No Love Allowed
~ Hello! Here is the second part which will be told in Butch's point of view as opposed to Bubbles'. Thank you for dropping by to read, and I hope that you enjoy it! ~
Summary - For some reason, it seemed impossible to tell anyone that my favourite place was in his arms. (Butch/Bubbles. Forbidden romance. Two-shot.)
Disclaimer - I do not own the Powerpuff Girls, the characters used in this story, or the song lyrics down there.
Wake up and look me in the eyes again.
I need to feel your hand upon my face.
Words can be like knives,
They can cut you open,
And then the silence surrounds you,
And haunts you.
I think I might've inhaled you.
I can feel you behind my eyes.
You've gotten into my bloodstream.
I can feel you flowing in me.
- Stateless, Bloodstream
XoXoXoXoXoXoXo
I hadn't noticed that there was a small spot of my wall that I had missed when I painted it, not until then, when my breathing was slow and my eyelids were heavy but I couldn't sleep no matter how hard I tried to. I usually had no problem getting to sleep, especially when she was here with me, but this day was different, because my subconscious was nagging at me with the anxiety that I never usually felt. I was trapped in the thought, the wonder, wondering what my brothers would say if they knew who I slept beside almost every single night. I betrayed their trust just so that I could be with an enemy in a way that neither of them could possibly begin to understand. And I knew, knew that they would never forgive me if they ever happened to find out. I was supposed to lie and to cheat, it's what I was born to do, but not to them. Never to them.
Even with the risk always at hand, I still spent most of my nights with her. Some nights, she wouldn't show because she would be with her friends - Robin? Mitch? - and I wouldn't be able to sleep. I was so used to her being near me, I had become so accustomed to it, that when she wasn't, I felt like I just..couldn't breathe. I didn't understand that feeling. Needing someone. She was never supposed to mean anything to me. We were always supposed to be forever a secret, a fire that would burn out and die in a matter of time. But she clawed her way into me. She got under my skin and there was no getting her out.
My body was heating up by the second, burning my skin and perspiring on my forehead. It was too hot to think straight - it was her fault, she insisted that I start closing the window before we go to sleep because my room was too cold. Our room. It felt like our room, so I said yes and I closed the window even though I always ended up freakishly hot when I tried to sleep. With one swift movement, I tore the green bed sheets away from my body and I slowly placed them around her. I had thought that she had long been asleep, due to her heavy breathing, but apparently not, as the second that I moved to cover her up, she turned her sylphlike body around so that she was facing me, closer to me than she had been before.
She was so deadly silent, but her eyes were open, blinking blue against the darkness. These nights were becoming meaningless. She barely spoke to me. She just held my face and looked at me with such affection and desire, but she never said anything. It was as though she wasn't in there anymore. She rarely told me that she loved me, but she always made sure to show it, by just holding me and being with me instead of running away from this disaster of a relationship that we were clinging onto for dear life.
I was surprised that she was risking so much just to be with me, especially when she easily could have gotten anyone she wanted (she was beyond beautiful. I had long stopped telling her that though). There were times when I considered just letting her go, so that we could both stop lying to our families and our friends and just get back to our lives outside of the darkness and hollowness of my bedroom.
But I never did.
She was everything that I was supposed to hate. She was the epitome of goodness and compassion. I shouldn't have felt anything other than hatred and disdain towards her, but even with her being who she was, a hero, she still meant something to me. She still made me feel special, cherished, wanted. She still loved me with every beat of her heart. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't let her leave, even if I wanted to, because even with the risk of being found out, I couldn't spend a night without knowing that she was there, loving and caring about someone as damaged as me. Someone as messed up as I was.
That's what our relationship was.
Messed up.
If the truth ever did come out, my brothers would never be able to understand why I needed a Powerpuff girl. No one would ever be able to comprehend why I wanted her.
"I thought you were sleeping," I spoke into the muteness, diverting my face so that I could look directly at her, and I waited, waited for her to say something, but she was absolutely silent. She glanced at my eyes, darted from one of them to the other, and her lips twitched into something of a smile. But she didn't speak. She never did.
As I turned to lay on my side, I searched for her hand under our bed sheets and took it in mine. Her eyes were downcast in seconds, staring down at our intertwined fingers and her almost-smile transformed further, into a real smile, the kind that she used to give, back when I would surprise her. I rarely saw it now. Rare was an understatement. Our eyes were on each other's, and I was so lost in her blue irises that I thought I may never escape, and I could feel my stomach sinking -twisting- under the marred skin. She was too beautiful. Her eyes, her smile, her face. Everything about her was (her voice was the most beautiful, and now it was gone.)
I remembered how it was in the beginning. We had both been so young and so confused. We didn't know why we were so attracted to one another, why we always found ourselves staring during the heat of battle, why she'd spend more time yelling at me rather than my brother and vise versa. We didn't want to feel that way. It was so many shades of wrong. But we hadn't been able to hold ourselves back from each other. And over time, the heat and the tenderness was gone, dead, buried, but we couldn't stop holding each other. Neither of us wanted to lose what we had. Our relationship had become the biggest part of both of our lives. It was too vital to give up.
"Do we have plans for tomorrow?" I asked her, trying to sound as casual possible, trying to hide the desperation and the begging of my tone, eager to pull her into a real conversation for the first time in two whole weeks.
She tilted her head into her pillow, batting her vivacious blue eyes into mine, and spoke.
She spoke.
"Same as usual," She mumbled in return. Her voice was quiet and so so so familiar that my chest ached at the sound of it. She offered me a small, weak smile and she carried on. "All we ever do is sleep beside one another in this room. And that's all we will ever do."
My lips were twitching at a frown, and I wondered just what was going through her mind. No more than one month ago, she was telling me of how she wished that she could be with me forever -like a wife- and that she dreamed of a world where we wouldn't have to hide any longer, where we could truly be together. Now, she just treated our relationship like a disease. Doomed to fail. All because I couldn't tell her the words that she wanted to hear. And I still couldn't.
"Don't you want..more?" I stared down at her blonde hair and her blinking blue eyes, my question lingering in the air between us, and she appeared to be contemplating a response.
It was a redundant question. I knew that she had always wanted more, but lately, she wasn't acting like she did (and I couldn't blame her). She had changed from how she was in the beginning. She was once optimistic, she was passionate, she was effervescent, she was happy. And as the weeks dragged on, dragged on to months, she had completely stopped trying. She didn't love me so good anymore.
After pulling herself into a half-sitting position on the bed, she brought her cold hands to my face and caressed my cheek, indenting small finger-shaped marks into my skin - just like she used to. She pressed her lips onto my forehead and kissed me so delicately that I barely even felt it happen, and then she was pulling back, staring directly into my eyes, holding my face with both hands, and she nodded, wearing a small, insignificant smile on her face.
"Of course I want more," She stroked my lips with her thumb, before running her hands through my hair, at the back of my cranium, and it was almost as if this side of had never left; the side that treated me as though I was the most precious thing in her world. "But we can never have forever. We knew that from the start."
I swallowed down the dryness in my throat, trying to remember what breathing was. She was right. I did know that. But back then, I didn't care. It was only when she started to pull back, when I felt like I was so close to actually losing her after months of fighting to keep what we had, and struggling to settle, that I started to care about her. I was never supposed to care for her, but I did, so deeply that I couldn't even put it into words because I didn't understand it.
Just as I was about to pry my lips apart, say something more - too excited that she was bothering to talk to me tonight, rather than just lay at my side in silence - she laced her fingers into my hair and brought my face closer to hers, and I closed my eyes as she kissed me with so much passion and devotion that it made my stomach physically hurt. In seconds, her lithe arms were around my neck, tugging me down with them, trying to be closer to me. My skin was burning as she left kisses along my collar-bone, across my jaw and back down to my shoulders. And as she hugged me tighter against her body, her nails clawing at my back, leaving marks on my bare skin, kissing my neck so faintly, I felt myself rack with shivers at the intensity of it all.
She was so passionate. So romantic. So zealous.
And I wasn't. Not anymore.
She deserved more than me. Much more. But I wouldn't ever let her go.
(She was mine and I was hers.)
I could have sworn that I heard her whisper, "I love you.", but I was in too much of a daze to be sure. She made my head spin. Made my eyelids melt beneath their lids. My skin was on fire with each second of her lips brushing against mine and I couldn't breathe, couldn't even try. I had no idea how she always managed to make me feel so powerless whenever she was near. With one final peck on my cheek, she pulled her head back and she sat up straighter, removing her arms from my chest. I watched her, blinking my eyes to bring back my sight, and I felt her hand on my face again (and I was in Heaven).
She stroked my cheek, softly and faintly, before smiling at me. Her smile was so arresting. But I rarely saw it anymore."I love you," She whispered - and this time I knew that she had said it, but she didn't say it like she used to. She said it like she had given up.
My heart kicked violently at her words.
(She loved me.)
(I was too afraid to love anything.)
Pulling the black sheets around her legs, she tore her hand away from my face and moved back to her side of our bed. "Good night."
With that said, she lay down and her blue eyes snapped shut, and I was left wondering if that was the last time that she would talk to me (for a while, at least). When I lay down beside her, she didn't cozy up to me like she always used to, but I still felt her take my hand and rub small circles into the base of my palm, and I welcomed it. Welcomed the normality.
As she fell asleep at my side, I wondered if she would ever just stop loving me one day.
And the funny thing was, she never did.
~ That's the end of my Butch/Bubbles two-shot. Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope you enjoyed it! ~
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