Stephen snorts; not all the way to a laugh, just a short huffed breath, but the half-smile’s there in his face buried in her neck.
“I try to be a lifelong student, but no, I agree.”
It’s so odd. This isn’t how he intended or wanted to start the day, and this conversation would have been unutterably harder with anyone else. With Christine, even, who’s likely too good of a person for it. It’s that recognition which makes it easier: here are my ugly edges, here are where we align. Here is where I, too, have been spiteful and awful and selfish and monstrous. I understand.
His arm’s slung over her ribcage, a reassuring weight. His voice is a little muffled, but with an attempt at a clean scalpel-cut lancing the emotional tension and grief sitting heavy in the air and thick in their throats and hearts: “You can put it down today, at least. All you need to remember is that my middle name’s Vincent.”
no subject
“I try to be a lifelong student, but no, I agree.”
It’s so odd. This isn’t how he intended or wanted to start the day, and this conversation would have been unutterably harder with anyone else. With Christine, even, who’s likely too good of a person for it. It’s that recognition which makes it easier: here are my ugly edges, here are where we align. Here is where I, too, have been spiteful and awful and selfish and monstrous. I understand.
His arm’s slung over her ribcage, a reassuring weight. His voice is a little muffled, but with an attempt at a clean scalpel-cut lancing the emotional tension and grief sitting heavy in the air and thick in their throats and hearts: “You can put it down today, at least. All you need to remember is that my middle name’s Vincent.”