Shower of angst, crumbling façades, and complicated feelings.

(TW: really heed the tags, for this one)

Íþróttaálfurinn ignores the first few thuds.

It might just be the old house. Floors and walls and piping, all creaking and groaning, protesting their presence. Or maybe welcoming it, who knows. Old houses are known for their unpredictability.

He should ask Glanni what he thinks, when he comes out of the bathroom. He's been in there a while, hasn't he? But it's only a guess, and none of his business. The two of them might not have the same definition of a while, even. He stretches, touching the ceiling with his fingertips, stifles a yawn.

He can feel himself get sort of drowsy, ready for a new sleep cycle. He hasn't slept as much as he normally does, and has strayed very far from his usual rhythm. The chamomile is doing its part too, he suspects. He picks a couple of activities that don't involve jumping—crunches, some sets of push ups—whatever won't make the ceiling flake off on Siggi's grandma's head, whatever will keep him awake.

Thud, then a muffled imprecation. Íþróttaálfurinn halts mid-movement, lifting his forehead from the carpet, suddenly wide awake. No mistaking this one for the opinion of an old house.

Hesitating, he makes his way to the bathroom. Knock? Ignore? Leave? The shut door in front of him might as well be a wall and, once again, he wonders if there is a hint he isn't getting. Doors, as a concept, are confusing by design―wooden boundaries that open and close, split and transform. As far as symbolic and physical delimitations, he'd prefer windows. They allow for the continuity between spaces, for a see-through, less stark separation.

The children know nothing anyway, he reminds himself, it's not like they'd be upset if he leaves now and pretends he and Glanni simply went their separate ways in the night. They still think the two of them barely tolerate each other, they know nothing of the history they have been cultivating in the shadows, like an obsession kept secret. Do they? Or maybe, Íþróttaálfurinn is looking for a reason, a convenient excuse to run away again from his own discomfort, this time without the guilt snapping at his heels. It won't work, he knows. It never does.

Another noise, followed by a familiar, distinctively peeved grunt. Something inside him whines pitifully instead of snapping, and isn't deterred in the slightest by the set of handstands he pulls right there by the door.

"I can hear you hovering," comes Glanni's voice from behind the door, startling him off balance.

"I wasn't!" Íþróttaálfurinn retorts. Silence. The water stops running. He pulls seated, bouncing nervously in place, before finally caving in. "Everything okay, in there? I keep hearing―" Thud.

"Just peachy! I just keep knocking my elbow into the―ow, fuck."

The cursing, for some reason, gives him a minute stir of relief, despite everything. As Íþróttaálfurinn lets out a long exhale, climbing to his feet, the man's voice reaches him again.

"I don't suppose I could, uh…" A pause. The elf leans his ear closer to the door. "Can I get a hand in here?"

"Oh! Sure." He looks down, stomach tying itself into knots. His hand is already on the doorknob.

"Enthusiasm! Great," Glanni grunts. The water is running again as he steps inside and feels his ears grow hot at the remark.

On the other side of the door, the tiny windowless bathroom has been made into a climate of its own, straddling the line between tropical heat and foggy highlands. He has never been inside a volcano but this, he thinks―with the scalding steam and overwhelming smell of sulphur assaulting his senses―must come pretty close. Maybe a sauna, rather. It makes him yearn ardently for a dip in a placid, ice-cold pond. Breathing in the humid air, clothes dampening and adhering uncomfortably to his skin, he squints, momentarily blinded.

For a moment, it looks like there's no one here, and he has called out, Hello? before realizing the silliness of it. A long, wet arm emerges from the curtain-less shower, grabbing onto the wall for support.

"Close the door."

Rising from his crouch in the cramped, sloped-roof bathroom, Glanni is a pale giant cloaked in steam, the top of his head brushing the ceiling, too tall to fit. The water has combed his body hair in neat inky swirls, all over his long limbs, and Íþróttaálfurinn has taken in the whole of him before could help himself, up to the disgruntled knit of his brow, and the sharp look in his eye that he immediately wants to avoid.

Íþróttaálfurinn blinks, looking up in the general direction of his face, stammering, "Should I… do you want me to cover my eyes, or―"

"Whatever." With an air of someone with no time for shenanigans, Glanni tosses a soaped brush into his hands. "Look if you want, just come here and do me a favour and scrub down my upper back, will ya? I can't reach all the way."

When he lifts his arm to reach back, he demonstrates, his elbow hits the ceiling. The showerhead is fixed to the taller wall, but it's still too low, and he can't fit under the weak, low-pressure stream if he twists or kneels.

Íþróttaálfurinn nods. "I see."

Upper back, that's where those bite-marks were, it makes sense. The healing skin must still be tender, difficult to work around without seeing back there. For someone just facing it, though, it should be a task easy enough. And it's a relief, really, that Glanni is actually taking care of… of his health, of himself. Definitely a relief.

Íþróttaálfurinn steps closer, and is like entering the glow of a fireplace, a pulsing, living molten core. Bare and unguarded and look if you want. He keeps his eyes down on the brush in his hands, running his thumb on the bristles, swallowing emptily. The hard plastic pokes like pine needles. Isn't this too harsh to go on skin…? It takes Íþróttaálfurinn a moment to wade through his distraction, for his focus to shift to the incongruent object in his hands.

"… this is a coat brush," he points out after a moment. Glanni, who was about to turn around, pauses.

"Enthusiastic and observant!" he jokes, but it comes out wrong in that familiar, splintered way. "I lucked out today, haven't I."

"No, I mean… why are you using this for washing?"

An eloquent eye-roll. "I left the loofah at my other hideout? It's all I could find, that's why."

The elf tests the brush on his own arm, feeling the resistance of the hard bristles in his skin. Suds and water run down his fingers, uncomfortably hot and slippery. It takes nothing for the skin to scratch, raising small welts in the bristles' wake. Íþróttaálfurinn looks up, noticing that Glanni's chest and arms are flushed an aggressive pink too. He looks from it to the brush and back again, for a couple of moments.

Before he can say anything, Glanni spins around and urges him, impatience as palpable as the steam condensing on the old tiles. Íþróttaálfurinn looks up to protest, and the voice dies in his throat. He slaps a hand to his mouth to suppress a loud gasp.

"What is it now?" Glanni huffs. He glances over his shoulder, frowns. "… elf? Íþró?"

For a while, Íþróttaálfurinn is frozen in place, eyes trained to the man's upper back, unable to look away.

"Did… did something else happen?" he asks instead, when he finds his voice. His fingers circle the air, not daring to come near, and he's not sure the voice he found is his own. Who did this, he wants to shout over the ringing in his ears. Who dared.

"What are you talking about? Hello?"

Íþróttaálfurinn closes his eyes a moment. He wants to think of something accidental. He doesn't want to take in the angle and the number of scratches… but somewhere in himself, he knows. The ground staggers under him, and for a moment he's certain the old house is going to come down under the burden placed on it.

He should have known, he thinks, and his eyes burn. He should have known from the very start. That there is nothing accidental about this. That all the effort Glanni has been putting into being his old self, into appearing barely affected, had to take its toll somewhere.

He draws his gaze up, to the line of Glanni's shoulders just at eye-level. And now it is here, a mess of raw, bleeding, scratched skin, right before his eyes. The toll.

The half dozen bite-marks that Íþróttaálfurinn last saw so new they were still bleeding—the scabs were fresh, the new skin still raw and fragile, barely tenting over the wounds—aren't healed yet. On the contrary, they have been scratched over and ripped and picked at so much they lost their contours, now a collection of misshapen red crescents surrounded by skin so inflamed it reminds him of a bad nettle-rash.

"Why?" he murmurs, incredulous. "What were you trying to do?"

"Uh… clean up? What else?" Glanni answers, oblivious.

"You're the cleanest I've seen you since I met you! And didn't you already shower at the Mayor's…?"

"Yes, twice. So what, are you keeping count? Creepy." He lets out a loud, throaty huff, like a man filled with exasperation. "And it itches sometimes… why are you being all weird about it? Do you need me to kneel so you can reach?"

Íþróttaálfurinn swallows, shake his head slowly. "No. I'm not touching it," he says low, his hand hovering where the angry red patches end, between the man's sharp shoulder-blades. "It's a wonder they aren't infected yet."

Unless, of course, they were infected to begin with, the ill intent of the man who left them passed over, when the teeth broke skin, like a snake's venom. He must be breathing too close to him, because Glanni hunches over with a shudder, bracing against the tiled wall.

"Finally grossed out, huh?" he sneers, voice full of spite. His body is an arch of angles and long, plunging lines, all aligning to twist and glare at him. "About time."

"They'll scar if you don't stop picking at them," Íþróttaálfurinn hisses back. "Is that what you want?"

"I just want them off."

The elf's chest constricts. He tightens and releases his grip on the brush handle a few times, thinking of the right words. He buys himself a moment leaning to the side to rinse the brush under the running water.

"You have to be patient, and let them heal completely before―ah! What the—?!" He draws back with a hiss.

"Sulphur's good for skin things, don't you know?" Glanni is saying, voice airy and brittle. "Anti-something and shit."

Íþróttaálfurinn rubs his hand, his nerves not sure if he got burnt or frostbitten. Then, he sees the faucet handle is turned all the way to one side. Certainly not the cold side.

"Come away from there," he says. He steps back and makes to pull him away too, but the man shrugs him off, pressing himself into the wall and away from him. "Glæpur, it's scalding."

"It's fine," Glanni says with fixed-eye stubbornness. He has been standing directly under it this whole time, Íþróttaálfurinn thinks in half-panic. And it's certainly not the first time he does it, either.

"Is this what you've been doing? " Íþróttaálfurinn whispers, voice thick, sick to his stomach. "This entire time?"

"No, listen, do you know how hard it is to find a decent shower while trying to lay low?" The elf shakes his head slowly, helplessly. "Well, not that hard actually, but you know. Challenging. So what? I was on the run for a while, I feel gross all the time―are you going to help me, or are you just gonna stand there?"

Íþróttaálfurinn looks at the cracked, floral blue tiles, yellowed by lack of use. He swallows the lump in his throat. "I'm not scrubbing bleeding wounds with a coat brush, Glæpur."

Glanni's eyes flash in anger. "Then you're useless, I don't need you," he hisses, sounding oddly triumphant. "Give that back."

The elf's body takes a step back on its own, curving like he's been kicked in the gut. Glanni lunges for the brush, misses, and tugs both of their shoulders into the weak scorching stream. Íþróttaálfurinn's elbow hits the handle as he flinches away, avoiding the skittering hands that try to grab him. The pipes groan and the water turns icy, showerhead sputtering over them. They both let out a startled yelp.

"I can't let you do it to yourself, either," Íþróttaálfurinn gasps, reeling, the word useless ricocheting in his mind. The coat brush clatters in the sink where he throws it. "It needs to be left alone!"

Glanni stands shock-still, making no move to take it. The fierce triumph has died in his eyes, leaving only a dim, miserable emptiness, breathing audibly in the steam around them. He doesn't move as the elf shuts off the water.

"What the hell was that?" Íþróttaálfurinn asks, quietly.

No answer. Rivulets of pinkish water run down the man's frozen figure. Slowly, he crosses his arms, caving in on himself, fingers digging into his biceps.

"Glanni."

"It's your fault."

Íþróttaálfurinn gapes, kicked in the gut again. "My fault?!"

Glanni rips a worn-thin towel from the rack, knocking it over, and starts to furiously scrub himself dry. Íþróttaálfurinn, still rubbing the scalded bit on his arm, feels the air leave his lungs again.

"I'm just trying to help―hey, stop that, what are you―are you trying to take your skin off?"

He takes him by the wrist, tugging the towel away from him. Anger dances on the man's flushed face, scrunching his nose up like a snarling animal. He rips his wrist away, stumbling back, legs close to giving out from under him. Glanni flips the toilet lid closed and drops seated on it, a slap of damp skin into white ceramic.

"I fucking wish."

"I'm not letting you take your skin off," Íþróttaálfurinn says firmly. "It's perfectly good, functional, nice skin, and you need it. Will you let me patch up that disaster on your back, so there's a chance it won't scar?"

The man glares up at him, eyes cold and narrowed. "And why would you want to do that?"

"I just… I can't see you like this."

Good intentions, bad word choice. Glanni turns his face away, faking offense, hiding hurt.

"Don't look at me, then."

Íþróttaálfurinn swallows, scrambling for something, anything. Almost petulantly, he says, "You called me in here."

"I am not exactly known for my good choices, am I."

The elf takes a deep, steadying breath. He will hold back from agreeing, or snarking, or cracking a joke, not this time―although he doubts the other is in a place to appreciate the effort. He focuses his attention on more practical matters: these are simple wounds, in the end, and those he knows well.

The Christmas care package is still by the door. Towards the bottom he finds a repurposed cookie tin. Inside, a packet of assorted plasters, cotton and gauze pads, and rounded kindergarten scissors. He feels many things, but mainly relief, and a rush of pride for the children's foresight.

"See? They know. They've got me and my bad choices covered," Glanni comments, peering from behind him. "How do they know me so well, those little shits?"

Íþróttaálfurinn can't bring himself to complain about the word choice. Said like that, with so much genuine puzzlement, it's almost a term of endearment. And now he sees how, even naked and hunched over on a toilet seat with his back scratched raw, how hard Glanni tries to sound at ease, shielded behind his own flair. In control.

Most importantly, the tin contains what Íþróttaálfurinn was hoping for in the first place. A small jar of handmade salve that he taught the children how to make in the mid of summer, as with the good weather came the tree-climbing, and consequent massacre of knees and elbows. It's made of almond oil, beeswax, and herbs from the elven village. It will stop any minor bleeding, not run, soothe and speed up healing. They bottled it in empty jars that once held some sugary comfiture. Good thing they made extra, he thinks. Opening it, he can smell his childhood―the good part―there, greenish yellow in that little jar.

"Fancy. I always just used rubbing alcohol," Glanni says, once he has explained the properties. "Or, you know, whatever alcohol I had on hand."

Íþróttaálfurinn shakes his head. "You already boiled yourself alive, so it's not bleeding much at least."

"See? Knew what I was doing. All along."

He doesn't have it in his heart to reply. He coats his fingers, leans slowly over, and sees him brace for pain.

"This won't sting," he reassures. Glanni blinks up at him in surprise, just for a moment. The frown is fast to come back.

"You don't need to… pretend, you know." His hands curl into fists, forearms a tense v over his thighs. "I can handle it."

The elf pauses, hand hovering. "No, really, it doesn't sting. I used it myself many times."

"Ugh―no, not that," Glanni groans. "I mean―being kind. To it―to me. Pretending it doesn't―that I'm not―"

He can't find the word he needs. In lieu of it, he flushes the toilet under him. The pipes groan and the hidden whirlpool brings him the word. He spits it out like a bite of mouldy fruit.

"Disgusting."

Íþróttaálfurinn's gut clenches for the third time. He crouches, one knee down on the wet floor, a little to the side so Glanni only has to lift his leg if he wants to cover himself. Glanni doesn't move an inch.

"Do I strike you as squeamish?"

"Well, evidently―"

"Glæpur," he calls, summoning the ghost of their old banter like a protective charm, "you kissed me in an alley behind a dumpster, with a breath that would have stripped the bark off an oak. I wasn't disgusted. Not then, and not now. With anything."

That seems to make a breach. The man's limbs spasm and he almost slips off the toilet seat.

"I―what?" Glanni gasps at him, scrambling to keep upright. "I did what, now?"

"You don't remember?"

Glanni shakes his head with a baffled shrug.

"And you just let me do it?" he asks, and huffs out a brittle, squeaky laugh. "What the hell?"

The cherry kiss is, for him, an oddly treasured memory. He looks at the man's spidery hands, dry and chafed with all the aggressive washing, clutched tight together, nails picking at the knuckles. He wants to cup them in his own again, feel them curl and hold on in his grip, open them and kiss where the winter cold will break the skin open. He lowers his eyes, to the man's feet. They, too, look pained, red with blisters and corns around the toes.

The whole of him washed up there, in Íþróttaálfurinn's town, all by himself, washed raw, walked raw. Íþróttaálfurinn looks at him, the dark circles and milk-spotted nails and the small folds of emptied skin that form in his abdomen when he bends, all the signs of ruin clinging to him, all bared in this crude, sallow light.

He remembers, the memory sharp as a vision, his nemesis at his peak, laughing at him from the roof of a tramcar. He remembers the river that ran alongside the road, the crunch of gravel under his feet, the light of the streetlamps waxing and waning behind Glanni's back, painting lightning in his leather coat, glinting off his perfect, mischievous smile. He remembers him shining in the city lights, brighter than anything around him. That would have been a good moment, he considers, to realize he felt more than tolerance, more than fondness.

But no, of course. It had to be now.

"You put a lot of trust in me, that night," Íþróttaálfurinn murmurs, careful, intense. "It surprised me. It taught me a lot about myself. I haven't been the same, since."

Glanni makes another sound that tries hard to be a laugh. "I don't know how you manage to sound earnest, when you say these things."

Íþróttaálfurinn stands. When he carefully starts applying the first coat of salve, Glanni's next breath catches in a gasp.

"I didn't mean for you to be there when I―cracked. Not again," he breathes, tensing under his touch. "I thought I'd just… I don't know, either keep it together, or handle it on my own."

The elf halts for a moment.

"This really is my fault, isn't it?" He runs his fingers alongside one of the scratches, nodding gravely to the shower still dripping with condensation. "What I said to you earlier, doubting you. The article they sent me, with the pictures. I made you do this."

"Don't flatter yourself." Glanni pointedly avoids his glance. "Nobody can make me do anything."

Silence falls. Íþróttaálfurinn concentrates on coating up the area, watching the red placate and dim away under his hands. As the marks become evident again, stark enough to distinguish between upper and lower teeth, he blocks out the horror stories whispered in their depth and angle, lest he shudders and Glanni misreads his sorrow for disgust.

Shrewdly, Glanni observes, "So you really aren't squeamish."

"There's nothing to be squeamish about," he reassures. "And I've seen my share of scrapes and bites."

"Like these?"

"Not like these." The impenitent face of the dead oath-breaker floats up in his mind, and he has to breathe deep to calm himself. "But they will heal like any other, in time. If you leave them be and stop doing whatever you've been doing."

There is a long pause, in which he unfolds a gauze pad and lightly presses it in, until it adheres to the skin and covers all the marks, and the man doesn't flinch under his hands.

Then, Glanni says quietly, "I keep forgetting how much you've seen."

It sounds, just a little, like an apology. "Well," Íþróttaálfurinn says, biting down a timid smile, "I've never had to patch you up before now."

"It's 'cause I never got injured on your watch."

Glanni tilts his head back to glance up at him, the corner of his mouth curled almost sweetly. It's so incongruous, the softness in his eyes when being touched around his shoulders must feel like torture. But the man is, after all, made of incongruity.

"Sorry I called you useless."

To this real, actual apology, Íþróttaálfurinn can't really reply. Not in words, at least. He stops what he's doing for a moment, and leans down to brush his lips on Glanni's hairline. The gesture contains both acceptance and an apology of his own, even if he wasn't trying for either.

"Oh," Glanni says only. He sniffs, and after a thoughtful pause, tells him, "Your 'stache got droopy with all the humidity. You look like a depressed walrus."

The loud snort that comes out of his nose nearly startles him. "You call me useless and ruin my styling. I don't know who lucked out today anymore."

"Still me," Glanni says, and Íþróttaálfurinn allows himself a selfish moment, all to himself and the army wife in his heart, to look at him and ache and yearn.

This man full of cracks, teetering back and forth, trying to keep himself in balance, tightrope walker looking up at the stars and not down, not forward. He is fighting so hard to keep himself stitched together, Íþróttaálfurinn can almost hear the faint leathery creak of his seams pulling apart. And now he's hanging, tilted, falling.

"I should have been more careful with you," he murmurs, almost to himself. "You have been making such an effort, and I didn't see it… I even got doubtful, because you seemed too normal… I've been such a fool, and so cruel. I'm―sorry."

"That was the idea, Íþró," Glanni says weakly. "If you had noticed… if anybody had―if you have to be careful, like I'm about to go to pieces or something… it means they've won."

Íþróttaálfurinn's chest constricts, and for a moment he cannot breathe right. And even the death of the oath-breakers, as vast and absolute as death can be, doesn't feel right, nor just, nor enough.

He kneels to scrub the crusted blood from under Glanni's nails, letting it fall in tiny flecks down the drain. It's methodical work, rinse and repeat, finger by finger.

Gross, Glanni says a few times, each in a smaller voice. So gross.

"It's not gross," Íþróttaálfurinn retorts, every time. He starts working the salve into the still damp hands, one at a time.

"I don't need any on my hands," the man protests, as his skin sucks in the moisture like cracked soil in the first rain.

"It's made for it. This winter is going to be a cold one, and your hands are already so close to bleeding."

The man blinks, frowning, raking his brain to articulate his protest.

"It's a waste," he says. "I should save it for when…" he trails off, gesturing to the concept of future injuries. "For―future stuff."

"You can have more of it," Íþróttaálfurinn promises, against his impossible hope that Glanni won't get hurt ever again. "We make it in batches at the village."

Íþróttaálfurinn's mind wanders off in a brief daydream, of bathing him in a big wooden tub, milk and elderflower in the water, soothing and healing his beautiful skin, making him whole and new. He'd wrap him in light linens and lay him on warm downy covers, dabbed in lavender oil for soft, soothing dreams. He'd stroke his hair in that way that makes him sigh, hold him until sleep comes.

"I really wasn't going to make it, you know, overseas? Not a chance," Glanni says, bringing him back to the present. "Either someone was going to come and do a mercy-kill, or I was going to―I just didn't want to die in handcuffs with some asshole shouting questions at me, right? Normal stuff." He speaks looking down at his own knees, free arm clenched tight against his abdomen. "Then you pulled a last minute on me, and I justasked you for a bit of time. But no."

Íþróttaálfurinn lets go of his other hand, and asks, "Didn't I loan you time, like you asked?"

"You loaned me―I don't even know what you loaned me." Glanni shakes his head. "But you can't just… go around and make people need you like this! Not me, at least―I don't care what you do with others… but I can't need you, I can't need anyone, I can't afford it."

"… need me?" Íþróttaálfurinn's running thoughts tangle and trip and grind to a halt. Helplessly, he tries, "But I thought―I mean, it was nothing, I just held you for a little while―"

"Íþró," Glanni cuts him off, such intensity in his voice the elf's mouth snaps shut. "I could never sleep with someone else there. Ever. And now, thanks to you, I can't sleep when I'm alone, either."

"Thanks to me? But―"

"Unless you're there, in my head." A deep, painful inhale, and Glanni looks up like he looked up at the sky and his eyes reflected clouds heavy with rain, like the admission is sapping all his strength. "Unless I remember… and you call it nothing."

Slowly, under the elf's astonished gaze, he mimics the motion of arms going around him. And there, like a lone light bulb short-fusing in his head, Íþróttaálfurinn understands.

"Hell, Íþró," the man grits through his teeth. "You could have fucked me in that alley, and I would have felt less naked."

For a moment, not a single one of the elf's muscles deign to work. A hundred sentences start and fizzle out in his mind, momentarily a chaotic tangle of rope that won't sort itself out.

"Oh," he says slowly, out the chaos, the emotion filling him a gigantic, unfathomable thing, crushing and frightening and too much to contain. "Oh—you idiot."

He leans forward, both knees on the wet floor. Glanni―his nemesis, his stray, his―injured, in terrible pain, tossing and turning on some dingy borrowed bed, needing to summon a confused memory of his embrace just to get some sleep. Hating having to trust him, feeling as bare and afraid as Íþróttaálfurinn felt, when Glanni came rescue him out on the bench. Maybe more―definitely more.

He just never thought it could be terrifying, to be rescued.

Something in Íþróttaálfurinn… goes out, melting off his bones, his chest so full he's sure it will burst. He extends his arms, wide and forward, and hopes it will surprise him again, the bravery of a man he once believed a coward.

"Come here," he pleads, voice almost a keen, and Glanni somehow, somehow, from the depths of his own despair he reads him perfectly, because he flings himself at him. "Oh, you must have been so afraid."

"I wasn't afraid," Glanni hisses, an edge of teeth into his shoulder.

"I didn't understand sooner―" Íþróttaálfurinn murmurs, pulling close. He is apologizing, he thinks, a string of words out of his own mouth right in Glanni's wet shoulder, and his arms wind tight around him, in a careful, urgent clutch. "I didn't understand anything… you idiot, if you just had stayed with me, I―"

"You're an idiot," Glanni retorts, clutching back even harder. "You keep saying it, like it's easy, but how could I just stay? Just let myself―how much more could I possibly show you? How much trust can I possibly put in you…? I don't have it. I keep thinking… I'm just making it harder for myself… once you come to your senses and―and I'll be left with all this debt, and no way to repay it, ever."

There is a dense, heavy pause, the silence broken only by their off-sync breathing in the cramped bathroom. Íþróttaálfurinn finds it in himself to look the other in the eye, and he finds something there, something small and bare, cowering back like a wounded animal.

"You thought I would leave you behind," the elf murmurs. "That I'd spoil your self-reliance and then just… toss you aside? That must have been terrifying―no wonder you ran first."

It's so direct―it would make anyone want to run. He would run himself, as fast as he could, if he were in Glanni's position. Independence is a stray's only religion, but it never served well either of them; a resource became a need, a need became a compulsion, and they were drawn to crash into each other, helpless and spinning, like tides with no moon to pull. This was all Glanni asked―he thinks, and he wants to cry―he suffered alone when all he wanted was this little thing, this small bit of comfort. He holds him closer still, mindful of the gauze.

"I can't breathe," Glanni murmurs, voice wheezy and a little touched with wonder. He tightens his own hold, wiry arms flung around the elf's neck, when Íþróttaálfurinn makes to pull away. "No―no, no, no, don't you dare. You're my prisoner now, no running."

It's Íþróttaálfurinn's turn to make a noise that tries its best to be a laugh. He manages a sort of wet, trembling chuckle.

"How the tables have turned," he tries to joke, happily obliging. He lets his lips touch the shell of one round ear. He echoes in a murmur, "No, no running. I'm not going anywhere."

He fits them, somehow, a little closer. He lifts a hand up to stroke up the man's nape and hair, and there is nothing quite like it, the feeling of Glanni melting in his arms, his body an over-warm damp line behind the barrier of his clothes. Every inch of skin on Íþróttaálfurinn's body is yearning to touch as directly, to feel as intensely. Glanni's hair has grown half an inch at least, since the last time he saw him, hiding better the old scars on his head. He has two cowlicks at the back of his head, one on each side, like miniature black whirlwinds. It reminds Íþróttaálfurinn of the wind currents on a map. He lifts his face only to kiss him on the cheek and the side of his head, stroking his hair and arms and back with desperate intensity.

Then, in that cramped wordless space, full and secret and safe, another admission crawls out of Glanni's throat.

He murmurs, "Something's wrong with me." He speaks into the elf's shoulder, not leaving the words even an inch to stretch. "I'm not myself anymore. It's like I'm walking on ice, and it's thin, and it's going to give under me any moment."

It brings Íþróttaálfurinn back to the crude light of the light bulb, to the uncomfortable dampness of his steam-soaked clothes. To the unthinkable thing that crouches giant and monstrous, spoken around and not spoken through, insurmountable.

"Hold onto me, I'll hold you up," he breathes, encouraging. But slowly, Glanni leans back from him, until his hands fall on the elf's forearms, thumbs hooked in the creases of his elbows, brow knitted in anguish.

He shakes his head. "I'll just drag you under with me."

"No, you won't," Íþróttaálfurinn says, and the long fingers squeeze his arms before letting go. "Tell me."

The man runs his fingers through his still damp hair, losing an inner battle.

"I don't get it, you know? Boggles my mind," he starts, then gestures vaguely at his middle, the yellow shadow of the beating that showed there. "I'm fine. Nothing broken. Blood still clean. I heal fast. And―I mean, it's not like I've never done it rough before."

He presents this list with a gesture of his open palm, like building a case to debate in court.

"So why the fuck am I so afraid?"

"Not all wounds are visible," the elf says, voice low. "Some are unseen, but no less deep."

"Like your coal mines?"

He nods. Íþróttaálfurinn thinks of the clemency he had to ask of his teachers and mentors, when he first started his training, to not give commands and instructions like they were orders. How hard it was to explain what his mind did, darting back to the scariest corners of his past like a spooked hare to the burrow.

"It takes time, and a lot of patience. It's difficult to pull off alone." He heaves a sigh. "But in time, even coal mines heal. You find peace again."

He thinks of how grateful and relieved he felt, when he was met with compassion and understanding. He thinks of the open sky through the envelope of his balloon. Of the simple acceptance and unbiased helping hands, fixing the unthinkable.

"But how do you prove it, if it's unseen? I have proof for all of these, after all. Of my talent for survival."

Glanni tilts his head to the side, and his hand brushes vaguely over himself, tracing a few of the old and less old nicks that mar him. His nails, shiny with ointment, snag in the raised white lines of skin. So many signs of old fights, so many indications of the life he has lived.

"I saw you looking, searching. I have proof of my survival this time, too. I'll show you."

Íþróttaálfurinn realizes where this is going only when he follows the hand down, from Glanni's mask of determination to his shivering, parting knees.

"Wait, no," he gasps, hurriedly cupping his thighs in his palms, pushing them closed like the case of a heavy tome. He can't look him in the eye, but can't look down either. Oh gods, his mind is screaming in horror, oh gods, they left a scar. He settles for the sharp, wet line of his collarbone, concentrating on the droplets collected there.

"You said you wouldn't be dragged under," Glanni reminds him, coldly.

Íþróttaálfurinn draws in a shaky breath. Much like doors, boundaries are strange and often mysterious. But Glanni, too, has learned his by observation only, and uses them as strangely as Íþróttaálfurinn himself. This is a test, of sorts, and there is something reassuring to that old pattern.

"You don't have to show me," he says, going with his gut. "You have nothing to prove to me."

The base of his throat hollows as the man gulps, and Íþróttaálfurinn lifts his eyes to look at him. His expression is hard, lips pulled tight.

"You don't want proof anymore?" he asks, to confirm, like they're at the last terms of a tense negotiation. The knees in the elf's hands tremble a bit with released tension.

"I have enough of it." Íþróttaálfurinn feels his voice soften, mournful. "And I shouldn't have made you feel like you needed to provide that much, either. I won't let it happen again."

Glanni's eyes slide shut, and for a couple moments he just breathes, going slack with relief. Íþróttaálfurinn strokes comfortingly down his thighs in time. He stops, when he realizes he's doing it. Boundaries, he tells himself, inner voice distracted, spinning.

"I didn't plan any of this," Glanni confesses. Something cracks in his voice as he speaks, hurried, like sand gathered before it spills. "It's just… you're the only one that knows. Because I let you find me—if you really didn't believe me, I wouldn't know what I'd do… keep convincing myself it didn't happen, I guess…? Because it wasn't really―"

Íþróttaálfurinn leans in. "It wasn't really?"

"Really anything." Then, panic. He's breathing fast, gesturing and shaking. "I-I mean, if you have imagined some great heroic struggle, you're wrong. I―it was a bad fuck more than anything, really."

"You don't owe me a justification, either," Íþróttaálfurinn says, shuddering. Occupational hazards. "You don't have to give me anything."

The unthinkable now crouches directly between them, huge and heavy and overpowering, and Íþróttaálfurinn can see the coal-prints on Glanni's body like they had been there the entire time. Down his back, round his wrists and throat, over the narrow arches of his hips. If he wanted proof, he simply should have willed―allowed himself to see, to read the thing as it's written in Glanni's reactions, his body left a minefield.

"Just making sure that if you don't start getting ideas about, I don't know, respecting me or some shit." He pulls both his heels on the edge of the toilet seat, hunched over like a pale, damp gargoyle. He sneaks a hand up, worrying the edge of the gauze on his shoulder. "I'm just the same dirty coward, like you've always thought―you're wasting your time being all nice to me."

Íþróttaálfurinn's heart squeezes painfully. He searches the man's eyes, tilts his head when he avoids him.

"No one has ever lost my respect for trying to survive," he says. "Bad sex leaves you disappointed, not half-dead in an alley. It doesn't make you want to take your skin off. It doesn't leave your mind full of open wounds."

"What are you, some sort of bad sex expert?"

The same defensive sneer that would have made Íþróttaálfurinn angry a month ago now only makes him ache. It makes him think about second motives, about the distance between choice and battle. Unthinkable things do a great job at breaking one's spirit, Glanni said himself. They leave one mostly whole, and yet in pieces, and Íþróttaálfurinn doesn't know how to fight it other than holding on with all he's got, look it in the eye and call it by its name, describing the shape of it until it descends from myth to reality, concrete enough to kill.

"You don't have to fight―you wouldn't even need to have scars, for it to still be ra—"

A very large, very oily hand slaps hard on his mouth, bending his moustache the wrong way. "Don't."

"But―"

"No, not now. I'll get there, okay? Just―not now."

Very carefully, Íþróttaálfurinn takes the hand off his face. He, too, has tried to fold monsters small enough to carry, then small enough to hide. He never succeeded.

"All right," he gives, running his fingers carefully over the man's tense knuckles. They feel a lot less rough, now. "All right."

Glanni doesn't notice, closing in on himself, going inward like a light dimming. Íþróttaálfurinn starts to get the same feeling he had in his balloon, of the need for distance and self-contemplation. The contours and borders of himself probably never felt shakier than now for his nemesis, he thinks.

He sighs in the growing distance, words of finality, draping the towel over the other's shoulders. Slowly, he draws back.

It doesn't take long. When Glanni emerges from the bathroom with the care package under his arm and doubts on his face, the change in air density has just finished expanding Íþróttaálfurinn's lungs.

Glanni is wearing some light old sweater, and the pants of a blue tracksuit. The newspaper article, that Íþróttaálfurinn was sure he had stashed away, is in his hand again. His brows are furrowed down in concentration, while he traces the lines and bites his tongue.

"Can you read this?" he asks, before Íþróttaálfurinn can open his mouth and try to convince him not to look at it any longer. The elf blinks.

"Sure, but―"

"I can read," Glanni feels the need to defend. "Only… it takes a while, the words get all," and he makes a descriptive gesture, crossing and waving his hands. "And I lose where I was and have to start over and it takes so long. That's why I've got a steel trap memory, you know?"

So, Íþróttaálfurinn reads the article aloud. At least Glanni isn't the only one to struggle, as he hasn't had to read a full paragraph in English in a while.

"As I said, it's vague," he finishes, shrugging. "They don't want too much attention on these matters."

The man is silent for a beat or two, as Íþróttaálfurinn folds the article small and puts it back in the mailer.

"Íþró," he asks, very serious, staring at the League's crest in his hands. "You really didn't… have them killed, did you?"

Íþróttaálfurinn shakes his head. "We aren't a hitman agency."

"You operate above the law just the same," Glanni says, with a dark gleam in his eye. "Heroes and villains, right? You could kill, if you wanted."

Oh, I wanted to, Íþróttaálfurinn wants to say, with frightening intensity.

"Your fans did it," he says instead, giving credits where it's due. "The men that loved your voice enough to kill for you. I didn't even know they were dead until I got that letter. All I did was start an investigation, after what you told me. Some humans like to pretend they don't see, but the League makes everyone uncomfortable. Overseas division, especially. They shed light in some very dark places."

Glanni blinks at him, eyes gleaming in that strange way. "It seems like… I do nothing but darken your worldview, don't I?"

"I prefer it darker, if it's closer to the truth."

Glanni makes an odd, almost affectionate snort, shaking his head. "Even if life tried to knock it out of you, you're still an idealist."

He lowers his eyes. "Maybe you're right."

"It doesn't matter anymore," Glanni says, looking away. "They're dead. It means I win, right?"

The elf nods. He watches with worried eyes as Glanni's hand goes to his upper back, rubbing the skin though the fabric, rubbing the marks into submission. But lightly, without disturbing the gauze. He breathes out, and Glanni really focuses on him, tilting his head in a critical look. Íþróttaálfurinn wonders if the man has ever seen him without his armour on. Suddenly self-conscious, he runs a hand down the front of his borrowed shirt.

"I drenched you," Glanni says, summoning a bit of a contrite look. Then, he turns very serious. "Dragged you under the ice with me, in the end. Didn't even ask if you wanted to carry a truth so heavy."

This is nothing, there's no weight I can't carry, the hero in him wants to say, as the rest of him screams, Help me, it's too much, it's too horrible, take it back, take it away.

You're the only one that knows, says Glanni's voice, brittle under the strain of admission, teaching him what it really takes, to be that bare and brave and vulnerable.

"It's all right," Íþróttaálfurinn says, thinking he has to be brave, too, in return. He owes it to him. "I'll help you carry it."

The air has grown quiet, ready for rest. Glanni turns off the space-heater with a fond pat, and the old house creaks as if pleased to be a few degrees warmer. The shadows curl and quiet, the streaks of wax solidify on the snuffed candles. The snow collects on the skylight, semi-transparent.

Íþróttaálfurinn peels back the covers, revealing the sheets cool inside. As he originally pictured, they take a side each of the narrow couch.

Notes: I honestly don't know which is heavier, between this chapter and next one, but hey.
Chapter title from Elbow's Red