her hand grazed his jaw and he went still, so still that even the faint twitch of the muscles along it betrayed him. it betrayed the anticipation thrumming beneath his skin. the craving. the wanting. the sheer anxiety that came with relenting to the carnal desires that tristan bottled up over the years. his restraint was thinning, that much he knew. his control continued to splinter with every breath she took too close to his own.
her words words sank into him like a challenge more than an admonishment. not fair, perhaps, but it was also not fair that she could tilt the world off its axis with one look. that she could strip him of every carefully learned measure of self-possession he’d carried like armor since his own conscience came to exist.
when her gaze darted down, so brazenly, so maddeningly toward his mouth, his own still held onto her eyes. never to indulge in the traitorous and unthinking pace of his mind. because instead, he was burning from the inside out with the knowledge that she wanted him to falter. that she wanted to be the reason his restraint snapped.
her whisper barely brushed the air : “you know exactly what you’re doing” and he swallowed hard, the muscles of his jaw twitching beneath her touch, because she wasn’t wrong. he did know. he knew the way his gaze lingered on her too long, the way he angled closer when he could have stepped back, the way he let her see him in ways he did not let others. maybe she was tired of letting him get away with it. but maybe he was too.
tristan could still remember the first time he saw her differently. the library’s dust-sweet quiet wrapping around her broken outline as if even silence dared not pity her the way others had. he’d seen it then : the sharp edges of her strength, raw and glinting beneath her sorrow. he’d seen her, and merlin help him, he had never stopped. the memory of her laughter now, so alive, so unguarded, was the cruelest and kindest punishment both. for years, their every step closer had been slow (so maddeningly slow ) yet threaded with inevitability. he’d felt it in the sly beginnings of their banter turning into something else. he’d also felt it in the hollow absence after she was gone from his afternoons. and now he feels it in the glimpses across crowded Ministry halls, in wondering if her eyes searched for him with the same aching curiousity his searched for her.
with her hand still on his face , his breath stalled, caught somewhere between his chest and throat. he could feel the slope of her hand against his jaw, the warmth of it branding into him. his pulse thundered against his ribs, screaming at him to close the distance, to finally surrender to what they had been circling for far too long. so his jaw twitched again - an involuntary betrayal of just how close he was to letting go and how much he wanted to.
for one dangerous moment, he leaned in a fraction, just enough to feel the brush of her breath against his skin. just enough to know what it would be like if he broke. it would be so easy to kiss her. so devastatingly easy. but he didn't.
instead, tristan forced the air back into his lungs and shut his eyes for half a second too long as if the act alone could steady him. and when he opened them again, his restraint had wrestled its way back into place, though it clung by the barest of threads. he shifted, tilting his head just enough to ease out of the direct line of temptation, though not far at all.
❝ emmeline , ❞ he said, low, roughened by what he wouldn’t allow himself to do. her name was its own confession, carrying all the weight of what he denied. his empty hand twitched at his side, aching to touch her, to pull her in, but he kept it there. rigid and disciplined. ❝ do you even understand what you are asking of me ? ❞ his voice wasn’t steady.
pulling back that single step was like dragging himself through fire, but he did it. because if he kissed her now, if he gave in, he would not be able to stop. and he was not sure she deserved the kind of undoing he was offering. still, his eyes betrayed him as they caught hers again. they were stormed with longing, with apology, with the unspoken truth that his resistance had nothing to do with lack of desire. quite the opposite, actually.
there is a quiet huff of a laugh , ❝ livid emmeline - ❞ he repeated, shaking his head as though he could ever remember a time that he's seen her at absolute peace . ❝ i'll have you know that herbology wasn't my strongest subject either . i can recall a time or two i nearly lost a limb at the expense of a fanged geranium . ❞
he's turned towards her to make another remark, and for one disorienting beat, he's caught stilled by her natural beauty . how could she look at him like that - like this ? her gaze snagged on his forearms, and though she masked it with the tease, tristan felt the twitch of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth at the thought . and he drops his eyes to the task at hand before the temptation of her expression unravelled him entirely.
with a flick of his wand, he summoned a knife into his hand, its blade gleaming in the lamplight. ❝ not exact, you say? ❞ he mused, glancing at her sidelong, brow raised. ❝ that's asking a lot from someone who’s spent the better part of his life convinced rules were never meant to be broken .❞ he paused for effect, his grin crooked, deliberate. ❝ but for you ... ❞ he set to work, slicing through one of the carrots with deliberate, uneven strokes, exaggerating the imperfection just to prove he could. ❝ this abstract enough for you ? ❞
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