tushanshu_logs | I'll Still be Standing Here (Closed)

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I'll Still be Standing Here (Closed)

Characters: Erskine and Hopeless
Date: Shortly after the newcomers start arriving
Location: The shelter
Situation: Meeting again for the first time in almost a year
Warnings/Rating: Probably crying. Most assuredly sappy stuff. Spoilers for the Skulduggery Pleasant series through the end of Book Eight.

It was late afternoon, the shelter was running just fine, the damage around Keeliai from the hurricane was largely cleaned up, and Erskine had absolutely no idea that strange Foreigners without soul gems were starting to appear in the city. So all in all it was a pretty average day.

It was times like this, in fact, that left Erskine feeling like he had no idea what to do with himself. Peace was the goal. Peace was nice. But what the hell did someone who'd been fighting wars in one fashion or another for well over two hundred years know about peace? All that time he'd spent scheming and lying and planning for a future that wasn't ever going to come... what did he have to show for it now? Other people had hobbies. Erskine had his loom and a small stack of books and an itch to call Valdis or Klaus or anyone to ask if they'd like to go for a drink.

(He wasn't an alcoholic yet, he didn't think, but maybe that would at least count as a hobby.)

Instead he perched himself in one of the comfier armchairs in the lounge with a thermos of coffee and a book, idly flipping pages as if making a show of things would actually let him focus on the words for a change. He wasn't sure just how many times he'd flipped the pages of Brideshead Revisited over the years but he was damned sure he couldn't remember anything about the book except that Ryder was a jackass.

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One moment, Hopeless was in the shelter, happily curled up against Erskine in Erskine's bed. The next, he was quite abruptly awake, standing, and in the middle of Keeliai, wearing the extremely comfortable pajamas Erskine had bought for him which weren't at all warm enough against the weather.

He took a moment to orient himself, borrowing thoughts off others until he knew exactly where he was in relation to the shelter, and how long it had been since the last group of temporary Foreigners had arrived. Then he set off with a determined vengeance, or at least as much a determined vengeance as he could manage wearing nothing but socks.

The socks meant that when Hopeless got to the shelter, his step was silent as he walked in, making a bee-line for Erskine's tired mental presence. He didn't pause at the door, but padded in silently out of Erskine's line of sight, and reached down to take the book with an eye-crinkling smile and very cold hands. "That's far too sad for the likes of you, young man."

He heard the door of the shelter open, but that didn't ever mean much. The shelter was a place for people to live, not a prison; the kedan and Foreigners within were free to come and go as they pleased, and new arrivals weren't so infrequent that Erskine was constantly eyeing the door. Possibly it meant that one of these days his role as security for the shelter would be tested, but as yet there had been no problems. So Erskine kept flipping pages, until the book was no longer in his hands.

His gaze immediately rose with the book, even before the words penetrated the fog of boredom that had settled over his mind. The sight that greeted him stole all the breath from his lungs and left him wide-eyed, heart hammering in his chest.

Hopeless.

It had always been the hope that this would happen--that the Dead Men, or at least Hopeless alone, would return. Erskine knew in a roundabout fashion that it wasn't what Hopeless wanted for him, pinning all his hopes for his future on the possibility of Hopeless coming back, but he couldn't help that. It was the only thing left in life that he really, desperately wanted. Needed. And now the redhead was standing here in pajamas and wet socks with cold hands and a beautiful, warm smile.

Erskine wasn't really sure what happened next, whether he was trying to pull Hopeless down into the chair with him or claw his way up the taller man into his arms, but he scrabbled at the mind-reader like a drowning man clinging to a life-preserver.

Even knowing how long it had been, the desperation in Erskine's shifting focus felt like a blow. The book thudded to the floor; Hopeless stepped into that lunge hardly before Erskine had left the armchair.

"Shhhh." Hopeless wrapped his arms around Erskine, arresting the scrabble by making an executive decision to slide onto Erskine's lap. He was skinny. They could both fit, if he curled his legs just so. Even still, he could feel the quivering tension under him.

Hopeless pulled Erskine tight up against him, and kissed his temple, and ran his fingers through his hair, blinking away some tears. "I'm here. It's okay. I'm here."

It was like finally being handed something he'd desperately been searching for, while at the same time having all the air kicked out of his lungs. Hopeless curling into Erskine's lap in the armchair saved him the difficulty of figuring out what he was doing, thankfully, since for the moment he couldn't tell whether he was coming or going. It was much simpler to just slip his arms around Hopeless's waist and bury his face in his shoulder, in the crook of his neck, eyes shut tight.

A strangled exhale escaped him, somewhat muffled by Hopeless's comfy pajamas.

"I missed you. I missed you, God I missed you--"

Hopeless still smelled like vanilla and sandalwood, the way Erskine remembered. And his feet were very cold, and not quite dry.

"Mnh." Hopeless wriggled his toes. As a bonus for this particular position, he could neatly tuck them under Erskine's thigh, where they had every opportunity to start getting warm and stop being numb. "Socks and jammies aren't good for walking around the city. The Dreaming was very rude."

He rested his head on Erskine, the hand in Erskine's hair dropping to stroke his temple.

"I'm right here, sweetheart," he whispered, and the name was not precisely a word Hopeless was accustomed to using; but right now, he wanted to assure Erskine that nothing had changed, at least where Hopeless was concerned. This year in-between -- what little of it Erskine was around for -- had not been kind to him, though Hopeless couldn't yet pick out enough of the details to know how.

He kissed Erskine's temple again, making sure his voice was audible as he said: "Better me than horribly sad literature."

If Erskine had been thinking a little more clearly he could have solved the cold feet problem in a handful of seconds with the barest thread of magic. As it was, he was more intent on clinging to Hopeless as if the redhead might disappear again at any moment. Which for all he knew might be the case, even though experience with the temporary foreigners suggested otherwise.

It had been almost a whole damned year (at least in Keeliai) since he'd seen Hopeless, and he'd gone back, and--

Erskine's heart did a funny little flip, hearing that endearment from Hopeless. That coupled with the achingly familiar touch at his temple helped drown out some of the roar in his ears, the static in his head. He breathed deep, savoring the smell of Hopeless as much as the feel and the sight of him, and a tiny smile curled at one corner of his mouth.

"Always better you."

"And don't you forget it." There. That was better. Erskine's mind was easing, and that helped Hopeless too. He ran his fingers through Erskine's hair again, and then pulled back to see Erskine's face, to trace his fingers down the side of it, and along Erskine's cheek bones, his jaw-line, his mouth.

"What did I miss?" he asked softly, as much an encouragement to talk as because he wanted to catch up. If he knew Erskine, Erskine probably hadn't talked to anyone.

God, Hopeless was just as beautiful as Erskine remembered, even if he was looking faintly ruffled from his sock-footed trek out in the city. And only Hopeless could make curling up in his lap in those pajamas look so bloody adorable. Erskine could barely stand to tear his eyes away... and yet they slid shut almost of their own accord as long, clever fingers stroked across the planes of his face, eliciting a long, deep shiver down the length of his spine. Thankfully the mind-reader was still in his lap and in something just shy of a death-grip, so Erskine could probably afford to close his eyes for a moment or two.

When they finally opened again he leaned his face forward, just far enough to press the side of his face to Hopeless's, cheek to cheek. Hopeless hadn't responded well to anything more last time, and for Hopeless it had only been days, not months. This was enough.

"I played with magic in the middle of a hurricane last month," Erskine offered, his tone jokingly light and enthusiastic. "Never done that before."

Much, much better. Hopeless rested his cheek against Erskine's with a sigh, still idly stroking the other side of Erskine's face. "Of all the things to choose for new experiences," he teased. "Did the hurricane beat you up, or did you beat up the hurricane?"

A hurricane was something even the Dead Men tried not to contend with. Not that it stopped them from doing so, especially when Rover was drunk and got the others to hop on board his hill-conceived weather-creation train.

His feet were definitely starting to warm up. He wriggled his toes, just to help them along, and to tease Erskine's thigh. Just because. Because he was here, he was back, they were together.

"Oh, you know how it is. I had it on the ropes, but we agreed on a draw so the hurricane could save face." Erskine chuckled. "Mostly I stood around and diverted debris from flying into the shelter. Saved us a fair bit on repairs at least."

The wiggling toes beneath him brought a smile to Erskine's face; without really planning for it, he planted a kiss on Hopeless's cheek and then drew back just far enough to rest his forehead against Hopeless's.

What else had he been up to? The past year, or what he'd experienced of it, felt almost like a blur. But then again he'd been missing for several months of that, hadn't he? "I went back," he said quietly, unable to look Hopeless in the eyes for this admission. "I don't know how long I was there, but...."

But it had been long enough for the torture to become fresh in his mind and his body all over again. Erskine's grip on the slender redhead tightened, his eyes squeezing shut.

"That's my Erskine, gracious as always," Hopeless murmured with that smile still audible. He turned his cheek a little into the kiss, and willingly reciprocated that not-quite-hug, his knuckles brushing Erskine's cheek.

A chill ran down his spine. He wasn't surprised by that admission; not really. But the weight of all the emotions lurking beneath those words, the flash of memory Erskine's grip on him couldn't quite curtail --

Hopeless swallowed an unconscious squeak of surprised pain at Erskine's grip, and gripped him back, thumb moving up to stroke his temple. It wasn't fair, how one man could be made to suffer so much, and all because of what he'd already been made to suffer. Logically Hopeless knew that back in Erskine's timeline it had to have ended somehow, but this -- this yanking back and forth, in and out like this --

"I vote we go hunt down whoever's in charge of the Dreaming and give them a piece of our minds," he whispered, trying to inject some levity and only managing something extremely serious.

Guilt immediately weighed heavily in Erskine's mind and in his gut as Hopeless let out that pained squeak. He should have known better, he should have known Hopeless would feel what he was feeling--

"I'm sorry," he hissed, angry at himself and afraid of what he'd done to the mind-reader. Even as Hopeless was gripping him, Erskine let go in order to bring his hands up to cup Hopeless's face. "I'm sorry, I won't think about it anymore. I wasn't thinking. Are you--?"

Worry for Hopeless managed to edge out the majority of the memory of blinding, neverending pain. Small mercies.

"I...." Erskine pressed his forehead to Hopeless's again, stifling the threat of a sob. "If it meant I could keep you, I would. In a heartbeat."

"Don't--" Hopeless began, but the guilt cut more cleanly than a blade, and he was too late to try and stop that mental pain. Automatically Hopeless's hand came up to cover Erskine's.

"Don't ever stop thinking," he whispered, not exactly as severely as he might have if he'd been teasing. Over and over, it hurt to realise that it had been so long for Erskine that he'd forgotten what helped and what hindered Hopeless's mind-reading. Focussing on Hopeless helped Erskine, and that was good -- but trying to explicitly cut off that tide of emotion would only ever hurt the both of them.

But why wouldn't Erskine try that? It was all he'd been able to manage for a century.

Hopeless ran his fingers through Erskine's hair. "Didn't I tell you not to hold back, if you needed to cry? Don't hold back, Erskine. Don't worry about me."

He was in better shape than Erskine was, right now.

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I'll Still be Standing Here (Closed)

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*SMILE was audible god damn

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