When You Were Pixels Quotes

“I loved you even when you forgot me.

And—for a little while—you loved me back.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I gave you all my secrets, and you lost them all. You lost a lot of things.

But the treasure of it was in the giving, not the keeping.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I know you’ve forgotten me, but I’ll remember you as long as I live.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“You were the monster, but all I could see was the boy.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“You won't remember me. You won't need me anymore.
You will leave me again.
I forgive you. I forgave you. I will always forgive you.
You should know that for a little while, you were not alone.Not alone.
I loved you when you were pixels on a screen.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“For one unbelievable moment, the emptiness— the ache —that terrible hollow of desolation I’d lived with all this time was just – gone.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I watched you roll off me and step away from the bed in silence, but when the heat of your body was gone, I wanted it back.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“That’s why I was calm. When you woke me in the middle of the night with your hand around my throat, and I thought I was going to die for bringing you home—that I had given my life to lie down next to a murderer—that’s why I was calm.

Because all I was thinking in that moment was that it was worth it.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“You’re safe, here.”

“But you are not,” you whispered. “Not ever. I forget. I forget and then I’ll—I could kill you.”

When I didn’t reply, you dropped your head again.

I almost missed it when you murmured, “I always kill them, in the end.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I couldn’t make myself move from the bed. To reach for you. I’d known this moment was coming, and now that it had arrived I found I had no strength in my limbs.

Only my voice. Only words.

Asking you to stay.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“They’d come for you, and this time they’d come with weapons.

I was afraid of that. For you. But not of you.

Never afraid of you.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“You should know that for a little while, you were not alone.

Not alone.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“All the enormous machines that keep full Citizens comfortable far above us in their glittering towers, all the infrastructure of power, of fuel, of commerce and industry—all of it happens below. Made possible with our hands. With our bodies.

With our lives.

I would have done anything to escape.

I got my chance. I made it out—but the price was loneliness.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I’d removed all but my underclothes, that night I took you home. Took off all the drab corporate synthetics as if stripping my armor to uncover the vulnerable man I was underneath it.

The man who needed to be near you.

I’d pressed my back into your solid length, eyes wet as I fell asleep.

That’s why I was calm.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“It's like a—like a video panel, you know that? Your face. I don’t think you realize how much of what happens inside you that can be seen in your face.

Maybe it was just me. I paid attention to you.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“Not your distress. Never that. I loved— I loved being there. Next to you. The pile of limbs that was Us. Together in the same bed. Even if it meant waking up with a few new bruises.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I was asked a series of questions.

What did you see? Why are there no files in the video archives? How did the assassin escape?

I lied every time.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“The second day, I watched you suffer through one of your nightmares, but this one was worse than I’d seen before.

You called out another man’s name.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I didn’t know what to do.

I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I was supposed to do.

But I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“The outside of you had peeled away, and I could see your insides as clear as my own hand in my lap, aching to reach for you.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“My skin hungered for you. You were warm, and alive, and in my bed, and I wanted you so bad I could feel the ripple of need on the pads of my fingertips, on the palms of my hands, on the skin of my back, at the base of my cock, inside my ass—

I wanted the taste of you in my mouth.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I wanted to take your hand into mine and kiss it.

I never dared.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“Things end. Everything ends. But for a few days in a city full of hunger, and avarice, and alienation—in this fucked-up mess of a life spent wandering in the dark without a hand to hold on to— I was not alone. And neither were you.”
― Julio Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“You let me set the water in the shower, and followed me into the booth to stand there with me under the warm spray. You kept your head down, not looking me in the eyes—though if you were shy, I couldn’t tell. You had no reason to be. You know what you look like.

I know you don’t remember what we did.

I want to tell you.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“Undertown. You maybe don’t remember it. Your clothes don’t smell of it. Of the filth, the rot. The stinking hell of vapor and grime. The warren of hovels and the millions of us starving in them, defending whatever pathetic collection of things we call ‘ours’—sometimes to the death, yet still doing little more than waiting to die.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I’m nothing, here. A lowly surveillance analyst. Being the hero could have meant something good for me. Could have changed my whole life.

I could have done it. I should have done it.

I sat there and I thought about you, instead.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels