[Somewhere in the background, unseen, Lance says: Lesson one: the buddy system. Giorno's fingers reach out and touch a cold throat with no pulse. Again: Lesson one: the buddy system. Backwards, time skipping, a bottomless gash in a place that shouldn't be open like that, hands deep in guts, cooling, freezing. Lesson one: the buddy system.]
[Bruno's hand jerks up, out of the middle of it. The emptiness. The wrongness. Fingers curl around Giorno's wrist, gentle. He lifts his head, parts his lips, speaks: It's important to know when it's time to let go, Giorno--except it's Miles's voice tripping out of time with the movement of Bruno's mouth.]
[It makes him scream--loud in the dream, a soft and thin wail in the waking world--as he tries to back away, to flee, only to find himself trapped twofold. Something with rows of cold teeth holds his wrist in the hole in Bruno's abdomen as a cold leather-gloved hand wraps fingers around his throat. If you speak to me again in this manner--time skips forward--you will tell me why this bothers you so much--reset--for the sake of friendship.]
[Giorno is crying soundless tears. Bruno's head rests on the pavement again, but his eyes are focused on Giorno, and alive. His lips don't move, but You are a disappointment sounds in Giorno's ears, clear as day.]
[In the waking world, there is a breathy nononono, barely audible, as Giorno struggles against nothing.]
[Fugo isn't sleeping. Not really. He's drifting, hazy, clinging with his toes to the knife's edge between one state of consciousness and the next; too tired to think but unwilling to let go and let himself sleep, bothered by the lamp that lights up his corner of the alcove that he can't sleep without. He's not sleeping but he is resting, because a few hours ago Giorno settled down to go to sleep, so Fugo sighed and put his book aside and decided to give sleeping the good college try.
The soft sounds sounds of Giorno's distress don't wake him. They drift through his own unhappy, unfocused thoughts as they stitch themselves together to become his usual unhappy dreams; his eyes crack open and he winces at the light, straining to focus on what he might have heard so he can determine if it's a real thing or something conjured up from his own shitty subconscious. Quickly, he realizes it's very real: moreover, it's coming from Giorno.]
[Fugo doesn't think, doesn't worry about what he should do. He pushes aside his blankets and sheets and makes the journey from his corner of the loft to Giorno's, settling next to where he's drawn himself into a ball of misery and fear. When his dreams are bad, often he'll wake to Giorno's arms already wrapped around his painfully tight shoulders, gently pulling him out of the nightmare by calling his name.]
Giogio, [he murmurs, calling out to Giorno with a voice fuzzy with almost-sleep.] Giorno. I'm here with you.
[He continues to talk, not needing to or making much sense. He reaches out to touch Giorno very carefully, drawing slow circles with his palm over the knots in Giorno's shoulder.]
[The first change is the way the mattress dips. He feels a sudden imbalance that cuts through his dream, making him feel just for an instant that he's falling. He whimpers, frightened, but not for long; the next thing that filters through is a familiar smell, ink and paper and old books and laundry and the lingering memory of the ocean.]
[After that, he knows who it is, even if he doesn't know. He can't be scared anymore--not just isn't, but can't be. It's impossible.]
[There's a touch to his shoulder, and he turns towards the voice. Not quite awake yet, he furrows his brow a little, reaching out blindly over his shoulder for the front of Fugo's shirt. He says something, but it's not really words; it's a plea for comfort from a more primal, childish, fearful place, and he's still too stuck in his dream to censor it.]
[Giorno cries out and reaches for him like a little child. One of Fugo's hands twitches down to Giorno's, to pull him off so he can help him up and out of the rest of the nightmare-- and then stops, frozen in the air by an unbidden memory of silk crinkling under his palms and cool, smooth fingers firmly pulling his hands off by the wrists.
Can someone take him? His mother's voice, distant and annoyed. She hadn't even looked at him; just over her shoulder, calling to an unseen servant. We're going to be late.]
[Where did that even come form. It was so long ago. And doesn't really matter. Why did he even bother to remember it. Why can't he just let useless things go.]
[Instead of pulling Giorno up, Fugo pulls up one corner of his blankets and settles down with him. He gingerly puts an arm around Giorno's shoulders and continues to rub his back and quietly call his name.]
1. Oh, well. I will. Think about it? For now please don't use it in front of others.
Speaking of nicknames. Is it ... okay? To use Giogio here, when it's not just us. Or would you prefer Giorno. 2. That's ... a little less ominous. I guess. I've done movie nights before. 3. Except for this part. I can understand wanting you to come but why me? I'm not very fun. Especially for movie nights.
[Not that early, comparatively. Later than when he likes to get up--when they like to get up. It's--he should've been up a while ago. To get things done. To get his day started. He should've.]
[He's dragging Fugo down again.]
[And yet, here he lies again, stewing drowsily in his own upset. He's got a thousand things buzzing around in his mind: how back home, Mista and Trish are suffering this anniversary on their own, never mind that time probably doesn't pass right there. How worried he still is about Mettaton after that conversation, despite everything. How awful this bed is, how strange this place is, how jarring it is to be here instead of in Oska or something sort of normal. Or home. How much he misses home, and hates that it's his birthday.]
[But in the end, he comes around to one crucial fact: Fugo didn't get to sleep last night until terribly late. So late, it was . . . was it four? Or was it later? He doesn't know, doesn't remember, and that in itself worries him. Fugo is so terribly haggard lately. Fugo needs something. Fugo needs--]
[Fugo needs rest, some botched and stifled instinct pipes up. So Giorno focuses all of his worries on that. On Fugo pushing himself too far, and needing to cut it out. On the pain of feeling like he was going to lose him in the mall. On not wanting to ever feel that again. On the thought, distant and fuzzy and fantastical as it seems, of seeing Fugo properly rested someday.]
[All of this is the collection of reasons why, when Fugo finally begins to stir, to frown in his sleep as his exhausted brain recognizes reluctantly that it's daytime; when Fugo opens his eyes and blinks and starts to move, Giorno tightens his grip around his waist and blinks up at him, tired and grumpy and sad but filled with Determination.]
[When Fugo comes stumbling out of a dream of balancing on the edge of a dock, unable to move forward or step back under the hot hot sun, he fights against a burden of weariness that threatens to send him back into it. He's so tired. But he's so sick of that dream, of when he was--
Of when he fucked everything up.]
[Getting up is a process, lately. Because Giorno has to be convinced to let him go. Some days it's easier than others. Okay, fine, he thinks, groggily, acknowledging that today isn't going to be an easy day.]
Giogio, s'morning. Gotta get up. [He can tell because there is more light, warm and sunny and cheerfully pounding on his temples, in the room than there was when he finally passed out. He groggily reaches from around Giorno's shoulder to push at the grit in the corners of his eyes and, for the time being, obediently stops wiggling.] Five minutes. Okay?
[He starts low, Giorno aims high. They'll meet somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen to twenty minutes. They usually do.]
[That's how it goes, usually. They compromise. Usually that's fine. Usually Giorno doesn't mind compromising with Fugo, because--it's good, to give Fugo space to make his own decisions. Sometimes.]
[Not today, though. Today--]
No.
[Just a flat no. He shakes his head, eyes wide and earnest.]
You need to stay in bed today. You're going to make yourself sick.
No? [Fugo's eyebrows come together, the stubborn gesture at odds with the rest of his drowsy confusion. He's not awake enough for this to make sense.] I can't just stay in bed.
[Days in bed are reserved for being "really" sick, a nebulously charted out condition with a flexible definition. But it basically boils down to this: if he can still move, if he can function even a little, he's not sick enough to spend a day.]
[This text is a single picture. No text, no words at all. There's just this picture of a familiar face belonging to a familiar guard, the one Fugo pointed out during those weeks on Asterion, the one whose voice goes with the split lip and the bruise on Fugo's cheek.]
[The guard is bound and tucked in a corner of the maze where very little light reaches. The bindings are vines, if one looks very closely, the kind of vines that it would be a very bad idea to try and break unless you'd like to be broken in return. The guard is also looking rough, to be quite honest: bruises all over his face, one or two of them ring-shaped; split brows, split lips, crooked nose; blood down his cheeks, with the hint of a bootmark on one side.]
[He's obviously unconscious, probably concussed. There's a rose in his hair.]
[They return to Oska and sleep for days. That isn't so surprising. It's been months since either of them got a proper night's sleep, much less in a real bed; fatigue is wearing on them even more than normal, and normal for the type of people they've chosen to be is more draining than most people's worst crises. For the most part Giorno thrives on it, but only for so long. Something has to give.]
[It's consciousness, in this case. The combination of physical comfort and psychological security have them falling into bed together while Giorno still has one sock on and Fugo's tie is only half undone; the sleep hangover they experience when they finally wake up is grotesque and only solved by a great deal of aspirin and several glasses of water each. Then they fall asleep again.]
[The celebration, about which Giorno feels very ambiguous anyway, will have to wait a little while. He's exhausted; more than that, he needs the comfort of his own bed, their bed, the tiny patch of home they've made for themselves in an alien place. In the drifting in and out of sleep, Giorno quickly falls into the habit of making himself a physical barrier against the world for Fugo, a habit that was half-formed before Asterion in any case. Curled up with Fugo's back against his chest, he falls asleep with his face buried in Fugo's hair or shoulder or neck, one arm slung over his hip. Even in sleep, nothing will get past him to hurt this boy.]
[Fugo is a restless sleeper, though. He tosses and turns, and sometimes when he rolls away in his sleep Giorno's dreams grow ugly. There are stark images of Fugo in a dimly-lit hall of the prison, beaten and lifeless; of the lush greenery overlooking Fugo's corpse, ripped to bits by something enormous and unseen in the labyrinth; of Massimo Volpe with blood on his hands and before him, a smear on the ground, the leftovers of a boy who considered his life forfeit and so took it in his own hands to forfeit it, so he could save someone he cared for.]
[Inevitably, Giorno wakes with a start and sits up wild-eyed, searching for Fugo--who is always there. Fugo, his touchstone. Who he tries so hard not to watch in his sleep, because he knows it's weird, but Fugo whose breathing he needs to monitor, Fugo whose pale lashes make his breath catch in the tight space of his ribcage.]
[This can't go on. It's irresponsible. And is it fair? Once he's caught up on sleep, which happens long before Fugo catches up himself, he still can't bear to leave the room for too long in case Fugo wakes up and is frightened. Not to mention the fact that the sound of Fugo's breathing comforts him, and the smell of this shared space feels so safe.]
[Maybe it's cowardly. But what Giorno chooses to do, in the end, is write a letter. Speaking to Fugo face to face . . . he's avoided it thus far. He will continue to avoid it. The more he thinks about this avoidance, the less he believes in its legitimacy. He doesn't know why he doubts it, but he isn't sure how much is for Fugo anymore and how much is for something old and left behind in himself. Not the natural caution over the upsetting of a vital hierarchy, but a much more personal fear. He knows he doesn't give a shit about hierarchy. What he cares about is getting what he wants as responsibly as possible, or not getting it at all.]
[There are a few drafts of the letter. He destroys them all. The final draft, which he leaves behind on the bedside table before heading out to distract himself in the bizarreness of Oska, reads as follows.]
I know that we had a brief and rudely interrupted conversation back in Leramzen on a confusing and murky topic for both of us. Forgive me for taking the ball out of your court in bringing it up again. I had intended to let it lie until you felt comfortable coming to me about it on your own; the more I think about it, however, the more I feel that my own indirect approach has made discussion of this topic more confusing and difficult for you (my own feelings on the subject notwithstanding in this moment).
This is the opposite of what I want. I've been selfish, I think, in speaking of my own feelings in coded terms and expecting you to pick up on them, even though I make a point of being hard to read whenever possible. As hard as it is to be blunt about my feelings for you, and as embarrassing as it is to write this, it's what's fair (or at least fairest), and I want to be fair to you more than anything.
So here it is: while you are an incredibly important friend to me, one of the few people here or anywhere who I feel I can trust with all of my feelings, even the terrible ones, the way I feel about you is more complicated than that. The language that the magitek uses is close enough to English that I don't trust it to get across my meaning correctly, so for precision's sake, in writing: Ti amo.
(Here I'm desperately hoping this is confirmation of something you at least had some suspicion of rather than being totally out of the blue and entirely terrifying or worse, disgusting.)
I don't know when this happened, and I think trying to backtrack and find the exact moment is counterproductive at best, so the most I can say is that this is not a new feeling, nor is it a passing . . . whatever people call it. Crush? What a stupid word. That's not what it is, anyway. I may not know what to do with this feeling, but I do know what it is.
I haven't told you yet for a lot of reasons. The universal and cliche reason is that I don't want to ruin our friendship. The more specific one is more complicated and frustrating to explain to anyone who hasn't lived the life we've lived, but I hope you'll understand it: I don't want you to feel obligated to treat me differently just because my feelings for you aren't platonic. Your vow to me does not extend to indulging my feelings if you do not share them. Let me say it again: Your vow to me does not extend to indulging my feelings if you do not share them. You are so important to me as a friend, a confidant, a member of new Passione, a fellow cynic, a believer in my dream. You have fulfilled your vow, and you continue to fulfill it as you have been. You are above and beyond the call of duty already. The fact that I love you is not part of your duty.
I can't believe I've written that in two languages already. This is insane. I'm more nervous writing this than I was the first day on the job. Absolutely ridiculous.
I want to dance with you--you specifically, and no one else--because I love you. But I respect you as well. Part of me wonders which of these facts will be harder for you to believe. My hope is that having them written down will help with that. It's easier to believe things written on paper, at least for me. Besides which, I think if I tried to talk to you in person again I'd take the coward's way out and avoid it entirely, or speak in euphemism, or flirt with you, which is fun (very very fun) but unhelpful.
I want you to have this information so that you can make your own decision with it, whatever that decision is. So that you can take your time and think and read this as many times as you like without the pressure of me sitting in front of you waiting for an answer. I can promise, too, that there is no "right" answer, other than the truth of your feelings, whatever that is. There's no right answer and no deadline, and there are zero repercussions regardless of how you choose to take this. Obviously I'd prefer if you didn't feel uncomfortable as a result, or taken advantage of, or hate me, but life is complicated and people are strange and often inexplicable and if that's the price of honesty then--I want to believe it's still the right choice.
I'm sorry this is so long. The earlier drafts were longer. I spent paragraphs on your cheekbones. It was terrible. It was all true, though. Come find me when you've had time to think. I've left water and aspirin for you, too, please take them.
Wow. You must be pretty bored, if you're going down the directory to see if there's anyone you recognize still on the team.
Fine, I guess. Trying to decide if the castle being crammed with people from other teams is more annoying than our basement full of Zymandis prisoners or not.
Is that a typo? :) doesn't seem like your type of emoticon.
Youre entertaining when your not dropping a brick wall of txt on me :P My othr team was way more exciting: lots of aliens, lots of explosions, less moral dilemmas.
kinda like the people tbh. not the prisoners theyre dicks
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action | just past 2 am, 1/23
[Bruno's hand jerks up, out of the middle of it. The emptiness. The wrongness. Fingers curl around Giorno's wrist, gentle. He lifts his head, parts his lips, speaks: It's important to know when it's time to let go, Giorno--except it's Miles's voice tripping out of time with the movement of Bruno's mouth.]
[It makes him scream--loud in the dream, a soft and thin wail in the waking world--as he tries to back away, to flee, only to find himself trapped twofold. Something with rows of cold teeth holds his wrist in the hole in Bruno's abdomen as a cold leather-gloved hand wraps fingers around his throat. If you speak to me again in this manner--time skips forward--you will tell me why this bothers you so much--reset--for the sake of friendship.]
[Giorno is crying soundless tears. Bruno's head rests on the pavement again, but his eyes are focused on Giorno, and alive. His lips don't move, but You are a disappointment sounds in Giorno's ears, clear as day.]
[In the waking world, there is a breathy nononono, barely audible, as Giorno struggles against nothing.]
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The soft sounds sounds of Giorno's distress don't wake him. They drift through his own unhappy, unfocused thoughts as they stitch themselves together to become his usual unhappy dreams; his eyes crack open and he winces at the light, straining to focus on what he might have heard so he can determine if it's a real thing or something conjured up from his own shitty subconscious. Quickly, he realizes it's very real: moreover, it's coming from Giorno.]
[Fugo doesn't think, doesn't worry about what he should do. He pushes aside his blankets and sheets and makes the journey from his corner of the loft to Giorno's, settling next to where he's drawn himself into a ball of misery and fear. When his dreams are bad, often he'll wake to Giorno's arms already wrapped around his painfully tight shoulders, gently pulling him out of the nightmare by calling his name.]
Giogio, [he murmurs, calling out to Giorno with a voice fuzzy with almost-sleep.] Giorno. I'm here with you.
[He continues to talk, not needing to or making much sense. He reaches out to touch Giorno very carefully, drawing slow circles with his palm over the knots in Giorno's shoulder.]
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[After that, he knows who it is, even if he doesn't know. He can't be scared anymore--not just isn't, but can't be. It's impossible.]
[There's a touch to his shoulder, and he turns towards the voice. Not quite awake yet, he furrows his brow a little, reaching out blindly over his shoulder for the front of Fugo's shirt. He says something, but it's not really words; it's a plea for comfort from a more primal, childish, fearful place, and he's still too stuck in his dream to censor it.]
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Can someone take him? His mother's voice, distant and annoyed. She hadn't even looked at him; just over her shoulder, calling to an unseen servant. We're going to be late.]
[Where did that even come form. It was so long ago. And doesn't really matter. Why did he even bother to remember it. Why can't he just let useless things go.]
[Instead of pulling Giorno up, Fugo pulls up one corner of his blankets and settles down with him. He gingerly puts an arm around Giorno's shoulders and continues to rub his back and quietly call his name.]
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text; un: harmonia
we appear to have been invited to a social event
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1. Why are you calling me Fugetto?
2. That sounds ominous. I'm suspicious. What sort of social event?
3. Who invited us?
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2. it's a movie night
3. hosted by mettaton, which is probably where your instinctive suspicion arose from
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Speaking of nicknames. Is it ... okay? To use Giogio here, when it's not just us. Or would you prefer Giorno.
2. That's ... a little less ominous. I guess. I've done movie nights before.
3. Except for this part. I can understand wanting you to come but why me? I'm not very fun. Especially for movie nights.
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1/2
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action | 4/16, morning
[Not that early, comparatively. Later than when he likes to get up--when they like to get up. It's--he should've been up a while ago. To get things done. To get his day started. He should've.]
[He's dragging Fugo down again.]
[And yet, here he lies again, stewing drowsily in his own upset. He's got a thousand things buzzing around in his mind: how back home, Mista and Trish are suffering this anniversary on their own, never mind that time probably doesn't pass right there. How worried he still is about Mettaton after that conversation, despite everything. How awful this bed is, how strange this place is, how jarring it is to be here instead of in Oska or something sort of normal. Or home. How much he misses home, and hates that it's his birthday.]
[But in the end, he comes around to one crucial fact: Fugo didn't get to sleep last night until terribly late. So late, it was . . . was it four? Or was it later? He doesn't know, doesn't remember, and that in itself worries him. Fugo is so terribly haggard lately. Fugo needs something. Fugo needs--]
[Fugo needs rest, some botched and stifled instinct pipes up. So Giorno focuses all of his worries on that. On Fugo pushing himself too far, and needing to cut it out. On the pain of feeling like he was going to lose him in the mall. On not wanting to ever feel that again. On the thought, distant and fuzzy and fantastical as it seems, of seeing Fugo properly rested someday.]
[All of this is the collection of reasons why, when Fugo finally begins to stir, to frown in his sleep as his exhausted brain recognizes reluctantly that it's daytime; when Fugo opens his eyes and blinks and starts to move, Giorno tightens his grip around his waist and blinks up at him, tired and grumpy and sad but filled with Determination.]
No. Stay.
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Of when he fucked everything up.]
[Getting up is a process, lately. Because Giorno has to be convinced to let him go. Some days it's easier than others. Okay, fine, he thinks, groggily, acknowledging that today isn't going to be an easy day.]
Giogio, s'morning. Gotta get up. [He can tell because there is more light, warm and sunny and cheerfully pounding on his temples, in the room than there was when he finally passed out. He groggily reaches from around Giorno's shoulder to push at the grit in the corners of his eyes and, for the time being, obediently stops wiggling.] Five minutes. Okay?
[He starts low, Giorno aims high. They'll meet somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen to twenty minutes. They usually do.]
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[Not today, though. Today--]
No.
[Just a flat no. He shakes his head, eyes wide and earnest.]
You need to stay in bed today. You're going to make yourself sick.
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[Days in bed are reserved for being "really" sick, a nebulously charted out condition with a flexible definition. But it basically boils down to this: if he can still move, if he can function even a little, he's not sick enough to spend a day.]
M'not sick.
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text; un: harmonia. just after team assignments go out.
we're getting the diamond so your team might as well not try
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ANYWAY: stiles is on my team. [what else needs to be said really???]
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this icon has never been more appropriate i feel
it is the most ic thing in the world atm
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text; un: harmonia. 7/6
[The guard is bound and tucked in a corner of the maze where very little light reaches. The bindings are vines, if one looks very closely, the kind of vines that it would be a very bad idea to try and break unless you'd like to be broken in return. The guard is also looking rough, to be quite honest: bruises all over his face, one or two of them ring-shaped; split brows, split lips, crooked nose; blood down his cheeks, with the hint of a bootmark on one side.]
[He's obviously unconscious, probably concussed. There's a rose in his hair.]
recollection day, 1/2
[It's consciousness, in this case. The combination of physical comfort and psychological security have them falling into bed together while Giorno still has one sock on and Fugo's tie is only half undone; the sleep hangover they experience when they finally wake up is grotesque and only solved by a great deal of aspirin and several glasses of water each. Then they fall asleep again.]
[The celebration, about which Giorno feels very ambiguous anyway, will have to wait a little while. He's exhausted; more than that, he needs the comfort of his own bed, their bed, the tiny patch of home they've made for themselves in an alien place. In the drifting in and out of sleep, Giorno quickly falls into the habit of making himself a physical barrier against the world for Fugo, a habit that was half-formed before Asterion in any case. Curled up with Fugo's back against his chest, he falls asleep with his face buried in Fugo's hair or shoulder or neck, one arm slung over his hip. Even in sleep, nothing will get past him to hurt this boy.]
[Fugo is a restless sleeper, though. He tosses and turns, and sometimes when he rolls away in his sleep Giorno's dreams grow ugly. There are stark images of Fugo in a dimly-lit hall of the prison, beaten and lifeless; of the lush greenery overlooking Fugo's corpse, ripped to bits by something enormous and unseen in the labyrinth; of Massimo Volpe with blood on his hands and before him, a smear on the ground, the leftovers of a boy who considered his life forfeit and so took it in his own hands to forfeit it, so he could save someone he cared for.]
[Inevitably, Giorno wakes with a start and sits up wild-eyed, searching for Fugo--who is always there. Fugo, his touchstone. Who he tries so hard not to watch in his sleep, because he knows it's weird, but Fugo whose breathing he needs to monitor, Fugo whose pale lashes make his breath catch in the tight space of his ribcage.]
[This can't go on. It's irresponsible. And is it fair? Once he's caught up on sleep, which happens long before Fugo catches up himself, he still can't bear to leave the room for too long in case Fugo wakes up and is frightened. Not to mention the fact that the sound of Fugo's breathing comforts him, and the smell of this shared space feels so safe.]
[Maybe it's cowardly. But what Giorno chooses to do, in the end, is write a letter. Speaking to Fugo face to face . . . he's avoided it thus far. He will continue to avoid it. The more he thinks about this avoidance, the less he believes in its legitimacy. He doesn't know why he doubts it, but he isn't sure how much is for Fugo anymore and how much is for something old and left behind in himself. Not the natural caution over the upsetting of a vital hierarchy, but a much more personal fear. He knows he doesn't give a shit about hierarchy. What he cares about is getting what he wants as responsibly as possible, or not getting it at all.]
[There are a few drafts of the letter. He destroys them all. The final draft, which he leaves behind on the bedside table before heading out to distract himself in the bizarreness of Oska, reads as follows.]
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I know that we had a brief and rudely interrupted conversation back in Leramzen on a confusing and murky topic for both of us. Forgive me for taking the ball out of your court in bringing it up again. I had intended to let it lie until you felt comfortable coming to me about it on your own; the more I think about it, however, the more I feel that my own indirect approach has made discussion of this topic more confusing and difficult for you (my own feelings on the subject notwithstanding in this moment).
This is the opposite of what I want. I've been selfish, I think, in speaking of my own feelings in coded terms and expecting you to pick up on them, even though I make a point of being hard to read whenever possible. As hard as it is to be blunt about my feelings for you, and as embarrassing as it is to write this, it's what's fair (or at least fairest), and I want to be fair to you more than anything.
So here it is: while you are an incredibly important friend to me, one of the few people here or anywhere who I feel I can trust with all of my feelings, even the terrible ones, the way I feel about you is more complicated than that. The language that the magitek uses is close enough to English that I don't trust it to get across my meaning correctly, so for precision's sake, in writing: Ti amo.
(Here I'm desperately hoping this is confirmation of something you at least had some suspicion of rather than being totally out of the blue and entirely terrifying or worse, disgusting.)
I don't know when this happened, and I think trying to backtrack and find the exact moment is counterproductive at best, so the most I can say is that this is not a new feeling, nor is it a passing . . . whatever people call it. Crush? What a stupid word. That's not what it is, anyway. I may not know what to do with this feeling, but I do know what it is.
I haven't told you yet for a lot of reasons. The universal and cliche reason is that I don't want to ruin our friendship. The more specific one is more complicated and frustrating to explain to anyone who hasn't lived the life we've lived, but I hope you'll understand it: I don't want you to feel obligated to treat me differently just because my feelings for you aren't platonic. Your vow to me does not extend to indulging my feelings if you do not share them. Let me say it again: Your vow to me does not extend to indulging my feelings if you do not share them. You are so important to me as a friend, a confidant, a member of new Passione, a fellow cynic, a believer in my dream. You have fulfilled your vow, and you continue to fulfill it as you have been. You are above and beyond the call of duty already. The fact that I love you is not part of your duty.
I can't believe I've written that in two languages already. This is insane. I'm more nervous writing this than I was the first day on the job. Absolutely ridiculous.
I want to dance with you--you specifically, and no one else--because I love you. But I respect you as well. Part of me wonders which of these facts will be harder for you to believe. My hope is that having them written down will help with that. It's easier to believe things written on paper, at least for me. Besides which, I think if I tried to talk to you in person again I'd take the coward's way out and avoid it entirely, or speak in euphemism, or flirt with you, which is fun (very very fun) but unhelpful.
I want you to have this information so that you can make your own decision with it, whatever that decision is. So that you can take your time and think and read this as many times as you like without the pressure of me sitting in front of you waiting for an answer. I can promise, too, that there is no "right" answer, other than the truth of your feelings, whatever that is. There's no right answer and no deadline, and there are zero repercussions regardless of how you choose to take this. Obviously I'd prefer if you didn't feel uncomfortable as a result, or taken advantage of, or hate me, but life is complicated and people are strange and often inexplicable and if that's the price of honesty then--I want to believe it's still the right choice.
I'm sorry this is so long. The earlier drafts were longer. I spent paragraphs on your cheekbones. It was terrible. It was all true, though. Come find me when you've had time to think. I've left water and aspirin for you, too, please take them.
As always, for always,
your Giogio
TEXT | un: huntsman
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But, if you need to get into the labs, I've borrowed some security credentials from a guard. I can get you in.
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suspect your card would work on those?
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text; un: LILITH
look who's still here
howya doin nerd :*
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Fine, I guess. Trying to decide if the castle being crammed with people from other teams is more annoying than our basement full of Zymandis prisoners or not.
Is that a typo? :) doesn't seem like your type of emoticon.
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kinda like the people tbh. not the prisoners theyre dicks
:* is a kiss. Heres another one! '3' <3
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