it's just a little white lie, adna

[bethlehem]

I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.

He wonders if he’ll ever get used to it.
How willing she is to meld into him.
How she curls her body to fit it perfectly against him.
And even with the time that has passed and the weight she has lost, she still fits against him as if she were made specifically for that purpose.

Perhaps he had been a fool to so willfully ignore this. He remembers, though, how she’d said that she thought she was meant to find him and he’d responded in the only way he’d known how, by turning it into a joke. Because he hadn’t known how to believe it. Not until now.

They were made for each other and he could not ignore it any longer. Despite the way that they sometimes mixed like oil and water, refusing to bend to each other’s wills. Despite the way they fought, trying desperately to get to the root of each other’s hurt, to plunge a blade into the still-beating heart. He’s never believed much in destiny, but she tells him that she loves him in return and he thinks this is the closest he’ll ever get.

She kisses him and there is a glimmer of a smile in the furthest corners of his mouth as he lifts his head to lay his cheek to rest along the ladder of her spine. He is content, for the moment, to simply siphon the heat from her.

“Now we’ve just got to learn how to do it the right way,” he mutters and then exhales a breath of laughter.

BETHLEHEM

I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.