[It's a verbal rejection, though not harsh - careful, like gently collecting a child's hands away from sharp objects, and he's answering her but he might mean them both. This is dangerous. She wants so badly to be enough; he wants so badly not to need so much. But though his muscles are tense beneath her hands - as he always is, as though he requires more tension just to be upright, just to move forward, than most people - where she touches, the trembling slowly stops. He does not try to pull away. For a moment he does not lean closer, but he does not pull away.
And then he does, a huff of breath out and a deeper inhale back in, and he bends closer to her, follows the sound of too many hearts when the glass cracks. She wraps an arm around him and welcomes him in, and he bends to her, carefully fitting himself in alongside her, knee to knee and hip to hip and side to side until he's curled, his nose pressed in along the side of her neck, breathing in deeply, the visceral smell of the external heart only marginally capable of masking the scent of Anya beneath it.
No, he didn't mean she needed to do that, to be more than she is. He told Alex once that Manticore gave him knives, and he swallowed them when he left so he could keep them with him but out of sight; they have been there ever since, carving at him from the inside, gut and heart and mind, but he'd thought he'd gotten a better handle on them. He thought he'd learned to manage himself better, to keep from hurting himself or from hurting others. Lately, though, it's there again. It always will be, as long as he is alive.
He knows that, and draws in a hiccup of breath, fails to notice the first tears pooling hot between where the skin of his cheek touches the skin of her collarbone.] She'll watch over us both.
She has to. We are hers. [This lost prince, and this Barge princess.]
no subject
[It's a verbal rejection, though not harsh - careful, like gently collecting a child's hands away from sharp objects, and he's answering her but he might mean them both. This is dangerous. She wants so badly to be enough; he wants so badly not to need so much. But though his muscles are tense beneath her hands - as he always is, as though he requires more tension just to be upright, just to move forward, than most people - where she touches, the trembling slowly stops. He does not try to pull away. For a moment he does not lean closer, but he does not pull away.
And then he does, a huff of breath out and a deeper inhale back in, and he bends closer to her, follows the sound of too many hearts when the glass cracks. She wraps an arm around him and welcomes him in, and he bends to her, carefully fitting himself in alongside her, knee to knee and hip to hip and side to side until he's curled, his nose pressed in along the side of her neck, breathing in deeply, the visceral smell of the external heart only marginally capable of masking the scent of Anya beneath it.
No, he didn't mean she needed to do that, to be more than she is. He told Alex once that Manticore gave him knives, and he swallowed them when he left so he could keep them with him but out of sight; they have been there ever since, carving at him from the inside, gut and heart and mind, but he'd thought he'd gotten a better handle on them. He thought he'd learned to manage himself better, to keep from hurting himself or from hurting others. Lately, though, it's there again. It always will be, as long as he is alive.
He knows that, and draws in a hiccup of breath, fails to notice the first tears pooling hot between where the skin of his cheek touches the skin of her collarbone.] She'll watch over us both.
She has to. We are hers. [This lost prince, and this Barge princess.]