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you kept the only part of me that was real (so real)

They don’t expect him to touch like this—the Spirit does not expect him to touch them at all. The Spirit watches his facial features tremble and pulsate, watches his lips quiver like something freezing to death in a forgotten cold, watches him convulse at the very sight of them. The expression is too warm, disgustingly warm, and the sensation of Larry’s palm against their charred face is too warm, disgustingly warm. The Spirit has never been touched, and oh, he is their first, he is the first person who has ever been able to spark the kind of churning galactic lovehatred that burns within them now. Only him. Only Larry Trainor, they think, can chain them to the experience of living.

They soar through the air being recycled in his chest but it’s getting too close to what they saw in the future, it’s time for them to leave and give him the second chance they saw back in 1996. When he was truly happy—a happiness he could never find if the Spirit were to stay. They cannot rewrite the future just because they want him to touch them.

The Negative Space is just that: negative. Nothing will be the same with him torn out—he nested inside of the Spirit in the same precise ways they nested inside of him, an eternal unfolding. They pour themselves into his soul and he regurgitates them both for their child to eat. Their face sinks down with his hand and, for a moment, they are weak enough to question this decision as they feel his knuckles give light pressure against their collar. They feel things like pressure now. They will never experience this kind of touch again - they don’t expect him to touch like this - they don’t expect it to feel so familiar, as if they should’ve done this long ago.

They do expect the wanting, and the wanting turns out to be a level of unbearable that no sapient being has ever before known. They could adhere to their word, and they could take him home. They’re so close to everything the Spirit has ever wanted—a way to have both, to have it all. To go home with him.

How can they know something so flawed and raw and beautiful — something like this man who is worth saving, who is everything the Spirit has ever wanted and despised and resented and desired — how can they have this and lose this without losing themselves? How are they supposed to go back home, to the negative, having known something this full of life? How are they supposed to move on?

They don’t expect him to be so gentle. The Spirit has never been gentle, and they cannot allow themselves to falter into that now.