Unbreakable [retro]

Aidan
"I know." Aidan said, pulling back enough that they could look at one another. "I know." And to what exactly?

Aidan knew that it wasn't how it was suppose to go. He might have been distant or finding it difficult to navigate human relations, but even among spirits, one did not take without giving in return, and you always asked. To not do so would stoke their ire, make them feel abused and betrayed. If you cared about something, you asked first. You asked, and you gave in return. It's why he was so kind to the spirits when others might try to twist them to their bidding. They were his family.

He used his sleeve to slide over his red face and pull the liquid from his eyes. It took a moment.. just a moment and he was lifting his face up, giving Elijah a smile as if nothing at all had happened. "You should eat. You wanted to dance tonight, right?" How easy it was to slide from one space t the other, to move from sadness to a smile, even if he was feeling torn.

"I...got your shirt dirty. I'll get you a new one." No, he didn't touch his dinner, but moved to the trunk to find a shirt that Eli could wear.

Elijah
"You should eat, too. C'mon, I'll even feed you," he said, small and mischievous smile but it's tinged with something. He was careful, now, maybe not uncertain but certainly tuned in. Aidan said he knew, he knew…

It didn't stop. Two years and it didn't stop. something about that hurt.

But they should eat, if there was dancing to be had, a tiny grin. He moves and tries to lean to grab Aidan's hand.

"It's just a shirt, I'll be okay," he said, "I could pair down to the undershirt if it makes you feel better, though."

Aidan

He wiped his sleeve across his face to get the lingering wetness from them. When Elijah took his hand, he was forced to stop. Aidan looka t him, dropping his brows in concern. "But...you can't dance in that. " He turned fully and held out his other hand. "I'll clean it for you. Maybe I can talk the dryer into drying it faster."

Aidan never ignored Elijah, even if it seemed like he had. Often he'd smile warmly, a recognition that he had heard, or give a tiny, brief giggle. "I'm just not really hungry. If i'll make you happy, I'll eat it though. But you have to let me clean your clothes."

Elijah

"It would make me incredibly happy if you are something," he did let go of Aidan's hand, taking a moment to unbutton his vest and carefully retrieve the pocket watch out of the pocket. He's so careful with it, so cautious, not at all cavalier with the thing. Odd for him, when one things about it, because Elijah was hard on so many other things. Furniture, clothes, motor vehicles. he put them to the test, to say the least.

"But I'm pretty sure this is all a ploy to get me shirtless," which he told Aidan with a grin. And a wink. He was in the middle of pulling off his over shirt and, in that moment, it became clear that Elijah? Wore a lot of clothing. Things stripped aside and he didn't even pop a button off. Elijah has a tattoo now, just the one- something in cobalts and indigo and navy up his side.

Aidan

"I'll eat." The smile lifted, glad to see that his friend would lift just a little if all he did was eat something. Aidan's head tilted just a little. "Why would I try to make you shirtless?" Because despite his past he still found it an odd thing to be concerned about. It wasn't that eh couldn't admire something for its beauty, but that he didn't feel overly stimulated like everyone else. It was a wonder...

He leaned in and down as the tattoo came into view. "Oh! This is pretty. Did Jenn do this?" He doesn't ask, but traces it, almost as if he's looking to see if it's completely smooth or not; Aidan's experience with tattoos was limited. "What does it mean? Did you gain status among your people?" And he means it in the sense of the magical. Aidan assumes...assumes that Elijah is in a tradition, though he hasn't asked or probed about which one, and how he's doing.

Elijah

And it was smooth, well past the point of being healed and sat on his skin like it had always been there, "yeah, Jenn does some pretty fantastic work. When we first moved to Denver, there was this guy who was going to pay her five hundred bucks for a tattoo, but he wasn't going to pay her if she fucked it up and she was super nervous- this is actually her practice piece. I might ask if she could do another one? I don't know, just let her do whatever it is she wants to do this time. People are picky about tattoos, sometimes I think you should just be happy with the art."

he doesn't seem to mind, doesn't flinch, doesn't lean in. Just, well, waits.

"They don't actually know what the serpent stone in Aberlemno was for. Some people think it's an astrological thing?" he said, "I haven't gained any status though. Hell, I don't think I'm even technically an apprentice in the Order? Like, legitimately? It's complicated."

Aidan

"I'll have to ask her to do one on me too. Maybe I can get Granna's face. Then she'll always be there to tell me when I'm not 'living to my capabilities.'" It made him give off a small laugh in delight. "I think she would hate it if I did that though. She'd think I was being silly and sentimental." He tapped his own chin, taking the clothes from Elijah slowly and setting them to the side. He held out a hand for his plate. "I promised I would eat." And Aidan never broke his promises. Promises were sacred.

"Order...Order.. Order.." He bobs his head as he thinks. He knows what that means, knows the word, and Oh, it finally hits. "Hermetics? The intellectuals?" He blinks, tilts his head to regard Elijah and then smiles brightly. "I told you that you were smart! Didn't I?"

Elijah

"Portrait tattoos are always for sentiment. Or, at least, usually. If you asked her, I'd bet she'd do it," he's conversational, and he sat down. Picked up the plate and handed it over to Aidan, "I'm pretty sure that, someday, you can swing it to where you don't have to eat anymore. Just kinda subsist off of the sun and the world. I don't know how it would work, but I'll figure out if it's possible."

He muses over this, settles back onto the floor and gets comfortable. Comfortable enough, at the very least, as one could be in the floor. "Yeah, like… like legit, the Order of Hermes kind of thing. I'm hoping that they'll actually, you know, keep me. Because I met this guy and he was basically like, hey, you seem like the kind of person that wants to save the world because you love it. And.. yeah."

He did. Maybe Kalen hadn't been completely wrong.

Aidan

Aidan takes the plate and he does eat, though he's eating slowly, forcing it down as he said he would. "Granna doesn't like sentiment. I think she's just old and she's seen a lot, and she's just sad she's not with her friends anymore." He put away all the fruit and was left with the beans and rice, and the vegetables. He could onyl imagine how people ate more than this every day, it was hard enough just to eat half of it.

"They'll keep you." He said, smiling and taking a bite. "Why would anyone not want to? You're smart, energetic, and I hear you have a really good punch. You'll do great. I know you will." Aidan leaned in a little, pressing a finger to his head. "My psychic powers say so."

"If you don't though, I'll still love you. Jenn will still love you. It just means you fit best somewhere else."

Elijah

"There was a Euthanatos in town who took an interest once, she was pretty cool… but I don't think I've got it in me to… y'know… do what they do," he doesn't seem terribly uncomfortable with the thought, but he laughed when he took a look at Aidan and his psychic powers.

He looked over, covered his face and leaned back on the floor. Elijah was a strangely physical. Perhaps not strangely so, he was attached to his body. The way it moved, the things it did. The things that he could feel under his skin and on his muscles and for a second he was pretty content to be laid up on the floor

A second, he looks, there's a small smile on his face.

"You'll still love me?"

Aidan

"Hmm.. No. I don't think it's you. I couldn't do it. I'm not much of a hedge trimmer though. I cry whenever the city folk come around to keep the plants nice and pretty. Even if they like it, I cry a little. And people.. I think people always have good in them. You just have to find it and have faith. They just don't feel it themselves." He managed the beans and then put the plate down for a moment. He had to breathe if he was going to eat anymore. 

Aidan admired Elijah. He was a pretty man. "I think it fits you. The tattoo. And the order." Because the ornament seemed like it only enhanced the art that was Eli. He liked Eli's eyes the best, but Aidan also believed that eyes really -were- the window to the soul. The deader the eyes, the deader the soul, but souls were never completely dead. Someone just had to heal them.

"Yes!" He said brightly. "I'll still love you. Being in a family isn't really...it doesn't really matter which family you're in, though it does help to have a family that's more understanding of you. If you want something Eli, you can do it with or without them. If they don't want you, it's because they didn't see how great you are...and it's better to be with a family that sees who you are and what you could be."

Elijah

His eyes were green. It was one of those things that got picked up in grass and plants and occasionally in nature when the world was springing forward into something. Green when something russet red cropped up and played off the contrast of it there. Sometimes in the shirts he wore, or sometimes against cherrywood floors. They weren't always bright, though. He was doing well. he wasn't scared, and that was saying something. He wasn't scared and he wasn't angry and for a lot of people in Denver it was hard to imagine him scared or angry or anything other than a young man filled with wide-eyed wonder.

"I don't have to be anywhere, but sometimes, I want to be somewhere," but he'll still love Elijah. So will Jenn. That… the mattered for something.

"Gah, have you always ben so zen?" he asked, "it… nothing seems to get to you. You're just… you're fucking unbreakable. You're like Jenn." Maybe there was admiration there.

Aidan

"You are somewhere Eli." He said softly. "You're here. You're on our planet. In a universe. And we're all here with you. You'll always have a place somewhere, even if you have to make it. You have your family, and Granna and me when you're here. You're somewhere with us. And Jenn is somewhere with you in Denver right? You've always got a somewhere." He pushed the plate aside and laid down on his stomach, putting his face near Eli's. He was staring at his eyes, staring at the color with that soft smile on his face. 

Aidan giggled. He never chuckled, he giggled or he laughed, but he never did anything half way, not when it came to expressing himself. "I'm not zen! But I don't know if I have or not. I don't remember a lot before meeting you. Or.. or before being in the ward. I guess I was! Why would I be anything else?"

"Unbreakable? I have bones. I can break. Is that what you mean?"

Elijah

Elijah was not at an age or a place where he could, or did, keep his hands to himself. He laid there, face close to Aidan's and his imagination wandered for a second, fingertips graze the line of his jaw, from his chin up past his cheekbones over and through his hair. It's a slo sort of appreciation, a delicate observation and a hand that was steady.

"You are zen, or… I dunno, I hope I'm using the word zen right there… you're try comfortable with the universe," his voice travels the scant distance necessary to be heard, he comes a little closer and his nose almost touches Aidan's for a moment before he pulled back, "and yeah, unbreakable… like… the sort of indomitable will that one has when they're poking reality's buttons. You… shit happens, and you know that it does… and you haven't fallen apart. And you aren't stuck. And… yeah. A different kind of unbreakable."

Aidan

Aidan was not sensitive about touching. He was not the sort of person that got upset when someone was in his space. Someone was always in his space, even if others didn't see it. Sometimes he even forgot that he was separate from other things, or that he had his own mind - so close they were. He did not take it personally either, not in the way others might. He found Elijah's hand to be warm, comforting. There was a reason he told Elijah what he did, and there was a reason that, no matter what, he didn't mind of Elijah was close with him. He didn't connect the two experiences. 

Aidan nuzzled into the hand, much like a cat. He closed his eyes and let out a small sound of joy. It made him feel loved, though there were no shortages of things or people that did that, whether they realized it or not.

"When your watch breaks, do you hate it? Does it feel uncomfortable? If you lose a gear, does it make you so sad that you can't love it anymore? The universe is missing gears, and some just need to be tuned right. It's broken, in a way, but that doesn't mean there aren't parts in it that are in good condition, that can't run for years. The universe is broken but I still love it. It's because it's broken that we get to be different people."

When their noses touch, he shrinks hi head with his shoulders momentarily. "Eskimo kiss!" 

He blinked slowly, letting his eyes slide to the floor. "What should I be doing? There has to be hope right? If there isn't hope then there's no point. If we lose that, then how do we keep going?"

Elijah

"Sometimes… I don't think the universe is broken. I think that it's becoming something else… I think pats of it are falling off… but I don't think anything… really, truly, breaks. I think it becomes the pieces we rebuild from… the universe is missing some gears, but only because they need to become something else… sometimes I don't think I like what the missing gears become, but that's not my choice," he says. Hand stays in Aidan's hair. His attentions are lazy, but intent. Content. Any number of things with a positive connotation.

"Maybe it's just because I don't like to think about it as being broken. If something's broken, really and truly broken, you can't rebuild. It's just… gone," a little sadness there. Something that tinges the edges of his voice. Something that touches his tone and gets to spark in his eyes.  "I dunno."

"There has to be hope, and that's… I think that's the thing, it's that you still have hope, and you don't let anything or anyone or whatever the universe has in store steal that. And it is one of the things that makes you so fucking beautiful, Aidan," which was when he pulled in. leaned in and softly (not not tentatively) pressed his lips to Aidan's. Of course, only if he'd let Elijah do so. Something that was quick, something that was filled with a sort of adoration that Elijah couldn't put into words, couldn't figure out how to put into words but there it was.

Aidan

"Is anything ever really broken? Or do people just give up? Everything can be fixed. Even the stuff that looks all broken and unfixable." 

"Did you lose hope Eli? Did someone steal what the universe has for you? I've seen you when something you really love is taken away, but you don't seem that way now. That means you have hope too." Aidan gave Eli a small smile, one tinged with affection. "Really? When everything happened after you left, I just told myself that I had to leave someday, and maybe I'd see you again. I always tried to remember that, so I think that's why I was OK."

The kiss was unexpected, but he didn't move. These are tokens people give, to show they care. He's observed them enough to understand that, so he returns it easily. It was appropriate for Eli. He was someone important.

Elijah

Elijah was surprisingly affectionate. One couldn't be terribly surprised, he'd been affectionate before he'd been in the hospital, though more desperate, more terrified, more heart-poundingly nervous finding the nearest person to hold onto that would make all of this stop for five minutes. People that knew Elijah weren't surprised to say that he was affectionate, that he didn't quite know strangers. He'd been a small, wide-eyed child who tried to wander off with whomever happened to be around at the time. His parents had been convinced that it was going to get him kidnapped someday.

Did he lose hope?

"For awhile," he said, "for awhile I did… being somewhere else really, really helped. I don't know what would have happened if I'd stayed here."

He doesn't, but he doesn't even understand how bad things could be. Doesn't understand that the world could have slipped away, that he could have skipped irrevocably into a kind of madness mages don't come back from.

"I might come back and stay at some point… Probably not soon, it's… it's really fuckin' loud, ya know?" like anywhere else would be quieter. He's a lot easier with Aidan than he is with other people, a lot less forward, a little more considerate of space. Gestures given like tentative chiminage to a spirit whose bans he doesn't quite understand. He pulls back enough to breathe, pulls back and his cheeks are flushed and his eyes drop. "I'm glad that Baton Rouge is good for you. And I'm happy that you have Granna and a place and… y'know, you're doing okay."

Aidan

"I know." He says. He knows how 'loud' the place can get, knows that it's not just the humans lingering around that are chattering. There are other things, more things that want to stop in for a chat whenever you're around. Then there are the people. Aidan understands, better than most people, but it's become life for him. It's become how the world works. It's difficult for him to imagine a world without all the chatter. How lonely it must be.

"You should stay in Denver." He says warmly, acknowledging that, while he'd love to have him around all the time, he knows how painful it is to be there; Elijah never come back for long. "It's good for you. That's where your people are now, right? It's the place for you. You'll always have a place here, but it's not a place for you."

There's a pink color to his cheeks when Elijah pulls away and he cants his head to the left, observing him curiously. "But?" Because he knows there is something else. He can hear it, in the phrasing. "I'm happy anywhere, as long as there is someone to talk to."

Elijah

"It's nice to have options," he admits. Having places for himself, that is. Having the option to be places; he doesn't know that he might have the option to go to Boston in almost a year, doesn't know that he'll turn it down because Denver really is a place for him. Doesn't realize it's a place for him even then, either. He can't see the future yet, probably for the best.

There's a but in his statement. There's a flush to his cheeks, and Aidan isn't stupid. Aidan isn't clueless, either- he doesn't really try to hide that there is something else there but Elijah can't figure out for the life of him- loquacious creature that he is- what words to use to articulate it.

"But.. yeah… I didn't realize I missed you as much as I do," he said, "and it makes me… y'know… not want to leave."

But he's going to leave. That much goes without saying.

Aidan

Aidan leaned in and kissed Elijah on his forehead. "You have to. This place isn't a place where you can grow. You need a sunny place, not one that's in the shade." He pushed himself up off the floor slowly, picking up his plate to shovel in what he had left, and putting it away. Aidan popped open his trunk to pull out another long sleeve, loose but not as loose the one he wore, and made of pale pink yarn with a white bunny in the middle. "This good for dancing?" Because only Aidan would go dancing in rabbit long sleeve pink sweater.

He sets it on the bed and peels off his own shirt, showing off his scrawny frame. He dropped the shirt with Elijah's pile so he could at least get them all together. Aidan scooped the laundry in his arms."If I could come with you, I would."

Elijah

He looked up from the floor, still sprawled and still content to be where he was because the floor was cool and he was comfortable and there were a number of things he could be doing front he floor but he was rather pleased with the angle that he was looking at Aidan rom. At the new way that light played off his features and the way that his hair fell.

"I think so, so long as you don't think you're going to overheat," he told Aidan, "hydration is pretty important? Like, if you're not careful you might pass out."

a beat.

"Also, don't take any pills anyone gives you. They're not sweet tarts. They are pretty much never sweet tarts."

Aidan

"Oh." So he'd need something lighter, something not so warm. Did he have much of that? Aidan had never really been the sort to show off skin all that much. "Pills?" It was wise of Elijah to tell him now. If he hadn't told him, the chances were high that he would likely consume whatever was handed to him without a second thought. Could anyone really trust him in a building full of people?

"I'll get these in the wash." He left the apartment quietly, taking several moments before he popped back in and exposed his teeth in a bright smile. "Won't take long!" He closed the distance between them and sat on his knees next to Elijah, leaning over him. "So what neat people did you meet in your new home?"

Elijah

"There's a woman named Sera who has… I don't know… she's just fucking striking and her hair is blonde and brown and she showed me the heartbeat of the universe. It.. it fucking blew my mind, made me rethink whether or not there is anything to being separate beings or if we're all interconnected and it was beautiful beyond measure, to the point that I think that beautiful doesn't even fucking cut it," he grinned bright, still on his back, gesturing at the ceiling and outlining various and sundry things while he thought.

"And there's this guy named Ian who is, like, a legit ballet dancer. He took me winter camping… then, there's Grace, who is fucking amazing with computers but has this ultra personal space bubble and Kalen-" his voice catches when he mentions Kalen. Fondness, yes, but something… a little more complicated.

"Kalen's, no joke, the first person I met in Denver and he gave me my pocket watch. I remember we were sitting on the floor in his house and it was covered in piles of things and stuff and there were crystals and playing cards and tarot decks and a wand and cigarettes and lighters and incense and, like, things. And every bleeding one of them had a story and he explained that sometimes when you do magic you have to have something that focuses the effect, and something that keeps you grounded and held onto the idea and you have to find what works for you," he said. There was a second, "the place wasn't substantial, like… I remember seeing the barrier between worlds fade and it's like… there wasn't enough investment in the house to make it real and there but I wanted to show him the stars there."

He wanted to show Kalen a lot of things, wanted to share what meager world-shattering things he had with him. Wanted to make him proud. There was a fondness in the tone.

"He's really great."

Aidan

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Elijah

Elijah Poriot loves Kalen Holliday.

It's not something small, not something tiny and understated and unspoken. There is a love there that forgives any number of things, a love and a desire for acceptance and a desire for companionship that Elijah actively sabotages on a regular basis because he can not handle the idea that someone cares about him unconditionally. Something that he can't handle, can't get that Kalen isn't going to abandon him even though he has done a number of things to try and push the other man away.

There is distance, things Elijah can't quite communicate. A strange desire to be near and be a source of pride while, at the same time, acknowledging that he can't actually be that. Understanding and playing up to the idea that he's a failure, that there are limitations, that there are barriers he can't begin to surpass.

There is distance, like a wound healing. There is distance, like a creature unsure. He loves Kalen, yes, and he wants to trust him but…

He doesn't trust easily. Not in the way that a student has to trust their mentor. There is something immature in their relationship, at least on Elijah's end. A fear of disappointment, the expectation of rejection. There is something that is fractured there, and Elijah believes he has broken it. Doesn't know how to fix it, so instead he leaves the proverbial vase taped together. Doesn't touch it lest it fall apart again.

But he loves Kalen. Adores him in the way a student does their mentor, admires the skills he has. Admires the vision he has, the things he can do and the things he wants to do. There is an attraction, most assuredly, but it is overshadowed by the person behind it all.

Aidan

He leaned over Elijah, putting a palm on the other side of the floor by his neck. He blocked some of the light from the apartment, almost forming a halo of light around Aidan's head. "We are all connected." He wanted to say that they were all the same, but he usually forget that part, only because the idea of separation feels strange to him. "These are all your people? They sound beautiful. Did you tell them you see places they can't?"

"Is he your teacher?" Like Granna was his. She had found him after he was discharged, homeless, talking to something, someone on the street....though she knew, could see. She could feel him there, as he sat, having a conversation without any care for anyone else. He had been much thinner then, as he had given what food he had to others who had been on the street longer. Aidan never minded helping. 

"He sounds like Granna." There was a knowing smile on his face, the sort that said he understood how Elijah felt. "Sometimes I think our teachers are really just a part of ourselves that manifests, or maybe we're a part of them, and they're just connecting with the part they've lost. He brings it out in you. The shine." Aidan curled his arms on Elijah's chest and set his chin on them. "That's why you're doing better."

Elijah

Is he your teacher?
"It's not permanent," he says, perhaps a little sad. A little reluctant to leave Kalen but he knows it will happen. Knows that, at the end of things, he'll go study with some other mentor in some other house and it'll be for the best but he'll miss Kalen. Even though it didn't necessarily mean that Kalen was going to be going anywhere. "But, for now… yes."

There were things he could say, but there were issues of impulse control. There were things he could say, but they weren't coming to mind because Aidan was right there and so lovely and just… he wanted to be with someone he could shower in adoration, he wanted to elicit delight in the younger man, he wanted to map and trace every vertebrae, every inch of skin, and he'd been attracted. Of course he'd been attracted.

There was a question that lingered- if they knew what he could hear? If they knew how his world worked on some fundamental level, but he didn't answer it, instead doing a little repositioning, letting his hands trace down Aidan's spine. Over the lines of his frame and his mind wandered. He let out a long, shuddering breath. Self control waned and he explored details.

"How long do we have until laundry's done?" he asks, trying his best to sound casual. Couldn't quite manage.

Aidan

"You're close with him. More than the others. I think that's good. Why will he change? Is something wrong?"

Aidan did not consider himself a sexual creature, and those who knew him might have felt the same way. He never showed an interest in either sex, other than to admire how beautiful they were. Love was not the same for him as it was for others. He didn't need sex. That did not, however, mean that his body didn't react, it just didn't react as quickly as others. 

Elijah was beautiful, and they shared something that others didn't. They saw things, heard things. They shared vulnerable moments with one anther, even if Elijah didn't realize how vulnerable even he had been. Elijah shudders, strokes Aidan's spine and Aidan let's out a soft 'mm' sound to show his appreciation. There were others parts that were responding in kind, though he was enjoying simply having Eli back in town, and touchable. 

"Hm? You know I'm not good with time." He let out a small laugh. "Um. twenty minutes? Then the dryer for.. time. I don't know how long. I just check it when I remember."

Elijah

There were things he wasn't even ready to say to Aidan, for fear it may upset him. He doesn't mention trying to kill himself, he doesn't mention the attempts, but the two didn't need to. Aidan could probably guess that Eliah was self-destructive. He knew him well enough, he was in the hospital with Elijah. If he didn't have something outward to focus on, he'd turn inward. He wasn't the picture of coping skills.

"We're not going to be part of the same house," he explains, "there are things I can't learn from Kalen. It's… it's just a thing, is all."

His hands continue along his spine, down along the contours of his hips. He's careful, exploring, but there's a quiet delight in his features. A quiet delight in wanting to be close and wanting to be there and with someone he'd actually given a shit about. Truth be told, that was rare. Truth be told, Elijah's had an abundance of sex, but only very rarely connected with people. Only rarely was it an exchange of something other than physicality. And there is a reaction, a physical one, the tinge of something insistent. The press of the hints of arousal and that delight that Aidan was there and wasn't very adamantly opposed to such attentions.

"I don't want to hurt you," he admits, "I don't want to push and fuck things up so.. if you're ever like… well… you realize you can tell me to knock it off, right?"

Cautious, searching, this is okay, right?

Aidan

"Oh." Each family was different, he understood that much, and that some people had different skills. Granna could teach him because she could see the spirits just as he could, but others had to use magic. Granna could understand his oddity, his weird behaviors. In that way he could...maybe.. understand why Elijah couldn't stay with his mentor. That was a little sad to him, having to leave someone behind. 

That wasn't as important now. The color rises into his face. He likes the affection, and where it would normally be simple, and benign, it was instead arousing. His hips shifted a little under Elijah's touch, though not away from him, only into it. 

But what he says is a little surprising even to him and Aidan can't help but give him a reassuring smile. He slipped his hands up and placed them along either side of Elijah's face. Aidan leaned into him. "You can't hurt me, remember? I'm unbreakable."

Elijah

There are so many analogies for kissing, for the way that someone presses their lips to another when they want nothing more, but it isn't as though Elijah is drowning. it isn't as though he can not think of a world where he would not be kissing Aidan, instead his lips are against his, something small and quick at first. Something small and testing and tasting before coming back a second time, then a third- that third time he does lean in, comes close and it is more than tasting. He is more than testing the waters he's there because he wants to be there. Like he needed to kiss Aidan, like the world might fall out from under him if he didn't.

He rolls his hips, presses into the other young man before slipping his hand around his waist. Aidan's thin, he knows this much, knows he could stand to eat more than he does, but he doesn't press. No, more than that he is reveling in the differences there. Acting on something that had, at once, been a passing thought. Something Elijah hadn't realized was an option but all he could think was that he wanted to give praise, pay attention, give the hints of worship and adoration and exaltation to someone so clearly deserving.

There is a moment when he pulls Aidan close, puts an arm about his waist to hold him steady so he could turn enough, maybe coax the other blond onto his back. He pulled back long enough o breathe, ragged and eyes closed but there was a smile on his lips. Not a word from his lips, though.