[private] putting roots in my dreamland

[isakov]

throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

He is so grossly unaccustomed to being so thoroughly swayed by the emotions of others.
Isakov has kept himself safely removed, unaffected, but he aches with the knowledge that someone has betrayed her trust. He aches with her pain. He can feel it throb in his own chest like a second heartbeat.

(How he resents it! How he wishes he could carve it out of the meat of his heart!
He was built from love, but it was the wrong kind of love.
He was not meant for this kind of crippling softness, Isakov.
And yet he does not feel as if he can breathe until she looks at him again.
He does not feel as if he can breathe until her fireflies take flight.)

And then she smiles at him and his own smiles softens around something more sincere, something that looks like relief. He does not know what she sees when she looks at him, he does not know what he has fashioned for her but it doesn’t matter if it makes her smile.

She closes up all the space she’d wedged between them and he’s grateful for this, too. He did not know how to be the sort of creature that repelled others, especially not the soft things like her. And when she touches him softly it feels like an apology, one he leans into. 

But he does not know how to react to shyness, so he pulls her swiftly into an embrace, anchors her close. Perhaps it is too bold but he has never been shy, Isakov. 

“I would never hurt you like that,” he murmurs, “you know that, don’t you?” 

 

isakov

@[Avelina]