an angel kissing on a sinner, tessa

[thomas]

and I'm the kind of love it hurts to look at, but once I was enough to make you try
now, I'm underneath the rubble, trying not to feel the trouble.

He knows that he holds her back.
He also knows that she is too kind to tell him as much.

But he is grateful for the quiet, patient way she falls into step beside him without him having to ask her to. He is grateful that she is soft and lovely and that she instills a new kind of confidence in him just by walking next to him. He should be her protector. He should rage against whatever injustices befall her, gnash his teeth at anyone who casts a sidelong glance in her direction. Instead, she is forced to protect him. From himself and the world at large.

The silence is thick but not uncomfortable. It settles around him like a warm blanket. It does not occur to him that the heat has anything to do with the season, happy enough to blame it on the warmth that spreads through him any time his sister is near.

She speaks and he nods without tearing his focus away from the ground unfurling ahead of them. He swallows thickly, allows himself to imagine all of the things she will see someday. With her brilliance and her wings and a thirst for life he’s certain she swallows for his benefit.

“I think you’ll see more of it than I will,” he says, quiet. And he’s all right with that, he thinks. Because he can live vicariously through her. He can listen in breathless wonder as she tells him about all of the magnificent things she’s seen. He’ll smile and his heart will swell for her because she deserves it. She deserves the whole world and everything in it.

“I can’t wait to hear your stories about it.” He smiles then, chances a glance at her before he shifts his attention back to the next place he’ll put his feet.

THOMAS

— and you don't care for me enough to cry —