09-03-2018, 07:03 PM
Vulgaris
He wants to crack his ribs apart and show her where it hurts the most, to tell her every secret he’s ever kept from everyone else. Vulgaris wants to let her in and lock the door behind her so she’ll be trapped there forever but the house of his heart is not a home. It will never be warm enough or bright enough to nourish her soul and give her what she needs to thrive in this world. Instead, he decides that he will protect her from all the ugliness like him and stay by her side even when the storms threaten to tear everything apart again. Words have never come easily to him but he can show his love in this way, at least.
He softens around the edges when she declines his offer to consume whatever upset her, relaxes against her while he idly kisses at her skin in apology. Something aches in him to think that someone could forget a girl like her and that feeling bleeds out into his thoughts. Could she ever forget him? He had meant so little to so many that he wonders how she could be different. But fear finds no place within him and he trusts that her words are true. She could lie for the rest of their lives together, he thinks, and he would still offer her his heart on a silver platter as he does now. Leliana makes all that empty inside him into a garden that might actually bloom some day.
I’m yours.
The words pour over him like molten iron and his skin feels too hot to even breathe, he thinks. He takes up her offering, however tarnished she thinks it may be, and builds a temple around it to memorialize its splendor. Vulgaris shivers at her next words and opens his eyes to stare at the curve of her belly. It doesn’t yet betray the little life it carries but he knows his child is in there somewhere, curled up tight in its slumber while it waits for its birthday. A smile finds his lips and it is the first sincere expression he’s worn in so long.
“Where do you live, Leliana?” he mumbles against the heat of her skin as he continues to watch her stomach. His head feels dizzy and his thoughts are so far away as he drifts through this moment like a dream. Still, he wants to know that she is somewhere safe. The idea of being in Loess without her has begun to loom over him.
“You could live with me, that way we’re never apart from one another.”
He’s greedy for her time and her affections but he makes no attempt to hide this from her. Instead he lays it all out on the table for her and waits for her to accept or crush him and all his hopes. Even if she did decline, he’d come crawling to her for even a second with her. To him, her face is that of the sun and there is no survival without it.