I should have loved a thunderbird instead
at least when spring comes they roar back again
They walk quietly amongst the water and the sea and Aegean can only think about the rising tide of his own heart. He feels its pull low and deep in his belly, a magnetic thing, and the way Pteron’s presence hums near him. It’s like an electrical current—a constant buzzing that leaves him just a little drunk off it.
When the boy compliments his head, there is no fluttering of lashes or shyness. Instead, Aegean just dips his head, white lips curving into an appreciative smile. “Yours is just as magnificent.” Then, with a sigh as he looks up again, he casually says, “And you do live in my head. You have for some time, in fact.”
Ever since he saw him as a boy.
Ever since he grew up with that queer memory dancing around the edges of his vision.
Pteron has always been there—as constant as the wind.
But he doesn’t linger on it, instead stepping forward to the lake and its undisturbed waters. He wonders if perhaps he should have been more clever in where he chose to bring him, but such things die before they ever take root in his heart. Instead, he just looks from its pure beauty to his companion.
For a moment, he says nothing and instead just lets his gaze lock with the others, focusing on the steady rise and fall of his pulse, the strange way that all of Hyaline begins to slowly fade in the background.
There is nothing but him, and Pteron, and the distance that feels so impossibly large.
“It has never looked better than it does today,” he says, feeling a warmth blossom and then spread across his chest, sinking its hooks beneath the skin and lingering there as he feels his heart continue to thrum.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
