( delight blossoms in her gaze at his gasp — pathetic, hateful, pained, desperate, raw — and she knows
she knows if she pushes back, if she lets go, sinclair will go tumbling down the stairs like in an old nursery rhyme she heard once. jack and jill went up the hill just to kill each other / jack fell down and broke his crown / and jill stood laughing after...
that isn't how it went. it isn't how it's going now, because her sinclair's grown stronger, and kromer recognizes something is off about herself. her leg slowly bends, first the left, until it hits the step, the odd angle driving stone beneath her knee. her right bends second, but she keeps her foot planted firmly. they look all the world like a couple mid-proposal, if not for the unmatched expressions on their faces.
despite her position, kromer tries anyway: she shoves her weight against him, not as steady as she could be on the stairs, not as overwhelmingly strong as she'd been before but nowhere near "weak", either. )
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she knows if she pushes back, if she lets go, sinclair will go tumbling down the stairs like in an old nursery rhyme she heard once. jack and jill went up the hill just to kill each other / jack fell down and broke his crown / and jill stood laughing after...
that isn't how it went. it isn't how it's going now, because her sinclair's grown stronger, and kromer recognizes something is off about herself. her leg slowly bends, first the left, until it hits the step, the odd angle driving stone beneath her knee. her right bends second, but she keeps her foot planted firmly. they look all the world like a couple mid-proposal, if not for the unmatched expressions on their faces.
despite her position, kromer tries anyway: she shoves her weight against him, not as steady as she could be on the stairs, not as overwhelmingly strong as she'd been before but nowhere near "weak", either. )