Another short ficlet. I spent all my energy in the mini ship week and I'm tapped out. Good thing my classes have ended early this semester.
~:~
Almost and maybes
Prompt (by anon): "If love is blind, then maybe a blind person that loves has a greater understanding of it."
Her laughter, he decides, sounds like rain. He could allow himself to drown in it.
She walks into a room, and he can feel it, like a sixth sense or something. And it's not because her feet are the lightest of all the others in the ship. He's tried to memorise all the different strides of his crew—partly so he could freak them out and partly for just the convenience of it.
Cinder falls a breath heavy on one side, and walks like she owns the ship. Wolf, when he finds a reason to venture out of Scarlet's room, is terrifyingly soundlessly. Kai is all confidence in his feet until he realises he's lost. Iko is boundless energy—all skips and leaps and tumbles instead of any coherent sort of walk.
But Cress—he doesn't need to hear the whisper of her feet to know she's near. She's like the sun, and even when he's as blind as a bat, she's a beacon, and what he really is, is a moth gone crazy. Her name rests in his lungs like a ghost, and she really shouldn't be haunting him when all he has to do is reach out to feel her hand in his.
Her face is a blur to him, a fogged up memory like a stained photograph that never happened. All he remembers is hair, and if he holds his breath, he can still feel it sliding through his fingers.
She's a song in his mind. She's the tap-tap-tap of keys coordinated to the sound of opera music. She's wild innocence and a dreaming wisdom. She's joy. She's warm and lonely and vast. She's a nebula. She's that exultant sound she makes at the back of her throat when she catches him cheating at cards. She's Iko's skip and dance walk. She's an impossibility breathing like any other mortal.
He sometimes wonders why she's even looking for a hero in him when she's a much better one all by herself.
She's selfless and kind and brave. When she sings, she hums the melody, quiet and soft. She tastes the words under her breath. When she loves, she's screaming at the top of her lungs, like it doesn't matter if her voice breaks when he doesn't whisper the words back to her. She loves like she could love enough for the both of them. She loves like she could patch hearts with sheer will and sellotape.
If he holds her hand too long, his chest starts to hurt.
(He can't make up his mind if he hates the feeling or not.)
Some nights he stays up counting sheep. Some nights he falls asleep wondering what it would be like if he was allowed to love her back. He dreams of slaying dragons to prove himself to her. She kisses him on tip toes at the base of a tower she was never trapped in.
Her lips, he decides, are an ocean.
And he's drowning.
Next up, Jealous!Thorne. I'm about halfway done with it. If I don't procrastinate tomorrow, I should have it finished and ready in no time.