What a compelling pairing! This is Beholder's great virtue every year: I run across fics like this one that cause me to think "Why had I never put these two together before? Because they just make sense."
Love the way you've dealt with an inability to express oneself here--so often (especially in m/m slash), it's a attractive quality, a brooding mysteriousness that's meant to draw the reader into the story. Here's it's just pain and a kind of stuck-ness--nothing attractive, just a central quality for these two characters, driving them forward, side by side, even as it keeps them apart.
Hope I'm not over-interpreting here! But I've thought a lot about how central this quality is to m/m slash, and I see it subverted in a really interesting way here. Enjoyed! M.