✘

[ (What Iain is, is hers. The whole of him. Where she is an insect in a glass box, he is a framed map as mounted on the wall, skin stretched out for her to read at her leisure, star after star after star written across his body; this is who I am, in the basest of senses. No one else has seen his scars, not in their entirety.)

He bares his teeth, both at her touch and at that single word. (I'll try. I'll try, I swear.)

The same flame, the same want consumes him (ruin and damnation, but fuck it — I will never want anything but you), in a way that he knows will cost him (them), in the end. They've both surrendered; no one has the upper hand, no one is in control.

(If you stay, I will.) ]