and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding
that never stopped exploding
At first he thinks only that the whole scene is beautiful in a way that a more poetic version of himself may have loved to describe but the Andras of here and now can't find the words. He only sees Pilate lick his lips because he's looking. He only sees the hard edge of his smile become gaussian and mellow because it fills him like fear, first the lungs then the throat. How does a body know if it or the snow is run through by the rain?
Pilate looks like a dream, or a statue with even the veins carved into perfect shape. Andras looks lost, like he cannot remember the last time he wanted to turn someone's pages. Maybe never.
For a moment they are watching each other in perfect silence, two boys in the street with knots in their throats, barely breathing through their lungs crushed by cinderblocks, one barely smiling and one that doesn't even try. If hell has a name Andras is sure it's the space between them, small as it is--close enough to feel the heat, close enough that he's claustrophobic and hot.
Attention, Pilate says.
Just like you.
Then he grins like the devil and Andras' heart crawls straight out of his mouth.
First is the searching, again, as if Pilate will spit up the reason, the answer, before Andras can even think to ask it. For a second he holds his breath, imagining--something nameless but tangible, though he doesn't know what it is until he leans forward again, so close they are almost touching but not quite, barely atoms from skin to skin, and another arc of static flicks over his wings.
"Then take it." he says, barely a whisper. What little self control he has is groaning under the pressure of not reaching in, not knowing what it feels like to touch Pilate's cheek, his jaw, his neck. He forces a breath to keep from combusting. "I dare you."
@
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
