He had unbelievably straight, white teeth, and looking into the shine of his smile, she wanted nothing more than to believe like he seemed to.
"You know, if we play our cards right we can get you outta this." he says.
Out of what she wanted to know, her skin, her body? Away from the voices that whispered
like a hand sweeping against a leather jacket, that takes a hold of it even though you know that doing that will make you look like even more of a child than you already are? But it's so hard to see him go, and you don't know how long you can do that without saying something. Saying something like don't go, or I think I like you in that way that could possibly be that dangerous, nebulous thing called love. I like you in that love type way. But you don't say it, because it is totally as stupid as it sounds, and what could you possibly know about love anyway?
"You're sweet." That, is instead what you say. Another one of those non committal, placatory things. Because you can't stand to tell him that it's never going to happen. Not to succumb to the utterly abysmal nature of life under the plate, but you have long accepted that you will probably be in your garden forever. Fifty years old, maybe, with dirty cheeks and on your knees. You are going to die on your knees. And you are going to die hearing other dead people.
"No, I'm serious Aer. One day, Ima take you with me." your breath catches, despite everything.
"Where?"
"Gongaga of course, the countryside is really fertile." He nods, and cradles your cheek in his hand.
He has such a gentle touch, it's almost possible to forget the sinew underneath his clothes, the poison rushing through his veins, passed the purple specs in his eyes. "You'd probably disappear in it like some kind of ninja." he laughs. "Because the air...it always smells like flowers." he finishes quietly.
There shouldn't be anything particularly seductive about that, but there is. But at the same time, it makes everything inside your chest clench up, and you want to shake him and tell him to stop talking.
"That sounds nice." you say. Because in the end you'd rather see that impossible idealism sparkling in his eyes than not at all. He pulls you closer and leans forward and his other hand sinks lower into the dirt, and you watch it rise over his knuckles until his lips are on yours, just barely touching.
"I'm serious about that, you know. One day you an' me, we're gonna…" But you can't listen to any more of that right now, and so you kiss him like he should've kissed you moments ago. He likes it best anyway when he isn't the one to start it, he probably feels less like he's taking advantage, even though that's completely crazy. Because there are days when certain looks of his, little things like the lingering bits of his accent just get you, make you glad he is such a decent man.
Decent, not perfect. But Gaia, if it doesn't seem like some kind of fairytale they way things just open for him. You own self pity makes you feel guilty, selfish for not only and immediately feeling happy for him. You are happy for him. But it's always more complicated than that, and as you kiss him you hear those familiar voices, and it kind of sounds like the world falling open for him. It kind of sounds like the walls closing in on you. And somehow you just know how it ends. And it sounds like dead silence.