// Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars //
Her presence is apparent in the way silence is when you're used to noise. It unsettles in a manner that slides against you steadily, a wrong chord humming displeasingly after something that otherwise could have been lovely. He expected it, but feeling it, the unfavorable weight of her attention, it just might be too heavy.
He sucks in a breath and holds it as the first slip of her voice creeps in like frost on a window. He keeps his head bowed with the line of failure he's aware he's drawn, Safrin's feet the only thing he dares to look at. The pause after her first words is long enough that he begins to wonder if she's waiting for his gaze, or maybe just the better angle for his throat. He tilts it up slightly, his exhale finally loosing though it does little to smooth any tension. She continues though, so he pauses, a wince crinkling the edge of his features at the way she describes the party. She isn't wrong, which is by far the worst part of it all. For someone who only ever aims to please, the sting of disappointment cuts deep. Safrin's, sure, but especially Caly's. It's not what she deserves from him, and he's confident he can give her more, that he can fix this.
"What do you mean, lesser?" he asks suddenly, eyes finally finding Safrin's with a flash of shock. He’d thought she was angry, jealous, embarrassed. At him, at a friendship that hadn’t managed to stay harmless, at the mess he made of her party—all reasons he’d turned over again and again in his mind since that night. All of them bad, all of them earned. This though, lesser? The word knocks the breath from his chest like a fall he didn’t brace for. He could take the blade of Safrin’s fury, but not that. Not the thought that he made Calypso doubt her own shine.
His fingers curl against the hem of his hoodie like he's trying to hold himself still, to keep from unraveling right there in front of her. His head is still racing, even as the stars flicker with outrage and words sink in with a bite that begs him to flinch. He's just replaying her party over and over again now, trying to recall each shadowed portion of her face, the way she withdrew, curled in, closed up.
He sucks in a breath and holds it as the first slip of her voice creeps in like frost on a window. He keeps his head bowed with the line of failure he's aware he's drawn, Safrin's feet the only thing he dares to look at. The pause after her first words is long enough that he begins to wonder if she's waiting for his gaze, or maybe just the better angle for his throat. He tilts it up slightly, his exhale finally loosing though it does little to smooth any tension. She continues though, so he pauses, a wince crinkling the edge of his features at the way she describes the party. She isn't wrong, which is by far the worst part of it all. For someone who only ever aims to please, the sting of disappointment cuts deep. Safrin's, sure, but especially Caly's. It's not what she deserves from him, and he's confident he can give her more, that he can fix this.
"What do you mean, lesser?" he asks suddenly, eyes finally finding Safrin's with a flash of shock. He’d thought she was angry, jealous, embarrassed. At him, at a friendship that hadn’t managed to stay harmless, at the mess he made of her party—all reasons he’d turned over again and again in his mind since that night. All of them bad, all of them earned. This though, lesser? The word knocks the breath from his chest like a fall he didn’t brace for. He could take the blade of Safrin’s fury, but not that. Not the thought that he made Calypso doubt her own shine.
His fingers curl against the hem of his hoodie like he's trying to hold himself still, to keep from unraveling right there in front of her. His head is still racing, even as the stars flicker with outrage and words sink in with a bite that begs him to flinch. He's just replaying her party over and over again now, trying to recall each shadowed portion of her face, the way she withdrew, curled in, closed up.
Kaisel
// I could really use a wish right now //
Wearing a watery blue, faded and stretched-out sparkling hair tie on his left wrist
