[Open your eyes the magician says, and he does so. Looks into Asra's face, really looks at him for the first time since he'd caught him in that surprise embrace out on the street, an embrace that hadn't ever really been meant for him. And he does see it, the knifey angles of Asra's face, the whittling down, the parring back as though parts of him have been artfully sliced away.
It's disturbing, honestly. The subtle changes in him, all the things that go unsaid and act to compound the impression that Asra has already given, himself. That something is wrong, that it's all wrong.
He wants to do something, of course he does, because perhaps things between them have always been strained and strange and somehow quietly twisted but it doesn't reduce the fact that Julian cares about him, that Asra left marks upon his heart that won't easily wear away, even if he knows that what played out between them never should have happened. It did, and he can't take it back. Wouldn't want to, despite everything. But he's already been told once, just this, and so he holds himself back from making offers that Asra wouldn't want to hear.
Never mind that he has, of course, already noticed that there are aspects of this place that could make it everything for him, everything in a way that their world couldn't be. But Asra seems to have been harmed by what they've done to him (Asra isn't like him, is he, wouldn't take to this in the way he could), and there are things left open and undone back in Vesuvia that - for the moment at least - still feel most pressing to him. It's these things that tug and tear at him, along with all the strangeness and the alarming changes in people he thinks he ought to know and the fact is that right now he doesn't know what he wants. How he will or should respond to this.
It's too soon to say.
But Asra has given him his answer.]
I um, I suppose I knew that. That if you've really been here for half a year then something must be...missing, or simply impossible to do.
Months. Maybe years, then.
[He says it as though speaking it aloud with his own lips might make it feel more real to him.]
no subject
It's disturbing, honestly. The subtle changes in him, all the things that go unsaid and act to compound the impression that Asra has already given, himself. That something is wrong, that it's all wrong.
He wants to do something, of course he does, because perhaps things between them have always been strained and strange and somehow quietly twisted but it doesn't reduce the fact that Julian cares about him, that Asra left marks upon his heart that won't easily wear away, even if he knows that what played out between them never should have happened. It did, and he can't take it back. Wouldn't want to, despite everything. But he's already been told once, just this, and so he holds himself back from making offers that Asra wouldn't want to hear.
Never mind that he has, of course, already noticed that there are aspects of this place that could make it everything for him, everything in a way that their world couldn't be. But Asra seems to have been harmed by what they've done to him (Asra isn't like him, is he, wouldn't take to this in the way he could), and there are things left open and undone back in Vesuvia that - for the moment at least - still feel most pressing to him. It's these things that tug and tear at him, along with all the strangeness and the alarming changes in people he thinks he ought to know and the fact is that right now he doesn't know what he wants. How he will or should respond to this.
It's too soon to say.
But Asra has given him his answer.]
I um, I suppose I knew that. That if you've really been here for half a year then something must be...missing, or simply impossible to do.
Months. Maybe years, then.
[He says it as though speaking it aloud with his own lips might make it feel more real to him.]