flora
As Kaisel stretches against her, Flora grumbles—a low, muffled sound that bubbles against his skin before she stubbornly cuddles in tighter, her arm cinching around him as though sheer determination might keep the morning at bay. Her nose finds the hollow beneath his jaw like she means to hide there, burrowing further into the cradle of his warmth, chasing dreams that are already slipping through her fingers.
But his voice—soft, hesitant, real—breaks through her sleep-fogged defenses like sunlight through a stormcloud, and consciousness crashes down on her in a dizzying wave. The moment shifts. The weight of reality settles across her like a new blanket, itchy and unavoidable. Despite the featherlight touch of his fingers trailing along her ribs—a path that draws a quiet shiver from her spine—she stiffens, the boneless contentment of her sleep replaced by something warier, more alert. This isn’t the night that it happened anymore.
This is the morning after.
"Nooo," she mumbles against him, voice thick with sleep and protest, as if saying it might somehow rewind time. But the sun has risen, and neither of them are the same people they were in the dark. Still, she lets the silence stretch a few heartbeats longer before pushing herself back just far enough to look at him. Her blue eyes are sleep-soft and open, unguarded in a way that she rarely lets them be. There’s no teasing glint, no mask of charm. Just Flora. "I don’t regret it," she says quietly, the words small but sure. "And I know it both does and doesn’t change things." But gods, does it ever change things.
It changes the way she feels curled up beside him, as if every nerve in her body has been rewired to respond to the shape of him. It changes the way her heart stutters under his touch, the way her affection has rooted deeper—feral and aching and impossible to uproot now. It changes how close she feels to him, like there’s no distance between them at all, not even the kind that lives in the mind.
But it also doesn’t stop time. Doesn’t unmake the rest of their lives. Doesn’t dissolve the truths they’re tangled in: the flames flickering elsewhere for other people, the friends and family caught in the ripples of this closeness. The history, the hurt, the hunger for more than the space between two people in a bed.
But his voice—soft, hesitant, real—breaks through her sleep-fogged defenses like sunlight through a stormcloud, and consciousness crashes down on her in a dizzying wave. The moment shifts. The weight of reality settles across her like a new blanket, itchy and unavoidable. Despite the featherlight touch of his fingers trailing along her ribs—a path that draws a quiet shiver from her spine—she stiffens, the boneless contentment of her sleep replaced by something warier, more alert. This isn’t the night that it happened anymore.
This is the morning after.
"Nooo," she mumbles against him, voice thick with sleep and protest, as if saying it might somehow rewind time. But the sun has risen, and neither of them are the same people they were in the dark. Still, she lets the silence stretch a few heartbeats longer before pushing herself back just far enough to look at him. Her blue eyes are sleep-soft and open, unguarded in a way that she rarely lets them be. There’s no teasing glint, no mask of charm. Just Flora. "I don’t regret it," she says quietly, the words small but sure. "And I know it both does and doesn’t change things." But gods, does it ever change things.
It changes the way she feels curled up beside him, as if every nerve in her body has been rewired to respond to the shape of him. It changes the way her heart stutters under his touch, the way her affection has rooted deeper—feral and aching and impossible to uproot now. It changes how close she feels to him, like there’s no distance between them at all, not even the kind that lives in the mind.
But it also doesn’t stop time. Doesn’t unmake the rest of their lives. Doesn’t dissolve the truths they’re tangled in: the flames flickering elsewhere for other people, the friends and family caught in the ripples of this closeness. The history, the hurt, the hunger for more than the space between two people in a bed.
My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you
And now I'm covered in you
