Shame crept up her throat the second her eyes snapped open, air trapped in her lungs for a familiar moment as the contours of the bedroom took shape again. Then the tremble of the man beside her. Zoe didn’t even have to look to know the state of him; of every taught muscle under perspired skin. This wasn’t just an occasional occurrence anymore, but a regular one— a nightly one that the brunette female expected, and knew would come. It kept her awake for most of the night in anticipation, her eyes closed and her breathing slowed, but her heart thudding hard enough to keep her waiting. But then… sometimes, against her own wishes, sleep would take her and she’d wake like this… ashamed.
Ashamed that she could find sleep when she knew what Adrian was battling; the war waging in his mind in the aftermath of Idris’ passing, every fiber in her body tensed and she felt the world tilt on its axis once again. Some nights, she could feel the prickle under her eyes, as if she’d burst into tears any moment, and others, the injustice and anger of the loss, of his loss would track like wildfire through her veins, but she’d have nowhere to put it. Most night however, she didn’t know what to do— how to handle it or how to truly be there for Adrian in a way that was helpful, but still allowed him the space he needed without making him think she was drawing away. He was, after all, Atlas reincarnated, carrying his and everyone else’s world on his shoulders, and always quick to apologize for it as if he was the burden. Truly, the world didn’t deserve him the least bit.
But apparently, that didn’t keep it from trying to break him.
Finding the courage to move, she pushed up onto her elbow at first, then the palm of her hand. She watched his silhouette in the dark— how his shoulders raised and lowered with a labored breath, a tremble against contoured arms and tightened fists. He wore his grief so personally; silently too, but it was palpable in every crevice, every single cell. A kiss to his skin, and she could probably taste it on her lips; the lion’s story, every loss layered against another. Hadn’t he been through enough? Hadn’t he paid his dues long ago now? Tonight was one of those nights… she’d wake and feel guilty, and then the prickle of tears behind her lids for a moment before she banished them and parted apologetic lips.
He shied away from the accompanying brush of her hand, the faint static of his flaming skin against her palm like a ghost when he was no longer within reach. For a selfish, short-lived moment, the rejection stung, and Zoe had to remind her what was going on— where she was and who she was with. The sleep had made her slow, vulnerable, and she looked away in the darkness for a moment, at pooling satin in her lap, the silky sheets bundled like quiet waves in the suddenly lonely bed. The creak of the window brought back her attention however, umber eyes lifting to the lean, broad back of a familiar man.
I’m gonna walk up to you now, whether you like it or not. She wanted to tell him— say it out loud, but she couldn’t. Another moment passed by; seconds, minutes, hours? She didn’t know for sure, but when she rose, leaving the bed cold and slipping into the t-shirt he’d worn earlier, any trace of doubt, of insecurity, was gone. She walked up to him like she’d been put on the earth to do just that, her step steady and her eyes focused. “Adrian,” she whispered against his back, her arms coming around him as her eyes closed. She could feel him tense, as if his body fought this; as if this suddenly wasn’t natural anymore— no longer them. And maybe it wasn’t. This was a new version of them…
This was them without Idris.
“I love you,” she said, and desperately wished he knew just how much— that he could feel how every little inch of her belonged solely to him. How no matter what, she would always, always be hopelessly his. Only his. “Don’t leave. Don’t shut me out, please.” She was being selfish, she knew that, but she had to be because she knew where his thoughts went— what the process was, and she knew it didn’t look good for her.
She brought him to life. Her near silent footfalls on their way to him could so easily fill him with exhilaration. Her slender arms and her heavenly body coming around him like coming home, filled him with a serenity he didn’t feel he deserved. Her whisper of his name, like a prayer on the lips of a god, filled him with a salient warmth only she could bestow, tingling him from head to toe, and with it, encumbrance. One that had him both stiffening, and melting into her all at once. Guilt and grief were like that in he, Atlas: interchangeable, until the lines between were blurred to nothing, and any ounce of comfort, of happiness, of Zoe Foster felt wrong to indulge.
Survivor’s guilt, the shrink diagnosed. After just three sessions with a psychiatrist he had swallowed his pride to visit in hopes to garner sleeping pills, and to get better, if not for him but for her, he was told that the nightmares, the edginess, the catatonia he suffered was boiled down to one umbrella: post traumatic stress disorder. ‘PTSD?’, Adrian had echoed angrily through a scoff, teeth gritted and jaw set in defiance. A full-blown argument broke out which ended with the raven male storming out, calling the man a quack in his wake, never to return again. Zoe’s fire, Ophelia’s attack–– that was PTSD. It felt disrespectful to compare him to their anguish. You couldn’t have post-traumatic stress from losing someone, could you? No, he’d convince himself when the loss of his brother felt like a hot blade slicing him open, not this. This... This was repent. For not fulfilling his promise. For not saving Idris.
Ever since then he wouldn’t talk about it. Not at face value, at least. Like cleverly written dialogue, were his seldom bursts of confessionals. The kind where between the lines only made sense. ‘It’s my fault,’ He’d whisper when night terrors kept him and her up, heated breath lost in her hair, and with it, what he really mean–– I should have done m o r e .
The umber-eyed empress wrapped around the broad male from behind. She had a talent for many things, and calming him, even against his own wishes, had always been one of them. The male was beguiled by her, ever since boyhood, and his name on her lips and body in her arms had his breaths collecting–– his trembling calming, heart slowing and skipping all at once. It was an anomaly, how one person could be so affected by another. But if you knew Zoe Foster, the mystery was solved: she was the fiercest, smartest, kindest person--- nay, goddess, all bundled in one island born girl from the west coast, with an obsession with old hollywood and chocolate just the same... God, he loved her. A hazel gaze opened, finding lissome hands wrapped around his strengthened core in the dark, and with slow heed, his large hands unfurled and rose to take cover over her own, work-roughened silk entrapping the bronze satin of her skin. “Don’t you–... Don’t you have an early morning?” His forced diminutive smile blossomed of sweet melancholy, hushed voice carrying the same note of his chiseled mien. One set of digits pulled away from their entanglement, only to glide them slowly, tenderly, across the exposed flesh of her forearm, dragging them in goosebump-coveting figure eights. Forever, the tactile creature would breathe from skin to skin with the act, I will love you, forever. “... You gotta get some sleep, baby–”
‘I love you.’ His lips, his words, fell to a halt. Three words, three syllables, all powerful enough to send his skeletal into haywire every time he heard them from her–– something supernatural, that had ever cell in his broad frame crying out in exuberance no matter the moment. Like they were plucked pieces from the same star, her matter his and his hers, with those words the key to their unity once more. Everything I am, is yours. A terrible sweetness overtook him. All at once he wanted to kiss her, hold her, push her up against that window sill and love her fiercely against it, right there on the hardwood floor, or take her by the shoulders and shake her, tell her to run from him, while she still could–– that he loved her too much to let her suffer for loving him back.
He turned slowly in her grasp, large feet shifting between her own carefully, never ceasing the way she held him like he was solid, when they both knew he was everything but. Fluid in their movements they were, like water spiralling in water, it was damn near impossible hard to tell where one started and the other began. His head remained down; anchored, toward the pleading words she breathed into his skin– ‘don’t shut me out, please’. His chiseled visage of raven, hazel, and gold tucked and hidden as his forehead came to rest on her own; hiding the agonized expression his furrowed brows bore, the fear in her voice breaking his heart all over again. It was the man’s nature to hide from the bare of his own heart, even as he lay it on a platter for her. Afraid to speak, for the knot that stretched painfully in his throat would release something strangled, a cry, if loosened. So he let his hands speak for him. Let palms rub up her hands, her arms, over worn cloth, tracing her silhouette the way he always had–– like he was pious, and she was holiness in the flesh. Heated palms found purchase at her jaw, his thumb tracing high cheekbones to soothe, stepping forward until hips pinned hips against cold brick, every breath of hers inhaled by him, lips an inch from her own, exhaling silent, but heated ‘I love yous’ back to her with every breath––
And he pulls away. Before he can do just that, not her shut her out, he pulls away–– hands dropping from the haven of her skin, eyes burning hot, Adrian takes that step back, no matter how much it kills him. “ZOE,” Adrian's deep voice came out firm, levelling his reddened hazel gaze with disarming umber, holding his ground even when they weakened his knees. It was only then he noticed the shirt she wore. His heart thudded. ‘Better on you than me’, he wanted to say, in that charmed way he always did –– spun on the tail-end of his signature crooked grin, head canted in his passioned gaze of her –– but he caught himself and saw it for what it really was: her, cloaked in him, the way he would reverently, and forever, be cloaked in her.
The latter was his heaven. The former could only be hell.
“You don’t deserve this,” A dam had burst inside him, all at once, “All this –– all my fucking pain. You don’t,” The expression he hid was lain bare now, all furrowed brows, pursed lips, agony and self-hatred scribed in every last facet of his godly features. His jaw, bulging with a tic a moment ago, loosened to unleash words muffled and stuffed for months now, out all at once, “Wake up, Zoe. You deserve better than this,” Raw emotion plagued his voice, louder, his self-hatred misdirected in this angry plea toward her, “And I’m not going to get fucking better, alright? This is it! This is me, without him. And I won’t let you suffer with me, I won’t. I can’t bear it–” He was shaking again; the wild look in his eyes he woke with returned, veins prominent in his neck, his voice rising to a full-blown yell, “LEAVE ME, while you still can. You hear me? Fucking leave me–” Because you will. Everyone does. Just let me be ready for it.
