tearmeanewone | rendez-vous + APPOINTMENT POST

[From here!]

"A backrub?" Elizabeth immediately looks less concerned and stressed and more curious. Laying down sounds great, and of course if Gai's suggesting it it's probably going to help.

"Yeah. They're a great way to relax if you're feeling tense." Gai almost says something to the effect of Sometimes I'd ask Inori to give me one but then decides against the inevitable questions that would result from that statement. "And I happen to be something of an expert at giving them."

"Really?" Elizabeth grins. The more she learns about Gai, the happier she feels--even if it's a silly thing like he's an expert at backrubs.

"Come on, then," she takes Gai's hands out from around her and pulls him back to their bundle of bedding.

Gai is all too happy to be led back to their bedding, even if it's for something that's completely innocuous. He's not sure he's in the right state of mind for anything more, to be honest, and he could do with something to focus on to get his own mind off of everything that's just occurred.

When it comes down to it, just being around Elizabeth is already helping him relax.

Completely innocuous, yes. Elizabeth is too hot and too tired for what they usually do when they go to bed, and she just wants to think about something else for a while. Gai is usually very good at distracting her, just by talking.

She sheds her dressing gown but lays down in her combination. She's worn less in front of Gai, she's completely comfortable just like this.

Meanwhile, Gai shrugs off his own coat, leaving him in just his red shirt and black pants, then settles down behind her and presses a kiss to her neck. The heat is much harder on her than it is on him, he can tell, and for a moment he debates asking her if she'd be more comfortable with that off too before deciding that such a question would probably come across as too much of a come-on for the situation.

Any questions she might have about what exactly a backrub entails will be answered when he reaches out to rest his hand on her shoulder and then begin to knead at the muscles there with his thumb.

Elizabeth has absolutely no idea how Gai can live in that coat during the day and sleep in pants at night, but she's afraid to ask in case it opens up bad memories. This is nice, just how it is.

She runs a hand over Gai's hair when he kisses her, and that almost melts all of her tension. But her shoulders are like rocks as Gai begins to rub at her, but she gives a little hum of pleasure even if it hurts a little.

A wise choice on her part; while Gai wouldn't be against telling her about his childhood eventually, this really isn't the time or place for that sort of thing. They're trying to relax, not make things even more tense.

He can feel how tense she is - he'd been expecting that much - and shifts his efforts to focusing on a single knot at a time, just trying to work out some of that tension there. "Tell me if anything I do hurts," he says, because he suspects that it will. She's really knotted up.

"It hurts," Elizabeth says flatly, with a little quiet laugh. She rotates her shoulders a little, not to throw Gai's hands off of her, just to test out what's happening with her shoulders.

"But I'm starting to forget why we're here, and if you stop I'll remember."

"I thought it might," Gai says, easing up just a bit with the pressure. Some pain means the knots are being worked out; too much means he's just being too rough, which isn't what he wants.

It's doing an excellent job of distracting him too, though, and for that he's grateful. "Maybe someday we'll be able to do this every night."

Her eyes had drifted shut while Gai kept working at her shoulders, but the mention of doing this every night has her opening her eyes again in mild panic.

"...You mean you want me to start leaving my window open at night? Seems like a lot of effort to climb in and out just to rub my back."

This time Gai actually has to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud at the mental image her comment produces. That's certainly one way of doing things, but it wasn't exactly what he had in mind.

"I suppose I could do that, but I was thinking more along the lines of being able to spend every night together."

Yes, Elizabeth was afraid that was what Gai was suggesting. She curls her fingers together, fidgeting as she tries to figure out what she wants to say. It would be wonderful, waking up every morning in his arms like they had been doing.

"I can't leave Booker..."

"I know."

And he does know. He understands, at least, even if he doesn't have any familial (or family-like) connections of his own. In a way, he's almost envious of what the two of them have-- his only real father figure had been Keido, who didn't even deserve that word applied to him.

If he had someone like Booker... he doesn't think he'd want to leave them either.

Elizabeth rolls around to face him, puts her hands on his chest as if Gai was about to roll over and leave her. She doesn't want to have to choose between them, they both mean the world to her. How is she supposed to choose?

"I'm sorry, that was stupid, of course I want to wake up next to you every morning."

But rather than roll over and leave her, he slips his arms around her and pulls her close against his body. Just having someone who loves him is more than he ever expected; asking for anything more than that would be selfish, he feels. "I want you to be happy, whatever that takes," he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

And if she'd be happier living with Booker than with him? Then so be it.

"I would be happy spending every night with you, though," Elizabeth says, pushing her nose into his neck and clinging to his shirt. She loved him, there was no question that she loved him. It was all entirely a question of Booker living alone. Booker living alone with the Luteces, even.

"I'm thinking of Booker, entirely. He's been alone with his guilt over his past for so long. I don't want to abandon him..."

"And you shouldn't have to," is Gai's answer to that, even as he tilts his head slightly to give her more room to nuzzle up against him. He's keenly aware of the fact that he's the one who came second... ironic that he's second even now, even here.

It does hurt a little. Buried deep within him is that sense of insecurity that there will always be someone better than him, and that he'll always be the second choice. "You shouldn't have to sacrifice one thing in order to have another."

"...I have to, though. I will..." Elizabeth's response is quiet and haunted, because she's thinking back to her conversation with Robert. That revelation that killing Comstock unravels everything, and she wouldn't remember anything. The choice would be made, by her, somewhere and someday.

And she wouldn't know any of them. Robert, Booker, or Gai. She would sacrifice her life up until now for a different, unknown one.

Without warning, Elizabeth pushes herself up to where she can reach Gai's lips and kisses him with a ferocity she hopes will pull those thoughts out of her for a moment. She doesn't want a new life. She knows she wants this one.

There's something to Elizabeth's tone of voice that sets off an alarm in Gai's mind, though he may not know the exact cause. He recognizes that sort of expression, not from seeing it in her, but from his own experiences, and the knowledge he'd carried with him back in his world that it wouldn't be long before his own death there. It's not a tone he'd ever wanted to hear her use.

Before he can comment on it, though, Elizabeth's lips are on his in what seems to be an attempt to kiss him breathless. And after everything they've just been through... he needs this, needs the simple human contact and passion. Something that's loving rather than cruel. So he kisses her right back, perfectly willing to let her take the lead on this. Right now, he'll do whatever she wants.

Elizabeth doesn't let up, terrified that if she lets them breathe, he'll ask her what's wrong. She knows he will, she knows this is strange for her and so he'll know immediately.

She hitches her knee up over Gai's hip and pushes off the ground, trying to roll on top of him while continuing to keep his mouth busy. She can't think about what she should say in response to the inevitable question, all Elizabeth can think about is showing herself how good things are now. She didn't need a new life, her past was behind her, she had so much ahead of her now even with the threat of war hanging above their tent.

But as much as she doesn't want to, she has to catch her breath eventually. And a mess of words that she hadn't thought of just escapes.

"Tell me to stay with you, Gai. Beg me never to leave, please, please!"

At this point, after the decision their group has just made, Gai doesn't feel a need to ask her what's wrong. He's pretty sure he understands; there aren't many people who could decide to assist in the slaughter of countless others and not feel any sort of regret or guilt for it, no matter how small. It makes sense for her to be clinging to him so desperately in light of that.

Her rolling on top of him does come as a bit of a surprise, but it's a welcome one. If she wants to take things in that direction, far be it from him to protest, because he could use the intimacy and the release just as much as she could. Perhaps even more, given that he and Law were the ones who held the most responsibility in all of this. He just continues to kiss her, his arms coming up to hold her close on top of him and reassure her that he's right there.

Then she pulls away, and the words coming from her aren't exactly the ones he was expecting. "I want you to stay with me forever... here, in your world, or somewhere else, it doesn't matter to me where. I don't want to ever be apart." And it's the truth. He's certain of that much now.

"We can't go to mine, no," Elizabeth shakes her head vigorously. "If we're going to stay together, I can't go back there, ever!"

She curls into herself on top of Gai's chest. It's been a while since she's felt so small and helpless, but the bomb situation has finally cracked her where her future is concerned. Too many choices that weren't any sort of choice at all. Her fingers tighten into fists in Gai's shirt as she huddles against him.

"Robert told me that after Booker and I destroy the siphon, we find and kill the man who imprisoned me. And murdered his wife, and had Robert and Ms. Lutece killed. And built Columbia.

"And once we do that... it all comes apart. Without him, I'm never taken from my family, I'm never put in my tower, and I grow up with my family. I'm going to be a completely different person if I go back and kill him. It's worse than dying, I won't exist anymore...!"

"It's worse than dying, I won't exist anymore...!"

Those words feel like a knife right in Gai's gut. Elizabeth won't exist. The woman he loves so much, who has become everything to him... she'll be written right out of existence, like erasing a pencil sketch. And what's even worse, she'll be replaced by a stranger, someone who won't know him and certainly won't love him.

He's died before. He knows enough to know that it's not an end, not here in Luceti. But no longer existing... what will that mean for her, even here? Suddenly he feels sick.

"You won't exist...?" The look on his face says everything. There's genuine fear there, something Elizabeth will have never seen in his expression before.

She shakes her head, feeling the tears starting to build up. It's too much, the tent is starting to crack apart with blue light, and nothing she's manifesting is sticking. Her mind is going a mile a minute, she doesn't know what she wants or needs at that moment aside from being right where she is--with Gai.

"Robert... Robert says I have a choice, that I could go anywhere I wanted, I could go to Paris, I could be with you. I want to be with you, more than I want a new life away from Comstock. I would rather remember all of the lies and pain and terror than forget you.

"I thought when Robert told me, that I would feel obligated to go back and stop Comstock. But I can't. I can't. If you want me here, I'll never go back.

"And why-- why does it have to be me?" she asks with a little scoff and laugh. "If Robert's seen it happen, it doesn't have to be me, it could be his Elizabeth who lets everything fall apart, not me! Don't I deserve to be happy, instead of erase everything? Don't I deserve you after everything I did?"

rendez-vous + APPOINTMENT POST

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