Work Text:
Vin smiles, and Chris is lost.
His stomach lurches, he breathes in, once, twice, and something settles in his chest, something healing and whole, and he almost chokes on it. Oh, he thinks. Oh. There you are.
It's just a moment, a pause between breaths, just a sunset and a smile and a friend - a friend - and it will pass, such things always do, it will pass, but...
But.
The drop from the bluff is tall and deep, and for the first time he is afraid. Of falling, of flying, dying. Of daring to want. Of Vin. Most of all, he is afraid of Vin.
There was a time, and not so long ago, he would have stood at the threshold of this abyss, toes at the edge, daring himself to waver, to sink and fall, to hit the ground and rise up again undaunted.
There was a time - but that was a different man, a different place, and the path from there to here was long and dark, and Chris no longer remembers the way.
Sometimes he wonders who he would be. If he'd turned left instead of right, if he'd stopped in a different town, turned away from another man's quarrel, another man's fight. If he'd stood and stopped and watched, only watched.
Another man, another life, and what would he see in the night, that man? Who would he see?
There are bad men in the world, men like him, with pasts and secrets and shadows, who yet do good for no reason he can understand, and men who spread cruelty with joy in their hearts - and there are days when he looks in the mirror, looks at the smudges like bruises under his eyes, and he doesn't know which of those men he is.
He loses himself. He loses himself in gunfights and warm soft flesh, and Vin finds him.
He falls, and Vin catches him.
He lashes out, with words and fists, overwhelmed by an anger that has no outlet and no target but the innocent and unknowing. And yet...
Vin stays. When he should step back, Vin steps forward. When he should speak, Vin is silent. And when silence is needed, Vin has the words to bring him back from the edge, and why do you stay, Chris only wants to ask. Why don't you hate me? Why can't you see the darkness inside me? Why do you stay?
Vin is ballast and foundation stone, sextant and compass. Vin is the center, the stillpoint, the movement and the spin - and when Chris is vibrating so hard he shakes, when he can't see for the rage and all he wants is to hurt someone, anyone, Vin's hand on the small of his back is enough.
That small touch, that connection is enough, and when he turns his head Vin is there, and Chris can see all the things in his eyes he doesn't dare acknowledge in his own.
He pushes at Vin. He pushes and pushes, and Vin doesn't say a word, just curls a palm around Chris' neck and holds on, cradling the vulnerable curve of skull and spine like Vin can protect him from the world.
Chris can't push him away, can't do anything but pull him closer, closer, and it's never close enough. And Vin is silent and strong, steady and sure and there, always there - and he lets Chris find what he needs in the words Vin doesn't say and the movements he doesn't make.
Vin hands out pieces of himself like it's nothing, like he's nothing, little shards of past, present, future left carelessly on bluffs and in streets; and he doesn't know it, can't stop, because Vin doesn't know how to be anything but himself.
And Chris, Chris doesn't know who he is, he's never known, never met those gray eyes in the mirror and recognised the man behind them, but he knows Vin.
He knows Vin, and he follows him wherever he goes, gathering those pieces up and keeping them safe. Because this is his map, this is his pole star, these signs of a man, carved in love and trust and given too freely.
There is a weight to love, a heaviness, a solidity. He's been weightless for so long, carrying the burden of nothing through four years, through hundreds of miles and dozens of beds, and the nights, the endless nights full of fire and pain.
And he knows, Chris knows, love isn't lightness and freedom and flight.
Love is the grounding, the earth and the roots and the bedrock of belonging. Love is the child planted in his mother's belly, the roots bearing the strain of the tree bending in the wind, the bird on the wing coming to rest.
When he closes his eyes at night, he sees Vin's smile and nothing else.