03-31-2019, 11:07 PM
She is no less overwhelmed in this than she has been with everything else. The weight of these truths, of his thoughts and his heart and his soul bared so willingly to her is more than she is remotely ready for. But she does not shy away from it as she might have when she first came to find him, does not wall off and close herself off so that she can safely disentangle and pull away to a place where he has no weapons with which to wound her.
But there is something shifting in her heart, or maybe the heart itself is shifting in her chest. Beating back walls and thawing ice laid over it in the span of so many wounding years - because when he stumbles through his words, staggering and frustrated and so ready to lay himself bare to her, for her, there is a reflex roaring to life inside her. A burning desire to keep him safe, to protect this heart he gives her.
And the man who gives it.
She is at once somehow hard and soft, fierce in the way she pulls him close to her despite all these broken pieces inside her. In the way she kisses his brow and curls into him, pressing closer when she can feel his mind touch on something with teeth, something that still wounds him after so many years. It is terrifying to feel this way, but she does not feel brave, does not feel strong. It is something much softer in her, something much more than boldness.
It is faith.
A deep rooted trust she thought she would never find again, would certainly never believe in, not for anyone. Not after the kind of love she had known, had given herself to so wholly, so blindly. Been carved so hollow by. But this is not like that, they are not even comparable, and it is like seeing with new eyes.
She kisses his shoulder when he lays his forehead against her neck, bending her dark, delicate body around him in a way that is reflexively protective. It is a thing she does without thought, something her heart demands of her in a way that might frighten her if she weren’t so distracted by the heat of his breath on her skin, by the words he shares directly from an ancient heart.
And she thinks she understands.
“Because I look and see you, all of you, not just an idea of who I think you might be.” A king, a hero, a friend, a lover. Easy surface things with so much more in the depths below, things too much and too hard to put into words, too impossible to share. “You aren’t broken.” She says, whispers, and it feels like a confession of what she feels but does not say, of how he is so beautiful to her in all of these unfathomable depths that he lays so bare for her. There is no part of him that she does not love.
But there is something shifting in her heart, or maybe the heart itself is shifting in her chest. Beating back walls and thawing ice laid over it in the span of so many wounding years - because when he stumbles through his words, staggering and frustrated and so ready to lay himself bare to her, for her, there is a reflex roaring to life inside her. A burning desire to keep him safe, to protect this heart he gives her.
And the man who gives it.
She is at once somehow hard and soft, fierce in the way she pulls him close to her despite all these broken pieces inside her. In the way she kisses his brow and curls into him, pressing closer when she can feel his mind touch on something with teeth, something that still wounds him after so many years. It is terrifying to feel this way, but she does not feel brave, does not feel strong. It is something much softer in her, something much more than boldness.
It is faith.
A deep rooted trust she thought she would never find again, would certainly never believe in, not for anyone. Not after the kind of love she had known, had given herself to so wholly, so blindly. Been carved so hollow by. But this is not like that, they are not even comparable, and it is like seeing with new eyes.
She kisses his shoulder when he lays his forehead against her neck, bending her dark, delicate body around him in a way that is reflexively protective. It is a thing she does without thought, something her heart demands of her in a way that might frighten her if she weren’t so distracted by the heat of his breath on her skin, by the words he shares directly from an ancient heart.
And she thinks she understands.
“Because I look and see you, all of you, not just an idea of who I think you might be.” A king, a hero, a friend, a lover. Easy surface things with so much more in the depths below, things too much and too hard to put into words, too impossible to share. “You aren’t broken.” She says, whispers, and it feels like a confession of what she feels but does not say, of how he is so beautiful to her in all of these unfathomable depths that he lays so bare for her. There is no part of him that she does not love.