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You found him staring into the sky at dusk sometimes.
When the sun began its descent, painting the heavens in layers of reds and oranges, like a blazing fire that devoured the clear blue sky to make way for the moon’s ascent.
He stood there. Amidst the wheat field at the end of the small trampled path from when you tended to it throughout the days.
He looked up into the cloudless sky with a gaze neither empty nor emotional. Neither focused nor turned inwards. As if he was caught and trapped in a space that seemed to isolate him from the very world around him.
And yet, you wondered if he knew how much you loved and appreciated him for the mere fact of him standing there. Alive. Well. Whole.
You approached him, slowly, the rustling of your clothes as they brushed against the wheat stalks and the subtle noise of them bending beneath your steps more than enough to let him know you were there.
He still didn’t move. Though, given how he was on such high alert usually - the calm sounds of nature themselves enough to pull him from his already too light sleep - you considered it progress. And another sign just how deep his trust of you ran. Only you. Ever since fate’s ties have been shattered and burdens have been lifted. To guide him, to put him back together again.
And as he finally acknowledged you and turned his head over his shoulder, you met his blue eyes. Still lacking the bright light from what you were used to, still veiled by a darkness that might never fully leave and yet, as he kept his gaze on you something flickered across them. Something you couldn’t quite describe as life but as recognition. As worth. As if he was looking at something incredibly valuable.
Under the weight of his gaze you felt the faintest warmth appearing in your cheeks.
His exhale sounded longer as he turned his gaze back towards the sky. And you blinked, contemplating, before you slowly wrapped your arms around his middle, gently pressing yourself against his back.
He didn’t reciprocate, but neither did he flinch nor attempt to evade your gesture.
“Are you alright?” you asked and only then did he turn around. You loosened your hold on him, but held onto his shirt when he faced you.
He nodded. A lie you recognized and you were both aware of, but neither of you pushed nor dwelled on it. Instead you gave him a small smile and wrapped your arms around him again, resting your head against his chest where his heartbeat conveyed a soothing sound that made you close your eyes.
He only slowly moved. Hesitation still ruled his every move despite how you knew he wanted this. Longed for it even. Rather than wrapping his arms around you, his hands settled on your shoulders, not pulling you closer, not pushing you away but keeping you there. Taking without demanding.
You wished he would take more.
He hasn’t been intimate with you since it all ended. Ever since hearts and souls mended and granted him a chance at having a life. Free from an inevitable fate of suffering.
You never pushed it, never pushed him. For you understood all too well that he needed time and space. To sort himself out, to adjust. To live.
You pulled back from him a little. His fingers a faint weight on your shoulders, letting you leave but silently wishing you wouldn’t. You had no intention of it either.
His skin felt smooth, warm beneath your palm and he closed his eyes, leaning into your hand as you cradled his cheek. Your other hand reached up, slid to the back of his neck. To pull you up, to pull him closer. Before you caught his lips with yours.
You suppressed the urge to sigh as his lips molded against yours. Like they belonged there. Cool and firm, warm and soft. Complimentary and contradictory all at once. Your hand on the back of his neck kept him close, played with the soft strands of hair while your other hand stayed on his cheek, let the feel of his skin against yours soothe your heart and ignite your body.
The kiss didn’t last long. Phainon pulled back before you could deepen the kiss, indulge in the sensations and the proximity of the moment.
“Don’t stop,” you breathed, your eyes closed, your hands still holding him close. Faintly his breath fanned over your face.
“I… I can’t,” he said, his voice quiet.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to hurt you or… bring back memories.”
You let out a deep breath through your nose. You knew what he was referring to, the images still vivid in your mind. Memories of darker times. Times when he pushed boundaries and took. When a mask and distorted voice was more than just a physical barrier between the two of you. A part of him - no, of his memories - and yet, standing here with you now - as troubled as he still was - proved that this part of his soul did not define him.
Neither did the shape he took when he gave into the deepest and blazing depths of his soul and let the destruction unfold.
“You never did anything I didn’t want,” you said, your words traveling over his exposed collarbones until they reached his ears, making him look down at you. “Or that I didn’t enjoy,” you added.
“What does it change if I probably wouldn’t have given you another choice, if it had been different?”
You looked up at him, your eyes finding his and refusing to let him escape your gaze, your fingers tangling in the loose shirt he wore.
“Do not forget that it was I who tore that mask off your face and kissed you in those ruins. It was I who took what I wanted - what I craved - from you.” Your voice had fire in them, a resolution he could neither fight nor shake off. You took a deep breath, tension leaving your shoulders. “Please do not imply any of this had been one-sided. Because it never was. And I never regretted a single thing.”
You looked down, your eyes finding the golden color drawing a line over his skin, sliding over his collarbone, disappearing beneath his shirt… The temptation of pressing your lips to it became unbearable, yet you resisted. It’s been so long…
Instead you allowed your forehead to rest against his skin, smooth and warm, not quietening the storm within you but still dimming the flood of emotions grabbing a hold of you.
Time stood still for a while. And you basked in the moment. Being close to him, the sound of his heart mixing in with the breeze ruffling the wheat stalks around you, his warmth seeping into your bones…
Time continued in a blur of colors and sounds.
Hands cupped your face, a whirl of white and blue in front of your eyes, and lips found yours before your mind could process how things suddenly shifted.
The grip on your face was gentle, cradling you, and yet relentless, unwilling to let you part from him and the sheer difference to what you’ve experienced before - what you have missed - made your mind go blank and your body feel weightless.
You surrendered to his touch and kiss instantly. Hands clenching the fabric of his shirt, eyes falling shut as his lips molded against yours. The way you remembered, the way you have wanted and craved for so long.
Whatever held him back before, it was gone and it almost hurt to realize just how much he has wanted to kiss you like this as well. How much he has held back for your sake, for the vague idea of what the memories of darker times have left behind in your soul.
Time remained frozen and fast-forwarded all at once. You felt every tiny movement of his lips against yours, of his tongue sliding along yours, of his fingers cradling your cheeks. But you also lost the ground beneath your feet, sounds and scenery around you vanishing and shifting as if you moved too quickly for it to be natural.
And when you blinked, dusk was but a mere glimmer of orange and yellow colors pouring in through the windows of your home.
He wasn’t gentle. Not when he dropped you on the mattress and not when he took his place between your legs which you oh so willingly parted for him.
But when hands came to rest beside your head, when he braced himself above you, he paused.
A turmoil of emotions within the depths of those gorgeous blue eyes. All accumulating to the conflict that itched itself into every part of his expression. The hard line of his mouth, the tension in his jaw, the furrow in his brows. Still doubting, still questioning.
Your hands came up to cup his cheeks, to cradle his face in the palm of your hands until he melted, closed his eyes to drown in the tenderness of your affection. The storm within his eyes calmed when he opened them again and searched for yours.
He didn’t ask for reaffirmation. The look in your eyes, the smile, how you cradled him like something incredibly fragile - like something that hasn’t been shattered over and over again before - it was finally enough for him.
His hands left blazing trails of fire on your skin as clothes were discarded and revealed so much skin to each other’s eyes. To caress and worship, to feel and love.
And oh, how he did.
He was driven by a need and desperation as fingers found your skin, as lips and hands worshiped your body and devoured your heart and soul. Like he used to and as if it was your first time all at once. Such familiar sensations that had you sigh and tremble beneath him, longing for more and drowning in the flood of emotions he stirred up within you.
And yet, despite his heady moves, his scorching kisses and all-consuming touch, there was an underlying tenderness. A gentleness and restraint that made him pause when you found yourselves entangled, heart to heart and legs around his waist. To encourage him, to tell him you wanted and needed this just as he did. That he was allowed to take.
His lips a ghost on yours and when he found his way inside of you, time stood still again.
He took a moment. Needed a moment. With his eyes closed and his forehead against yours, the hint of a gasp on his lips.
You thought you were drowning. In his arms, in the heat, the devotion and utter love seeping through your skin and into your bones just from being joined as intimately as possible again after all this time.
He shuddered above you. Or maybe it was you as you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, buried your face in the crook of his neck while he began to move.
Every thrust burned, every jerk of his hips sent sparks of fire through you, igniting your body from the inside out, the sensations so familiar and yet so overwhelming that his name left your lips in a broken moan.
He never pulled away from you, never parted enough to allow your arms and legs to slip from around him. As if him inside you wasn’t enough and he tried to fuse your very heart and souls together.
Every kiss, every roll of his hips, every gasp of your name like a prayer on his lips, an attempt to take you in. To appreciate and cherish you. To love you. Like he has always wanted. Surrendering himself to the gift that fate has stolen from him for so, so long.
“Join me… please,” he breathed against your lips, blue eyes half-lidded, dazed and yet burning.
And how could you not? How could you not let go of yourself and fall into him when fingers joined where you two became one, when hips stuttered and bodies shuddered, when moans and gasps for air filled the room around you?
Utterly blissful. And so overwhelming as you trembled in each other’s arms, basking in the love and adoration and surrendering to the pleasure and delight this oh so intimate act brought with it.
You stilled. Caught in the sensations and yearning for them to never end.
When the waves of bliss subsided, when your boneless body returned from the clouds and sank back into the cushions of your bed, his lips found yours. Slowly, tenderly, almost lazy. More sweet and an attempt to appreciate than stirring up the embers burning within you again.
He never moved away from you. When he pulled out he let himself fall into the sheets next to you, fingers grazing your skin as if to soothe, as if to cherish, commit the feelings all to memory.
It felt strange, somehow.
When you had wanted so desperately for him to touch you again, you had imagined and expected it to be rough, harsh, all need and lust after being apart for so long. You didn’t think he would make love to you like this. To drown you in everything he was and felt for you.
And yet, it was everything you ever could’ve asked for.
As you inched closer to him, as he wrapped his arms around you, kept you close to his body - warm and safe - you didn’t think you have ever felt more comfortable and… content than right here and now.
You fell asleep to fingers gently sliding through your hair and the soothing sound of his heartbeat beneath your ear.