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You tried to say it as nicely as you can, but he quickly becomes inconsolable. You knew it would happen, you've been dreading it, but it's true. It's been happening slowly, but yes, for the past several years your interest in your aide has dwindled to nothing, and now? You actively don't like him.
<span class="mu-r">”N-Nooooo!”</span>
Fim sobs, his face scrunches into something pathetic and sad, tears flowing. In that moment, looking right at him, you close your eyes. Superimposed on your vision is Fim's face, in the depths of his sadness, and you see it again. Your imagination fills in the gaps. The perfect, cherubic face, vulnerable, with soft cheeks and big eyes, perfectly centered. Smooth cheekpads, hair still retaining that downy softness. No wrinkles inside the ears, not tugging or decay of time to create tiny pits and deposits that trap bacteria, the smell of boyhood and outdoor air, the perfect look of play and sentiment.
That's how it was before, you know. What you've wanted to capture again, you used to look at Fim's face and see it. The same lips that would crash against yours in passion would just as likely belch and laugh and run and play. The taught arms with muscles like kite strings, not over developed and built for fighting over mates. The hands not too broad, still retaining their baby fat, the tail supple and without the drag of tiredness inevitable. His eyes huge and set in the small, fragile skull which can be held so close and in the comfort of your arms, passionate gasps and moans just as likely to be giggles and whispered boyhood secrets. He was perfect before. There was no expectation of anything, not of love or sex or performance of any kind. It just was. You think back to your time at the youth camp, the same sticks picked up in play and uses as fake daggers to imitate the great duels of old would then be woven into a shelter into the branches of the trees. Everything just was as it should be, and looking at his face was the only way you could find of going back.
Finally, you open your eyes and see the crying, sobbing man before you as he is today. It's over.
