@norgodly, clarke griffin — in the process of pushing the receiver's hair back from their face, the sender lets their hand rest against the receiver's cheek a moment longer.
embers of a dying fire spit up between them, or perhaps it is less impassioned than that something like a collection of ash swept beneath the locked door of an abandoned cabin; settling unforgettable, seeping into the floorboards and enduring the test of time. it settles there with the wistful almosts, the downtrodden what-ifs. a singular eye tracks the movement of her hand with the kind of trepidation a dog might deal to thunder, except there is no storm between them now just the silence of thereafter, a quiet that breathes like a wound, one that no longer bleeds. it is merely the aftermath, the wreckage of a youth that ran parallel and thus falls quiet in the years that divide but between it bridged the kind of understanding that could only transpire in meeting and then remeeting across another lifetime. digits move with a humanity that he does not know how to brace for, and he almost flinches muscle memory that reacts to any touch unrehearsed, no matter the perpetrator. she skims over the crease in his brow that seems to linger despite the slacken of skin, a mark not of age but of happenings; of experiencing far too much, too young. digits sweep aside a dark lock in its path, gentle and precise as though practiced lingering against the bump of his temple far longer than the gesture requires, and the shape of his fringe protests the movement nonetheless. his lips part, remain parted for an inexplicable length of time as though opening around a sound that will not come. there is something unguarded in the way it falters, as though a single syllable breathed between his lips might lay waste to this moment between them, the slow and sacred significance that neither dare shape with words. or is it still just that wanting to be understood, projected onto a single, inconsequential act? a dormant feeling flutters beneath featherlight contact, the roughened pad of her thumb catching on the soft plane of his forehead and that is all it takes for him to reach for a dream that he thought long-forgotten, the teenager in him rearing his head towards what he thought had been lost in the gutters lining the weathered streets of boston, walking out of sight with the rain catching in her hair.
something inside him yearns, and it is a passive reminder that this vessel he resides in is hers had always been hers. unsaid, unclaimed, but stitched together by some inevitable truth that had needled under his skin long before he knew what it was to long for something. older and kinder now, years that reckon twenty-three and yet that single, lingering graze of fingers still manages to collapse his body inwards sends his breath scattering across the back of his teeth, the same silent undoing of years passed, an ancient tide that knows nothing except to ebb and flow to the gravitational pull of the sun. (when her hand lifted in class and the world stilled in anticipation of what her voice might offer it, his eyes fixed to the hollow of her wrist that seemed to swallow time and space because nothing mattered then but to hear what she might say; when her shoulder kissed the gym mat with some primal lack of grace and him, a foot above, suddenly empty of every thought ever raised in looking at her; when the cut of her shadow graced his lace-up boots during a morning drill, never more than a moment never more than an empty touch). he remains still, iris trained on her in the shape of a half-moon; lidded, both thoughtful and thoughtless as he watches, unblinking, anticipating. it burns almost, not to flicker in its worship, the fear bristling in his spine that a second closed might dissolve her from existence, like blinking away a reverie beneath the piercing light of a morning sun. jordan's scar is bare to her inquisition now, no longer shielded by a midnight lock that falls partway over his socket, but raised to the light to be observed either revered or repelled, he could not answer for sure. and him, silent, braced; knuckles white to his thigh, and to the armrest, distrusting of own movements that he seizes altogether.