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It’s late enough that someone will notice (and with notice comes talk) if Amuro leaves.
“It’s late.” He says nothing about the rest.
“It is,” Amuro agrees, finishing his drink and crossing over to stand in front of him. He doesn’t look up at him, keeping his gaze steady at the wall.
“You need to rest.” It’s toothless, really, and they both know it.
He turns his gaze up to him, finally, and Amuro puts a hand on the back of his chair. They’re closer together than usual, even for them, and he finds himself smiling flatly. An idiosyncracy of Char’s, to smile at warmth and familiarity as if it’s a private joke that he will never understand.
“There are other ways,” Amuro says. The observation, no unnecessary kindness, only sharp understanding, makes him a little more sure.
He shakes his head, and the silence is warm and comfortable. He puts Amuro’s hand over his own, observing the roughness of his fingers and the gentleness of his touch.
“You…” It isn’t that the feeling isn’t unpleasant. It only settles an ache in him that he hadn’t realized was there, a weight more easily borne by two than one.
“Your touch is a burden I’m willing to bear.”
Amuro smiles wryly at that. “Always the same with you, isn’t it?”
And then Amuro kisses him, burning out everything else if just for a moment.
---
It’s not easy with Amuro-- but then again, he doesn’t want it to be. There is no room for the practiced ease of flippant words or even cruel ones; Amuro takes the distance and pulls him in, piece by piece. His sense abandons him, his instincts telling him to run and the person he’s so carefully built himself into letting him stay. Amuro sidesteps the parts of himself he offers up, parceled up like gifts, taking in the whole. Amuro pushes (pushes up the mask, the sunglasses, the corners of his mouth, where a real smile hadn’t made itself known in so long it feels more unnatural than the false one) and he lets him.
It’s not difficult, either, and it surprises him. He had thought that the absence of ease demanded it, some kind of suffering. He wears suffering as easily as the name Char, but, that too, Amuro unclothes.
He doesn’t look away.
It’s almost enough.
---
Amuro isn’t asleep, not really, but they both say nothing, their breathing matching one another despite their best efforts.
Even in his most natural state, Amuro is pulled to him-- is pulling him closer, hand wrapped around him for just one more moment.
It’s too hot, sweltering only where Amuro’s body is touching his. Amuro would turn away if he asked, give him the space to miss their closeness and to ask for it again and again.
But he is a man who cannot ask, even when Amuro lets him.
Especially then.
It’s the willingness that makes him slip out of bed, out of reach. Morning is almost here, he thinks, as he slips on his clothes. The early-morning light makes it all the more reasonable when he walks from his own room to Amuro’s, lifting his hand and knocking. He makes a show of it to noone but himself.
Inside, he pulls off his boots wearily, climbing into Amuro’s bed, back pressed against the wall. He leaves space where he might have held the other man, still fully clothed, sunglasses still pressed against his eyes.
He could be Char in his totality, if he wanted to be. There would always be a part of him tucked away, hidden safely away, the same way he sits high in his mobile suit. He pilots this body, this identity, pushing limbs this way and that, smiling or frowning when appropriate.
If that were the limit, if he were only letting his thoughts or his emotions pilot his body, perhaps things would have been different.
He could love Amuro, and he lets himself, as Char.
He lays here, unsleeping, and waits for Amuro to come home.