“May I ask you something personal?” Cael said finally.
“Haven't we moved past formal courtesy by now?” Damian replied with a slight smile.
“Your blindness,” Cael said gently. “Does it ever make you feel... isolated? Unable to connect with others in ways they take for granted?”
Damian's expression grew thoughtful. “Sometimes. People assume I can't understand things I can't see. They speak to Corrin instead of me, or they try to help in ways that just make things harder.” He paused, then added with quiet honesty: “But in some ways, it's made connection easier. I can't judge people by how they look, so I listen to what they actually say. I pay attention to how they breathe, how they move, what they choose to do when they think no one's watching.”
“And what do you hear when you listen to me?”
“Curiosity. Loneliness. Something that might be hope, though I think that's new for you.” Damian tilted his head, considering. “Also careful control, like you're constantly editing yourself. Choosing your words to hide as much as they reveal.”
The observation was uncomfortably accurate. “Names have power,” Cael said carefully. “Especially mine.”
“Everything has power if you know how to use it. Words, touch, silence.” Damian leaned forward slightly. “What are you afraid will happen if you tell me what you're called?”
Cael was quiet for a long moment, feeling the weight of the question settle between them. When Damian spoke his name—if he spoke his name—it would change something fundamental about their dynamic. Knowledge always did.
“Cael,” he finally offered, the word feeling strange on a tongue he was only just learning to use properly. “I think that's what I am. It's the name I've kept longest.”
The admission felt like offering a piece of his essence to mortal hands, vulnerable in ways he'd never experienced. When Damian repeated it softly—“Cael”—the sound sent unexpected warmth spiraling through his borrowed chest.
“Cael,” Damian said again, testing the feel of it. “It sounds like wind through empty spaces. Or the call of something wild and distant.”
“Is that what you hear?”
“It's what I feel when you say it. Like you're sharing something you don't usually let anyone have.”
Emboldened by the intimacy of shared names, by the gentle acceptance in Damian's voice, Cael reached out without thinking. His fingers brushed against Damian's arm, skin meeting skin for the first time.
The contact was electric. Warmth transferred between them like a sacred gift, and Cael felt Damian's pulse beneath his fingertips, the miraculous reality of blood and life and breath. Damian gasped, color rising in his cheeks, his own hand moving to cover Cael's before either of them fully realized what was happening.
For a moment, they were connected by more than conversation. Touch bridged the impossible gap between mortal and cosmic, between ending and healing, between two beings who should never have been able to reach for each other.
Then the intensity of sensation overwhelmed Cael's inexperienced nervous system, and he jerked away, his form flickering between states as unfamiliar emotions crashed through him.
“Sorry,” he gasped, though he wasn't sure what he was apologizing for. “I didn't mean to?—”
“You're shaking,” Damian observed gently, his own voice rough with surprise and something deeper.
Cael stared at his own trembling hands, unaccustomed to such visible uncertainty. The urge to reach for Damian again warred with a terror as old as his existence. He let his fingers curl, clenching tight to keep them still, as if one more touch might unmake him entirely.
“You're not supposed to feel anything,” Damian murmured, wonder and concern warring in his voice.
Cael's response came without conscious thought: “Neither are you, according to your city's laws. But you feel everything anyway. You carry everyone's pain because you choose to care.”
The observation hung between them like recognition, the acknowledgment of two beings who existed outside the normal rules of their respective worlds.
“Is that what this is?” Damian asked softly. “Choosing to care?”
“I don't know,” Cael admitted. “I've never had to choose anything before. I simply was what I was designed to be.”
“And now?”
Cael considered the question, feeling the golden threads that connected him to this mortal realm, to this gentle man who spoke to Death without fear. “Now I think I'm becoming something new. Something that chooses rather than simply responds.”
In the aftermath of their first real touch, both men sat in charged silence. Cael could still feel the echo of Damian's warmth against his fingertips, the miraculous reality of skin that yielded under pressure, of pulse points where life announced itself with steady rhythm. Damian seemed equally affected, one hand still pressed to the spot where Cael had touched him, his breathing slightly uneven.
The moment stretched between them, fragile and precious, until it became a foundation—the first stone of something neither fully understood but both found themselves curious about.
