[open] did I build this ship to wreck

[jamie]

jamie

I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT

He is not a coy thing.
If he is not susceptible to the wiles of women it is only because he does not know how to recognize them as such.
So if there is any flirtation in her asking, he does not notice.

Instead, he takes her question at face value. He does not smirk or simper, does not turn the voice to something honeyed and warm, something inviting. He drags in another wheezing breath, the air rattling against his ribcage while he considers how to answer.

Where might she find something more?
How can he offer any insight when he has only ever wanted something less?

(But is it really that he wants something less or that the things he wants are so intimately tethered to death that they only feel like less?)

“I could show you,” he tells her. And even this is without flirtation. There is nothing suggestive in the way he says it. No, it is all plain shadows as he takes one step toward her, peculiar head tilted, the freakish yellow eyes never straying from where he has fixed them on her face.

“We could go there together.” 
The only place he has ever yearned for, the only place that ever meant much of anything at all to him. The place where he discovered it all. 

AND IT LEAVES ME COLD

@Tiasa