#rockcore

Time goes on and Chase and Rock expand the number of things they know inside each other. And palpate the negative space of what they do not.

Rock: Chase’s molars on the pad of his thumb. That his eyes keep moving, under his eyelids. Footsteps he begins to recognize offhand from a hundred yards away— he turns one day in the middle of the compound and is sure he looks foolish, that people would see and think him pulled to Chase like some kind of little mutt hearing its person come up the path to the door. In reality there were some looks but no comments. That I need your words is asking for a very fragile favor.

Chase: The footsteps, he’d started recognizing a long while ago. The flattening of the breath that means Rock did not learn how to say actually, never mind, and the sound that means Rock did not learn how to say please, again. Where the claws are and how to get them, or let them retract. The support struts in his knees that are tied to the throat.

Rock: That Chase has heard him mumble things in his sleep. That someone— his money is on Briony— also told Chase what it means when a person’s handwriting slants to the left, and that he’s also begun to slant his to the right. That Chase knows where the claws are.

Chase: The difference between being spoken with in his head and hey, just checking that you’re here. That the second feels so inanimate he would think he just swallowed weird or had a headache coming on. What pitch to the shoulders means he would rather be touched than asked.

Rock: Which leaps are taken simply because the acrobat does not care about falling. That Chase knows which Rock is going to be behind any closed door before Rock has decided.