all the weight of my intentions; magnus

[isle]

She does not tense this time when he drags her tight against his body, closing that sparse distance between them in a single, sweeping gesture. It feels too good to hold him, to brush her lips over whichever parts of him she can reach, learning his body as well as she has been able to learn his mind. His heart. She traces the shape of bone buried beneath hard muscle, and soft skin the color of burnished gold - a shade too rich and dark to be like sunshine, but easily something far more beautiful. It darkens at the edges like a sunset, deeping to bronze and then solid black, lacking the stars but not the beauty of night.

Her lips find the strands of his mane, equally deep and dark underneath, but the topmost layer is a rainbow of sunbleached fading that make her think of peaceful summer evenings. His dapples are her favorite, though, as though large raindrops had fallen to dilute the gold in uneven, imperfect circles.

She smiles, soft and affectionate, kisses three of the dapples nearest her lips.
Finds a fourth with careful teeth and a gentle quirk at the corner of her mouth.

When she shifts again, he is there, his face in her hair and his lips pressed to her cheek. She closes her eyes, lifts her chin against him to bask in such soft affection and the warmth of his words whispered against her dark skin. She wants to tell him not to thank her, that the words make her feel something strange in her heart, like they sew a little bit of distance between them each time he whispers them.

Like maybe she is supposed to save him, except she doesn’t even know how to save herself.
Like maybe he is lost, and she is the lantern in his endless night.

Her heart pangs at that, wounds in her chest that hurt where no one can see them. A fear, this one new - not that she is incapable of loving him, she does not doubt that now. But a worry that maybe she will not be what he needs, not bright enough to guide him back to himself, not strong enough to steady him. Is it enough to want to be his strength, enough to try? To care for his heart when that heart is so busy caring for the people he leads, so busy forgetting itself.

But this feeling is undeniable, this tether between them that feels nothing like being bound and everything like being whole again - and this child in her belly, part of them both.

He pulls back suddenly, sudden to her though the motion itself had been gentle, and when she lifts those eyes so dark and beautiful, still ringed in a shade of the worry gathered in her thoughts, she is surprised to find that glint of mischief. Surprised by the kiss he steals at the corner of her mouth, by the pinch of teeth that flush sudden heat through her veins. More kids? There is a moment where she is flayed inside by old memories of a man she had loved so desperately, of the children he’d had with so many others while he promised he’d wanted only her. Of the agony of trying to believe beautiful words repeatedly mangled by ugly actions. Blank and distant and walling herself off for one single beat of a heart that thuds in her chest.

But that is not what Magnus means, and she knows it without having to confirm it by his thoughts. Knows that listening will only confirm this, and it does, of course. But she wonders if he will have noticed that brief change in her, if he will be hurt by it, by her inability to completely let go of the things that have wounded her in the past. Those reflexes so learned, lessons reinforced by the pain of trust broken as many times as she had offered it. She wants to apologize, but the words catch like a lump in her throat and she swallows them back down. Instead, with a soft kind of uncertainty, an unspoken apology, she noses back beneath his neck again to lay her cheek against shoulder.

“Boys,” she agrees in her quiet way, as though they would have any say in the matter, settling comfortably into the curve of his chest, “kind, like their father. My girls inherit too much of my wild, I’m afraid you simply couldn’t handle it.” She says it with a smile, with gentle laughter in her eyes and in the color of the words pressed to his skin. Then, softening, twisting her neck to find his face and those warm, beautiful eyes, “Would you like me to tell you about them? The children that came before ours.” As much a part of this family as their own children together would be.

[magnus]

I wanna give you wild love, the kind that never slows down
I wanna take you high up let our hearts be the only sound

She could never frighten him off, he thinks. Never hurt him. His heart has been battered and bruised so many times—by those who have left, by those who have betrayed him, by those who have died. It has been something that has happened slowly and all at once, and he has learned how to live in the aftermath of that moment. He has learned to live with pieces of himself gone missing, of pieces that he has learned to stitch together, and he has come to accept this new patchwork version of himself.

But he does not feel incomplete when she lays her cheek on his chest.

He doesn’t feel the pieces of himself missing, doesn’t feel less than.

He just feels himself drawn together, at peace, with the steady knowledge that he has finally found the port he has been looking for—the home for which to rest his head. So he doesn’t startle when she pulls back because he recognizes the ache in her heart and the way that this is both thrilling and terrifying. He doesn’t hold it against her or even not understand it. He just smiles, gold-flecked eyes soft.

When she comes back to him, he is tender and quiet and accepts her version of an apology. He laughs under his breath, looking upward as the wind catches his mane and glides down the curve of his neck. “I don’t mind the wild,” he says, pensive, his sooty lips curved upward in the corner, “but I certainly don’t mind a group of boys either.” She talks about her other children and he just presses a kiss to her skin, tasting the sweetness of it as it lingers. “I would love to know more about them.”

Because they are of her and it doesn’t matter that they are not his—because they are now. In his heart, he has claimed them, loves them as much as his own children that roam wild and free. The children that no longer even live on this earth because decades have passed since their birth. “I can tell you about my children too,” he says quietly, and there is ash in his throat that makes the words a little hoarse. 

I wanna go where the lights burn low and you're only mine

[isle]

She leans against him in the growing dark, curled into his side, into his gold with her eyes closed so softly and a smile easy on her lips. There are so many stories to tell him of all her children - of Argo and his broken, unhealable heart. Of Australis and her wander-spirit, of Nevi and Lieschel and the way they had come to love each other as more than just adopted siblings. It had never upset her the way it upset Offspring - they had never truly been just siblings, that connection had been deeper from the very first day Nevi had found her. She tells him of Levi and Lynx, of Eione, of how much she regretted the distance that had come between her and some of her children. Of how, sometimes, when the night is too dark and too quiet, and the stars hang above her so heavily, she wonders if she loved them well enough. If they know.

She even tells him of Wyck, and somehow that is harder, like a piece of brokeness lodged so deeply inside her heart that she isn’t sure what will cave in when she pulls it out to show him. But he is so kind and he holds her so close, traces the dapples along her shoulders and her hips and her belly with kisses that steady her.

They stay together through the night, sharing stories and the names of their children, of the ones they love and miss and worry for, and it is a strange, beautiful glimpse of a life she longs to have. Of the partner she has always ached for, a heart to trade halves with.

When the stars climb high and then start to fall away again, and the sky blushes pink somewhere far below the distant horizon, she can feel the soft weight of sleep climb into her limbs and draw her eyes peacefully closed as she settles down beside Magnus. There is no hint of uncertainty left in her heart now, no sign of the doubt or worry she had felt so poisoned by, there is only content and raw affection as she tucks up beneath his neck and falls asleep to the beautiful beat of his wild heart.