[ Somewhere in his head, there’s a part of him that’s started to keep a tally every time he gets a smile or a laugh out of Ian. Each time, it’s a win because Jesus fuck, look at where they are. Look at what’s happened to them so far, and what’s most likely going to happen to them —
Yeah, he’ll take every good part of this as a victory while he can, snatched right out of the clawed hands of this cabin itself. So that small, shaky laugh, it prompts Mace to nudge Ian’s hair out of the way from his nape with the full intention of pressing a real kiss there.
Halfway through, he gets that earnest no — and he doesn’t freeze, exactly, but it makes him wonder for the briefest of moments if Ian hadn’t wanted him after all, that same shadowy sliver of doubt from before trying to pierce its way in again. Then, I wish it was anybody else but you, and oh. Mace thinks he can see where that’s coming from.
This is pretty much hell’s hideous little backyard, and if he could somehow make a deal with the devil himself to get Ian out of here — he’d do it in a goddamn heartbeat. He knows he would. Ian shouldn’t be here even in a nightmare, forget in reality; he ought to be back at a college somewhere, booting up a whiteboard screen at the start of a lecture, in front of a bunch of dweeby engineering freshmen. ]
That was almost a very bad blow to my ego.
[ Quiet, amused, and somehow a little sad, because saying ego here is safer than saying where Ian’s words had really struck him. His heart. Although he figures that’s kind of obvious, with the way he kisses the first knob of Ian’s spine: slow and comforting, like it’s his lips instead.
And it’s what Ian says last that Mace holds onto, waiting for sleep to take him, unwilling though he is.
no subject
Yeah, he’ll take every good part of this as a victory while he can, snatched right out of the clawed hands of this cabin itself. So that small, shaky laugh, it prompts Mace to nudge Ian’s hair out of the way from his nape with the full intention of pressing a real kiss there.
Halfway through, he gets that earnest no — and he doesn’t freeze, exactly, but it makes him wonder for the briefest of moments if Ian hadn’t wanted him after all, that same shadowy sliver of doubt from before trying to pierce its way in again. Then, I wish it was anybody else but you, and oh. Mace thinks he can see where that’s coming from.
This is pretty much hell’s hideous little backyard, and if he could somehow make a deal with the devil himself to get Ian out of here — he’d do it in a goddamn heartbeat. He knows he would. Ian shouldn’t be here even in a nightmare, forget in reality; he ought to be back at a college somewhere, booting up a whiteboard screen at the start of a lecture, in front of a bunch of dweeby engineering freshmen. ]
That was almost a very bad blow to my ego.
[ Quiet, amused, and somehow a little sad, because saying ego here is safer than saying where Ian’s words had really struck him. His heart. Although he figures that’s kind of obvious, with the way he kisses the first knob of Ian’s spine: slow and comforting, like it’s his lips instead.
And it’s what Ian says last that Mace holds onto, waiting for sleep to take him, unwilling though he is.
I’m glad you’re with me. ]