Liam isn't quite sure why he feels like this, why his heart races and his face flushes every time he sees the young Rainsworth. He is young still, his newly acquired spectacles too big for him. They slip from his nose almost constantly, tumbling to the floor if he doesn't catch them in time. He hates them, hates how often they fall and break, hates how they need frequent cleaning, hates how Sharon puts them on and giggles at how fuzzy they make her world.
But at the same time, he finds he loves them. He can hide behind them when his friend's soft amber eyes make his heart skip a beat. He notices details he never did before, like how her bangs are slightly longer on the left than the right, or how she has one small mole, too tiny to notice without ages of gazing at her perfect pale skin, by her left ear. Above all, he loves to watch her face change as she laughs, her little pink lips curling up and button nose scrunching.
He finds his glasses make the words he writes clearer to him, so he can finally be useful to his employers. When he isn't studying or reading, he tried his hand at poetry, writing sonnets and stories for this little noble girl who makes his chest feels so strange. In his spare time, he acts out imaginary scenarios of riding into the courtyard on a white steed, to where she waits, pining, and dropping onto one knee to profess the feelings trapped in his mind, a rose in his mouth and his hand extended toward her.
But he realizes that such things are meant only for books, and besides, his words are not yet poetic enough anyway. He is hardly old enough to identify such feelings as love beyond that of a brother. So for the time being he contents himself with the long, halcyon days with her. White horses and roses can wait.
