Slumber melts away from behind your eyes, and dreams of vile whispers and burning mist are replaced by the rumbling cadence of his comforting stomach, the scent of peaches wafting from his skin, overpowering warmth and pressure in his weight on you, squeezing the remnants of stillness from you.
Even as your fingers trace the taut lines of his skin, like trained clockwork, arms winding around his middle, keeping him so close not even a breath could pass between you, last night floods into your thoughts again, and the dried salt tracks under your eyes sting as if they were touching a raw wound.
His words, touches, rough marks of love scattered across your tender skin, have always had an easy way of putting you back together, not unlike yours on him. But today you still can’t quite trust it, the stitches he’s expertly woven over the deep cut he himself has inflicted too.
His love for you is obvious, but yours might not be. As your self esteem falters, so does your behavior, so do the actions of your commitment - and that must be what he’s missing, that must be what has caused him to lash out so openly: further fruits of your insecurity. You cling to this moment, thinking it ephemeral, entirely expecting to do something else soon, that’ll only make his next reaction more violent, and you can’t help but think you’ll deserve it.
He still loves you, but that can’t fix the broken bits of you, all the patches that’ll never be good enough. You’ll only keep disappointing him, and sooner or later maybe even his love will fade. And then what will happen to you? What will ever happen to him? How dare you even get this far?
He stirs awake the second before your first tears start flowing again, and he is quick as always to sniff them out, lick them up, kiss you so deep down you forget every pain but the sweetness of claws digging into your sides, your lungs filling up with the breath of him, your heart bruising up as it crashes against your own ribcage.
He says you’ll feel better after you eat and you agree. You even smile a little as he licks the sugar off your fingers, the bits of flesh clinging to your bloodied kitchen knife, happy as the Cheshire cat.
Through the entire time there is no remorse in his eyes, no trace of evidence to say everything isn’t as it should be, and that somehow only makes your chest feel heavier. You can’t trust this to last, not unless you do better.
Or break this for good.
It’s only way later, after a blur of hours spent further in his arms, that you dare return home, and even then you drag yourself straight to your room, the house empty in your path, allowing the tears to flow freely again as you sink into the mattress.
You don’t know either how long you’ve spent like this, time measured not in minutes and hours, but instead in bouts of tears and each consequent apathy. You try to keep busy, work on your next table, blog for a while, but your attention unavoidably draws back to his criticism, and your pathetic inability to deal with it.
A few eras pass, floods succeeding droughts, and he comes gently as the new rains die, the sun rising through the bedroom door. You don’t quite recall if you greet him or not, but he approaches just the same, and you’re certain he knows why you’re like this. “Rough Moonday?” the proof comes.
Rough Moonday.
He settles next to you, and the moment his palms cup your face, your skin flares to how much you’ve missed him. Tears stream through the sunlight, and he kisses them up, tracing rainbows along your lips, forehead, cheeks. Your fingers cling to fabric, to starry skin, to warmth and golden hope.
He murmurs, soft yet coarse, close to tears himself, and you hate the pain that irradiates off you, affects him so. He tells you about how he’s seen your table for him, and he spills the most gorgeous tapestry, in vivid color and raw emotion, a thank you and a return of feelings, a sanctuary for you both, the relief in your heart, knowing that at least for you and him, things can keep growing, you can do better, love more.
Eventually he smiles wider, pokes loving fun at the sap to your words, draws laughter out of you, and your arms reel him ever closer, you become a mattress to the firebird in all his fiery glory. Between sniffly kisses, soothing moments of solace, he talks about his day, about the little moments you’ve missed since you were gone, relays the loving messages from your family you hadn’t caught, of encouragement and worry, slight impatience, but ultimately, understanding.
You thank him for being ever so wonderful and supportive himself. You tell him you can’t wait to make it all up for him. You always do.
It’s only when he gets up to start making the evening’s meals, dropping one more kiss on your forehead, that he lingers on the doorway, hesitant. “Whatever it is he’s said to you… I know you won’t believe me now, but he’s- ...You know... and you’ll figure it out soon, I just know it, and you’ll find a way to make it good - no one can do that with him like you do. But trust me when I say: he's good at making you believe what he wants you too. And you'll... always be clearer than that.“
He’s right: you can’t believe that Deacon’s criticism is anything less than fully genuine right now, and the pain still weighs you down. But then you see it in Daven's face, the way the subject doesn't let him speak openly, with the same warmth to his voice. You know he knows well what he's talking about, he takes so much of it. Maybe you can still make it better for him, and for Dea. You can still make it better for yourself. He leaves to go nourish your home, and you heave a deep sigh.
You can’t help Dea, yet, but right now you can try to do right by your home too, this core. You open your laptop up again, copy&paste the skeleton of a new table, and start typing.
Your body slides from the back of the couch like a waterfall, spilling between the rocks of his own body, solid warm and heavy over you, and the synthetic moss of the cushions below you. His arms come instantly, the bedrock you puddle in, and you time your breaths, the motions of your chest, to the cadence of his purring spurts.
True to his large cat persona, napping comes after a large meal, and after making sure that everyone else is taken care of - kids sent to school, the entire Fuckhouse fed and at ease - you allow yourself to join him back in slumber, the first true night of rest you’ve had since this solar eclipse happened. You both know he has a kingdom and you a composition to tend to, Apollo’s chariot tracing the sky even as its master rests, but a few more minutes of this peace is all you beg for.
And even as your features relax, your muscles unwind, your thoughts slurr to stillness, a smile remains.
It’s dark out there, pitch and hostile, the eclipse still overpowering and ever present. But it already lingers in the air, the turning away. The end of the longest exhale before the truest sigh of relief, the touch of starry arms cradling the sky, the warm veins of the northern lights meandering where the sky cracks.
You see it in opal eyes, in the glow they offer upon virgin blonde hair. You see it in open smiles and full tables. You hear it in foreign conversations behind closed doors, in Anime openings screaming from upstairs, in no longer hushed steps, patting down carpet that has seen too much lately. You feel it as the leftover warmth on plates and cutlery when you go to refill their food, rumbling piles of meat soothing you to sleep and, later, as the lavender who will crouch across you on the couch, and paint you the most beautiful book of stories you’ll hear.
If there’s one good thing to take away from this disaster, is her willingness to stay, the many words exchanged in cosy solace. Together, your sister-in-law and you gather a photo album in spoken form, tears and colorful descriptions imprinting the pictures of him and his many loving traits into the air. Your mutual love for him is a good starting point. Rose talks of his teen years, awkward exchanges in the name of friendship and mutual support, of endless hours spent in some alien falling world, trying not to regret their temporary immortality too much.
In turn, you talk of the grown up who’s never really lost that boyish charm, instead weaving it with charisma and a thread of gold that is only his. You speak of him like a beacon, like a foundation, a speckled lighthouse among a thriving garden or ocean, the boy who’s too good to turn away someone in need, who helplessly falls for kindness in return even as he’s convinced he should stay down, who accidentally builds a shelter of strays amidst the pain and depression and frustration at some great wrong done to him. You argue how, up till then, maybe he’d felt like a stray himself.
Soon, even his lack of presence becomes a foundation, the weight of him being just a little far away motivating you to share wistful thinking, and speculation. You eagerly drink ever bit of information she gives on the Beautiful Stranger Angel, the sprite who mirrors him so perfectly, but you also know her to be unbearably cryptic. Nothing experience won’t teach you, she says.
She speaks of her job, the monotony of her life without him, and she shares, in embarrassed secrecy, just how much her outlook on life has changed, just from the hope he spills even unknowing. As you spin new tapestries of this bright future waiting, you know you’ll always want to keep making room for her in your world. You know you want her to live as he does. Sometimes you stop to listen to their voices, muffled but so real, bright like your own tone. The moments you go to deliver food, to check on bandages, to spill free ‘I love yous’, become the fulcrum of every hour’s pilgrimage, an almost religious communion you drink up with wide smiles and prickly eyes, and you catch her dabbing carefully at her make up after every time.
She decides to stay. Until they're out of the room, at least. Delighted to have her company, to keep the dark and nightmare at bay with the flames of him and you you burn together, you don't hesitate in welcoming her here. You'll praise the sun together, and in the sky, the northern lights weave gradually redder.
