Don't Let the Forest In

You could cut me open and devour everything that I am. I would let you, I'd ask you to. But I have no idea what it means to you. What I mean to you.

Everything inside me is in ruins," Thomas said. "For you.

If you cut open my chest'—Andrew's voice was wrecked—'you'll find a garden of rot where my heart should be.

For a vicious moment, Andrew thought about slipping his fingers into Thomas's cut. Taking hold of his rib and breaking it. Pulling the soft crumbling bone from his chest and sewing it into his own. They'd be forever together, rib against rib, fused in gore and bone and adoration.

I 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.

He needed Thomas, needed their lungs sewn inside each other so he could remember how to breathe. He needed to take words from Thomas's mouth and put them in his own so he had something to say.

When I cut you open all I'll find is that we match.

It was strange, Andrew thought, how when something moved in the dark, everyone’s first instinct was to go inside and hide under the covers. As if monsters couldn’t open doors and crawl into bed with you.

I think someday you'll hate me." Thomas's voice stretched with a loneliness Andrew had never heard before. "You'll cut me open and find a garden of rot where my heart should be." Andrew let the silence sharpen between them, waited until Thomas's breath caught in quiet anguish from being made to wait. "When I cut you open," Andrew finally said, "all I'll find is that we match.

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.

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.

To write something nice, he’d need something nice to say. But his ribs were a cage for monsters and they cut their teeth on his bones.

You could cut me open and devour everything I am," Thomas said, ragged and thin. "I would let you. I'd ask you to

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.

All my stories are about you. They will always be about you.

Here was a boy who made monsters, or perhaps was a monster himself. All because he couldn't face the fact, the guilt, the sorrow, the rage, of his sister being dead.

They could be so beautiful to each other. They could be so cruel.

This is how they were, bones broken and mended crookedly, each intertwined with the other. He though maybe you could love someone so much you ruined them, and then ruined yourself.

To cut out his heart was actually such a small thing.

They were beautiful together; they were magic and monstrous, and they created a whole vengeful world between them.

Life didn't fit against his skin and it never had and sometimes everything was just too much.

I'm scared of everything except the dark.

Andrew lowered his head so his mouth was close to Thomas's ear. 'Wake up. I need you to tell me if we're real.' Thomas didn't open his eyes, but his face had gone soft; all that fierce anger and lonesome fear slipped away. 'Kiss me,' he said, low and sleepy. 'Then you'll find out.

Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him. Kill for him.

Kiss me, then.' It burst out of him, frantic and feral. 'Kiss me.' Thomas took Andrew's face in his hands, thumbs tracing his lips as he tilted his head down. Their lips almost touched, Andrew's swollen and crusted with blood, Thomas's warm and soft as a story. Then he whispered, 'I am real. You are real.' 'Make me believe you,' Andrew said. And Thomas kissed him, hard and fierce and merciless. All teeth and tongue as he took everything from Andrew and devoured him whole. Andrew's teeth sank into Thomas's lip until the old scab burst open again, and then it was impossible to do anything but breathe as one. They were catastrophe, exploding. Thomas pulled back and grabbed Andrew's face, rough and hard. He pressed their foreheads together. 'Do you feel this? I am here and I am here and I am here.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the forest had outgrown the confines of his body and longed to stretch. He used to be an empty boy, impossible to fill. Now he was so full of monsters.

But he didn’t know what part of himself was safe to hold on to.

Everything inside Andrew had been scooped out, and he'd been left a hollow thing, impossible to fill. Dove would absolutely freak out when she saw what he'd done to his hand. He'd explain it to her over breakfast, how it had been a tough, stressful year, and he'd spaced out for a minute. He'd thought there was a monster in the mirror and he'd only meant to kill it.

It hit Andrew then, how Thomas would sacrifice the world for him without even thinking. How terrible that was. How part of Andrew's chest caved in relief with knowing it.

Thomas went off on a rant about how math was offensive, or how he belonged to the forest like some sort of fae child who planned to run away to the trees and never look back.