"gonna give you my heart (in spite of my soul)"
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
18+ M/F - explicit sex
“an unpredictable wonder / you gave it all hope / that all of this is a circle / I'm gonna try / this is the moment I choose / there's nobody else like you”
Lane loves Mina. Wants to show her. Wants so badly to get it right… but he needn't have worried. She was always the best at understanding him, wasn't she? Even now.
Mina leans against the doorway and sighs at him.
She’d come in chattering, Echo clicking in after. She’d just hung up with 'Lyn and Will, she said. They want them to come around for dinner on Friday. A double-date, so let’s dress up, ey? His sister will want to do her make-up, she joked. He and Will can drink beer and talk shop or whatever it is they do. And Lane had snorted despite himself.
She’d sent Echo to his bed near the couch. Lane knew if she spent the night, Echo would worm in-between them and stink up the place with his happy breath. He knew it then, he knows it now.
He can sense the expectancy. Refuses to look. Hands are shaking too hard to manage the stove, so he twists it off. Stands there breathing. Exhale first, then bring in the rest. Someone he’d known long ago had looked him in the eye. Told him to exhale as hard as he could if he was ever panicking. Out with the old, in with the new. Gotta let go to let go, don’t you know. He can still see that bright smile. Fortune-teller. Marie Ellis. Someone who had hated his father too.
Mina starts to move. Lane screws his eyes shut against failure and the light.
There’s the clink of the vase being shifted onto the hutch. The rustle of woven fabric, sliding. Lane listens as Mina folds the tablecloth and places it on the washer– At least the steaks are still good, but. Damn him.
“What is this, Lane.”
“Dropping the ball,” He murmurs, clutching the edge of the stove. He can’t go down on her, he doesn’t think. This was supposed to be the next-best thing. But he hadn’t warned her.
She isn’t one for surprises. He knows that.
Mina moves him aside and takes the food. Spoons everything onto their plates. Humming as she drizzles the vegetables over with steak leavings. He’s breathing deep again. Search-and-rescue. Dirt beneath his knees… the full life he could have, if he could just– let go.
Still holding on. Let go. Still holding tight–
Mina turns off the lights. Takes him to the table. Sits him down. Lane keeps his eyes closed so he can memorize the moment. There’s the sound of cutlery. The hiss of juices, getting released… the weight of meat, balancing on metal. It falls with a muted splat. So she stabs it with a put-upon mutter. He can hear it getting punctured, the scrape-tink of fork tines hitting porcelain.
He fights off the flash of a smile. Picturing the look on her face–
It bumps into his lips next, that sliver of meat. He feels like a child– he feels loved.
She feeds him there in the dark. Bite-sized pieces to not wear out his jaw. Filling the air with her scent, her soft breathing.
Her kindness.
