↳ ɪɴᴠᴀʟɪᴅ.

send a ☢ for a goodbye hug

                     ❝ LISTEN TO ME. on my mark, you're going to                          run. do you understand, HIRO ? you can do that, right?   ❞                   & he's trying so hard not to let the ash leak from his lungs ;

                   ❝ i'll be right behind you. just run towards the exit, and                          don't look back, KNUCKLEHEAD. i'll meet you there.   ❞

                      fingers wrap tighter, they claw & grasp at what little survives                      the flame. he will LIVE -- hiro will live, he'll forsake his own life for                      his. life's worth is in DEEDS; his duty lies not in a heart, but                       in a cage ( a house of bone accursed to hoping, to surviving, to                       be his brother's keeper until time and time alone shall fold &                      close upon itself into a pair of paper wings ). and the chaotic                       firmament swallows pipe dreams whole, growing, growing,                      GROWING. how pitiful is it, to watch him wrap his arms                       around his brother for what seems like the FINAL hour, much                      like the FIRST -- ' d o  y o u  r e m e m b e r ? ' when he brought                      you home in baby blue blankets and beaming smiles and                       how he PESTERED his mother for your name, his father for the                      bottle. he wanted, he wished ( & still does ) for you to be HAPPY.                      loved & cherished & never wanting nor wishing for anything more.                      but now -- now what? HOPE is but a dream, only illusory in the                      hands of mere mortals. ' h i r o , i  s w e a r , y o u  w i l l  l i v e . '

                            ❝ now. go now, HIRO. NOW ! i'm right behind you. ❞

                               ❛  you do know you could have let me  cook  instead, right?  ❜ 

            HER SIMPER is a spring rose’s bloom —— bright and bashful and just a little bit hesitant.  ( she hopes he won’t elucidate it as gaiety on  his  expense. )  but her lips are not the iron bars of a prison cell, and from them flees  LAUGHTER  like a convicted felon.  eyes are large pools of azure, spilling out an apology from where they rippled in place.  she simmers with a familiar kind of fondness that has, over time, wrapped itself like tendrils around his being —— this particular brand of partiality has come to be associated with hearth-like eyes and a firelight smile, with a  HEART like no other.  fleetingly does she shut the windows to her soul, not more than a graceful downward sweep of lush eyelashes that linger for a beat or so.  and when she retracts the curtains, it is coupled with a  BRILLIANT  grin.

                                       ❛  —— cold pizza  sounds wonderful, though.  ❜

                     ❝ i promised that i'd make you dinner, EL. you                              know how i feel about KEEPING my word. ❞               and he's all red-rimmed eyes, blinking between her star-bright laughter -- -- a UNIVERSE she may outshine, light pooling softly in the gentler corners of a smile. come to think of it, he could never quite COMPREHEND her; she with gold in her veins and an accent of FROST upon her tongue. but rather, she is an enigma stymied by the AFFECTION he holds for her, warm and tangible and REAL within his lungs  ( from which he barely breathes laughter and celestial words ). and gently does he steal a GLANCE from those eyes of hers; deep and cerulean, flecked with a flattering shade of haloed sunlight, and the sensation of falling helplessly, returns. it's a pitted, powerless pull of gravity ( almost biblical, apocalyptic, cataclysmal in its nature ) of which spurs the nervous chafe of a thumb to his lips -- -- as if to distract runaway daydreams and pink-tinted fingers, he nimbly kicks the fridge open,

       ❝ i'd cut down on the SPEEDING if i were you. ❞              the vowels of his words have the EDGES sanded off, curt and cut ( sharply ) against his tongue. SUPERHUMANS         the mere sensation, the taste of the word, embittered against his tongue -- he has come to DESPISE THEM, with their copper-wired veins of which trickle FIRE AND BLOOD. between sunday school hymns, did they always whisper G O D  M A K E S  N O  M I S T A K E S and yet one breathes before him and shares what little space lingers between them. or perhaps he can call it INTIMATE in its complete lack of emotion, the way his fingers splay across the screen, brushing past numbers far past RECOGNITION.