Something Like Him (bxb)

Prelogue;

"Sometimes it's not the strength but gentleness that cracks the hardest shell."

-Richard Paul Evans, Lost December

;

People called us "the wonder boys."

Only out of sheer obligation, of course.

I preferred wonder men.

After it all, after the youth of us had been forced together because of the dangerous pack at both our borders, creeping up on us, killing our wolves, it was clear just how much wonder we evoked, who'd we become to save the ones we loved.

But it wasn't as easy as they thought. Wonder was only the tiniest part of how it happened, the biggest part of who we were, encumbered by each other, obsessed with figuring out how to make it, us, work.

At least, I was. Obsessed with him, I mean. Mystified by how he made me feel when I'd never felt anything before, only the loneliness that came with being the youngest of a big family. Me, a talker, words that covered the ones he never spoke. Me, a boy made of bricks, picking at the caulk just to see in, both our bricks, both of the walls we'd covered to block out the things we only ever kept to ourselves. He was the first person, out of sheer obligation, that really saw me.

And I don't regret, for a single moment, all the moments we ignored each other, sent confused, blanketed looks from across patches of grass and wood. I'll never forget a single second of cold winter morning in a heated summer, calling for a man I'd been forced to be with, desperately desperate for him.

Because something like him wasn't an obligation.

Something like him wasn't a man of few words and a blank face, blank mind, empty of thought and emotion. Wasn't contingent and desperate for power, the lazy son of a forceful man. He never could have been a stupid, idle pacifist, not with his heart, he couldn't.

Because something like him didn't exist.