they say looks can kill and i might try

Jude

Every time we touch, your hands are colder, colder
There's no beating coming from your wooden chest

The image of her sitting there, meek and uncertain in a way so unlike the version of her he knows - the one he adores - pulls so hard at his heartstrings that they would sooner tie themselves into a noose to hang himself with any other day. But she doesn’t know that while she twirls her hair around her finger, tying his heart up in knots with every curl, Jude is swallowing down the panic that rises over the thought of losing her. Hurting her in order to save her is a pain he wishes he didn’t know because all of twenty minutes ago he hadn’t. Jude wishes she’d stop introducing him to new things.

”Hey,” he murmurs from where his cheek still rests on her head, shifting them until their shoulders bump and jostle as he dips his chin to look her in the eye. He can do that now when he couldn’t minutes before, because what he has to say isn’t going to be a lie this time. “You know I…I don’t like promises. Making them or hearing them.” His hand falls to hers, slowly enveloping it with his fingers to gently encourage it to stop fidgeting with her hair. Jude’s eyes slide away to look at that, her hand enclosed in his. Not because he’s lying, but because he’s too scared to make a promise for the first time since Sohalia had held his heart. But he’s not so scared that he won’t do it at all. 

“But I promise I’ll come back. Maybe not soon, maybe not the same, maybe even if you don’t want me to come back anymore.” All reasons why he doesn’t make promises in the first place. How many ways could this go wrong? How many ways could he break her heart over something as simple as wanting to see him again? “But so long as I’m still breathing, I’ll come back. I promise.” His fingers unfold just enough to slip his pinky inside her own, curling tightly around it. His head drops back onto hers until the dark shades of their hair meld together into some shadowed amalgamation that blocks out the kitchen until he can only see the edge of her cheek and the line where her nose hides her other eye away from him. “Let me do this for you. Or, y’know…let me try.” A murmur that belies the ache of knowing he might fail no matter how devoted his heart might be or how pure his intentions.

Frozen grin, a mannequin when I get closer
I can see the strings, they're underneath your vest