Tadgh stayed quiet for quite some time. He listened to her talk about liking the horses names and wondered what little details Selene loved about Shadowfax and the Mearas legends. There were a million details about Tolkien’s world he loved and his mind wandered over the things that might be similar between them. Still, he was too lost to speak, fingertips still drawing wet circles on Selene’s skin. There wasn’t a single scar, birthmark, or freckle on her that he didn’t know, except the one he knew was pressed to his back.
He wasn’t surprised to hear that Selene wasn’t surprised by the change of pace from tinker to carpenter. His gaze moved to the hand she wasn’t touching. He’d never thought of the lines on them to be like the rings on a tree, but he could see it now, years of stories etched into his DNA. “I wish I could say I’ve ever written anything half as beautiful as you. That was always the problem, not just the inability to share it or the inability to share it at the right time, but the talent to fully express the emotions that I was always falling short at expressing with words.” Tadgh cringed just thinking about their last fight. He could replay every step through this place, not a single sign of the man that had fleetingly been his friend and that had stood by Selene to the end… Tadgh didn’t linger on his name or his face, he didn’t ask why he was gone. Instead he chewed his cheek trying to push away the cloud of regret from washing over him again.
Turning as much as the tub would allow, he looked back into her eyes, “There’s a song I heard recently, a line in there always rang true every time I thought about you. I would be bereft if separated ever from you. I was meant to catch the last ferry back, just a day trip. How could I leave now?” Tadgh’s fingertips brushed across Selene’s cheekbone. The only thing shaking more than his hands was his voice as his pale blue eyes looked at her. “What do I do now? Tell me what to do.” His wet fingers turned a lock of her fiery red hair in his fingertips. Swallowing the fear down, he rephrased the question, “What do you want me to do?”
Selene’s gaze hovered on his hands as her chin brushed his shoulder. ‘You always spoke volumes to me. At least, I always thought so.’ Drawing her chin back, she pressed her lips momentarily to his shoulder blade, thinking about how best to phrase it. ‘You know I have always loved your poetry, you know I have treasured the times you did give me words but, it might have taken me a long time, but I started to learn you spoke in other ways.’ She let her fingers slip slowly over his own, her thumb running along his, pressing in here and there as it felt the dips and curves of his tendons and joints, as if she could push away any long held tension there. ‘When you would show up in my apartment in the pre dawn light, you were speaking. When you fell asleep on my chest when we would read together, you were speaking. I treasured those expressions of how you felt more than any words on any page, Tadgh.’ A little smile found her lips as she thought of her own obscured attempts at communicating. ‘I have never been able to speak with such tenderness and kindness as you did in those moments. I was… I was so much more violent in myself then.’
Looking back on herself now, all she could see was the firestorm that had been burning inside of her then. Where Tadgh had been earnest and tender, she had raged and ravaged, not knowing to bring her heart to heel. Time though, time and pain had done that though. Would he still care now she was no longer that storm? That she was now just a steady soft wash of rain. The fierceness had gone, the fight had gone. ‘I was always angry in love, I felt in battle for your love. That anger… it was always love.’ Not knowing how to talk about it, not sure he wanted to talk about it, she let the topic slip away if he wanted and let the quiet wash in a moment as he took in her question and was he turned, she dropped the sponge into the water and moved so that she could meet his eyes, the sudden connection knocking the breath out of her as she held her gaze to his. Despite the changes in both of them, when he looked at her like that, they could have been transported in seconds back to her old apartment in Los Angeles. ‘Stay.’ The word was out barely a second after he closed his lips, there was no hesitation or questioning in it. From the moment Selene had realised it was him on the beach, the moment her hand had touched him, the moment he kissed her, there hadn’t been anything else in her mind other than the anxious imperative to never let go again.
‘Stay.’ Repeating the word with more emphasis, she closed her eyes and ran her cheek against his shaking fingers. Too long had she hid her feelings from him for fear of rejection, fear of all the things that separated them. She knew better now than to fear. ‘Stay with me, or… or let me go with you. Anywhere. I just want you. As you are, with everything we are.’ Her thoughts trailed back in memory to the last night they had physically been together, the small hours of the morning she had crawled into his arms and they had buried something deep in each other. Before it though, he had read to her, a sentiment she had never forgotten. ‘It welcomed her hands as if they were the very ones that had worn down the golden case over centuries and smoothed away the knurling of the wheels. As soon as she felt it, she wanted to be alone with it; she wanted to spend hours and days in its company; she wanted it never to be more than an arm’s length away.’ As she finished the quote, quietly speaking against his fingers, she pressed a kiss there but her eyes didn’t move from his. ‘Stay. Never be more than an arms length away.’
