Mush didn’t know how to get Blink to realize how much he cared about him. It was agonizing to him, to try to get Blink to believe him, especially when he was always acting like he was useless and unattractive. Mush couldn’t see why at all. He insisted Blink was good for plenty of things, like kissing, and looking pretty, and soaking any boy that even looked at him the wrong way. At least those were the things he said out loud, just off the top of his head. He loved everything about him. He wanted to look at every one of Blink’s handsome features and point out to him how lovely he found them until he could see himself the way Mush did.
He loved his eye of course, being so blue and vibrant. It reminded him of a speckled rock Blink found and gave to him one day while selling papers near the docks. He loved his freckles, and he loved kissing them even more. He loved his toned arms and legs, though he was always talking about how he was nowhere near as strong as Mush. Maybe that was true, but he didn’t see why that would stop him from admiring him. Even after he told him all that, Blink would insist there were parts of him that were undeniably unattractive, which Mush still couldn’t comprehend. He loved his flaws too. He loved his lips, and the scar that ran over them, giving him something to gently run his tongue over when they kissed. He loved the scars on his chest and back, although he hated what put them there. He liked them simply because Blink said he enjoyed when Mush would run his fingers over them, slowly healing emotional wounds inflicted on the boy. Blink would always cover up his missing eye, asserting that it would make the tall boy jittery if he saw it too often. It was years before he even let Mush get a good look at his face without his patch. When he finally did, Mush wasn’t scared, or skittish, or any of those other bad things Blink was worried about. He had one thought, and that was about the butterflies inside him swelling up because he was finally seeing his own young man, whole. And boy, did he find him stunning. He was floored, unable to speak or move for several moments, with big eyes and a gaping mouth. Blink misinterpreted it completely, going red and trying to storm out on him. It took a while of giving Blink gentle kisses on his neck in between telling him that he wasn’t in fact, uncomfortable, he was just stunned he could call a boy so handsome his own. It seemed an impossible task, to get Blink to love himself as much as he did, but Mush was persistent. After all, they were young. They had the rest of their lives together, and he planned on spending it healing their wounds.
