Author: Kat
Title: never quite the same
Story: Shine Like It Does
Colors: Glitter 4 (You're nothing without me. - City of Angels), twilight 11 (Beguile),
Supplies and Materials: Miniature collection, brush (collimate), stain ("A choice which confronts every one of us at every moment is this: Shall we permit our fellow men to know us as we now are, or shall we seek instead to remain an enigma, an uncertain quantity , wishing to be seen as something we are not?" - Sidney Jourard, The Transparent Self, 1964), glitter (Better Together), novelty beads (don't let go)
Word Count: 300
Rating: PG
Summary: The Hennessy siblings and their men.
Warnings: skip
Brief implied suicidal ideation

Notes: Hey guys, did you miss me? I've finally finished a thing. Turns out moving really screws with your ability to finish things. I promise to catch up on all the wonderful writing I've missed this weekend.


He made her feel safe.

In retrospect that should have been Miranda's first warning sign, that she could relax so totally around this man she barely knew. She hardly relaxed around her family, the people she had loved and trusted all her life; how could she just hand herself over to him? She knew better. She knew better. Sooner or later, he would take advantage of it. Sooner or later he would hurt her.

In retrospect, she should have broken it off the moment he touched her and she went boneless.

But at the time all she felt was safe.

--

He told her she was beautiful. Charlotte could count on one hand the number of times someone outside her family had called her beautiful, but it was more than that, it was the way he wanted her.

Her family told her she was beautiful but it took her years to believe it, because no one wanted her. Wrong skin, wrong eyes, wrong lips and nose and smile, and then he told her that he wanted her, her, and meant it.

The end would have been easier to bear if he hadn't said that, but she couldn't make herself regret it.

--

He was the only one who never gave up.

All right, parents and sisters, but they were family and they weren't allowed to give up. Of the people who didn't have to stick around, the ones that mattered, he was the only one who never blinked, the only one who'd been there all the way.

Of course Jack would have liked more, of course he would, but he didn't dare ask for it. Romance was worse than friendship, and if the one person who never gave up... gave up...

Well.

What reason would there be for him to keep going?