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’s said the wrong thing.
It’s no surprise, considering.
Considering he has never loved anyone but her. Considering he has loved her from the very first moment he laid eyes on her. There was never any hope that he would come out of that meeting -- or any that came after it -- with his heart. He had surrendered it to her but had never tried to yoke her with the burden of looking after it. He had belonged to her from the first time she’d said his name but had understood that she would likely never belong to him the same way.
But he is young still, if only just barely. He is young and wont to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, if only because he doesn’t know any better.
It does not occur to him that to call her perfect might somehow stir up whatever guilt she’s harboring unnecessarily. He has always understood that she could not pledge her heart to him. He has never resented her for it. He does not allow it to hurt.
He watches her carefully, the gaze contemplative as she speaks. He can taste the guilt when she speaks next. And she looks at him for only a beat longer before she looks away. And, despite the regret that rolls off her in waves, he smiles.
It is a patient thing, that smile. And it remains as he moves to eliminate the space she’d wedged between them. As if doing so might help to convince him that what she said was true.
“There is no one better than you,” he murmurs into the valley at the base of her neck. “And even if there was, I wouldn’t want them.” He chooses his own words carefully so as to not further compound her guilt.
“You have done nothing you need to be forgiven for, Desire,” he continues, drawing just far enough to try and catch her eye. “I would never dream of asking you to belong to me.” He shakes his head before he presses his smooth glass forehead against the plain of her shoulder. “I would never dream of trying to keep you. I’d be too afraid of killing you.” There, that same glimmer of a smile as he exhales a contented sigh.
THOMAS
— and you don't care for me enough to cry —