#so i read recently about st francis of assisi being the first recorded stigmatic and uh. yeah. ✨symbolism✨

[talentforlying]

@handgiven: ❝i’m fine. you’re the one who got stabbed.❞ fallen em moments u.u — SIX OF CROWS STARTERS

' fine my arse. you're fuckin' bleeding. '

the rest of the sentence fades out to static, bullied back by the instinct he follows to catch em firmly by the chin and tilt his face up for better inspection, stiff and unsteady fingers fumbling for a pocket hankie ( thank christ he never fully gave up on the desire to dress pretentiously ) to crumple in his fist and dab at the dark streak sliding down from em's hairline. he still hasn't gotten used to this: the stomach-dropping, tilt-a-whirl feeling of finding em after a fight and seeing dings and scrapes and bruises. even now that it's become more common, now that em doesn't have a halo to beam down holy armor from the angelic mothership — especially now that it's become more common, now that they both know a nick at the wrong junction could puncture clay like plant roots in soil — constantine can't fucking get used to it.

devotion's simple enough to stomach when it doesn't cost anything, when the person giving it's got plenty to spare and has a finger on the scale strong enough to keep themself level. it's a different story entirely when you're the one responsible for ensuring they make it out alive at the end of the day.

( em's choice, to keep following him in. em's decision to take the hits and risk his newly-under-nine lives. still constantine's responsibility, because . . . because he owes it. because he owes em. )

it's only once he can see the edges of the laceration, shallow enough not to be life-threatening, that his lungs kick back into active service again, the release of air dropping his shoulders like the limbs of a cut marionette. then the static clears, leaving him blinking blankly, hands retreating to absently pat down his own chest for a cursory triage. ' . . . 'ang on, stabbed? how d'you mean, stabbed, i'm perfectly — oh, fuck me. '

yeah, being stabbed would account for the hot and sticky something that's been running down his forearm and pooling in the crease of his elbow, wouldn't it? it'd account for the smeared fingerprints he's left on em's cheek, too. and, you know, there's the searing fucking burn in the center of his right palm where the perforation's gone clean through, now that he's noticed it. hard to buff that one out.

he looks up at the expression on em's face and just can't help it: he laughs, a nervous giggle that sounds an awful lot like shock, wiggling his claret-colored fingers in a gruesome sort of cooee. ' look — guess i'm the hole-y one now. '