Glass Miles

PART TWO: DREAMS LEFT UNSPOKEN

There is a soft smile on his face as he sleeps, and it twists his heart something terrible to see it. Because when was the last time that smile was there for him, and him alone?

He can hold him close and pretend, but he knows the smile is not for him no matter how much he wishes.

And oh how he wishes because during the day all he has is that cold parody of a smile, that dark cynicism and amusement that he only bears because he knows at night—

—he can pretend this smile is his.

But during the day, when the empty spaces are filled with so many unspoken words and those that aren't empty are filled with words hurled like knives, this memory is all he has to cling to, because though he can pretend the words aren't his—

—they aren't they're his, the him that laughs and brushes it off like it's nothing even when they're breaking him inside—

—he knows they are. And he knows that this smile will never be his.

His fingertips thread through his hair, gentle as can be, brush against pale cheeks and even paler eyelids, and finally ghost over pale, smiling lips that never smile for him.

"Won't you smile for me?" he whispers into the empty silence. "Just once?"

There is no answer—he did not expect one. There is only the sad, heavy silence, broken only by their soft breathing.

A word tumbles into the silence, the softest ghost of syllables, and his breathing catches. Suddenly, the skin beneath his fingers burns, and he snatches them back, eyes wide and wild.

He flees because that smile hurts more than anything else and he knows that if he has to see it a moment longer he will break. He never sees the smile fade and pale eyes stare into the darkness, pale eyes that close on a single tear and later wake wide and wild and afraid.

Pale hands grasp the darkness searching for something to hold, something to drag him out of the memories that threaten the edges of his mind, but he finds nothing but cold emptiness and the fading echoes of words never spoken in daylight.

Those same hands fist in the empty sheets and he smiles, a broken, empty thing, and he wonders if the other can tell the difference. Or is a smile a smile, after all?

"I would smile for you," he breathes into the silence. "If I knew you'd love me even when there's nothing to smile for."

- fin -