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Walt shut the bathroom door, turned on the light, then looked in the mirror.

He ran his hands over every inch of Hollis’s face. Touched his bushy eyebrows, the freckles that covered his cheeks and chin, ran his fingertip down the curve of his nose, tapped the bump on its slope gently.

He pressed a thumb to Hollis’s lips, dragged across them in a burst of sensation. Hollis began to weep, overwhelmed.

Walt made a soft hush noise, but Hollis cried harder. He couldn’t help it.

Walt looked inside Hollis’s mouth at his teeth, lifted his tongue, fingered the back of his throat to test his gag reflex. He swiped along the edge of Hollis’s ear—a thing Hollis had never done on purpose—and his knees involuntarily buckled. Walt caught him and stood again.

He tilted Hollis’s head back and clasped the full arch of his neck, drummed against the jut of his collarbone, then dragged his hands through Hollis’s thin, limp brown hair.

Everything about this was so horrifying and intense that it took Hollis a moment to notice that his eyes were the wrong color.

They were brown.

Walt’s eyes.

Hollis’s had always been green .

Hollis stared at them, hard. He had only ever seen Walt at night, by streetlamp, with winter shadows crossing his face. Or whoever’s face that was.

He’d thought it was strange for someone who was colored so light in every other way to have such dark eyes.

In a wave of despair, he knew it would take a while for anyone in his life to notice: his green wasn’t bright; it was close enough to brown. But Hollis knew his own face, and a change was a change. Mercifully, Walt let him lean them a bit closer to look.

Walt’s eyes were honey brown, had a dark ring around the outside and a yellow one around the pupil. They made Hollis’s face look sleepier, more serious and less fresh. The outside hadn’t changed shape, Hollis couldn’t tell what Walt looked like from this, how old he really was or whether he had crow’s-feet...

Hollis was so engrossed in this that he didn’t realize Walt was stripping off his clothes until his pants were on the ground and Walt was using his arms to roll up his shirt.

STOP! he shrieked.

If you think I’m not taking a shower, you’ve got another think coming, Walt hissed.

STOP, PLEASE.

Walt ignored him and wrestled the shirt off his head.

DON’T LOOK AT ME.

Walt stopped.

Everyone has a body, Hollis. Yours is fine. I won’t look at it if you don’t want me to, but I haven’t showered in three weeks, I just want to feel the water on my face.

Hollis was so panicked he could feel his ears getting hot and red. No one had seen him naked before. Not even his parents after he was done being a kid. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want the first time someone saw him to be like this.

But Walt was already facing away from the mirror, gaze locked on the ocean-themed shower curtain, obeying.

FUCKING FINE. PLEASE, JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES.