anchorage

[ninefox]

He was warned about childhood floods.

He was not warned about this. Everyone has had their age adjusted, seemingly completely at random, and the Admiral apparently decided that for the full three-hundred-year experience, he had to be properly a ghost again.

For a moment, the sheer confusion is crippling - having his senses reduced back to sight and sound after months of tactile existence feels like waking from a vivid and beautiful dream, all the moreso given the barge's absurdities, except that he knows perfectly well that he can't dream. Not like this. Not in his real life.

But he can still see his room, perpetually lit, with his multicolored wall and his golden one, can still hear the wind chime turning in its corner. And in the bed, he can see Fives, alone, already startling awake at the sudden lack of weight.

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[ninefox]

He's still beautiful; he's always beautiful; he's so beautiful like this, loose-limbed and smiling and wrecked. Jedao could watch him like this for years and not get tired of it.

"Yours," he echoes, and it hurts in a chest he doesn't have, hurts like sensation coming back after too long in the cold. I'm your gun, he said, over and over, hated it and wanted to mean it all at once. Didn't need it - but wanted, in some quiet desperate place.

He isn't Fives' gun. I'm your fucking general, he remembers snarling, and he feels warm all through, like an edgeless patch of air flooded with afternoon sun.

"Yours, Fives, always."

[callmefives]

His smile stretches a little wider at the echo, the acknowledgment. He's not possessive, not in the way of normal people--he's never even had personal property, the idea that some person should ever be his alone is alien and somewhat offensive, if he thought it through--but Jedao is definitely his. His to love, and protect, and obey when appropriate, none of which assumes any kind of exclusivity. It's... an obligation and a privilege, not a chain.

"I think... I need to sleep soon," he murmurs. "Wish I could do it with you curled up against me." He should clean up first, himself again, the floor probably, the bed. But he feels ridiculously languid and satisfied, like moving is entirely too much to ask. "Do you want me to turn on music, or... or a video, before I do? You can't read, can you?" He frowns, slightly more alert as he thinks it through. "Couldn't advance the pages." He wonders if there's some way to fix that. "Unless we could set it to automatically advance at a pre-determined speed...."

[ninefox]

"My slate can be set to tab through things, but don't worry about that now. Just leave the light on and go to sleep, cyar'ika. You're beautiful when you sleep, too."

It does Jedao's flayed old heart good to watch him rest, to see the smoothness of brief and easy peace on his too-young too-old face.

[callmefives]

"Are you sure, Jed'ika?" he asks, voice a low, satisfied rasp and eyes barely half open now. He stretches, long and slow and kriffing decadently luxurious, feeling his muscles tense and then loosen as he settles back against the sheets again. He doesn't think he's ever felt this thoroughly fucked out in his life, and no one's even laid a hand on him but himself.

"Don't want you t'be bored and lonely," he adds, voice fading slightly as he relaxes further.

[ninefox]

"I couldn't possibly," he promises, a low, crooning rumble.

"I'm watching over you. That's all I need."