Work Text:
i. Steven wakes up at 3:52 in the morning sometimes, and in the darkness of his room, he knows nothing but Xabi, feels nothing but Xabi, yet the other side of his bed is empty (his heart feels emptier, though) and he’s engulfed in loneliness and cold and he wonders, does he burn for me the way I do for him?
ii. Ask me if I love him, Steven says, to an empty room. Ask me how I drowned for him, fell for him, starved for him. Ask me how I feel like I was made purely for him, because it’s as though I can't do anything else but love him. Ask me how he is my penance and my absolution and my prayer.
iii. They met on a Sunday morning. It was raining and windy, but Steven - he had never felt more complete.
iv. “This, all this, it will do nothing but ruin us.” Xabi’s words came out as barely a whisper, but Steven heard it louder and louder, every second by second. His knees had a slight tremor, and he wondered how possibly what they have (had) could be reduced to one word. Xabi placed a hand on his thigh, and it felt like sunrise and honey and everything inside him - the blood flowing through his veins, the heart pumping in his chest - twisted at his touch.
v. Steven wanted to tell him: It’s still you. It's always been you. You occupy everything in me. But the truth is, I’m falling into this black nothingness and it’s killing me, it’s fucking tearing me apart, because I don’t know anything else but the crevices of your arms and the warmth of your body. You started this fire in me, and now you’re leaving me in ashes.
vi. What he actually said was, “I remember when you first told me you loved me. You said it like it was an apology.”