[private] ive never fallen from quite this high | aegean

[Pteron]

finger trips across my cheek----------------
----------------kiss me until i can't speak

Damage to his heart is rather unlike damage to the rest of his body, Pteron has found. Bones break and heal and break just as easily the next time. His skin is still fragile despite ten thousand magical mendings, bruises color him just as darkly no matter how many times they’d been replaced on freshly healed skin. But the aches and pains of his heart are not things that his magic can mend. They are not scratches or dents in the tissue; nothing is missing that needs regeneration. So his heart recovers in its own way, and it builds itself stronger each time it must do so, patching over the weak areas with something stronger.

Once, the words might have crushed him. Once, when he was primed to assume the very worst, the statement would have broken him.

Once, but not any more.

He knows better now, knows to wait for everything to be said, knows to not jump to the worst conclusion. The worst might be coming, Pteron knows, but he will gain nothing by fearing it too early. Instead he waits, his ears flicking to catch each word and a faint smile at the edge of his mouth.

“Well,” he says soothingly, a gentle shrug of his winged shoulders wordlessly indicating the task of creating his image is an understandably difficult one. “It is rather hard to recreate perfection.” His face is too perfectly still to be serious, the arched brow frozen at its peak during the silence that follows.

There are a thousand ways that he could fill that silence. A younger man would have done so, freely professing the emotions that rattle within him. Instead he quiets them, releases the tension through a casual resettling of his left wing. Rather than spill out an explanation for his behavior at their last meeting, Pteron chooses to find out if one is even necessary. He has wished Aegean happy each day they have been apart, but has the other man become so content that reminding him of the past would be painful? Pteron cannot bear the thought of hurting him.

“Have you tried recently?” He asks, or have you moved on in the year since I pushed you away? "Perhaps having a reference might inspire you."

-- pteron --

@[aegean]