savetheearth | [Closed] Fly, pigeon fly, cross your windblown sky

Julien shifts so he can lean the side of his head against Aaron's chest. His wings open, part of the way. Can he even really be held like this, not just around the neck?

He pulls back a little so he can rear up, and it's stupid he can feel how his legs should be able to work, he should be able to stand, all he can do is fold his calves tight against his thighs and extend his ankles. Even then his body will not become upright, and he can feel the weight of all the muscle attached to his keel trying to drag him back down.

Julien rests that on Aaron - try not to stagger - and lowers his head over the man's shoulder, hooking over it. Then he can, gradually, move one wing to circle him. His wings don't quite move like arms anymore. Some motions aren't as free.

[Totally this.]

He can take the weight -- he's stronger than he looks -- and keeps one arm around Julien's neck. The other goes as far around as it can. His hold tightens, and he makes no move to pull back.

It's been a while.

Another deep, deep sigh. Okay, Julien can't be held close, sheltered. He's just too big. And sensation is more distant through feathers, spread out and insulated to a remove; he feels them pressed down, not the kind of heat and texture he'd taken for granted once. Still. It's something.

"Okay," he mutters down Aaron's back. "I don't hate you. Just..." He turns his head, rubbing his face, the velvety shape of his operculum, against the jacket, and closes his eyes.

"...my God. My God."

"I know." It's murmured. There is meaning to it -- it's not just repeated because he can't think of what to say. Aaron knows Julien doesn't hate him, and he knows that what has happened to Julien is frankly beyond words. His hand moves over the feathers on the back of Julien's neck -- left and right, like rubbing someone's back. It, too, cannot be mistaken for a pet.

Gradually the way the feathers on his head and neck are raised shifts, making it easier to sink through them.

"I need to stop falling apart." The only control he's had here, all along, has been in how he's reacted and what he's done with what was handed to him. It's had a cost and is so much harder than anyone knows, but it's his. "I need to - pull myself together."

Nothing will be the same again. Nothing will be how he wants it. Telling someone, even Aaron, changes nothing. He hates to pretend he's okay, now, but it's the only thing he can think to do.

"Everyone falls apart," Aaron tells him, getting his fingers in the feathers. His head is turned in, leaning against the side of Julien's neck. He's not shying away. "You've done a remarkable job controlling when and how for the past two years. It's okay if putting yourself back together takes a little time."

He sighs out a breath. This is a situation he's never handled before, and what he's telling Julien is -- well, uncalculated. There are times Aaron Strider will tell someone what they want to hear, or what they need to hear, or what he needs them to hear. With this, though, he's got so little reference, so little grounding, that he's got no choice but complete honesty.

"I didn't come here to hurry you."

Julien hadn't quite realized before how touchstarved he was, how much he wanted human contact. With a kind of distant disgust he thinks it's like he's engulfing Aaron in feathers, covering him; he thinks he'd let Aaron lay on his back if it just means continuing, staying there. It makes him want to start tearing feathers out, like he'd done in March.

He doesn't think of it this way but he is incredibly resilient. A few words and some time to collect himself is usually enough that he can work to adjust.

This time, he had not been on the verge of coming back on his own. This time he could probably have stayed out for a long time. "Okay, I'll play," he mumbles. "Why did you come out here? Besides 'I know you'."

"Because I should have come the other times," he says. Aaron hasn't forgotten Julien's first words to him. Without his Echoes, Aaron had always guessed that Julien would be fine, and that Julien had others to rely on, and that if Julien had needed him enough, Julien would have let on, somehow. He had been wrong. "I let you down again -- for a year this time. Probably the year I could have done the most good. I know I can't make up for all the times I was wrong, but I can start doing things right."

A breath.

"I won't tell you how to deal with this. But whatever you decide, you don't have to do it entirely by yourself."

Now, at last, Julien pulls back with his wings furled. He's holding his head up more, despite not making himself tall.

"You don't owe me anything," he says with a sigh. "You, or anyone. This bullshit is mine, all of it. You can't shoulder it for me. There's only so much help anyone can give."

Aaron shakes his head -- I'm not trying to shoulder it, this isn't a matter of owing. "But any help is better than none, and better still than having no one there to offer it."

"You're just going to break your heart, Aaron." There are several reasons Julien's had for keeping quiet, on a lot of subjects. One is that there is nothing to be done for most of what bothers him. Telling anyone would spread unhappiness without diminishing it. It's so tiring to think of picking his way through his life and only sharing what isn't too upsetting.

"I'll decide what to do with my heart, thank you," says Aaron, unwavering, "and what it can take before it breaks. It wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for you, anyway." A breath in, calm, resolved. "Julien, tell me what you need, and if I can give it to you, I will. Even if all I can do is listen without judgment, I will do that, and nothing you say will break me."

It is an offer, not a request. If Julien does not want to talk -- if he truly believes it will leave him feeling no better -- Aaron will not ask him to. But, he says, if Julien does, he can.

"And if I cannot listen, then I will just be here, and remind you when I must that you need only be alone when you choose to be."

"You already know anything I could tell you." Anything he's willing to say. This is horrifying and hard, he's mourning who he was and what he's lost, he's afraid he won't be able to present the personality that suits anymore.

He just wants to hear it. "Okay. One more time. Why did you come out here? There's so much else you could be doing with your time. Why put this much into me?"

"You still don't know?" says Strider softly. "I don't think you understand what you mean to me, Julien." He steps forward and puts a hand on the side of Julien's feathery bird-face. "I came because I love you. I have loved you since the day you walked into my clinic, looking for work. Now, years later, I love you still." His eyes are warm, earnest, and affectionate, tempered with the slightest fear of rejection -- what if this comes between them? Julien has Isabela, after all, and this kind of confession coming at the end of a year-long rift in their friendship must be sudden.

"Perhaps I should have told you before you turned into a bird. However, my feelings have not changed."

"You... you can't mean that." His voice is shaking. He should pull away. "You can't love me. Not when I'm like this. Don't tease me like that!"

Julien isn't pulling away. Hope and the beginnings of joy flare up in his heart -- dampened by caution, of course, and by the knowledge that he could well be reading this wrong, but impossible to stifle.

He steps closer and brings his other hand up; he holds Julien's jaw in his palms, and his fingers slip into the feathers on the sides of Julien's face, brushing against the superheated skin underneath.

"Do you doubt me?" he murmurs, bringing their faces close, inches apart. "Would I tease, at a time like this?" His eyes meet Julien's, gazing deep; if Julien still needs convincing of Aaron's sincerity, he need look no further. There is no flinching, no flicker of doubt, nothing to betray a lie.

"I'm not even human anymore!" His eyes are wide-set enough that an inch closer and Aaron will be in a blind spot, that he's forced to cross his eyes to try and keep him in focus. "Can't you... find someone... Aaron..."

Something soft snaps, or unties, deep in his chest, and Julien's protests die in a rush of incredulous joy. He leans closer, lets Aaron pass out of the space he can focus on to try and press his forehead against his face. "You had to say this when I don't have goddamn lips anymore," he tries to grouse, because he doesn't, this hasn't taken anything from his awareness of all the things he can't do anymore.

He closes his eyes and presses their foreheads together, and breathes out all the tension of the last few years. His fingers sink deeper into Julien's feathers, and a smile he can't suppress crosses his face.

"I did find someone," he says, brushing the side of Julien's face with the back of his hand. He knows it's cheesy but is too deeply, deeply happy to care. He's sure that whatever happens, they can work it out.

"Shh," he says, stroking Julien's feathers like hair. "It's all right. Lips don't matter. I'm Aragorn. Sixty-year dry spells are nothing."

"Oh, Aaron." He manages to bat his outer eyelids. "You always say the most goddamn romantic things."

"Okay, cut! CUT!"

The camera shivers a little and loses focus. Feed switches to a less-than-steady handheld cam, through which you can see Victor Moransen pulling away, grinning, from the enormous animatronic costume that's being used for a lot of shots of Bird Julien. The costume continues moving, exaggerated now, swinging its head left and right.

The director takes off her baseball cap and rubs her forehead. "C'mon, guys, it's not that funny."

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Julien looks up at him with unreadable round eyes. "There's nothing else I can tell you." There's nothing else he's willing to say. This is horrifying and hard, he's mourning who he was and what he's lost, he's afraid he won't be able to present the personality that suits anymore; that's plenty.

"Okay. One more time. Why did you come out here? There's so much else you could do with your time, effort... You left the clinic. Why?" He just wants to hear it.

"Because you, Julien Sakazaki, are very important to me. More important than the clinic, certainly, and perhaps more important to me than any other individual in Locke City. I've done a terrible job of showing it, and that is a mistake I regret."

Aaron doesn't know in truth how much he will be able to help Julien, but he thinks that saying this out loud might not be a bad first step.

He hears it, and he wants to reject it. Aaron may mean it now but that's not something to seize to and depend on. That he can't rely on anyone is a lesson the other him knows well, and one that's been impressed upon Julien again and again.

But he does know how much the LSR means to Aaron Strider, and feels a little of that himself. For all its roughness, for all the awful things that have happened in it and the desperation that brings most people to it, it's a good place, a worthy one. Aaron's taken one of his very rare leaves of absence from it, the same way he'd left when something had happened to his mother, to find Julien.

That has to mean something, temporary or not.

"...that's really sweet," he says at last, quietly. "I'm sorry you've had to go to all this trouble."

"But I'm not sorry I did," replies Aaron, neither tired of nor embarrassed about saying it as many times as he must. He's had a full year of saying nothing.

He takes a step back, toward the door.

"Well? Are you coming?"

There's a considering pause. Part of it is Julien is already pulling together enough to want to look okay, like he's halfway to fine already. Not desperate, not scared, not hurting. Weary. That's safe to aim for.

"Yeah, I guess." He picks up his cloak off the floor.

"'M tired of being cold, anyway."

"Come on, then." He'll wait for Julien to get the cloak on, and then put a hand around the back of Julien's head. It's encouraging, a nonverbal come on now, don't turn back, we're going this way. It's closer to an arm around the shoulders than anything else, and it'll move Julien toward the door. He's going to have Julien go out first.

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