I need your hand but I don't want to burn it
Everything in her keeps washing over him, wave after wave with no clean space between them, and Vesper sits inside the weather of it with his jaw set and the peppermint bark turning slowly through his fingers. When she shifts closer, he knows what she means to do before her weight ever reaches him, but foreknowledge doesn’t make the touch any easier to bear. He goes tense beneath her cheek, every muscle cinched hard enough to feel like wire under skin, though by degrees his shoulder softens beneath her, hardly enough to call relaxation but enough that he isn’t making her rest against stone.
Her insistence that she doesn’t hate him draws a quiet huff of laughter from his nose. It’s dry, but there’s no mockery in it, and he nods with an understanding she can’t possibly know the depth of, not when he’s been listening to every failed attempt to turn him into something easier to despise. He knows how hard she’s tried, knows where the effort has gone instead, and the knowledge leaves something bitter and tender lodged behind his ribs.
This moment has found him a hundred different ways in the privacy of his own thoughts. Sometimes he’s shouted the truth at her, flung it like a weapon because she’s backed him too close to a wall. Other times it has slipped free by accident, forcing him to lie badly and claw his way back behind the secret before she could understand what she’d heard. He’s imagined clever versions too, phrases sharpened and arranged until the confession sounded like something he might survive saying. None of them have ever looked like this, though, with moonlight silvering the grass and Colt close enough that he can still feel the fading pressure of her head against his shoulder. Every line he’d rehearsed leaves him at once.
Vesper glances toward her and swallows. His lips part, close again, and for a second the only movement between them is the peppermint bark bending faintly beneath his thumb. Then he pulls in a breath and lets the truth leave without armour. "I’m a telepath, Colt." He bites the inside of his cheek and makes himself wait, resisting the instinct to rush in and soften what the words must rearrange. For once, outside the rare safety of Jack’s company, he doesn’t shutter his awareness or prepare to pretend he can’t hear what comes next. Whatever questions begin to rise in her mind, he lets himself remain there to meet them, and answer what he can.
Her insistence that she doesn’t hate him draws a quiet huff of laughter from his nose. It’s dry, but there’s no mockery in it, and he nods with an understanding she can’t possibly know the depth of, not when he’s been listening to every failed attempt to turn him into something easier to despise. He knows how hard she’s tried, knows where the effort has gone instead, and the knowledge leaves something bitter and tender lodged behind his ribs.
This moment has found him a hundred different ways in the privacy of his own thoughts. Sometimes he’s shouted the truth at her, flung it like a weapon because she’s backed him too close to a wall. Other times it has slipped free by accident, forcing him to lie badly and claw his way back behind the secret before she could understand what she’d heard. He’s imagined clever versions too, phrases sharpened and arranged until the confession sounded like something he might survive saying. None of them have ever looked like this, though, with moonlight silvering the grass and Colt close enough that he can still feel the fading pressure of her head against his shoulder. Every line he’d rehearsed leaves him at once.
Vesper glances toward her and swallows. His lips part, close again, and for a second the only movement between them is the peppermint bark bending faintly beneath his thumb. Then he pulls in a breath and lets the truth leave without armour. "I’m a telepath, Colt." He bites the inside of his cheek and makes himself wait, resisting the instinct to rush in and soften what the words must rearrange. For once, outside the rare safety of Jack’s company, he doesn’t shutter his awareness or prepare to pretend he can’t hear what comes next. Whatever questions begin to rise in her mind, he lets himself remain there to meet them, and answer what he can.
No I don't deserve it, I don't deserve it
☆ has a pale star tattoo beneath his left eye, and freckle-sized constellations move across his skin
☽ hair changes from bleached blonde to brown
☆ telepathic: Sunlit Shadows | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
☽ hair changes from bleached blonde to brown
☆ telepathic: Sunlit Shadows | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
