♡ ˚· @peerlessscowl asked:
"Hey." Finding her in the crowd is as easy as breathing by now, the light of her breaking through the dull, muted tones that have washed over the bunker in the last few weeks. He hadn't noticed at first that it was hers that his eyes immediately sought out each time, the instinct to draw to her side after each shearing separation becoming more deliberate until it rose in his mind to the top of his checklist: where's Ishtar, where's Chad, has anyone fallen, larder, armory. The time in the novel was...calmer than he had expected, even upon waking up incarcerated. There were moments, and more than one of them, where he fully expected to draw his blade, to need to break down a door, to press into a guard's face and break through...which never came. In the end, the story being told was not one of heat and desperation, it was, ultimately, a love story. His eyes raked over her form, checking for outward damage, before bringing a palm up to cup her cheek and meet her eye, checking for inward damage. "Holding up?" Although circumstances had tugged them apart at each juncture, he found that his thoughts dwelled – not only here at the bunker, but to the steps coming out of the inn where she might often be waiting for him, to that field of flowers in autumn, to the wooded roads they rode down, to - "You look tired." Fingers trailed down, across the curve of her shoulder blade, until eventually they came to thread with hers, and he tugged her close. "Come on. Let's...let's sit, for a bit."
There is always a moment's rush of fear just before they reunite-- that they might not, that they might never again-- but that fear has gradually begun to ebb faster and faster each time. Security is a dangerous thing, and Ishtar fears nothing more than him vanishing the moment she stops fearing he might.
But he hasn't yet.
Lithe fingers graze the back of his palm, his wrist, a touch for a touch, where silver lashes flutter shut so that the world becomes the warmth of his palm against her cheek for as long as she can bear without looking at him again.
"I am," she answers, "and you?"
It's strange to admit how much she worries for him when they are apart, strange to worry as much as she does. She had worried for him, once, but the hand at her strings was seldom far enough to be missed. Always pulling at her limbs, always guiding her movements. A dog does not miss its leash, after all.
She shouldn't be surprised anymore, not about how different this feels.
And there is his hand, moving, guiding hers into it. It's not deliberate, the way her eyes flit to where fingers weave together, stolen away by the way he pulls her to him. Never an order, never an obligation-- this closeness. Absently, she nods, lets the world move around them until they've found their corner of it to sink into together.
He's right, she's tired.
Hand still tight in his, Ishtar rests her cheek against his shoulder. He is the closest thing in this bunker to being away from it all, his warmth a memory of a hundred places better than this one.
"I'll rest when this is over, when you can too."