How long can a man lose [CLOSED]

[red_dust_rising]

Who: Derek Rayne, Mars
What: Nightmares, possibly cuddling, some really screwed-up people.
Where: Rayne's room, the King's Inn
When: Sunday night

Comments

[red_wilderness]

Mars sleeps lightly. He never slept before the humans came, and although he has long since left the simmering terror of unconsciousness (after eons of constant awareness) behind, the vulnerability of it still irks him.

It's the movement that wakes him, Rayne's body jerking and twitching, still in his arms.

And then the sound hits him, intimately familiar, the slow desperation of asphyxiation, victims of early accidents, mechanical failures, gulping down thin air that was 95% carbon dioxide anyway, gasping and gasping and unable to breathe.

The little thrill he gets at the sound is automatic, an excited tingle of memory and want, but holy fuck it's Rayne and suddenly he's disgusted and terrified and why isn't Rayne breathing.

He grabs Rayne's shoulder, shaking, and he can smell something awful, bitter and chemical, and taste bile -

"Wake up. Come on. Rayne, please. Wake up!"

[red_dust_rising]

And Rayne blinks awake, the instant he hears Mars' voice, sliding from asleep to fully alert with a soldier's ease that he hasn't had since the Battle of Toridia.

When Mars calls...

He blinks, heavily, and swallows down the acrid taste in his mouth.

"Sorry," he murmurs, moving a hand up to rub at the bridge of his nose. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

Yeah, fuck, his pulse is racing. He's not getting back to sleep until he calms down.

[red_wilderness]

"Don't worry about it," Mars mutters, burying his face in the crook between Rayne's neck and shoulder.

He wants to say don't scare me like that, but he doesn't really think he has the right. He likes feeling people choke to death, still struggling as they fall and slump against him, and he doesn't want Rayne anywhere near that part of himself, out of protection and shame and seriously, what the fuck is that about?

Nations are arrogant by nature; everyone's a patriot, martians moreso than most.

Mars doesn't even begin to know how to deal with shame. He holds Rayne tighter, tries to breathe steadier himself.

[red_dust_rising]

Rayne reaches up to tangle fingers in Mars's short-cropped hair, releasing a shuddery and half-relieved breath of air. And now it occurs to him, the surpassing bizarreness of being so close to - a planet. He's not blind; Mars's affection is more like a lover than like anything else Rayne can think of.

"It's okay," says Rayne, softly. "It was just Toridia. Y'know."

The gas.

[red_wilderness]

And the fact that Rayne would die for him, technically already has...

He's pretty sure that makes it worse.

He wonders how France felt, when Joan burned. He doesn't think he could handle it.

"Yeah," he says softly. "Yeah, I remember."