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[homosexuals]

Good thing you can do a hell of a lot more than walk with those legs now, huh.

[he's not buying that for a second, but he'll give him the grace not to push it tonight.]

'Course I fucking remember it. I was bleeding too, and it was - I wanted more. Can't tell you the last time I felt so genuinely starved to see more of it, to take and not worry about you getting precious about it.

So it makes sense he fucked you like that. Makes sense you've probably been looking for it ever since, and not just anyone can give it to you.

Because not everyone is as fucked up as you and I - but we're willing to do what has to be done, consequences be damned, and forget about the pieces on the floor when it's said and done. Don't spare a thought to the ones we're leaving behind, no time for heartbreak - something like that, isn't it?

[someone who wasn't pretending to be a good man. i needed you to be exactly what you are.

jesus.

for all the times he's shoved himself into the perfect boxes of what everyone wants him to be - senator smith, lucy, mary, cohn, bobby kennedy, joe alsop, his father - even tim, here - he can't remember anyone ever saying that hawkins fuller, wearer of many masks and buried down deep somewhere underneath them all, was fine just the way he is.

he spares a glance over to tim, a polite smile to alicent while angling his phone closer to his body and punching out another reply.]

If I was a good man, I'd tell you to stop. Except: I can't do the things I do and be good - but you know that better than anyone.

Go on.

[hymen]

everything you're saying is exactly why i want you. everything about you.
you fill a need. it's not some fairy tale bullshit i'm chasing. i need this. i need you.

[ the pathetically disgusting reality of that hits him like a slap in the face. there's nothing that could ever shake his love for ash, nor diminish his feelings for greer. but hawk is his solace behind doors that will remain permanently closed, and there's a certain relief in knowing that. there's comfort in the knowledge that he can never disappoint hawk on a monumental scale the way he does ash, because there's no love between them. there's something else of a different sort of complexity that he finds just as important, just as necessary. hawk is the absence of expectation when embry feels like he's suffocating from his secrets, when looking ash dead in the eye physically hurts.

and yet — his bitterness is a living thing, souring his thoughts. at the end of the day, he doesn't need anyone, not ash and not greer and certainly not hawk. ]

but you don't get to close the door in my face and then order me around. i'm not asking you for shit. do i look like the kind of person that needs to come crawling on their hands and knees for a fuck?

[ no matter how much he might enjoy that sort of thing. ]

i'm willing to do what needs to be done. consequences be damned. forget about the pieces on the floor when it's said and done.
i accept everything about you. don't change at all. go do what you said you were gonna do.
it wasn't with me.

[homosexuals]

[fuck. it feels like all the air in the room has been sucked out before he's gotten suckerpunched. i need you. it's not the first time he's ever been told it - even if it is the first time he's reading it so plainly in black and white with all the caveats that come with it. hawk swallows thickly, tim and alicent's chatter fading into a dull noise in the background.]

No, but you'd look mighty fine doing it anyway.

[he's a fucking asshole. but he's a fucking asshole who was thrown a bone: of embry knowing that about him and wanting it anyway.]

I'm not closing the door. But I am - I don't like it. I'm sorry.

[another word he doesn't say often enough, if at all. the last part he just leaves on read, guilt roiling his insides something fierce.]