Chapter Text
Timothy James Kippen is a thousand and one paradoxes wrapped into one; an enigma tied into a knot of broken superstitions and promises kept without fail. He is without a doubt his mother's son, and his sister's brother.
Timothy James Kippen's favorite color is blue. If you were to ask him why, he'd say it's because blue is the color of the sky and of the ocean, of possibility and languid happiness.
But he won't tell you that blue is laced into his mother's eyes. That the first gift she ever gave her daughters lay in the clear blue shining in their eyes. He won't tell you that he's spent years wishing for the crystal blue eyes he wasn't given. Instead, he fell into green.
Timothy James Kippen's least favorite color is green. He'll never tell you why, but he knows it's because the very green he holds in his eyes was a gift from the one person he's never wanted a gift from. The one gift he could never return, etched permanently into his eyes.
TJ is woven out of threads made of midnight walks in the dark, 11:11 wishes, movie ticket stubs, and the few pages precious enough to have been torn from the spines of their journals. He is shelves upon shelves of books, all adorned with notes in black ink along the margins, and countless weathered atlases and world maps, each marked with places he wants to go, things he wants to see, people he wants to meet.
He is warm, gentle, blue cotton. But he's been dyed green. The dye has stiffened him, tangled the threads that weave through him. He's slowly washing the green away, softening again. But with time, maybe the dye will fade completely. Maybe he'll be warm and kind and loving again. Maybe he'll be blue again. But for now, he's settled for teal.
TJ pulls petals from the centers of daisies and daffodils, watches them fall to the ground as his fears fall away too. He makes wishes on dandelions, blows the white fuzz away without thinking. He watches stars fall from the sky, wishes he could hold one in his hand, no matter the consequences the occurrence would hold.
He climbs through windows at midnight, falls in love with caution, not fear, and kisses like his life depends on it. Though, then again, maybe he believes that, maybe he genuinely understands the way a single kiss can change the way the world spins on its very axis.
Every time he breaks, he is the one to stitch himself back together. He picks himself back up every time he falls, every time he falls over a shoelace. He's never needed to fall into anyone's arms; has always held himself up.
TJ sings under his breath, wastes time lost in the pages of a favorite novel, and falls asleep late at night. He watches the sun as it sets over the horizon, traces constellations with his eyes, and searches for Mercury in the night sky. He reads the same pages over and over again, tracing over the paper beneath his fingers as he watches worlds form around him.
Falling in love with TJ Kippen is like letting your feet slip from underneath you, and trusting he'll be there to catch you. Trusting he'll wrap you in his arms and tell you that everything is okay. TJ is always there to catch you, will always remind you that everything is going to be okay.
Timothy James Kippen is imperfect and perfect all the same; he is sunshine and moonlight and rain falling in warm, comforting sheets. He is everything wrapped into a perfect bow, complete with lost threads and frayed edges. He is broken, shattered into a thousand pieces.
I think I'm in love with every piece.