WE BECOME THOUGHTLESS

twenty-seven | ivar is a dilf, confirmed

(this chapter is way longer than usual and i'm actually too tired to determine whether the writing is even any decent or not, so good luck fools!)

The next time Cole said something so entirely heart-wrenching and expressed his feelings in such a healthy, communicative manner, Alistair wouldn't be able to stop himself. He would reach over, look him in the eye and tell him; "you're beautiful, you know that?"

Even thinking about it made him feel stupid, but how could he not? There Cole sat, spewing out his feelings as if this amount of emotional vulnerability wouldn't have any effect on Alistair at all. But it did, and now he was stuck.

And now they were friends. Officially. Which was probably the last thing Alistair expected Cole to agree to, despite the amount of time they spent together.

It wouldn't last, the two of them like this, sitting together in the quiet of his makeshift cottage. It was bound to fall apart – they were bound to fall apart – but these were things that Alistair refused to think about. Not when he could be enjoying Cole's company. Afterall, worrying was just suffering twice.

He didn't know where this influx of painful self-awareness had sprung from, or whether it wasn't the awareness of the feelings but the feelings themselves, but he did know that they were going to make everything one-hundred times harder.

When Cole wasn't around, Alistair spent his time sleeping, killing and lighting the fire, and fiddling with the Knogar pebbles Cole had left behind. He wasn't built for boredom – no, he had no tolerance for it at all, which he was realising quite quickly. So whenever he heard that light rap of knuckles on his front door, he leapt to his feet and waited for the only source of entertainment of the day to enter.

At one point, while Alistair went to peel back his blood-dry bandages and inspect the bite, the toothy dimples in his flesh had almost entirely healed over. He didn't tell Cole, though. A sense of overwhelming dread lingered in the pit of his stomach, and no matter how much how tried to swallow it down, it always rose in his throat like bile.

He would have to leave soon, and when he did, he would be all alone. In Weles.

Two days after Cole had visited and relayed to him his worries, Alistair was stretched across his bedspread, playing with the loose piece of thread along the edge of his blanket. Night was nearing, and the shadows in his hut had darkened, but he couldn't bring himself to cross the room and start the fire. And it was starting to get cold.

Sighing, he rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. There were smoke stains pressed up against the roof, the way smoke left an imprint after prolonged contact, and the smell lingered with it. Staler, dryer.

There was a knock on the door. Alistair sat up. He would've smiled, he would've leapt to his feet and waited for the door to open like some overeager puppy, but the staccato gave him pause. It was loud, abrupt in the gentle quiet of his cottage, and it didn't sound too friendly.

Still, Alistair couldn't ignore it. "Come in."

Two long-legged figures stepped into the room. Yes, the Welish were typically tall, but these warriors were on an entirely new level. They ducked their heads under the doorframe as they stepped inside, the slow thump-thump of their boots against the floor too loud in the quiet of his room. Their hands, wrapped up around the knuckles with strips of brown leather, were coiled into hard fists.

Alistair was barely a soldier. He suspected those fists could do a lot of damage to his fine-boned face, mar easily bruised skin. Never before had he felt so useless, displayed out in front of them without armour, his hands gloved, without a disclosed weapon hidden somewhere on his person. Completely useless.