Title: A Question of Degrees
Fandom: Two Gentlemen of Verona
Rating: G
Length: ~300 words
Content notes: Focussed on Proteus and Proteus & Valentine.
Author notes: Basically, a bit of an over-extended metaphor.
Summary: Proteus' relationships in thermometric terms.


When Proteus first laid eyes on Silvia, he felt as though he were burning up from the inside out. He loved Julia, of course he did, but being with her was a warm, soothing fire at the end of the day - Silvia was something else.

When he thought about it later, he could only explain it by saying she, or what he felt when he saw her, had burned his reason and sound judgment out of him. Even when her heat singed his fingers and his eyebrows, he'd persisted, and would in no short time have burned himself given the opportunity.

It was Valentine, of course, who brought Proteus back to himself. He nearly drowned him in a barrel of icy water, made him cold and numb to anything other than Valentine himself.

Proteus had always sensed warmth and affection from Valentine too - different from Julia, with her warm embers in the hearth which he now missed sorely as well. A candle perhaps that gave more light than heat but burned constantly, never changing, since their young days.

Proteus had never anticipated it would be extinguished, and least of all by himself. But there was neither light nor warmth in Valentine now, and it terrified him. There wasn't even the searing heat of anger any more, only cold steel and bitterness in his eyes.

On his knees, shivering with the cold, he raised his hands in the hope that his repentance might rekindle that flame - that small beacon of light that was more vital to him than he had realised. He felt the cool water leech the warmth out of his body as he waited for Valentine's reaction. Perhaps he was right to leave him here, wet and exposed, in the night; perhaps he really was no longer deserving of the warmth and light bestowed on such that could respond and reciprocate.

But Valentine extended a hand down to him and raised him back to his feet, and Proteus inwardly swore to his gods that he would do anything to never let that candle go out again.