She is all contradictions, and he is fascinated by them. She is soft and hard, smooth and yet rough. He cannot decide whether to fear the way that he responds to her or to revere it and so instead he chooses to do neither, instead closing his eyes and leaning into it. The salt of her skin dissolves on his tongue and even as he feasts, he feels as if he is stuck in famine, his stomach twisting with hunger pangs.
“Ellyse,” her name is wine in his mouth and he savors the feel of it, the syllables precious and savored as he wraps around each one. “I would give you all of me were it enough.” He does not want her to argue; he does not want to hear her say that it is enough (he is enough) because he knows the truth of it. He knows the empty spaces between his ribs, the places where entire chunks have gone missing. He has seen the way that time and sorrow has eroded at the cliffs of him, how the sea has washed away the edges.
He is not whole—not anymore; he has not been whole for a long time.
Still, he presses his mouth into her again, tracing the edges and whorls of her flesh. “You deserve so much more,” he murmurs, greedily pulling her closer to him, consuming all of her fire and heat so that entire infernos spark and flicker between them. “I would give you it all if I could.” One day, she would find someone who would do just that—someone who would pour themselves into wholeheartedly, someone who would not have but droplets left. He could not tell whether he would rejoice or mourn on that day.
In his chest, he begs for her to not leave, to stay just a little longer, but he keeps that held back for now. He manages to bite back that request at least. Instead he closes his gold-flecked eyes and rests his weary head against her, breathing in her sweet scent and soaking in the bliss of this stolen moment.
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know
I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
![[Image: gqYjsHr.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/KjqNDKxc/gqYjsHr.png)