cont. because they grieved too sexily tumblr beric flagged them / @mctanoias
No.
His fingers twitch, his jaw sets, because the part of him that lies in bitter anticipation waiting for death to thieve away all that sacred had begun to stir. If everything was well, why would he not be here? He would be here. He should be here. Cian was incorrigible that way; he'd latch onto the little things, and wear himself thin trying to make others happy. Fetching their favorite flowers, buying their favorite candy, reading them their favorite book, just because they'd mentioned it to him once. He was much too kind, and his absence speaks louder than anything else. They need not tell him what happened, he can feel it in his bones, in his marrow, and in the phantom aches of his body that something horrible had happened. He should be here, and he should be telling him to leave—his breath stutters, something sharp caught in his throat as despair lodges itself there, tightly coiled and unwinding, threatening to choke him. Where, then? If not here, where?
Alive. Asleep.
He can feel the bones shifting beneath his flesh in discomfort, the tightness of his jaw that wants to crack his teeth; the blood, which was often so violent and red, now drained from his face, leaving him pale as a ghost under the moonlight. His dark eyebrows wrinkle with frustration, her mouth is wild, and angry. "I see..." the words feel strained and his body rigid. The tremble in his hand is barely exercised restraint, keeping it from snapping shut like a trap around hers and breaking it in two. He feels light-headed and nauseous, his innards are tied into knots, all of the sudden, and immediately does he want to recoil, jolt away from her touch as if he'd been struck—shrink away into himself like a wounded child trying to disappear in that darkness that had made a home of him.
Love makes wolves of us all; it has awakened such a violence in him, such an urge to lash out as he bites at his own tail, to tear these walls down brick by brick 'till it all crumbled into nothingness as despair swallowed him whole. He exhales, and feels his heart sink into unknown an unknown oblivion, and he can feel her looming, even now, the softness of her hair brushing against his marbled cheek, a pyre of her hand outstretching over his sternum where wolves pace, aching, longing. His fingers tighten reflexively to anchor himself, fabric coiling between his fingers as he tethers himself to her in this endless abyss that threatens to devour all.
There is something fragile in the way it happens, how the stubborn rhythm of his heart grudgingly refuses to settle on its own, like any other bruised organ in need of healing it was bleeding and hurt, and it did not beat steadily; it stutters, it thrashes, it stumbles through erratic beats before clumsily stumbling onto a quieter pace, as though he is being taught a language his body should have known all along, but has never learned. He does not know how to soothe himself without his father's hand to guide him, without his hands and knees pinned to the ground, without a leash around his throat.
