Victor lifted himself from the bed, letting the sheet slip away to pool around the lithe figure of the slimmer young man, a picturesque wilting form which begged the jealousy of any Greek artist or poet.
His shock of bleached blond hair had thin fingers raked through it, only for the delicate hand to fall back, dragging the sheet over his bare stomach.
A soft yawn graced velvet creme lips and he curled into the pillow, pulling it to his chest to rest his head upon it while he studied the more Adonis like nature of the steady moving Witch.
"You could stay."
This was a very soft suggestion coming from the Imp, and it caught Victor off guard so much he paused in the act of putting on his pants.
His stark blue eyes leveled on the gold flecked hazel of the other man.
"I really can't. " he continued the process of sliding his pants on but was careful to keep eye contact.
"Who says?" Echo was just cheeky enough to talk to Victor how nobody else did.
It was part of what Victor liked about him, but his adoration of the spitfire didn't seem to waver the somber way he responded.
"You don't want this to be any more than it is."
Hiding behind what Echo wanted was an interesting tactic which the Otherbeing seemed to be unphased by, instead tilting his head in a coy fashion, one finger tracing the creases in the sheets.
"And what is it exactly?"
This was delivered light and arid, a little coquettish as if it could be pretended for even a moment he asked the question without knowing how hard it would hit Victor.
"We have fun. We hang out in the Cabaret.
We enjoy each other's company. You get taken care of, if you need something you can always tell me. What more is it that you want?"
He seemed to remain stoic, taking the opportunity of half dress to cross his arms protectively over his own chest, his blue eyes connecting with Echo's but looking far beyond them.
A soft humm came from the Imp, but it, along with his stark rounded expression and pursed lips, remained inscrutable to the Witch who's blue eyes became cold with sudden distance.
Victor said nothing, unwilling to kneel in the conversational arena nor accept the abject humm as any real response. Echo was familiar enough with his antics to realize that when he started talking business it was difficult to pull him back.
So for a tense moment Victor dressed in silence, eventually the other young being moved to do the same, though only went so far as his tattered jeans- which hung so loosely around his legs they hardly constituted as pants. Victor eyed them as the hickory skinned imp lay himself back into the bed, racking his fingers through his thick hair and studying the ceiling.
"You don't want any more than that?" The question was directed to the ceiling with flippancy, but it cut through the air to Victor who paused in the act of tucking the pricey Italian button up into the tailored pants.
"It really doesn't matter what I want." He sighed as he finished, running his fingers down the front of the shirt to smooth the creases; understanding precisely where this conversation was going and that he hardly had a choice in the matter.
"How does it not matter what you want?!" Echo laughed at the very audacity of the suggestion, sitting up to look across the small hotel styled room, irises glinting much like a dog's in moonlight might. But Victor's blues were far from meeting them now.
"Because I know what you want, and it isn't something with me, I promise.
If you want out of this and you want to keep getting money or something we could talk about it. I care enough about you to take care of you, even if you don't want to be with me anymore."
"Sweet lucifer you are infuriating. Can you stop being so...evasive?"
"Me? You haven't said a single thing yet. What do you want?"
"If I said I wanted something more genuine with you would it matter?"
"You really don't-"
"Say that again and I come for your throat. You don't get to tell me what I want Victor. So stop fucking trying. You can't control everything. You can't control me." It was said with an ardent laugh, but the threat was not to be taken lightly.
"I am not trying to control you Echo." Victor sighed, as if he was speaking to a child and Echo pushed off the bed, moving towards the taller man with such a fierce stride that he stepped back slightly, his hands falling away from his freshly smoothed jacket.
"I asked if it would matter, Victor."
There was a beat, crystalline blues holding the fierce fiery umber and emerald.
"It matters. If it is something you want then it matters to me."
The imp was beautiful, not a mark on flawless hickory skin, but the ire in his gaze made even the stubborn stoic swallow his self assuredness.
For a moment, incredibly brief, Victor looked more his age.
A flicker of an eye roll crossed the umber and gold hues.
"But it isn't something you want?" The snide was undercut by the faintest tinges of something sad which Echo had no intentions of lingering in.
"Yes." It was said simply, curt, as if this was an admittance of defeat.
With a frustrated growl which tiptoed past shrill Victor was shoved back into the wall behind him with splayed fingers on his chest.
"What does that MEAN. Why wont you just… stop making this a riddle."
Despite the vitriol and venom meant to be in those words they came out confused and pitiful, and carefully both wrists were wound in the firm grasp of the taller witch.
"Echo it means I would love for this to be something that could leave this room. I would love to be able to love you. Romance you. Show you off. All that fun stuff. But I can't. Not because of you-" seeing the question rising on his lips Victor rushed ahead of it,
"-No. No, not him either. Not…Max I mean… kind of but not because I am still stuck on him. I miss him dearly but more than anything I regret what I did and how I handled the aftermath of my mistakes. More than anything I can't trust myself."
A scoff escaped the soft plump lips of the other man who attempted to pull back from the child's excuse of 'it's not you it's me'; but Victor wouldn't lessen his grip on the fragile circumference of Echo's wrists, instead pulling him right back into his chest.
"Because I am not a good person, Echo.
Because I am trying really hard to do the right thing for others but deep down, in the core of me the very center of my being there is only darkness. I know it. And I don't know if I can ever overcome it completely, I will never make up for the people it has already hurt.
The only person that ever believed I could be more than the monster inside me, who actually loved me, I betrayed in the one way he could never forgive. In the one way I could never come back from, and I was not so blind as to not know that when I did it. Even…even given the circumstances, even given my state, I could have said no, and I didn't. I will never understand that choice, and I made it… how can I reconcile that? How can I deal with the potential that I may make a mistake so…plainly stupid. I can't trust myself to love you. I can't trust myself to do anything."
His ardent whisper grew weak with emotion, something which left the fiery imp stunned. Autumnal hues drifted wildly in search of falsehood beneath the rolling northern waters of Victor's eyes. All that slipped through was a pain and desire to bury that pain.
Echo had lived on this planet for hundreds of years, he had grifted, cheated and clawed to make a life for himself among the humans and the scraps of Otherbeings which managed to survive in New York. But he had never known anyone, Magik or Mundane, like Victor Blood.
After a moment his wrists turned in Victor's firm hold, and willowy fingers spread across the crisp white expanse of the italian design. The witch allowed his own fingers to tentatively unwind, blue holding tight to wicked hazel, letting his hands slip down the slim fit plains of chest and stomach to rest gently, intimately, on the imp's waist, still bare, supple and enticing. But it wasn't drawing the witch's attention, these waters were too tenuous for even the slightest slip.
"Victor… I thought…"
A slow deep breath was taken in, the metal rings in his nose and lip catching the dim lamp light of the room with the rise and fall of his head.
"I thought you understood by now how ridiculous and made up those ideals were. Darkness and light. Good and Evil. All fake dichotomies Vic. We need both. One can't exist without the other, they rarely exist in pure forms at all, and never for very long, I have met true darkness and it doesn't care like you do. Balance is accepting the dark and light you have. Your graces and your lines and boundaries around whose granted that grace, your darkness is your power, and you can make it work for the light."
Echo was normally snide and cutting but he spoke now with a learned patience, revealing his age in his wisdom.
Victor felt humbled. The abject truth of Echo's words were profound to the long isolated witch. Max had never understood this, the way darkness could never be scrubbed from a person, some were marked with it. But darkness, too, was not in itself evil.
Victor had felt like he had to pretend to be some Apollo when he had always been more of a Hades. Max had been his persephone, stolen away and brought into a wicked world he learned to rule. But he expected it to change for the better if he loved hard enough. Some things couldn't be changed.
But they could be harnessed, understood, guided.
An audible swallow left the witch, and he nodded, the two beings beyond human gazing into one another's eyes for a long breathless moment.
He nodded again, eyes fluttering as he looked away to hide from the rising emotions in his chest which clenched his throat and stole his words. Echo seemed to sense this and the hands spread across Victor's wide chest finished their journey, hooking behind the taller witches shoulders.
"You are allowed to trust yourself. Even if you sometimes make mistakes Vicky, everyone does. Humans to Gods alike, we are always squabbling and arguing and none of that would happen if we were all perfect without mistake."
There was another ghost of a nod from Victor whose eyes had grown glassy and distant, so Echo continued, pressing gentle soothing kisses to his jaw as he whispered.
"You just have to forgive yourself, and move on."
"How…how do I do that when nobody else has forgiven me?" His voice came out so small that the imp had to stifle his shock- Victor never expressed such outright childlike fear.
"They can't understand what you went through, they can't define how you see yourself Victor. And if they see you have forgiven yourself they may find their way to the same conclusion on their own."
Vic allowed his arms to wrap around the smaller being's waist and dropped his head to his shoulder. For a moment they held each other in silence before Victor sighed.
"And what…would it all mean? If I said I did…want something with you? That I have forgiven myself enough to try again?"
Echo scoffed, sounding more like himself, less gentle despite the way he kissed at the sensitive place behind Victor's ear,
"It means you get what you want, you idiot."
The witches arms tightened around Echo and he nodded, not having the strength to say more, a response accepted by the imp who closed his eyes and allowed the quiet intimate moment they had always avoided.
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