Work Text:
The pearls at the bottom of the sea,
The stars winking in the night sky.
The words look strange in Lillium’s self-binded journal, like a plaster stain on a white wall. Strange, not because of the words as such, but for having been shown elsewhere apart from Lillium’s own head.
He is sitting, alone, in one of the booths of the canteen where everyone in the camp seems to be. He’s as comfortable as he can be, in a place as packed as that is, in the farthest table from the principal entry, with a wall on his back and a window at his side.
If it were for him, they would have been in the trailer, warm, comfortable and safe. But Iris gets anxious when he is inside a single place for too long and Lillium, no matter how much denies it, is simply unable to deny him the slightest thing.
So he is sitting there in the corner, writing nonsense, while Iris roams around groups of people, shameless in a way that’s easily confused with confidence, kind in a way that’s impossible to mistake as something else.
Lillium stares at him with his hand on his chin. People tend to turn around and offer a smile at Iris when he’s around now that he’s kind of proven himself, because, even being who he is, it’s simply impossible to resist his pretty eyes. And his winning smile, and his shy laughter.
Perhaps that is it. People don’t smile at Lillium like that, he could be biased. He looks down at his journal and what he’s been trying to write there.
And the love that rests in my heart.
Iris is listening attentively to something that Don is saying, even if it’s obvious that the guy is very drunk. Iris has his hands crossed in the small of his back, it makes him look smaller than he already is. He turns down at Sunny, just as intent. They ask him something and he shrugs, tilting his head to the side, a small smile lighting his face. A little of marred skin peaks through his bandages, Lillium wants to run his hands through it, press his cold nose in the space beneath Iris’ jaw, just to listen him giggle against his ear.
All the shimmering things I surrender to you.
Something happens, someone must have done or said something, because Iris goes still. It is not obvious. He doesn’t scowl, his mouth doesn’t frown or snap. But he changes his posture, leans back and moves his arms across his chest. He’s still smiling, but his eyes don’t quite crease the same.
Lillium leans back as well, and drops his hands to the table. Perhaps he should go and—
The sky grows stormy - the pearls disappear.
The sky grows stormy - the stars disappear.
“If you stared at me like that, I'd be very creeped out.”
Lillium startles, and gets angry at his own inattentiveness. Heather takes the booth across from him and drops a flask on the table.
“Aw,” she whines, taking a drink, “don’t scowl like that. It’s even more creepy!”
Lillium tells her off, before looking back at Iris.
He doesn’t need to go there, and Iris has asked him, more than once, to stop picking fights for his sake. He’s never said it, way too kind to do so, but Lillium knows that he finds his mistrust and defensiveness a little too harsh. He knows that Iris thinks that his way of dealing with others is rude and borderline cruel at his worst.
And Lillium understands, but doesn’t really care, he has to make up for Iris’ endless generosity and warmth towards everything that breathes.
Iris is not, by any means, a weak person. If he wished to, he could bring hell upon everyone who ever wronged him, he could leave destruction at his bay, the way he now leaves art and creations.
It is easy to forget, what with how he easily smiles and forgives, who Iris is, and where he comes from. Even with the evidence quite scared across his face.
A whole genesis lives in his fingertips, and yet he chooses to make new prosthetics for Lillium, with tiny flowers and stars that can shine in the dark; and makes a dozen of blue bunnies that scatter and jump happily around their trailer.
Heather gaps and Lillium snaps his attention back at her. She has her mouth wide open, eyebrows raised high in an exaggerated expression of surprise. But she's not looking at Lillium, she is looking down. “Is… is tha— is that a love letter!?”
He quickly shuts his journal closed and drops it next to him.
“Shut up. That’s enough.” He tells her.
“You are writing a love poem,” she repeats, “while staring at Iris.”
“Enough.” He says again, because she doesn’t understand.
“You know what? Stare at him all you want. I’m sure he won’t care, or won’t even notice!”
“Heather—”
“Never pegged you for a loverboy.” She smirks, all sharp teeth, and leans on her elbows to keep teasing him. “Do you like him?”
Lillium scowls.
I adore him. He doesn’t say. I adore him like I’ve adored no other, like I’ll adore no other. And he’s my best friend. I just can’t help it.
Iris is making his way towards them, easily sidestepping a handsy Sunny. Somebody tries to get his attention, but he just waves and stays walking.
“Woah, you are watching him again. Is it ‘cause he’s pretty? Let me tell you—”
“Enough!” Lillium can’t help but yell, slamming his hands at the table.
“Hi! Heather, nice to see you.” Iris scrambles near, looking between the two of them. He’s still tense, and Lillium’s growling foul mood must not be helping in the slightest. “May I sit here, please?” She slides across the booth. Iris thanks her and takes the space, but he doesn’t sit down. He stands in the seat and jumps across the table, until he’s in the empty space between Lillium and the window.
His feet slip and he reaches up a hand until he takes a hold of Iris’ waist, who grabs Lillium’s shoulder to sit down, laughing breathlessly.
“Sorry.” He mutters, a flush high on his cheeks.
“It’s cool,” He thinks that Heather says.
Iris sits sideways, with his legs crossed beneath him, the way Lillium’s could never. He rests his elbow on the table, folding himself around Iris, to keep him away from whatever sent him running.
He still has his hand on Iris' waist, so he slides it across the small of his back and pulls him closer, until his knee is resting in Lillium’s hip bone. He looks him in the eye, tilting his head towards the other, but Iris waves him away, still flustered.
“Look at that, I’m being ignored!” Heather suddenly says. “Rude. How did I not see this before?”
Lillium glares at her, before reaching for Iris’ dinner across the table; he takes his own empty plate from where he had put it downside on top of the food to keep it warm, before she starts talking again.
“Iris, tell him to show you his diary.”
“I told you to stop it.” Lillium snaps at her.
Iris reaches up and wraps slender fingers around Lillium’s wrist, like he knows that he is about to throw the empty plate at her. She opens her mouth, but Iris interrupts her.
“Are you bothering him again?” He asks, and he is smiling, but it is that pained smile with his eyebrows frowned that makes people want to apologize for everything that is wrong with the world. “You know I don’t like it when you try to anger him just for your own amusement.” It’s gentle, and downright teasing, but it works. Heather laughs, pretending to not be uncomfortable, and coughs. “Wow,” she says, “I’m just shocked I didn’t realize.”
“You’ve said.” Iris agrees with her, even if he doesn’t know what she is talking about.
“Yeah,” the silence stretches, Iris keeps his eyes on her. “I’m going to talk with Sunny,” and she leaves.
Iris blinks at her back, and turns back at Lillium, feigning innocence.
He can’t help but laugh, and nudge his food nearer to him.
He talks while he eats. He’s different around Lillium, louder, brighter. There is no need for distant politeness between them, no room for shame or fear.
So Iris talks with him, searches his eyes as he tells him about the glowing red hummingbird that he wishes to build to wake them up in the mornings.
He speaks whilst Lillium stares, at the black of his eyes and the shadows of his brows. The soft lines of his cheeks and the straight ones of his jaw. He talks with his hands, little, restrained gestures that grow bolder as he thrives under Lillium’s attention, that he’s nothing but happy to give.
Lillium wonders; how could anyone dare to dare a hand on him? How could anyone meet Iris -know him- and not outright adore him?
It’s just— his smile and his hands and his heart and—everything. Iris is everything.
He reaches for his journal once Iris is done with his food, lays it on the space between them, opens it in the page he was before.
Iris reads, far too curious to let go of an opportunity given as free as this one, and Lillium keeps writing, before he loses his nerve, stumbling towards the opportunity. He just puts what was left inside of his bones, laid for him to see.
But my love will never change.
Through generations of time.
It is not enough, the words don’t quite fit what he feels. How to say it? How to make him understand? He owes so much but that is nothing, because there is no room for debts within them. There is barely enough space for this lovely, bright thing that—
Things that shimmer for eternity are just—
Lillium doesn’t know what else is left to say. He can’t offer him his heart, since he already owns it, it’s his. Just his.
But he can make a promise, and he can keep it. He can show him, he’ll just have to show him.
No matter what happens, I’ll never leave you.
And his hands shake as Iris grabs them between his, as he kisses the back of both of them.
“I know.” He says, eyes shining. “I know.”