Will's POV
(Six months ago, a conversation we had after a friend was severely injured during a car crash.)
"Would you have stayed with me? Would you still love me?"
"I would have kissed your scars while making endless love to you, marvelling in how beautiful you are in the soft moonlight…"
He didn't speak, but his eyes were dark with emotion. My fingertips stroked his cheeks with a feather light touch. I realised he was holding his breath and while my eyes caressed his face I leaned forward to kiss him in the most intimate and intense way I ever had.
(… Present…)
Two months ago Sonny was injured during a fire. His back, arms, and chest were covered in severe burns, and since then he had to travel an endless road to recovery. Surgery after surgery, intense pain, creams and lotions, and a tight pressure suit are now main aspects of his life, and therefore also of mine. Today he will finally be discharged from the clinic and I can take him home. Although I look forward to try and start our life together again, I am nervous as Sonny has not been himself since it happened. He is distant, angry, insecure, and unhappy. His smile is not half as bright as it used to be, and his eyes are so dark they almost seem black. Every day when I visit him I would lean over and kiss him, but other than that we haven't kissed or touched. The moment I attempt to reach out he moves away ever so slightly, but it is enough to stop me from moving closer to him. I really want to take him home, but I am not sure what lies ahead of me.
When I walk in he is dressed and packed, ready to go. We say goodbye to the staff, whom we have come to love as family, and then we are heading to my car. We are both quiet, an underlying tension palpable when we drive home. We talk about little things, a random conversation about the weather, the scenery, and what we should have for dinner. The sun is shining and I am wearing a T-shirt, but Sonny is wearing a long sleeved button up shirt to cover the damaged skin on his arms. The drive home only takes thirty minutes and soon I carry his suitcases into our apartment. I put them in our bedroom and realise how tense I am. He doesn't follow me into our bedroom, and instead he stays in the living room, where he eventually spends all day. When it is eleven pm I stand up from the couch:
"I am going to sleep… are you coming?"
I hear the caution in my voice, the fear of what he might answer. And the moment he does my heart sinks and I feel tears welling up.
"I think I am going to sleep here tonight…"
His voice is soft, almost apologetic, and for a moment I want to sit back down and talk to him about all this. But the tension around him seems to squeeze my throat and I am unable to speak so I just walk away. I undress quickly and curl up under the covers while biting my lip almost painfully to prevent the tears from rolling down. I wish he would open up to me, that he would let me in, but it seems as though he has built brick walls around his heart and I am unable to break them down. My hand reaches out to pull his pillow against my chest, and while I close my eyes I try to pretend it is his warm body pressed against mine. And while I lay there I realise I have to step up, I have to keep trying to break the walls and find his scarred heart, and softly I whisper in the dark:
"I will break the walls, Sonny, I will reach your heart…"
(…)
When I wake up I roll out of bed, almost sleepwalking towards the bathroom. The moment I push the door open I hear his panicked voice:
"Go away… I am not finished yet…"
I look at him from his head to his toes. He is wearing his pressure suit that covers his back and his chest and the top of his arms. He is wearing a pair of blue jeans and sneakers, and he is reaching almost desperately for his shirt. In a rushed movement he pulls it over his head, and when he is dressed he whispers:
"Please knock next time…"
He tries to walk past me but I suddenly reach out and grab his wrists. I am fast and this time he cannot pull back. His body is soon leaning slightly backwards though but I don't give up:
"Sonny…"
He doesn't say anything and refuses to look at me. I try again, wishing I could find the right words:
"Sonny…"
Nothing comes to me though and eventually I let him go. When the door falls closed behind him I stand in front of our bathroom cupboard. The doors are still open and a number of creams are stalled out for Sonny to use. I hold one of the tubes and sit down on the cold hard floor mumbling:
"Please open up to me…"
(…)
When I come home I find the bathroom door half open and the light switched on. I hesitate for a minute, remembering how Sonny reacted this morning when I walked in on him. But when I hear a grunt, that sounds as though he is in pain, I push the door open. He is sitting on the floor as I did this morning, a number of tubes around him and a pained grimace on his face. He looks up and me and for the first time in months I see a hint of my Sonny. Although his words are pushing me away his eyes are begging for me to help him.
"Go away, Will, I need a minute…"
I don't even respond, and instead kneel down next to him, pushing the pressure suit he took off in one of the corners to make room for me.
"Let me help you…"
I pull the tube of cream out of his hand and carefully start creaming his back. His skin used to be smooth and silky, but now it feels rough and broken under my hands. He shivers almost uncontrollably and I am not sure whether he is cold, nervous, in pain, emotional, or all of them at the same time. I want to ask him to tell me what is in his heart:
"Sonny…"
I want to lean over and kiss his cheek, but then I see how he is biting his bottom lip in an attempt to stay strong and I just continue creaming his back.
"Not a good day today?"
He shakes his head and mumbles:
"It hurts… it's very tight…"
I move to creaming his arm and feel how he slowly relaxes under my touch. And suddenly I start talking:
"Son… I love you… this doesn't change that… I told you that before, remember?"
I shiver runs through his spine and then he says, almost irritated:
"What does that mean, Will? What did we know then? Those were just… just words…"
The silence after he speaks echoes in my head, as I am shocked how he pushes that memory away, a memory that means everything to me. That moment has kept me going, those promises have kept me going and he pushes it away as if it meant nothing. I clear my throat and while my hands rest on his scarred skin I whisper:
"You are wrong… those words meant something to me…"
He shrugs and finally our eyes meet. The pain in his hurt me, but the way our souls reconnect makes my heart beat faster. I reach out to hold his hand and his fingers clutch around mine. While my eyes never let go of his I ask:
"Let me prove it to you… Let me show you how much I meant it…?"
His eyes are swimming in tears he is trying to hold back:
"I am scared Will…"
"Of what…?"
His fingers are squeezing mine so hard it hurts, but I just wait for him to find the words.
"I can't ask you… how could you… how can you love me…?"
His eyes break away from mine and two tears roll down his cheeks:
"I am not the person I was… I am scarred and not just on my skin… my heart is damaged just as much…"
He is crying now. I haven't seen him cry very often, and how he is breaking down in front of me is almost too much to take. But I also feel closer to him than ever and that makes me stronger than I have ever been. I change position and curl my legs around him. Without hesitation I wrap him up in my arms until his head is resting against my shoulder and my nose is buried in his hair. He is sobbing and his body shakes uncontrollably against mine.
"Sonny, I love you… and I know you are hurt, and you are afraid people look at you differently, that I look at you differently… that we think less of you…"
He nods against my chest and seems to want to hide in my arms even more.
"I need you to listen to me, Sonny… I love you… I love you… all of you… I love you…"
My hands carefully stroke his skin while I repeat those words over and over again until he calms down.
"OK…"
I smile and kiss his forehead, realising I haven't done that in a long time. He sits up and then looks at me:
"I need you to be patient though… I am still scared you might run… that one day you realise you don't want all this…"
His hands gesture at the tubes around us and I shrug:
"There will probably be days I want to throw all this stuff out of the window and scream… but that is just because I don't want you to be in pain or to be unhappy…"
He smiles, it is a small smile but it is a promise of better times ahead. I stand up and pull him onto his feet. The moment he is standing in front of me I pull him in for a tight hug. His arms fold around my waist and he leans his chin in the crook of my neck:
"Thank you…"
"Don't say that… I love you…"
He sighs deeply and breathes:
"I love you too…"
(…)
It has been a week since our bathroom moment and slowly we are growing towards each other again. He doesn't jump up when I walk into the bathroom when he is still half naked, and every night we curl up together under the covers. When he is at home he wears T-shirts instead of long sleeves, and he is no longer trying to hide his creams which means I find them everywhere. Yesterday night we made out like teenagers before he pulled away, whispering apologetically:
"I'm not ready yet…"
I understood, but also realised how much I had missed him and how much I wanted to make love to him. He must have noticed my disappointment:
"Will, it is just…. Just scary… I need a bit more time… I am so sorry…"
And after his apology I just pulled him close to me, promising:
"I'll help you… when you are ready I will make it really special, just like you made our first time special for me…"
He chuckled and it lit up my heart:
"You are setting yourself quitet a high example…."
So now I am thinking about how I can make it special for him, and eventually I go shopping to make sure I have everything I need. It takes me about an hour to get it all ready and then I hear the front door open. I rush back into the living room and he raises his eyebrows when he sees me:
"You OK?"
"Sure…"
He nods and smiles:
"You seem a bit flustered… what are you up to, Horton?"
His usual banter is just like 'old times', and I smile happily when I walk over to him. My hands cup his face and I whisper:
"I made it special…"
When he doesn't respond I pull back and mumble hastily:
"But if you are not ready yet, I do understand…"
I turn around, but soon his hands on my waist turn be back:
"I am ready…"
When my eyes meet his I see a familiar dark in his eyes, not the one I have seen for the past months, but the one I used to see when he wanted to make love to me. The dark that tells me he loves me and he wants to show it. I have to control myself not to push him on the couch and rip his clothes off, so I pull back slightly and grab his hands. I walks backwards to our bedroom and pull him along. Before I open the door I whisper:
"I love you so much…"
The moment we walk in I see the emotions painted on his face. I just look at him while he looks at my work in our bedroom. A sea of candles gives a very intimate, romantic glow, and above our bed I have used decorative letters to spell out the words 'Let me kiss your scars, let me marvel in how beautiful you are'. The moment he reads that he shakes his head, while biting his bottom lip. I reach out and pry it loose:
"Don't chew that, I need that bottom lip…"
He smiles weakly, shaking his head again:
"You did all this."
"I said I would make it special."
He stares at me and then he whispers with a lump in his throat:
"You are a man of your word… you do exactly what you promise…"
I feel a blush coming up and I look away from his intense eyes. His hands come up and they cup my face, making me look at him again:
"Will, you have no idea how often that conversation went through my mind in the past months, how often I replayed your words in my head praying you meant them…"
"I do mean them, honey… I do mean them so much."
"I have been so scared those were just words, but all this time you have showed me nothing but unconditional love."
I helplessly shrug:
"You stole my heart years ago… I can only love you…"
He smiles, a wide happy smile and my heart falls back into place. I feel how he pushes me on the bed and soon he is strangling my hips. He sits up and slowly takes his shirt and his pressure suit off. For a second I see the insecurity flare up in his eyes, but I shake my head:
"Don't… don't you dare… you are so beautiful…"
I pull his head down so I can kiss him and when I feel him relax into the kiss I flip him on his back so I can lie on top of him. Slowly we undress each other and finally we are skin on skin. It has been months since I have felt him like this and I moan softly against his chest. When I grind our hips together he shivers from the intensity of our touch. But then I hold still and lean forward to kiss his lips. When I let go he mumbles:
"I want you so bad…"
I smile:
"I have something to do first…"
"What?"
My lips softly caress his shoulders and with tender devotion I start kissing his chest. His hands hide in my hair:
"Will… you don't have to if you don't want to… I do understand…"
I look up and find his eyes with mine:
"I promised… and I want to do this… they are your scars and they are part of you… please just let me do this…"
He nods wordlessly and I continue licking wet trails on his scarred chest. When I move back up while planting wet sloppy kisses in his neck and on his cheek I feel the dampness on his skin. Our eyes meet and I realise is crying, overwhelmed with emotion as I kissed his scars.
"Sonny… are you OK?"
He shakes his head and smiles:
"OK doesn't even begin to cover it…"
Thank you all for reading and supporting. Not sure where this plot came from, but I was suddenly writing this. Hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to your reviews!