all the weight of my intentions; magnus

[magnus]

I wanna give you wild love, the kind that never slows down
I wanna take you high up let our hearts be the only sound

It feels like he has spent years at sea.

It feels like he has spent years away from dry land and she is the first taste of it. She is the first sip of honey on his tongue, and he is drunk on it. Drunk on the possibility. Drunk on that whisper of something more after the years—the decades, the centuries—of starving. It makes him wild-eyed with it. It makes it harder than ever to fight against the hope that crashes recklessly against his rib cage, that threatens to swallow him whole. Because he has never been one to have happy endings.

And he isn’t sure that he can survive another bitter one.

But the look in her eyes, the way she closes the distance between them again, makes him want to hope again. It makes him want to fling himself into the wild yonder of the possibilities. He wants to grab her hand and pull her in after him. Hope with me. Dream with me. He wants to show her the way that it can be. The beautiful, heart aching beauty of it. He wants to show her sunrises and sunsets and everything in between. He wants to show her the edge of the world and back again.

Not yet, he tells himself. Not yet.

She is a bird caged. A wild animal let loose. She is perfect in every way but haunted by the horrors of her past, and he will not ask more of her than she is willing to give. He will not push her further than she is willing to go, even if everything within him wants to lose himself in it.

He remains quiet and still, his crooked smile deepening at her words and drawing her close into his chest. Her touch ignites small fires with him, fires that crackle and burn, and he closes his eyes to steady himself, to find that core of control. To be what she needs to be and not the reckless man he knows he can be. But she drags at his resistance, tempts him, and when his gold-flecked eyes open again, they are smoldering with something he cannot name—something he cannot ignore.

“You undo me,” he finally growls softly, lips and teeth finding her, kept in check but only barely. He lingers on her jaw, on her nose. He savors the taste of her on his tongue and feels a small growl in the back of his throat. Other words rise and die on his tongue; perhaps they are the promises he has told himself he will not burden herself with, perhaps they are apologies for the state of his battered heart, or perhaps they are simply invitations into the dream they now weave together

I wanna go where the lights burn low and you're only mine