orendalogs | IT'S YOUR DESTINY!!!

Aoba might have been just as confused as Declan, really. Maybe it was something more subconscious, like a fear of losing all this kindness and relative comfort after he’d been stuck with the Deckers so long. Maybe it was just an ingrained softheartedness. Whatever it was, it felt like a victory when Declan stepped back inside long enough to show him how the communicator screens could be expanded and shifted around the apartment.

Urgent or not, maybe it really wasn’t so bad of a mission. Aoba had trouble imagining someone being able to call back home every day if some kind of war erupted back home.

What was going on back home, anyway? Aoba had already been gone for a month, and nothing in the Guide’s message had told him (that he could remember, anyway) that time wasn’t continuing to flow just the same in his home era. Was it too much to hope that falling through that first portal had been like hitting a big ‘pause’ button on his normal, mostly safe, only occasionally irritating life? Could the world he’d come from still be aging even though he supposedly wasn’t?

Two weeks was a lot of time, but at the same time, it absolutely flew by. Aoba wasn’t kept bored and idle, after all, as if he nothing to do but waste away and worry.

Medical examinations with Jolene-9 were just a drop in a bucket. Aoba found himself with cause to use her injectors—and report on the results—only thrice in that time. As weird a feeling as it was, to go days at a time without medicating, all he could decide and admit was that the future had more effective medication than his home time. Granny had done everything she could for his unique systems, but Declan’s world was years—and probably timelines—apart from theirs.

He had no way to know that some nights he was up and about anyway, strolling the balconies of the Tower and drinking in the world with golden eyes. Desire found himself… oddly mollified by the medications, but not quite buried. If anything, it was more like the holes he’d punched in Reason’s barriers were being shaped into guarded doors, rather than completely sealed up again. As if the robot-woman’s medications somehow truly healed, despite her not knowing what she was healing. Despite her scans continuing to insist nothing was physically wrong with Aoba’s brain. Desire could still break through, and that was still the way he was strongly inclined to after being ignored so long, but when it came to experimenting with carefully leaning those doors open while Aoba was asleep… well, results were results.

His days were busy, but at the same time, only felt like even more drops in some vast bucket he couldn’t even see the bottom of. Tess did indeed take him on for courier jobs to help him earn his keep, but after a few days of puzzling his way around with Ren and the maps Declan’s Ghost had given them, Aoba had finally conceded that… maybe upgrades were the way to go. He’d held off out of concern for his ancient little Allmate and a worry of him no longer matching up with the technology back home, until one moment where it occurred to him: he was acting as if the next portal he tried might magically dump him back in the Old Residents District when the chances of that were, in fact, infinitesimal. Upgrading Ren might not just benefit him in this world, but in every other one he’d have to pass through.

So Aoba ran routes, earned money, coordinated with recommended Exos for custom parts that cost all his money, and worked on Ren. He also spent time in the library that The Speaker had invited him to peruse, though he ultimately learned little of any use. Mostly he was just left confused and small-feeling, ever more distant from home.

Declan’s calls home, without any real conscious recognition of it, became the closest thing Aoba had to a feeling of stability and regularity. Even though it was foolish, Aoba sometimes even allowed himself a delusion: Declan couldn’t possibly be in danger in such beautiful places. It was comfortable to update his new friend on the things he’d spent the day on and ask about the sights he was seeing, as if he were doing nothing more threatening than vacationing for a while. Even the people that sometimes interrupted his calls seemed too at ease to cause stress. Even the overly flirty one, who ordinarily would have grated on Aoba’s nerves to no end. Oh he was still grating in a way, earning dry you’re a familiar sort look from Aoba, but the wayward wanderer’s eyes usually drifted back to Declan anyway, watching the Guardian’s embarrassed expressions with a softer sympathy.

The day that Declan returned home, it would be to an apartment only barely changed. Because the Guardian had seemed, to Aoba, to want him to make use of the shaders, he had finally taken the time to play around with what he’d found until the apartment had added some gentle blues to its existing grays. Accents, rather than taking over the place completely. Aoba and Ren themselves weren’t hard to spot at all. Both were at the little table by the couch, the latter in sleep mode while the former worked over his latest hardware installations. Aoba, himself, had applied shaders to his clothes that rendered them the bright whites and cyan shades he’d worn most back home, but he heard no one’s entry because he had his headphones on and drowning out the world with Goatbed beats.

Though the changes were only subtle ones, Declan liked them, and liked the implication of consistency and stability that Aoba taking an active role in making the space his created. He paused when he realized the other man was adrift in his own world, working diligently on his companion. Instead of immediately making his presence known, he made a soft sound to pull Ghost back and they retreated to the bedroom, putting things away and climbing into the shower for a much deserved scouring.

A little while later the Titan padded back out on bare feet, wearing heather grey sweatpants and nothing else, a small towel around his neck draped over his shoulders, catching any leftover dampness from his hair. His body remained the massive wall of muscle Aoba had seen peeks of under shirts and armor; the white skin made him look like some Mr. Universe mock-up of Michelangelo's David, and the way Awoken skin literally shimmered, Declan was a lot more stunning than he knew. Of course the people he traveled with weren't the sort to compliment him or have personal interest outside a soldiers generic camaraderie.

When he saw Aoba still tinkering, the Titan went to his gear bag and pulled out a satchel loaned to him by his Warlock friend, holding it under one arm. Then he had Ghost send a notification to the blue-haired man's coil, the communication alerting Aoba with a plain text.

Are you busy?

He waited standing behind the couch and over Aoba, smiling faintly before following up.

Can you see if I left anything behind the couch?

Not a duplicitous person in any way, it didn't mean Declan couldn't have a tiny bit of fun at Aoba's expense. Not that he could say why inspired him to something so frivolous, but he wanted to surprise the other man.

It wasn't as if he believed Aoba would be excited to see him in particular, but the gifts he'd collected might be an enticement.

Aoba never imagined Declan would do anything but let him know as soon as he was on his way home again. Why would it go any other way? The Guardian was so considerate, as prompt as he could be... and with the door only letting people in with permission, Aoba never imagined someone might sneak up on him, either. He was enjoying relaxation, safety, and the world outside the loud music he played was currently unthreatening.

The blip of his Coil on his wrist was barely a distraction, a bit of vibration rather than sound. Aoba didn’t know Declan was behind him to witness him tapping the message just a moment after its arrival, a prompt reaction rather than an overly excited one. Still, that polite little are you busy? prompted a chuff of amusement from him, some idle little expression to himself of that’s just like him.

Something behind the couch? Aoba’d been alone in this place for two weeks now and had been pretty careful about keeping things tidy and not letting and clutter spread from the pieces of work he kept doing. If something had been back there this whole time, wouldn’t he have noticed already? Well, better to check and—

Aoba’s arm went up and back first, to brace himself on the couch for a simple pivot and backwards-leaning peer over, but he only got partway through the motion before his periphery registered something very large and very white and his calm turn became something far more startled and jerkier as he completed the motion. His attention whipped up to Declan’s face first, his expression going through shock, amazement, and delight all in very short order.

“Declan!”

Aoba’s only response to the harmless little joke was elation. He was home! He was home already! Aoba hopped up from the couch in a hurry to greet him, but it was only when he was upright and a few steps into the motion that he finally realized Declan was barely wearing anything, and something about this fact was far more than Aoba could ignore outright. It didn’t… embarrass him, really, because that would have been dumb, but… geez. Why did he manage to look even bigger outside of his armor than in it?

He was… beautiful, really. Statuesque. Not that Aoba really had any business making an opinion like that, but, there it was.

It slowed him down, but only put a hint of color in his cheeks that he didn’t even feel happening as he wound up about halfway around the couch, a hand down on the backing of it. Maybe Aoba’d been on the path for a ‘welcome home!’ hug, but the lack of clothing stopped him. That would have been a bit much, for sure, but although Aoba stood a little awkwardly, it was with an excitedly fidgeting energy. A ‘I’m happy you’re home but I don’t know how to express it’ sort of thing. Words just scratched the surface.

“Welcome home!”

He smiled genuinely when Aoba shouted his name, surprised at himself. When the other man whipped around and came at him so quickly, he didn't know what exactly was coming, but braced himself, muscles flexing quite visibly, only to relax when there was no impact. Distantly, he realized he'd braced for a hug, then felt instantly stupid for thinking that was Aoba's intention. He wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed. Either way, the flex relaxed and he cleared his throat, free hand tugging at his towel for lack of anything else to do.

"Thank you. It's good to be home." And he meant it. He never would have cared, before. Now he had something to come home to, which made the missions less dull, less repetitive.

A few moments of silence stretched between them, both thinking to themselves about the near miss. It was Declan who finally cleared his throat and held out the stuffed satchel.

"Souvenirs?" the large man offered with a tilt of his head, damp hair tucked behind his ears actually showing his face in full, for once.

Inside was a wide array of items from everywhere he'd gone; anything he thought might interest a non-native from a less explored Terran galaxy.

There were rocks from every location, of course, and he was prepared to detail the specifics of every item, if asked. More curious were the artifacts he'd procured. Wrapped in a piece of cloth, there was a smooth black orb, cracked and glittering blue inside like a mineral geode. Rolling around in the satchel, a pale, prickly, chitinous scale as big as Aoba's hand, from some alien creature. In a small case, a pin made from alien metal with an almost sinister-looking design. At the bottom of the bag, a shoebox-sized stone totem and a badly scuffed metal box. Another cloth-wrapped stone that once uncovered, pale green moths seemed to coalesce from nowhere, fluttering around the dimly glowing thing. Another small box with a dazzlingly sparkling artifact sitting on a cushion of fabric, the pieces floating independent of one another, somehow. In a little leather wrap, a stunning blade that shifted colors when turned in the light. A palm-sized vial of shimmering, glowing, purple dust that moved like smoke in it's stoppered container. And a carved amber bird skull wrapped in a torn bit of fabric. It wasn't even everything he'd wanted to bring, just the things it was safe to stop for.

Aoba actually had to doubletake at that proffered bag. It was probably the use of the word ‘souvenirs’ that really flummoxed him. Declan was a warrior out to protect the world from some kind of nebulous Darkness (or so it seemed to Aoba, to whom all the mentions of Light and Darkness sounded more esoteric than truly real) and he’d been gone two whole weeks fighting who even knew what. That did not at all sound like the kind of thing one brought home souvenirs from! But he also didn’t have to look any further than the coffee table to see that blue-green gem that Declan had brought home before, either.

He looked from the bag, to Declan’s stunningly exposed face, skipping past his bare chest (why did he look like he’d just taken a shower, anyway?) and to the bag again before finally taking it with an uncertainly begun, “You….”

…Was it going to be more ‘pretty’ things? Things Declan had looked at and for whatever reason thought of him? Of course Aoba wasn’t about to ask that, but the errant thought had him briefly coloring as he turned away to reclaim his seat upon the couch. Once there he set the satchel upon a free stretch of the table, and patted the couch beside him. Inviting Declan to join him, naturally. Whatever his friend had brought him, Aoba was prepared to make Declan tell him about each piece, in case the meek fellow didn’t volunteer much on his own.

He wasn’t expecting that to be the case, but he was prepared for it. He’d said he was going to be Declan’s friend for as long as he was here, and this was definitely part of it.

“Just let me finish this bit with Ren,” he said, giving the man a chance to join him. It didn’t feel right just leaving his Allmate open and nearly-finished while he got distracted by something else, but Aoba was also glad he was so close to done. He didn’t want to risk hurting Declan’s feelings by delaying looking at the souvenirs for too long, either, so in hopes of keeping the Titan feeling included, Aoba added, “Everyone you recommended has been amazing. Ren’s working better than I ever got him to before, and everything’s more compatible with him than I thought was possible.”

He wouldn't have been hurt. Patience was something Declan had an enormous amount of, despite rumors of his aggressive behavior and willingness to solve disputes with his fists. That being said, he did want Aoba to open the bag and hopefully be pleased with the contents. Just because the man was a virtual saint didn't mean he couldn't be a little selfish now and then.

"I'm glad. I wouldn't recommend anyone I don't trust implicitly. That, or at least people Mac has vetted. Either way." He paused, nodding once and taking a seat next to Aoba, dwarfing the other man as he rested his hands on his knees and watched.

"A lot of things are very simplified in this age. The Traveler taught us a great deal about flexible technology, elevating society with better works. The easier the complicated parts are, the more the species can focus on improving itself. I guess that's the idea?" The massive man shrugged pale shoulders, sliding the towel from around his neck to finish rubbing at his hair.

"So Life got easier to live, and then people started being better to each other. Centuries later, you've got a lot of good people, willing and happy to do good things. Be good to strangers. That sort of thing." Guardians in particular were prone to that behavior, practically hard-wired for sacrifice, it might seem. Really it was just that the people the Ghosts returned to life were already predisposed to goodness, easier for the Traveler's Light to reach. Not that any Guardian could articulate as much. Least of all Declan.

"Was it easy for you to work with? That's more important. I'd hate for you to have complications with your friend."

There wasn’t much left for Aoba to do, but he shuffled his headphones down around his neck and turned off the music before focusing on his last bits of hardware swapping. That left his ears free to hear everything Declan had to say even while his eyes were turned elsewhere.

It felt good, that awareness of Declan’s truly titanic form at his side. The Guardian’s presence didn’t feel threatening or intimidating or anything like that. It was definitely welcome. Definitely safe-feeling, and reassuring to know that he was right there and safe, himself.

“Yeah, it’s great,” he agreed. “Practically plug and play. He’s got more storage and RAM than any full-size computer I ever worked with back home, but still runs ten times faster. More than great, it’s amazing.”

And now done, too. Aoba closed up the panel in Ren’s belly, smoothing his fur back into place, and rolled the Allmate back into a natural-looking position. With a pass of his hand between Ren’s ears, the little dog immediately came awake with his usual sound, dark eyes somehow bright. Screens popped open in the air around him, scrolled rapidly, then disappeared again all before he’d even gotten his tail wagging.

“Installation complete,” intoned his deep little voice as Aoba held him up for their usual ritual.

“Thanks for your patience, Ren.”

“The pleasure is mine.”

After the touch of foreheads, Aoba lowered Ren to his lap, where the Allmate immediately focused upon the company that hadn’t been there before he’d deactivated. After a look exchanged with his owner, Ren hopped free and right across to Declan’s lap—or leg, really, perching there as if upon a sturdy grey-swaddled log.

“Welcome home, Declan,” he said to their host, tail wagging again.

He tensed visibly, hands twitching as though to catch the dog. Worried it might fall or something? Either way, his cheeks colored that pale lavender, full lips curving into a barely perceptible smile. Perhaps it was just strange for him to have what he equated to a human being hopping into his lap whenever they liked?

"Thank you, Ren. It's very good to be home." He nodded, meaning it, and ran a hand gently along the dog's back, marveling at the soft fur. Without really meaning to, he glanced at Aoba's hair, wondering if the feathery mess was as soft as it looked. With an upward tick of his eyebrows, he looked away quickly.

"Ren! If you're got the space now, you and I can go over information from the Guardian vaults and see if there's anything relevant to extrapolate!" Ghost intoned, zooming over from where he'd been staring out the massive windows up at the Traveler. Declan paused in his petting, looking to Ghost, then Aoba, nodding slowly.

"It isn't *all* the information we can access, but it's a great deal of it. The most comprehensive collection, at any rate. The Ishtar library on Venus will have all the rest. If you two can't find anything here, we're bound to find something there."

Edited 2018-09-12 23:09 (UTC)

It was Aoba’s turn for a secret little smile then, though really, it was only secret so far as no one looked at him. And then it wasn’t secret at all, really, because Declan glanced at him and Aoba glanced away, still smiling. Aoba wasn’t blushing this time around, at least. He just thought it was oddly cute, how charmed Declan seemed to him to be by Ren, and was grateful his little companion was willing to humor him on this.

He may not have thought of Ren as so solidly human as Declan did, but Ren was still his friend and partner. If Ren hadn’t been willing, Aoba wouldn’t have forced him. Tried begging him, maybe, but not forced.

And on Ren’s part, it helped that Declan and Ghost were much, much more palatable company than Yoshie and Clara. On that note, when Ghost came zipping over, Ren looked up with interest that was all his own.

“I was going to ask you about that, in fact,” he said, while a half-distracted Aoba reached for that satchel of mysteries and pulled it onto his own lap. (He didn’t open it just yet, but smoothed his fingers over the exterior, wondering again what had caught their host’s eyes.) “Now that my capacity is increased I wanted to ask you for the additional information you were unable to include along with the maps I accepted before. I’m ready to collaborate in any ways necessary.”

"Then I will update you on everything necessary! And we can work on getting you both full local clearances. That way you can go to the hangars and battle halls. That should help with your delivery job. With more clearance you can take more orders!" Ghost remarked cheerily, drifting across the room towards the computer docking ports in the back room.

Declan lifted his hand, making sure Ren could go if he liked. Of course when the two constructs went, that left he and Aoba alone, the Titan quietly watching the other man, not sure what to talk about.

As Ren and Ghost went off on their own, Aoba was distracted enough to watch them go. Suddenly he wondered: could Ren get homesick, too? Did he wonder what Beni was doing when Aoba was wondering about Koujaku? Was it as nice for him to have a friendly face in Ghost as it was for Aoba to be able to look to Declan? They were completely different people and robots and situations, of course, but idle thoughts didn’t have to be perfect parallels.

Imagining Declan carrying on the way Koujaku did around women was pretty impossible, too. Presenting them with gifts and compliments and—

—and something about that thought skirted in too weird a direction as Aoba looked at the satchel in his lap again, so he tried to avoid it even as he was opening the bag up and putting a hand blindly inside. It felt like a surprisingly large number of objects shifted around under his exploring fingers. Geez, how much was in here…?

“So, you wanna tell me about what you brought back this time?”

"I can, yes, absolutely," Declan replied, jerked back into the real world and out of whatever thoughts he'd momentarily drifted on. He gestured for Aoba to start taking things out, wordlessly encouraging him to explore. Everything that was taken out and inspected, the Titan detailed. The variety of rocks, of course, were the different colors and textures of worlds distant and foreign. Some were known, like Venus, Mars, the Moon. Some were from stranger places, like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, or even a place he sad existed somewhere between time and space, called the Black Garden.

The smooth black stone with the blue glitter to it he explained was a warp fragment. A piece of Golden Age tech from a derelict ship. The sparkling dust permanently fused to it? Particulates from another solar system entirely.

The scale was from an Ahamkara - a feathered, dragon-like creature presumed to have been hunted to extinction. The bones, scales, and feathers are all still used by Guardians when found, being exceptionally good armor against energy weapons.

The brassy metal pin with the red glass orb inset was called a Continuum Pin. A piece of a Vex portal, it created eddies in time. Essentially, it granted the wearer the ability to remain in a loop in one spot. Useful, he said, for those who needed a breather in battle. Not the most reliable technology, however, he explained that they weren't often used as anything more than prestigious decor.

The stone totem; a Hezen Totem, paraphernalia of the Vex Hezen Corrective or Protective, a massive hive mind race of bio-organic robots. Not friends to humans in the slightest, they are at least fascinating from a distance. The totem itself is something like a gate key, though the gate near which it sat was, Declan insisted, thoroughly destroyed.

The metal cube was an intact warmind core. For all intents and purposes, Declan explained, the box was a brain. Inside lay the consciousness - so to speak - of a warmind. A Warmind being a type of powerful artificial intelligence designed for strategic warfare purposes. They were so complex and intelligent that the Vex had difficulty simulating them. The only known conscious warmind was Rasputin, buried deep under the Cosmodrome in Russia. This one, Declan remarked, was called Martel, best as he can glean from what little information was accessible. No warminds were desired for reactivation, so it really wasn't more than a paperweight without orders to do anything else. May as well bring it home?

The stone with the moths is a piece of the internal chitin of a Hive ship. In the Hive's ontoformic reality, the glow was the manifestation of bound, dying souls. The material the Hive made their ships out of was their own people. Much in the ways bees pulled scales from their bodies and crushed it down into the wax for the honeycombs, the Hive had a way of refining their own dead into a solid material they could build ships and cities out of. While no one believed the whole thing about the moths being the souls of the Hive and humans used to build the ships, pieces of moth-lit material were often taken as a sort of portable shrine for the missing. Warlocks, however, just liked to use them as lamps. Declan admitted that he liked the gentle green glow.

The sparkling gem floating in the metal crescent was a Prismatic Heart - an artifact from the Cult of Osiris. Declan didn't know much about it, not being part of the Cult himself, though a hunter friend said it was used in some sort of meditative ritual. Something about "learning to tease apart the hues of your own heart", which he assumed meant it was something to do with self-reflection. Admittedly, it was pretty and he wanted Aoba to have it. Simple as that.

The rainbow blade was a sacrificial dagger he knew little about, other than it was so incredibly sharp, it's edge could be measured in angstroms, one hundred millionth of a centimeter, usually used to express wavelengths and interatomic distances. Basically, really strong and immeasurably sharp. And again, pretty. The utility of it was interesting, though, and Declan felt it was a weapon good for Aoba to have available to him, even if only for decorative purposes.

The container with the sparkling, swirling dust was actually spectral dust direct from The Reef. It was captured particulate of a kind unique to The Reef where the Awoken - like himself - made their home. It was the mysterious material that held The Reef together, creating a world entirely out of cobbled together derelict ships and other space debris on a massive scale.

And the amber bird skull was called a Traitor's Die, another Hive artifact. While warlock's tended to carry them around as conduits for their power and good luck, the real purpose of the item wasn't known. It was simply something occasionally found on slain Hive soldiers, or in places the Hive inhabited. A relic of the race, symbolic to those unfortunate followers of Oryx, the Taken King, and the only thing of artistic value that indicated any level of independent creativity in the species.

It was a good thing Declan could explain everything, because Aoba was just…speechless. He’d expected more shiny stones like the first one his host had brought home, but…all of this? To Aoba, they struck him as priceless artifacts far more than mere souvenirs! Samples of space dust? Fragments of enemy art and technology? A dormant combat AI?

And yet, alike to Declan, Aoba couldn’t help but admit that so many of the pieces were just plain beautiful, regardless of function. Neither Steelport nor Midorijima had ever put such marvels in his hands, to turn over and examine and feel the heft of how real they were.

He had to go home. He had to find his way back, to Granny and to Koujaku and to everyone else who would be missing him and worrying at his vanishing. He had to. But he also looked at these beautiful things and found himself sad that he did.

Sad that he would have to leave a world that had such beautiful things in it.

He sat with the Prismatic Heart in his hand and the rest arrayed across the coffee table, objects more suited to a museum than to being knickknacks kept upon a shelf, and found his free hand moving over to gently grip Declan by the arm. Not his hand, not with the weird little thoughts he was trying to avoid having, but more below the wrist. A friendly touch just seemed to be something more earnest to do than use only words.

“…They’re all incredible, Declan. Thank you. For…for thinking of me.”

"You're my friend...how could I not?" Declan asked with the sort of innocent directness that always made his peers wonder if he wasn't somewhere on what was once colloquially referred to as 'the spectrum'. Golden Age medicine had curtailed all manner of mental and physical ails, but Guardians weren't always previously born after the Traveler arrived. Some people the Ghosts brought back were truly curiosities of the prior age, and while that usually manifested as cultural traits, sometimes more unique things came into play.

Silver eyes slid down, looking at the hand on his arm with a blank sort of confusion, full lips pursing for a moment. Eventually he looked up again, offering one of those small, unsure smiles, broad chest rising and falling with a deep breath.

"Thank you for taking my calls. Mm, and thank you for giving me something to come home to. It...it's been good, being able to think about home as just that. Knowing I might be missed, even a little."

Friend. Hearing Declan actually use the word, when previously he’d been so hesitant to admit anything good about himself, just…suddenly Aoba’s chest felt all kinds of warm, looking up at the Guardian with a feeling that felt like pride mixed with maybe half a dozen other things, and the mix didn’t get any more distinct with the rest of what Declan ended up having to say.

“We’re friends.” Aoba absolutely had to say it. He wanted to share in that agreement, and reinforce Declan’s choice to finally use the word himself. “Of course I was gonna miss you. I would’ve worried myself sick if I didn’t have your calls to reassure me you were alright.”

He gave Declan’s arm a squeeze—it was like trying to grip steel rebar, geez—but after a little lingering, he took his hand back before he could (he thought) make the man uncomfortable by dragging it on too long.

It was a complicated admission, and saying it wouldn't have happened if not for Aoba's patience and the constant corrections made to him by his Ghost and the other guardians he traveled with, most notably the warlock. Mac had very specific ideas about relationships between people, considering himself something of an expert - though in what regard, Declan couldn't say. The man was an abysmal failure, romantically. Not that Declan had romantic feelings for Aoba.

No matter what Mac said.

But some things had rang true. A person who wasn't friends with you wouldn't have the patience that Aoba did. Wouldn't stick around, make or share efforts in making life and home better. He could content himself believing they were friends, and eventually the reality sank in and became acceptance, which finally turned into genuine pleasure at the idea. That didn't make it easier to fathom, but every climb had a starting point.

Physical contact, though...that made him nervous. He didn't understand why, of course, since plenty of people came into contact with him casually in the Tower. Aoba touching him felt different. It wasn't about camaraderie. Not quite. And on his bare skin it felt very, very different. It didn't feel bad. He'd even hazard to say it was a good feeling. Nice, was the best word. Something nonthreatening, at least. H hadn't been upset by it, either way.

"I'll make sure to call when I'm on missions for very long. Usually it's just an evening of patrols somewhere. Big missions like that aren't as common. But I'll always let you know where I am. While you're here, I won't let you feel alone." Probably as much a promise for himself as Aoba, but the sentiment was the same.

I won’t let you feel alone.

Aoba felt those words right through the heart, a surprised sound in his throat and color rushing onto his cheeks too strongly for even him to dismiss offhand. He averted his eyes, embarrassed but really not all that unhappy with it? And tried diverting his thoughts with a different private argument instead.

Declan barely thought he deserved friends. Calling Aoba one was a milestone as it was. That probably meant he had no idea his words could be construed in completely different ways, right? He was just too honest, stating things just as they were. There was no need to read into things when Declan was talking. It was refreshing, truly, but it also meant Aoba had no business digging for deeper meaning.

“Talk like that too much and I might not even want to leave,” he mumbled anyway, thinking you’ll make it hard to leave and accidentally phrasing it much differently.

"Would that be so bad?" he asked, genuinely curious. A moment of pause and he shook his head with a minor correction.

"I mean...if you didn't have things to go back to, I'd be more than happy to stay this way. I don't feel like I don't have enough space. I don't know about your feelings, though, and I don't know everything you left behind. But...if you're stuck here, you're welcome to stay. I like having you here," the Titan nodded slowly, more content with his words then. It didn't make him uncomfortable to be honest, at least. No matter what the multiple meanings and reality of his words implied. He wanted Aoba to stay, that much was obvious; but he wouldn't pressure the man.

Not that he would equivocate it, but the old saying did state 'if you love something, let it go, if it's meant to be it'll come back to you'. Mac told him it had something to do with birds in China long before the Golden Age, so he wasn't entirely sure about the whole thing. It seemed relevant, at least.

He really just….

Aoba exhaled, low and slowly. Declan didn’t know what he was saying, he told himself. Or to be fairer and more accurate, Declan didn’t know the possible ways what he was saying could be interpreted. He said he liked Aoba being around so that was the only way Aoba had any business interpreting it.

And that included the fact that Declan wasn’t wearing much in the way of clothes right now.

“I’d like to be able to stay,” he admitted anyway, after a quiet moment of studying the artifact still in his hand. Teasing apart the hues of your heart, huh? Well, Aoba had a sneaking suspicion he didn’t need any kind of meditation to really spell things out for him. But it wasn’t a good idea, it wasn’t any kind of fair, so the best thing for him to do with it all was just—

—falter.

There was a dull knocking behind his temples. It was uncomfortable, but hard to say that it hurt. Aoba dropped his head into one hand and pinched at his brow in a distracted fashion, like kneading an old injury without being super conscious of its aches, while still twisting the Heart a little in the rest of his fingers.

A spoken fragment: “I’d….”

Nodding slowly in understanding, Declan was willing to let the matter go. He didn't want Aoba to feel pressured, feel bad in any way; he just wanted the man to know that he had a home in Declan's world. It did surprise him, however, that he felt somewhat crestfallen. It made him...sad, to think that Aoba would eventually disappear, somehow. And it troubled him that the man may be going off into some great unknown, some peril, not lucky enough to arrive in a bathroom stall in a relatively safe place.

"However long you need or want, Aoba. As long as you understand that you always have a place to go to," he smiled one of those vague smiles, the emotional inflection too subtle. The frown a moment later was quite apparent, though.

"Are you alright? I hope I haven't upset you," the Titan asked, reaching out to carefully brush aside the hair in Aoba's face, knuckles resting on the other man's forehead the way he'd watched other people do, checking for excessive heat. He was no medic of any kind, but he could certainly shuffle his friend to bed and tend him with compresses and teas. He wasn't a complete failure.

No. Declan was so much better than that.

The headache didn’t quite hurt, in that weird way that nausea wasn’t exactly hurt, but the touch to Aoba’s hair was another matter entirely. Even gentle, even delicately, the nerves took the sensation and amplified it much too far, startling Aoba into jerking his head back with a widening of his eyes.

More than that, he jerked back, like some old movie adventurer stumbling back against a secret door unbeknownst to them and getting tumbled into someplace mysterious and dark—complete with someone else entirely getting spun on the swivel and shoved out into light. Mentally speaking, that was.

Declan might even see it: hazel eyes rapidly polished into a bright, inhuman gold.

Surprise wasn’t completely in Desire’s character, but fascination served well enough. For a few moments more he was uncharacteristically docile, blinking at the back of Declan’s hand, then sliding his gaze along the bare musculature of that strong arm until he found the concerned face somewhere around the other end of it.

Oh. Well hello there. Now this was unexpected.

Declan reached out with surprisingly quick reflexes, grabbing Aoba's shoulder when he looked like he might fling himself backwards. He stopped at jerking his head up, though, and the Titan's grip instantly relaxed, hand sliding away in relief. Must have just startled the man?

...His eyes...

"Are you alright?" Declan asked again, tilting his head slowly to the side, arching a thick, barely visible, white brow.

"Do you need some water? Tea? You look..." He trailed off, unsure how to describe the difference he saw in Aoba. He looked the same, but also changed somehow. Instinct made him question what was in front of him while rationale told him nothing could have happened while they were sitting there together. Still, the Guardian had a doubt that nagged at the back of his skull.

Declan’s show of concern was met with a slow chuckle, that golden gaze sliding away for a moment to glance at the trinket still in his hand before giving it a disinterested toss back onto the table with the rest of the junky knickknacks.

“Better than ever, big guy,” he answered, voice lower in pitch and somewhat more drawling than when the Aoba that Declan knew spoke. His eyes were sharp in more than just their color, raking over the Guardian’s exposed body with very keen and very obvious interest.

He pushed himself up, as focused and confident as Aoba had been quiet and sheepish before, but not into standing, oh no. What he did was pivot, slinging one knee out and straddling the bulk of Declan’s nearer thigh. Stretching out across their host’s entire lap was, sadly, just a little too much of an actual stretch.

As Ren was just beginning to become aware that something was very off with Aoba’s brainwaves, Desire himself was moving to get a little more up close and personal with the Titan, using one broad white shoulder as a prop to hold up his own arm and balance his chin against the back of one hand. Time to mess with him some more.

“I’d like you to get your hands all over me again. You left me pretty unfinished last time.”

For a while Declan just assumed the topic of conversation had changed and he was too slow to catch the segue. He didn't assume the worst - that Aoba had a mental illness, some lapse like a seizure - and just accepted things. Though they terrified him in ways body-shredding rounds from Cabal troops and Vex lasers never could. Still, he was a Titan Guardian, fearless and peerless, as the saying went. So he let Aoba sit on his leg and rest against him, looping an arm around the man's back for additional support as a courtesy. Declan was build like a brick shithouse, sure, but a thigh wasn't exactly a proper seat.

"I don't...know what you mean..." he murmured, brows furrowing in minor consternation. He didn't, at first, thinking back, then memory drifted out of the fog of weeks of battle and he smiled slightly.

"I don't know a whole lot, but I learned how to crack a few things recently. Mac is teaching me a lot of things." Things the other Guardian was learning for himself because he thought it would somehow make him more appealing to his unrequited love, but any skill to help others was of interest to Declan.

"I can still do a deep tissue neck and shoulder rub." Things he could use, himself, with all he'd been through, but there were too few people he would even let touch him. Aoba was quickly insinuating himself into that short list without Declan any the wiser.

"But...not with you sitting like that," the pale man added, arching brow and shifting his leg slightly, lifting the full weight of the other man effortlessly.

Woah, woah. Hold up now. Desire felt that arm wrap around him without even a second of hesitation and almost couldn’t believe it. Felt really fuckin’ nice, sure, if in need of being a little more adventurous, but suddenly he had to wonder: was this Declan guy more in touch with his own desires than he let on? It had Desire leaning on the Titan like a content but still predatory cat, listening closely as he spoke.

Not another word of ‘are you alright’. No odd looks, no apparent suspicion. Just…as natural as you like.

And then that hoist of the leg he was straddling! Desire drew in a short breath of surprise, then was somewhere between laughing and groaning on the exhale. This guy…either he didn’t notice or he didn’t care, and while the first option had some pretty hilarious implications in Desire’s eyes, it was the second that kept him feeling so damn magnanimous. (Or at least that was the only thing he could be truly aware of, knowing nothing about medicine except for how much it pissed him off when it walled him away from the world.)

“I bet you could mess me up a whole lot better than that,” he said with that laugh, putting his free hand to Declan’s face. It was no sweet caress, but he didn’t let it be just a rough grab, either. It was a more studious sort of hold as he lifted his own head from his other hand to look the Guardian all the better in those colorless, glowing eyes of his.

His eyes might not have been the source of his power, but looking into others certainly was a gateway to deeper delving, to really getting to the heart of their minds. What did Declan really want, he wondered? Wondered, but didn’t want to just tear him open to find out. Something about the whole conscious, package deal was just far more interesting right now.

Definitely a lot more interesting than acknowledging the scrabble of little dog feet as Ren came running into the room from the back.

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