His face crumbles at her explanation, the words that come unbidden, and he closes the distance between them again—his touch hesitant, all of this between them still so new and vulnerable. “It’s okay,” he whispers, his voice slightly hoarse. “It’s really okay.” He swallows and wonders if it would be easier for him to avoid this conversation entirely. If perhaps it was selfish for him to not want to think of her with him or have to face the fact that he had been with others and so he hesitates visibly for a moment.
“I’m not disappointed in you. I couldn’t be,” and it’s true, even if it’s difficult to say. “You loved him,” he manages, golden lips pulling into a sad smile with a warmth that never reaches his eyes. “Perhaps still do. Maybe you always will.” This causes his heart to ache, clench in his chest, and he bumps his nose against her cheek again, savoring the soft quiet between them. “It’s not something that needs forgiveness.”
Another pause as he clears his throat. “And I’ve,” he frowns, “I’ve had children too, Maze.” There is a laugh and it’s slightly bitter, the discomfort lacing through it. “Too many, perhaps, although I couldn’t say that I regret any of them—even if I don’t know them.” Hurt flashes across his face, and more than his share of self-loathing. For a second, it’s difficult to breathe and he drops her gaze. He hadn’t ever stopped to think about what he had left behind. The children he had fathered and then left. The brief moments of reprieve that he had walked away from. The way that he had so desperately tried to lose himself in it.
But he does now.
He lets it consume him and he clenches his jaw at the ramifications that become clear.
Before he shakes his head to clear his thoughts. Forcing himself to come back to the present.
“So it’s okay,” he manages again, his voice still rough.
And she says the exact right thing in the same way that he has always said the opposite. He smiles sadly as she touches him and he lets his mouth drop from her cheek to her throat, tracing down her neck.
“Me too,” he whispers against the velvet of her. “I didn’t think—“
His voice cuts off and he closes his eyes.
“I never thought I’d be a we."
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)
@Mazikeen