and I'm the kind of love it hurts to look at, but once I was enough to make you try
now, I'm underneath the rubble, trying not to feel the trouble.
He caught sight of himself in the water once.
Just like his mother.
When he touched her, there was a horrible sound.
A cold sound.
But Tessa was warm and he curled himself into her and pretended he found some comfort in the heat he siphoned from her. Pretended that he could feel it, too.
And there are days – days like today – where he touches his mouth to his own chest and the glass is warm. He wonders if someday it will be hot. He wonders if it will ever burn his lips.
He wanders now and he is careful. Every step is exceptionally well-thought out. He pauses at the edges of ditches, steps so carefully over downed trees, skirts past low branches so that they cannot catch him and tear the skin.
Still, he wears a smile. Even with all that uncertainty coursing through him. The trepidation. The persistent pulse of worry that lives in veins. Because he does not want to break. But he is good-natured and kind and he greets those who pass him by. Until he is buoyed by the way they sometimes smile at him, too, and it puts a jaunt in his step. He chances a stilted trot and grins when the bones creak but do not break.
He enters the playground without meaning to. Without ever knowing that it was there and his expression collapses around the soft edges of wonder as he staggers to a stop at its edge. There are none here like him but they are strange and wondrous and he grins, casting a cursory glance around the clearing.
He sees her then, by the tree, a shoulder leaned against the bark and this draws him to her. He goes to her without making the conscious decision to go. He tilts his fine head, studying quite intently the place where she presses her skin against the tree, his lips pressed together in a thin, thoughtful line.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” he asks when he gets close enough, shifting his focus from her shoulder to her face.
THOMAS
— and you don't care for me enough to cry —