happiness was a subtle thing: not the grand affair it was said to be and written of by poets, nor the devastation will always expected to follow its pronouncement. will had considered in private moments of wandering nights what might happen, the moment he would tell tessa gray that he loved her. ( that it was a catastrophe, the way he loved: his a touch that assured death and a truth that would sever them from any chance at hope. ) he’d never pictured, in all the scenarios of doomed and tragic love, of rejection and of those dying before his eyes in myriads of terrible ways, that it would be like this. love could be this intimacy, a quiet contentment that snuck upon you and took hold of your heart and not even the sigh loosed at its realization could be considered dramatic, or even entirely terrifying.
tessa sits at her vanity, combing softly-burnished tresses that glimmer near golden in the candlelight. will scoffs that she could ever call her hair dull or herself anything but breathtaking. he leans against the left post of their four corner bed, enjoying a moment where she does not look to him with wide grey eyes, assessing his every movement with shrewd calculation and an opinion close to tongue as she had when she first arrived to them all. he wonders how he could forget pain like a distant point shrinking behind them, and cross into a plane where his lovely new wife as a possibility, that the rune against his collarbone that she’d drawn there a night or a few ago could exist at all.
@lanidaes ( tessa gray ) ⋆ › ‘ you’ve always seen me. and i think that’s all that anyone wants. seeing someone. really seeing someone. that’s love.
her voice startles him from the reverie, where he’d been a willing captive to the marvel that she is. how long had she been staring at him in the mirror, waiting for their eyes to meet ? for him to admit he’d strolled in from the bath-chamber and been struck at the enormity of what his life was now, that happiness could follow grief that still twisted their hearts and cause laughter to flutter in his throat once again, reviving the mischief glittering in will’s eyes.
❛❛ from the moment i saw you, amid the shock of the near mortal blow you thought to deal me, i was yours. ❜❜ the embellishment of his tone cloaks the truth behind the jest, as he uncrosses his arms and takes a step and then two forward, to rest his forearms against the back of her chair, his chin against the top of her head. ❛❛ i used to think no one could ever see the person i had been behind the person i was. you have shown me differently, tess, and whatever shape or face you wear, i have never seen another in your place. ... i wished to make you feel as you had me, with all your questions and your provocative curiosity that first day. you were not content to deem me a lost cause, you thought i was interesting enough to argue with. that alone was a gift, and it was enough to love you recklessly as i do. ❜❜
his eyes were twin drifters of blue that wandered from the sky of her stare, that would always run away until he remembered each time that he now had a home, and the now reminder was all it took them to land on tessa’s in the glass. will drinks in the sight of them standing together, now husband and wife, for the blessing it is. from thin-seeming air he conjures a parchment-wrapped package, tied with simple ribbon. ❛❛ i shall spend all our lives thanking you. perhaps this, to start. no, it is not a box of chocolates, and yes, my dearest regret is to not have married someone i could give chocolates to. ❜❜