He is a monster.

Bright, bared teeth, a clutching grip, a hoarse growl. Dirt between his toes, and moonlight on his back. Broad, bare shoulders, and crystal laughter in the dark.

“Move like this.”

The command, and he is compelled. He moves obeisant, grunting with pleased effort, oblivious to anything but the scrape of nails guiding him. He bites, bruises, and is rewarded with the hitch of breath in his lover's throat, white fingers pulling sharply at his beard.

He hears a stranger's murmur, somewhere nearby in darkness, and feels a possessive snarl rise up to his lips. A tighter pull, and more laughter, and some sharp word, and someone scrambling away in terror. He presses his face to his elf's neck, cackling victorious loving laughter, and is rewarded with another breath in his direction.

“You beast.”

The entrance is open, and so he bows his head as he steps through the arched entrance of the chief's tent. Both the chief and his mate are present, as is Valla the Mother-of-Many. He places his hands together in front of him and looks from face to face for explanation. It isn't until the newborn bundled in rags gives a cry that he understands why they have called him.

“It is said that Valla chooses her fathers.” The chief speaks, and Daimd listens.

Valla nods and bares a teat to the child's groping mouth, speaking to him, “She is yours, Daimd.”

He feels remarkably unstirred. They have tried to name children his before: Kurzag, the wild song; Mang, the young violence; Zelop and Polez, the twins. He has never bonded with a child. He sees no reason why this one will be different.

The chief recognises his silence, and raises a hand, “You must see.”

“Yes, Chief.” Obediently, he moves to the babe, stopping an arm's length away. Valla looks at him, and he meets her eye. He remembers her lust, the sway of her hips and the curve of the breast that now rests beneath the infant's desperate fingers. He has always thought she looks best with a child on her chest.

“Her name is Valm.” She speaks lowly, to keep their conversation private.

Daimd thinks the name is assumptive, a combination of the two of theirs. He looks at the miniscule head and waits. The waiting is his least favourite part. He knows that some of the children in the tribe bear his blood, but he is father to none of them. He only waits for them to demonstrate that their mother is the parent they choose.

Valm stops her suckling suddenly and wriggles insistently in her mother's arms, twisting to his direction. Valla holds her firmly and extends her towards him, looking expectant and triumphant. Daimd offers the pointer finger of his left hand, and Valm clings to it tightly. Daimd stares at the connection where flesh touches flesh. He swears he saw whiteness spark, for an instant.

“She is yours.” Valla repeats, but as she does, the babe releases her grip and turns back to her mother's warmth. Valla's expression changes, and Daimd backs away.

“Was there a bond, Daimd?”

He bows his head and quickly excuses himself. He will not let them declare him a father. He will not let them give him a word. But he will not lie to his chief.

The next day, he leaves.

You are mistaken if you believe I will ever be half as much as you are, Quinn.

I watch your swordplay, and wish to drill you. You skills won't keep you if I'm not watching. I'm always watching. I'm always killing things before they can touch either of us.

I know you might have left me to die, that day. You might have done many things.

You're here now, and I'm never out of reach. I might walk alone in the mornings, but I turn back to you. I might show you my back when you demand it, when you need your times, but my ear stays on you. In the dark I hold you close to me so you know that I'm there.

And I don't say enough.

He wonders what sorts of secrets he would have, if he were the type of orc to keep secrets.

Quinn is not and will never be a secret. He has not shown the elf his small tribe's homeland—is that a secret? A secret collection of small huts and a rock in the centre, with secret orcs with secret names. It is his life, but only something that builds him.

Still, he wonders. A secret first place for many things: a secret first home. He has never had to explain that he feels at home wherever he and Quinn are. He makes places his own, and Quinn is his, too.

Quinn is not a secret, and he smiles to himself as he imagines what the elf would have to say about his hard-packed floor, and the mat that served as a sleeping place. He thinks he might know exactly what Quinn would say, and he decides that is why they have no need to go there.

He tells himself that even as he knows the elf surprises him. Quinn surprises him often, and Quinn will never be a secret.

It was a moment of here and now. Sometimes the light catches him and Daimd realises just how beautiful he is. Daimd's hands are too big for subtlety but he is a practised hand, and he places them just so—so that Quinn looks at him. That's his second, and it has to count.

It's laughter bubbling from his lips and the way he brushes off Daimd's touches that make it please and now. Daimd relishes making the effort to catch him again, choosing his precise moment carefully, and then stealing him off into the shadows for a kiss. He has a minute, then.

Quinn's mood makes decisions for them. Quinn can't be manipulated, but he can be prompted. Bribed and teased and stroked. And then they speak their own language for hours.

Valm visits him outside his hut more often than the other children do. She adopts a pose like his and places her dagger carefully across her lap. She calls it 'Cleave', which he considers an improvement on the choices made by many other children. Many of them bore unfit weapons named 'Fang' and 'Bite' until majority.

She speaks rarely, and he does not offer conversation. He concentrates instead on the forms his master has asked him to practice. He forms the shapes slowly with his hands, moving through in the pattern described to him: first the infinite breaks into streams and crashes together like the ocean, but the ocean too, must part as it expands around the earth.

“Oh.” Valm leans forward, her mouth round, “You made fire.”

He grunts. The ball is nebulous and sits unsteadily between his two palms, sustained only by concentration. It would burst three times as large if he let it. It would disappear if he let it, too. He splits it down the center by pulling the fire apart, and turns his palms to the sky with a lick of flame in each. He gives himself some ease, and the fire blazes upwards into twin columns, higher than the roof of his hut. He snuffs them both by snapping his hands to fists.

He sits quietly, with his eyes closed, until he feels some—sense, before him. Valm is mimicking the movements he just performed, and he sees flickers of red between her palms.

He closes her hands and shakes his head, snapping, “You are not to practice magic unless the master identifies you.”

“Oh.” Valm smiles, flexing her fingers, “But I can do magic, like you?”

Daimd says nothing. She uncrosses her legs, takes up her dagger, and bows to him before dashing off. He is uncertain how he feels.

He imagines losing his temper with Quinn. He imagines crashing into the blood elf after one of his sessions, taking advantage of him at his most vulnerable, and hotly forcing him to the ground in a haze of fury. He imagines Quinn's face twisting around emotions it isn't sure of, and he imagines fighting to keep Quinn on the ground.

He imagines this because Quinn has never once made him angry, least of all for having needs.

But nonetheless he imagines straddling his elf on cold, wet ground, all but screaming why and why do you do this to your beautiful self, and don't I do enough and won't you let me help you, Quinn, I fucking love you, Quinn.

He often wakes from these imaginings with traces of tears on his cheeks, not only because the traitor thoughts in his head bring them about but also because he can't stand being so cruel, even in his own mind. He takes Quinn exactly as he is and loves him exactly as he is, and sees no way how showing Quinn his temper, like he was some Alliance scum, would do either of them any good. Worst of all, he knows that it would hurt Quinn worse than almost anything else he could do.

So he imagines instead kissing those palms and coming away with blood on his lips, and holding Quinn to him tightly enough that neither of them can breathe. And Quinn wouldn't say it, but Daimd would lend his voice to both of them: “I love you.” He'd whisper.

(It was a wonder he never felt stupid for saying it, but he knew, he knew. He trusts Quinn like he does no one and nothing else in the world.)

Sometimes he imagines Quinn breaking down, and himself the pillar that holds the cracking blood elf up, but those never last. His elf breaks in his own perfect, subtle ways, and it's enough that Daimd can see them, even if he can do nothing about them.

How do you explain your love to a family tribe? For the purpose of mating, sex and love have always been separate, and sparse few tribe members take permanent, promised mates. But the children of the tribe are important, and if not your children, then your skills and how they benefit or protect the tribe. Quinn will bear me no offspring, thank the ancestors, and at best he serves to distract me from my ability to cast effectively. Quinn has no skills to offer outside of ascerbic wit and a violent disposition with a penchant towards boredom. He refuses to do that which he does not wish to do, and his primary concern is always for himself.

How do you explain this kind of love to a predominantly pragmatic family? I have never been one of theirs, their 'type' to speak of, but they are loyal, and I will always be one of them. I will know all their names whenever I drift back, and I will learn the names of the new children, and I will grieve honestly for the lost.

And I will always be Daimd. They may name me however they like, but I am only Daimd, and I have always been different from them, even before I knew I was.

I am Daimd, and this is my love! The one being I love more fiercely than life itself, and value higher than the riches of all the dragons in the world. I will hear no words spoken against him and see no judging looks cast his way. I live for his happiness and well-being before mine own, and before that of the clan. If that ousts me from your circle, then so be it, but who ever doubted that Daimd the Sometimes-Traveller would find something out there in the world to swear his life to? Daimd, who refused to be father to any child in the clan, even those undoubtedly sharing his blood, and Daimd the Damned, blessedly cursed with indubitable magic?

The Daimd who stands before you, loving this elf, is no stranger to you all, bar that he is now happier than he has ever been. Chief! I ask that you recognise my mate as mine, as my partner for now and for always, just as you took the Chieftain before all the tribe and the ancestors. I ask humbly, honestly, and as no stranger to my own flaws. I ask anyone here to disapprove if they feel it is needed. I promise only that I will walk with him, regardless of what you choose. Know that, and speak your decision.

Valm came looking for him after he addressed the tribe. She was older now, stalking towards her majority with the pride and determination of a true hunter in the making. Her clothes were loose and flowing, and her childhood dagger hung heavy on her hip, paired with a long sliver of wood—the telltale sign of a mage. If she so chose, she would make a fierce mother some day, and undoubtedly she would prove a valuable member of the family.

She looked around him, and then spoke directly, “Are you alone?”

He spread his hands to either side of him, unsure of exactly where Quinn was at the moment either way, and offered her a smile. It would be a lie to say he wasn't fond of her.

Valm seated herself with careful arrangement, one of her lingering childhood habits, and gave him a serious look. When she spoke, though, her expression faltered, “Is he why you would not father any child in the tribe?”

He heard her unspoken question, the one regarding her and why he refused to recognise her as his child even though it was obvious they both knew, and sighed heavily. Here she was making an adult effort towards him, and he was unsure if his response would do her question justice. Still, he couldn't lie, “No. I met Quinn later than...” His eyes fluttered shut for a moment, before he forced himself back, “And even if he were not in the world, I would not be a father. I am Daimd, and nothing else.”

“I don't understand.” Valm stared at him, perhaps misunderstanding his pause, “Why can't Daimd also be a father?”

“Because I am not one.” He heard himself say that far more gruffly than he meant to, and bit back on his cheek as she shrank away into obedient silence. He had always lacked the words to explain this, and he wasn't about to make the effort of finding them now. It was not important. He pulled on his beard thoughtfully and adjusted his tone to one more conversational, “What did the master say when you were tested for your magic?”

He saw the pride in her smile as she replied, “He says I am clearly talented, though not as much as someone else from our tribe.”

Daimd huffed loudly, keeping his outward expression carefully neutral. They called him gifted, blessed—apparently, power resources like his were unheard of, especially in the children of non-magical parents. There was only one fire within himself he considered worthwhile, and it was not the sort that made arcana bloom from his fingertips.

“My magic serves me.” He said finally, when he caught Valm gazing questioningly at him. She would never know the real meaning in that sentence; Daimd had to doubt anyone would. Quinn would never ask. Quinn only ever wanted to see.

“And mine, me. And the tribe.” She drew herself up, and bowed to him before she walked away. Daimd had to wonder if he'd offended her worse than usual somehow. After she vanished into the distance, he decided that he didn't care. It was all a mess, anyway. He pushed himself to his feet and turned, looking for the kindling to stoke his fire. He listened, and then headed towards the nearest angry voice he could hear. Where there was someone being pricked, Quinn often held the needle.

You are most aware of yourself when you're pressed cheek-to-cheek with him. Your body seems overlarge and ungainly; your tusks, primitive and violent. You are a groaning, sweating animal against the carved porcelain of a perfect pale chest. Your hands, your feet, your shoulders—they all feel far too big, and but for the passion burning you up from the inside, you feel that you'd have to stop. But it's Quinn, Quinn, Quinn, ancestors, you can't help yourself when it comes to him, and you are a furious blaze of lust. You know in the small, still-rational part of your mind that you couldn't stop yourself if you tried.

Sometimes you yearn for the gentleness of easy lovemaking, but you are a creature of passion and your yearning pushes you closer to the edge, until violent need becomes you. You are intoxicated with an effusion of lust and love, and all you can do is hold him closer and tighter. You don't want to lose this happiness of yours. You refuse to let it go. You don't want to hurt him, but your fury scares you. How do you match the love you know you feel to the physical furies—and Quinn, Quinn. You want nothing else, no one else. He is your world, narrowed down to smooth skin and laughing lips and pointed nails and a mouth and eyes and—

Sometimes you long to stroke his hair and talk ceaselessly, telling him all the precious truths you keep in your heart. He makes your world worth living in, isn't it pathetic, Quinn, that he is the reason you wake with a smile in the mornings and you settle to sleep with warmth in your heart. No matter how hard you try, you can't find the words to explain how it happened, when it happened, but you love him fiercely, endlessly, violently, fully, utterly, more than your own life, more than you know how to say. You will beg him if you need to, and you will do whatever it takes to stay with him, and you will wring yourself through and through to make him happy. You...

don't know. You lose your mind halfway through, driving into him. You don't know what else to say to an unresponsive face. You wonder if the silence was better. But you love him, and love him and love him andlovehimandlove...

I want to tell him that he has no idea who my father is. He waltzes in here and looks down his nose at all of us, like we're some vermin beneath his shoe. No, worse than that—he considers us less than even a vermin's shit. He thinks we are all worthless, and yet he comes with my father, and my father comes from us. We are not primitive or violent, and he is no better than the rest of us simply because he is a blood elf. He goes to each tribe member in turn and sees how he can needle us, what the worst thing he can say is. His tongue is a bright, steel sword and I long to blunt it, and save my father from him.

Surely he's bewitched my father. There is nothing else that explains this. All the elder tribe members speak of Daimd as wise and reasonable, and fondly of his kindness and understanding. It perturbs and upsets me, therefore, that he should bring this blood elf to our tribe and not only demand him recognised, but declare, too, that he doesn't care if we even do that, because he will leave with the elf regardless. How can that creature be more meaningful to him than all our family?

It has always been my fondest wish to understand my father, and why he will not name me his daughter. We both know the truth. I think everyone in the tribe knows the truth. He left the day after I was born; that is an admission in and of itself. And yet he chooses that blood elf above all of us. Why?

I am being childish in my insistence. I should take the elders' words to heart and leave it be. But everyone is puzzled, and I cannot settle.



I stalk him. Why does my father let him roam unchecked? He is nothing short of awful to all of us. I have avoided him as much as possible after my curiousity on the first day. I do not remember what he said to me, only that I bit my tongue until there was blood to keep from responding to him. I thought to keep him from getting enjoyment by enfuriating me, but he only laughed and went on. Why does my father tolerate him? He is disgusting.

Everyone talks on the hunt, so that Daimd will not overhear. There is no love lost among us for that blood elf, but no one wants to offend him, either. We're all losing patience, though. Mang says if he has the chance, he will slit the blood elf's throat, but we tell him to stop posturing. He would, or he would try, but we think Daimd would kill him, and infighting is the worst of all sins. United we stand, divided we fall.



I am awful. I have broken one of the first rules. I am awful, terrible, and so confused. I overheard. It was not my place to listen in on their private conversation, and I did. How he hissed! That blood elf, he said such hurtful things to my father. He could not have been sharper had his words been knives. And my father said... nothing, for a while. He only listened. I must assume he listened.

And then he simply said the blood elf's name, and I nearly cried. How can you say a name with so much tenderness? After what I had just overheard, I could not believe it. And he said it again, and he said that he loved him. I thought the blood elf would be angry, and yell at him again, but he was quiet. It was quiet shortly, and then they spoke no more.

I am an awful child. And still I do not understand. I think perhaps it may be me who does not know my father, despite my desire. And perhaps that blood elf does, more than I ever will.

I must respect that much.

Daimd's hardest lesson had been that magic is limited.

“You've got magical stamina just the same as physical stamina, Daimd.” The master had said, eyeing his neutral expression seriously, “You may be extraordinarily gifted but you cannot cast indefinitely. You will be a better mage for learning your limits early, and only taking on as much as you can efficiently exterminate. You know your armour is insufficient to maintain you in the event that your well runs dry.”

Daimd had thumbed his sword and chewed on severe thoughts. Why play some useless, dangerous game with magic when you could know your own sword arm? Surely there was nothing so easy to understand as physical exhaustion.



Daimd was in trouble, and he knew it.

As he loosed the last fireball from his fingers, he felt the thrumming in his veins subside, and he swore. He understood the master's lessons better than ever, now. He'd learned what it felt like to invoke magic, and he'd learned this feeling: the feeling of magic failing him.

A hand that now pleaded untrained fumbled over the hilt he refused to put by—and he roared furiously as a wolf's jaws gouged his forearm. The cloth, as perfectly mended as it was, gave way beneath the teeth without a shred of resistance. He could feel the magic pooling again in his fingertips, singing tighter and stronger, begging to be used. Another five, another four—and he cried aloud in fury as another wolf struck at him, and dealt it a powerful blow with a massive forearm. Ice crackled after it and the creature froze in place, without the time to yelp.

Daimd went to one knee, cursing again. There was no magic left in him, and he was finished. He made another attempt at drawing his sword, as a last ditch attempt to defend himself, and found his injured left arm unresponsive. He had to laugh. So, he really was going to die.

And then a sword swung in his direction, shattering the bones of the half-frozen wolf who was just starting to prowl towards him again. Dispassionately wielding the weapon was a skinny, tired-looking blood elf, and Daimd found himself laughing again. How any creature could so blandly save the life of someone else was strange to him. Strange, and interesting.

The blood elf disposed of the last wolf standing before turning to Daimd and, for a moment, Daimd was concerned the blood elf would simply kill him as well, easy prey that he was. He could feel, in the absence of stress and adrenaline, the magic's source trickling back into his bloodstream, soon to fill his ears with its hum at need, but he didn't cast against other persons, as a rule.

However, the blood elf only smirked and levelled his sword, saying, “You're mine.”

Daimd eased himself experimentally to his feet and offered a bow, accompanying it with an illustrious, exaggerated hand gesture, “Until my debt to you is paid, I agree.” He was serious, but doubted a blood elf would be able to stomach his company for long.

Some quiet, knowing corner of his mind whispered that debts of life lasted to the death, and he grinned it to silence.

Daimd conceived of himself simply as Daimd, and everyone knew that. But in the secret recesses of his mind, farthest from his conscious everyday thoughts, lurked the sole title he would sometimes attribute to himself: Daimd the Dreamless Sleeper.

Daimd considered his relationship with sleep a good one. He could stave it off as long as he liked, but when he chose to roll beneath its warm, dark blankets, time and time again sleep carried him off to peaceful, dreamless nights. He'd learned, therefore, to pay attention whenever he had dreams he could remember.

He'd had an older half-brother named Yoouk, who'd been a hunter. They'd never been close, as siblings go, and they were very different from one another from the start; Daimd had always favoured the sword, while Yoouk took to ranged weaponry; Daimd was intelligent and kept to himself, while Yoouk couldn't go half an hour without saying something stupid to someone. Daimd paid him no more mind than any other member of his tribe.

That is, until he dreamed about Yoouk.

He dreamed Yoouk's first successful kill, and he also dreamed Yoouk's death. He woke in the morning with a profoundly unsettled feeling, not certain if he should give these stranger thoughts any consideration. Yoouk had waved to him as he set off on his first official hunt that morning, and Daimd had returned the motion faithfully. Surely, they were just dreams?

It was when they carried Yoouk's trampled body back that he knew they weren't.

He never explained his lack of dreaming to anyone. He'd spent many long mornings considering how the supposedly depthless reaches of magic within him might be related to the colouring of his dreams with reality, and had come to the conclusion that his dreaming was rare enough that he could ignore the unknown aspects and simply take the dreams as foreknowledge when they came.

So when his blood elf travelling companion slunk into his dreams and settled there, he paid attention.

The dreams nearly all went the same way: they started off sitting around the campfire in darkness, silence between the two them. Daimd moved closer, and Daliquinn smiled in his direction. Daimd touched his hair, and suddenly they were skin-on-skin, all low heat that came from somewhere other than the fire. Daliquinn's mouth was hot, wet, and everywhere, and Daimd's hands were pulling, holding, flexing. They fucked violently, needfully, shamelessly. He heard himself whispering—

The fourth time he awoke from one of these dreams, groaning aloud and clutching at the air with half-fulfilled want, he rolled to one side and sat up, passing a hand over his face. He shook his head lightly and then took himself in hand, thinking reasonably—it had been a long time since he had been back in the tribe, and a long time since he'd had any partner. Certainly the close, constant presence of another person was pressing on him.

He refused to allow himself to look at Daliquinn until he brought himself release and the tension eased out of his shoulders. He was wide awake. He prodded the dying embers of the fire to life once more, casting light across the blood elf's face. He studied it; Daliquinn's expression remained displeased even in his heavy sleep, or so Daimd thought. He wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

He stood suddenly, turned his back on camp, and stumped furiously off into the distance. No matter how deeply the blood elf slept, he had no right to touch him. Even that hair...

As he walked over the cool ground, relishing the damp tickling of dewy grass on his bare feet, he pondered. He found it difficult—he wasn't sure where to start. It would be a lie to say he wasn't already accustomed to Daliquinn's company, and a further lie to say that he wasn't fond of it. The shifts in mood hardly bothered him, and he enjoyed the banter they threw back and forth. But repeated dreams of that sort seemed to imply something stronger than a fondness. He... couldn't settle on a line of thought to have, even.

His mind drifted, and he found it lingering on Daliquinn. He found that he didn't mind.

He found himself slowly turning around, and he found himself smiling as he did. He found himself returning to camp with every intention of watching the blood elf for as long as he could get away with it. He found himself... deciding something.

He knew now what his dream self whispered, and he supposed that he had to agree. What else was there to say?

Daimd loved the morning.

Sometimes, it was walking in the early sun, before the earth grew too hot. Wending his way across the barren desert plains of Durotar, he cast his gaze freely and smiled to himself. He wasn't in any hurry. He'd been all but kicked out, after all. But that was the way, wasn't it? It didn't bother him.

He watched the lizards scuttling back to their shady spots, and the hares springing lightly across the path, and stumped along. He was at ease, here.

Sometimes, it was little more than wandering in his own thoughts. He'd been known, to the observant, as a thinker, though he would never flatter himself with such a name. Even wandering found itself victim to the weight of his consideration—sometimes, it was a flat rock in the sunrise and nothing but his memories.

They were good memories, to a one. He had trouble recalling the terrible. It wasn't his job, anyway.

Sometimes, it was chasing down the unsuspecting prey, an old hunter's instinct he'd never done away with. Magic burned at his fingertips now, and he rarely if ever resorted to steel, but boars all died the same way regardless. From time to time he missed the weight of a sword on his hip, though, and he knew he watched Quinn's sway in front of him as he trailed dutifully behind the blood elf.

And now, smiling, turning his steps back to Orgrimmar and that same temperamental blood elf, who might still be sleeping if he was lucky. If he was luckier, perhaps the elf would be awake.

(Oftentimes, it was stroking the hair that fell next to Daliquinn's cheek and listening to his breathing before nudging him awake for the morning curses. He loved the morning and, as a rule, Quinn hated it.)

Daimd was happy to consider himself an orc of few vices. He couldn't recall the last time he'd envied someone else, since he hardly took notice of anyone's life outside his own, and he certainly lacked whatever defined one as avaricious, given that he rarely wanted more than what he already had. Similarly, gluttony was not a factor in his life; he ate what he had, when he was hungry, and not otherwise. In these senses, he would describe himself as satisfied.

The others were less straight-forward, but he shifted them around in his mind, not too set upon by any one in particular. He considered himself prideful in that he was pleased with himself, but not so much that he considered himself vastly better than any one of his neighbours. He was simply the only Daimd in the world, and the best one of that, in particular. Nothing spectacular. Nothing self-indulgent.

Wrath, too, was a familiar cousin, but not a close relative--surely that was something he experienced only with good reason. His life was, all told, free of excesses.

But he supposed, with a rough grin, that maybe he was too generous with himself. If it was sloth to linger hours away beneath the blanket with an arm around his lover, and if it was lust to want him fiercely, any time the slightest opportunity presented itself... But, he thought as he pulled the redheaded blood elf nearer to him and pressed his face into that fantastic hair, that hardly felt like vice.

if it wasn't this
It wasn't a secret, so he said it as often as he liked.

He remembered the first time, and smiled often to himself at that memory. Hoarse and rough and deep, with big hands on small shoulders, and then repeated over and over until the blood elf seemed satisifed. Daimd hadn't been certain, at the time, that Quinn would be satisfied—he seemed to be searching for some falsehood in the repetition, needing something different to latch onto and argue with, but it had been true, and so calmly, and honestly, he'd repeated it until there was no more need to say it.

That day had been one. He made a promise to himself then that Quinn would not go a day without knowing it.

He had never, personally, had a need to hear it. There was a neat slot in his life into which Quinn fit (or rather, a sizeable hole through which he overflowed, now). That he also had a similar space, whatever size or shape, in Quinn's life, was enough for him. That they could wake together in the morning was enough for him. That he could laugh.

It was the way they moved together. Be it through conversations with oblivious outsiders or in the throes of their latest obscenity, there was a delicious feeling of belonging and being that he had found no where else. It was feeling alive, and loving that feeling. For that feeling, he would do what he could. What he had to.

He said it every day.

He would say it while they walked, while they rested, while they fought. He would say it even when someone else was listening—he'd say it differently when no one else was. He'd say it in a thousand different ways every day, through teasing and touch and all manners of attention. He said it with his mouth and his hands, his tongue and his hips. Sometimes in growls, sometimes in whispers, and sometimes in silence.

He said it, above all, because he loved to hear it and know its truth. He said it because it was no secret, and the person who heard it was the one person above all he would not have forget it. He said it because it simply needed to be said.