11-20-2019, 07:47 PM
----------------kiss me until i can't speak
There are no fresh tears on her face when she draws back to look at him, and Pteron meets her violet gaze steadily, even if with uncertainty. She does not cry, but he has said the wrong thing again. This time, his words have not made her cry, but the weariness in her expression is no better. The pleading in her eyes when she tells him not to offer what she has just asked of him, it twists all up into knots. Whatever he does, it is wrong. How have they come to this? A week ago – an hour even – the thought of her had filled him with joy, and now there is guilt, and regret, and sadness.
She tells him that the one who holds his heart is the luckiest horse alive, and Pteron doesn’t hide the flinch.
Aquaria is not done yet though; thanks him for his friendship like it is a thing that has ended. Pteron doesn’t realize he is closing the space between them that she has put there, nor that he follow her into waters that lap at his chest now rather than his belly. She can’t mean to end them like this, she can’t. Pteron can’t let her. A piece of him, that is what she thinks he has given her, and she is not wrong. There are many pieces to him these days, shattered, broken little bits. Aquaria had gotten the least battered of them, the one that laughs and smiles and can forget that he is not loved the way he wants to be.
He had used her, the boy realizes, he had let her love him in the way that he knows Aegean would not. And he had loved her back, not in the way she wanted but in the only way he really could. She deserves better, just like Aegean does. They all deserve something better than what he can offer them, and the realization is only made more bitter.
“They have not.” Pteron says, his dark eyes tracing the smile that does not nearly reach her eyes. “They have not, but I am able to forget that here, with you.” The boy reaches out, presses his cheek against hers with affection. Not with hunger, or with desire, but just to touch, to remind himself that she is real and here and hurting – and that he has done it because he is too weak to face reality. “You make everything better, and I have been selfish. So selfish, to use our friendship like this.” The words are easier to say here, where he does not have to watch her reaction. That, too, is unfair of him, and he pulls back to meet her gaze.
She is so lovely; he forgets this every time that he looks away and back again. His breath catches in throat, and he traces the lines of her face. Beneath that glamour is Aquaria, he knows, the girl who had come to find him in the woods. That night, he’d taken something that was not his to take, and the aftermath has made a wreck of them. He should regret it, he knows, and some part of him does writhe with guilt. But there is more than remorse at the memory, and when she had asked him to pretend, one last time, he had begun to think that perhaps there was more than regret for her as well.
“I don’t want you to hang yourself with it,” he says, referring to the rope that she said he offers her, “But I swear I mean it. Tell me what you want. Tell me how to fix this.”
@[Aquaria]
-- pteron --