This isn’t how he had imagined this moment going, but then again, he’s never been particularly good at knowing how things will go with her. They have been a frustratingly dead-end when it comes to communicating since the first time they met, all those years ago with youth still rounding their cheeks. They had always known to push and pull, prod until they hit the weakest parts. They had known how to get under one another’s skin. How to toss the sharpest barbs until the other was left bleeding out.
So he isn’t surprised that they fumble now.
That he manages to say the wrong thing and she corrects him. That they are both so very gentle with how they treat the bud between them—the petals on it just barely unfurling. He laughs softly underneath his breath and shakes his head, amused after all these years that they managed to find their way here.
He finds her gaze and holds it and all the breath leaves him. All of the mirth. He is stripped bare by her question and he has no defense—nothing with which he could possibly hold her off or push her away any more. This is it, he thinks, and there should be fear to be this vulnerable, but he feels none of it.
“I want you,” his voice is throaty, heated, and he moves his golden gaze up to study her face. “I think perhaps I always have, but I was terrified to admit it. Terrified of what that could mean.” He swallows and feels the intensity of the need to go to her and pull her close, but he restrains, for now. He grits his teeth against the need and feels that tension bloom in his chest, drowning out every thought in his head.
“It’s enough for me,” he finally says, voice hoarse.
“I love you,” he repeats and the miracle of it has not dulled. “I love you, Mazikeen.”
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