[Nothing disproportionate . . . that doesn't feel right to him. It grates at something inside. Everything must be perfect, measured to the gram - everything, from violence to pleasure to grief. Nothing can be haphazard. He can't be anything but flawless.]

[He presses his lips tight shut, an unconscious mirror of her own expression, and tries to figure it out - the precise way of saying this so that it's just right. Another piece of perfection.]

Because this isn't what normal people do. Normal people just feel what they feel, and that's that.

[But he's not normal. He never has been, and he certainly isn't now.]

[Sighing, he pinches the bridge of his nose.]

Sometimes - loving people is such an uphill struggle . . . even if you know why, or can guess why, sometimes it hurts almost too much to bear. And then some things are easy, and it seems - cowardly, maybe, to miss the easy things, the effortlessly perfect things most of all.

I don't know. I really don't. I'm just talking, I don't know what I'm saying at all, sorry.