Flycatcher Downs if i ever leave, i could learn to miss you

a magician—alamar hides his secrets; where jaime sees an ease as if adaption is a simple flip, the storming is shifted instead from the edges to the center. stored and blocked and ignored. denial a face that alamar is too familiar with—a friend, a lover, the intimacy of denial is kept close to his heart.
it would take one minor step to crack the fragility of their shift; the conversation that began with bellowing screeches that set the forest floor alive with the mirroring disturbance of a wave of birds had hushed into communication that alamar never thought he’d get from the boy. the boy who ought to not forgive the monster that fucked his life from the beginning.
alamar tosses for days after; desiring that he’d been better, that he could have come up with a finality that would have sent the lone, precious follower scrambling away from him forever—yet the broken look on his face, the shatter of rejection every fucking time he’d been too weak to see it crumble even more.
he hates that part of him more than anything. in the end he’s so wrapped up, so chained and twisted and sinking into denial that he shields it with words like responsibility. that even if forgiveness is never a possibility, maybe alamar could feel a weight lift from broken, tathered shoulders.  
Crack.
the touch to his crown brief enough that it oughtn’t have frozen him—but it does. alamar halts in his movement, a breath held, a tremble tempted to make itself known. composure kept by the sheer luck that the press is short. the ghost of it still lingers.
oh, he casually shifts, dropping a glance towards the corpse. cool, thanks. alamar goes back to cleaning the wound, until the worst of it is gone and the bleeding has slowed.