"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
He doesn’t meet her and she feels her heart constrict painfully in her chest.
He keeps himself separate and even though she is aching to find that softness of him, to uncover it again, she doesn’t press it—not anymore. She just stands there and feels the space between them as a physical thing. She feels it like an ache, like a dagger buried in her belly. She wraps herself around the pain of it and then lets it simmer, fester, until she feels like she may go mad with the longing and the need.
When he looks away, her face falls, the anger rushing out of her.
“Maybe let me decide who I think is worth missing,” she says and her voice is quieter now, softer. She wishes that he could see her through her eyes. She wishes that he could see how much of him she has thought about—how much she has come to care about. She wishes that she could press it into his palm like a gift and then let it sink into his bones until her truth became his reality. Until it shored up his heart.
But she nows that life doesn’t work that way, and she doesn’t expect it to.
She doesn’t expect him to understand her—or even want to, after how she’s been.
And how could she blame him?
So she continues to just watch him, feeling her heart pound painfully when he gives her that sad smile, when she studies his face. “It’s okay, you know,” this is quieter, as if she is scared others will overhear, and her smile is a shadow of a thing on her face. “If you didn’t miss me. That’s okay.”
Adna rolls her shoulder, trying to shrug it off like it hasn’t already buried deep inside of her.
“Is it odd to say that I would rather have the suffering?”
Another swallow. “I would suffer a thousand times over for that night.”
It is exhausting, this game.
The ebb and flow of their anger as it breaks against these soft moments.
She had said that he didn’t know her, but he supposed that she doesn’t not know him either. How could she? He had offered her almost nothing. Told her only that he had walked himself across this entire god forsaken land as a child in pursuit of something he would never find.
Why had he allowed himself to believe her when she’d said that she believed she was meant to find him?
Why had he allowed himself the luxury of that one weakness?
He swallows again and he shakes his head but he does not open his mouth to protest. Perhaps it is her decision to make, he thinks, but knows in his heart of hearts that he is the one who will pay the price when she’s wrong. When he trespasses against her belief and she breaks her anger against the ridge of his spine.
So he will let her believe him worth missing until she learns for herself that she is wrong.
Again, he sighs. It is only defeat now, bone-deep exhaustion from the sudden spike of rage and then its sudden recession. He grits his teeth and he shakes his head. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Adna,” he murmurs. “I never said that.”
He watches her now, wonders what she’s thinking. And then she says it and he wishes she hadn’t. Because he doesn’t know how to rectify this. He doesn’t know how to make it better, only knows how to make it worse. So, he says, “I’m sorry.”
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
“Please,” there is something like a plea in her voice, soft and quiet. “Please don’t apologize.”
It cuts her deeper than she could ever explain—the way that it feels like pity wrapped around her throat. The way that it feels like charity, like a mistake, like anything but what she wanted. She hates herself in these moments. She hates herself for the weakness that claws at her, vicious and brutal and biting.
She hates herself for the way he can remain so calm while she just comes apart.
Adna opens her mouth again and then promptly shuts it, gives a sad smile and then just falls quiet.
She has done nothing but make this entire situation worse the more that she talks. She has done nothing but provoke him into rage and then pity; she has done absolutely nothing but ruin his peace and quiet.
So she doesn’t even try to rectify it again.
She can’t bear the thought of pouring out her heart again—telling him how much she has missed him, telling him how much the night meant to her—for his pity. She can’t bear to tell him anything more when it just ruins things further, when it doesn’t do a lick of good, when she’s left aching in the aftermath.
So, for the first time since she saw him this day, she stays silent.
She swallows her pain and lets her gaze drop to the ground and just breathes in slow.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
Her plea sinks into the very marrow of his bones.
It quivers quietly in the charged air between them.
He swallows it and it leaves a bitter acid in its wake.
But he has so much to be sorry for, he finds, that the reasons gather at the base of his throat and try in vain to claw their way up it. He struggles to stifle them, smother them. He sews his mouth up tight and turns his gaze away and tries to find some equilibrium.
He is exhausted, he realizes. Perhaps because she is the only soul in this entire god forsaken land he’s ever come across more than once. Both times by chance, though he cannot help but feel like fate has played some part in this. Fate must have injected that want for a home and roots into his veins and led him here. To her. To them. Because his gaze falls heavy on the swell of her belly again and that heart he’d forgotten he had swells until it feels too big for its ribbed cage.
And he finally - finally - moves toward her. It takes only a few strides to totally eliminate the murky distance between them. He does not speak either, merely closes his eyes as he draws near and presses his mouth against her barrel. He does not breathe, stills himself completely as he seeks out some sign of the life within her. Their life. Equal parts of both of them. He wonders if the child will look like him – ordinary – or like its mother – beautiful and reptilian.
“What will we name it?” he murmurs into her skin.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
The seconds seem like millennia.
The stretch and stretch and stretch—until she feels like surely her reality will snap and she will be sent spinning into the sun. She wonders if he will just turn around and leave. She wonders if maybe he will finally be done with her—she is so deeply done with herself—and just slip back into the shadows.
Maybe this was a fever dream after all.
But, eventually, she hears the sound of his heavy footsteps on the ground. She feels the way that the air seems to be pushed by his presence. She swallows hard and glances up, feeling her heart trapped in her throat. When he is near her, she curls into him without thinking. It is instinctual and she cannot help but feel like it it drawing her first breath after spending so long underwater—so long drowning.
Her sudden inhale and exhale is heady and she closes her eyes, presses her cheek to his belly and then tilts her head up so that her head is resting on his spine. Everything within her twists tight around the feeling; everything within her nearly shatters with the relief. “I don’t know,” she says and it is almost a laugh. It is almost a broken sound as she presses in tighter to him, so hungry for the warmth that only he can bring.
Suddenly, she feels that faint stirring of life quicken.
She frowns and then gasps as the child kicks out and her head pulls back suddenly.
“Did you feel that?” She breaks apart just enough to curl so that she can turn her head around and look back at him, her serpentine eyes widening just a little. “They must like you,” and then a shy smile.
