The last thing that he wants to do is laugh—although, to be fair, he rarely wants to laugh.
Perhaps he is overly serious as he ages. Perhaps he spends too much time looking for the bad things in live or, perhaps, they simply find him. Regardless, there is no humor on his face as he stands there, watching her, wanting her, and doing his very best to look like he is doing neither.
She begins to talk and it is so fast that he can barely keep up. “I was flying,” he answers quietly, unable to tell her the real reason. Unable to tell her that he was actually trying to exhaust himself so that maybe he could get an hour or two of sleep. Maybe he would pass out so deeply that dreams would not come.
But it doesn’t matter because she is moving on like a rock tumbling through a stream.
He angles his head, continuing to watch her curiously, amused by the way that the words seem to pour out of her without any provoking—the way she can barely hold them back. “I didn’t expect to see anyone either,” his words blunt, that wild river of his voice steady despite the churning in his chest.
It is her last words that catch his attention.
His grey eyes narrow, focusing in on her, his pulse rising just slightly.
They dig in under his skin and he can feel the mistake forming within him before he even has a chance to fully realize that it is a mistake. It is just a breath, a moment of time, a quick inhale, and then:
“Do you mean that? Did you want to see me?”
BRIGADE
when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake