When they're in Paul's hands, he stares at the glasses like he doesn't understand what they are, which is ridiculous. He's seen Gideon wear them a hundred times if he's seen them once, an elegant fusion of style and function that he only ever thinks of as hers. He turns them over in his hands delicately as he leans back against her, throat working silently.
The world slips behind a veil of smoke when he slides them into place, fingers light and unfamiliar on their arms. He turns towards her with his chin tucked downward, half-shy and half-furtive, although he couldn't name why for either, or what the nuanced difference between them is. (He could; it's better if he doesn't, even to himself.)
"You can laugh," he says, gratitude welling in a hundred softly mingled voices, quiet like the verge of tears, "I must look terrible."
But he thinks he might look less terrible than he did, and it's less terrible for him to look at her like this, the unsettling blue toxicity partly filtered. He lets a little, settling breath escape him, a strand of miserable tension slackening across his shoulders.
Something Paul is learning about calamities is this: in the aftermath, you continue, whether you want to or not. The flesh of your body makes its demands felt eventually, and with the glasses on, he looks at the assembled snacks and remembers that he's hungry.
"It's not going to be a very good shirt," he warns her, reaching for a little bundled bag of something or other, because she lent him her glasses, and that means something he's still turning over and over in his hands while they sit on his face.
no subject
The world slips behind a veil of smoke when he slides them into place, fingers light and unfamiliar on their arms. He turns towards her with his chin tucked downward, half-shy and half-furtive, although he couldn't name why for either, or what the nuanced difference between them is. (He could; it's better if he doesn't, even to himself.)
"You can laugh," he says, gratitude welling in a hundred softly mingled voices, quiet like the verge of tears, "I must look terrible."
But he thinks he might look less terrible than he did, and it's less terrible for him to look at her like this, the unsettling blue toxicity partly filtered. He lets a little, settling breath escape him, a strand of miserable tension slackening across his shoulders.
Something Paul is learning about calamities is this: in the aftermath, you continue, whether you want to or not. The flesh of your body makes its demands felt eventually, and with the glasses on, he looks at the assembled snacks and remembers that he's hungry.
"It's not going to be a very good shirt," he warns her, reaching for a little bundled bag of something or other, because she lent him her glasses, and that means something he's still turning over and over in his hands while they sit on his face.