#yeah this is absolutely projecting yeeaaahhhhh

[atlantis-just-drowned]

He couldn’t hold his tears back. His hand laid on their cheek – they looked at him almost the same way they always looked, their expression cold, neutral, if it wasn’t for the discrete, practically unnoticeable tension of their features. Sorriness. They were sorry. He could feel it as if it was his own heart tightening in his chest.

Oh, how bad he wished to tell them they didn’t have to be sorry. That it wasn’t their fault. But he couldn’t let his mind linger on the feeling without addressing every other hurt. There was so much to say. And no words to describe the loneliness and despair stabbing at every part of his body and mind. It was cryogenic liquid burning his insides. Pressing against his lungs until he would choke. And it was imprisoned in his core, chained to his soul and wrapped in satin-like silence.

What was there to do, except to shed every tear he possessed? He couldn’t imagine any single way to describe it. He could only cry and scream for all of eternity in a desperate attempt to relieve the monster clawing at his heart. But even then, his eyes would dry up and his breath would go missing before the ache would subside. And it would never be enough.

He wondered when did they stop crying. He wished he has known. He wished he has been here for them sooner; before they grew used to it. But he knew even then, he couldn’t have fixed it. Just like he couldn’t now. There was no escaping it.

“You’re…” He started before choking up a sob. Looking up at them and to the ground again as he felt himself tremble and struggled to articulate the words. “You’re in… so… much… pain…!”

Two hands came up to cup his face and tilt it up as he kept crying and crying. He couldn’t stand so much sorrow. How could they? How had they been able to keep going when their chest weighted heavier than a cold star?

When he looked at them again, a smile lit up weakly on their face, and inside of him, he felt the tiniest warmth spark – so small compared to the cold and the darkness that tried to engulf it, but so, so powerful. His gaze was frantic, desperately searching for a way to keep this relief – or was it love? – alive. For a way to make it grow big enough to eclipse the hurt forever. But there wasn’t such thing. There would never be.

His face twisted into a pained frown as he felt both of their thumbs wipe away his tears – trying to reassure him, trying to keep the misery at bay, to hide it away from him – and their eyes bore into his.

“Hush.” They smiled gently. “No reasons to cry. There will be brightness forward.”

They said it with this distant, hesitating hope that they were right. Like they refused to believe it too much. In case they would be wrong.

With all the grief and ache of their pierced heart, they looked at him like they were going to make things better, and they whispered.

“The past is behind us. We need to keep moving. Otherwise we won’t see the beauty ahead.”

And oh. He loved them. More than ever, he loved them.