so we let our shadows fall away like dust
As soon as the wall is built, she wants it gone.
It hurts and chafes and feels soul-deep wrong, like a world upended with blue sky below and green grass above. But she needs this wall, doesn’t she? Needs some kind of distance between them to – to what? Keep them safe maybe, protect him from her? She groans with her uncertainty, with a confusion that furrows so deeply in her brow it looks as though it may stay that way forever. She ducks her head and blinks, frowns in that tight-lipped way as though something has hurt her. A burr of uncertainty in her chest.
Stillwater. Her thoughts jump to him like a reminder, just as quiet and uncertain as she was, or maybe a question now. Of course she loved Stillwater, even now she felt his absence like an ache in her chest, missed the softness of his lips at her throat and those quiet deepwater eyes. Her affection for him had been months in the making, bone-deep and beautiful, it would not be undone so easily. Even then, if it could be undone, she would always care for him, always worry at the chain bound around his ankle and the steely woman who claimed to love him and was still willing to hurt him in the same breath.
But –
Her eyes find Dovev’s again, so deep and black and yet still bright in some strange way she cannot explain, in a way that softens the furrows in her forehead and the lines of worry in her cheeks. They are like beacons to hers, calling her, coaxing her, loud in their silence. She surrenders to them willingly, perched precarious at their dark edges before tipping forward and falling. Falling. Falling. Was she? Is that was this knot in her chest was, why she cannot stop worrying and fretting over the wounds in his skin and the tension in his shoulders. Why she cannot stop reaching out to touch him, feel a warmth and a heartbeat and know that he is real even in his impossibility.
She groans so quietly, so woundedly – though her expression does not reflect it – and disappears to his body, to his wounds, to taste his copper and his sweat. She cannot look at his face right now, not his eyes, cannot be trusted to make sense of the tumultuous emotion roiling in her breast. So she gives herself to his wounds, to his pleasure, soft suckles that pulled his skin between her teeth so she could pinch and release him, kiss him again.
What was she doing?
He moans at her touch, at the way her tongue sweeps over raw wounds and between the crevice of bone plate and flesh, gasps when she reaches further than she had before. But where he is a symphony of sound for her, vulnerable and beautiful and aching in a way her soul wants to undress further, she is only silent. Her eyes are dark and quiet, not uncertain anymore but maybe disbelieving, confused. Able, but unwilling, to name this feeling in her chest for him.
He trembles, or shivers, whimpers, and she is pulled from her quiet kisses and back to his neck, his face, finally noticing the damp track of tears beneath his eyes. She inhaled sharply, worriedly, and then kissed him. She knew she shouldn’t have, guessed that the tears on his face and sitting like clear gems along his eyelids were a result of her, of her touch and her closeness and her greed. But he hadn’t pulled away from her, hadn’t asked her to stay away again. Did he feel this too, this unraveling at his core? She gives everything to him in this kiss, all of her pain and all of her uncertainty, all of the ache she feels for him burning like coals in her chest. Could this be love? Was it more than that, less, something else entirely? Or was she a broken thing now, undone and unraveling and reaching for something to anchor herself to. In the end it didn’t matter; there is nothing she keeps for herself, nothing that isn’t his to have.
He moans and breaks away from her lips and she lets him, will never force him into something he doesn’t want. But it hurts when he won’t look at her, when she reaches for those eyes that make her soft and gentle and they are gone. She says nothing though, gives none of the hurt up for him to see, to be swayed by. Instead she turns and disappears into his home, beckoning to him with an ache of need in her chest and deeper, with a soft furrowing of her brow beneath the dark of her forelock.
A second later he joins her, soft and relaxed and it feels like a moment her soul must know, must remember, because at she is at his side at once and pressing sweet kisses to his face and his neck and the hum of his chest. She shifts so he can see her face, gentle and affectionate, etched in a pale silver light that seems to drench her like sweat. It has always been hard to control this magic when her emotions are running deep. For a long moment she watches him, traces every hollow in his dark face, every elegant ridge of bone beneath the black and above it, the curve of his ears and the whorl of dark forelock that fell between them. When she kisses him again it is different this time, no urgency, no fire. Instead it is soft and molten and sure, apologetic, maybe, because she doesn’t ask when she presses it to him like a promise.
A sigh, a confession she doesn’t expect him to believe, not yet, maybe not ever. “I think my heart knew you even if I didn’t.” She says, still soft, almost whispering in her fading certainty as she reaches up to brush his forelock smooth again, feeling suddenly painfully vulnerable. “That first night, I mean, when I asked you to stay. Why didn’t you?” Her eyes go sad, round and dark, and the light fades on her skin just a little, paler like reflected moonlight in this skyless cave. Maybe there was no room for her in his world, maybe he didn’t feel this same beautiful pain in his chest that she did. So quiet she almost hopes he won’t hear it – she won’t look at him now. “What if I was meant to be yours?” She laughs, a quiet sound, as though this will soften the weight of her wondering. It isn’t I love you, it isn’t a vow or a promise because it isn’t that, not yet, perhaps not ever, not now in this lifetime – knows too that this pull in her soul is inexplicable and nonsensical and he will probably shy away from her. It is just the keening in her chest, the song this pain sings to the beating of her heart and she cannot hold it in anymore, not now. There are too many cracks in her, too many holes.
So she softens and steps close again, tastes the salt on his skin where it is damp with sweat, runs quiet lips across the lines and ridges of a body that her soul seems to claim as hers. He isn’t though, she mustn’t forget that. So she closes her eyes, hides her heart from him behind a smile that is soft and sweet and, despite her best efforts, etched through with a quiet kind of sadness she will never show him, never force on him. She shifts again until she is pressed to him, curved and small against his chest, beneath his neck. Her lips lift to his, beside his, to that spot of deep blue where galaxies hide in the deep-dark of his skin. “How long can I stay here with you, Dovev?” A whisper, an exhale, and their small stone world smells of her again.
