Supplicant - Imre's POV (E8)

He rubs his forefinger along his chin, his eyebrows fretted and his mouth pressed into a grimly concentrated line. 

His eyes ache and the gentle grey light from the window does nothing to make the words rearrange themselves in a way he can decipher. 

Imre sighs and leans back, the tensions in his shoulders abetting only slightly. He lets the pages fall to the desk and takes up his cup of tea, he can barely taste the savoury hot water. 

He was a fool to think he could sit here and see how to read this language. He’s dealing with forces far too grand for his subpar human brain to be able to know. Yet. What keeps him going is that he could get there. He will get there. But he can’t do it alone. 

His mouth twists at the thought and he lays the tea cup down gently on the saucer. Why must he be plagued with teamwork? Why must he be reminded that there are things in the cosmos that are far superior to him?

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio,” Imre murmurs. 

His mind —as it is oft to do nowadays— drifts back to them. He doesn’t make it a habit of sleeping in the same bed as someone who he hasn’t partaken in. Perhaps it’s because he only ever has someone in his bed to fulfill their desires and some of his own; the longer they are there afterwards is unproductive. 

He smiles as he thinks of how they look when they sleep. It’s not peaceful, which is what he usually sees. It’s tormented. Their eyes move frantically behind their eyelids, they gulp as if their mouth has gone dry and their eyebrows nearly press together with how much consternation they feel. 

It’s a delight to witness. They are a beautiful horror. 

He remembers how their skin felt under his lips, certain areas were soft and others jagged, his tongue gently caressing the raised skin of their scars. They’re more marred than he thought. But somehow it added to their presence. Grotesque marks have been made glorious on their body.

Many nights he’s thought of what they look like underneath their clothes. He felt sweet stirrings of want at the lower part of his stomach. He’s thought of reaching underneath his boxers to relieve that pain but the image of how pitiful it would be stops him.

He’ll have them one day. When this is all over, he’ll take them, make them his and bind their souls and bodies together for eternity. 

He picks up the pages again. If they could, wouldn’t they have done so? Must it be under special conditions? I could show them again, away from the others. 

There’s a knock on the door and with an inner irritation he allows them to come in. It’s one of the maids who informs him that his nena/nene is ill. 

He’s already throwing on his coat before she finishes.

—

After Imre listens to Nia rant about Sally’s delusional outlook on life, he volunteers to care for them. 

“That’s fucking easy. They’re asleep and you just have to do shit. I don’t wanna go be a jailer,” Lorcan groans. 

“It’s your home, Lorcan. This is for the greater good,” Imre replies. 

Lorcan rolls his eyes. He quickly looks at Nia —who’s busy putting a damp cloth on Crowny’s forehead— and whispers to Imre, “we have to let him go.”

Imre responds, “it’s late for that now. The point is to one-up the rest, Lorcan. If he escapes and tells Sally or god forbid my father, we have no advantage. They’ll force us out.”

Lorcan fiddles with his piercing, and winches. “This is getting dangerous. I can’t fucking—”

Imre slowly blinks at him, his face expressionless but penetrating and Lorcan’s words die on his lips. Imre has had this conversation with him many times. Lorcan gets into bouts of hysteria that makes Imre want to slap some sense into him. 

“You’ve endured this long enough. You can hold on for a single month,” Imre says quietly. “What is a month compared to two years?”

Lorcan lets out a shaky breath and nods. He looks as confident as a preteen girl with acne but Imre knows this is Lorcan putting on his leash. 

“Can we go now?” Lorcan asks Nia. 

She lays the cloth in a bowl and gets up, straightening her belt. “If they get worse, ignore whatever bitching Sally does and call the ambulance.”

Imre assents and they leave. He spends his time between wetting their forehead with wet cloths, reading a book he brought and looking around their room. 

It doesn’t say as much about them as he wants it to. They have the necessities, the pictures and posters. But it looks benign. The room of any regular teenager. It’s so normal for someone so abnormal. 

Sometimes I forget how they can be just a person. He has thought them much exalted beyond what they appear but that has a basis in reality. He knows what they are. He views them as they are meant to be. The trouble is that he also forgets how they are also his age, that they have desires that anyone could have. They are real tangible and not a being sketched into a book. 

He can touch them, this being that should not exist here with him in this time. Was it luck or destiny that has brought him in this room, mere inches from glory? It’s difficult to equate the image in his mind to this person who has been brought down by a cold. 

A contradiction. An improbability. Absurd. Chaotic. It is all things he despises but when he looks at them, their slowly rising chest, their slightly open mouth exuding their raspy breath and the sheen making their skin so soft— he finds they are nearly perfect. 

Like him, within them they have the capacity for more but are bound by mere mortal flesh. They could never be better than him. They are the same. His half. He sits on the bed and lightly traces their damp cheek. 

Only to them could he ever bow down as supplicant.