Re: Lakeside night: Seven/Liam
Seven would have given a tower of manuscripts to understand what was going through the man’s head in that moment, the fragmented flicker of emotions that tugged at the outline of his mouth that he didn’t even have to see to know it was there. He felt the tickle of eyelashes against his beard, or maybe it was a ribbon twined between them as a placeholder, ruffling in the gusted sigh that stuttered out of Liam’s lungs until it frayed at the edges. He imagined that threads would start to tear loose the farther into the stacks they wandered, hand-in-hand. Umbilical binding them to safety. Apparently, it was Seven’s turn for casting wishes.
“But you’re here,” he mumbled, eyes slipped shut as he cupped one hand against the back of Liam’s head and thought about the shape of his skull under his hair, the same white as the pages that drifted around their ankles. His lips grazed the line of Liam’s eyebrow, traced the bridge of his nose, skimming down and across his cheekbone while Seven’s eyes were closed tight. Like he could pretend that this was all there was as long as they were shut. Like the mountains of pressed pulp and ink weren’t shifting tectonic and threatening to bury them, alive or dead. “I can feel you. You could never be less.”
But even as he said the words he felt the creep of an invisible fingernail along his spine. That inkling, the faraway suspicion cooking up in his gut that he was a fool and somewhere out there in the dark, a match had been put to the red phosphorus strip that ran the length of the box. “I couldn’t forget you,” he said, his voice pitched lower and sounding like sandpaper. His hands splayed against the back of the man’s shirt and felt clammy skin beneath, but he held tight. “Not gonna happen, sweetheart.”