His shadows curl in closer around the pair of them, crawling up legs and on their back. It is a soft and simple thing, but he feels the heat of it in his belly—feels the simple pleasure in having her tucked against him and the rest of the world fade away. His grief won’t, he knows. It is there lingering in the back of his mind, a painful gnashing of teeth, but he does his best to turn away from it. To let it sit there. It will be waiting for him when he does step away from his moment; he will only need turn to face it again.
But he blocks it from his thoughts.
Blocks the pain from permeating every thing in his life and does what his mother always wanted for him: he lets his guards down. He doesn’t try to run away or push her away. He doesn’t deflect or use his father’s sarcasm as a weapon. He just rests in the moment, allowing himself to be vulnerable. “I am afraid I only specialize in nightmares,” he quips, just a little, his golden eyes bright, “so I promise this is real.”
But there is a hidden smile in his voice as he laughs at her memory, his heart squeezing tight in his chest that she would have held onto any piece of him at all—any part of those first encounters. “You always did surprise me,” he whispers, nipping her gently. “It was so hard to try and keep myself from you. From how you made me feel. From the reality.” A pause, and then, “I think if I had faced it then I would have had to face a lot of things that I wasn’t ready to yet, so it was just easier to push you away.”
Firion rolls his shoulders and then leans his head down to press his cheek to her shoulder, draping there and feeling the hum of her pulse, his magic wrapping around them in a warm breeze.
“This is better than a lot of things. Never included.”
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas
all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)