{se} feels like I'm sleepwalking when you're gone

Hotaru

Somewhere my lifeline still hums and sings
In the mess of all I have thrown away

Right about now she should be pulling away. Apologize for confusing him, for confusing the both of them and this friendship they're trying to foster. Maybe excuse it away as hoping to startle him so he'll drop her, or distract him and get him close so she can exact an act of better revenge. She can make it make sense.

Hotaru could talk her way out of this.

But she isn't pulling back.

And every second that she doesn't is a second she can't explain away, a further cinching of the truth around her neck like an iron collar. And it should feel stifling. Alarms should be blaring in her head, bringing her out of this bubble of fantasy. But they aren't. In fact, she can't help smiling against his mouth as she sees his pegasus wings emerge from the corners of her eyes, letting them fall peacefully shut moments later. If every wasted moment has already doomed her like Icarus reaching for the sun on fewer and fewer feathers, then she wants to languish in each stolen breath and stuttered heartbeat until the second she hits the ocean's surface.

With little leverage to speak of while cradled in his arms, she can only cup his face in her hands; thumb stroking over the edge of his scar on one side and sliding up his temple on the other like she can't sit still, can't refrain from touching him. Hotaru kisses him like they're straight out of a storybook - shielded by pale wings as if demurely hiding from prying eyes, autumn sunlight bringing out the blond in their hair, tangled together in a way that makes it clear they know each other's bodies like well-traveled roads but with the impossible shine of newness gilded across their bare shoulders.

Hungry now,
I am gathering new seeds to throw wide