Blind Spot
by Kay
Author's Notes: Sequel or follow-up story to "Line of Sight," more David/Christopher SLASH established and a huge teaspoon of angst to bring it home.
Thank you sooo much for reading. I'd make joyful little hearts, but they won't let me do the symbol anymore. Really, though, I can't thank you guys enough.
Christopher turns a blind eye to a lot of stuff.
It gets easy after a while. Christopher could be the master of ignoring things-- he's good at letting reality slide over his skin and off him like soap bubbles. When that doesn't work, there's alcohol. And when that doesn't work, there's sex.
In the end, with David, it gets to the sex. He should have known.
Christopher's the first to admit he's a bastard. He ducks when he should punch. He drinks, he swears, he's a dog for girls. On his best days, Jalil can barely stand him. On his worst, neither can April. But that doesn't mean he's always blinded by his own desires; he can't help but see where the world turns black, glued at the edge of war, and the bodies that fall behind them on their marches. Battle is hell. Christopher isn't made for battle. Most of the time, he drinks it off.
David isn't like that. David keeps it all in him, lets it build, lets it glow like it's frying him inside out. David doesn't drink, either. Mostly he just rots.
In the beginning, it was just the means to an end. Alcohol is hard to find out in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere. Expensive, too. And sometimes it just wasn't enough-- sometimes even made it worse, drunken nightmares about soldiers growing out the ground and swords that impaled their owners on whim-- and David, every goddamn day, just winding up more and more and getting people killed, nearly getting himself stuck like a pig, so full of the things around him that he couldn't breathe anymore. Christopher saw it, reflected it, and after that it was easy. It was desperation.
Christopher, contrary to popular belief, isn't good at "no strings attached."
It's all David's fault, he thinks furiously some nights, bunching up their sparse sheets that beg for cleaning in his fingers and squeezing until the frustration leaks out between his knuckles. It's David's fault. Because David's skin feels like it's burning, always, imprinting on Christopher's throat and ribcage and thighs. Because David doesn't say anything, doesn't make him feel less like a man even when Christopher's bucking under him and making strangled, incoherent noises like he's drowning, they're both drowning, and he can't get enough air or enough of David. Because when it's done, and his heart is still stuffed up somewhere in his throat, David doesn't leave and the nightmares are a little less ugly.
Christopher is good at turning a blind eye to things. He ignores it, he waits for the better days when they're back at Daggermouth and Etain is waiting. He pretends not to see the dark contemplations in David's eyes, or the new softness when he touches him, even for a second. There shouldn't be a difference, but there is, and it's harder and harder to ignore or drink away.
It's stupidly ironic, really. The cure becomes the problem. Christopher might have thought it was funny a year ago-- yeah, so fucking funny he could absolutely cry.
End