Everywhere they touched – touched but not-touched – sent him reeling, giddy and light-headed, like he couldn’t remember how to breathe. It wasn’t enough and it was too much at the same time, so potent it was almost painful. “Me too,” he gasped as Cash pressed closer, his mouth leaving no trace on Theo’s skin except new blooming bruises of the feeling.

He was rapidly losing any sense of control, but he kept the contact wherever he could to try and make Cash feel it too. He ghosted his free hand across his shoulder and against his back, and tried thrusting upwards towards-into him, his hand motions growing haphazard; but maybe because Cash wasn’t physically here, it was too easy to pretend that he wasn’t really here at all, that this was just some messed-up dream or fantasy. Because, “I lo—” Theo started, managing to bite it back just in time, as he came onto his hand and stomach and as he felt all the tension in him loosen, almost in the way he imagined it must have felt for Cash to leave his body behind.

But after the relief of it, Theo was still stuck there in himself, flushed and slack-limbed and ashamed enough already.

“I love you,” he said quietly anyway, wondering if it would be any better to have said it, just once. If he would feel any lighter for it. And it wasn’t an excuse for what had just happened, but – maybe it was at least an explanation.

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   Adrienne Lestrange

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He'd have to go home as soon as he got back to his own body; Cash wanted to touch himself while remembering the visual of Theo coming undone. And then it was as if a bucket of cold water was dumped on top of him — I love you.

Cash leaned back, out of kissing distance, but stayed straddling Theo. I love you. He had loved Theo for over a year now, since they had found Valeria with a halo of blood around her skull and Theo had taken him away. He had never said it. It felt like danger. Now he was married, and they would surely go back to avoiding each other after this, and —

"I'm sorry," Cash said. This was a difficult conversation to have when he was high, when he was wanting, when he was so scared that loving Theo would hurt him even more than Cash had already. But — "I love you too."

I love you, I'm sorry — because whether they loved each other or not, Cash was still exactly who he was.

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   Adrienne Lestrange, Theodore Gallivan

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MJ made this!

This was a bad time to have this conversation, but Theo didn’t know when he would find another moment for it, never mind a better one. They weren’t together – and they couldn’t be, so this wouldn’t change anything – but he hadn’t known how to put it into words when they had been together.

And he hadn’t known that Cash loved him back.

“Oh,” he said. Cash loved him. It was the first time someone had, like this. Theo swallowed, not sure how he had expected it to feel. He leant back and slung an arm across his face, to try to cover his expression. There was a sting of moisture at the corner of his eyes; he bit the inside of his cheek to quell it. He had already felt raw enough from this, raw and exposed, and in spite of the indignity of the circumstance there was still an awful thrum of want from the persistent touch across his thighs – and Cash was sorry, and loved him, and maybe was sorry for loving him – but at least Theo knew with better certainty that he hadn’t been hurting for so long over nothing. That at least it had meant something to them both.

So he let his arm fall and looked back at Cash, stumbling through the words. “So you – understand why I can’t let it be my fault if we –” get caught. “If you –” He couldn’t say it. If you die from the vow. if you get killed because of me.

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   Adrienne Lestrange

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Cash swallowed. "It would never be your fault," Cash said. Theo had not made Cash into his father's son; the unluckiness of his birth had done that for him. When Cash felt trapped, he knew it would always have been like this. Or even worse, that he had done it to himself. He swore the vow, he married Adrienne, he hadn't left when he was a teenager and still had the chance.

"But I think I understand."

It was almost worse that Theo loved him.

  

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MJ made this!

Whether it was ever his fault or not, Theo didn’t know how he would be able to forgive himself if something bad happened to Cash because of him. And besides that, there was nothing Cash could say to fight him on it; just the inevitability seeping back into the room.

He shouldn’t have said he loved him. If he hadn’t, he might have been able to forget this night, this one small fuck up, could have pretended it hadn’t ever happened. But Theo had had to go and bring love into it when love really had no power and no place here, hadn’t he? And Cash had said it back and now he would never be able to forget that little truth.

He brushed his hand over Cash’s thigh as if he could lighten the mood by it, sweep the conversation away and recover the helpless pleasure they had been lost in before, where instead his wanting now verged on acute despair. But Cash was dabbling in drugs and Theo didn’t really want him to leave, because he doubted there would be a repeat of this and he didn’t know if they would talk again (although he missed him still, in spite of all the danger), but he felt like he probably should go. He wasn’t corporeal. It wasn’t as though Theo could ask him to stay. So – “Will you let me know,” he said, hesitantly, “that you make it back alright?” To his body – to reality.

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If Cash could taste, his mouth would taste like copper — he was biting on the inside of his translucent cheek, trying to make this feel either more or less real. He nodded at Theo's question. "I'll send an owl," he said, "When I'm back."

Back home, back to his body, back — to the things that neither of them could change, no matter what substances Cash decided to inject.

  

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MJ made this!