you know, I think it was born of a feeling that I got when I left from your home
then it turned into something repeating and I couldn’t let it alone
The moment is confusing in a way that he can’t quite name. It’s like being torn apart by something that you can’t name—feeling your own mind twist out from underneath your grasp. He tries to reach for each different fragment of a memory but they swim away the second that he touches them. The moment that he can feel them is the second that they dissolve and he’s left empty-handed and empty-chested, aching.
Her face changes, the emotions shifting with the seconds, but he can no sooner name what he is seeing than he can put a name on the massive holes in his own mind. So he just sits still, doing his best to think around it with each new breath, trying to piece together this strange experience with fresh eyes.
“I am only charming when it suits me,” he says with a grin, wondering why it felt like effort to pretend that he was feeling so flippant. Why he wanted to frown at her. Why he wanted to shake her and snap out of this moment. He shakes his own head instead, the faint buzzing not leaving—the headache beginning to form behind his eyes and crawl up his skull. The tension grows there and he feels his stomach sour.
But she continues to morph and his vision nearly strobes trying to keep up.
“I don’t think you’re a monster,” he says with a certainty he can’t explain. The frown comes then, pulling at his lips as he take a step after her as she retreats. He opens his mouth to say more—to try and keep her here so that he can pull apart this moment further—but what she says, her voice so hollow, unlocks the memories that she had temporarily pulled from him. They rush back through him with a vengeance and he sucks in a breath as they slam into him, as he tries to process everything that suddenly fills him.
Another shake of his head, the headache spreading, the ache in his chest worsening.
“Luster?” her voice is a question as he finally opens his eyes, searching for her.
who’d have known that I’d ever be reeling simply from being on my own
oh, I craved and I craved and I craved and I craved to get back that feeling I’d known