It Had to Be Hers
Summary: There was no spring storm that could compare.
Notes: For alemara.
Because I love them, and have loved them five years, and probably am nowhere near done loving them either.
Set in fuzzy space, but likely Milliways or Ambergeldar, after the events at the end of Marian's canon. You know. Aside from dying. (Or at least, not dying...exactly.) If you were there, you know what I mean.
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He'd reached out, Marian knew, with no more purpose than to brush aside the rain drop that had suddenly, so ungracefully, hit the front of her hair too heavily and plopped down on her face. Rolling across her temple and cheek.
He hadn't done it with the intention to end up brushing the side of her mouth with his finger. No more than she'd planning the involuntary shiver or the breath she'd drawn in, across that finger, at the contact. No, if anything, the way Caspian's jaw had just barely tightened when it fell across her temple and he reached out. It gave that really it had probably reminded far too much of the tears he'd probably seen more than enough of in the last few months.
She had wondered several times if she was a curse on his patience now. Alive, Yet standing on the precipice of leaning how to live with it. But she wasn't now, as she straightened just slightly. Enough to snap him from his surprise, even as his hand didn't drop.
"I was only-" Was easily an explanation, almost nearly apologetic, and probably had planned to have more words. Before, as he'd gone to pull away, she moved without thinking about it. To cover his hand, to keep it there. The warmth of his slick skin against the rain-spattered cool of her face, her mouth.
Marian about as surprised at having made the move herself, still aside from it. Her own voice, so small next to the shudder of her heart, made her words, both a twist toward questioning his sudden silence and yet the same quiet acknowledgment of already understanding. "You were?"
Except there were no words. Even when his hand shifted under hers, slow, like she might run if he did, even though she'd been the one to stay him His thumb brushing part of her chin, only to stop. Only for those storm grey eyes, so like the sky above this copse of trees they stopped riding under, to settle with such seriousness in the search of her own.
She could see the emotions that chased through them and the great will that stopped them. The tension in his shoulders as her did not at all. Had they ever not been so transparent? Even if he wanted, felt, she could not place a finger on what to call it, anymore than she could deny not having noticed.
But Caspian knew better than anyone else, maybe even truer than anyone who'd been there the whole time, that everything in her life frm love to death had been forced on her, with nearly no choice for herself, nearly every day for the last half decade. The same as she knew he could not, would not, let himself be another thing in that long tally off everything she would never name, nor ever say in the light of day she could not manage.
That if longing and frustration, with so many other emotions were there in his eyes, it had to be her choice. She had to be the one. To tilt her head, and rub her cheek, letting her eyes half close, against the hand now frozen against her face, fitting herself against him. To open them, again, looking at him and move forward.
To stop the words, the ones that words that she could see forming on his parting lips, the ones that would say somehow that she didn't have to do anything, it wasn't required of her. By letting go of his hand, at the same time as she acted before she could stop herself, before they could, would.
Stepping forward, and leaning up to kiss him, fingers pressing into his wet shirt, heart thundering for the hunger and truth, understanding and acceptance, there. For the taste of the heart that knew hers best, the fingers that slid back, with a gasp, from her cheek into her hair. That never once asked more than she could give.
There was no spring storm that could compare. To the hand that appeared on her side pulling her closer, the snap of roughened delicacy, as it slid around her back. The mouth that parted against hers, surprise packed off with no glance back sending warmth down through her entire body, searing through every cold, dark place with the light that was only his.