Just some drabbles for the hivemind.
Slow, #1
This thing is small. It's new. It's a brush of warm fingers against rough knuckles. It's a heated glance from between hat and mask. It's a wordless exclamation of concern when danger comes too close.
Slow is a promise. Slow is a plea. Slow is sooner or later. Slow is the inexorable fall forward into something Tarquin never imagined could be real.
He thinks about it all the time. How to keep it close, warm, safe. How not to fuck it up like he's done almost everything else in his life.
Slow, #2
He’s been many things in his life. He’s been wrong and weak and rejected and, lately, he’s been useful and important and—other things, too. Things he’ll think about a hundred different ways and never name.
And, since then, it hasn’t mattered. About being wrong or weak or rejected or—
But this time, it mattered that he was—not slow. Slow can be good. Slow can mean careful. Gentle. Trusting. But slow can also mean other things. Not stopping a blow. Not blocking a claw. Not keeping him safe.
Slow, #3
He hates slow. It's always run for the Shadow Dragons, hurry for the Templars, now for himself because there's never any time that isn't now. He's too busy. Too many jobs to do, too many people to please, just too much for slow.
Slow is still going, slow is still happening, slow is sooner or later. Slow is the inexorable fall forward into a future Tarquin doesn't want to—can't even begin to—contemplate.
He thinks about the words all the time. I know of magic that may slow the corruption.
