Duet, Unfinished
(encore to 'Dance, Traditional, in Two Movements')
by Ashura
warnings: ANGST!! Beware the angst!
pairings: Bran/Will, mentioned Bran/Barney and Arthur/Merriman
archive: Arcadia (http://arcadia.envy.nu)
disclaimer: still not mine. Oh, the horror.
notes: Odd-numbered movements (in italics) are Will's POV, even numbers are Bran's.
There is no more after this. Make up any resolution you want, because I have no idea what would happen next.
****
i.
I can hear the door open and close, sense his footsteps halfway down the hall. I close my eyes, make my breathing even, pretend to be asleep. Even without looking at him, the despair he wraps himself in is suffocating. I wonder how he breathes inside it. I sneak a glance at him, when I know he's looking away. His hair is mussed, his white skin flushed, and there are tear-trails glistening on his cheeks. He smells like sex. I close my eyes again and remind myself that I don't have a right to care.
ii.
When I get back into the room I share with Will, I let the door close behind me as loud as it wants to. Not that it matters, since Will grew up in a house with eleven people and could sleep through the Second Coming. But he's not asleep now, he's just pretending. It's a good enough show to fool most people, and really I'm not sure how it is that I can tell the difference. Maybe just because I've made such a study, for so long, out of watching him. I know all his little habits, how he always uses his right hand to push his hair back out of his face, how his left eye twitches when he's nervous, how he always takes his sandwiches apart and rearranges them before he can eat them.
I go through the motions. I crawl into my bed, cocoon myself in blankets and hide my head in the pillow. It's too hot, but if I throw the blankets off I feel exposed, more than I want to be. What have I just done? What the hell is the matter with me? What made Barney kiss me? What on earth made me kiss him back? I lie there in bed, being too warm, my brain suffused in images of golden hair and moonlight and loneliness, sneaking glances at the man across the room. He looks peaceful and asleep. I wonder if the first is as false as the second.
I tell him, "I know you're awake."
I hear his sigh, see his eyes blink open. Beautiful grey eyes he has, like the cloudy sky above the ocean. There's a storm brewing in them, now, heavy and laden with rain. "Congratulations. I'm awake. What do you want me to say?"
Now there's a question. "Don't know. Could ask where I've been. Why I left. Get pissed for waking you up. Something."
"As you were astute enough to point out, I was already awake. Can't really yell at you for that." So calm. "And I already know the rest."
I am suddenly very, very cold. I demand, "What exactly do you mean?"
His voice is tight. "Nothing. Nevermind."
But I don't nevermind. I need to follow this, find out what the hell he's talking about. "What is it you know? That I had to leave the room because I couldn't stand having you avoid looking at me for one more minute? Or that I just spent two hours in bed with Barney and still don't know why, except that he was there and warm and isn't afraid to look at me?"
"...If you're trying to get me to say I'm jealous," he says softly, "Yes, I am."
I stay very still. I want this admission to mean something, but I'm afraid—I don't think it does. "You don't have a right to be." My voice sounds much colder than I meant it to.
"I know." He doesn't move, hasn't moved this entire time. "That's why I didn't say it. Only, it seemed like you really wanted to hear it."
"I don't understand you, sometimes. If you feel something for me, why don't you do anything about it? It's not like you don't know how /I/ feel. It's never been a goddamn secret." And this is Will I'm talking to, who knows everything, after all. "I used to think it was just because you swung the normal way and liked girls, but that's not it, is it, because I watched you do the same thing to Jane. It's just you. You don't like anybody."
Very quietly—"That's not true."
"Don't trust us, then, enough to let us get close."
"That's not it."
"Well what /is/ it then? Why do you always have to talk in riddles like some fucking guru? It's driving me nuts." I flop onto my back on the bed. The mattress squeaks and whuffs with displaced air.
"What do you want from me, Bran? What do you want me to say?" he asks, and he's gone plaintive and sad. "That I can't do...what you want me to do? That I want more than anything in the world to see you happy, that I think you could do a lot worse than Barney Drew? That I love you? It's true, all of it."
I feel like all the air has vanished from my lungs. When I force out the words, I sound bitter, and I know it. I /am/ bitter. "Iesu mawr, Will, if I'd known what it took to get you to say that was to shag somebody else, I'd have done it years ago."
He turns onto his back, staring up at the ceiling so that I can't see his face. "I do. I always have. But I can't—we can't—please, Bran, please believe me. It's complicated, and it's painful, and I cannot explain it to you."
"Don't you fucking dare." I hate when he does this, goes all distant on me. I hate it. "Do not, Will Stanton, pull that out of this world things I don't understand crap right now. I don't care whatever this secret is that you've been carrying around with you since we were kids, but stop hiding behind it and talk to me." Somehow I make the shift from angry to pleading without even realising I'm doing it. "Tell me. Trust me. Please."
For a moment—a breath, held, a heartbeat, fast—I think he's going to give in. I can feel him struggling with himself, the conflict rolls off him in waves that are almost tangible, visible.
But in the end he fails. "I'm sorry," he says, and I think he means it. And then, more offhand, like he has to force himself to say it: "Barney's had a thing for you for years, you know. He could be good for you."
"What is wrong with you? How can you do this, Will? If you do love me, why are you trying to give me away? Why won't you keep me? Why won't you even try?" Too many questions, and they tumble out of my lips, and I can't even keep track of them myself.
"I can't," he chokes out. "Please. This isn't easy for me either." That's obvious enough, he can barely speak.
"Will, you fucking coward." He pretends he doesn't hear me, or doesn't choose to answer. He doesn't look at me at all, when he crawls under his blankets again, hiding behind them. "What are you so afraid of? You're sad, you're jealous, you're lonely—why can't you act it? Say something, yell, get mad. Show me you're angry, that you're human just like the rest of us!"
I barely hear his whispered, "But I'm not." Not angry, I assume, rather than not human. Though with Will, I'm not sure I'd be entirely surprised.
"I don't understand you."
"I know."
"I love you."
The Will-shaped lump of blankets on the opposite bed doesn't move. "I know that too."
"Even though you're a bastard."
"Yes, I know."
I'm not getting anywhere with this. I don't know what possesses my vocal cords, let alone my brain. Maybe it's the raw anguish in his voice, or the anger still burning in me. At any other time it would have been—should have been—a request. Somehow it becomes a command.
"Come over here, Will, and kiss me right now."
He stares at me in shock, but he stands up.
iii.
I wonder if that is how Arthur sounded the first time he called on Merriman. I should resist, refuse, should turn away, but I can't. This bond between us has as strong a hold on me as ever, and there is still a part of me that wants to give in to him, no matter what the consequences may be. And I /do/ want it, of course I do. But it hurts so much to look at him, sometimes, to see everything he is and know that he knows nothing of it. To remember adventures we shared together, and not be able to speak of them. I'm so lonely it burns me, and sometimes I hate everything I am. And yet...and yet when the moonbeams light him like this, he looks even less of this world than ever, and I wonder if the High Magic has simply chosen me as the object of some great cosmic joke. But I can't make myself refuse him. My lord has given an order, and I am obeying.
iv.
I don't think I expected him to do it. I don't know why he is. I watch him push back the blankets and climb out of bed, wince when he looks at me. He pads across the floor, and I just sit there on the edge of the bed watching him come closer. He cups my face in his hands and bends to kiss me, and it's the sweetest, saddest, most tender and heartbreaking thing I've ever felt. The sorrow cuts through everything else clouding my heart, right to the core of me, and I'm shaking when he pulls away.
His hands drop to his sides, limp and helpless. "I love you," he says softly, and he sounds profoundly tired and sad. "But I can't keep you. And please believe that I will regret that for the rest of my life."
And then he turns away.
[fin.]