Except no moment is truly meaningless. They are all important and individual, formative in some way, and this one will be no different for either one of them. Another piece of an important past, someday. She knows this even if he does not, that even the most unremarkable moments gather to mean something.
She smiles at the sound of his laugh, one side of that smooth white mouth catching to produce something crooked and imperfect. “Then I suppose this is a gamble, isn’t it.” That smile only grows when he touches his lips to her forehead and she closes her dark, tired eyes, lifts her chin to lean into it. It isn’t as brief as he means for it to be, not when she steps into him, keeps him close.
But when he pulls away to study her, she doesn’t protest. She stands still, waiting, opens her eyes again and lets them settle so dark and heavy against his beautiful face. There is a part of her that understands, a part of her that examines him in the same way he examines her. Traces the lines in his face for secret tensions, checks his eyes for shadows, his body for scars and signs of weariness. But he is so very unchanged, so very much as she remembers him from that night with his neck wrapped tight around her withers.
She wants to ask him what he found, what secrets he managed to pull from her skin with such dedicated scrutiny. But his lips part before hers can and she finds herself answering instead. “Mmm.” She acknowledges with eyes that grow just a shade darker, a shade duller. He does remember that night, her neck. She inhales deeply, looks away for a moment because remembering wakes an ache in her chest that she doesn’t want him to see, doesn’t think he’ll have any way to understand. “I’m well, Fenris.” She says so soft, the smile on her mouth nearly smooth and faded now despite the gentleness in those wild brown eyes when they return to his face. Then so much softer, her brow furrowing beneath the currents of a dark and forelock, “He isn’t what I thought, Fenris. He isn’t what he thinks he is, either.”
@[laura]