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DMCL Day 2 - Wounded/Trust
Khalid still sleeps with a knife underneath his pillow.
Dimitri doesn't judge him for this, the first time he stirs in the middle of the knife and feels cold metal against his skin before it eases away. All he does is simply wait, and listen. Even when it seems as though Dimitri can feel his heart cross the distance between them to land in his lap with all the force of its beat, Khalid's breaths are so quiet. He has to strain his ears until he can catch the change in the air, those little tell-tale sounds. The lungs, relaxed. The pattern not so frantic.
Only then does he ever move, his head turned in his beloved's direction. Times like this, he always feels as though his words could never be enough. More than once has he expressed his frustration, after all. All the struggles that Khalid faced on his own long before Dimitri ever had a chance to meet him... and now, with both of them more separated than not for all their hard work, people still pursue him.
Khalid may not be a child any longer. Still, should he be happy with this just because of that?
So Khalid still sleeps with a knife underneath his pillow. And Dimitri lets him. Because Khalid sleeps right next to him as well, and Dimitri understands the weight in this choice. He understands what it means, for Khalid to wake up at the slightest rustle of snow sliding off the top of the castle roof and have a knife in his hand and know that he can still rely on someone else.
He cannot stop the assassination attempts so easily, but he can at least do this.
Dimitri still can't always sleep through the night without nightmares.
Khalid gets it. He really does. After enough trauma and difficulty, well, those sorts of dreams are only inevitable, aren't they? It's things like that which make him feel lucky and pampered. After all, it's not like he's had to deal with the kind of things that make Dimitri wake up with his skin ghost pale and his one good eye wide, frantic, constantly flicking from side to side at sounds that only he can hear.
There's not really a lot that he can do - to stop whatever drags Dimitri from a peaceful sleep, to muffle the sounds which go off in his own mind. He'd love to, he's sure, and he's looked into various plants and stories of those haunted similarly by ghosts... but nothing yet. And he's loathe to just experiment on his own lover. So, yeah. It's a long, slow process to dealing with all of that... and in the present, all he can do is something simple that doesn't feel like nearly enough.
He steps away from the books he's reading or the plants he's trying to investigate at a desk nearer to the fire place, and he goes to hold Dimitri's hand.
It's not a lot. Just his weight, on the bed, and his hand, in Dimitri's. Him, talking about the crackle of the fire, Faerghu's winds sneaking through window cracks. How his plants smell, where he's taken them out from storage. It can't be enough.
But Dimitri accepts it, and so Khalid does it, every time.
Dimitri doesn't judge him for this, the first time he stirs in the middle of the knife and feels cold metal against his skin before it eases away. All he does is simply wait, and listen. Even when it seems as though Dimitri can feel his heart cross the distance between them to land in his lap with all the force of its beat, Khalid's breaths are so quiet. He has to strain his ears until he can catch the change in the air, those little tell-tale sounds. The lungs, relaxed. The pattern not so frantic.
Only then does he ever move, his head turned in his beloved's direction. Times like this, he always feels as though his words could never be enough. More than once has he expressed his frustration, after all. All the struggles that Khalid faced on his own long before Dimitri ever had a chance to meet him... and now, with both of them more separated than not for all their hard work, people still pursue him.
Khalid may not be a child any longer. Still, should he be happy with this just because of that?
So Khalid still sleeps with a knife underneath his pillow. And Dimitri lets him. Because Khalid sleeps right next to him as well, and Dimitri understands the weight in this choice. He understands what it means, for Khalid to wake up at the slightest rustle of snow sliding off the top of the castle roof and have a knife in his hand and know that he can still rely on someone else.
He cannot stop the assassination attempts so easily, but he can at least do this.
Dimitri still can't always sleep through the night without nightmares.
Khalid gets it. He really does. After enough trauma and difficulty, well, those sorts of dreams are only inevitable, aren't they? It's things like that which make him feel lucky and pampered. After all, it's not like he's had to deal with the kind of things that make Dimitri wake up with his skin ghost pale and his one good eye wide, frantic, constantly flicking from side to side at sounds that only he can hear.
There's not really a lot that he can do - to stop whatever drags Dimitri from a peaceful sleep, to muffle the sounds which go off in his own mind. He'd love to, he's sure, and he's looked into various plants and stories of those haunted similarly by ghosts... but nothing yet. And he's loathe to just experiment on his own lover. So, yeah. It's a long, slow process to dealing with all of that... and in the present, all he can do is something simple that doesn't feel like nearly enough.
He steps away from the books he's reading or the plants he's trying to investigate at a desk nearer to the fire place, and he goes to hold Dimitri's hand.
It's not a lot. Just his weight, on the bed, and his hand, in Dimitri's. Him, talking about the crackle of the fire, Faerghu's winds sneaking through window cracks. How his plants smell, where he's taken them out from storage. It can't be enough.
But Dimitri accepts it, and so Khalid does it, every time.