1.
"You seem like you're a long way off." Come back to me.
"I am, my love, I am." It's a long way to go between the two of you.
"Where are you?" So I can find you.
"I don't think I know." Is that true? Can I be true to you?
He looked at her and she looked back, gold eyes into blue, but they both knew there was something different, so they closed their eyes and kissed, just kissed, in case they could find something if they made sure to go slowly. They kissed, paying attention to each move, the subtlety of the interplay, they kissed. They were pressed against each other, hands going over all the clothed inches they knew so well, trying to find something different, something they hadn't noticed before, a sign that would lead them back to each other. They touched. He brought his hand under her shirt, she was ready she was always ready for him, she didn't need slowness anymore she just needed him and she didn't even take off her clothes, and neither did he. He just opened her trousers and she pulled off her underwear, and not even all the way. And for a few minutes there was exquisite comfort, that built into something else. Something else, something heightened, an expression of something lost. And in their relief they lay besides each other, but soon they fell into their own dreams, as far away from each other as they had begun.
2.
"Where were you?"
Allistaire looked at Shin for a long time, and Shin asked him again. He walked to a couch and sat down.
"Corso."
He put his head in his hands. "I need to tell you some things, Shin."
Shin sat next to him, put his hand on him. A killer's hand. Allistaire had seen him kill. "Tell me."
Allistaire looked at the floor. "My name is Allistaire."
He could feel Shin shift into a more rigid posture.
"It's not like that. It is, but, well..." He laughed bitterly. "It's a bit of a long story."
"Tell me," Shin repeated.
And Allistaire told him, for the first time he put it into words, what used to be his innocence, and then he moved through his experience, and wondered, put his wonder into words, if he could gain back what he had been. Put into words the question, what he was, what the overlap was between Corso and Allistaire. And looking back at Shin, in whose eyes he saw a deep love and a deep willingness to help him find answers and comfort, even to change, knew. Shin was the overlap between what he had been and what he had woken up to. Shin, who killed and who loved, who was not who he'd thought he would love like this, but who he did love. He still did. He had the feeling looking at him that he fit, he was what he needed to see, he was the person who he needed to fit the puzzle around. And he hadn't even felt that before. Desire, he had felt, and a sense of taboo, and fear, but looking at him now he knew he would love him for the rest of his life, even if Shin grew out of it, as people did so often.
"I'm sorry," said Shin. "Tell me what you need, and I'll help you."
"I need to get out. I need never to kill again. I want you to come with me."
There was a pause. Shin didn't, Allistaire knew, make promises lightly. The pause made him comfortable. "I will. It may take a while, and I will probably have to kill to do it. I hope you can live with that. But when I'm done, and I go to you, I will give that up."
Allistaire smiled. Shin said his name, his new name, his real name, his old name, tested it with his mouth, and Allistaire tasted the mouth that made that sound, and they shifted against each other and into each other and closer and closer and fell asleep together.