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His gaze fixed itself on Dion’s eyes– his eyes, his brown eyes, which always seemed so vacant and judging, in this instant stared back at him with some strange and nearly frightening softness. He felt intimidated. Dion had always intimidated him. But he didn’t break contact, lest he never see this certain look in Dion’s eyes again… No, he thinks, we’ve already wasted enough time… certainly, certainly, the Enemy is outside and we are destined to die (together) in this room where we stand. He can feel Dion’s breath, gentle and tasting of liquor, grace against his own mouth. He wonders for a brief moment when they had become so close. Dion glances down, at Cassius’ lips, for a nanosecond. Dion tilts his head subtlety, gazing at Cassius through half lids and thick black eyelashes.

Cassius is aching, drowning in his presence, trapped between his own confusion and a desire that he has never yet been forced to confront. He is filled with desperate melancholy. It is now, and only now, that he deliberately thinks that he doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t know what Dion is thinking; nearly doesn’t want to, but he hopes that he feels similarly. Perhaps this, this is not the worst way to die. To hang in limbo for what seems like an eternity.

Dion breaths in, Cassius closes his eyes.

“You burn me,” Dion whispers, so quiet and so sad, lips barely grazing Cassius’s as he gingerly places his hand against Cassius’s face.

Cassius swallows, lips slightly parted. “I’m sorry,” he breathes.

He nearly winces at a sudden pang of guilt. Both ancient and newborn feelings begin to muddle together, joining and failing to join like the differing waters of an estuary. He begins to feel as if this world, this torturous paradise they had swiftly and eagerly built for themselves, had begun to crumble around him. He feels ill. Saturated in an old, deep self-loathing, his thoughts begin to wander away from his present circumstance. But he doesn’t move, and hardly does the man in front of him.

“Don’t.”

And as soon as he says it, precisely in the moment right before their final convergence: knocks on the door.

“Room service!”

Everything shatters. Dion’s undivided attention is no longer on Cassius; Cassius shoves his hands in his pockets and immediately tries to repress every detail of the memory he just created.

He thinks to himself that it was nice while it lasted. He looks at Dion’s face, now facing the front of the room, and the vacancy has returned to his eyes. Nice, that is, while it lasted.

“I didn’t order room service,” Dion replies, voice deep and biting as ever.

But both of them knew what was going to happen very soon. Cassius resents him for a brief moment.

Both of them clutch their guns.

//

[Obviously not following immediately after]

Cassius stands, awkwardly, hands in his pockets like he always stands, and finds himself desperately at a loss for words. Dion has probably forgotten about him, he thinks, though Cassius himself couldn’t bear to erase his memory. Dion was his last thought before he died– died and was brought back, that is: he was only dead for a minute or two. But Cassius had been comatose for nearly two months…yet he would swear that he had heard Dion’s voice every now and then, nothing particular or definite, but comforting nonetheless. Cassius had told himself that he was dreaming.

Dion conspicuously raises his left hand to scratch the back of his neck. Cassius’s curiosity tangles with his modestly, and he glances at him– he catches sight of Dion’s finger, still ringless, now lacking the subtle band of light that was there some couple months ago. Cassius opens his mouth to say something, but the words don’t seem to come. A primal fear rises inside him at the thought of Dion’s eyes, which he has been avoiding the gaze of for the entire moment they have been together.

“Didn’t expect to see you back here,” Dion breaks the silence, voice managing somehow to be both soft and rough at the same time.

Cassius is almost startled. “I’m just picking up some things,” he answers weakly. He still can’t bring himself to look Dion in the eyes.

More silence.

“How long have you been awake?” He asks, swaying on his feet a little. Cassius hasn’t seen him do this before, and he finds it slightly amusing.

“A little over a week,” he replies.

“And you got the, uh…” Dion trails off, gesturing to Cassius’s arm.

Cassius’s eyes widen, “Oh, right,” he says. How could he have forgotten? He slips his hand out of his pocket, gazing at the dozen or so filaments of soft light trailing up his arm. It was his new arm: mostly full-functional, with some feeling in it, but still alien to him. “Yeah, it’s not as bad as you’d expect. It’s a bit stiff, though,” He says, extending it towards Dion.

“You mind?” Dion asks quietly, fingers hovering above Cassius’s.

“No,” He answers.

Dion takes his hand in his own, running his thumb across Cassius’s knuckles, feeling his new skin. It feels tougher than real skin, more rubbery and perhaps less breakable. It doesn’t bother him. “How long has it been?” he asks, eyes still lowered.

(This might as well have been a blatant lie, for he had been counting the days since they had returned home, and since Cassius had been put under.)

They are close now, much closer than they were before. Cassius can feel the warmth radiating off his body, the scent of his cologne, the same as what he felt that strange night in Russia.“I don’t know. Too long, maybe?” He breathes, almost with a laugh.

“I’d say so,” Dion replies. He looks up– directly at Cassius, who is trapped and can no longer elude the inevitable. “Cassius, I…”

“Yeah?” He says, coaxingly. He notices how Dion’s eyes have gone soft again.

“I don’t mean to be too forward–”

“You’re not forward,” Cassius interrupts bluntly.

Dion opens his mouth, then closes it again, breaking eye contact. “Okay, well–” He stops, glancing off to his side and then returning back to Cassius. He doesn’t bother completing the thought.

“Dion,” Cassius says, almost sternly, staring up at him with a brave new face and wide pupils. He is frustrated now, always frustrated with the way he never says anything.

“I missed you,” Dion admits.

Cassius is still.

He continues, “…And I don’t know what I would have done if… if you–”

Cassius presses his lips against Dion’s, tasting his words. Dion seems much more content in this state– he places a hand on the side of Cassius’s face, thumb resting on his cheekbone, utterly consumed, the both of them sinking into mutual oblivion.

Cassius murmurs, in a brief separation, “I love you too,”– and they converge again in softness and solace; finally warm, finally real.