I love you. I love you. I love you.
Yes, he says, yes. As he pours himself into me.
“Oh Micha, really? All this time? Everything you have done for me was done in hate?” Thomas was silent a moment. “I don’t ... I can’t ... understand it. How could you have been so kind, if you hated me?”
Micha shuddered, self-loathing trickling through his veins as thick as poison. “Kind? I’ve never been kind. I’ve done nothing but use you and lie to you.”
“But I lied to you. I lied to you about Edward, and I tried to pretend I did not desire you and that my heart was pure. I am every bit as corrupt as you would have me be.”
“But you’re not,” cried Micha. “That’s the fucking problem. I wish you were, but you’re not.”
“Those are not the words of a man who could hate me.” The sharp edge of pain was fading from Thomas’s voice, but Micha could still not bring himself to face him. “I am no saint, Micha, and I would not wish to be. I tried to carve myself into the image of one, but you showed me what a hollow man it left me.”
“Please. Please, stop it. I’ve done nothing for you.”
Suddenly, Thomas’s arms were around him. Micha tried to resist and then to pull away, but he lacked true conviction and his body betrayed him. He leaned into Thomas as if he could not have stood alone for another second, his head falling back against Thomas’s shoulder. And when Thomas spoke, his lips moved against the edgeof Micha’s cheek like an ever-forming kiss. “Nobody has ever asked me about my dreams before. Nobody has laughed with me. Nobody has told me the names of the stars.”
“God,” muttered Micha. “Does your life so lack for love?”
“I don’t know. Mostly yes, I think. But I cherish what you have given me, Micha. I adore the world through your eyes.”
“How could you?”
“You see so much beauty. I was blind before I met you.”
Micha shook his head, his hair tangling with Thomas’s, like strands of shadow. “Don’t talk like this. It’s pathetic. This isn’t love, it’s barely the shadow of it.”
But Thomas would not be silent. “You comforted me when I grieved. You tended me when I bled. If these are the actions of a man who hates me, I want nothing of love.”
Micha had thought himself immune to shame, but now he felt its sting as deeply and bitterly as he ever had. It was strange, and oddly painful, to see the moments he had cast away as carelessly as grains of sand made precious in another’s eyes. Regret stirred in his heart like ashes. He had wanted Thomas’s love as a thief desires a trinket, a thing coveted but not earned. He turned slowly in the yielding circle of Thomas’s arms. “I don’t hate you. I couldn’t. I can’t.” He pressed his face against Thomas’s neck. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Thomas’s fingers coiled lightly in his hair. “There’s no need to apologise, my dear, dear friend. Can’t you see how much you mean to me? How much you’ve done?”
“But it’s so very little,” whispered Micha brokenly. “And you think it so very much. I wish ... I wish I was different. I wish I was better.”
“That’s not the first time you’ve said that. I would have you as you are.” Thomas lifted Micha’s head. He slipped a hand between their bodies and let it rest against Micha’s pounding heart. “This is the man who saved me. This is the man I love.”
“But you don’t know the half of it.”
“Then tell me, and I’ll listen, and love you still.”
Micha nodded and met Thomas’s eyes. “I’ll teach you the names of all the stars,” he said unsteadily. “You’ll be so fucking sick of them.”
“Never.” Thomas’s lips curled into the faintest of smiles.
Micha’s fingers clutched at him clumsily. “You can beat me at chess. All the time. I’ll fill your house with flowers. I’ll draw you terrible landscapes. I’ll learn how to knit and make you a scarf for the winter. And I’ll ... I’ll lie in your arms all night, I’ll wait for you all day, I’ll ... I’ll—”
“Micha.” Thomas silenced him with the sweetest of kisses. “Micha, please, it’s all right, I understand.”
Micha was breathless from his own babbling. “Understand what?”
Thomas’s smile grew radiant. “That you love me too.”
There was a long silence. Then Micha nodded. “With all my ruined heart.”
Isidore, oh Isidore, oh please, please.
His body is a trembling velvet weight on mine, and I am as wild as a trapped lark. He stirs, heavy-eyed, his hair falling over his face in damp, golden rivulets, smiles, and kisses my helpless mouth.
