🔥 (( from Wes!!!!!! ))
Even beneath her slight weight, the swing creaked in protest, rusted chains groaning in the thick heat of late afternoon. The world lay blanketed in the sweet-sour stink of sun-scorched earth and old hay, in distant woodsmoke curling into a sky that threatened rain but had not yet wept. The copse that crowded them stood black-barked and bent, a congregation struck mute, their tangled branches whittling the light down to gold-threaded shadow.
Anri sat as still as she could, though her ribs ached with hunger and her sweat-damp skirts clung to her legs. Her feet barely brushed the ground, the tips of her boots pushing idly at the dry grass. She felt as small as she had in childhood, yet never more aware of her body – of the bones too close to the skin, the quiet tremor of exhaustion and starvation in her fingers. Surely she looked younger than she was. A wisp of a thing, hollow-eyed, too light for this earth.
Wesley stood a few yards away, watching the horizon as if it might rise up and strike him. He was always like that – head tilted, shoulders tight, jaw set hard, as though bracing for an unseen hand. His father’s, maybe. Anri had her suspicions.
She had never known him at ease, had never seen his spine uncoil or his hands rest easy at his sides. Even now, standing among the ruins of what had once been his childhood – the parched grass, the rotting fence, the farmhouse sagging in its own weary bones – he was as tense as a dog that had learned too well the weight of a boot.
Still, she liked him. God help her, she did.
She liked the way he moved, all lean efficiency, no wasted motion, no needless flourish. She liked the way his mind worked – sharp and quick, like a blade that had cut more than its fair share. He did what he had to in order to survive, and he had not yet let it rot him inside.
She liked his rare moments of gentleness, the way his hand had steadied her once when she nearly fell, how he had given up his coat without a word, how he traded generously despite his scarcity. He never spoke of kindness, never asked for thanks. Somehow, that made it more real.
Most of all, she liked his eyes.
The colour of earth after rain, rich as heated honey, aching just as sweetly. They were the kind of eyes that had seen things no youth should have, that had looked long into the dark and found no kindness waiting there. Eyes that watched the world not with fear, but with the weariness of one who had already decided it would not love him back.
Anri, who had spent her life looking for kindness in places it did not belong, found herself drawn to his bruised form like a moth to the last, dying light.
Before she could stop herself, before she could think better of it, she blurted:
“You have nice eyes.”
The dry wind stole the words as soon as they left her mouth, but she knew he had heard them.
For a long moment, Wesley did not turn to her. He stood stock-still, his back rigid, scabbed hands flexing at his sides, as if the words had struck somewhere deep and unseen. Then, slowly, he looked her way.
His gaze settled heavy and warm as a hand upon her skin, and she suddenly felt bare beneath it. As if he saw every thin line of her, every hollow space. As if he knew – knew how she saw him, how she had imagined him as a boy, hungry for a love that would not come. How she had traced the outline of his soul in her mind and found it terribly, terribly tired.
Her breath snared in her throat, but she did not look away.
“I mean it,” she murmured. “You do.”
