She loves the little things he notices about her. The way she rolls her shoulders after a long, tense day of dealing with costars and cameras and directors yelling 'cut.' It's her shoulders he looks to for the full story when the tiredness in her eyes tells only part of it. And he'll rub the ache away with hands that know her as intimately as she knew herself until she stretches with a happy grunt and smiles.
He loves the little things she notices about him. The way she can tell he's furiously fuming despite the placid smile he smears across his face. She swears up and down that his tell is the smallest wrinkle in his brow but, after examining his face thoroughly in the mirror one evening, he wonders if that's true or if her words are covering up some extrasensory ability she refuses to divulge. He doesn't mind either way.
Because it's all about the little things.
Like how he always seems to know when she's craving hamburger steak. How he curls up with his head on her lap for hours after she returns from some distant location shoot because he missed her more than words can allow him to say. Or how he notices the glint in her eye whenever something in a shop window catches her eye and though she'll never say outright that she wants it and even tries to pretend as if it means nothing to her, but he knows better. He knows her.
It's the way she always seems to know when he's come down with a cold. The way she silently, lovingly prepares his favorite meal on the heels of a director or fashion designer deciding to jet him off to some exotic place because she missed him more than she'd allow herself to say. It's how she can extrapolate an entire thesis from him speaking only two words because, according to her, he speaks in a cipher for which only she has the key. Because only she knows him.
And only he knows how to adjust his fingers ever-so-slightly inside of her so that it sends her head flying backwards and pushes a keening wail out of her mouth, the sound of it turning his blood into molten lava. Because he knows what the quirk in her lips means when her eyes rake over him upon emerging from a steaming shower. Only he knows how to press and pluck and pinch the little sounds out of her that build up to one big crescendo.
And only she knows how to cant her hips just so, changing the angle in such a way that his jaw goes slack and his eyes roll back into his head as he snaps his hips into hers, sending a wave of immeasurable pleasure from her scalp clear through to her toes. Because she knows what his hands are saying when they pull her a little closer and he kisses her a little deeper. Only she can touch, taste, tease and tug until he's driven so mad that a stint in a psych ward sounds like a luxury vacation.
The little things pile up on top of each other and together they scoop them into their arms, laughing and straining under the weight. They marvel at how much heavier it becomes with each passing day. Their knees wobble under the struggle of staying upright and they know that, one day, it will send them both to the ground. They'll lay there, blissfully breathless with all the little things strewn about.
And they'll gather them up into a pile once more, only to fall backwards into them as a child would fall into a mound of dried leaves, giggling all the while. Because just as they carry these little things with them forever, so do the little things carry them.
fin.