He could love her, he thinks, holding her close to his chest, feeling the way she tucks against him and the way it feels so natural—so right. He has always been a boy enamored with the thorns of the world, the stone and the storm, but he finds that they live within her too. There is something impossibly complex about her that fascinates him; something of quiet meadows and raging rivers and poison and honey. He finds that there is plenty to fear, to worship, to want—plenty to keep him forever enamored.
Such things cannot make it to his tongue just yet though.
Such things live in the shadows of his guarded heart, a whisper that he can barely hear, let alone accept. It is easier to just let himself live in the space between breaths; it is easier to busy himself with the quiet rearranging of golden hair and the smoothing of her golden coat. It is easier to feel the warmth of her against him and think of the fires that she starts with the simplest of touches, the briefest of moments.
“No,” he counters her, his throat tight and his voice nearly husky with everything unsaid. He wants to say more—to explain to her how unworthy he is of such compliments, but they die on his tongue and he is left with nothing but the tide of his pounding heart and the dryness of his mouth. “Just no.”
There is another second and his eyes turn stormier, thunder living in the grey of them.
“Spend the night with me, Kensa.” His mouth traces over her forehead and then dips below her jaw before skimming down to her mouth where he exhales before breathing in the sweet perfume of her.
“I just—I just want to know what it is like to sleep well.”
There is an exhaustion in the corner of his eyes, hints of a man who has never slept through the night, who does not know what it means to rest easy. He has only known fitful slumber—slumber that is so strained that he is more likely to give up trying and spend his evenings running until exhausted.
His smile is smaller, nearly shy on his red-wine lips as the question hangs in the air between them.
BRIGADE
when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake
@[Kensa]