Closer


Gareas woke and immediately sat upright. The bed sheets wrinkled around his bare waist and created large ripples in the watery silk. Not that it bothered anyone, though. Beside him, with mermaid hair and curled eyelashes, Leena stirred. She had always been a light sleeper. She had always been beautiful, too, but simple facts justified nothing these days.

"Mmm…"

Without turning to look at his lover, Gareas let his left hand wander over to where she lay. Even before their skin met, she opened her eyes and looked up at his shadowed form. She reached out and carefully clasped his hand in hers, intertwining their fingers with deliberate slowness. One by one by one…until they held on as so.

"Hey? Gareas?"

A heaved grunt. To anyone else, it may have not seemed as so, but she knew that the flat tone of his voice was actually a positive sign, that it indicated that there was absolutely nothing wrong, that he was just fine.

"I hope you're not worrying about Rioroute and Phil."

Gareas' free hand absently stroked the side of his face, right near the jaw. His eyes were still fixated on the dark emptiness in front of him, but she didn't seem to notice.

"I'm not worried about them…not even thinking about them."

He wasn't lying.

"Oh, Garu!"

Her pink lips parted like waves and everything within converged into carefree laughter.

"Stop lying!"

He wasn't lying.

Giggling, Leena brought their joined hands to her lips and kissed Gareas' fingers and then moved over to his knuckles. She was definitely feeling more awake now.

"Phil is really tough, full of spunk and determination. But she also has this sensitive side too. I've been noticing it recently, actually. She's always touchy when it comes to weakness, whether she thinks it's in herself or in her pilot. It's funny because more and more she has been reacting strongly about Rioroute. You can just see it, by the way she looks at him, or when he's not around, how she's occasionally distracted by small things that remind her of him. And she'll suddenly forget everything else and concentrate on those little details. It just goes to show how sensitive she truly is on the inside.

"But people are always sensitive about things they love, I suppose."

She smiled warmly, directly at Gareas' now closed eyes. His brows were furrowed and it looked like he was listening.

"She may seem mad now, but if Rioroute is planning to go to her room and say sorry to her like he said he would, then, well, I wouldn't worry too much about their argument as I would their…apologies."

The young man didn't find that funny, at least, not outwardly, but Leena did.

"No argument, no matter how strong, can break up people who are truly in love. So, really, Garu, there's no need to worry about them."

But he wasn't lying.

"I mean, nothing can come between two lovers, right?"

It was an odd question. But, it needed an answer. He knew the answer.

Gareas slipped his hand from Leena's and slid underneath his covers easily, placing his self right beside her. She danced to his movements with liquid grace and discovered rainbows of warmth within his inviting arms.

"Of course…"

He moved his face closer to hers, his eyes purposefully skipping over the blonde and blue, so that particular area around his jaw rested lightly on top of her soft head, while his eyes closed to a place with no painful pairings of color, a place of only undisturbed darkness.

"Nothing can."