A/N: xposted from devART.

You are Christophe. He is Gregory.

--

He presses his lips carefully, almost reverently, to your skin, on a scar that preserves the path once traveled by a knife. It is a thin line up your chest, curving over shoulder, stopping sharply over the bone it once exposed. He traces it with his fingers, which are smooth, free of the thick calluses that mark your own. His lips follow, deviating from the line to brush up your neck and release a quiet breath of words over your ear.

He loves your scars. He loves everything about you.

You tell him that it's because he's a sentimental faggot. After all, no one with an ounce of sense could love everything about you: you're an insufferable, short-tempered, foul-mouthed, God-hating son of a bitch. You're also French. That has to count against you. But it's not your fault if he's fucking insane. He stays around by his own free will (although you really have no idea why.) When he wants to leave, you won't do a thing to stop him.

But secretly, you hope that day never comes. You are not an optimist, but you hope for this one thing. Because although there are many things you can handle, you are not sure that that is one of them.

You can bury a man whose identity was removed along with his fingers and teeth without wondering who he was and why he was killed. You can think straight when your hands are bound behind you and a gun is pressed to your head. You can accept the fact that you are going to spend eternity in Hell for your crimes (and not just because the luaus are great). These are not the things that frighten you.

You have looked death in the face, gone so far as to experience it once—gotten close enough to taste it more times than you can count. You have walked the literal path through fire and brimstone and, despite the many lies you have told in your lifetime, you can say honestly that these are not the things you fear.

That the next person who has a hit on you will track you here, to him—that you will make a mistake and he will pay for it; these are the things you fear. It makes you ill, to think that anything might happen to him because of you, because of what you do. It makes you want to run away back to the real world, if you were ever a part of it, but you're in too deep for that. First you'd have to fade into obscurity; that takes time. And, truth be told, you're not willing to become nobody just yet.

You are selfish. So terribly selfish that it must be a sin, and if you were a different sort of man you might pray for forgiveness. But it would be inappropriate for a man who doesn't seek forgiveness for killing to ask for it now. It's not the Lord's forgiveness you want, anyway.

Gregory hovers over you, pale eyes watching you in quiet amusement, asking silently if you're ready to stop thinking so goddamn much and pay attention to him already. The irony of this role reversal is not lost on you, and you smirk as you kiss him, tangling your fingers in his silky hair and pulling his lips to yours.

If you asked him, he would say there is nothing to forgive. You know this. That doesn't stop you from knowing that you could be—should be—something better, for him. Such, you muse, are the unfortunate side effects of being helplessly in love.

You catch yourself there, mentally smack your forehead with the heel of your hand, and groan internally. For fuck's sake.

Like it or not, you're a sentimental faggot, too.