@strxnzo said, ❛ well, i’m an unconventional girl, that’s what you like about me. ❜
he knows she’s just teasin’, but it comes on the heels of a confession he’d meant more than she maybe knows. it’s not something he lingers on a whole lot, but it’s there — a little more now whenever he catches sight of the two of ‘em in the same space, reflections starin’ back. her hair’s dark and falls just right over her shoulders, and her eyes — they’re always shining up at him, always beautiful, always so full of life and bigger than the world. maybe his favorite thing to do these days is trace his fingertips all over the tattoos scattered along the length of her little body, then kiss the corners of ‘em, too, just for good measure. and when she smiles . . . he’s a goner, just gone.
then he sees himself, and he always sobers.
they used to call him ears — just ears. nothin’ new, he’d always been awkward and ungainly through the years. it didn’t last long anyway when he’d grown bigger and lumbering, and they started just callin’ him logan, save for a few jokes over drinks. back in those days, there wasn’t any time; no one gave a shit, no one thought too hard or long about somethin’ little like looks. far removed from his family, there’d be days he forgot to compare himself to jimmy, with his squared off jaw and steely eyes, charm drippin’ from his brother like nobody’s business.
then clyde came back here, back home, back into his brother’s shadow.
they say i’ve got unconventional looks, he’d murmured, stretching the syllables out in that four - dollar word like they were foreign — or like maybe he just hadn’t wanted to repeat it. don’t know how you ever looked at me again, he’d joked, voice a little lighter to make up for the fact that he wasn’t, not really, his a half - cocked smile that didn’t go any higher than his lips. maybe that’s alright though; he hadn’t got jimmy or mellie’s nice eyes, no, he got their granddaddy’s flint ones and a big, pouty mouth like his ears had conspired with ‘em to unbalance the rest of his too - narrow face — a face she now cradles, coaxin’ it down to hers like he wouldn’t live there in her bubble if he could. well, i’m an unconventional girl, that’s what you like about me, she says, whole universes in those eyes. dark like his. he tries to see himself through them.
then he leans in and presses a soft, lingerin’ kiss to her lips, ‘cause it’s more than enough that she even looks at him at all.