You’re here. You’ve come to me. The masculine frame of nordic stature filled most of his bedroom’s doorway and stalled at a sight that grew roots from hardwood and tangled him still, dead in his tracks. Bloodshot hazel eyes were roped by the lissome frame of his amoureuse adorning his bed, and at first, he thought her a mirage; a sleep deprived apparition of his life’s love magicked by his brain in desperate lure for him to find full slumber for the first time in days, Sophie’s words ‘Go home tonight, change, sleep, I’ll be here with her,’ echoing in his skull. But as his feet slowly carried him deeper into the room seeping with lunar light, gaze alerting in slow blinks and full lips parted in baited breath, he knew the gradual release of the abject despair that knobbed his spine could not be felt in the presence of a mere mirage, of anything, but her. Of course it was her. No imagination could craft the sight he drank in now from the likes of scratch–– Michelangelo’s, maybe, but even his holy hands could not actualize Zoe Foster. The realization already had the sutures of stoicism stitched through the middle of him unthreading, but what caused seams to burst was the cognizance that, she couldn’t have known he was coming. Apart from exchanged texts about Idris and Rocky and updates on Ophelia, and a phone call or two spent in just a hair louder than silence —a rejuvenation sought in the sound of the other’s voice, a comfort in their breathing— they hadn’t talked much. In the midst of it all she had been stalwart as an oak for his sake; not fretting but cool-headed, aiding him in the safety of Idris, a rock of obsidian in deadly waters. But now, seeing her limbs threaded through place-holding sheets, no expectancy for his arrival in sight, he realized that she bore his turmoil too. She missed him as much as he did her. Enough to drive to place where danger lurked, just for a few hours in a bed–– their bed. And had the roles been reversed, he would’ve been tangled in hers too.
She was curled inward to face where he usually slept, a slender arm attached to svelte fingers stretched and adrift, as if reaching for something, but only finding duvet. Adrian sank quietly and settled seated on the edge of his side, his back to her, closest to the window, and with heedful care to not wake her peace with the weight shift, he relieved his body of a worn grey hoodie; his torso bare and breathing, shadows creviced in the grooves of muscled flesh. His head turned, chin resting on the bare breadth of his shoulder, and his pupils fastened on the godling adjacent. Her bronze skin glowed an alabaster white in the cast of the moon, the shadows under high cheekbones defined, dark tresses splayed like rich soil against cold marble, plump lips slightly ajar. The eighty four hours preceding him were of a desolate anguish he couldn’t say he had known before, a feat alone in itself, and what he despaired for was hard to pinpoint. From Ophelia’s attack and the trauma it left her with, to the idea that her assailant could have chosen not to stop his strikes at all, to Idris’ fragile state and safety, Adrian’s feelings of betrayal and newfound hatred to the constitution he had chosen to dedicate his life to, and to Zoe’s absence; just to name a few. It was breeching unendurable; until now. Now, being in her presence relieved that actual, physical pain of being without her from flesh and bone, the weight of it hooked and yanked from anguished waters to reveal its size; sheer and grand, an agony soothed by her presence, his waters calming without it being there, and he felt he could breathe for the first time in days. However, with the catch came a collateral, needed from the man with the pride of a lion; where his pain fell away, his carapaces did too, nothing but the raw left instead.
Red-rimmed eyes lapped up every facet of her in their glaze, his throat constricted with overwrought emotion. When will the sky allot us, the sun and the moon, a tender eventide? The existential musing was not made verbal, however, it did manifest into tacit movements; his fingertips gliding along slender digits that remained outstretched, specific attention paid to the ring finger, his tracing hers in a slow and sweet grazing of finger pads smooth knuckle, and quicksilvered hope and longing bled through him like a punctured artery, all before he stopped himself. He retracted his hand, head facing forward again, a silent prayer that he hadn’t waken her mulling lips, but a chain reaction had already catalyzed–– a crescendo of tremors racked his back, borne of a vulnerability only the woman could elicit, even in the subconscious. Not this, not now. Eyes screwed shut and his teeth gritted, slow breaths taken through his nose, out between rigid ivories, body wound tight in an attempt to get a hold. But Atlas’ broad shoulders were buckling under the pressure of the earth, shuddering his resolve, and the male was too busy warding it off to feel the stir behind him.
