The minute we hit green grass I can't keep my hands off you. To see if you're real, to make sure you aren't going to disappear like so many times before. And I can feel the pulse in your neck and wrists, by your hipbones, a slow and steady beat, all in the places you feel most fragile. Like you really are still Christopher, human boy blood heart. It makes me calm. It makes everything real. It's like switching from black and white to color, or coming up from underwater and breathing again, stepping out from the desert and into an oasis. Relief. Base and pure and overwhelming. It was a lot like kissing you for the first time.
"Christopher." Love you. Missed you. Missed you so much. Couldn't sleep without you drooling all over my pillow and breathing in my ear, hands all over beneath the blankets, that first stale sour kiss in the morning. You always kissed like you were going to steal my soul away along with my breath.
When you were here I swore you drove me crazy. Now I see you kept me sane. Three months without you is a lifetime, Chris. I don't want to do it again. You're supposed to save me. That's what you do. I need you. I need you when I'm broken and bleeding and too stubborn to let anyone help me. I need you when I'm a witch's pawn, when I'm a goddess' General, when I'm just a face in the crowd. I need you when I'm awake, when I'm asleep, in my dreams and wrapped around me when I wake up.
I thought I was in love with Senna because she held me together. I'm in love with you for the opposite reason, because the truth is sometimes I need to fall apart. Everworld David needs space from Old World David. General David needs to get away from mindless soldier David. Ten-year-old David needs to be able to cower under his sheets without seventeen-year-old David yelling at him for being a pussy. You were the only place I could separate myself, let all the pieces of me fall apart and put them back together later, no problem. You were the only one who could deal with all the pieces and still love the fucked-up whole they made.
You always pushed me. You always needed more. You wanted to hang out with me touch me kiss me sleep with me sleep next to me. You needed. I didn't ask to need you back, Christopher. You did that to me. Pushed so close and so fast, clung so tightly to me. You wanted everything and I gave it to you because I had no idea I'd miss it so much when it was gone. When you were gone.
I'm not you, Christopher. I can't drown myself in a bottle. Believe me, I tried. You were my bottle, Chris. My escape. That was you. That was you. And I need you to be again.
Please?