For the past month, his life was changing in ways he couldn't have begun to track.
A spaceship, burning up and hurtling through the sky, metal plates being torn off by sheer speed until there was only the core of it, red-hot and acute. That could've been a good metaphor, if he found out a way for it to make any sense.
So he was pleasantly surprised when he saw a figure of something familiar. Evien's shoulders were backlit by the sun. In typical Taylor fashion, he fights the pressing urge to stare. He was fighting constantly like that. He takes a breath because he doesn't trust himself. Evien, he calls out, and you can hear the smile before you see it.
So many words crowd around the base of his throat. He's never felt like he had too much to say before. After a few moments of deliberation, he arrives lamely at You're here. In Ursus. And then, I'm glad.
He notices the injury on his cheek and hand; his face darkens imperceptibly, but he says nothing.

It felt good to have his name in Evien's mouth. Like he was grounded. His feet curling into the dirt, he's almost overwhelmed by a need to stay in Ursus. It unsettles him, how much he wants it. He grits his teeth, knowing that it will only be all the more painful if or when he has to leave.
For a few wild moments, he swears to himself that he'll stand his ground if Planck finds him. Hey, Taylor. Why don't you hold still? In his mind, he holds his brother's head in one big hand, and makes a fist.
Taylor doesn't hear the and you're here too, but he feels it. Wants it so bad for it to be true. Wants so bad to be known, to be liked, to be comfortable in his own body. He smiles, both at Evien and at his joke, and he hasn't felt this normal in so long. When I was recruited, we spilled blood too. 
He berates himself for being so awkward. The otherness he'd been born with had never felt like such an obstacle until now. He sighs ruefully. A good healer and a decent fighter. Damn, Kastner. Leave some for us. He almost wishes he could stay like this forever.

How appropriate it was that when left to their own devices, Evien healed people, while Taylor, even given the power, tended to do the opposite. 
You're good, though, he wants to say. I might not even deserve to know you.
Making Evien laugh felt as charged as any fistfight. It's cheery and elastic, everything that he fails to be. His mouth feels unbelievably dry; he swallows. I'll keep that in mind, he says, returning the smile, although every cell in his body is begging him not to. Taylor lies down on the grass. It's the same way he had been sitting when they had first met each other in the Glade. He leans his head back and clears his throat, looking at Evien with one half-lidded eye.
I am glad you're here, Fields. A muscle in his jaw moves with an effort. He doesn't know where this effort was supposed to be headed. Don't apologise, he says, realising midway that Evien might've noticed the dissapointment that had flashed across his face. The thought worries at his seams. 
You're here now, aren't you? I'm not dreaming, am I? But this wouldn't be a bad dream at all if it was. I'd want to stay asleep for once.

Lying down here, under the sun, is almost painful. He knows there is work to be done. He knows that he is never completely safe. In my head, everything is so tangled. I am such a damaged thing.
The knots in his head and in his throat tug at him, but he doesn't move. He lets the quiet and cool breeze run its long strokes through his hair. The sound of woodland animals, the dampness on his toes, Evien, who smelled like herbs and something else unnameable. He can forget that he is himself.
He scoffs, but takes a closer at the scrape on his cheek. Teach me how to make some poultices one day, Kastner.
The question prematurely aged Taylor Fields. He lets it marinate in silence before saying: I'm happy. He pronounced happy very carefully, as if it were a newly found complicated chemical concoction. Are you?

The mention of a den warms him. Putting your roots down. Drawing out the perimeter. Watching the blueprint turn into something real.
Taylor presses his cheek against the cool, damp grass. That'd be nice, he murmurs, his voice slightly muffled.
It was a debauchery of the white picket fence and the two story house and the living with someone you loved. Taylor could and would never lead a normal life. But in this veneer, in this thin slice of spring, he entertains the fantasy of him coming home after a 9-5 day of work and putting his loafers in the shelf by the door. Then the fantasy slips away as fast as it had materialised.
No, he says, feeling uncertainty making its way to his head. Through the brain stem. Had Merrick asked Evien if he could kill? Do I look that depraved? Do I look like a murderer? A monster? He didn't need to ask. He presses his forehead against his knuckles.
He isn't distressed, he thinks. Just deep in thought.

He couldn't remember the last time someone had touched him like this, and it was strangely grounding.
There's no flinching. There's no sharp intake of breath. But for a few moments, all that's in his mind is Evien's presence, the small circle of warmth where their hands touched. He looks down. Evien's hands are pretty, he thinks, with long fingers and large knuckles and dewclaws that stuck out boyishly.
The rosehip poultice's smell fills his lungs. Taylor raises his head, but his eyes don't quite reach Evien's. It's like he assumed that I could kill, or had killed, or something. Maybe it was the fact that he had been so haggard and his mind so frayed, that Merrick only'd had to take a single look at his insomniac's face and bloody mouth to come to the conclusion that all the homes he had ever had in his life did not deserve to be called homes. He said something about marching. I don't know.
My lips are sealed, he grins, and it is then when he can really look at Evien's face again. The sunlight was lighting his eyelashes. His pupils constricted and widened imperceptibly in the green irises.

Like leaning against the back of a pew, watching dust motes in the slanted light through a stained glass window, listening to the drone of a pastor. He closes his eyes and lets Evien's voice sink into his head.
He'd never really thought about romance. About love. He'd never had the chance to ponder on that and by the time he'd finally shaken off his brother from his trail, what was inside of him was festered and malignant and mutated. 
All Taylor knew was that he could start wars for that laugh. That it was hard to look away from the elegant lines of his face. Thanks, he breathes. Marching was military. Marching would result in injuries and blood and exhaustion. He couldn't care less about that. And Merrick was indeed strange. But who could blame him? Imagine being one of the only living members of an endangered species. It was hard not to go insane, living like that.
He places his nose carefully on Evien's hand. Memorising his smell and the feel of his cool fingers. The pale, hairless scar that would be left after the wound healed. 

Evien must be so tired, he thinks. Tired from squeezing his first fight in between getting to know Merrick and Taylor, two people who were indisputably a pain in the ass to get to know, from squeezing in making poultices and taking care of not only himself but other people in Ursus, squeezing in marching and possible war.
He feels guilty for not having left Evien to fall asleep sooner. For a while, he stares at his face, which is turned slightly away from him. His eyelashes flutter, the fine facial muscles twitch. It feels good to be looking at someone and them not knowing that you were looking, in the way nature photographers so lovingly recorded butterfly wings and the flashing red belly of salmon during mating season.
His lids grow heavy. Before he knows it, he slips into unconsciousness, into a smooth and dreamless sleep, with the sun glowing red through his closed eyes.