A/N: Short little fanfic I wrote to cope with my feels about the Tamsin/Dyson kiss :(((((((. It's valkubus at heart because that kiss was valkubus at heart ;_;
Tamsin wants to pretend he's Bo.
She walks into the Dal and sees him sitting there so alone, so like herself in his despondence, in the way he drowns his feelings in booze and bitterness. She pushes her way into his lap and rests her hands on his shoulders. His golden eyes are glassy and dark tonight. He's so empty in the way he stares back at her: accepting, unfeeling, cold.
I'm empty too, she wants to scream. Can't he see? They're the same. Betrayed, unwanted. At least, Tamsin thinks with a spiteful almost-laugh, he got to have her once. At least she ever loved him back at all. At least he got the privilege of warming her bed, of watching her eyes flash blue in the darkness when she threw her head back and felt him inside of her and just breathed.
At least for a while, he had something he could call his own. The word is like a friendly stranger: mine. It beckons to her and smiles as she draws nearer, but as soon as she reaches out to greet it, it's gone.
Probably forever now. Rainer isn't the Wanderer. Bo is happy with him. She loves him.
Each new thought is like a fatal blow. She's so tired of thinking. All she wants is to stop—for all of it to stop.
"Stop thinking," she says, though she's not sure if it's to him or to herself or both, maybe.
She searches his face for any recognition, for just one answering spark of tenderness that might stoke the coals in her smoldering, dying heart. Maybe they aren't completely empty. Maybe there is enough of both of them left that, if they are together, they might have something to start over with. Something worth starting over for.
She kisses him and she wants to pretend it's Bo. Oh, gods, how she wants to close her eyes and drink her in, feel the softness of those cheeks beneath her fingers. The roughness of Dyson's face ruins it. She slides her hands along his jaws and feels the scratchiness of hair as she breathes in his cologne.
He'll never be her, but she prays he could be something. Anything.
But he is numb and shuts her out.
"Come on," she whispers, calling on the alcohol running hot in her veins for courage. She kisses him again to spur him on. "Come on." She doesn't even try to hide the desperation in her voice. If he doesn't kiss her, she'll die. If he doesn't love her, she'll die. He has to.
No one else will.
