I will be your lighthouse
His attempt to shove her away again failed. Like a ghost, it passed through her and left him stumbling in its wake. He blinked. Was she actually a ghost? Was he arguing with himself, out loud this time, like someone whose sanity had finally unraveled? Where he'd expected a wildfire to roar in retaliation for his match strike, he only found the calm fortitude of an anchor upon which he could lean all his weight. Instead of laughter or scorn, instead of agreement that he was a miserable waste, she wrapped him in the understanding he was so adamant she wouldn't have. That dying flame burned a bit brighter for it.
The pressure of his teeth against each other eased; the fragile anger roused from his well-protected depths receding. He couldn't help it then, and laughed genuinely. The final uncoiling of the tension like a wave of euphoria that washed everything from him, even his sensibilities, what little of those still remained anyway. He hung his head as he tried to quiet the sound, his shoulders still shaking with the effort. He'd rather that than end up weeping at her feet. "Thank you..." he managed to get out, soft and solemn despite the grin he was wrestling from his face. "It's been so long that I've tried to hide all that from you. To be better than that, by the time we met again, but I just keep sinking into it each time I start to come alive again." When he finally looked at her again, there was a genuine fear that gripped him. A fear that he would do so again; that these layers of scar tissue finally settling over the wound he'd borne for years would rip free before it had closed up and he would be hurt all over again.
The pressure of his teeth against each other eased; the fragile anger roused from his well-protected depths receding. He couldn't help it then, and laughed genuinely. The final uncoiling of the tension like a wave of euphoria that washed everything from him, even his sensibilities, what little of those still remained anyway. He hung his head as he tried to quiet the sound, his shoulders still shaking with the effort. He'd rather that than end up weeping at her feet. "Thank you..." he managed to get out, soft and solemn despite the grin he was wrestling from his face. "It's been so long that I've tried to hide all that from you. To be better than that, by the time we met again, but I just keep sinking into it each time I start to come alive again." When he finally looked at her again, there was a genuine fear that gripped him. A fear that he would do so again; that these layers of scar tissue finally settling over the wound he'd borne for years would rip free before it had closed up and he would be hurt all over again.
Iskra
