Emrys hadn't slept well. He'd gotten up multiple times to check whether the sound he heard while tossing and turning was a return owl. He'd given up on his bed around sunrise and relocated to the downstairs parlor, where he'd been stretched out on the couch contemplating all the various things he could do to distract himself. He didn't want to drink; he wanted to be sensible enough that he could respond to letters if any arrived. He'd written Arthur; Angelica might write him. He didn't especially want to be sensible enough to think about anything, but unfortunately it seemed impossible to accomplish one without the other.

Eventually he'd ended up ordering just about every breakfast food known the man from the staff before dismissing them for the day, and was now making occasional trips to his dining room to make plates and half-heartedly pick at fruit salads while he longued on the sitting room sofa. Sober, but contemplating a hookah in the corner of the room.

"Here," he called when he heard Arthur come in. He considered adding Alive, but held back; their experience in the sinkhole might not have been in good taste to joke about, and he was too maudlin at the moment to trust his own judgement on it.

"Thank you for coming," he said when Arthur reached the room, waving him towards a couch. He didn't bother getting up from where he was lounging. His voice was calmer than it ought to be; if he was in Arthur's shoes he imagined he would assume he was high. "I'm thinking of leaving my wife, and I was hoping you'd talk me out of it."

He picked up a grape off his plate and eyed it critically.

---

He'd been stewing in this long enough that he ought to have an answer ready for such a simple question. What had he been doing for hours? Not deciding how he would describe this chain of events succinctly and meaningfully to Arthur, apparently. He let out a breath and put the grape back down on the plate, which he lowered onto his lap. "We went to a party," he started. "Argued afterwards." This was accurate, but it seemed so ancillary to what was actually bothering him that saying it at all seemed like a waste of breath. He inhaled and looked down at the plate, trying to think of what to actually say.

It was that she insisted on knowing him, in a way he had not wanted to be known; it was that she never left well enough alone, that she pushed until something broke and called that progress. It was all the assumptions she made about him, all the ways he recognized she didn't really know him at all. She would say that was his fault; she was partially right. It was that she was looking for solutions in all the wrong places. It was that they wanted fundamentally different things from their relationship. It was that he couldn't even look back at that first summer, when they'd been deeply passionate about each other, in the same light now. He couldn't say with confidence that they ever had been on the same page about anything — not after the baby that never came.

There was too much to say, but there was one thing particularly that Emrys felt he was obligated to say; a confession that he owed Arthur. He exhaled. "About you, amongst other things."

---

"No," he answered, and looked up to meet Arthur's eyes as he did. He didn't particularly want to be looking at Art — he was feeling mortified on an atomic level — but he understood the gravity of a question like this, understood the stakes. He knew it was important for the answer to come immediately and to feel certain. The other man would only be half-listening to him until he was sure of this point — not a fault, just a fact.

He shifted his eyes back down to the couch, around where his feet were resting, and exhaled. "She didn't ask any specifics. But she'd guessed you existed. Sensed your shadow. Your indent in the mattress. The empty space in my suitcase for your souvenirs." This was all metaphor, Emrys indulging himself in his melancholy; in reality she hadn't needed to be a detective to figure it out, he supposed. One admission years ago that she'd hung on to, and the vindictiveness to ask a well-targeted question. He took another heavy breath. "She knew there was someone I loved." He still wasn't looking at Arthur, not yet — this was another admission he didn't want to make but felt the other man was owed, after last night. After taking a second to steel himself he looked back up. "Ridiculous, isn't it? That she said it before I did."

---

He had been sketching out how this confession might be received for hours, but he had not allowed himself to hope for this. He smiled, but not the sort of wide, unburdened smile that accompanied these sorts of declarations when they were made by the young and foolish. His smile was wry; an acknowledgement of their shared tragedy rather than a signal of joy. Aren't we pitiful? this smile said.

"I was going to give you a chance to leave," he said ruefully. He might still want to, in the end; there were things at stake, and Angelica knowing anything about him at all imposed a serious risk, however he felt about Emrys. Sentiment rarely won the day, in situations like this.

---

That was as much as he could ask for — more, really. He'd been preparing to open the door and let Arthur leave without a fight; he knew it would have been the smarter thing to do. Having this moment was more than either of them were entitled to. He moved the plate from his lap to the end table and sat up on the couch, shifting his position until he could lean in to kiss Arthur. Three years, and some change. It had started like anything else; haphazard meetups, cryptic letters. Emrys didn't know exactly when it had transitioned into something else, but it was undeniable now. He may have offered Angelica the answer last night because he told himself it was pointless to argue, and an answer was the fastest way through the conversation... but as he'd turned it over after she left he hadn't come up with a way to talk himself out of it. He remembered how he'd clung to Arthur when they were both broken and bruised in the sinkhole; realized the simmering anger from last night when Angelica turned the conversation this direction hadn't just been for his own sake. He wrestled with the very real possibility of saying goodbye, of losing him. There was nothing to attribute this degree of pain to except love.

---

What if this was all they did today, Emrys thought with a giddy rush as Arthur pulled on his lapel. What if they just had a moment and then spent the rest of the time he had basking in each other's presence? What if there was nothing else that needed discussing, nothing else to weigh on his mind? Just this?

That wasn't the case, of course.

Several minutes later — when he'd been kissing Arthur long enough that he either needed to stop or escalate — he pulled away with a satisfied sigh.

"Do you want breakfast?" he asked, brighter than he had been so far today.

---

Emrys smiled, gently, and leaned in to brush other kiss against his lips. He lead the way to the dining room, where the table was laid out with a veritable buffet — far more food than one person could eat. "I didn't want them back today," he explained, slightly sheepish. "And I wasn't hungry then. So I just asked for everything." He slid around the table and took a seat, leaning one elbow on the table's edge and resting his chin in his palm. He was watching Arthur, observing him — as if he were different now, in the context of this morning, and Emrys needed to learn him from scratch.

"I suppose we should decide whether I'm leaving my wife," he said eventually.

---

"No," Emrys agreed. Arthur wouldn't know why; there was so much Emrys had never told him about Angelica, about their marriage. He didn't talk to anyone about it. He tried not to think about most of it — unsuccessfully. It was all there, lurking at the edges of his mind, making superficial intrusions into anything he was thinking about.

So he would have to explain it, if he wanted Arthur to understand. He knew this, accepted it — (although Arthur never asked; was that why it was so much easier to tell him things than it was with Angelica? There was the unspoken underlying message, with Art: if you want to. When you're ready. Never a demand. And Arthur had never misunderstood him so completely as she had) — but that didn't mean he knew how to begin. He turned the matter over like the Gordian Knot, looking for an end, somewhere it was even possible to start.

"She's — consuming. Like a fire. She can't be satisfied with half of someone. Or with most of them. She needs every door open, to understand everything, know everything. Anything less isn't love, to her. She says I'm running away, hiding. She called me heartless," he said, with a helpless shrug. This was a bit sprawling and indefinite, as far as explanations went, but once he'd started talking words just followed each other without his conscious thought. "I just — can't."

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