Chapter Text
Shalem isn’t quite sure how it starts. You’re never quite sure when you’ve started to grow comfortable after a transition, he’s realized. It’s only after the fact, when you’ve already settled, that you might realize something is different and you’ve grown complacent.
In this specific instance, it’s the transition into being known.
Shalem always takes care to remain anonymous. It’s second nature at this point. The thought of peeling back his layers—letting someone break open his ribs to take a peek at his heart, the thing he keeps carefully hidden beneath his lungs and the viscera of flesh—is mortifying, in some undefinable way. You can’t live with your skin pinned back like a butterfly’s wings, just as he can’t live with his words under a microscope. That’s the beginning and the end of his thoughts on the matter; there’s no changing his outlook, so there’s no point in further dissecting it.
It’s a fine existence, for something that started out as self-preservation. He exists in a plane between surviving and living, in some approximation of contentment.
He finds it hard to content himself with the knowledge that he’ll never be truly happy. He’s tried to mold it into something more palatable, romanticizing himself as something like a martyr. He could be one of the many unknown creatives whose pain is poured into their art; misery begets beauty, and an utterly unremarkable death could serve as a magnum opus to an equally meandering life.
As unpleasant as it may be, he’s grown used to it.
There was a time where the thought of entering Phantom’s assigned dorm would be terrifying—close to the feeling of being unraveled and perceived—but that room is now firmly Lucian’s in his mind, not Phantom’s. Breaking the monotony of the tentative life he’d set up for himself was almost worse. The present fear, while still there, has been numbed by the transition of ownership, because Lucian is many different people. He’s Rhodes Island’s Phantom, the Crimson Troupe’s Solitaire, their leader’s Blood Diamond, and Shalem has known each and every iteration.
Shalem steps into Phantom’s dorm, because these days, Phantom is closer to Lucian than he is any of his past names. He remembers the start of this act—the tenuous companionship—quite vividly.
His heart had been in his throat as he stepped across the threshold. Blood was pumping through his veins quick enough that he could hear his heartbeat in his ears, could feel it with every step he took, thrumming in the soles of his shoes. There was the feeling of danger—a familiar prickling sensation that crawled up his neck, which usually heralded the plunging of a knife in his back—that persisted, no matter how many times he quietly reassured himself that it was fine, this was Lucian.
He doesn’t remember what they talked about, or what little he tried to do to stave off the awkward air, because it wasn’t important. Shalem was here simply because he had committed himself to facing his past, and this was the place to start.
While the details of that first meeting are a little muddled in his mind, that’s not the transition he has difficulty remembering; after all, that was the beginning of it, and beginnings are usually memorable, for better or for worse.
Now, he can lay in the dark of Lucian's room, in bed with the comfort of being unknown.
Lucian is like him—he prefers to be alone. He's quiet and withdrawn. Even after Shalem has bared his heart to him, he could die tomorrow, still bathed in the comfort of ambiguity, because he knows Lucian would keep his secrets until he found himself in a grave. Even in the landship they call a home, they're anonymous, skirting the edges of any kind of committed relationship, both between themselves and with their neighbors.
Their relationship—if you can call it that—is simply a product of their upbringing. Lucian isn’t any more trustworthy than their other coworkers, and yet he’s the only one Shalem can stomach bearing his heart to.
Does he even love Lucian? Maybe. Probably. It’s the easiest word to pluck from the ugly amalgamation of his feelings.
He admires Lucian, he fears Lucian—those are two feelings among their vast numbers that he’s absolutely certain of. There’s other, less definable ones. Things like love and hate. More abstract, vague things, like, I find him comforting, and I want to watch him bleed. Those are hard to file away. He’s picked and prodded at them like old wounds, but it’s hard to trace them back to any particular emotion. They simply sit there, unsightly and obtrusive. He hides them like exposed nerves; under long, loose sleeves, so they can’t be seen nor touched.
It’s funny, because he’s certain Lucian wouldn’t see him any differently if Shalem allowed him to truly know him—and yet Shalem can’t stomach the thought. Lucian accepts Shalem for what he is, for whatever reason. Lucian is far more of an enigma in that regard.