I need your hand but I don't want to burn it
Vesper feels the offer strike every sharpened edge inside her, friendship turning hot and acrid as it sinks through all the things she still wants and has no intention of naming tonight, and the careful neutrality he has worn around other people’s thoughts for most of his life slides back into place across his face. The urge to grind his teeth is there, along with the impulse to let out a frustrated breath and ask what other answer she expected him to give, but neither reaches the surface. He has too much practice holding still while another person’s mind says what their mouth never would, but that doesn’t make them any easier to bear.
Only moments ago, the warmth of her fingers between his had drawn up images with an ease that frightened him: leaning across the narrow space between them, tasting peppermint from her mouth, catching her by the wrist and pulling her back the way he once had when she tried to walk away from him. Those possibilities still linger, bright and bodily, but the revulsion curling around the shape of friendship cuts through them cleanly enough to remind him why reaching for any of it would be a mistake. He won’t fault her for the thoughts she never intended him to hear, not after everything he’s admitted tonight, though understanding where they come from does nothing to blunt the way they scrape against him.
When she refuses to choose, Vesper inclines his head, accepting the answer without argument. It is, at least, an answer she has made for herself, and he won’t try to pull another from her merely because uncertainty leaves him standing in the same uncomfortable dark as she is.
He watches her gather herself from the grass, all that reluctance moving through her like weight being lifted onto shoulders already worn thin, before he pushes himself upright as well. His long frame unfolds more slowly than usual, his shoulders taut beneath the combined pressure of everything still moving through her mind and everything he has finally allowed out of his own, and for a moment he stands facing her with the strange sense that the meadow has become a border neither of them knows how to cross.
His shadows answer the smallest shift of his attention, slipping soundlessly through the grass toward where the bottles had fallen earlier. They gather around the rum and the smaller vial bound against it, lifting both without disturbing the glass before carrying them back through the dark to hover near his hand. In the grand shape of what has passed between them, accepting the gift feels almost absurd, a piece of ordinary etiquette left standing amid wreckage, but leaving it behind would turn her care into one more thing he’d refused to take from her. Saying nothing would be worse. "Thanks for these," Vesper says, the words quiet and thick as he nods toward the bottles suspended in his shadows.
His gaze catches on her for a moment longer, blue searching amber as though there might still be something left to say that won’t split the night open again, but nothing safe presents itself. Turning on his heel, he starts back toward camp with his spine held rigid and his eyes lowered to the grass ahead, carrying the liquor beside him and the far heavier knowledge that, for the first time in a year, Colt no longer misunderstands why he left. It should feel like relief. Instead, every step away from her feels much the same as the first.
~FIN
Only moments ago, the warmth of her fingers between his had drawn up images with an ease that frightened him: leaning across the narrow space between them, tasting peppermint from her mouth, catching her by the wrist and pulling her back the way he once had when she tried to walk away from him. Those possibilities still linger, bright and bodily, but the revulsion curling around the shape of friendship cuts through them cleanly enough to remind him why reaching for any of it would be a mistake. He won’t fault her for the thoughts she never intended him to hear, not after everything he’s admitted tonight, though understanding where they come from does nothing to blunt the way they scrape against him.
When she refuses to choose, Vesper inclines his head, accepting the answer without argument. It is, at least, an answer she has made for herself, and he won’t try to pull another from her merely because uncertainty leaves him standing in the same uncomfortable dark as she is.
He watches her gather herself from the grass, all that reluctance moving through her like weight being lifted onto shoulders already worn thin, before he pushes himself upright as well. His long frame unfolds more slowly than usual, his shoulders taut beneath the combined pressure of everything still moving through her mind and everything he has finally allowed out of his own, and for a moment he stands facing her with the strange sense that the meadow has become a border neither of them knows how to cross.
His shadows answer the smallest shift of his attention, slipping soundlessly through the grass toward where the bottles had fallen earlier. They gather around the rum and the smaller vial bound against it, lifting both without disturbing the glass before carrying them back through the dark to hover near his hand. In the grand shape of what has passed between them, accepting the gift feels almost absurd, a piece of ordinary etiquette left standing amid wreckage, but leaving it behind would turn her care into one more thing he’d refused to take from her. Saying nothing would be worse. "Thanks for these," Vesper says, the words quiet and thick as he nods toward the bottles suspended in his shadows.
His gaze catches on her for a moment longer, blue searching amber as though there might still be something left to say that won’t split the night open again, but nothing safe presents itself. Turning on his heel, he starts back toward camp with his spine held rigid and his eyes lowered to the grass ahead, carrying the liquor beside him and the far heavier knowledge that, for the first time in a year, Colt no longer misunderstands why he left. It should feel like relief. Instead, every step away from her feels much the same as the first.
~FIN
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.
