By the time Theo had begun to sign, Fletch had already turned away. He didn't know what the next day would bring if he left like this. He just knew that right now, it would hurt too much to sit in whatever damage this was. He needed peace. He needed simple. He needed a drink. And none of those things would happen in Theo's room, in Theo's bed. The man would just stir shit up again. He'd take something good and make it an argument and dig and dig until he'd found another tender string to yank. No. Fletcher needed away from that, whatever it was.

He left the room and returned to his own, picking up his now futile purchase along the way. He shut the door without pausing to so much as glance at the man. He set the bag aside. He stared at his empty bed: the rumpled sheets, the depression in the pillow where Theo had lain. It would be hard to sleep with the man's scent and memory surrounding him. Harder still with this blossoming anger at Ven and himself and the unfairness of life. But he was too raw to quest any further down that path. He didn't want to lay there and wonder why the man had never said it. He thought he knew the answer already, and it scared him to face it. So instead he drank it all away, and fell into bed with his clothes still on, and faded off into drunken oblivion.

He nodded in understanding. This was why he hadn't gone straight back to Fletcher's room when he left to give him space. There was less sting in the rejection by being told no versus being kicked out of the room or abandoned in it.

"Alright. Get some good sleep. I love you and I'll see you in the morning."

Fletch stopped, back turned. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Did he want to stay? Part of him did, but that part was drowned so deeply in the pain of these little cuts, and it wasn't strong enough on its own to change his mind. He sighed. Turned to face the man, barely visible in the dimness of the night, and he signed back with slow, careful, deliberate motions. "No. I wouldn't. Not after that. Good night, Theo."

Theo sat up in bed staring ahead at the fire as a million thoughts swirled slowly through his head. He'd confessed at last how he felt. But it had been done in frustration and not sweetness as he had always dreamed. He had been confessed back to. But it had been done in anger and not tenderness as he had always hoped. He'd made this man the the loved above all else look at him in such pain and fear, had trod upon the space Fletcher had been seeking and inserted himself into to without care of the other man's wants. All his talk of respecting Fletcher's boundaries, wants, needs and then he'd gone and done that. 

He picked anxiously at his nail beds, waiting and wondering what state his love would be in when he returned. Would he even speak to him? Would he just storm away and slam the door? Would he feel better? Worse? Would he come back to bed or call Theo to his? Would he retreat further into himself and drink himself tipsy again?

So wrapped up in his thoughts, Theo initially missed Fletcher's entrance through the balcony doors. He did however catch the look and sat up straighter. His mouth opened before he had time to think as he called out, hesitant and nervous but longing.

"Jack? Are you going to bed? Or...would you like to come stay?"

Theo left, and Fletcher stayed, watching the man go with an expression like he'd just been slapped. He felt like he'd been pulled in ten different directions, his seams tearing open, and Theo had found those wounds and dug in and split them open wider. Why say something like that just to leave? Why wait until Fletch had said it too, just to shut down and turn his back? Had he gotten what he'd wanted, and that was it? It felt like being used and left behind. It felt like Ven.

Well. It was all Fletch could take of that tonight. He finished his cigarette, ground it out on the railing, and headed in. He cast one brief glance at Theo that told the man just how raw and hurting he was and headed for the nanny door.

Theo quieted and stilled as Fletcher verbally flailed o catch up and make sense of things. The man's reaction alone told him that he had struck true. There was the issue and they both knew it. Theo was terrified of being the cage. Fletcher was afraid of being free. What a pair the two of them made.

Yet, they had made it this far and that was likely further than either of them had ever gotten before. Perhaps they could go further still, together. Theo was willing to try and for all his warning hisses, it seemed like Fletcher was too.

And then there was the man's angry signing. It was very much a declaration not too different from Theo's own: said passionately and with deep feeling but not how either wanted and not in a moment of tenderness but strife.

"Later," he quipped tiredly and then extinguished the dregs of his cigarette. "I'm going back inside. Take your time."

He hesitated in the doorway and turned back slightly. "I know you're angry and upset with me. But I want you to know my sentiments have not changed. Neither of us are going anywhere without the other. And that's enough for me right now.

"...try not to stay out too long. You don't need to be catching a cold," he added more quietly before stepping back into his room and crawling into his own bed.

Fletcher shook his head slowly. Was it in disagreement? Was it in warning? He didn't know. Theo had thrown all of this at him so fast, and he hadn't been expecting it, and now the man had gone in for the kill, too, with something that hit dead center. Fletch took in a breath and let it out like a kettle under pressure. He remembered his cigarette and plucked it from his lips. "Would you just — would you stop complicating things — and putting words in my mouth — for one bloody minute? Can I just — can I just have a minute to think?"

He shook his head again and began to pace. "First: don't you dare pretend like you don't see it in every little fucking thing I do. I think you know exactly how I feel about you. It doesn't matter if I'm ready for it. We're here now. Second? Stop trying to twist this into some inevitable failure where I leave you. Just stop. What if I said the same thing to you, ey? What if, days into us doing something about this, I kept going on and on about you pushing me away ten years down the road because of the chance that I'm not what you want anymore? Yeah, it hurts, doesn't it? It's a shit thing to say. Stop saying it."

He stopped pacing. He shook his head again. He stared intensely and longingly across the balcony as he tried to form the words, but they still wouldn't come. So he popped the smoke back where it belonged and signed it instead. "Fuck you for making me say it like this. Fuck you, Theo. I love you, too. So fucking much."

He nodded. Yes, Fletcher had seen what he had thought he had seen. "I love you," Theo signed again, more gently. "Whether you say it back or not. Whether you feel it or not. Whether you are ready for it or not. This is how I feel."

Theo flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette and took another small pull. "I don't think this about whether I think you'll leave or not. It's about whether you think you can belong at my side while doing whatever it is that makes you happy. And instead of wanting to face it, you'd rather be my shadow and let me choose. And I care for you too much to allow you to make that same mistake.

"Because I love you, deeply and you have more than every right to be happy finally."

He could barely keep up with the man, and his shock at where this had suddenly gone meant that for a few seconds, he didn't even try to. Then he was stumbling over his own hurried answers, not even certain if the man read them.

"Theo, no. That's not what I said, and you know it — it has nothing to do with that, would you just listen for one second — would you just stop? Can we not fight about this?"

Fletcher groaned and ran a hand over his hair and rolled his eye and nearly missed it. But there it was: slow enough that he couldn't mistake what the man had said for anything else. He froze with his arm up and the cigarette hanging on for dear life to parted lips. He glanced from Theo's hands to his eyes. A thousand little wounds made their way to the surface as disbelief and anguish and regret and anger, and for that moment, he was every part of him that had never heard those words. He was the beaten child, the posturing young man, the broken older one. Why did it hurt so much to be told something beautiful, by someone beautiful? His mouth twisted as he fought it back for Theo's sake. He should have said something in return. He should have told him then. But it was all suddenly locked up tight behind the hurt, and his words left him altogether. His arm dropped to his side, and all he could give the man was that forlorn look of every painful and unfulfilled minute that had led to this moment.

Morthil listened to her story with a lot of sympathy.
"I'm so sorry that happened to you...seems that Goblinda has helped a lot of people."
"My clan...it was close knit, but very strict on customs and tradition. I-I pushed the village witch doctor too far. He had a short fuse, I shouldn't have done what I did..." Morthil trailed off, regretful of the past. 
"So how long have you and Goblinda known each other, then?"
"It's ok....not many people I've met have even heard of the type of magic I was cursed with...someday I hope to find a cure—all of a sudden, he felt Goblinda bite him AGAIN! But this time on the head.
Wonderful. He desperately wanted to clean his head.
He let out a very strong, long string of his clan language, cursing up a storm.
"Excuse me," he apologized to Lin.
And then, half out of retaliation and half out of desperation, he bit her arm. Hard enough to hopefully wake her up.