Tell Her You Love Her
Drabble Series: Just a non-chronological look at the journey through love, pain, and death of a relationship with Levi and Petra. Lemons/Lime/Adult Language to be expected.
Step One: Tell Her a Story
"Tell me something." Her voice is soft against my neck.
"Something."
Rolling her eyes, she swats my arm gently. "No. Tell me—tell me a story." And then, before I can breathe a single syllable to life, "A true story."
Wincing internally, a swarm of agonizing memories come tumbling from their neatly stacked boxes. Each one howling and begging and screaming to be spoken; to be remembered; to be realized and put to rest. They open their jaws wide, lions with a need to feed. They stain everything in red and poison. A beautiful woman stands in the corner, pulling at the stings of the little lions, making them dance and scream. Her crimson dress whips around her, masking her face save for one cobalt eye. It electrifies me. I know that eye. I have seen it before, but never so alive; never so vivid.
Sweat pools over my forehead, at my nape, in my hands. The bitter taste of memories pungent on my tongue. Making it hard to breathe. Making it hard to swallow. But, I shake it off; I force it down.
"I'm not good at storytelling. You know that," I say, my voice too loud in the silence of the barracks.
A feminine hand strokes my hair, spinning it like thread through tiny fingers. "Please. I want to know something about you, Levi. You know so much about me. My life. My dreams. Everything, but I—I feel as if I sleep beside a stranger. A figment of my imagination. And, I just want proof that you—Levi Ackerman—are in fact, real."
The pink that stains her freckled cheeks sends my heart into overdrive, fluttering wildly beneath the palm of my hand. What is this feeling? What has this woman done to me?
Her amber eyes are glowing in the starlight of the window: watching; waiting; wanting. My lungs demand more air; my heart demands more space. And, my head demands answers for these foreign feelings.
I part my lips after a pregnant pause long enough to span the entire room three times over, and tell a story. A true story. A painful story.
"Alright," I begin, sitting up against the headboard, disconnecting this figment of imagination from her veritable, warm, inviting—naked—body. My elbows dig into the sides of my knees, filling the hollow space, not entirely unlike the space she's taken residence in in my heart. And a part of me hopes that she, too, is not a figment of my imagination. That she is not just some plume of enchanted smoke beguiling me with pretty smiles and feathery kisses.
I shake that thought away, willing it back to a dark corner of my mind as a story I've never spoken aloud comes tumbling onto the scratchy wool of the blanket surrounding us.
"There was a boy. A very young boy who lived in a very small castle. His mother, the queen, loved him very much. She used to sing lullabies in ancient tongues, and dance around symbols painted in blood and salt. Her laugh was a song; her love: magic.
But magic provokes misunderstandings, hatred even. Her magic is what killed her. The king, he fled from the castle, holding the queen's magic in his hands. He murdered her. And there was no more magic left in the world from that day forward. He buried it with all the other lost treasures of the world."
The room is quiet with only the distant hum of wind sliding past the windows. My throat is dry; my mouth is numb. I don't think I've ever said so many words—silly words that I'm unsure even make any coherent sense. Heat is rising and rupturing over my skin, giving way to a blush to match her perpetual one.
"You see," I say, unable to keep the sarcastic, cynical bastard inside me at bay, "I told you I'm no good with stories."
Glistening tears stream down her cheeks. Dammit, how do you do that, Levi? How do you manage to always break this girl's heart?
A muddled, uncomfortable apology squeezes past my lips, but is overshadowed by her broken voice. "What happened to the boy?"
"What?" Poorly disguised surprise lines my voice, and the lines of my face.
"The little boy in your story—what ever happened to him? Did someone come back for him?"
A man with dark, menacing, hell fire eyes looms over the bed. The slash across his cheeks barely passing as a smile.
"Yes."
It must have been the way that single syllable fled my tongue that caused the tremor on her face, for she looked half scared, half confused, but she let it go. She didn't ask for the details on who. Didn't notice that shadow hanging over the bed with a wicked grin.
"That little boy—it was you, wasn't it?"
Sliding back down beside her in the bed, I let my fingers snake over her thighs. I needed to be inside something warm, and real, and living. I needed to forget about that little boy and his castle and his queen. Liquid gold eyes flickered, but understood, and just like that her lips were kissing away memories and stories better left forgotten.
XXX
Author's Note: Just a short scene between lovers. Like I said, this will go in no particular order. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading!