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his eyes are glossed over.
he doesn't seem to be present in the moment. normally, this wouldn't worry you. he's like this often- staring off into the distance, his face resting on his hand, and an unreadable expression on his face but an undeniable despondence in his brown eyes.
this is different, though.
the expression on his face is readable.
if you look close enough, its almost...
content.
you are so aware of the reflection of light in his gaze, of the illumination of his side profile, and the corners of his mouth threatening to curve into a smile. you sense warmth in him- true warmth, in the way that he used to carry when he was soft and amenable, when he still had faith in the world and comfort within himself. it has been far too long since you’ve seen him like this.
you just take it in for a moment. you understand that there is a very real possibility that you are horribly misreading the situation, and only imagining that warmth inside of him, for fault of your boundless love for him and your ever present belief that he will be okay. just in case you’re wrong, you want to take it in now, and you take mental photos of the curves of his cheek and the crook of his jaw and the look in his eyes that you wish would just stay there.
you stay like that for a while before you break the silence.
“you okay?”
two words. two little words often exchanged between you two. usually, the reply was a muffled sob or the clenching of his fists or the imperceptible look of anguish and raw despair in his synonymously vastly empty eyes.
he turns to look at you.
for a second, you are afraid.
but he only smiles. a real smile. not a smile earned from cheap dirty jokes, or a threatening smile shot across the room at someone (usually jesse) as a silent plead for laconism, or a smile in the dark corners of a dimly lit basement that sparks with excitement at the thought of risk, of reward, of such cruelly premeditated violence.
this one is real. this is the kind of smile earned from comfortable silence and the familiar scratching of pen against paper and brief stares at the stars whilst the quiet is filled by explanations of how such things came to be.
it’s real, and your fear rinses away, baptizes, in the holy water of the happiness in his eyes and the love in his face.
“of course.” he speaks.
his voice is smooth, and mellow. slow and thoughtful. full of the love of a million lifetimes. the kind of love that you can only achieve after so long without warmth, the kind of love that is so inconceivably smoothly melded with traces of sanguine catharsis and yet a wavering kind of emotional infidelity and a modicum of formless bloodlust, unusually thermal around you, lulling, in its own way.
you are aware, now, of just how sweet and gentle his voice is when it’s not laced with venom, with mal intent, or when it’s not breaking as he tries to choke back tears that could never even being to gather in the first place, a muted and rushed penance for something he would undoubtedly lose in the cadence of his almost jovial sense of such emotional carnage anyways, an atonement that will never come.
he looks like himself again.
for the first time, you can almost forget about his jagged edges and the sinews of muscle, of torrid and tangible flesh that have been ripped apart over and over again with little more than a raise of his eyebrows or a wave of his hand or a parting of his lips.
for the first time, you believe him.