you're paralyzing me, any

[sleaze]

I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife

He isn’t sure what to do when the other horse touches him. It has been a long time since Sleaze was last touched, in any fashion. He tends towards solitude, and is not handsome or intriguing enough to draw others to him, much less their skin to his.
It’s nice, though. He’d forgotten that.
(Who had been the last horse he touched? He can’t recall.)
As he is thinking this, trying to wind back the years or months that have passed since he last felt the warmth of anyone else, something shifts.

Quiet rises like a tide, and he feels the incessant, squalling nature of his unreality fade. It is not gone – not completely – but it is quieter than he can ever recall it being. Sleaze inhales, sharp, and the noise is so audible in this quiet, but he doesn’t care. He feels steady in his own mind again, and though parts of him quake internally – the sea-legs of madness persist – it is so gloriously still.
He is so transfixed by this that he almost forgets about Isakov’s presence. When he turns to him, the quiet increases, and he realizes suddenly – of course! – that somehow this is his doing, because the quiet is better when he looks upon him, as if he radiates it.
“It’s so loud,” he says, then, awestruck, “but you’re quiet.”
He is the one who touches him, now, as if he could spell out his gratitude by running his muzzle against Isakov’s star-stricken crest.
“You…” he says, and he’s almost breathless, almost himself, a self that had been lost long ago, “are quite a miracle.”

Sleaze

@[isakov]