Space

So close. They were so close. The tip of her nose brushed his; breathing light as she kept her gaze steadily on his eyes. They were such a bright blue; like the clearest lagoon water on an uncharted island. And they were so… fixated on her. As if there was nothing else in the world as fascinating to him as she was.

And by any regard that may have been true.

“No… No, you’re my equal.”

That was how he viewed her; a compliment she doubted anyone else had received. To him, she was on par; an impossible feat in itself. That was how he saw it. It was his truth. But not hers, no.

He was… the closest thing to an “equal” she would encounter. In her infinite boredom and distrust, he was the only one even close to grasping at how she worked; how that rewired, damaged brain ticked on a daily basis. He was the only one who took her chaos and destruction and found beauty in it.

She recalled the night those memories had surfaced; the waves of raw emotions washing over her in torrents. It was overwhelming; it was too much. And before long she had stood in a kitchen gleaming with shattered glass. It looked like a field of diamonds strewn before her; each piece reflecting the face of a girl who was long gone. He had found her sitting among the broken shards and had marveled at the scene, praising her “Stunning work.”

He said he could feel the emotion in what she’d done; whether it be the glass covered kitchen, or the broken corpses of the drug addicts two houses down. He had been the only one not to condemn her actions with disgust or fear; if anything he had embraced them. And she… needed that. Undoubtedly. He was her validation; her safety. Just as she was his. While she worked off of emotion; he worked to feel it. The bitter taste of despair was his drug; his euphoria. And it was known that the sweetest taste of that came from the destruction of those he held most dear.

His allure brought people to him, like moths to a flame. The relationships he built always the basis for his pyre of personal destruction. When the opportunity arose, he would seize it without hesitation, plucking the ripe fruit of despair as he brought about the physical, emotional, and mental destruction of those he held closest. But she wasn’t as simple as they were; a labyrinth of emotional barricades coupled with her understanding of him left her as a most appealing—if not unobtainable target. She could tell when the spells hit, and blatantly refused to make it anything close to easy for the boy. He knew that, and a part of him was grateful. Just like she appreciated his ability to help her calm down from a destructive fit, even at the risk of his own physical well being.

But this wasn’t a scenario where either of them was in a volatile state; something was certainly palpable in the air, but it wasn’t ruin, it wasn’t chaos and pain. It was a tension of different sorts, one that had happened multiple times a day for the last few weeks. His hands cupped her face, thumb tracing lightly along her jaw as her own arms twined around his neck. One of his hands slid down her side, resting on the small of her back to pull her further up on his lap. She found herself pressed flush against him; something—strangely enough—she didn’t mind. Any other person would have been long gone if they had so much as laid a hand on her.

The mere thought of contact with… people, was nothing short of appalling, if not panic-inducing. But he was the exception. Perhaps it was the mutual understanding; perhaps it was a strange desire she kept securely pressed into the darkest corner at the back of her mind recently. A curious thrill had grasped her senses during these encounters; a hint of a rush when he would mutter brief replies to her in a low tone, and her fingers would find the front of his shirt of their own accord. Nothing seemed quite as appealing as these close exchanges; even if it was just his fascination with her eyes. Did he understand how transfixing his own gaze could be? The utter, focused intensity so beautifully capable of holding her attention like no one else could? She wasn’t sure. Regardless, it didn’t matter.

In an instinctive motion, her fingertips gently brushed the strands of shaggy hair back from his face, not missing the momentary flicker of his eyes to her lips and then back. The distance between them was minute; easily closed if either of them leaned forward just the smallest bit. But that minuscule bit of space had held it’s place for weeks, the hairsbreadth gap never fully closing. She wasn’t sure if it ever would.

A swirl of ideas as to what would happen began to swim around in her mind, and for the first time the girl realized:

She certainly wouldn’t mind if the space between them one day slipped into nonexistence.