for Rat

[silenttrainbaby]

It isn't as if Grey has found a sense of peace in the two days since he's seen Rat. He hasn't found the solution, an answer to his existential crisis. But he remembers where Rat lives. And, carrying the cat once again, he finds his way to the building and to the door and he taps his fingers against it. There were flowers on the side of the walk as he'd come here and he plucked them and they are already starting to wilt, even as the cat tries to eat them. Silly cat.

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[silenttrainbaby]

Oh.

Grey shifts easier, settling on the chair to watch. He shifts the cat against his chest, urging claws to be put away.

Love. Is it that strong?

[plaguedrat]

Still acting as a lovelorn Juliet, he disappears, convincingly female as Rat flows away, replaced by his stage persona of Eve.

"Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name!" he pleads as Juliet.

"What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, and for that name, which is no part of thee take all myself."

[silenttrainbaby]

Without thinking of it, Grey touches the word over his heart, the one covered by the bandage.

Coming together, anew ... is that what this means?

[plaguedrat]

The look on Grey's face gives him pause and Rat forgets to read the next few lines. It's a look for that faraway Gilliam, he thinks, and Rat feels as though he should turn away. It's as if he's witnessing something utterly private.

[silenttrainbaby]

That is the only love Grey has known. It is his only experience. Is this, in this book - he holds it now - is this love, too? A kind of love like that?

A different kind? He raises his head to Rat. Please keep going.

[plaguedrat]

" I take thee at thy word. Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized. Henceforth I never will be Romeo."

Playing Romeo, the male role, is somehow odder for him. The only men's parts he's taken are Mercutio, Puck, and Ariel and often then he plays them from a place between genders.

"What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night, so stumblest on my counsel?" he skips Romeo's next lines, continuing as the lady. "My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?"

[silenttrainbaby]

Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized.

Hope. Love, connected to hope. Oh, Grey feels something lurch in his chest. He's leaning forward now. Love can make someone know what they are. Who they are.

[plaguedrat]

Again, that quelling look. Rat pauses, startling back into himself under Grey' gaze.

"What?"

[silenttrainbaby]

Fingers tap to the page and Grey looks questingly at Rat. Is that what love is? This? As described here? Is that love?

[plaguedrat]

To Rat's mind, it's madness and infatuation, very different indeed from real love. Real love doesn't end with six people dead.

"I don't always know that I believe they're in love, not really...When I'm Juliet onstage, I play it that way..."

[silenttrainbaby]

So, people can think they are in love, but they aren't? Grey's brows knit in question.

[plaguedrat]

"They meet and marry the next day...By the end of the week, some of their dearest friends and family are dead," Rat says, laying his hand flat on the book.

"I don't think real love is so thoughtless."

Hypocrite.

[silenttrainbaby]

No. Grey doesn't want to think it is. He wants to think that life - his life - has meaning.

When Gilliam told him to go forward, Grey went. It was what he did. That wasn't thoughtless.

Grey touches Rat's fingers. What does Rat think love is, then?

[plaguedrat]

Rat stares at their hands, barely touching but still connected.

"Love is blissful. And painful," he says quietly. "And losing it is the worst of all."

[silenttrainbaby]

For once, Grey thinks he knows something Rat doesn't know. He reaches forward and takes Rat's fingers, bringing them to his arm. Die!

That's worse than losing it. Seeing the one you love die is like dying yourself.

[plaguedrat]

"Yeah," he agrees. "It is. It's the worst thing..." He's seen Shion die. He understands.

Then he chose to walk away.

"It makes you realize everything you've ever done to hurt them...Things you can never take back or make up."

[silenttrainbaby]

It means not being able to see his face again, not being able to touch him, to be touched.

Yes, Grey knows that. And he's missed touch so much. Living with Curtis isn't the same.

Grey covers Rat's hand with his casted one on his arm.

[plaguedrat]

Rat looks at him, at the hand on his arm. The last person he touched before coming here was Shion. Now there's someone else. His chest squeezes.

"Yeah."

[silenttrainbaby]

Grey's sorry he ran away last time, that he ruined their nice evening. (He's sorry, in a stomach-way, that his leftover food hadn't made it home).

But Rat had held his hand when he needed it and now he holds Rat's, their fingers twining.

[plaguedrat]

The lines slip out of his mouth before he thinks to stop himself. "If I profane with my unworthiest hand...this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this."

The next lines are a dangerous territory.

[silenttrainbaby]

What does that mean? Grey's face forms a question again, his eyes searching Rat's face.

[plaguedrat]

"They're...Romeo's first lines to Juliet," he says, not moving his hand away. "He takes her hand and apologizes for being so bold."

[silenttrainbaby]

Does that mean Grey was bold? The idea urges a quirking of his mouth.

In the sling, the cat yawns.

He'll have his cast off in four more weeks. An eternity. The edges of the plaster are dirty, even if his fingers, twined with Rat's are moderately clean.

[plaguedrat]

Coughing, Rat turns back to the book with his free hand. "And then he says...My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss...That's the part I was reading when you knocked."

[silenttrainbaby]

Something gets fizzy in Grey's belly as his eyes move between Rat's, to his mouth, and back to his eyes. Without thinking of it, really, he catches his own lower lip between his teeth.