it's strange what desire will make foolish people do; isakov

[sleaze]

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

Sleaze is not used to things working out. He is used to being broken, consumed in the worst ways by the things life has thrown at him.
(Did that other world not turn him mad as well as purple? Others walked away thinking of it as a strange dream, he spent years struggling with it and still he dreams of fire and bared teeth.)
His life is scattershot, he meets others briefly and then they are gone. He considered himself blessed to have known Isakov for more than a handful of meetings, but in his last separation, he began to think of him as gone, too. It is easier to think of them as gone then to clutch on to the hope they might come back, because hope will wear at you, right down to the bone.

But sometimes, life is kind.

He thinks it a mirage at first, something brought on by the pain of the birth, but the sharpest of the pain is gone and he is well enough to stand, so perhaps it is not, and then Isakov says his name and that is real, has to be, because Sleaze’s imagination could not manifest this so perfectly. At the noise, he lets out a small, choked noise, relief and joy mingled with the lingering pain, and he strokes his lips against Isakov.
“She’s yours,” he says, as if it isn’t obvious – she is stitched of the two of them, this girl – then, “you found us.”

Sleaze

@[isakov]