It felt like forever since Pain had seen Skyler face to face, and Pain was irrationally happy when he got the call that they were to meet up, at Skyler's apartment no less. Even spending time with Fira didn't keep his mind off of his best friend. He met Skyler at a low point in his life, while Elaine was visiting him because she heard that his last sister, Betty, had been murdered. The first time he ever saw him was when he was sitting at the edge of the hospital bed, bandages blotched with gray covered his chest.
He was there at Skyler's apartment in a flash, and knocked on the door. There was leisurely footsteps, and the door opened.
"Pain! It's so good to see you!" Skyler smiled and hugged him.
"Good to see you too! God, it feels like forever since we met last." Pain returned the hug and laughed.
"Come in, come in! There's something I need to talk to you about." Skyler smiled awkwardly and waved him in.
"Sure! What is it?" He followed him inside and sat down on the left facing cushioned black chairs in front of the blank television that he used instead of a couch.
"Well, it's about Gabrielle and me." Skyler sat down on the one opposite him.
"Oh, is everything alright with you two? By the sound of your voice on the phone last time I couldn't hear a single bit of worry in your voice." He sat on the edge of the chair and was ready to listen intently to the conversation.
"Well, I promised myself that I wouldn't keep any more secrets from her, and that includes... What happened between us." He sighed, and avoided eye contact.
"Oh, you didn't tell her already?" Pain was confused, he thought people usually talked about their orientation while they were dating.
"I haven't, have you talked to Fira about it either?" He scratched his cheek and looked back at Pain.
"Well, yeah. I told her that I dated a guy, and she took it pretty well, to be honest. I'm perfectly comfortable with my sexuality, so I didn't think much of it." Pain shrugged, Fira was okay with it, it wasn't about how someone 'took it', he told her almost immediately after they started dating, back in Purgatory.
"I'm... Kind of afraid to tell her." Skyler smiled awkwardly again.
"Are you still getting the feeling that liking guys at all is bad? You can't change who you are, remember?" He shook his head, Skyler told him before that he always felt like it was wrong to like the same gender, like it was a guilty pleasure.
"That's not it. I'm afraid of how she's going to take it." He waved his hand and lowered his head.
"I know a lot is riding on you two being together, but I don't know if it'd be alright for you to stay with someone who won't accept who you are. You have to tell her, and tell her why you never revealed it to her before. I know you were terrified back then, and didn't want to make anything worse than it already was, but that's over now. You just have to tell her that liking both isn't that big a deal, and you've learned to accept yourself." Pain sat back in his chair and frowned, he wished Skyler wouldn't feel like it was like telling someone that he had a disease, which he believed that was what was going on in his brain.
"Well... I guess you're right. I think it's because I don't trust people to react rationally when I tell them about serious things like this." Skyler intertwined his fingers and looked down at his hands.
"That's a whole different can of worms. I know you aren't comfortable bringing stuff like that up, so I'm not going to say anything. I just hope someday you can be more trusting of people when it comes to things like this. I know it's hard, after what you've been through, but that might not be something you can ever get over. All I can say is you need to take a leap of faith, coming from your perspective." He knew very well what happened with Skyler in the past, he told him everything about himself, and the same thing with his own self.
"Yeah, I guess you're right. It's time I opened up, no more hiding that part of me." Skyler smiled sadly, and sighed.
"You being with her all the time like you are should be proof enough that you love only her. It... Hurts that I haven't been able to see you more often, but I know you're happy, and I should be happy that you're happy instead of being selfish." Pain shook his head again.
It hurt to let him go, but he would have lost Skyler to the darkness that was eating away at him if he hadn't helped him defeat the Lords of Darkness. It was either be selfish and be with him until he was completely consumed by darkness, or set him free and help him see Gabrielle again.
He even made the superweapon that helped Skyler do it, a scythe fashioned with Skyler's prosthetic hand. The hand's attachment when he died meant that he could convert that to shock power, an extremely large amount of it. Skyler channeled too much of it and it broke, but it had outlived its use because it broke after the last Lord of Darkness fell.
"Hey, it's ok, we're still friends, I wouldn't abandon you, you know that." He got up and looked down at Pain.
"I do, I just..." Pain got up, jumped up and hugged Skyler, his arms wrapping around his neck.
"Wh- What are you doing?" He bent his knees a bit and Pain's feet touched the ground again.
"I was just seeing if you'd pull away from me or not." Even though he was already moving on, those feelings he had for Skyler still lingered.
"Why would I ever pull away from you?" Skyler returned the hug.
It made him remember. All those moments they spent together. He felt a jolt of pain in his heart, he knew he could never be with Skyler again, but it didn't make it hurt less.
"What's gotten into you? You doing alright?" Skyler patted him on the back.
He let go but he slid his hands down onto the middle of Skyler's chest.
"Would it be wrong if I said I still have feelings for you?" Pain looked away.
Ever since he got back from heaven, he felt like a completely different person. Almost nothing between him and Hex were alike anymore. Hex may have had trouble letting old relationships go, but it felt three times as difficult.
"You still have feelings for Elaine too, right?" He stood back up and placed a hand on Pain's shoulder.
"Yeah, the only one I don't have feelings for anymore is Din, since she wasn't even a real person and it was all a lie. There's only hurt where those feelings used to be now." Pain clutched his chest.
It wasn't fair that she was fake, just a golem. It made him want to give Elaine the list of all Din's cohorts, even though he knew it was wrong, just to get revenge, and then maybe it would hurt a little bit less.
"You always were the hopeless romantic type, that's part of who you are, don't feel bad about it." Skyler smiled and patted Pain's shoulder.
"You're right, but I hate it. I hate not being able to get over my feelings for people. It just causes so many problems for me. I know I'll be able to get over all this in time but it's going to take what will seem like an eternity to do it." His feelings constantly betray him, and even though he loved Fira, he still couldn't let go of the emotions he had for others, even though they started to slowly fade. Sometimes he wished that his feelings wouldn't fade, and that he could keep things how they were, but that would just be too painful.
"They say that caring too much isn't a flaw, but I'm sure that you don't feel the same way." Skyler grabbed one of Pain's arms and took it of his chest.
"It's got to be a flaw, it's got to be. You wouldn't believe how much trouble it's causing me." He took his arms back and let them fall to his sides.
"I heard Drake's having problems too, there's this sixteen year old girl who's after his heart." Skyler let out a singular laugh.
"Oh jeez, I'm glad Fira is eighteen, Elaine even confirmed it, even though I told her not to dig into Fira's identity." Pain sighed, Elaine was a bit overprotective still, after all the girls who broke his heart she was very wary about any new relationships besides Skyler who she cleared almost immediately.
"Overprotective as always, she only agreed to me being with Gabrielle because she was a childhood friend, she gets worried over nothing and it makes her seem like a helicopter aunt." Skyler closed his eyes and shrugged.
"She doesn't need to worry about you making bad decisions though. I've got a history." Pain frowned, he always wanted the next relationship to work out but it seemed like they never would. He doesn't want to lose Fira too, and it scares him to think about her mortality.
"I've never regretted a relationship, so I can't say the same." Skyler shook his head.
"I don't regret ours either, even though it ended." He looked up at Skyler and stared him dead in the eyes.
"You don't need to be sad, I'm still here, you know. I haven't walked away, and you're the one who asked for us to break up, remember?" Skyler looked back down at him with a reassuring smile.
"I know that. but that's because of what was happening to you. It wasn't because I wanted to, it was because I had to." He grabbed Skyler's trench coat sleeve.
"I was slipping, you're right. I just didn't want to push you away." He averted his eyes away from Pain and his smile faded.
"If I didn't take the initiative I'm not sure you'd be here right now." Pain looked down and his grip on Skyler's sleeve tightened.
"You didn't make a mistake, neither did I, it just wasn't in the cards for us in the end." Skyler turned back towards him.
"That's what hurts the most," he said.
He had hoped things would have worked out, and that nothing bad would happen to Skyler, but Skyler, when he started to lose the fight against the darkness, even though he tried to act like nothing bad was happening, he could feel it.
"Well, there's Fira, and Gabrielle has me, so you don't have to feel so bad about it anymore." Skyler put his hand on Pain's hand that was grabbing his coat sleeve.
"Yeah, I prefer not to lose you, so at least I have that going for me." He smiled sadly.
"By the way, how are you and Fira doing? Has she seen your stitches yet?" He took his hand off of his and let it fall back into place.
"Oh, no, she hasn't. I'm thinking about how to go about that." Pain let go and frowned again.
The stitches on his chest in the shape of a Y incision were very permanent. He didn't want to freak her out but didn't know how to let her know about it in a better way.
"Well you just have to explain that you were put back into your own dead body, and the spell that put you back in made it impossible for the wound to close without special stitches." He shrugged again.
"It's not that easy, Skyler. The floating and telepathy are cool, and she already saw what's left of my wings, but the stitches are another thing entirely. I have to explain to her what a Y incision is, on top of bringing up really bad memories." He put a hand to his head in frustration. He didn't want to dig up what happened again, but if she was to know everything about him, he would have to.
"Oh, yeah... You had a real hard time getting over that. I could even see how haunted you were in your eyes when you told me about it." Skyler sucked air through closed teeth.
"She's still young and probably doesn't know what it is, I'd be surprised if someone as innocent as her did." Pain took his hand off his head, raised his other hand and cupped it over the other.
"You'd be surprised, there's lots of crime and medical shows out there, she might have even seen one while flipping channels." Skyler giggled.
"I'm not so sure, but I guess I have a leap of faith to take too." Pain felt his face make an awkward grin.
"Well, we've got to make preparations for tonight, so I think it's time we call it for now. I'll meet up with you tomorrow night though." Skyler hugged Pain, pulled away and smiled again.
"Alright, I'll see you then, I should have expected that because it's so late already." Pain waved.
They said their goodbyes and parted ways. He went back to his room and waited for Elaine to summon him. When she did, it was about whether or not incense worked for summoning, and he had to explain that candles were necessary, and that he didn't make the rules. She was angry because there was a sale at an incense store and she bought a bunch. Kalan saved the day when he offered to take it off her hands so he could use the incense in the daily rituals his clan held.
He spent his time in Elega with Fira, and the time he had been with him almost made him forget about his feelings for past relationships. He was asked by her to take her back to Purgatory, and he was confused initially, but then she started to teach him how to control his emotions when reaping the certain souls he had trouble with reaping. He was extremely grateful for her help, and almost didn't want to part ways with her when night time in Elega came close. Being left alone to his own devices was the worst feeling, that small window where he had no one to depend on was extremely soul crushing. He was so glad that Fira was a part of his life, and that he felt he could learn to appreciate his past relationships without feeling so strongly about them.