(all i want is now)
-irishais-
He is lazy this morning, alarm silenced a minute before it even goes off. Rinoa is still asleep, hair draped across her neck, a dark curtain. Squall props his head up on one hand, and draws her hair back with the other. She shifts, mumbles something incoherent- she's always declaring herself "useless before noon," but even if that isn't true, she's really not a morning person. Especially not when morning shows up at 0500.
He kisses her just beneath the arc of her jaw, twice to get the point across. "Wake up," he murmurs. "Train leaves in three hours, and you still have to pack."
"I can sleep for two more, then," she replies groggily, turning herself to burrow against him, depriving Squall of the line of her throat. He kisses her temple instead, hand sliding beneath the soft down comforter and over the line of her hip.
He doesn't much feel like getting up either, not when they're tangled up like this. Mornings are not his enemy, though. He's seen 0500 every day since he was eight and it was his mandatory wake-up time at Garden. (He'd even go so far as admit that he likes mornings, likes the early silence and solitude that most of them bring, the peace of a cup of coffee or three and the morning paper.)
"Don't you want to enjoy our last few hours here?" he inquires in her ear, leaving a kiss there. Another, a half inch lower.
"Mhm- sleeping." She's rousing, though, against her wishes. Squall has had years to perfect this routine, but it still baffles him that she actually responds to it, and positively, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck. "Did you schedule room service last night?"
"'Course I did. Extra croissants and everything."
"Mm. I love you."
The words wrap themselves around his heart and stay there like a warm balm. He sends it back to her, a thrum along the thread that connects them. He will always love her. Always. It isn't even a question anymore, now that there's a pair of silver rings and a litany of vows, a ceremony by the sea just three weeks ago.
He loses himself in her for a while, the easy way she responds to his touch, the warmth of her skin, the way she arches back against the bed and her legs hold him fast against her for the better part of a minute. The way she comes back to earth, and there is starlight in the room, magic slipping out from beneath her skin.
Rinoa looks like an angel, he thinks in moments like these, ethereal. Holy. He tries to imagine her without all that power shimmering beneath her skin, and thinks she might be exactly the same.
There's a brief knock at the door, and he disentangles himself from her long enough to wrap a sheet around his waist and answer it, the scent of breakfast heady in the wake of everything else- he steals a slice of buttered toast even before he gets the cart the whole way in the room, and sets it up next to the bed.
"My hero." She beams, reaching immediately for the coffee- they go through gallons of it at home on a regular basis, and their honeymoon has been no different; it's just strange knowing he can take his time with it, split an entire pot with her and not have anywhere to be. Squall pours a cup, passing it across the white bedspread, careful not to let it spill.
The plates are divided up, rearranged. He takes her home fries, she spears out all the bits of banana they've sliced up and put in his cereal. The giant bowl of fruit they split practically down the middle. The croissants, she hoards, and feeds him one she smeared with blackberry jam, bite by bite until it ends with kissing, which ends with trying to keep their food from dumping in each other's laps.
"We should stay here a while longer," Rinoa says, spearing another strawberry from the mountain of fruit as it tries to escape down her leg. The juice dribbles pink down her chin; Squall thumbs it off and kisses what's left. She laughs, trying to wave him away, despite the fact that not ten seconds ago they were doing the same thing. "I have coffee breath-"
He rolls his eyes in exaggerated complaint, settling back against the headboard with her.
"We can stay." It is an agreement so immediate he almost doesn't realize the words are coming out of his mouth- but they are, and here he is. "I can call it in. Xu can keep things under control for a week or so more."
He doesn't know if she can, but Garden has express orders to not contact him at all unless there is an imminent apocalypse, and he assumes that things must be proceeding relatively smoothly, because his phone hasn't rung once since they've been here. Peace and quiet. This must be exactly the unrealistic fantasy everyone conjures up when those words come into play, tangled up with his new wife pressing a blueberry against his mouth and encouraging him to try one, they're delicious.
Squall opens his mouth obediently; the blueberry bursts between his teeth and tastes like summer. He nods his approval, and snares another one from the mix. She retaliates by snatching a piece of bacon.
She is a sorceress, and he is fully, completely, totally under her thrall, even when she's stealing his favorite part of breakfast, and he would change nothing about this moment.
"Really?" Hope, unexpected and free in the word. She is always so optimistic, even in the bleakest hours- he is perpetually undone by her view of the world, how brightly she sees everything, how fully she lives. He remembers a boy curled up on his narrow dorm bed, I just want to be alone.
He doesn't recognize that boy anymore, not in who he's become, not in how everything has shifted ever since she waltzed into his life (literally), and pulled him kicking and screaming out of his shell.
How things change. How the world moves on. A hundred other cliches that sit on the tip of his tongue. Squall swallows the last mouthful of his coffee, chasing away the taste of summertime on his tongue. If they take nothing else home from this honeymoon, he is going to track down the supplier of this coffee, and buy at least a ton of it.
"Really. I'll call after we're done."
Train tickets can be canceled, hotel stays extended- he's gone to space for her. He would do anything for her. Anything at all. Squall reaches for the carafe to refill their cups, rich Galbadian roast filling their noses. Timber is beautiful in the summer, in peacetime, fairytale provincial just outside the window, but Rinoa's smile eclipses all of it.