Edwin opens the door with an arm braided from several tentacles, a habit he's starting to get into. Both because he likes having arms and because he can lift more with one. Before he says anything, Edwin wraps several around Jedao's wrist and draws himself and his crown down into the man's hands like a bird coming to rest on a perch.
"Hey, darlin," Jedao murmurs, out loud, as his fingers close carefully around the metal. Not because any part of him is unsure, but because Edwin deserves to be treated with care.
I love you, he thinks at the same time, and he doesn't mean it to be a thought that he shares, but the feeling is fierce and bright and overwhelming in his chest, and it slips out.
Edwin can't help it--the strength and purity of the emotions scares him. It scares him because it will be so much worse if Jedao ever decides to hate him. It scares him because he doesn't want to say something that will make that happen. He could ruin it, and he's never had or expected anything like Jedao's intangible warmth.
I love you.
It's an overwhelming set of words. He makes a soft, shocked noise.
"I love that you ask good questions," Jedao says softly, "And that you try so hard, that you're brave and stubborn and you don't take anything for granted. But most of all I love you because...when I was new, and confused, and not the person my maker wanted, nobody loved me. And brand new people are supposed to be loved, even though so many aren't. I found you. Maybe not first, but I found you, and you're so much like me it hurts sometimes, so I get to love you. I get to do that. I love you because I can, and nobody can stop me. That's why."
A long, startled silence, and an internal sense of turmoil from Yellow--confusion, nerves, gratitude, longing, the sharp withdrawal of mistrust and uncertainty. But he doesn't demand to be let go or even ask Jedao to put him down. The withdrawal eases, slowly.
Different kinds of love can feel different, Jedao muses, but he's not blowing it off, he's trying to give Edwin a real answer. He doesn't say love is when you would make sacrifices for someone, because Jedao would sacrifice himself for people he's never even met. Love is something else; something that gives back to you out of the deep clear well of your own heart, whether you sacrifice or not.
The way I love Hakkai is full of trusting him to be careful with me when I'm fragile, and knowing he understands the things that are most important to me, and wanting to share as much of my life with him as we can, to build things together. I feel safe and wanted and understood and not alone, when he's there.
The feeling of it is steady and wondrous and warm and exhilarating, the regular beat of the waves on a Carribean shore. The water would buoy him up; could surround him and carry him along; is strong and endless and gentle at the same time.
The way I love Eiffel is knowing he won't ever want to hurt me, even if he does by accident sometimes. Knowing he doesn't want to hurt anyone, because he's kinder than I know how to be, and I want to keep that close and learn from it, and be kind to him even when he won't ask for it. It's full of feeling...younger and lighter and more free, free to be silly and enjoy things, when he's there.
The joy of running madly through a summer field, of shrieking and tumbling down a hill, of discovering the precious tiny shine of fireflies, and learning to make wishes on them.
The way I love Norton is just thinking he's...delightful. He delights me, especially when he's not trying to. I love how shameless he is and how petty. When I'm with him, it's not just okay to be self-indulgent, it's good, it's fun. I see him and I'm happy he's alive. I'm happy he's himself.
Cozy and sparkling and easy all at the same time, like laughing around a campfire, like blowing the puffs off of dandelions and watching them fly.
I've loved people who hated me before, Jedao admits, with a soft patter of old melancholy, like the gentle sound of rain outside, the grey-blue like drifting cool through the windows. And it did hurt, but the joy was still there, that they were themselves, that they existed in the world, even if they weren't for me. I think that's the core of what love is. Being glad to know someone exists, that they are who they are not and not someone else, thinking the world is so much richer and better because they are. I like John very much, but I'm also so glad you are you and not John. I think I'm very lucky I get to meet you. I'm so lucky I get to watch you grow.
Jedao tries to keep the volume turned down low on all the flavors of love he's trying to show Edwin, enough to notice and understand what he means without being overwhelmed by it. It's harder to do with the love he feels for Edwin, who's right there, for whom he feels so ferociously protective, and so unbearably tender, wanting to squish him so tight to Jedao's chest that he never knows what it's like to not be wanted again, like holding a bristling two-week-old kitten in the palm of one hand.
Yellow is fascinated by the sense of each one in turn, the differences and the ways they feel the same. But when Jedao gets to loving him, the gentleness and protection and absolute acceptance make Yellow shrink in on himself. Not because he doesn't want them. He wants those things to be for him, he wants it so much it burns. But he's afraid.
He's so afraid.
What if he ruins it somehow? What if he takes these feelings as things he gets to keep and they fall apart or Jedao decides he doesn't deserve them? Can he take knowing that these emotions could be for him if he just knew how to make them stay?
[I... love John.]
It's true. He realizes it now, as he crouches away from the responsibility of Jedao's love, terrified of failing the gift. He doesn't feel that when he talks to John. He never has. Yellow still worries about it, quietly, the idea that John will stop caring about him and he won't know why. But it is quiet, an occasional worry, one that disappears whenever they talk.
If he's not careful, he'll think of Mandrake, his breach-brother who never pretended it was anything else, and burn Edwin with a mix of caustic old self-recrimination and jealousy. It's, profoundly, not about him.
It would be too easy, too, to think more deeply of Dhanneth, who Jedao loved so feverishly, and lost so emphatically. It's so tempting to tongue the wound of him like a child who's lost a tooth, to taste the sluggish blood and feel the tender spot. Jedao knows exactly how shattering it is, to believe in someone's love and then feel it wrenched viciously away, replaced with the truth of hatred.
It won't happen to Edwin, not from Jedao, but dwelling on the agonizing truth of that fear made manifest, or even drawing attention to the fear at all, won't do any good. So Jedao keeps his own heartaches firmly packed away.
"I'm so glad you have him," Jedao murmurs, dwelling in that emotion instead: the rose-gold dawn-chorus sweetness of his affection for John, the unexpected delight of finding someone who understands so many things about him, who is so earnest and kind and forthright. It's a bright, pure thing, but not half as powerful as the heavy, chest-churning purr of his love for Edwin. And the joy of it is pure gratitude, flowing like a clear mountain stream. For both of them to have someone else who understands, who is like them -
(Revenant never promised to love him. Jedao pushes away missing it. Revenant hated him too, in the end.)
It's so beautiful, the feeling of Jedao's affection. Yel... Edwin slowly settles, the sense of him like a cat circling closer and closer to the warmth of a fire.
[I've... never... No one has ever felt this for me. I... don't want to spoil it.]
You can't spoil it, Jedao tells him. And you also can't keep it exactly the same. It's going to change and grow because we're going to change and grow, because that's what being alive is. And the love is going to grow with us, so that it always fits.
[Like a plant.] He can see that. It makes sense, the way a thing would change over time, like if they grew some climbing vine together and shaped the path it took up a trellis.
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I love you, he thinks at the same time, and he doesn't mean it to be a thought that he shares, but the feeling is fierce and bright and overwhelming in his chest, and it slips out.
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I love you.
It's an overwhelming set of words. He makes a soft, shocked noise.
"...Why? What did I do?"
If he can learn, maybe he can do it again.
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sure forgot my formatting again at 1am
[...How do you know when you love someone?]
we've all been there
The way I love Hakkai is full of trusting him to be careful with me when I'm fragile, and knowing he understands the things that are most important to me, and wanting to share as much of my life with him as we can, to build things together. I feel safe and wanted and understood and not alone, when he's there.
The feeling of it is steady and wondrous and warm and exhilarating, the regular beat of the waves on a Carribean shore. The water would buoy him up; could surround him and carry him along; is strong and endless and gentle at the same time.
The way I love Eiffel is knowing he won't ever want to hurt me, even if he does by accident sometimes. Knowing he doesn't want to hurt anyone, because he's kinder than I know how to be, and I want to keep that close and learn from it, and be kind to him even when he won't ask for it. It's full of feeling...younger and lighter and more free, free to be silly and enjoy things, when he's there.
The joy of running madly through a summer field, of shrieking and tumbling down a hill, of discovering the precious tiny shine of fireflies, and learning to make wishes on them.
The way I love Norton is just thinking he's...delightful. He delights me, especially when he's not trying to. I love how shameless he is and how petty. When I'm with him, it's not just okay to be self-indulgent, it's good, it's fun. I see him and I'm happy he's alive. I'm happy he's himself.
Cozy and sparkling and easy all at the same time, like laughing around a campfire, like blowing the puffs off of dandelions and watching them fly.
I've loved people who hated me before, Jedao admits, with a soft patter of old melancholy, like the gentle sound of rain outside, the grey-blue like drifting cool through the windows. And it did hurt, but the joy was still there, that they were themselves, that they existed in the world, even if they weren't for me. I think that's the core of what love is. Being glad to know someone exists, that they are who they are not and not someone else, thinking the world is so much richer and better because they are. I like John very much, but I'm also so glad you are you and not John. I think I'm very lucky I get to meet you. I'm so lucky I get to watch you grow.
Jedao tries to keep the volume turned down low on all the flavors of love he's trying to show Edwin, enough to notice and understand what he means without being overwhelmed by it. It's harder to do with the love he feels for Edwin, who's right there, for whom he feels so ferociously protective, and so unbearably tender, wanting to squish him so tight to Jedao's chest that he never knows what it's like to not be wanted again, like holding a bristling two-week-old kitten in the palm of one hand.
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He's so afraid.
What if he ruins it somehow? What if he takes these feelings as things he gets to keep and they fall apart or Jedao decides he doesn't deserve them? Can he take knowing that these emotions could be for him if he just knew how to make them stay?
[I... love John.]
It's true. He realizes it now, as he crouches away from the responsibility of Jedao's love, terrified of failing the gift. He doesn't feel that when he talks to John. He never has. Yellow still worries about it, quietly, the idea that John will stop caring about him and he won't know why. But it is quiet, an occasional worry, one that disappears whenever they talk.
[I love John.]
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It would be too easy, too, to think more deeply of Dhanneth, who Jedao loved so feverishly, and lost so emphatically. It's so tempting to tongue the wound of him like a child who's lost a tooth, to taste the sluggish blood and feel the tender spot. Jedao knows exactly how shattering it is, to believe in someone's love and then feel it wrenched viciously away, replaced with the truth of hatred.
It won't happen to Edwin, not from Jedao, but dwelling on the agonizing truth of that fear made manifest, or even drawing attention to the fear at all, won't do any good. So Jedao keeps his own heartaches firmly packed away.
"I'm so glad you have him," Jedao murmurs, dwelling in that emotion instead: the rose-gold dawn-chorus sweetness of his affection for John, the unexpected delight of finding someone who understands so many things about him, who is so earnest and kind and forthright. It's a bright, pure thing, but not half as powerful as the heavy, chest-churning purr of his love for Edwin. And the joy of it is pure gratitude, flowing like a clear mountain stream. For both of them to have someone else who understands, who is like them -
(Revenant never promised to love him. Jedao pushes away missing it. Revenant hated him too, in the end.)
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[I've... never... No one has ever felt this for me. I... don't want to spoil it.]
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[...I hope-- I hope that it always fits.]
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