19. Valkubus, if you would.
(Try this out with “Coming Home” by Sigma & Rita Ora.)
Months had gone by. Months. Months since Tamsin had torn open her chest and exposed her heart. Months since Bo watched her walk away, out the door with tears in her eyes, with that same exposed heart shredded and dying. Months since Tamsin had disappeared into the night.
Months since Bo had properly slept, unable to shake that moment. Unable to shake the wet streaks on Tamsin’s cheek, the crack in her voice. The pleading.
What’s wrong with the me?
The way that pleading morphed into anger, into fire. Into disaster. Disaster.
The sound of the words shattering through her lips haunted Bo, played on a loop between her ears. Between her ribs. The rhythm of Tamsin walking away.
Months, she had been gone, and Bo felt each day like a crack in her exterior, a fist around her heart. Never realizing how much of her had been tangled up in the girl with the hurt in her eyes and centuries inside her soul. So much of her, planted and grown between Tamsin’s bones.
They had searched for her. Day and night. Every hint. Every whisper. Every whiff. But there was nothing to find of a valkyrie who wished not to be found, a broken heart that wanted only to melt into the ground and disappear.
So when Bo woke one night, heart racing and mouth dry from a dream that slipped away in seconds, and found the silhouette of a dipped head and folded wings beside her bed, she could do little more than blink and wait to wake again. But she didn’t. The image didn’t fade, didn’t change, and she watched, afraid to speak or shatter the moment, as Tamsin’s wings moved slowly up and down with each deep breath she took in the dark.
“I come back sometimes,” Tamsin said, a whisper to stir the stillness, and Bo felt her heart slink up into her throat at the sound of Tamsin’s voice. She had begun to fear she might never hear it again. “I like to watch you sleep.” Her hair hung over her face, head still dipped in the dark, wings still fluttering. “I always did.”
Licking her lips, Bo tried to speak but her voice only croaked in her throat and died. Her eyes began to sting with tears, and she wanted to move. Wanted to reach out. But she was terrified that the slightest bit of movement would send Tamsin flying off into the night. Silent again. Invisible.
“You were always soft in your sleep,” Tamsin said, quiet, almost as if she was talking to herself. “I would lie beside you, and you would breathe easier. Like you felt safer with me beside you.”Â
Her wings fluttered up, shook the slightest bit, and then settled again. “You smiled when I touched you, like you knew it was me.” A ragged sigh shook through her lips. “Like you wanted it to be me.”
The sound of her own voice surprised Bo, the way it bled out of her like a plea. Like a prayer. Ragged and desperate and, god, hopeful.
“I wanted you to want it to be me,” Tamsin said, voice cracking the slightest bit. Just a broken breath between two syllables.
“I do.” The words slipped through before Bo could even process the thought, the feeling. The truth. Blinking away tears, she took a steadying breath and set the feeling free once more. “I do.”
Slowly, gently, Bo pushed up on her hand and then shifted onto her knees. Dared to inch closer to the edge. Closer to the soft press of Tamsin’s wings. “Tamsin.”
She reached out then, careful but confident. Sure. When her fingers grazed over the line of Tamsin’s jaw, Tamsin jerked away from her.
“Don’t,” she said, shaky. Broken. Quiet, shallow breaths shook the air between them. “Don’t do that.”
Bo swallowed, thick, painful. Slowly, she reached out again. Timid. Tender. Her fingers slipped over Tamsin’s forearm where it rested in her lap. “Please, Tamsin,” Bo said, voice straining around the words.Â
Edging closer, she lifted on her knees, enough to straighten her upper body. She pressed in close, close enough to feel the heat of Tamsin’s breath puff against her face. She slid her hand up Tamsin’s arm, up over her shoulder, up the line of her neck, and Tamsin trembled under her touch.
“Gods help me,” Tamsin muttered, shaking her head. “I still want you.”
The words stirred in Bo’s stomach, staggered the rhythm of the beat in her chest. “Please want me,” Bo said, yearning, open. Raw.Â
Tamsin turned to her then, sharp. Her eyes were wide and dark, her face nothing more than a precious silhouette in a dark room. “What?”
The one word whispered across her lips, little more than a breath of disbelief, and Bo pressed in. Pressed closer. Fingers slipping up into Tamsin’s silky hair, Bo framed the line of her jaw and leaned in.
Their breath shook in the fragment of space between their lips, waited to fracture further around Bo’s shredded voice. “Please want me,” Bo said again, nose nudging against Tamsin’s, the heat of their bodies prickling at her skin. Bowing her back.
When Tamsin’s fingers teased, just a touch, at Bo’s side, Bo felt it in echoes. Tears pressed up and through. Kissed at her lashes. Rolled down her cheeks at the second press. Fuller. Wanting.
Tamsin’s hands scorched up the length of Bo’s sides, burning through the thin material of her tank top. Their foreheads bumped as they hovered, suspended in the tension of a present heavy with the past; as they shifted forward and back, closer and away. Push and pull so minute, so minimal, that it felt like more like standing still. A heavy sigh pushed through Tamsin’s lips. “You’ve ruined me,” she whispered, tilting just enough to break the tension; enough to shatter the world. And rebuild it. Her lips touched Bo’s, just the bottom, just a flash of flesh to flesh, and Tamsin sucked in a hard gasp, let the breath go on a wet sob. “You’ve ruined me.” She pulled Bo in hard, then. Hard. Desperate.
Pressed the taste of giving in to Bo’s full lips.
“You’ve ruined me,” she muttered into each heated press. Each prayer in the lines of her fingertips. “You’ve ruined me.”
Bo felt her cheeks,  slick and sticky, slide against Tamsin’s as they grabbed at one another, rocked up into each other in the silent dark. Breath came in wet bursts, in aching spasms beneath her ribs. In Tamsin’s touch. In her kiss.
She opened herself beneath that touch, let Tamsin draw up all the apologies she had carved into her bones, and felt something shift inside her.
She cried in the dark, teeth pulling at Tamsin’s lip and hands pressed into her hair, and even in ruins, she knew this was home.
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