( Weight-warmth on his back, where old scars burn taut under layers of silk bound tight like a wet knot. He feels it soft-scratched against his leaning cheek, before his skin tastes the quiet, flinched indifference of coarse linens, arming him the cold.
No need. He thanks with a mute mouth, gaze diffuse — pressure finally released of his lungs, each breath a calculated progression. The slow drip of water from his hanging hair fits the gauges and ravines of old deck boards, foot-battered.
One of the pearls slips back into a wooden crevice. He looks up, and — ...ah. No. In his hands, now. )
Retain them. ( Rasped, fighting its way out of him. ) They were... residue. Not the cause of submersion. Hundreds of dead sleep below.
( To the victor go the spoils, and there's blood with this gain, for all Lan Wangji's hands come impossibly, impertinently clean. Fingers curl, white knuckled, around the pearls Damon had positioned in his hands. Fists release. He feels like an immaculate ghost of himself, solicitously beholding the music box gears of his body winding, unwinding. He does not own this flesh. It screams at him unanswering.
When he clutches what he can catch of Damon's limbs beside him — an arm, the joint of a knee, indifferent — it is to anchor himself in rise and speculate, at the last moment, that the mean, ached sway of the ship, fighting fresh currents, will not break his footing.
A fool's gamble. One, dead weight, fell seamlessly. This round, he seems intent to also coax Damon down. )
please sir, help this men find his balls
No need. He thanks with a mute mouth, gaze diffuse — pressure finally released of his lungs, each breath a calculated progression. The slow drip of water from his hanging hair fits the gauges and ravines of old deck boards, foot-battered.
One of the pearls slips back into a wooden crevice. He looks up, and — ...ah. No. In his hands, now. )
Retain them. ( Rasped, fighting its way out of him. ) They were... residue. Not the cause of submersion. Hundreds of dead sleep below.
( To the victor go the spoils, and there's blood with this gain, for all Lan Wangji's hands come impossibly, impertinently clean. Fingers curl, white knuckled, around the pearls Damon had positioned in his hands. Fists release. He feels like an immaculate ghost of himself, solicitously beholding the music box gears of his body winding, unwinding. He does not own this flesh. It screams at him unanswering.
When he clutches what he can catch of Damon's limbs beside him — an arm, the joint of a knee, indifferent — it is to anchor himself in rise and speculate, at the last moment, that the mean, ached sway of the ship, fighting fresh currents, will not break his footing.
A fool's gamble. One, dead weight, fell seamlessly. This round, he seems intent to also coax Damon down. )