color me in gold (lips like petals on my throat)

con amore.

It's the way the words are spoken that nearly brings him to his knees.

They're spoken with quiet conviction, the way you'd declare something to be an axiom upon which everything is built upon. This is how it always is with Eddy and earth-shattering revelations. As it stands, however, with him perched on the brink of perhaps the most important precipice he's ever been on, Brett feels a bit shattered himself, with no foreseeable way of putting the shards of him back together.

The chasm is before him. Here, the edge. There, the jump.

When his body finally deigns to move again, the action is minute. His thumb brushes over the empty space after the word until, as if willing it to produce more written prose: an explanation, a declaration, anything he can use to figure this out beyond the unthinkable, unbelievable words coming from Eddy's own mouth.

It remains tellingly blank.

"What you said," Brett begins, and it takes a herculean effort to steady the tumultuous vessel his words want to sail on, "it's—it's not on here."

Behind him, Eddy breathes deep, the rise of his chest barely brushing the line of Brett's spine before retreating. The warmth of his hand burns through the thin fabric of Brett's shirt. "No. No, it's not. I didn't get to write it down."

More bombs, more explosions. The foundations of his world are shaking, this close to being forever torn asunder. There's no turning back, here.

"Whatever you're trying to say, I need you to spell it out for me." Brett's voice isn't shaking; that would be stupid. He just doesn't want to jump to the wrong conclusions, that's all. Not for this. Never for this.

(He thinks he just might die if he gets this all wrong.)

Silence answers him. Brett licks his lips. "Please."

The world hushes, waiting on the cusp of a new epoch, the thin line between before and after. And then—

"All of my words are for you, Brett Yang. Always for you. Only could've ever been for you."

Falling. It feels like falling. Like being weightless, hundreds of feet up in the air. Like seeing the ground coming on to swallow you up, like knowing you'd welcome it with open arms.

All of my words are for you.

Brett itches to try and pinch himself. This is not a dream.

(If it is a dream, let him never wake up again.)

"You're not running away," Eddy says, disbelief entwined around the syllables.

"I'm not." God, but something in him wants to, though: something terrified, something bruised from hoping, something that still can't quite believe this is real. But no, he's standing his ground. He's facing this, whatever this ends up being.

There's a pause. "Why?"

"I didn't want," Brett clears his throat, continuing again, "I told you. I didn't want to assume. If the letters were actually for someone else, I would've just made a fucking fool out of myself, yeah?"

Eddy says nothing for a time. And then: "And now that you know they're all for you?"

(Only could've ever been for you.)

Brett turns around and sees his best friend. He sees him.

At first glance, Eddy looks the same, even after the world has remade itself in the wake of that blistering admission. But then Brett looks closer, and he sees the shaking hands, he sees the wild-eyed gaze, he sees the galloping heartbeat pulsing obviously enough on Eddy's neck.