✦ 𝓠. “in my lowest moment, you kept me safe. from myself, from everything.” @docurios.
Quiet clings to them like a sheet within the intimacy of late night, of hushed talks by the fire while everyone else sleeps. It is the non-time, the liminal space before the first light of dawn where they can allow themselves to whisper the things they deny to themselves in the harsh light of the waking world, once the comfort of shadows passes and life exists again. Tentatively, carefully, tiptoeing around a minefield of forbidden words and emotions. This, teethers over the edge of that uncharted path that seems to lead down the unfamiliar land of things they do not speak of. The steady drumming of their heart as they watch Daemos' profile in the fire light, the dark pools of his eyes watching them, always watching them, observing. They never know what they see, they are too scared to ask.
It is their turn to watch now, chin resting on their arm, fire reflected in the storm of their eyes. So loud and so quiet at the same time. Their emotions, a contrasting cacophony against the sudden muteness of their lips. Words shape and reshape themselves in their mind, but escape their fingers like water the moment they try to grab them.
They never saw themselves as a protector, a caregiver. All they have ever been good for is to destroy things, bleed them out slowly or cut them violently. They feel as if they should deny Daemos words out of principle alone, and still want to hold them like a stolen treasure.
“I keep you. You keep me, yeah?” the drumming is longer steady but a furious, frenzied pounding against their ribs. The words feel too close to the line, illegal somehow, even dangerous. The wrong thing to say entirely. Still they bite their tongue from softening them with a joke. They let them hang defiantly between them, burdened by their glare that tries not to be expectant, not to want too loudly.