thecapitol | For we are a woven thread.

Entry tags:

For we are a woven thread.

WHO| Wyatt and Maximus
WHAT| Reuniting and it feels so good.
WHERE| Wyatt's room in the Ten suite.
WHEN| After his death, finale of the arena.
Warnings/Notes| Feels. Of the Waximus variety. Perhaps some adult-esq content? Maybe, putting it down just in case.

There were likely some watching out there, from the warm, clean safety of their homes, who found it all rather anticlimactic. After all that fuss, all that time. Wyatt though, there in the strange clarity that came when a body realized what was happening to it, found it oddly fitting.

He'd wondered, before, as surely most men in his position did, if someday he wouldn't meet his end at the end of a barrel. And there it was, all this way from home, the answer to that old question found face-down in a shining puddle of his own fluids.

It was better in some ways, he supposed. Worse in others.

There was too much time. Several long moments as his heart beat his life's-blood onto the ground. Too much time to know he'd failed. To wonder if Howard was alright, back in the Capitol. To remember the feel of Max's lips against his own.

To realize how much he was losing, as he lay there, clasping tight to all the pretty promises Max sent him. His bloody fingers smearing the neat, fine print as the darkness stole away the rest.

The canon boomed, the game went on. His killer rode away with the crown.

And while the Capitol sang her praises, against all odds, Wyatt stirred. A quickening breath, his eyelids fluttering. The familiar blue ceiling swimming above him.

Back again.

A cricket called, a soft cree-cree and his heart slammed against his ribs.

Alive again.

The room came into a sudden, sharp focus as he lurched upright, awake with a snap like lightning.

The hologram wall, the figures on his desk - everything exactly as he'd left it an arena ago. ...Everything except for the little bag, his name scrawled across the front, sitting on his desk, and the chair, dragged up to the bedside. And the figure in it, slumped, chin against his chest, in sleep.

Last he'd seen Max, the Peacekeepers had been dragging him from the room.

Wyatt hadn't been able to reach for him then, and now, despite the hard kick in his gut - the instinct - he hesitated to.

What if it wasn't real? What if it was a dream? A picture, like the wall beside him?

Some hell he'd never imagined - close, but never quite enough.

"...Max?" Need won out. He shifted, sheets rustling, and reached for him.

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He'd been in a righteous state as soon as Wyatt had fallen, had torn to the man's room and argued with his escort until he was assured of the man's return, and as soon as he was told that Wyatt had been put into his room, he forced them to let him in.

He didn't try to wake him, however, not sure what magic they used to bring him back, so he'd pulled the chair up to the side of the bed and decided to wait it out until Wyatt woke naturally.

He didn't remember falling asleep.

He woke almost instantly, however, when he heard the man's voice break the silence of the room, and he started as he pulled his head up.

"Wyatt--"

Wyatt's hand found Max's arm, light at first, then his fingers tightening as the man woke. As their voices echoed each other.

"Max." A sigh. A laugh. A sob. All tangled up together in his throat.

He squeezed. Pulled, even as he leaned across the bed. Tugging Max into a fierce, and not a little bit desperate, embrace.

Wyatt nearly pulled him clear from the chair, but Maximus' returning embrace was no less fierce. He let himself be pulled with the same force that he did, dragging Wyatt into a hard and fast hug, burying his fingers in the fabric of the man's shirt, head buried into his shoulder.

There were words, probably, that he could have said, but his throat was so tight it wouldn't allow even one of them to escape.

There might have been words, if Wyatt had stopped and put his mind to it, but he didn't want to. Didn't need to.

Not yet.

Just then it was enough to hold and be held. Dragging hard at a breath, his lungs struggling. Turning to press his lips against Max's jaw. Tucking his face in against his throat. His fingers curling tight in the tunic.

A warmth behind his eyes; a wet on his cheek.

He could feel the slight wetness on his skin, and though his own eyes were dry it made everything in him twist and convulse painfully, protectively, as he tightened his grasp on the man.

"I'm sorry, Wyatt," He murmured, the words a rough, ragged whisper. "I should have-- I should have told you, I should have been there, I--"

He wasn't supposed to be back. He'd been so certain....

He'd been so selfish, for no damn reason.

"No..." He took a moment more, lips against Max's skin, then forced himself to move. To lift his head and take a breath, clearing his throat roughly. "No. Ain't nothin' on you, Max. I'm the one that aughta be sorry."

He pressed his cheek against the other man's. "I didn't think -- I shouldn't've--"

"Wyatt." The word was firm, meant to silence, and Maximus forced himself to pull back, to keep the man at arm's length so that he could meet his eyes and hold them.

"I love you," He said, firmly, without a question or a doubt, though his fingers tensed on Wyatt's shoulders. "I should not have allowed you to go into the arena believing anything otherwise."

Wyatt's lips parted, then closed again as he swallowed. His Adam's apple rolling thickly beneath his skin. It hurt, a bit, to hear the words. He hadn't expected that.

What he wanted to hear, but didn't really believe.

"Ya let me go with the truth," he murmured slowly. "I couldn't ask for more than that. ...Ya didn't have to say it then, an' ya don't have to now.

"No," He said quietly, brows furrowing as he shook his head.

"I did not release you with the truth. I remained a coward, even in the face of your loss. I took your love but would not return it, because I was afraid."

Of so, so many things.

He raised a hand, running it through Wyatt's hair before gently clasping the side of his face.

"But I will not be a coward, Wyatt. And I will not allow myself to lie by omission. I love you, and I will not be afraid to."

Wyatt studied his face, eyes moving over Max's familiar features, and he reached up, fingers untangling themselves from the fabric of the tunic to clasp around on the back of his neck.

"I know why ya didn't," he told him, assured him with a squeeze - hiding the twitch of his fingers. "I understand that I ain't..." He struggled for a minute, trying to get rest out, trying to unstick the words from his throat. But then he let them go, figuring they really didn't matter.

"I don't want to give ya any more regrets."

That was the important bit. The chance for Max to let it go. To know he didn't have to say it for Wyatt's sake.

"And now you won't," Maximus said firmly, leaning in to press his forehead to Wyatt's.

"I found my courage before I lost you. There is nothing now that I could regret."

It was a quiet murmur, but it was true. He had spent weeks, alone, his bed cold as he watched Wyatt fight for his life, every day. As he was constantly faced with the man's imminent death.

He knew, now, that losing Wyatt would destroy him just as thoroughly as losing his wife, and his son.

Knew, somehow, that they could not blame him, not anymore.

It wasn't that Wyatt filled the hole that their loss had left, which is what he had feared. He had feared that his grief would be tarnished with his new found love. But he had been wrong.

And he knew he wouldn't survive a second tear.

His fingers slipped into the man's hair and curled, holding tight. Pressing back, his forehead against Max's. His eyes closing as the man's words whispered against his skin. As his heart wrenched in his chest.

He'd given Max a chance to change his mind, to take it back, and still he said it. Still he promised.

Max meant it. All of it. Wyatt knew enough, understood the man enough, to know he wouldn't have kept on then if he didn't. Max was too direct for that; too good for that.

Wyatt leaned in, a small surge, to find Max's mouth.

The kiss long denied by the arena, long dreamed of, realized again, finally, against everything.

God, but he'd needed that, drinking in Wyatt's kiss as if he was dying of thirst, pressing closer as he pulled the man to him, as he echoed everything he meant and everything he'd said in that embrace.

He would prove it to Wyatt, even if it took years for the man to believe it.

Even if they didn't have years.

He would prove it somehow.

He'd stopped hoping for it during the arena, knowing how slim his chances were, but it always been there in the dark and quiet of the night. Waiting in his dreams.

This moment. A hundred, thousand more like it. All different, all the same.

All Max. The taste and the feel. The rush in his chest.

All love.

He broke away only because his lungs demanded it, but still lingered as close as he could get. Lips still brushing the Roman's as he sucked in a breath.

"I love you, Max." His other hand joined the first, callused fingertips kneading the strong cord in the back of Max's neck. "I don't give a damn 'bout what anybody's got to say, er thinks." Allgood and his snide insults. Venus' blond friend and his beliefs. The Capitol, threatening to keep them apart. "I love you."

Maximus leaned up, pressing his lips to Wyatt's forehead as he closed his eyes and breathed him in.

"I love you too, Wyatt," He murmured, the words a soft rumble against his skin. "The rest doesn't matter."

He pulled back, just far enough to be able to give Wyatt a slightly worried look. "Are you... Is there anything I can get you?" He knew that coming back from the arena was often rough.

Wyatt looked away, sparing a glance down at himself. Gone were the tattered and stains clothes of the arena, and the ragged, broken body beneath. The terrible burns and the angry blisters were healed. The bullets that had taken his life removed without so much as a scar to remember them by.

Just the memory, fire and steel and blood and pain.

He might have to deal with those later, it all cropping up again when he least prepared to defend himself, but just then it was distant. Covered by the warm haze of finding himself alive, of reaching for Max and finding him there.

"Nah." He shook his head, meeting Max's gaze again with a small twitch of his mouth. Not a smile, not yet, but the edges of one. Soon. "I'm alright. Capitol put everythin' back where it belonged, an' I got everythin' I need for the moment."

Right there with him.

"...What 'bout you? Everythin' alright? Anythin' happen here while I was gone?"

"Nothing of any consequence," Maximus murmured. He knew Wyatt had seen his fight with Enjolras, but he wasn't going to bring it up if the other man wasn't.

"I am not built to be a Mentor, Wyatt. I dislike watching and being kept so far away, where I am useless."

Wyatt was silent a moment, feeling the anguish, the bitterness in the words and wishing there was something he could do. Knowing that his loss wasn't going to just hurt himself.

"Ya kept me goin', Max. What ya did for me... I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did."

He'd tried there, after Howard's death, for Max. For them both, wanting only to get back here. To see him again.

"I'm sorry I didn't win."

It was the first time he'd ever said such a thing. More surprising still that he meant it.

Maximus shook his head heavily.

"Wyatt- all I could ever ask is that you act with honour, and you always have." He took another heavy breath, pressing his lips to the man's throat solemnly.

"Do not apologize. Not for that."

"Honorable..." Wyatt murmured lowly, shifting slightly to give Max's lips better access. "I'll admit, that ain't exactly what I was feelin' there at the end."

He touched his lips to Max's jaw just because he could. Because he had to. (Because all he really wanted was just to hold him, for as long as the man would let him.)

"...All I wanted was to be back here." His voice dropped, a whispered confession drawn out by the moment. Max's arms around him, the sweet words still echoing in the drum of his heart. "It hurt more than the dyin' to think I wouldn't."

There were no words he could offer, as Wyatt's dug into Maximus' chest and twisted there. He knew, he knew exactly what the man meant. Had felt it.

Carefully, he slid himself onto the bed beside him, drawing Wyatt into his arms and giving him a firm, but tender, kiss.

"You're here," He murmured against his lips. "We both are."

Max didn't have to ask, Wyatt moved without question, shifting to make room for them both even as their lips met.

"Ya know," he whispered back, mustache brushing Max's goatee, a tickle against both their lips. "I still ain't sure. Maybe I'm still dreamin'."

Lord knew he'd done it often enough in the arena.

Maximus let out a low, breathy, relieved chuckle.

"Is there nothing I can do to convince you?" He murmured against Wyatt's lips.

Wyatt shifted, turning into the embrace and Max, his hands slipping over the man, curling again into the tunic.

Letting himself be steadied. Everything he wanted, everything he needed - a moment of true peace.

"Jus' be, Max." He touched his lips against Max's, a slow taste, taking him in taste and scent and touch. "Jus' be with me."

"I'm here, Wyatt," Maximus murmured lowly, taking the kiss before pulling Wyatt closer to him, running a hand through the man's hair as he held him close.

"We are both of us, here."

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