[He can see it before it happens, because it’s happened a few times before now. Alec tossing away a book, or a scrap of homework, or a report card, or anything that shouldn’t be thrown away and into the gutter. But this time, as he watches his fingers curl around the page to rip it out, Henry’s frustration spikes to a new level.
The grandfather clock he’s drawn, it has meaning to him. It represents a strange and unexpected change in Henry, one that he’s only just learning to wrangle, parts of it still manifesting, the rest of it unknown. Alec has no context for that, so he’d not know what kind of offense it is to see it nearly-torn from his sketchbook — as though the other boy were trying to symbolically wrest this new part away from him, to crumple it up like garbage, before he can even understand what it is.
And so he stands to his feet—]
Stop!
[—and without actually meaning to, an invisible force lashes out. It pushes Alec backwards, collides against his face like an open-palmed slap. Hard.]
no subject
The grandfather clock he’s drawn, it has meaning to him. It represents a strange and unexpected change in Henry, one that he’s only just learning to wrangle, parts of it still manifesting, the rest of it unknown. Alec has no context for that, so he’d not know what kind of offense it is to see it nearly-torn from his sketchbook — as though the other boy were trying to symbolically wrest this new part away from him, to crumple it up like garbage, before he can even understand what it is.
And so he stands to his feet—]
Stop!
[—and without actually meaning to, an invisible force lashes out. It pushes Alec backwards, collides against his face like an open-palmed slap. Hard.]