08-23-2020, 10:00 PM
── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──
She thinks that she might fall apart in the waiting. In that moment before he reacts and she is left standing there, her own voice the last thing in her ears.
Another silence, another chance for regret and fear to rise in her chest.
She remembers how she had tried to catch herself before she came to this point. She had tried to let logic drown out the way he made her heart race in a way that was different from just being afraid. She had tried to remind herself over and over that there was nothing tangible here. That it did not matter how she might wish something into being, she could not make love exist where it had no business being – with her.
She is the graveyard where love goes to die, where even the flowers wilt and wither on the headstones.
Please, he says, and she sucks in a sharp breath when he pulls her into his chest. Her mind had told her heart to be ready for him to push her away, again, to tell her that he didn’t care if she stayed or left. The relief that rushes through her rattles the air from her lungs, and she can do nothing but press against him, into him, to let her lips trail from his shoulder and down to the familiar scar. She breathes in everything that makes him him, and thinks she can hear the echo of her own heartbeat whispering back to her from his chest.
“Do you remember what you said the day that I left?” She asks him around the ache in her throat, trying to quiet the memories from that day, but this one burned too deep to ignore. It is there, bright and burning across her heart, and she is afraid if she ignores it that it will consume her. “When you said that this wasn’t anything special?”
She does not move from where she stands curled against him, afraid that she is pushing her boundaries and that he is going to rip himself away at any moment. She keeps herself flush against his skin like that might somehow keep him there, like it might make him actually listen. “Tell me you didn’t mean it,” her voice still an almost whisper, but the need that is there is something beyond a plea. “Tell me, and I promise I’ll never need to hear you say it again.”
She has shifted back now, just enough so that her lips can caress up his throat, and along the sharp angles of his jawline. “Because you are not nothing to me, Atrox. And I cannot replace you today or tomorrow, or with anyone else.”
Another silence, another chance for regret and fear to rise in her chest.
She remembers how she had tried to catch herself before she came to this point. She had tried to let logic drown out the way he made her heart race in a way that was different from just being afraid. She had tried to remind herself over and over that there was nothing tangible here. That it did not matter how she might wish something into being, she could not make love exist where it had no business being – with her.
She is the graveyard where love goes to die, where even the flowers wilt and wither on the headstones.
Please, he says, and she sucks in a sharp breath when he pulls her into his chest. Her mind had told her heart to be ready for him to push her away, again, to tell her that he didn’t care if she stayed or left. The relief that rushes through her rattles the air from her lungs, and she can do nothing but press against him, into him, to let her lips trail from his shoulder and down to the familiar scar. She breathes in everything that makes him him, and thinks she can hear the echo of her own heartbeat whispering back to her from his chest.
“Do you remember what you said the day that I left?” She asks him around the ache in her throat, trying to quiet the memories from that day, but this one burned too deep to ignore. It is there, bright and burning across her heart, and she is afraid if she ignores it that it will consume her. “When you said that this wasn’t anything special?”
She does not move from where she stands curled against him, afraid that she is pushing her boundaries and that he is going to rip himself away at any moment. She keeps herself flush against his skin like that might somehow keep him there, like it might make him actually listen. “Tell me you didn’t mean it,” her voice still an almost whisper, but the need that is there is something beyond a plea. “Tell me, and I promise I’ll never need to hear you say it again.”
She has shifted back now, just enough so that her lips can caress up his throat, and along the sharp angles of his jawline. “Because you are not nothing to me, Atrox. And I cannot replace you today or tomorrow, or with anyone else.”
ryatah
