contact part deux

[bouchonne]

if this were modern times byerly would probably make you listen to total eclipse of the heart before you were able to leave a message

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[coquettish_trees]

[ The breath she lets out when he takes her offered hand is the one she drew after she told him. She had taken other breaths, of course, but that one had been in her chest until now, frozen. Waiting for him to pull away inside himself to where she could not reach him anymore.

But he doesn't.

And then she realizes he hasn't. Not once since they began speaking, not any of the times she knew he would. There had been once during a swell of despair that he had reached toward her. Small, the insistent press of his hand on hers to ask her to come back, but it had been there. Her eyes widen with it, full of a kind of tentative fragile commingled joy and relief as she lets herself hold that hand more warmly.

Soft and unbidden, she cannot help herself but say— ]

You stopped.

[bouchonne]

Stopped -

[ He doesn't understand. He shakes his head. ]

[coquettish_trees]

Leaving. You—

All this while we have been speaking about such difficult things, perhaps some of the most difficult, and I have not once felt you were pulling away.

[bouchonne]

[ He does pull back now, painfully self-conscious. His brow and mouth are tense. ]

I didn't - realize that I do, normally.

[coquettish_trees]

It... feels so, but—

[ I should not have said anything, why did I— ]

I do not want to be something you have need to protect yourself from. I am—

[ She smooths the cloth that covers his shoulder with her thumb, and smiles: small, tentative, a little sad. ]

I am sorry. That I am.

[bouchonne]

No. You're not. I -

[ He runs a hand over his face, frustrated and unhappy. ]

I'm simply no good for this. I am sorry. It is my fault.

[coquettish_trees]

If it is mine to forgive then I forgive it.

[ She runs her fingertips down the side of his face, gentler than he had been with it. ]

I am not good at this either, for all that I wish to be.