And so he finds peace
He knows that it's by happenstance that they ever met. It caught him by surprise, which irks him sometimes; he'd considered himself to be too old, too jaded for surprises. But every time they meet, somehow she chips away more of the parts of him that died years ago and the hard shell he protected himself with, baring all the ugly vulnerabilities that he learned to quash and hide.
He's terrified that it won't last. The world has made it clear since before Summer that it doesn't favour him; that was just the breaking point. He'd spent every day for almost fifteen years revisiting this harsh truth, and trying to either swallow it, or forget it in the depths of his hip flask.
These thoughts dissipate silently like the early mist, though, as he looks into her half-lidded, glacial blue eyes. And her small, content smile – god, he wishes he could see it forever, brand it to the back of his eyelids so he can't forget how it looks. It's as gentle and sweet as her militaristic expressions are severe; he wonders briefly how many lucky people in the world have ever glimpsed this side of her, this painfully beautiful and wonderful and loving side that condemned him to fall irrevocably and irreversibly.
He'd once thought that, when he knew Summer, he knew all there was to know about love. He laughs dryly at how, even forty-odd years into this nightmare, he's still trying to find his way around the most commonplace of things. He really did love her, but it was naïve, and so was she. He hadn't known what pain and loss were, or seen how shit life was, or understood how broken everyone was inside, no matter what anybody said or pretended. This time, he carries with him full knowledge of what it means to bare one's soul, to love another, and it makes every difference.
It's one thing to be in love, and another entirely to love and also be loved. Neither of them really puts things into words, though. Somehow, it's better explained when they don't try to think about it.
He breathes in her heady scent and pulls her closer, still not quite believing what his eyes tell him, what his body feels. It feels almost like he's fallen into a trance, the way that colours seem so rich and vibrant and the way light swims in his eyes around her impossibly white hair, but he knows his dreams – they're always dark and haunting and full of regret. He's incapable of dreaming up something like this.
She slides her smooth leg between his and sighs happily. Sometimes, touching feels incommunicably exhilarating. Now, however, with their legs intertwined and his right arm loosely curled around her waist, holding them together, what he feels is the golden glow of peace, saturating every fibre of his person, flowing in his blood and diffusing in his lungs.
He breathes in and out, in and out, feeling the steady beat of his heart from above his head to below his toes. Her warmth, the silkiness of her hair, the feather-light pulse beneath his fingertips to match his own – how he feels about her doesn't come as a surprise or in some grand epiphany. It was only ever a question of when he noticed the overflowing fullness in his heart and the fidgety excitement suffusing his entire person that made him feel like a stupid kid again. It's a feeling that he tried to forget with his flask, and one that he never thought he'd ever truly taste again. At once he wants to dance and sing (and maybe give Taiyang a heart attack while he was at it, the blond bastard deserved it anyway) and also to never ever move from where he is, to preserve this peace and contentedness that somehow gives the past couple decades meaning.
By habit, he wakes up early – it's one of the many traits they share. They both revel in the sheer luxury of sleeping in past their regular schedules, of laziness and company and a break from the relentless world.
He pulls her closer to his face, brushing her nose with his and dipping into a slow and deliberate kiss, wondering again and again at how soft and lovely she feels. She smells a bit – and he probably does too – but he really couldn't care less. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he feels like he's forgetting something, but it doesn't matter – it can't matter – and the niggling doubt dissipates before he can put a finger on it. The clarity in his mind is not unlike waking up from a long, long nightmare that never seems to end, and he wonders how he managed to even breathe for those long years.
The glow in her eyes grows stronger with each passing moment, the beautiful contours in her irises gently folding, twisting, opening, and it pulls at something deep inside of him painfully and wonderfully. The thought of waking up like this – waking up to her – tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that; his heart is so full it's almost bursting, and he desperately wants to tell her how he feels, but he can't concentrate enough to speak while she looks at him. And as he follows a sudden shaft of warm yellow light with his eyes, he notices it's that brief moment when the sun hangs not above or below the horizon – but somewhere in between, the whole world teetering in focus between the mundane and the mystical.