01-02-2022, 07:48 PM
ILLUM
I don’t think you are.” The hint of a smile, the ghost of one as he presses his lips to that perfect brow in what could be nothing less than a kiss. “I’d like to think I am clever enough to not be here if you were.” But there is something that clenches inside his chest, a wariness as her lips trace paths over the dark and stardust of his winged shoulder, because of course he cannot know that for sure - and standing with her like this, battling against unwelcome mental comparisons he would rather banish from his thoughts, he wonders if this angel is like her mother. If she is another moment he’s mistaken for something more.
He cannot tell if it is doubt or if it is resignation, if this bruise blossoming across his chest comes from the memory of how it felt to watch Ryatah go, but he can feel it settle like stone inside his chest, like ice around a heart both unwilling and wanting to thaw. He was never meant to be someone like this, a creature carved from all it’s broken pieces. He was never meant to hide behind this cold inside his chest, behind walls where he can be safe from everything that always wants to undo him, where others will be safe from the sinister dark that lives in the space between his ribs.
He was never meant to care so much.
But when she touches her lips to his shoulder and whispers that soft confession, that desire not to be apart from him, he wishes he were the kind of man who had the strength to let her go. She deserves more than what he is, more than this creature so willing to unmake worlds for her, to crush anything that tries to keep her away from him. He knows that this trust extending from her like a golden thread must turn black and withered the moment it reaches him, but he cannot stop himself from swelling with something that feels like more than affection as his golden eyes burn against hers. It is want and it is need and it is a kind of aching gravity that he is so sure will be his undoing. He is so much less than what she needs, so much less than what she must truly want. But if for now she chooses not to see it, chooses instead to stay among his midnight and his stars and believe that he is someone worth keeping, he will not be the one to show her the lie of it.
He will be her starlight daydream of mystery and wonder, he will trace kisses over the curve of her throat as numerous as the stars that float around them. He will drown in the sound of that breathless laughter and never once need to come up for air. He knows that none of this is anything he will be able to hold onto, knows that he is fated to always be a mere moment in the ever growing ephemera of time. But when she steps away and looks up at him, and he is left stumbling from the sudden absence of her warmth, he knows that he is already caught firmly within her quiet gravity.
That he is caught willingly.
He had been from that moment she first found him in Taiga, though he hadn’t fully understood it until after she left and all his waking thoughts turned back to her.
“She should.” He says, and his face, his voice, the slack line of his mouth are all strangely blank as he watches her look up at him with wonder and confusion and a tangle of things he is not good at recognizing because he has never cared before. His face is still something a little too firm, a little too distant as he watches her with his brow half furrowed, and it takes a long moment for him to surrender again to this gravity inside his chest. To the pull and tides of her. “You’ve been on my mind since you found me in Taiga. I haven’t grown tired of you yet.” He closes the distance again, but when he reaches for her it is with a tendril of soft, star-soaked darkness he weaves through the strands of her hair. “Only of the absence of you, Este.”
It is her smile that untethers him completely, the implication in her words that makes darkness boom from him in a soundless explosion of black and indigo and the deepest blues, a watercolor cloud of gauzy star strewn night born from the softness of her eyes and the arrogance inside his chest. She has made it no secret that she thinks the night is beautiful, and so he creates this one for her, builds galaxies that swirl around them and between them as if they are standing together at the top of the world. “These stars?” He asks, and there is gravel in the quiet of his voice, amusement as he drifts close enough to touch her again. “Or?”
He’s even quieter now, but there is nothing soft about his voice even as he presses a kiss to her throat and then her neck and then the curve of her shoulder as he pauses at the place her wings would be. “I miss these, you know.” He says, brushes his teeth over the skin as he wonders if she remembers how it had felt to have his midnight tangled there. Then he smiles, something dark and amused as he reaches higher to nip at the skin along her delicate spine, his touch turning to tendrils of shadow spilling out across the ridges of her vertebrae. "As I recall, you seemed to like when I touched them." A pause as his mouth drops in an arc over her ribs, frost and midnight against the molten of rose gold dapples. "What else do you like, love."
And he wonders, dreads, delights in the moment that she realizes it is more than just a word he uses, that she is the only one he uses it for.
He cannot tell if it is doubt or if it is resignation, if this bruise blossoming across his chest comes from the memory of how it felt to watch Ryatah go, but he can feel it settle like stone inside his chest, like ice around a heart both unwilling and wanting to thaw. He was never meant to be someone like this, a creature carved from all it’s broken pieces. He was never meant to hide behind this cold inside his chest, behind walls where he can be safe from everything that always wants to undo him, where others will be safe from the sinister dark that lives in the space between his ribs.
He was never meant to care so much.
But when she touches her lips to his shoulder and whispers that soft confession, that desire not to be apart from him, he wishes he were the kind of man who had the strength to let her go. She deserves more than what he is, more than this creature so willing to unmake worlds for her, to crush anything that tries to keep her away from him. He knows that this trust extending from her like a golden thread must turn black and withered the moment it reaches him, but he cannot stop himself from swelling with something that feels like more than affection as his golden eyes burn against hers. It is want and it is need and it is a kind of aching gravity that he is so sure will be his undoing. He is so much less than what she needs, so much less than what she must truly want. But if for now she chooses not to see it, chooses instead to stay among his midnight and his stars and believe that he is someone worth keeping, he will not be the one to show her the lie of it.
He will be her starlight daydream of mystery and wonder, he will trace kisses over the curve of her throat as numerous as the stars that float around them. He will drown in the sound of that breathless laughter and never once need to come up for air. He knows that none of this is anything he will be able to hold onto, knows that he is fated to always be a mere moment in the ever growing ephemera of time. But when she steps away and looks up at him, and he is left stumbling from the sudden absence of her warmth, he knows that he is already caught firmly within her quiet gravity.
That he is caught willingly.
He had been from that moment she first found him in Taiga, though he hadn’t fully understood it until after she left and all his waking thoughts turned back to her.
“She should.” He says, and his face, his voice, the slack line of his mouth are all strangely blank as he watches her look up at him with wonder and confusion and a tangle of things he is not good at recognizing because he has never cared before. His face is still something a little too firm, a little too distant as he watches her with his brow half furrowed, and it takes a long moment for him to surrender again to this gravity inside his chest. To the pull and tides of her. “You’ve been on my mind since you found me in Taiga. I haven’t grown tired of you yet.” He closes the distance again, but when he reaches for her it is with a tendril of soft, star-soaked darkness he weaves through the strands of her hair. “Only of the absence of you, Este.”
It is her smile that untethers him completely, the implication in her words that makes darkness boom from him in a soundless explosion of black and indigo and the deepest blues, a watercolor cloud of gauzy star strewn night born from the softness of her eyes and the arrogance inside his chest. She has made it no secret that she thinks the night is beautiful, and so he creates this one for her, builds galaxies that swirl around them and between them as if they are standing together at the top of the world. “These stars?” He asks, and there is gravel in the quiet of his voice, amusement as he drifts close enough to touch her again. “Or?”
He’s even quieter now, but there is nothing soft about his voice even as he presses a kiss to her throat and then her neck and then the curve of her shoulder as he pauses at the place her wings would be. “I miss these, you know.” He says, brushes his teeth over the skin as he wonders if she remembers how it had felt to have his midnight tangled there. Then he smiles, something dark and amused as he reaches higher to nip at the skin along her delicate spine, his touch turning to tendrils of shadow spilling out across the ridges of her vertebrae. "As I recall, you seemed to like when I touched them." A pause as his mouth drops in an arc over her ribs, frost and midnight against the molten of rose gold dapples. "What else do you like, love."
And he wonders, dreads, delights in the moment that she realizes it is more than just a word he uses, that she is the only one he uses it for.
@Este