❛❛ I just want to see you smile again. ❜❜ (caleb, from @lovemeant)
@lovemeant - Sad and Soft Starters - Accepting!!
It’s unfair, the way he says it, all boyish smile and puppy dog eyes.
"I just want to see you smile again."
Like he doesn’t know how close she is to breaking just from the sound of his voice. Like he hasn’t already unraveled her, simply by standing here—alive.
The same face. The same eyes. The same deep timbre of his voice that once promised a hundred soft, ordinary days.
But the boy who used to laugh with her over burnt pancakes and paper plane contests is different now. There’s steel in his quiet. Gravity in his stillness. He carries himself like someone who’s been to the edge of something dark and never quite made it back whole.
And that's the part her heart refuses to let go of.
Hyori blinks once, hot tears glazing her eyes. Her fingers twitch where they rest at her sides, like they’re remembering how to reach for something that used to feel easy. She moves slowly, like she’s in a dream trying not to wake. Her body leans into his chest, and then her arms wrap around him. Around the version of him that came back to her.
She can’t string the words that try to form at the tip of her tongue, so instead she lets them lodge themselves in her throat, stuck there behind all the things she hasn’t let herself want for so long. She wants this. Wants him. Wants the version of happiness they had before—before flames and silence and everything falling apart. And perhaps, a dark and greedy part of her wants even more.
The words are too heavy, too full of everything she’s been holding in. But she moves, quiet and careful, until her fingers curl into the back of his shirt. Her head presses lightly against his chest, and she breathes in the faint, familiar scent of him. Clean. Crisp. Caleb. Here. In her arms.
She wants to say: I’ve missed you so much.
She wants to say: Please don’t ever leave me again.
Instead, she closes her eyes and lets her body speak for her. Maybe this is enough. Maybe this can be the start of something soft again.
