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.
The boy is honest.
He’s never known how to be anything but.
So, when he tells her that she is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, he means it with everything he has. Every fiber of his being trembles with it. And maybe it’s because he’s never seen anything like her before, something so obviously made of stardust that it seems impossible. But whatever the reason, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. It does not change the fact that he will always think she is beautiful. Even if their paths never cross again. Still, he is certain that she will visit him in his dreams.
And, in the wake of his admission, there is only silence. He can feel it pulsing between them like a living thing. And then she laughs and the sound is so sweet that it almost takes him to his knees. He swallows thickly, uncertainly, tries for a smile but comes up short. He trembles with the effort it takes to keep himself upright when she reaches out to touch him again.
First his neck, which feels innocent enough. He has touched his sister plenty, perhaps too many times to feel like it means anything at all that Desire touches him there. But then she shifts, drags her mouth tenderly down the length of his neck until her mouth comes to rest against the slight swell of his chest. And this is the most intimate thing that has ever happened to me. He goes absolutely still so that she might feel the way the heart swells and bursts and strains to rise up and greet her beneath the glass’s impossibly smooth surface.
He tries to find some humor in her words but he finds that he cannot force his thoughts into any kind of coherent pattern. So, he drags in a shuddering breath and turns slow. So slow, so terribly careful. Turns so that he can press his mouth against her shoulder. The stars there do not burn him as he’d expected they might. So he smiles. A secret kind of thing, lingers there a long time, exhales his breath warm and slow across the surface of her skin.
“I’d still let you,” he says finally. And then draws his mouth again with a slanted, boyish smile.
THOMAS
— and you don't care for me enough to cry —