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They’re just meant to hurt. Like a paper cut—a tiny sting that meant nothing more than I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive.
Other people existed only in Thomas’s periphery, but the Perrault twins eclipsed his entire galaxy. There was something intoxicating about meaning that much to one person. Addictive.
Get ahold of yourself. But he didn’t know what part of himself was safe to hold on to.
Andrew wanted that—to be so full of fierce life it spilled over his edges.
“I can handle you,” Andrew said. He’d meant to say I can handle it. A smile broke across Thomas’s face, all sharp edges and cleverness. Andrew loved it.
An extraordinary amount of intimacy lay in exchanging art. Not for critique and not for class. Just to look. To feel. To understand each other.
“You’ll cut me open and find a garden of rot where my heart should be.”
“When I cut you open,” Andrew finally said, “all I’ll find is that we match.”
Andrew should have said nothing. He needed Thomas, but he’d always known Thomas didn’t need him in the same way.
Is it that wrong to fight for yourself if no one else will?”
Thomas did not loosen his hand over Andrew’s mouth, but inexplicably he turned and pressed his lips against Andrew’s filth-streaked forehead. It lasted half a second. A kiss, but not. Comfort, but useless. The promise, I’m here, without words.
The princess’s silver tears fell like rain upon the coffin. True love’s kiss should wake him, but she had tried seven times and nothing had happened. Behind the princess stood her brother, a poet with soft lips and soft moss for hair. He whispered, “Let me try.” But no one heard. They buried the fairy prince alone.
Andrew didn’t know. Life didn’t fit against his skin and it never had and sometimes everything was just too much.
“I like how you are. There’s an entire world of ink and magic stuffed inside your head, and I think it’s beautiful. I just wish everything didn’t hurt you so much.”
All I care about right now is you.
Just once, Andrew wanted to step outside of his skin and be someone who could talk easily, fit next to other people and not want to take himself apart and analyze everything he’d done wrong.
“You’re not the monster.” But all Andrew could think was if he could crack open Thomas’s ribs right then and fit his whole self inside him, he would.
He needed Thomas, needed their lungs sewn inside each other so he could remember how to breathe.
“I told a story.” Andrew gripped Thomas like he’d never let go. “I killed them with ink.”
It would answer one thing and ruin everything else.
Liar. But he’d always been one. Instead, he whispered, “Would you die for me?” Thomas sounded warm and cottony with sleep. “Of course I would.”
Thomas, the beautiful wreck.
Thomas said, “It’s ruining me.” And Andrew couldn’t look at him. “You could cut me open and devour everything that I am,” Thomas said, ragged and thin. “I would let you. I’d ask you to. But I have no idea what it means to you. What … what I mean to you.”
“Of course I like you.”
“Damn it, Andrew.” His voice had gone uneven. “Can’t you tell that I’m in … that I like you? Because I-I like you a lot, okay?”
“Everything inside me is in ruins,” Thomas said. “For you.”
He wanted to say, You are my everything, too. He wanted to say, I don’t exist without you. He wanted to say, Kiss me.
I’ve loved you since then.
The remains of a battlefield lay in his wake, broken swords and hollyhock crowns left to decay among piles of bones. But the sword plunged through his stomach was his fault. All Thomas had done was ask to love a boy lost in fairy tales, and the boy had ordered him punished.
The boy who loved no one loved him.
“I think,” Andrew whispered, “it sucks to be ace.” “I think,” Lana said, “the world sucks for making you feel that way.”
When she’s upset, she cares for people in, like, angry revenge at the world for being crap.”
“But shy people don’t make good friends. Neither of them can keep the conversation going.” “Silence is okay with me,” Chloe said.
“Have you ever wanted to be something else so … so someone would still want you?”
“It’s shitty that it has to be luck to be loved as you are,” Andrew said.
He knew how to ruin Thomas the same way Thomas knew how to ruin him.
Sometimes there was no stopping pain. There was just seeing how much you could swallow before it spilled out your throat.
I loved her like she was my family. But I love you … like you’re my whole world.”
I just don’t want to be alone anymore. I just—I’m so scared of being alone.”
Once a prince took a knife to his chest and carved himself open, showing ribs like mossy tree roots, his heart a bruised and wretched thing beneath. No one would want a heart like his. But he’d still cut it out and given it away.
He gave his heart to the October boy with one thousand and one freckles and hair of autumn leaves. But almost at once, the heart began to corrode, and the prince turned into a monster. They should bury it, the prince decided, and see what it would grow into.
They decided to bury the heart deep in the woods, for monsters were ravenous things, not to be trusted. This way the October boy would be safe.
Within the ground, the heart grew into a tree and the monster lived among the branches and forgot he had ever been a prince. But the October boy didn’t flee. He climbed the tree and kissed the lonesome monster until it devoured him whole.
This was how they were, bones broken and mended crookedly, each entwined with the other.
“If you cut open my chest”—Andrew’s voice was wrecked—“you’ll find a garden of rot where my heart should be.”
don’t care how dark the world is for you. I’ll hold out my hand until you find it, and I won’t let go.”
You’re strong enough. You’re brave enough.”
