Atlas was trembling. He tried to conjure up the memory, long ago, of the last fire eater at the circus. The way he'd taught him to read the movements of hands. He and Zari would use it to talk across the noise of the big top on show nights. They'd been far from fluent, but there were things that Atlas understood.
I love you was one. The earth had stopped spinning there. Atlas didn't have time to digest it, though, he had to concentrate. Rexus was signing slowly for his benefit, thank god. Don't want you to stay away. I want... why I'm-- why I'm hurt. I was abandoned--
Felt abandoned. Scared of not--
I don't want you to live a life you hate
I want you
Atlas didn't know what to say. Made a pained noise in the back of his throat. He took a couple of steadying breaths, and sat down on the tiled floor of the kitchen. Pain shot through him with the angle he'd decided to it, at and he shifted. He rested his head in his hands.
"After I left I was the worst of myself. I'd left my last sliver of anything worth saving here, with you." How was he to put this next bit? That he was not just running away from himself but everything else, the vague possibility that there might be a corner he couldn't crawl out of? That the feeling of being trapped made him feel like he was sitting in his own coffin, that passing through a new town before he got the chance to know its name was the only thing that seemed to keep his head quiet. That there was a joy in it, too. That, before this, there'd been a time where he'd been, not necessarily fulfilled, but happy. How did he tell him that he didn't know how to love someone, but he desperately, desperately did. How did he tell him that he hadn't spoken to his own sister in five months and his own father in eight years?
"I'm not worth a damn, but-" and the words were tumbling from his mouth before he could stop them, before he'd even realised he'd felt that way at all. "But if I left, when I panic and run from things that aren't there, again. Come with me. I won't go without you. Come with me." His red eyes were wide, desperate, dark smudge of a bruise around one making him look strange, almost dangerous. There was something of the fae about him then, his button nose and long face, imploring, begging Rexus to let him spirit him away.