Word Count: 711

His father’s house was small. Paris’s bedroom was even smaller.

The door was shut, the lights were off, and the window was open to let in the night breeze, but it was warm and somewhat muggy, and did very little to lower the temperature in the tiny room in the back of the house. Paris couldn’t wait until fall. He loved the summertime, but only for so long. Eventually he reached his limit of sun and heat and looked to the leaves in the hopes that they would soon begin to change. At least then it wouldn’t matter if the air conditioner broke again. It’d been fixed only a couple of weeks ago, yet it’d shut off at some point earlier in the afternoon and hadn’t turned back on since.

He lied on his bed, on his back with his arms and legs stretched out, in a pair of shorts and a thin shirt, with his hair pulled high, off his neck and above the back of his head, so that the tail wasn’t squished uncomfortably between his head and the pillow. He didn’t bother slipping under the sheets and bedspread. He wouldn’t be able to stand the heat.

He stared at the ceiling, at the fan spinning ‘round and ‘round, at the white bumps he’d looked for shapes in as a child. He didn’t see any shapes anymore, but if he looked hard enough, squinted his eyes or let them go out of focus, he could almost imagine they were stars.

Paris thought of nothing, except the truth, but that hurt too badly, to the point where he wished he didn’t have to think at all. For months now, his life had been progressing toward this, ever since that moment at a party on the other side of town, when he’d sat beside a handsome boy playing a guitar – You could be my silver spring~… – and he’d played a game of pretend.

He couldn’t pretend anymore.

It was getting harder and harder by the day, not because he found it difficult to pass for a girl, but because of the guilt. It ate away at him, tore at his heart and twisted his stomach into sickening, painful knots.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He wasn’t supposed to care. It was supposed to be funny. He was supposed to reveal himself to Chris and laugh in his face, call him a fool and humiliate him, like he’d done with so many others.

It wasn’t like that anymore. Maybe it had been at the beginning, but nothing was like it had been then, because Chris was Valhalla and Paris needed him. Needed, wanted, but not loved, though he might as well have. He thought the desperation he felt to keep him would have been the same either way. It consumed him, filled every last part of his being, until he didn’t know what to do without that crutch, without that pillar of support. Chris had given him so much more than either of them realized, and Paris already felt it slipping away.

He was happy with Chris. He could be happy with Chris for a long time. The rest of his life? He didn’t know. Probably not, unless his life was destined to be short – which it very well could be. Long enough, though. All the things he’d thought he’d needed before they’d met no longer mattered to him. He could forget about his mother, he could handle the recent problems with his father, and he could accept his role as a senshi because when he needed to he could escape from it all, because Chris made things easy, gave him shelter, made things safe.

But he had to tell him. Chris had to know. If he didn’t tell Chris, then Chris was sure to find out on his own, and Paris knew that that would be so much worse.

He had to be the one to do it, the one to end things – because he knew once he told Chris, that would be the end.

Paris had known all along that this time would come; he only wished it didn’t have to be so soon.

Or perhaps it should have been sooner, before they’d both gotten in too deep.