He watches her in a way that makes it feel like he is trying to know her, trying to understand how all these pieces inside her chest fit together to make her whole, to make her Winslow. It is a very vulnerable kind of feeling, like he has seen all these cracks inside her, all these jagged edges she tries so hard to conceal behind this mask of stoicism she wears like armor. But in the same way that it makes her feel laid bare to him, it also makes her feel seen. Like she is someone worth wondering about, someone worth learning.
Maybe this is the thing that keeps her tethered here to him, the thing that binds her wandering heart.
She is still a thing of fierceness watching him, more wolf than equine, more jagged than not. But her eyes spill secrets like they are tears, staying soft and uncertain in their shade of pale, watery blue. “Every day is a lot of days.” She points out, frowning as though it is her job to remind him how soon that might come to feel like a burden to him. But he is smiling in that way that traps sunshine inside her chest, traps light inside the dark, heat where she is made of stone.
But what is happiness? Is it the solitude of the forest she knows she well, living on the outskirts of a pack that only barely tolerates her company but all the same allows her the space she craves? Or is it this pale and chestnut pegasus always so ready with his smiles and his levity and those dark eyes that seem to know her better than she even knows herself.
His nose reaches out again, soft and heather grey, like velvet where it touches the line of her cheek and the coiled muscle beneath. But when he pulls back again to watch her, she is pulled in on the tide of him, drawn into his gravity like a falling star. “One day at a time.” She repeats, and even she is not entirely sure if she says it in question or confirmation.
“What does staying look like?” She says it in a near whisper and with a frown that creases the corners of her pale blue mouth as she studies him. She knows what the alternative is, knows her place in the pack or in the flock or in whoever allows her to revolve around their gravity, but she does not know what it might mean to stay here with him. With Tamlin, who is gentle and kind and touches her skin like maybe it is something he enjoys, who watches her like her secrets are treasures instead of hidden flaws.
She takes the final step that draws her face alongside his, so close that it takes no effort to reach out and trace her lips along the undercurve of a pale grey jaw and to the quiet pulse at his throat where he nose rests a moment to breathe in the scent of him. “I care about your happiness too.” His mane is a tangle of sandy red and pale flowers, and she notices that the ones buried deeply in the tangles seem to glow within that delicate dark. “And I want to be part of that happiness, this smile.” Her lips drop again to find his, touch that crease at the corner of his mouth that appears so often. “But I am not so sure I will get it right, and I do not want to be the reason for your unhappiness.”
the devil in my arms said feed me to the wolves tonight
@Tamlin