day

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“You see it, don't you, James? Without Tessa there is nothing for me--no joy, no light, no life. If you loved me, you would let me have her. You can't love her as I do. No one could. If you are truly my brother, you would do this for me.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“I should have known what you would do,” Jem said in a low voice. “I always know what you will do. I should have known you would put your hands into the fire.”

“And I should have known you would throw that packet away,” said Will, without rancor. “It was—it was a madly noble thing to do. I understand why you did it.”

“I was thinking of Tessa.” Jem drew his knees up and rested his chin on them, then laughed softly. “Madly noble. Isn’t that meant to be your area of expertise? Suddenly I am the one who does ridiculous things and you tell me to stop?”

“God,” said Will. “When did we change places?”

The firelight played over Jem’s face and hair as he shook his head. “It is a very strange thing, to be in love,” he said. “It changes you.”

Will looked down at Jem, and what he felt, more than jealousy, more than anything else, was a wistful desire to commiserate with his best friend, to speak of the feelings he held in his heart. For were they not the same feelings? Did they not love the same way, the same person? But, “I wish you wouldn’t risk yourself,” was all he said.

Jem stood up. “I have always wished that about you.”

Will raised his eyes, so drowsy with sleep and the tiredness that came with healing runes that he could see Jem only as a haloed figure of light. “Are you going?”

“Yes, to sleep.” Jem touched his fingers lightly to Will’s healing hands. “Let yourself rest, Will.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles