[DRP] trustful hands (algie & jeremiah)

[iloveyouDIE]

let your hands do the talking

"We weren't ever those people," Alg clarified and squeezed Jeremiah's hand back. "We are ourselves."

He was sick of being pinned with the responsibility of someone else in a different time, a different cycle, who may have had his name and face. What was the meaning of an identity at all if you were burdened with the guilt of action that wasn't your own?

"It's certainly something. And sounds like it got a bit more complicated than the original intention."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

let your hands do the talking

"No," Jeremiah agreed, bringing Algie's hand up to kiss the back of it, "we are us. No more, no less. It is simply frustrating to be burdened that actions taken by someone who wore our faces and our names." The shift in reality added to it, made it that much worse to deal with.

He leaned towards Algie, beckoning him closer.

"More complicated and, in all honesty, the man Renard is now and the man he was then are likely different. Caging human beings? It changes them drastically."  

[azuredreams]

shifting focus

"No, though I've followed it's path of destruction a few times only to find nothing." Jeremiah held a hand up, the glimmer of blue around a finger slipping off of it like smoke and forming a bright blue butterfly.

It simply flitted and flew around them, nothing drawing it one way or another. "This is supposed to help lead me closer and then I can use my own powers to track it from there." With his fingers he then pinched the bridge of his nose. "I worry that I am dallying too long in finding it and I will wake up, come one morning, to my phone buzzing because there's been a terrible incident in town."

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

shifting focus

Alg actually laughed a little watching the butterfly flutter. It was a sound of disbelief, "You haven't dallied since all this started. If something appears in the rare moments you get rest it's not your fault.."

Jeremiah of course took too much on as his responsibility and should something happen out of his control would place the blame further on his own shoulders.

"On the other hand I feel further behind every moment.." The listserv helped him of course, see what was going on, but lately there seemed to be personal attacks and flip outs. As well as people only sharing what they felt like they should. Everyone had an agenda. It was entertaining but not always helpful.  

[iloveyouDIE]

let your hands do the talking

"Then don't be burdened by it. Don't view it as yourself.. or your responsibility." It was difficult but Algie seemed a bit better at it then his husband, not taking others actions on himself.

Beckoned, Alg closed what he was doing and moved closer, "And if this is a shade of what he was before, imagine how he was. Imagine the power." It was terrifying, "To have people make that move against him. What he was doing must have been.."

Possibly more scary than what they did? Or perhaps they simply screwed up.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

shifting focus

"Only dallying because there's so much else going on. It's not real dallying, only the kind from-" Jeremiah huffed, though he looked away from Algie a moment later. Mostly because there was, for some reason, a ruddy hue to his cheeks. It was not as if he did not know he pushed it.

There was not enough time in the day for him to do what he felt was needed and, worse, he felt as if everything that was them slipped out of his grasp just as easily. His fingers reached out and tangled with Algie's.

"I am tired," he said softly, stepping closer to Algie. "... and it honestly sounds more appealing to stay at home and never get out of bed." Which he had been guilty of on more than one occasion. Just laying himself across his husband until the morning sun was higher in the sky than just on the horizon.

Their pillow talk was not these things that they discussed here. Not charters and who mysterious people on the listserv might be, or how the Spinel Lady was the very embodiment of what they were now part of. In their bedroom it was just them and the cats and whatever came to their minds to talk about.

It was nice.

It was needed.

It was one of the only ways to balance things out.  

[azuredreams]

let your hands do the talking

"They may not have even knew everything and acted without full knowledge," Jeremiah replied, "but what he was doing would have shaken reality as we know it in a far different way than we have." He had, however, been speaking more of personality than power. That perhaps Renard had been a saner man before all of this had happened.

That the caging had changed him into something else entirely.

He tugged until Algie was beckoned to sit next to him.

"You know I don't view it as myself, precious," they had been over it, "but the fact is that more often than not I have been burdened by something someone else did in another time. As it stands, it could become clear that I did have a hand in the murder of Ascencion Shore. I may not have done something but the me I replaced? He lived an entirely life that was not mine and I cannot account for it and what he's done." It was a bitter truth and one he was not fond of.

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

let your hands do the talking

"Well considering what it was like for us before things changed," Alg's brows lifted. They had been ready to kill Sunny. It had been discussed at the ball. Her ascension and the concern that perhaps killing her there would be giving The Enemy what it wanted. He didn't actually have any remorse for it either. Even less to find out that Sunny was a collective of power given form.

It unfortunately didn't make her any more a person to him. Ashdown had done something to his definitions of and values on life.

"Did Shun come up with some sort of evidence in his investigation?" They had both been suspects as far as he knew but after that hadn't heard any more after the young detective had come to question him.  

[iloveyouDIE]

shifting focus

Alg chuckled when his husband pulled close, "You know if I could keep you in bed all the time I would."

It was preferable to the alternative. They tell you about the worries of marrying a police officer, about how anything could happen and they may not come home. This world, this life, took that to a whole new level.

"There's too much going on," Alg sighed and floated up off his toes to kiss his husband, "You have too much going on."

And while he worried about all of them, about his students and his employees and their strangely built surrogate family, when the chips hit the table he could only think of Jeremiah.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

let your hands do the talking

"It's a constant theme? Answers that lead to more questions?" It was frustrating that the rabbit hole continued to get deeper. They had not found Wonderland and he was beginning to wonder about that.

He leaned against his husband once he was sitting, quiet.

"Not yet but I would not expect it to stay so forever." It was an unspoken worry in the back of his mind. After all, he had said to her face that he would do what was necessary.  

[azuredreams]

shifting focus

There was a brief surge of guilt that Jeremiah could not stop himself from feeling as well as a flicker of fear. Where before he had been stretching himself thin, finding himself at the end of his rope, he was not and instead flourished under the pressures that should have put him down.

Yet that did nothing to stop him from his constant worry that he was going to hurt Algie. That something he did went poorly, that he would somehow not come home. Sometimes he wondered if-

"I know," he said quietly, an arm going around Algie as he floated (like he could take hold and float away with him and he did, in fact, raise up all the ground some himself). His head rested against the other, nose brushing against his cheek. Part of him wanted to say sorry but it would be trite. Algie knew, Algie could feel it.

"... though I suppose that makes our time all that much more important to me." As each moment just as much as the last. Jeremiah would soak it all up because without Algie, without his support, he was not sure that he would continue to stand as he did.

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

let your hands do the talking

"Everything comes back around.." Even when you thought it was gone. Or in this case dead.

He then signed, because that's what they were doing wasn't it? It was a bit stuttery and clumsy but they were working on it.

"I don't know if we will ever get all the answers."  

[iloveyouDIE]

shifting focus

The guilt was palpable and while Alg frowned he couldn't really alleviate the sentiment. Jeremiah knew how he felt about it, they'd had those talks, but there was no middle ground. If anything.. this was it. The other man pursued so long as he didn't get worn out.

Alg could only support him. It would be foolish to do anything besides that. He helped, he assisted, and he cleaned up. He made sure home was home, even if home was simply the two of them together, because nothing else in the world was definite. But Algie couldn't so actively pursue things. It wasn't in his nature and to put himself on the line while Jeremiah was doing the same...

Someone had to be the rock.

Alg's own concerns were deep and dark. Jeremiah could feel them if he didn't talk about it. Fear of being left behind. Fear of everything, Jeremiah included, passing him by. Fortunately he was a champion at squashing them, boxing them, and not letting them sink him when Jeremiah needed him to float.

Alg leaned into his husband, tilted his head against the other's and turning to brush his lips across his cheek.

"It'll be fine.." It was perhaps as trite a comment as Jeremiah thinking to apologize, but this would he always continue to say and continue to hope.

"We'll be fine." That, at least, wasn't a lie.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

shifting focus

It ate at him, though he would never say it. Algie was his rock. Algie was the reason he kept pressing because he wanted to find a future where they would not have to worry about any of this anymore. Algie was everything that made him keep going at it.

Yet it also meant he pulled himself away in ways he did not want to.

His heart suddenly ached and being in other ashdown no longer seemed so appeasing. Things had waited, another day would not matter. He turned to catch Algie's lips in another kiss. "We'll make it fine," his voice was soft, "together." A timbre of shakiness was in his voice before he got it under control.

"Let's go back home. I think, for right now, I just want time with you."  

[azuredreams]

let your hands do the talking

"I don't either but ... I have to find the truth of things or some manner of it. Even if we may not like what I find." Jeremiah let out a breath, sighing, and interlinking Algie's fingers tightly with his.

"A universal constant I could do without."

iloveyouDIE