#i mean it makes more sense but im haunted and vexed by not knowing why i thought he was a tinsmith

[nikomedes]

i wouldve sworn on a stack of bibles dammon was a tinsmith. what do u mean he's always made weapons and his work was sought after. where the fuck did i get the idea he was a tinsmith? ive mandela effected my fucking self

[andryuska]

@extasiie // im fucking crying

His eyes roam over the sheets around him, too fresh, almost untouched, though the shape of his legs breaks the smooth plane at the slope of the feet – or, rather, the shape of one leg. He almost doesn’t know better when it’s out of sight. Sometimes he can feel the sense of that missing limb, and hidden from his eyes like this, he can almost believe it’s there. BUT IT HURTS, and so he knows. This dull pain, this malcontent, is all Anatole seems able to feel in the days since returning home. Before that, just after the surgery, things had been still so urgent and diverting amongst the rest of the soldiers that Anatole had been unable to fall completely into the despair that now haunts him.

He watches light creep its way across the bed with the setting of the sun – the bed in which Andrei has not lain since their return – and thinks that this isn’t a place for love, only for sickness. “Don’t,” he murmurs, and his eyes still do not meet Andrei’s. He knows that this accusation should mean something more to him. It should inspire some indignant protest and a desperate promise to amend his inattention, but all he has is the silent and heartless certainly that it is not true.

He has missed Andrei terribly, and yet has resolutely denied each visit from him, afraid that this new, lame thing that he has become will wither Andrei’s desire for him. He cannot bear the thought of it. He’s never been one who tends towards isolation, or who fears rejection, but things are different now. Things are different all over. The war has left him with the ghost of a TERROR he cannot name, and his wound has left him unable to distract himself from this ghost. He lies in bed, takes his meals, is offered meager helpings of medicine to dull suffering, and is pressed back into the pillows whenever he makes any vain attempt to escape the maddening  s t i l l n e s s of the bed. All he has now, he thinks, are these four walls – which are certain soon to be gone as well, if the accounts of the advancing French army are of any worth – and his bleak and confused thoughts. He needs assistance to do the most basic of things, as he refuses still to wear the wooden leg that sits at his bedside and mocks him for his inability. He has been CONSUMED by the dreary, suffocating existence that is recovery, and its gray character with its numbing medications have maybe numbed his heart too. He has no declarations with which to assure Andrei of his love; no soft words will come to him.

There comes, struggling against the weight of this deadening sorrow, the old wish to  h o l d Andrei, to have those lips against his own and to feel his heart pound strong and loud again, but what can he do with it? He is ashamed of his weakness, and the certainty that he is a wholly undesirable lover because he is now also an INVALID sears him with impotence. Curse the very thought! Him, ashamed! He’d never have believed the day would come.

His fingers twitch and curl into the sheets so that he will not be WEAKER STILL and reach for Andrei.

“What is all this?” His voice trembles, and for the first time since Andrei’s arrival, for the first time since leaving the war, some life is present in his words. “Do not force me to–” But he cannot finish, afraid that something in him still capable of shaming him further will compel him to cry.

    andrei had not fought his superiors and his conscious alike to return to moscow with anatole in the hope that all would be the same as before. he had not expected to return to the life he and anatole had known, he had not expected that after a some time, all would somehow resume as it had before that awful day which in his memory still painfully burns. that everything would change is an expectation that he had accepted. that they would change this much ---- that is what had sent him insistently over, despite his request for a visit having been again refused.

at first, andrei had imagined he could not see his lover on account of there being physicians and caretakers around too often for it to be proper. and still he knew the other wouldn’t be fully healed, would not even be close to it, but to still not see him? days and nights had been spent awake, pacing his study in furious worry, denouncing anatole for denying him, denouncing the war for making it so, and questioning, always questioning, why he didn’t want to see him. when pain had seemed to him to no longer been a factor, andrei had only been able to come to that one conclusion. that anatole no longer loved him, and worse, that he blamed him for not stopping the amputation, for not doing enough to protect him, for letting this entire thing happen. guilt had choked him, had stopped him from sleeping and eating, had threatened to steal away his very life and send him back into the war. and when that guilt had become too overwhelming, it had been subsumed into anger.

andrei has expected to come and to make his accusations, which he cannot even strongly declare, and to have them confirmed. he has come thinking that it shall be all over, because some part of this must be his fault. it has not prepared him for the sight before which he now stands, which fills him with such dread that he nearly must leave to compose himself. he has come expecting to be angry and vicious, to fight, and now cannot even find it in himself to speak.

only the most heartless and vile dignity prevents him from rushing forward, from falling onto the bed where he should be sleeping, from taking anatole’s face in his hands and kissing it and promising that all will be well, that he has promised to stay and that he shall never go back on that promise, that he himself is a fool and that he means nothing of those words, that they are wrong and misplaced and he knows that they cannot be true. yet he cannot know that, he cannot be sure that it’s not all true. doubt swells in him and his arms cross over his chest, as though to embrace himself, to protect himself from this onslaught of sadness that aches through him for their horrible mutual neglect.

andrei cannot bring himself to bend to that will which love puts in his soul, and he cannot bring himself to be angry either. a tear his crept down his cheek without his realizing, and what causes it is unknown and thus vexing.

“ you haven’t allowed me to see you in weeks, no matter how often i call ---- ” his voice is thin and without any strong conviction, and he knows that trying to explain himself is useless, but it is all he has prepared to say, and so he says it. “ i’ve come and made requests, and sent letters, and nothing has been answered or returned. you haven’t ---- i didn’t even know if you were still recovering well, you could have died and it would not have reached me. ” a lurching step forward is taken before he can stop himself. “ what could it be? what else could the reason be other than that you don’t ---- that you’ve stopped ---- ”

but he cannot repeat it, because the words taste too bitter and too true on his tongue, and if he utters them, the tears which he has mostly held back will break through his defenses and in falling, drag his spirit down further still.