Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Let me make you something else.” Basil isn’t pleading. He isn’t. It doesn’t destroy his soul every time to see Val drinking straight black coffee first thing in the morning like this, without even so much as a touch of spicing to make the flavors dance. It just damages it a little bit more every time. 

Not that this coffee is terrible on its own, nothing like the tar Basil knows Val was drinking before he stepped foot in Conwell Coffee House, and not like the horror of a roast his brother had selected before Basil had intervened on the coffee front. But still. It’s principal. Basil could make him something amazing; he could make him whatever he wanted. Plus, he’s seen Val eyeing the cakes in the display case. He’s an artist after all; he notices things. And there’s no way the other doesn’t have a sweet tooth. But despite everything, Val persists. 

“No.” Val’s arms are crossed in front of him, and his face is set in that grumpy line, the one which means he hasn’t yet fully emerged into the world. And it is early. No one else is around yet on the chilly spring morning. And it’s possible Basil has been opening up half an hour earlier than the time on the door for weeks now, because he’d gotten the impression the normal hour and its quickly forming line had bunched Val’s (very broad, not that Basil has been paying attention, not that his fingers itch for a pencil) shoulders with stress.  

He doesn’t know the particulars of it. But it’s not like he sleeps all that much anyway. They never talked about it. Not exactly. Basil had just mentioned at some point that he’d be in around 5, and Val had shown up, and it’s been a morning routine since.

On the days Val isn’t missing anyway.

Basil isn’t a fan of those.

But he’s here today, in his full, rumpled, it’s-still-dark-out state, hoodie pulled over his slightly damp hair and glaring at Basil with a pout that might border on adorable, not that he’d ever say.

“Yes, come on, Val. This has gone on for too long. You can’t possibly like it like that. Or if you do, I mean, you’ll like what I give you more. You’re wasting all of my talents.” He gestures dramatically for effect, leaning forward against the counter, both palms flat against it. “I could make you anything. ”

Val huffs at him, a long-suffering sigh, and rolls his eyes. And his shoulders bunch, just a touch. “ ‘s stupid to pay that much for a coffee.” He drawls the words in perfectly casual derision. “Against all my principles.” 

They also carefully don’t talk about how this is all optional for Basil. Being here, working. Putting on the green and gold apron. That the coffee is just a little side hustle for his family, propped up as they are by fortunes made of Syrup. That for Basil this is desire not need. They don’t talk about how that’s true, but the circles under Val’s eyes are darker every day. 

Basil had offered exactly once to forget the charge. And Val had walked out and hadn’t walked back in for a week. 

The coffee had gone cold on the counter.

He keeps quiet about it now.

“Well, it’d be a special favor to me.” He grouses now, not letting them skitter toward dangerous territory. Reflexively, because his body is always working ahead of his brain, he’s shifting even further forward as he speaks and pointing his finger at Val’s chest. “Since you’re literally causing me pain.” A hair closer and… fuck. The pad of his finger brushes the other’s solid chest… which hadn’t been his intention, not his direct intention. But he’s in it now. He forces in a breath---even though his heart skipped two beats---somehow gets out. “You know what, I don’t care, I’m making it for you.”

There’s a pregnant pause between them. A silence that stretches long wherein Basil’s finger is still on Val’s chest, and his eyes, tilting in almost slow mo, shift up and up and up until they meet the curious blue-grey ones that peer unreadably back at him. There’s a touch of almost amusement playing along Val’s mouth, though, as they exchange stares, and Basil feels his own lips smiling back, a little sheepish.

The other’s voice is low when it surfaces from his throat, a little sleep-rough from the hour still, and it radiates annoyingly through the cells of Basil’s body. “Are you telling me what to do?” Val rumbles, not quite laughing, but laughter studs through it, and what a fucking thing to say. The amusement seems to deepen in the taller man as the thought trembles its way over Basil’s face, and his annoying tendency to blush rears its ugly head. Immediate heat rises along his cheeks, curls pink and damning over the stretches of his skin. He can’t see himself, but it feels like a damn homing beacon. Val’s eyes don’t shift to it, though. Just stay locked. 

Basil breaks the gaze first, another three ridiculous heartbeats later, and pulls his stupid finger away. Stupid finger. No one gave it any permission to do that. “Yes.” He mutters, turning his back to the other to face the coffee machines around him instead. Much safer. And thank god there’s actually something for him to do or he’d be wishing for a hole in the floor to come swallow him whole. 

“Fine.” Val’s calls from behind him freezes him again for another half second. But he can tell by the sound of it that the other is actually smiling now, and though the fluster is still there, something pleased comes to tangle with it. “Make me something.” 

A smile of his own crosses his face again, and he reaches for a mug. 

When he finally turns around, Val is leaned over, sprawling against the counter. His hood is pushed down, finally, and a well-worn paperback rests between his fingers. But when he looks up, a frown creases Basil’s face. He hadn’t noticed it before with the hoodie and the lowlight, but there’s something dark marring the expanses of Val’s face. It's obscured slightly by what looks like makeup, but not very well applied, and when he really looks, Basil can make out the edges of a massive purpling bruise, glinting beneath the other’s cheekbones. 

“Val---” He starts, slow, not sure exactly what’s coming after the name, but a sudden ache catches him, wraps a hand around his throat, and squeezes the air from his lungs. 

Another fucking bruise.  

The gaze is back on him, heavy and steady, in an instant verging on stormy, his fingers clenching and unclenching into fists. “Don’t ruin the moment.” The words grind out slow, a warning note embedded through them. There’s anger somewhere, Basil can hear it, but Val holds it at bay, pushes it back. He forces his hand open, closes his book, and sets it aside, then, for the briefest hair of a second, wraps his fingers around Basil’s wrist instead, tugging him closer. There’s an inhale, long and deep, an exhale, and the voice sounds again, purposefully lighter, and Basil knows effort has been expended on his behalf to make it so. The smile comes back to dance along Val’s expression in coaxed inches. “Whatdya make me.” 

Basil breathes into the touch. Breathes out of it. He wants to protest. Wants to demand. But he knows Val doesn’t want him to. And to do it. It would just be selfish. He knows that.  

Stop hurting yourself. Stop letting yourself get hurt . 

The words dance on his tongue, but he swallows them down. Smiles gamely back instead and pushes forward the mug full of froth and toasted marshmallows. He can at least do this. He can at least give Val this. 

Val pulls it toward him, eyeing it suspiciously. And Basil doesn’t even bother to pretend like he’s not watching him pick it up and lift it to his lips. Even despite the lingering residue of gloom that wants to cling, smug pleasure sparks through him when he can pinpoint the exact moment his masterpiece hits Val’s tongue, rich and sweet and comforting. Chocolate, marshmallow, cinnamon, a few dashes of this and that, a little cayenne, a little sage. Not cloying. Not flat. Delicious till the end. 

He may or may not be smirking at the way Val’s eyes widen a little at the taste and then shut, smoothing out. 

Take that black coffee. 

“There’s no caffeine in this.” Val is muttering a moment later, though, when he’s cracked an eye open again, despite the way he’s holding the hot chocolate almost protectively to his chest. 

“Wow, Basil,”  Basil parrots, in a voice pitched too high. “That was delicious, you were totally right that my taste is trash and I should always listen to you.” A grin tugs his cheeks wide. “Gee, thanks, Val. That’s so sweet of you to say.” 

Val rolls his eyes again and takes another drink. “It’s good.” 

The words are short, just a touch grousing. But Basil doesn’t care. Doesn’t actually need him to say anything about it at all. Because there’s a soft smile surfacing on Val’s face now. Just small. But it’s a rare one, pleased and earnest, walls lowered all the way down for the space of a sip, burdens set aside. 

And fuck, Basil’s fingers, yearn for his pencil. Yearn for… something.

You’re beautiful . 

The words dance on his tongue, but he swallows them down.

“I’ll make you your tar.” He hums instead, taking one last look at the graceful poetry of the other’s face, shadowy bruise, dark circles, and all. The way it eases into something transcendent when all the pain soothes away. He commits it to memory as the sun’s rays start to drift in through the windows. And it’s just him and Val and the fragile loveliness of the moment.  

And then turns away to get the coffee. 

Behind him, the bell chimes with a new customer, and the coffee shop starts to flood as the rush of the morning kicks in. He knows, when he turns back, it’ll be to something else. It twinges something in him to lose it, but he’s an artist after all, he knows the beauty of the fleeting. Knows it’s his job to capture it.

With a soft smile of his own, he pours the black coffee into a paper cup. 

And so the day begins.

Chapter Text

Val falls fast asleep on Basil’s couch ten minutes into the movie, even though he’d sworn up and down that he wasn’t that tired on the stroll back to the apartment. 

They don’t usually end the day together. And Basil had given up on seeing him at all as the minutes ticked into true morning too slowly and then flooded into afternoon in one big rushing gout. It’s not unusual for Val to miss a morning, but it’s not all that usual either. And even though it’s not like they’ve sworn to see each other the five days a week that Basil works, the chips have steadily been falling like that for long enough now that he’s come to more or less expect it. And it’s that expectation that darkens the days when the other is missing. That makes the sour taste of disappointment and worry coat his tongue when it’s half past six, the sun is shining, and still no tall form fills the waiting space of his sightline.

It’s expectation that makes that particular sensation start trembling through his gut, that strain of anxiousness that keeps him restless on his feet, snapping his gaze up to scrutinise every face that wanders in, even long past the time Val is likely to show up. A delightfully nauseous blend of resignation and anticipation.  

Expectation. Basil tries to temper that urge where he can. 

Because if there’s one thing he knows pretty fucking well it’s that abandonment requires expectation. 

But that’s too much to put on Val, that’s his own shit. 

In any case, Basil has learned that if Val misses a morning, he doesn’t show up at any other time. One of the few things he can say with confidence about the other. Because despite Basil’s best, most talkative, and most little brother of two-honed ability to ask the annoying questions, he’s still only partially pieced together the full sketch of Val. It stays more of a rough outline, despite everything, if he’s honest, the first gestures of charcoal on a page. And that makes his artist’s brain go into hyperdrive, raring to shade in the rest. Color, shadow, depth, dimension, he’s itching to find them, to be let in. So he can see. He always wants most to see the truth of his subjects. But he wants it more than usual now. He won’t admit everything about what he wants with Val, not even to himself. But he can admit that much.  

Val doesn’t make it impossible. He doesn’t make it easy either, though.   

In between their snarking banter over simpler things and Val’s tendency to fall into surly one-word answers when pressed, Basil has pieced together some things. There’ve been the briefest allusions to having been born somewhere else. And a sister whom Val clearly loves very much. There’s a history in the army or something like it, which is a chapter fully under lock and key. In the current timeline, Basil gets the impression that Val works seasonal jobs, construction, sometimes, most recently, doing something or other he won’t commit to fully revealing at a carnival that’s rolled into the city.

( And around these things. There are the things that Basil knows but doesn’t want to. The sometimes ravenous look in Val’s eyes. The same look Naima gets on a bad day. When Basil tells her she’s had enough and it’s not safe to have any more. Except the Syrup ruins Naima and it saves her. But he knows in the hollows of his stomach that it just ruins Val. It’s not Basil’s fault. But it’s not, not his fault either. The knowledge burns in his chest.) 

(And then there are the bruises. Too many bruises for accidents and clumsiness. Bruises in the shape of fists that align better with the whispers of something brutal that’s happening, elicit and unregulated, on the outskirts of town. Basil had heard JG chuckling about it over drinks at some dinner party he’d been made to go to. The ugly men around them leering at the thought of money passing over bodies and blood. “It sure could be funny to see.” The knowledge burns in his heart.) 

And so, given all of this that he’s gleaned, he’d been surprised when the day, which had tasted more unplatable than that sour kind of coffee that’s been sitting for too long and developed something acridly bitter in its dregs, (a drink which he’s named “The JG” on the menu), had brightened suddenly after dusk. Basil hadn’t expected the pleasant note that drifted into his evening, nor how it lifted his spirits. (All of it happening with such immediacy, in a way that he really can’t bring his cowardly self to look at too closely.)

He’d never seen Val in the golden low-light of the lamps before. 

It had stutter-stopped his brain. 

And for a moment, he’d smiled beautific at the other, the presence of him palpable all at once in the empty coffee shop. And Val’s lips had tipped up at him in response. And in that breath, their gazes locked, relief had danced around an effervescent kind of happiness inside of Basil. Not a Val-less day after all. Not a Val-less day followed by a night of wondering if something terrible had happened, or whether the other had simply decided he’d had enough of Basil and was never coming back. But, Val, here, with him, a bandage on the punctured balloon inside his chest. 

A blink later, past the pleasure of presence, and everything began to settle, began to come into focus. And the unusual time, just after closing but before Basil locked the doors, was not just incidental, he decided. But desperate, somehow. As though Val had come here because there was no other place to go, and to go nowhere, Basil doesn’t want to think about what that would mean. So he felt grateful Val was there, grateful to see him. But there was something wrong in the component parts of the other when Basil took a closer look, a half step off. As though Val had been taken apart and hastily pressed back together into the shape of him, but not every piece had returned seamlessly to its place without a gap, without a scar. And now he was all jumbled up beneath his skin. 

It wasn’t, Basil, in a guilty kind of relief, quickly assessed the all-too familiar scraping call of the Syrup, but there was something unusually jittery about the way Val moved as he slunk into the space, pulled tight and flinching at the barest sound. And there was a faraway look in his eyes, a pained shade painting over them that Basil couldn’t quite place the origins of. A tired sadness drenching through. 

“Come home with me,” He’d murmured before he could stop himself. And even though it’s what he wanted more than anything, Val’s lack of protest, just a sharp cut of his eye to Basil’s and a nod, slow and heavy, that had, in and of itself, sent a chilling note prickling through Basil’s veins, unnerved him. But not as much as the thought of Val disappearing again, fading away into the night.  

And that brings them to now. 

The credits are rolling on The Shape of Water. And Basil is curled up into the corner of the couch with his sketchpad, trying to stop the lines of Val’s face from emerging onto the page. And Val is sprawled out, all six hundred feet of him, across the cushions, having drifted so deeply into sleep so immediately that Basil is surprised he’d been able to stand on his feet at all to make it back to the apartment. He idly marks out the outlines of Naima’s face across the white space and tries not to consider what lies behind the exhaustion, what pushed Val so far beyond his usually tightly held, gritting control into this place where it’s all evaporated like this. 

He adds a smile he so rarely sees onto Naima’s face, and considers for a moment placing next to her the contours of Zavia, one of their newer employees at the coffee house, whom he’d last seen draw it out of her. Naima thinks he’s clueless, but he spends most of his days committing moments to memory in the hopes of recreating them---he sees more than she thinks he does. Like the peculiar grin that touched the edges of Naima’s lips, turning them up in a mischief he so rarely sees on his sister, when she’d reached over to hand him Zavia’s discarded apron in lieu of a rag to wipe up a spill. He’d been more than content to play dumb about that one… Deciding on the spot that he very decidedly did not want to know. And he supposes, in the end, he can’t blame her for keeping her secrets close to her chest. It’s not as though he’s ready to share most of his truths with the world… Namely, their brother. 

Val turns, restless, in his sleep, pressing his cheek further into the cushions. And since there’s no one around to stop him or see, Basil lets himself lean back to watch him for a long moment, allows his mouth to turn up into a secret smile of its own, affection rushing through him at the sight of the other sprawled like this in Basil’s spaces.

He wishes desperately that it means Val feels safe here. 

…Feels safe with him.  

Basil doesn’t want to presume (doesn’t want to hope), but he gets the feeling that if it wasn’t the case, that Val wouldn’t have let his eyes fall shut come hell or high water. So there’s, there’s that. That and the fondness that won’t stop blooming whenever the other is around, that is on hyperdrive with him closer than ever.

Thank god JG is out of town this week, so there’s no danger that he’ll come bursting in to ruin everything. Even though Basil has told him a thousand times that just because he has the key doesn’t mean he can show up without calling, his brother has never really understood boundaries. Or at least, imagined they might apply to him in any way. 

When Basil was younger, he’d all but ignored him, only on occasion letting his steely, blame-filled gaze fall heavy along his younger brother’s shoulders when he’d done or said something so abhorrent, like expressing he enjoyed playing the piano more than signing up for football, it merited attention. But lately, JG seems hell bent on overcorrecting and appearing everywhere that Basil least wants him to be. Basil’s decision to work at the coffee shop full-time now that it’s up and running seems to have only baited him. And there have only been increasing efforts in service of whatever holy pilgrimage JG has undertaken to save his soul. But Basil isn’t about to give it up. He’s not about to be corrected. If JG only knew where he’s been going, more and more… His head might implode. 

But with any luck, he’ll never find out about that, ever.  

With an exhale, he unclenches the fingers he hadn’t even realized he’d balled into fists, his pencil held tightly in his grasp, in sudden danger of snapping. And it’s not its fault his brother is a grade A jackass. And his brother being a grade A jackass is NOT a good reason to let that simmering rage, an inherited family trait, he fears, rise up in him and overwhelm the evening. That’s not how he wants to be. 

That’s not going to be his life. 

He lets a slow breath fill his lungs. And then another. And then another. And reaches for the calm he’s tried so hard to build here. In his own rooms. In his own place. Where he’s safe. Where he can just be. 

And he’s just finally settling back against the pillows, his socked feet pulling back into his chest, sketchpad set aside, the last of the whorls of unhappiness fading back down to nothing, when Val’s chest goes tense where it’s lying across from him. The other’s body pulls tight, as though yanking itself out of sleep in a panic, and in the next moment, blue-grey eyes have blinked open, long lashes brushing the tops of Val’s cheeks in quick succession as the other seems to bodily fight off the confusion of sleep, grasping for clarity like a drowning man reaching for air.

It’s not a peaceful awakening. 

Visions of the times in their lives when instability had been the order of the day dance in Basil’s mind, before Syrup, and Conwell’s great empire, in the shadows between the loss of everything and the gain of it. Ingrained fear that’s not easily forgotten. 

For Basil, it had been a temporary state of existence, gone now into memory, more or less. For Val… 

The muscles in Basil’s fingers tense with the ingrained desire to reach out. To assure. To ground. But the way Val’s eyes are glaring unseeing at the ceiling, his chest heaving in increasingly erratic motions, his long limbs pulling into himself like a spring ready to uncoil, the barest thrumming edge of danger settling around the contours of him. Basil knows better than to flick a match into that. So instead he sits, barely breathing, perfectly still and quiet, and works to metabolize the inherent ache that surges through him. The one that Val won’t want to see when he finally makes it all the way to awake and aware. 

I’m not fucking fragile . The other had hissed in some conversation gone awry or the other. And that’s… that’s not for Basil to decide. 

All he can do is sit and breathe and wait for the other to acclimate. 

And eventually, he does, awareness seeping slowly back into the other’s features, as his breathing slows back into something more closely resembling a normal rhythm, and he tugs himself just a little bit more upright along the arm of the couch. Val’s blinking again now, but the motions are less robotic and more filled with Val , something heavy with sleep and drowsed confusion, and just a touch rueful replacing the previously intense shifts. Back in the land of the living . 

Back with Basil. 

Their gaze meets in the middle, and Basil offers a little crooked half-smile, doesn’t bother to try to hide the fact that he’d been staring, because what exactly else was he supposed to have been doing? But hopefully, at least the deep worry that wells inside of him is tucked away. 

“Hey.” Val lifts a hand to his face and rubs away the last of the sleep, but the motion remains sluggish. He looks around him, eyes falling first on the blaring streaming menu, still cycling through silent inducements to watch something else where Basil hadn’t bothered to turn it off. Then, on the clock, which signals a couple of hours have passed between the last time he’d opened his eyes and this one. Finally, his focus is back on Basil as his face contorts in a kind of displeasure, flickering embers of unhappiness that rise to consume the set of his jaw, the corners of his lips, the bunching of his brows. The subtle shifts entrance Basil and nauseate him.  And then, in the low, sleep-rough voice, now tinged with more than a brush of frustrated irritation, aimed inward. “Sorry.” 

Again, that inane reflex to reach out trembles through every last cell in Basil’s body. But he only shakes his head, “You were tired.” He offers, trying to make his voice light. “I was just going to stay home and watch a movie anyway.” 

It’s not entirely true, he’d told Marco he might stop by, to save a drink for him. But the other won’t hold it against him, too damned kind for that. Extenuating circumstances, he’ll explain, even though he probably doesn’t need to, given that he’s promised to go to the Green Carnation and bailed like a coward more than his fair share of times already. But this, it’s an emergency. And that doesn’t even feel like an exaggeration. 

“Just got to do it with the bonus soundtrack of your snores.” He lets his legs uncurl, only a hair, allowing them to splay out closer to the other as he dangles them over the side of the couch. Not touching, not even close, but the casual gesture of camaraderie warms the temperature between them. “Really added to the drama.” 

Val rolls his eyes, and some of the tension in the strained lines of his face softens a touch. “I don’t snore.” He grouses, and something more companionable floats back into the tone where he’s still mostly lying prone on the couch, filling in the hollows. “But I guess I was tired.” He adds, a little begrudging, as though admitting even this much weakness to Basil, who held vigil over the entire affair, costs him. And more quietly, the faintest flush arriving to brush red across his cheekbones, hidden, but not invisible, by the low lights dotting the room with their golden glow. “Thanks for letting me crash.” 

A silence stretches between them for a breath, as Basil weighs out the pros and cons of honesty before throwing caution to the winds. “If you’re still tired…” He tries not to sound too… too hopeful? Too exasperated? Too worried? Too invested? Some undefinable blend of all of the above. “We could just… call it a night?” 

If he could have willed Val into sleeping until morning, he would have done it, just through sheer willpower alone. Because seeing him now, dark circles still glaring under his eyes, weighty exhaustion lingering in the slump of his limbs, it’s patently clear to Basil that two hours had not been enough. And when was the last time Val had gotten sleep, and it had been Enough ? The cadence of the question, considered with some regularity, but especially glaring at just this moment, haunts him.

But, it’s Val. And being Val, he has to do the most Val possible thing, which is, of course, to immediately dismiss the rational offer, and instead, try to prove that he’s just fine, by gritting his teeth and pushing through. And if Basil never saw him grit his teeth and push through again, it wouldn’t be soon enough. But there’s a sheer cliffside of stubbornness built in the other that’s like nothing Basil has ever seen before. And chipping away at that is a project he’s not totally sure he’s ready for, even though he knows, on the most primal level of knowledge, he knows, that it’s much too late for that. He’s already signed himself up. 

It turns out, he might be a little stubborn, too. 

In the spirit of that, he fixes Val with the most unimpressed eyebrow he can manage to raise as the other pointedly starts to move in an attempt to straighten himself once more. Because even though his personal jury is out on whether or not Val is fragile, and there are points and places where handling with care makes sense… This isn’t one of them. This is just stupid. Val glares right back in a huff as he stirs, and Basil crosses his arms to punctuate his point. “Nah.” The other mutters, gaze sliding away, and then back in full force as he finally pulls his hands up with more than a little effort and presses them into the couch on either side of him, levering himself up into a sitting position with a bit-back groan and the beginnings of a wince, aborted. “S’fine.” 

And as though to punctuate exactly how fine it is, Basil watches in an annoyed, he won’t call it a pout, he’d like to think it’s a very mature expression of displeasure, but pout, as the other lifts his arms into a stretch. Shifting himself as though to prove to them both that this had been nothing more than a harmless nap, just a drift into sleep brought about by a bout of boredom and a little bit of tiredness from the day. 

For an indeterminate press of time, they’re suspended in the farce, everything moving suddenly in unbearable slowness. Val’s long limbs extend out and out and out, and Basil, inhales, exhales, stops, holds his breath, waits. He doesn’t know what it is he’s waiting for, but it comes all the same. The moment pauses. Both of them freezing in the center of its gravity, but not being able to reverse course. Basil’s churlishness fades, Val’s veneer of confidence cracks. And then seconds bound forward in a terrible lurch of everything speeding forward, pressing them ahead in double time to catch up with the reality of events. In the next blink, Val has collapsed into himself, a SHARP inhale of breath cracking through the silence of the room, and he’s hunched over now, coiled in on himself, head bowed into his chest, his breath coming in suddenly wet gasps.

The exasperation wipes immediately away from Basil’s heart, leaving no traces. But the worry ratchets up mercilessly, threatens to overwhelm. Still, despite everything, and the sudden trembling in his chest that spreads, unable to be contained, unable to be stopped just by willing it as the fear , icy and choking, surges through him, his voice, when he speaks, has settled into a deadly calm. 

“Val.” The edges of his words have dropped into a cautious softness that has rounded out the cutting edges of annoyance, of frustration, melted them into something molten with care. But there’s an interjection of a tone in his voice that doesn’t typically exist there, that he’s usually no good at summoning up at all. An intercedence of an unusual certainty comes into his speech, not an order exactly, but not a request either, a statement that leaves no room for argument. “Show me.” 

The other’s breaths have evened out in the minutes of Basil pulling himself together, although they still come drenched in a pant, stuttering now and again. And he’s lifted his head again, chin defiantly up again, and, fuck, fuck, Basil cares about him. Is stupidly endeared somewhere in the backdrop of his mind, a drop of the sunshine warm affection from before infiltrating even through the ice of this moment. He’s more than a little relieved to see that the other’s eyes haven’t gone to that dark place that it’s hard to pull them back from sometimes. That is frightening, sometimes. He’s still present. Still listening. But, it sits clammy in Bail’s chest that, instead, a little fear has crossed into the now wide shape of them, a hazy edge of hesitance ringing the vivid pain that blares through them, liquid and relentless. 

Somehow, the thought pierces sharp, punctures through his throat, skewers into his lungs, makes his voice breathless when it comes out, it feels suddenly clear that in this moment, injured and exhausted, Val is afraid of him . 

“Val, it’s okay.” He doesn’t reach out, but he lifts his hands up, conciliatory, shifts so his feet are tucked underneath him again, tries to be as unassuming, as small, as he can make himself. He’s pretty good at that, and normally, he wouldn’t be too sure how to feel about it. But right now, he’s grateful. Grateful for being way too fucking soft as JG had so generously put in the past. For being as far from a physical threat to Val as he can be, even though he knows that’s not all of it. That there are some alarm bells he can’t turn off even if he tries. 

“I won't.” His breath catches on itself, snarls, tangles the sentiments as they try to leave his tongue. They stutter-step and fall into this mournful hollow that’s formed sharply between his lungs and his lips, studded in sorrow, filling his throat with the heaviness of unshed tears. And the rest rushes out all at once in a whisper. “I won’t hurt you.” It’s too ugly to imagine. To hurt Val. 

And yet here he is, hurt. 

And this is all Basil can do about it. 

Insist he not just push himself up on his own strength and go out into the night.

And he will. 

He will do that. 

It’s not enough.

But he’ll do it.

They take the measure of one another. A silent search. Both of them with strangled breaths and the separate aches that stretch along their forms. 

In the end, it’s Val who folds. Surrenders. Basil hates that that’s how it seems as the other’s eyes close momentarily and a long, steeling sigh seeps out of him. That he’s giving in, allowing something he wouldn’t have chosen if it could have been avoided. But it’s not the time to get into, as the other turns himself around in halting inches, his broad back now to Basil, so he lets it go. Watches as, in excruciatingly slow motions, one side of his body clearly moving more easily than the other, Val lifts his arms up into the air, wincing around one particular stretch, his shoulders tensing under fabric, a harsh gasp escaping into the air, but he makes it to the position he’d been aiming for. His arms, bent at the elbows, curved sloppy and shuddering above his shoulders, waiting. 

I can’t do it. 

Basil doesn’t make him say.

Pads closer on his knees until he’s just behind Val, too close, maybe, closer than he’d like to be, given the circumstances, given the way Val’s muscles tense at the proximity, caught between fight and flight, and he fills his lungs with more and more and more oxygen until he has to let the air out again, and it trembles on the exhale. But no flinch comes, at least not yet. And that’s something. 

Basil is closer than he’d like to be, given the circumstances, but what he doesn’t want is to risk not being able to gracefully pull off what’s being asked of him, refuses to gamble causing the other more anguish on a few more inches. 

He swallows hard, though, when faced with actually reaching out and doing it, with bridging the last gap of space and touching . There’s a constant deliberate distance between them. Around Val, there’s always a space that screams not to be crossed. And Basil has done it, despite his best efforts, because he’s always been touchy, always wants to reach out and connect if someone has made it past stranger and ended up at friend. Maybe, there’s a dearth of touch in his heart that he’s always trying to fill, maybe he just likes to know they’re really there, around him, present, solid. 

So he has , has touched Val. has reached out thoughtlessly to curve his fingers around a shoulder, or nudged the other, still laughing from a joke, or clumsily grabbed for his arm to stop a slip. And Val has allowed it of him, has allowed more of it maybe, of late. 

But this. 

This is something else. 

Something bigger. 

Something he knows Val doesn’t give easily. That he’s all too ready to snatch away. 

So with careful fingers, as unbearably careful as he can make them, he reaches out his hand and crosses that great divide, the one that takes him from one side of the screaming space to the other. 

He doesn’t know what possesses him in that moment, but for a split second, just for the barest beat of the heart, he presses his palm flat to the slope of Val’s back, gentle, but solid, spreads his fingers there as the other shifts below his touch, unyieldingly rigid at first, but then accepting, rising and falling instead with breath. 

They breathe there, one inhale, one exhale. In sync. Together. 

With a little reluctance because Val is warm, even beneath the layer of fabric, and there, and… Basil takes himself back to the point. Between slow breaths, he brings his fingers lower and wraps them, almost reverently, around the hem of Val’s shirt. He tries his best not to skirt the skin, to keep hold of the fabric, but not touch if he can, although still his knuckle grazes softness almost immediately, and it sends something screaming in his mind, even though this is as far from the time as he can possibly imagine. 

He shelves that completely unhelpful (not to mention totally inappropriate) reaction and focuses on the task at hand. Lasers into the minutia of action so he doesn’t just drown head-first in all the variables going on at once. What he needs to do is get Val’s shirt off without hurting him so he can assess the damage and help . And he should focus, because maintaining the balance of graceful fluidity and measured care that he’d like to achieve is not all that easy. He keeps his eyes on the edge of the fabric for now, can’t yet make himself process whatever is lurking below. 

Val holds completely still under the jostling, and Basil gets the distinct perception that he’s trying extra hard not to react at all. Fucking react! That angry part of Basil he’s tamping down on wants to yell, Tell me if it hurts . But he knows that will do exactly 0, so he just tries to concentrate on reading what he can of the other’s responses, and short of that just getting the damn thing over his head.     

But the truth is that even with Val sitting and his arms curved and Basil on his knees extending as far as he can, he has to stretch a little to go all the way up and over. As he’s wrestling the last stretches, Val lowering his arms just a little to help him, their eyes meet in the mirror on the far wall. 

And, despite everything, that endearing kind of Val humor, dry and black, tugs slightly at the other’s lips, pulls the corners of them up for the first time since they’d greeted each other at the coffee house. Back when Basil had just been so blissfully happy to see Val, he hadn’t clocked anything else… A breath ago, that felt like a lifetime ago, but the kernel of warmth sweetening Val’s expression, it comes back a little bit closer. Basil smiles back through his reflection, letting the genuine happiness of that thought seep through. And, besides, they do look kind of ridiculous, Basil half leaning over Val, not tall enough even with the scales tipped in his favor. He shrugs as he reaches up just a little bit farther, exaggerated, and the kernel expands. 

A moment later, the shirt is off and in his hands. 

And fuck, they’re close. His chest nearly draped along Val’s now bare skin. So close. But it is not about that, he tells himself firmly, pulling away again as he drapes the shirt over the edge of the sofa. 

And then he looks. 

And he doesn’t need any reminders because anything silly has fled entirely from his thoughts. A little dazed, he leans against the back of the couch, silent, taking it all in. Val’s arms have come down again, but he doesn’t shift at all, doesn’t say anything. Just waits, a resigned slump to the set of his shoulders. 

In the mirror, his face has hardened again, but an inescapable weariness is palpable around it now. 

Val’s back looks like one of Basil’s canvases when he’s furious with everything and everyone, and he’s just sloshed paint onto it without thinking, whipped graceless colors into the air so they splash and spill, marring the untouched surface with ugly scars.

But that’s a canvas. And this. This is Val’s back. Attached to him. Skin, and flesh, and bone. And Val. Dimly, he can sense that there’s a dawning horror yawning over him. And it’s exploding, or maybe imploding, inside his brain. A screaming fury hums from somewhere deep, corrosive and crackling, as the fullness of the image threatens to become complete in space before his eyes.

Throbbing bruises bloom dark purple along the expanses of Val, decorate his body in patterns that have neither rhyme nor reason, but seem, to Basil, to spread endless and everywhere. Over his shoulder blades, splashed along his sides, down his spine, spidery veins of scarlet darkness spilling in between the contusions, marking where the blood vessels broke and spilled. Basil swears there’s an outline of the boot in the mix, tangled in with other long scrapes, cuts that bleed a sluggish red. There are no color gradients yet, though, no sickly green, or painful yellow, no spreading galaxies of healing because the healing hasn’t even thought about beginning. It’s all just florid pain. Raw. Fresh. Fresh as a daisy.

Basil has had his scrapes and bruises like everyone else. But he’s been hit fewer times than he can count on one hand. And the only one that even begins to compare is the distant phantom of the back of his father’s hand, connecting with the skin of his cheek as a dull thunk echoed in his ears, starting a fire that had blazed for days. JG had stepped in between them after that. And the hand didn’t fall on Basil again. But it had stung, humiliating and sharp, long after the midnight darkness of the inflamed skin had disintegrated into light blue, yellow tendrils, and then nothing. And that had been one mark, one time. 

This… 

That hollow warmth which had lived in his chest and climbed into his throat has ripped open, it floods him now, filling his eyes with unbidden tears that blur the room, turn the calamity of Val’s back into a fuzzy haze of twisting colors. And he knows Val will hate that, will hate all of this, but he probably should have thought about that first. Before he let… before he… 

Basil’s fingers, the ones that don’t listen to him, that he can’t quite control, reach up, reach out, ghost faintly over a particularly intense dark stretch that starts on Val’s side and drifts over and around following the outline of a rib, disappearing into the side of him that Basil can’t see.

“I think the rib is just bruised.” Val’s voice is low and meticulously devoid of emotion, but there’s a little something almost gentle that Basil knows is for his sake, that doesn’t just fall naturally from the other’s tongue. “That’s why.” His breath rattles out of him, and Basil’s fingers are still hovering on the mark as though he can’t quite bring himself to believe it’s there, as though seeing it, touching it, and pulling away to find it still present would be too much. “That’s why…” He trails off. “Before.” 

Why it hurt so much. 

Basil’s mind supplies the words Val won’t say. 

Followed closely by a haunting loop of the matter-of-fact way Val had said I think the rib is just bruised. 

Just bruised.

The rib is just bruised . 

Their eyes meet in the mirror again, and Basil doesn’t bother to hide the way his cheeks are tear-stained now. There’s no pity in his gaze, but a deep ache at seeing Val like this steeps into it, at the vision of what he must feel. He couldn’t disguise that empathy if he tried. And he thinks, although it’s hard to tell in the dim light, that tired tears have tracked down from Val’s eyes too, welled up and fallen silent. 

That’s okay . He wants to say.

It’s good to cry . He wants to say.

It’s okay to be hurting if you’ve been hurt . He wants to say. 

No one ever told him that when he needed to hear it. And he wants to give that to the other now, wants to insist on it.

But the stubbornness still notches deep marks into the other’s features, it seems a little more worn now, spread thinner. But it doesn’t fade. And it seems to silently ask him, maybe even beg him, not to push this. And he doesn’t want for Val to beg. He doesn’t want that at all. So he just squares his shoulders and pushes his spine straight, reaches for bravery he doesn’t really think he has, and inclines his head slightly in acknowledgment. Message received. Relief seems to settle, visible, on Val, a looser exhale, a softening of his mouth, and Basil hates that. But he accepts it. Tries to find his voice. 

“I think you should lie back down so we can ice that rib.” 

That rib that is just bruised.

He tries not to imagine how fucking tired Val must have been to collapse onto the couch on all of this when they’d first come in. Tries not to imagine what he’d been doing between, presumably, last night and when he’d shown up that evening at the coffee shop. None of the few alternatives he can imagine, knocked out cold, forcing himself through work, or drugged out of his mind, particularly appeal. 

He’d like to bury Val in a tub of ice at this particular moment, but it seems like the rib is the worst culprit for now. And the fact that Val is only mostly able to stay awake. Basil wants him to sleep more than anything else, to just get some clearly, keenly desired rest that Val needs so badly but has so far denied himself. They’ll figure the rest out tomorrow. 

Val nods, and he’s already started to turn before Basil has fully conceptualized the literal execution of the next part of the plan. But at the motion, he’s shifted onto his feet, and has his hands gently out to the other, just hovering over skin. 

“Wait,” He murmurs, before Val can proceed to toss himself back onto the arm in some wild motion. It’s only a few steps into his bedroom, where, thank god, there are the millions of pillows he likes on his bed every night. So sue him, they’re soft. He grabs a few and darts back, brandishing them with a slightly dramatic flourish in Val’s direction before arranging them onto the sofa. He hopes the motion says, Slow down before you hurt yourself more, you fucking idiot . 

And judging by the small huff the other lets out at the sight of them, good-natured but with the flat, unimpressed sarcasm that only Val can imbue into a hush of air, it’s loud and clear. He says nothing, but Val doesn’t try to stop Basil from helping to gently guide his body down onto the mound either, once everything is in place. So it’s score one for Basil vs. Val’s terrible self-care skills. They should make that into a TV show. 

Thank god his sofa is pretty damn huge and supremely comfortable. He’d gotten it with half a mind that maybe at some point or another he might end up taking in a stray. He just hadn’t totally accounted for the stray to be about twice his size in his specific visions. But even Val fits comfortably onto it, and so, good job, Past Basil, one more point for you. Somehow, he considers, he knew without knowing. The thought hovers at the edges of his mind and memory, a little idle, a little preternatural, something in it that touches on a greater force he can’t quite fully bring into focus. But he doesn’t question it. Lets it slip away. 

Before him, Val’s eyes drift shut as he leans back against the pillows. Around him, his limbs splay out from his body, long and formless, sinking leaden into the couch as though relieved they don’t have to hold their own weight for even a moment longer. And Basil’s eyes can finally trace the damage in full. 

The front of him isn’t much better than the back. Worse, even, if it’s possible, but Basil is at least more ready to take in the expanses of savaged skin, the marks left from pounding fists, and ruthless kicks, from dragging along gravel, and hitting the sides of a ring. There’s something else in along the rest now, though, a different kind of mutilation. Basil leans in a touch closer, blinks to make sure. And there, skirting up the shadows of Val’s neck and along his collar bone, live the purposeful indentations of teeth and the sucking marks of a mouth. It makes Basil’s mouth go even drier as the worry clangs higher, rising now in entirely new directions, frothing with a sudden touch of rage. Surely not… delivered all at once. But the marks feel equally fresh. Temporally similar. 

He doesn’t like it. 

“You should see the other guy.” Val murmurs, as though the weight of Basil’s frown is visible below his lids. There’s the barest hint of slur in his speech, a tired tug down on the syllables. But he drives to press something else into it, a touch of gallows humor twined into the speech with the end of efforts.

Something about the sound of it shudders right through the last vestiges of Basil’s own willpower. Cracks something deep in his chest. He lowers himself down in slow inches, settles on the floor, kneeling by where Val’s arm is dangling. With careful motions, he reaches out softly and wraps his hand around the wrist, thankfully, a patch of skin, unbruised, unhurt. He holds it there, for a moment, waits until eventually Val lets his weight fall into the touch. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.” He finally manages, an honest vein of sorrow opening up to paint the words. 

Val doesn’t answer, but after a breath, his arm is moving, pulling across the edge of the couch in one costly shift after another, until he’s tugged himself out of Basil’s grasp. Basil lets him, watches, waits, lets go. But then, at once, Val turns his fingers to catch the smaller hand in his own instead, enveloping it all the way around it, cocooning it in his grasp. Even though he’s been smashed to pieces, is falling apart at the seams, his grasp stays firm and solid, he holds Basil---strong. 

Fresh tears well in Basil’s eyes. 

They sit in that place for some unclear stretch of time. Basil wants to stay in it, to bask in the warmth of the connection, in the moment of comfort. But it’s not comfortable for Val, Val is hurting. And Basil demanded to help. So he needs to pick himself up and do exactly that. 

Regretfully, he disentangles his hand from the heat surrounding it, rising to his feet. Val cracks his eyes open a hair at the loss, too, blearily finding Basil’s shape above him in a silent question, and Basil tries to smile, “Let me get the ice.” 

There are ice packs in his freezer, thank god. Naima had brought them over with that huffy big sister expression, not too long after he’d moved in. He is a bit clumsy and doesn’t always pay the best attention to his surroundings when he’s lost in his thoughts---so he’s needed them more than once. But there is only a normal amount of hit his hip on the side of the wall or missed the last step on the stairwell sort of aid at hand. Not the went three rounds with a freight train kind, not by a long shot. 

He’s already mentally ordering a surplus of supplies to stock in the apartment though, even as the thought that this might happen regularly churns his stomach dangerously. But better safe. He’s not about to be sorry. He’ll ask Zavia about it when she’s in next week. He’s pretty sure she used to be a nurse in Romania, and he knows she won’t ask too many questions. Although he probably will end up on the receiving end of an all-too-wise stare. Hopefully, Naima will come by at a deceptively casual twelve minutes after the start of Zavia’s shift, as she has so often taken to doing recently, and he can just side-step out of the frame, Zavia distracted and his sister none the wiser. He does not need to hear it from her. 

You did what? He can just hear her voice jump a register, that awful, pinched look of disapproval gracing her features. Basil, you don’t even know him. 

Ignoring the sudden glare of her ghost, he pulls the ice packs out of the freezer and into his arms, tugging a dishtowel loose from a hook as he passes back out into the living room. It’s a silly one. Marco had given it to him as a gift when he’d let slip his birthday was coming up, not long after they’d met. An artist always needs another rag, eh? The other had grinned his infectious grin, and Basil had laughed too. Cheery basil leaves dot the white expanse, and amongst them, flowers intersperse. Basil is very important to us Italians. Marco gave him a little wink that had flushed his cheeks, benign as it was, But people are always forgetting the blooms . Me, I like them. 

The memory suffuses with sunshine, and it steadies the rhythms in his heart for a breath. A much nicer presence than Naima’s shrill phantom. Marco would tell him he’s doing the right thing. 

There’s a lot of Val, and a lot of bruising, and not a lot of ice pack to go around, it turns out. He flips the TV back on and sets something inane playing to fill the silence, to keep all of this from catching up to them both and exploding spectacularly. And momentarily hovers as he ponders what exactly the best thing to do here is. 

In the end, there’s only truly mitigation. He sets one towel-wrapped ice pack along a spectacularly blotchy patch of blood-shot skin on the right side of Val’s stomach, which paints a queasy image of a foot connecting with the tender skin, and snakes one along Val’s shoulder and slightly over his back where another impact seems to have landed, and the last, wrapped in the Basil towel, he gently tucks around the dark scarlet slash of the bruised rib on his left, sinking to sit at the foot of the couch once more, so he can push it gently against the wound.   

Val’s head tilts a little bit down as he breathes through the new sensation, a slight hiss of displeasure slips from between his teeth for a moment, but then his body controrts slightly with something like a shudder, his neck stretching long as though the ice is bodily coursing through his veins, before all of him sinks down into the cushions and couch again, contraction giving out to decompression. His lips part in a long exhale, and then a low groan, but not pained this time, appreciative, escapes his throat. 

“Fuck.” He murmurs, and his voice, as scraped as it is, hollowed out and totally wrecked, is good to hear. “Thank you.”  

And then, immediately, because it’s Val. “You don’t have to hold it.”

Basil lets himself snort a little at that, prodding the other’s side gently on a stretch of skin that isn’t marred. “Yeah? Are you going to do it?” And at least Val has the good grace to look a little sheepish. He doesn’t reply, but pulls his shoulder, the one lacking an ice pack, up to his ear just a touch, pursing his lips. There’s something suddenly so fucking childlike about him, that it breaks Basil’s heart and fills it all at once. 

“Don’t worry.” He knows his smile is touched with sadness, but a part of it comes sincerely. “I know the drill. I have two older siblings, and they both kick.” He aims for overly solemn, though he’s only half-kidding. 

He doesn’t know what possesses him, but his finger is still on Val’s side, and he ghosts it along the strange path Val’s pale skin weaves between the marks that decorate his body. And somehow, they land on the raw edges of teeth that are burnished into Val’s shoulder, trailing up, one bite mark after the next, to the sucked patches that lurk in the dark hollows of his throat, layered over and not under the cuts and bruises. It’s a poor order of operations, if you ask Basil. 

Val hadn’t been moving to begin with, but he seems to go somehow stiller beneath the pad of Basil’s touch. 

“And they bite too…” He’s not trying to pry, he really isn’t; he knows it’s probably none of his business. He only… wants to know that it wasn’t, that no one… It’s just hard to understand the whole quilt of it, the way it lays altogether. Because who in their right mind would see Val like this and… And some part of Basil needs to know that no one is… That it wasn’t like that. “But maybe not like this.” He lets the words linger with a hint of question, but withdraws his touch. Shifts back again, keeping his hand only on the ice pack. 

Did you want this? He wants to say, but doesn’t. 

Val snorts tonelessly, but makes the effort to turn his neck to face Basil. And when he does, his eyes are open again, and back to that place they were in earlier at the Coffee Hall. Shaded with some kind of inexplicable hurt that’s not physical, some glistening kind of heartache tangled in a tired confusion. “It’s not.” He starts, and then presses his lips together, as though he’s not sure exactly how to explain. “It’s just some guy I’m seeing.” He bites his lip, and Basil processes. Some guy I’m seeing.

“It’s messy. Not…” 

The syllables of Val’s speech become more air than word as they twine out of him, suddenly, at once terribly fragile. And he shakes his head a little, some wisp of humorless laughter falling from his lips. And in the folds of it, there’s something dark, bleak and black, sticky like tar, self-deprecation flirting with self-hatred. 

“I don’t know what it is.” 

He sounds, for a breath, defeated. 

Did you want this? Basil thinks again, but doesn’t say. 

But what it is, is certainly not the time. So he only nods his head, silent, and reaches out to wrap a hand around Val’s arm again, squeezing softly. And the other fixes that lost gaze on him, a rare show of vulnerability, so he holds it and doesn’t let it go. 

“Okay,” He breathes back. And he doesn’t know what to say, so he reaches for the truest thing he has to offer. “I’m glad you’re here.” 

And he is. At the core. Beyond everything else. Just so fucking glad that Val is here, with him, and he can hold the stupid ice pack to his just a bruise rib, and know at least for tonight, exactly where the other is. Not being torn apart in some dusty basement. Not with Mr. “It’s so complicated that it’s fine to bite into bruises.” And not alone, hurting in the dark. But here, with Basil. 

Safe.

Val’s gaze stays lost for a minute, wandering out god knows where, but slowly, it recedes, just a touch, and the corners of his lip turns up. “Yeah,” He murmurs, and he lets his head fall toward Basil, the tiniest of genuine smiles dragging out of him. “I’m glad I’m here, too.” 

And that small motion, the earnestness of it, the gentleness that clings, that only Basil gets to see, breaks his resolve. With well-projected motions, he moves his fingers up to where Val’s head is lying against the pillow and tangles them---gentle---into the sweaty strands that have stuck to his forehead. He lets himself touch, as he eases the hair back into place, strokes through the softness of it, back and again, even when there’s no more hair to set right. Allows himself to fall into a rhythm, as Val’s head tilts back into his touch, his eyes closing. 

They sit there like that, drenched in silence, and the nonsensical buzz of the TV behind them, low mutters of words that flood around Basil’s ears but never register. His fingers card absentmindedly through Val’s hair as the other’s breath evens and his body begins to go limp. He’s drifting off, Basil thinks, when Val’s eyes slit open again all at once, on the cusp of sleep, but clinging to something.

“Basil,” The murmur of his voice is barely loud enough to make out, and the contours of Basil’s name drag out of it heavy with effort. 

He leans in to ease the struggle, so Val can speak in his low, bare tone without having to fight to raise it. “Yeah?” He whispers back, it feels strange not to, when the other’s voice has faded into nothing at the edges. His hand stills for a moment, but he leaves it where it is, not ready to break the connection. 

Pure pain drenches the slivers of grey-blue that watch him now, as Val fights to make the words audible. But stubbornly, he pushes them into the air, stark and all hollowed out, a heavy truth on his tongue. “I hurt someone last night.” He finally breathes, lids closing as shimmering tears well up in the corners of his eyes, but don’t yet fall.

The other’s body is too tired to move, too rent, but Basil gets the sense that if he could, he’d be curling in on himself at just this moment, wrapping his strong limbs into a ball, trying to make his body as small as possible, trying to escape the sense memories buried in his skin. 

“I didn’t mean to.” The words come in the cadence of a confession, a bearing of Val’s soul at the last, when he’s so worn down, so razed to nothing, that he can’t keep the thoughts buried anymore. Can’t keep them from bubbling up where they’ve sat aching in his chest. Loathing layers heavy along the sentiments, a revulsion so excruciatingly aimed inward, it breaks Basil’s heart. “But I did.” 

He doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t know how badly Val hurt someone or why. But it doesn’t matter. In this breath, he could care less about the details. His hand shifts as the first tear falls, thumb gently brushing it away. 

“It wasn’t your fault.” 

Absolution rolls easily from his tongue for Val, comes with absolute, palpable certainty. And if it’s the one thing he can give. He’ll give it gladly. There are so many monsters he imagines in the corners of this story. But Val. Not Val. 

“Whatever happened.” Val has tilted his cheek into his hand, and so he holds it. “It wasn’t your fault.”   

He knows his own certainty won’t end the one Val clings to, running in the other direction. But that Val wouldn’t have voiced the thought if hearing its opposition aloud was meaningless.

He doesn’t want to cheapen the sentiment by repeating it, though, so he just stays silent, catching the tears as they drip down, one by one, along the (beautiful, so fucking beautiful) expanses of Val’s face. Doesn’t let them stain his cheeks. 

“Do you promise?” The other murmurs, finally, fighting to keep his consciousness, the sentiment almost entirely made of air. 

Val can’t see, but Basil’s smile is sad as he bends even closer, presses his cheek onto the couch by Val’s head. “Yeah.” He breathes back, and for a second, their exhales tangle together, their inhales come in unison. “Yeah, I promise.” 

A strangled sound seeps from Val’s throat, a sob mixed with a groan tangled in a scream, his muscles tensing and twitching for a breath. But when the wave of it fades, he says only, “Okay.” And that word is so small, but a drop of hope trembles through it. Fragile, precious. 

And then Val’s eyes have shut all the way, and Basil exhales, watches him from so close for another breath or two. He doesn’t want to pull away. But it doesn’t seem right, now that Val can’t tell what’s happening anymore, to stay so close without his awareness. Reluctantly, Basil pulls himself straight, settles back to sit. To hold his vigil. 

And hold it he does.

Time spins strangely after that. It’s 20 minutes on, an hour off, for the ice. 20 minutes on, an hour off. Val stays fast asleep as the clock tips into the witching hour. And Basil’s vision is starting to get blurry around the edges. 

Some part of him knows that when he drags himself to bed, shuts the door to his own room, and lets the darkness take him, that will be the end of this interlude. That this space will have vanished as soon as the first rays of sunlight touch the edges of his curtains. That much as he’d like to wake up and make Val coffee in the morning, insist they go to the doctor, or call Zavia, or at least find some balm… It’s a fantasy that won’t come to pass.

It aches in Basil’s heart that knowledge. Pulses pure ache through his veins, as he rises to his feet and watches Val, sunk so deep into unconsciousness now, the trails of exhaustion finally followed to their natural conclusion, that his face is at last smooth, free of pain. 

He wants to keep him here. But he can’t. So instead, he silently covers Val with a soft blanket, careful not to brush any bruises. And leans in to place a feather-light kiss on his forehead, just the barest brush of lips. 

He wants… 

But it doesn’t matter. 

His own body begging for sleep, he lets the siren song of his bed draw him in, slumps onto the mattress, and in an instant, deep, dreamless sleep consumes him.

In the morning, when he opens his eyes, of course, Val is gone. 

But on the couch, a small note sits folded in the middle of the abandoned expanse. 

“Thank you. - Val ” It reads in a messy scrawl.

And Basil half-laughs, half-sobs at that, and settles down onto the cushions himself, the indentation the other left letting him sink in deeper than he would have on a normal day, the reassuring scent of him, something deep and rich, a little earthy, a little spicy, a brush of straightforward soap, lingering on the fabric.

He wants… 

But it doesn’t matter. 

He closes his eyes again, the note pressing to his chest, and lets himself feel the pangs in his chest, bittersweet but beautiful.