[He's overwhelmed before he remembers that to speak, he has to breathe in first. That his lungs don't just fill themselves with air on instinct, void of life the way they are. A scattered tapestry of memories buzzing before his eyes— between his ears— each one pulling out the inlay of himself (as he is. Or as he's learned himself to be, perhaps, considering how much underneath his skin is held together with cheap thread and bitter drink and avarice alone), replaced in these strange seconds with something bright and unmistakable and almost searing to the touch.
Foreign loses meaning in familiarity. Secondhand only, but not the way it dances on his tongue with every taste.
Surrendering himself to that comes more naturally than his own existence.
Dingy tavern rooms and the acrid smell of iron supplanted by names he commits readily to every scattered image: out of order and yet perfectly aligned. Isabela. Varania. Sunlight fasta vass but he's missed sunlight), threaded with the sensation of a flickering pulse— pain, if just the sweetest kind— by any other context: love.
And he sees himself at its center. And—
They're both fumbling things, under their own specific circumstances. Astarion's is naked vulnerability. Honesty. And it has its hooks in him already (and in that divide: touch— thank the gods themselves for that. Slim fingers wrapped around one fine-boned, tattooed wrist, though he can't remember when it was that happened.)]
I—
[Should he deflect? Try to apologize by way of explanation? His eyes scan Leto's— Fenris' (oh memories have him)— no, Leto's face]
Just wanted to see what it was like, as it so happens. Your friends. The way you'd described it. The way you described them.
[He didn't mean to drive a hundred private sensations out of Leto's head. He didn't mean to pry (and coming from him, well....) which is saying something. Something too important to overlook. His head is swimming. He feels unstrung.]
The things you were offering, to me, I couldn't comprehend it— not abstractly. Not truly. Not in any sense.
[And despite the fact that he's reeling enough to feel like a voyeur crossed with a thief (crossed with someone pining for a wondrous loss he never understood, and grips Leto all the more deeply for it) apologetic and appreciative both:]
no subject
Foreign loses meaning in familiarity. Secondhand only, but not the way it dances on his tongue with every taste.
Surrendering himself to that comes more naturally than his own existence.
Dingy tavern rooms and the acrid smell of iron supplanted by names he commits readily to every scattered image: out of order and yet perfectly aligned. Isabela. Varania. Sunlight fasta vass but he's missed sunlight), threaded with the sensation of a flickering pulse— pain, if just the sweetest kind— by any other context: love.
And he sees himself at its center. And—
They're both fumbling things, under their own specific circumstances. Astarion's is naked vulnerability. Honesty. And it has its hooks in him already (and in that divide: touch— thank the gods themselves for that. Slim fingers wrapped around one fine-boned, tattooed wrist, though he can't remember when it was that happened.)]
I—
[Should he deflect? Try to apologize by way of explanation? His eyes scan Leto's— Fenris' (oh memories have him)— no, Leto's face]
Just wanted to see what it was like, as it so happens. Your friends. The way you'd described it. The way you described them.
[He didn't mean to drive a hundred private sensations out of Leto's head. He didn't mean to pry (and coming from him, well....) which is saying something. Something too important to overlook. His head is swimming. He feels unstrung.]
The things you were offering, to me, I couldn't comprehend it— not abstractly. Not truly. Not in any sense.
[And despite the fact that he's reeling enough to feel like a voyeur crossed with a thief (crossed with someone pining for a wondrous loss he never understood, and grips Leto all the more deeply for it) apologetic and appreciative both:]
I suppose I might possess an inkling, now.