The yearning to push more of the ferns aside to look at him blossomed inside her, full and beautiful. It felt as heavy as a bruise on the inside of the skin but as weightless as water slipping through her lips. Bean could not explain why she needed to fill her eyes up with the splendid vision of him; she just knew that the need weighed on her like an itch she couldn’t shake.
She wanted to be reckless like she always is but something about the way he whispered to himself and lay curled up inside the shelter of the ferns made her hesitate. Bean did not like that hesitation, it felt unnatural and foreign to her. Yet she couldn’t just barge in on him like she normally would have done.
There was almost a warning in the way the wind shook the leaves on the branches overhead, subtle and imagined but somehow there nonetheless to take care in disturbing him. So she did, pausing after having said his name as if she wasn’t quite sure what kind of fairytale she’d stumbled upon in the darkening woods. Would it be a trick of light, shadow, and magic and she’d discover it’s not him at all but a figment of her rampaging imagination?
How cruel! To which she then sucked in and held her breath, afraid to let it go and have the moment shatter like glass right in front of her. Her ears fly forward at the small barely audible gasp, and she realizes that he is indeed as real as she is. Bean would have but herself just to confirm that suspicion but she was spared from having to do so by her name flying from his lips.
The breath she’d been holding came out in a rush on the wings of a smile that transformed her plain face into something radiant. Before there had still been the smile but it had been soft and uncertain. Now it beamed and broke on her face like a ray of sunshine through storm clouds. All because he said her name in such a way that made her heart leap like a salmon swimming upstream against the current.
His muzzle presses to hers and his scent overwhelms her in a way that is inexplicably good. She inhaled it deeply, certain that she could drown on scent alone and she thinks that might not be such a bad way to go… it never occurs to her to shrink away from his scars; they don’t matter to her or if they do, it is only to the extent that she would always know him by those scars and how his skin felt against hers, bumpy but unforgettable and oh so good!
Had she always longed for a touch like this? Maybe, girlish dreams and hopes aside and here they are, heads bent close together and noses touching for what feels like the span of one agonizingly short heartbeat when all Bean wants it to do is stay forever. “Did what?” she asks, distracted by his easy cheer that matches her own, beat for happy beat. She is clueless to the gloom that held him in a tight horrific grasp only a moment ago.
Has no idea that she is like aloe on a sunburn, cool and soothing and just what was needed. But his comment keeps her afloat on a tide of emotion that feels a lot like more than a silly crush and she smiles on, not entirely oblivious to the wolf howl and the resultant shiver that ripples through his silver-brown skin. Bean just doesn’t ask about it, despite a pinprick of curiosity that makes her want to - his secrets are his own, for now.
She feels it has to be something he’ll share in time and she is content with that, the curiosity subdued by his smile and the fond look in his eyes that she drinks in. Bean could look at him for hours on end, admiring the silver-brown and patchwork white of his skin. Even his scars, that she is sure he has stories about. In time though, and she’s not sure where this newfound patience comes from - maybe him?
He makes her less rowdy and wild, which Bean kind of likes. It’s nice to be calm sometimes, instead of a wild harridan chasing after something, since even she is not sure what. Maybe the sun and the moon, maybe she’s an errant star on an earthbound mission, or maybe she’s got way too many fairy tales on the brain. “I’m beyond happy to see you too,” she admits with affection clear in her voice.
Bean lifts her head up to stare at him, surprised but also secretly thrilled that he’d say such a thing. It doesn’t sound ridiculous to her at all. How could it? She wants to echo that very same sentiment to be honest. Every bone in her body is begging to make him come with her into the great unknown, and not just because there is something undefinable in his tone that makes her heart hiccup and suspect he’s seen things that Bean never has and thankfully, might never.
(Oh! But if she had known of the terrors he’d suffered, she’d have gone to the mountain to beg of the fairies and this land’s magic to make him whole and untroubled again. Or at least give him some measure of peace from all the nightmares that plagued him. Bean though, just doesn’t know.)
“I’d like that. You coming with me or me going with you. We could go anywhere, you know…” she trails off, mulling it over because she hasn’t fully explored all the lands here. Maybe they could find one together. Bean, perpetually smiling, leans into him with her plump pony-sized frame and asks him, “What direction should we point our heads in?” It probably sounded a little dreamy and anticipatory, and in all seriousness, it was. That was just how Bean was, already dreaming of the trails they’d take and the sights they’d see.
@[Clegane] ❤️