orendalogs | IT'S YOUR DESTINY!!!

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.

What Declan wanted was Aoba to be happy and safe. He wanted the man to stay, sure, but he wanted his friend to have the rest more. His own desires were less concrete, less internally virulent, and there was nothing dark behind them. The things he wanted in life were either very small and harmless, or very big and abstract; from being able to sleep where there weren't rocks pressing into his back to genuine galactic peace. But the surface-most desires were very, very simple to the point of being child-like.

He just wanted his space to continue having life in it, particularly of the Aoba-shaped and sounding sort, and wanted to be allowed to take care of someone in a way that was meaningful to him on a personal level instead of just fighting in a never-ending war for some nebulous lulls.

"Mmm, hm. Um...the point isn't to mess you up, it's to help? With whatever aches or ails you. I would never try to hurt you. You're...You're important. You don't damage that which is important," Declan stated carefully, eyes attempting sliding off to the side as he inhaled and exhaled slowly, usually cool skin heating under Desire's hand when he realized his gaze was fixed. He took it in stride, however, assuming nothing more than that he wanted to convey his own honesty. It was alright to tell Aoba he was important, wasn't it? No one was insignificant to Declan, of course, but there was a place reserved in his mind, for certain people. People he would drop everything for. Fly across the galaxy for. Endanger his life for.

"I'm sorry I didn't do better last time. I suppose I'm not very good at it. I don't...like touching people. So I don't have a lot of experience." Except Aoba, evidently, since he wasn't flinching away the way he would often with others. Even Mac could only be tolerated so much, but touching Aoba felt less threatening, in a different way.

It was as easy as just…dumping a box of photographs out onto a table, spreading them out with his hand to see them all. No prying, and barely any digging. Declan was answering him all while Desire was thumbing through his thoughts as simply as Granny would a box of collected recipe cards. Desire’s power was there in it, but there was nothing to force when everything gave way and showed itself so easily.

No dark, repressed desires. Barely any secrets he was keeping for himself. Nothing for Desire to sink his fingers in and drag out into the light to crush and break him with. What a weird guy! In all his years of flaying people’s minds down to their blackest cores, he had never, ever met someone so…wholesome.

“…You’re so pure I think I’m getting cavities just listening to you,” Desire remarked, his grin pulled sideways. It wasn’t even all that much of an insult, really. The big guy was honest, and really, Desire was very much a fan of people that knew exactly what they wanted. Declan’s problem more seemed to be a lack of really understanding than lying to himself and denying it.

Desire wasn’t about to call it anything as fluffy as love, but he saw nothing wrong with someone thinking Aoba was important, especially since Desire himself didn’t appear to be getting ruled out of this equation!

…Ren was growling. A low, little sound in his dog throat as he stood a ways behind the couch, ears turned back and eyes narrowed. Desire broke his eyes away from Declan’s enough for a sideways lean and peer past his shoulder, just to scoff at the Allmate. Still all buried away in there, huh? Now there was someone in need of being dragged out in the open, but at the same time, Desire wasn’t in a mood to be bothered.

What he did was lean forward, wrapping his arms around Declan’s neck in a deliberate, almost exaggerated embrace. Aoba might have been clothed in full still, but Desire was sure the Guardian had more than enough bare skin to appreciate the contact. Though one hand lightly scratched through the fine hairs of Declan’s nape, it was Ren that Desire shot a smug, dry stare from over the loop of his arms.

“Buzz off, mutt,” he said, sounding not the least bit Aoba-like.

"I'm not sure what purity has to do with cavities," Declan murmured, tilting his head a bit into the touch without intention. For someone that professed to not like being touched, he didn't seem to mind that much at all. Then the man was up against him and the Titan froze after a sharp inhale, the muscles in his neck tensing briefly. He almost missed the strange exchange between Aoba and Ren. Almost.

"Is everything alright, Ren?" the Guardian asked, both arms looped around the man against him then, reflexive. His grip slackened a fraction when he heard his friend's words, generous lips curving into a frown.

"Are you two...fighting or something?" he asked, Ghost drifting over slowly, blue eyes flicking between the odd tableau Aoba and Declan created and the Allmate. More perceptive of minutiae than his companion Titan, the Ghost ran a quick scan of Aoba and compared it to previous scans, noting the subtle differences, but keeping silent for the moment. Ghosts were equipped with full personal intelligence, able to disobey commands, lie, withhold things. He wanted to confirm things for himself before weighing in, and Declan seemed to be alright with or without his interference. It was important to him that his Guardian grow on his own, and this bizarre turn of events since Aoba's arrival was doing good things.

Didn't mean he couldn't be cautious.

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