28. my love, my beautiful love
Their lives first come to mould together in a gazebo at his mother's estate, the rain pouring relentlessly around them but the world silenced as they hold their breaths after Elain has poured her heart out to him, their faces and clothes and hair soaked to the bone. They have been standing with little over a hair's breadth between them, eyes locked, throats silenced, chest heaving, just like they always had come close to. This familiar dance over and over: his hands at his sides, hers thinking of reaching for him. It is hesitation written all over their faces, nerves wrecking their limbs, and never had he been so clueless, at loss for what to do. He shouldn't, they shouldn't, she shouldn't have said all she had. And yet. Yet.
Yet curse him, Elain's wide eyes are unblinking, Azriel's own staring back. Somehow none of them are moving, but it happens, a little brush of soft souls hesitantly stepping out their respective cages and Azriel feeling like his back has been broken by the weight of her glance alone and he is crippled beyond healing by her love. It's just an understanding, damn him for all eternity for it, but they don't even move, damp lips pressed tightly and their chests shuddering as if both their affections hurt more than any words uttered to turn the other away. There has been much of that between them, nothing quite as bittersweet as the perfect person but always, always the wrong timing. Him, reaching out, her refusing. Her, seeking him, him turning away. Always the world between them, but so and so’s hanging like swords of doom above their heads. Always someone else to think of, someone else’s priorities placed above their own when there is naught but acceptance to be found in the people who matter most in this equation.
Is this is? He cannot believe it, he is waiting for something to smite them down. The world isn't kind to him, not even remotely, and he has grown used to being the least favoured entity alive- has learnt how to navigate the cruelty of life and her formidable forces of nature. Travesty and devastation are his norms, and he has not been surprised in the least by the abundance of that between them; a male cursed in his very bones would inflict that kind of infectious misfortune on those around him. It is why he isolates himself, and yet she has wormed her way in with determination and a goal only she is privy to, even if he has tried time and time again to shove her away and curse him, truly, curse him for this but life gets so lonely in isolation and he cannot keep refusing that who is determined to sit by his side. Him of all people.
Him.
My love loves me, he thinks softly as tears cloud his gaze.
It's a drawn-outgaze, where he is tearing out his heart and offering it with his mind out of his head, and she is hearing all the words he is not saying and they’ve reached the limit of their tolerance and patience. To stretch thin the two most patient people in Prythian is not an easy feat, and yet, Azriel finds himself but a hair’s width away from throwing caution in the wind. Elain has tossed her hat into the breeze already, and by the tightening of her jaw, the resolution solidifies in her gaze: there is no intention of retrieving it.
It's hesitation and fear but bravery and desire. Elain's hand finds his, reaching, this silent invitation, and he offers his own back, wondering when they had begun refusing to make the move and simply make the offer and the request for permission. It's like their dance of affections; their fingers ghost one another, and their ring fingers and pinkies link together loosely as Azriel presses his forehead to hers, finding in her a pillar of strength to lean against and rely on, their chests moulded together, his wings exhausted on his back and his whole frame giving up any sort of a fight, as his lips finally whisper the answer to Elain's proclamation.
“I'd have no one on this earth but you, if you'll have me.”
Caution fades into the breeze.
“I’m yours,” she whispers in the rain, tears pebbling in her eyes it is a sight worth breaking his heart for. “And you are mine.”
“From this day,” he whispers back, his voice hoarse and broken and relieved. “To the end of all days.”
“I’ll have no-one but you.”
“This I promise you.”
They’ve fallen from his eyes. Streaming down his cheek. Life breathed into his soul, he gasps with the space found in him. His shoulders quiver and Elain’s hands tightens around his own, tight and right. He knows he can’t feel it, the scars too thick and too deep, but his own bones and flesh can tell. Even detect the tingling and prickling in his hands finely making their path on him. He shudders more, the sensation as nothing he ever experienced before, a little quivering breath of hers mirroring his experience. The feeling washes over him, he cannot look away from her, as ink blooms on their flesh, twining its way around their limbs and spawning from where their fourth fingers are locked together. Forming a pattern only complete and only in powerful fruition when their hands are intertwined.
My love loves me, he thinks, as a smile is finally born on his face.
52 notes
·
View notes