my bones are caving in

It's in the stars
it's been written in the scars on our hearts

"You… punched Korbin."

He repeated the words slowly, almost afraid to confirm them. His immediate response, any other time, might have been to ask her if the boy was OK, if she was OK, and then to try and explain that she should not have done that - but today, when his anxiety had been on a rollercoaster ride and he was in a hazy afterglow of coming back down from a rocky high?

He laughed.

It was an ugly sort of snort at first, as he tried to rein it in, to hold it back. But the laugh burst out through his lips anyway, because it was so ridiculous, the whole idea of it, of everything that had happened today. He was laughing, far more hearty than the chuckles that usually rumble through his chest, tears pressing against his shut eyelids as he just tried to make sense of it all.

He didn't know how long he laughed for, but it felt good to just let it out, to wipe the tears from his eyes and to press another kiss against her temple, giving her waist another squeeze as he calmed down again.

"I'm sorry - I probably shouldn't be laughing," he said when he caught his breath again. "But I think I'm mostly jealous about the fact that I can't hit for shit." He takes another breath, and moves to gently hold her bruised hand in his again, looking at it more closely this time.

"Are you alright? Is… you didn't hurt him too bad, right?" Because despite everything, Chuy didn't want to see the boy hurt.

That we're not broken just bent
and we can learn to love again

CHULANE