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For the first time in years, Taliesin agrees to sleep in Katy’s bed when he doesn't really want to.
It's not her, of course - he just doesn’t feel like having anyone close to him right now. Isn’t in the mood to be touched, just a little thing like nerves exposed and screaming like a sunburn spans every inch of his skin. It's not her. Really.
That's a lie, but he's a liar. He's already here, might as well just let it happen. Like lying half-still beneath a boorish new lover who lost their appeal in the span of a single drink, it's easier than any of the other solutions he can think of. Easier to be sticky and bruised, to smile and thank them for it so eventually this will just be over and he can leave.
He can never tell her that, though. It may not be enough to make her hate him, Katy is nothing if not generous in her forbearance, but there is easily enough hate in him for two. He doesn't want forgiveness anyway, hasn't done a single fucking thing to deserve it.
He should be… happy. That's what other people would feel, he thinks. Happy that her heart is healing, that in seeking it has found someone so utterly worthy of it.
Harper, I'm in love with Rizven.
There is no reason that should make him feel so sad.
He's embarrassed, of course, that he never noticed; now that he knows, it's obvious really. Not that Katy felt that way, but that she should. She's a good judge of the heart everywhere he thinks but in himself, and she could not have chosen better. There is goodness in Rizven, bright as polished stone, worn smooth by suffering but strong, a solid foundation on which to build something wondrous. It was that same quality, was it not, that he…
Well, nevermind. That's over now. Rizven may not love Katy yet, but he will. How could he not? Whatever Katy thinks he feels for Taliesin will fade, if it was ever there at all, exactly as it should.
He's like Cort, in that way. Kinder perhaps, but rooted, stable, a poor match for the tempest in Taliesin that rages and rages and rages. No one chooses a storm over a rainbow, merely weathers one for the reward of the other.
And oh, Rizven’s had to weather him enough already, hasn't he? This new light doesn't flatter Taliesin at all, paints him in shades of minor villainy. The boy who asks too much, who can't be kept out, trickling into places he doesn't belong like a leak in the roof. He kissed Rizven and Rizven ran away. That says it all, really.
Idiot. Maybe he really is as arrogant as they say. He can take a cue here at least, will find his way offstage with minimal fuss, forgotten as soon as the scene changes like the last act before a happy ending.
He wishes he could be happy, genuinely, consistently, for other people. Happiness slips so easily through his fingers though, so fleeting and ephemeral he forgets the shape of it even as it cowers in his palm. He hates that he puts that on other people. Maybe he's just reaping a harvest of all the bitter seeds he's planted, but even on the worst of his days he wants Katy’s meadows to bloom. Brilliant and green and precious and new; he wants only soft grass beneath her feet, flowers in her hair. He wishes he could be sunshine for her, to help her garden grow without fear of unthinking moments that could scorch new shoots and tender petals, leave them smoking.
He is afraid of everything, always has been. He's just fucking selfish too, and he doesn't know when to stop, where to stop, how to stop. Who's to say where he might find himself, if he ever ceases swimming forward. Alone, he suspects. He's always sensed it there, underneath, biding its time. Waiting.
Maybe that's why this feels so much like he needs to be ready to lose them both.
Fuck. His mouth tastes of ashes, breath too hot as it rushes out between his lips, spilling heat like a furnace. She's drooling on his shoulder and her hair catches uncomfortably in the scratch of his stubble and if he doesn't move he'll drown in the blood of his own bitten tongue.
She doesn't stir as he rolls her onto her side, pushes a pillow half beneath her to take the space he vacated. He has a dozen excuses prepared just in case, but she never wakes up. Not on the worst of his sleepless nights where restlessness all but vibrates through his skin, not during his nightmares, not all the times he's woken up weeping and shaken, choking on the unspoken words that fill his mouth. If he can say nothing else for himself, at least he's learned how to be fucking quiet . No one likes their sleep disturbed, and he wouldn't know how to talk about it anyway.
There is something to be said, he thinks as he slides himself down to sit with bare chest and bare feet on the cold floor, about the comfort of old lovers. He never had to worry about explaining things to Cort, because Cort already knew, Cort was there . The myriad of ways Taliesin had allowed himself to be broken was not a surprise, it just was . It's harder with new people; he doesn't know how to explain the dark things lurking in him like a spider at the edge of one's vision, lording over a web of cracks with edges so sharp they could leave you bleeding before you even knew you'd been cut. Pain is always hungry for more pain, and misery, after all, desires most a companion.
You don't have to be alone, Harper.
Blood is pounding in his temples, or maybe in his fingertips, in his eyelids, in the back of his throat like a garrotted wail. He has the sudden urge to go back to Umberlee's temple, to ask the goddess to take him instead now the Cyrinishad is gone, but that seems extreme even for him.
There's no need to be so dramatic, Taliesin, whispers Khem, and Cort, and Tamsin and their father, a poisonous gestalt of a voice in his head he suspects is really just his own. People only hurt you if you let them. Stop whining and be useful for something. This isn't even important. Your heart is not a thing worth breaking.
And they're right, or he is. Maybe the difference is semantic.
He's still looking for someone who makes him feel safe, contained, the way Cort used to. Someone who doesn't need him but wants him anyway, who can tolerate the smell of smoke as Taliesin plays with fire, be his soft place to land when he can no longer fly for the ash on his wings. Someone who can keep him, hold him still, who cares for him so much or so little they can make him stop without coming to hate him for it.
Maybe he could ask for an island and the whole of the moon while he's at it, so reasonable in his demands. The selfishness of this heart is nothing to be proud of.
And the thing is, he knows he could have some of what he wants, if only he didn't give two shits about what would happen if he were to take it. Medh would talk to him about this, if he wanted. Medh has been waltzing with melancholy for a hundred years, he might even understand. He would look at Taliesin with his big, soft eyes and would touch him with his cool, soft hands, and would give him a clean, soft pillow for his head so he could implode in creature comfort. Would take him to bed and lie with him, say sweet, soft things that he thinks he means. Would pretend this kind of rancid, infectious neediness can be managed with the perspective falling in and out of love a hundred times provides.
Medh, who hides himself behind nice wine and pretty clothes and a stack of ledgers neatly written, who believes in himself about as much as Taliesin does, surely he's the person to go to. The man whose confidence broke at a glimpse of Taliesin with someone else, that's who he should run to with his scalded fingers and twisted up feelings about other lovers, almost, once upon a time.
He can't say he doesn't consider it. He's exactly that kind of monster, after all.
But Medh doesn't know that yet. Doesn’t really know him , doesn't know anything about him, and Taliesin doesn't know if Medh believes it when he says that what they have is enough. He doesn't think it is, never has, isn't sure that either of them understands what that word even means. No amount of time in misadventure and his own misspent youth has ever made it any easier to define, and Taliesin suspects, on the other side of thirty, a true answer to this question is not one he will want to hear.
People like us don't fall in love , Molly told him, once, a million times. We play it like a game . The world has no use for an aging whore; the clever ones plan, build a nest, a safety hatch. The others die, dry up, ground to dust when all the usefulness is wrung out of them, discarded and just as easily forgotten. You look after you because the world doesn't give a shit about what you need or what you can handle. You take what you can, when you can, how you can, because enough is a dream, not a guarantee.
He'd thought her the wisest woman he'd ever met, back then. He'd been bleeding, wounds yawning and ragged, empty and raw and so desperate to understand, to make any kind of sense of where he'd found himself, what he'd done. A blade can do just as much damage coming out as going in, and Cort was, is, an exit wound. One of many, but unanticipated pain lingers long after the flesh has mended.
He hasn't even managed that much, he thinks. Not really. Not with skin thin as wet paper, so easily torn. He's never fully staunched the bleeding, took too long to even try, just let it erode away at him like storm water tearing stones out of a riverbed until it's deep and wide and impossible to fill. Maybe that's why he can't hold on to anything, swept away by his own current while old ghosts whisper, more, more, just a little more.
Maybe there is no such thing as enough, no discernable delimiter between nothing and too much. He'd rather not be a thing left carelessly in a doorway for someone to trip over in the dark, a shard of glass in the sand to catch an unsuspecting sole. He doesn’t want to be anyone else's lingering wound. Medh deserves better than him and Katy does too, and he will sit here and cram fistfuls of silence into his mouth, fill his belly with it until there isn't room to be hungry for anything else.
So this is where he is now, again, on the floor, again , pathetic and maudlin in the middle of the night. So disappointed in himself and so deeply, deeply ashamed.
He's supposed to go and kill a god tomorrow, probably. It is not a thing that makes sense. He can't even sleep for eight uninterrupted hours, no one should trust him to do anything.
And they don't, probably. It's good that little enough of his participation is required. If Halaster had deigned to inflict that stupid butterfly net on anyone else there wouldn't be any need for him at all, as superfluous in this moment as in every other.
He doesn't know why he fights that. It makes his hands ache, knuckles bruised by the spectre of old wounds. Swing and miss. Fall down, get up again. Get up again. Get up.
He wants to give up on that. Wants to be drunk, wants to be fucked, wants to inject something that burns directly into his veins and let it lighten this leaden feeling in him with excoriating fire. Wants to run, again, sail to Waterdeep, change his name, maybe never come back.
He wants to climb to the top of the stalactite and scream I miss the sun and I don't want to die alone in the darkness and I wish I was a simpler man. He wants to let someone shoot him for waking them up in the middle of the night and making babies cry and maybe hug him even though he looks just like his father, tell him he's a good lay but a better friend in a way he can believe it.
He doesn't do any of that, though, doesn't realize there are tears in his eyes until he can taste them, breathes out slow and lets them fall into the palms of his hands like the world's smallest downpour.
Nobody notices the last raindrop in a storm, not even him, and it's gone as quickly as it started. The house is quiet and he's grown uncomfortably comfortable with the shadows. Katy snuffles softly above him, safe and unthreatening, trusting enough in sleep to tuck herself against him when he climbs back into bed, seeking heat in his hollow chest.
It isn't as comforting as it sometimes is, but that doesn't surprise him, a net of love and resentment and despair all tangled up around his heart. It isn't her fault though, isn't anybody’s fault, and he'll sleep this off, kill a god, build a house, get a hobby, manage any way he can.
He is a really good liar, after all.