blanket over Jude. He's... not upset, exactly, but not pleased by they're big enough rooms. There's only himself to blame, making Jude treat him like he's made of spun glass, making it hard to make it clear that he wants something. And then there's the fact that what he wants is probably weird itself, staying through the night with no particular hopes but closeness and making sure Jude's okay. Maybe it'll work. He just hates the hole he's put himself in sometimes.

He only spends a few moments brooding, though, glad to let Jude and Aurora distract him. He watches quietly, and when Jude thanks him he reaches over to rest a hand on his shoulder. Which turns into brushing fingers against his hair somehow. Oh, well. He skips explaining that he didn't do anything, really.

Can't stall anymore, not honestly. "Are you... You're welcome, but--Are you okay? Besides... besides the cold..."

The last time Bodhi spent the night, he sat in a corner while Jude dozed on the couch, fitfully trying to tend the fire through the night and make sure Bodhi hadn't wandered off into the cold and dark again. He doesn't know there's any other intent this time, though the setting improves his chance of real sleep. Not that rattling house full of empty rooms. Someone else to watch the fire, a furnace keeping the upper level warm.

It isn't Bodhi's fault that he doesn't usually sleep. Jude can't imagine the caution is in any way Bodhi's fault either. There have been times he's tried to puzzle out the reason, but he backs off of those thoughts as readily as he does his considerations of the specimen room.

Bodhi's never offered a reason, and Jude is a little afraid to ask.

He likes that Bodhi is asking, though. Not as much as he likes Bodhi's fingers in his hair: it softens up his face, makes him blink a few times. Instinctively ready for a kiss, not a question, and he drops his gaze between them as he recovers. Instinct also says to give Bodhi another I'm fine, but Jude finds himself already shaking his head. He stops, caught between what would be an obvious lie, and wanting to do it anyway. He likes to be honest, if he's going to say anything at all, but he has always lied about this. Lifting his head back up, his eyes don't quite make the journey. "I'm - "

He is okay: he's indoors, he's got food and all of his limbs intact. The truth beyond that sets his heart crawling up to his throat. "Not here." An answer, in an obtuse way, but also a request. "Can we go upstairs first?"

Bodhi expected a polite lie, most likely, and he'd have accepted that. If not another fine, an active refusal to talk about it would have made sense. Even a to the point answer wouldn't have surprised him. That soft little request, though, that takes him aback a bit. He didn't expect to be handed that vulnerability so easily. He can't really think he's earned it, but damned if he won't do his best to deserve the trust.

(And Jude looks so kriffing young like that, softened and weary and unsure. Not because of the years between them--though there are those, just enough to make Bodhi a little nervous if he thinks about them--but young in a way Bodhi was, say, six months before he got here. Not the difference between twenty-one and twenty-six, something much harder to pin down but easy to spot in unexpected shadows.)

Bodhi strokes his hair more deliberately and leans in to deliver the anticipated kiss a bit belatedly, lingering but even gentler than the last. Another promise. One he could define this time. "Y-yeah. Let's go." He can come down and clean up the cup and bowl later, when Jude's asleep.

Once they're upstairs he'll have to carry on whatever impulse made him say that instead of no, I'm fine, and the lump in his chest almost starts to buzz. All of him wants to close up around it and go the conversational version of limp. Utterly uninteresting until the attention passes, and it's safe again.

But it's Bodhi, pressing as close as he ever dares, the tips of his fingers touching just behind Jude's ear. He barely kisses back this time, knotted as he is with a new anxiety, but he doesn't take it back.

Jude finishes pulling on fresh socks and pads upstairs after him: he doesn't think anyone would take his clothes, or misunderstand why they've been left by the fire. In a moment that isn't quite stalling, just finding something to ground in and shake off his nerves, he crouches to let Aurora lick his chin, rubbing at her ears. She's coming too, and maybe if Bodhi decides to sit in a corner, she'll lay back to back with him for awhile. Easier to achieve when your bed is cushions on a floor, but he'd seen through an open door a few times, her piled on top of her owner.

He almost starts it in the hall, but a door opens, someone filing past to the bathroom, and he waits until they're shutting the door on an empty room at the very end. "Sorry," he says, to have pulled them away from the fire. One hand holds up the oversized jeans, pinching the waistband against his hip. "It's just - it's like the memory thing. I don't like to talk about it." Even that was months ago, and not really mentioned since. It hasn't been as bad here. It's been so not bad that he's started to remember, and that's the problem.

Bodhi considers a moment and nods. He's almost as tempted as Jude to let it go. They'd almost certainly both be more comfortable. Jude is exhausted, slightly injured, too cold still, or so says Bodhi's worries. Taking on more trouble is asking for it to go wrong. But most of the world seems to agree--unfathomably--that problems should be talked about. Unburdening a secret is something he can understand, at least in theory.

"You don't have to," he says carefully, trying to keep his voice very even and not seem to demand either way. "But." He stops for a moment to take Jude's wrist and, well, to lean a bit in the direction of the bed. He's not deciding anything for Jude right now. "You can. You... Um, you can t-tell me anything you want to." A risk. Telling goes well with asking. But if this is even a little helpful to Jude, he's happy to listen. "Good listener" is one of the good points former flames might refer to.

Bodhi sounds as nervous as Jude is, which - he isn't sure how to feel about, pushes aside feeling anything about at all. If he takes on anything else he's going to shut down. Instead, he lets himself be led to a bed, and leans himself into sitting against its edge.

Aurora follows, clamboring up and settling at his back like it's why she even made the trek here: warm people to stick to.

Jude hopes Bodhi won't let go, but he makes no attempt to shift the grip and link their hands. A rejection, if only from Bodhi's nerves, would be too much right now. "I don't really know how, to talk about it," he says. "I just. It's winter, again." Rubbing a free hand up his face, he wears his exhaustion plainly. "I'm starting to remember things, and I wish I wasn't. Things about - before I got here."

Bodhi moves with him as seamlessly as he can, grateful to Aurora for leading the way. He doesn't want to make a ripple to push Jude along. He can't help projecting a little (though he can't imagine himself agreeing to as much as this anyway), and it'd be horribly easy to make him feel trapped and hunted at a time like this.

Once Jude's on the bed and talking, though, once the decision seems to be made, he shifts gears a little. And takes a calculated risk. He sits on the edge of the bed with Jude--that part's easy. And, steeling himself, wraps an arm loosely around his shoulders, resting gently as possible, ready to move away at a moment's notice. It's the closest they've been. Jude dozing on him with their arms twined together was the next best, and he was fine with that. It was his own head that chased him out of that room, not the contact. And this, well, he initiated it, it's his arm on Jude, nothing that could possibly make Bodhi feel trapped or invaded. It was still a risk, but it pays off. He's fine.

Which leaves not much energy for figuring out what to say. Which is probably fine, because what would you say to that? He knows a little about not remembering--projecting again, but sometimes that feels worse than the things he is sure of. That doesn't mean getting them back would help. "I, um, whatever... helps you to say? Or you want me to know? Both, either, I don't know..."

"I don't know either," he admits.

It isn't supposed to be this. A canyon, a hole in his head starting to fill back up. Two holes, the crack of the car and the crack of - something else. Parker's voice, over and over. Hey Jude. Like a joke. He almost gets angry, sometimes, putting the pieces together. He's never been properly angry at Parker. He's never been so far away, held against someone's side, trying to find the words. It's all too new for him to know - he should want Bodhi to know him better, and he should know Bodhi better.

Why did Clary have to make it real, in a way he's refused to let it be?

A lance of pain behind his brow bows his head, hides him in his hair while he grits his teeth until it stops. It doesn't have to be a fit, he's so tired. It could just be a headache, but he's terrified it isn't, and he's so tired of being terrified on his own. He wants to cry as fiercely as he absolutely does not, and there's a compromise in the way he turns his head to Bodhi's shoulder, rests it, sighs rough.

"I'm - scared," he says, quiet as he can and still give it a voice. He doesn't know if he's put those words together in the last decade, no matter how much he's felt it. "Something horrible happened, something so horrible I forgot. I don't want to remember. I don't want to know."

Bodhi listens silently, distressed by the information and it's delivery. Jude's quiet doesn't usually take this form, uncertain and halting, looking for words that may not be there. That sounds like, well, bodhi. He hopes Jude doesn't feel like this every time he gets lost in his own sentences. Probably not. It'd be exhausting. Bodhi breaks down over everything. Jude's the brave one.

He turns a bit where he sits, grip on Jude's shoulder tightening, twisting so he can run his other hand through the soft hair falling against him. Of course. Wasn't brave enough to do this before now. "That's... It's okay. Not--I don't mean whatever happened. I mean..." This is Jude he's talking to. Not afraid of earthquakes Jude. "That's something to be scared of. Go ahead and be. And... I'll be right here." For whatever that's worth.

There's a bitter crack of a feeling, as if through very thick glass: why is he remembering, when everyone else seems to forget? Blood in the snow, men hanging in the trees. That can't be real, there's no reason for it. He turned the truck off the road and drove it right down the slope, clipped by trees until one crunched it to a halt. Why had he turned? In his sketchbook there's a rough drawing of antlers out of a skull, or there was: he's torn it out and fed it into the fire every time.

He almost touches the shape of it, the throb behind his eye picking up its pace until it all blanks out. Not even fog, just a white space, Jude limp under Bodhi's hands for a minute that stretches on.

With a sharp inhale, he's back. A small fit, then: his head hurts in a general way, and he didn't shake, and he didn't cry. He's right where he remembers - being held, being told it's alright. Bad days don't usually resolve themselves into this, and he doesn't clutch Bodhi so much as a fold of his shirt, his grip hanging the fabric with the weight of his hand. "Sorry," he says, fuzzy and reflexive at the end of blanking out. He sniffs, more for his brush with the cold than anything else, and eventually his other arm slings carefully along the back of Bodhi's waist. Indirect holds, with a little more of his weight leaning center.

"Is this okay" feels like such a horrible thing to ask, need to ask, when all he wants is to tighten his arms and sink. He doesn't know if he wants to talk about it, if he can even properly explain - but he wants to hold on. If he has to think of it at all, and lose himself, and have his fits and headaches, he just wants this too.

Bodhi is only a little disturbed by the long silence and Jude's unresponsive state. He's seen it happen without knowing what he's seeing. Still doesn't. Doesn't care much, either. ...No, that's wrong. He worries, but he won't pry, and staying here quietly and waiting is no trouble at all.

He almost tells Jude not to be sorry, but coming from him that would be rich. He just gives the narrow shoulders under his arm a bit of a squeeze. It's a very pleasant surprise that he can hold Jude like this so easily. Being the one making the decision, physically being the one doing the enclosing, that's much more possible than he'd have guessed.

Which makes it really sting when he has to set his jaw to keep still and quiet when Jude hugs him back. Karking hell. The sick swoop in his belly and the crawling sensation in his skin... if this were anyone else he'd yank away before he finished his next breath. For Jude he can keep still. Jude needs him. Worth it.

He can't answer and clench his jaw at the same time, so he hesitates a moment, trying to bury everything, and dares himself to make it worse. He has to do this. A slow inhale, and he pulls Jude closer rather than let himself pull away. And presses his nose into the silky hair he loves to watch as it falls. Breathes in woodsmoke and cold wind and the brave, handsome boy who's too good for him. "It's okay." He only sounds a little strained. Hopefully Jude can't tell he's talking to both of them.

There's strain to hear and stiffness to feel, the back at his arm, the shoulder at his cheek. But Jude wants to take Bodhi at his word if it means he doesn't have to pull away. He wants to tell Bodhi that it's fine, that if he can't he should just let go - but he doesn't want to know in this moment that Bodhi can't. He doesn't want Bodhi to pull away.

It isn't fair, but it's the way it is. Comfort is a thing to take, and it isn't so easy a thing for everyone to give.

That gets him through the first moment. The second, he thinks: maybe if he just does it, and the world doesn't collapse around them, Bodhi won't mind it. After that, he just feels rotten. If he needs something to hold onto, the dog is behind them, there are pillows at the top of the bed. Why is a kiss so much easier than this?

He doesn't ask. He just relaxes his hold until he can pull his hands back into his lap, folding them there. It leaves him leaned into Bodhi's shoulder, and there's nothing wrong with that - it's better than he hoped to get. "You don't have to make yourself."

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