Looking down, there's a certain distance in his eyes; though not a sorrowful one. Even knowing rationally that life here is wholly out of his control, that there's no way to keep the curses at bay and no way to predict when and how one might leave, Neil has the sense-- driven more by willpower than any knowledge of destiny-- that neither he nor Todd are going home, ever. He knows there are days and years ahead of him; good and bad, curses and blessings, friends he's yet to meet. The glimpse of a man he thought he'd never have a chance to be, reconsidered in the light of a new future. Things he can't say or even properly consider, the awkward and immeasurable experience of being young and in love. It's idealized and romanticized, certainly; and pressed for it he'd have to admit that he doesn't know, can't know what the future holds for anyone. But it is the habit of the young to believe their own immortality; and though Neil knows all too well how misleading that can be, granted a second chance he intends to make things work.
This remains inchoate and unexpressed, save as a gleam of joyous determination in his gaze as he raises it again to meet Yvaine's, his will to live deep and suck the marrow out of each day, the affirmation of something he's believed for a long while now but has only come to wholly understand recently.
His fingers folded around the box he smiles back at her, wordlessly overwrought. Emotionally he's too raw, too frenzied with a joy that's been built up in secret over time, to speak; the sort of thing that climbs mountains and cries over the rooftops with the sheer joy of being, unable to be contained by the patterns of language and thought. It's entirely the right matter and the wrong mood for poetry, the emotion meant to be reflected upon in later tranquility. He'll get there in time. For now he'll simply live it.
"I should," he begins, a little color to his cheeks for no obvious reason, and pauses, shifting a little in his stance, feeling almost electric. It isn't that he's eager to shake her company-- far from it-- but he wants to run and leap, to howl with bacchanal fierceness. He nearly laughs at his own inadequate tongue. "I should probably get home, so Todd doesn't catch me coming in with it. I wanted to surprise him," he explains, in a low and conspiratorial tone.
It sings to me sweetly from the trees and in vowels...
This remains inchoate and unexpressed, save as a gleam of joyous determination in his gaze as he raises it again to meet Yvaine's, his will to live deep and suck the marrow out of each day, the affirmation of something he's believed for a long while now but has only come to wholly understand recently.
His fingers folded around the box he smiles back at her, wordlessly overwrought. Emotionally he's too raw, too frenzied with a joy that's been built up in secret over time, to speak; the sort of thing that climbs mountains and cries over the rooftops with the sheer joy of being, unable to be contained by the patterns of language and thought. It's entirely the right matter and the wrong mood for poetry, the emotion meant to be reflected upon in later tranquility. He'll get there in time. For now he'll simply live it.
"I should," he begins, a little color to his cheeks for no obvious reason, and pauses, shifting a little in his stance, feeling almost electric. It isn't that he's eager to shake her company-- far from it-- but he wants to run and leap, to howl with bacchanal fierceness. He nearly laughs at his own inadequate tongue. "I should probably get home, so Todd doesn't catch me coming in with it. I wanted to surprise him," he explains, in a low and conspiratorial tone.