// If the world was ending, I'd wanna be next to you //
She's normally a potent, unstoppable force that doesn't know what it means to rest. Even breaking through her whirlwind and into the eye, the calm is one surrounded with the echo and chaos of her might and it's endless reach. It's always been a breathtaking, enviable thing. So her stillness is unusual, and it serves as an indicator that something is shifting. To what, he's uncertain, but it makes him strain towards her further, like he means to catch hold of it before it totally turns. He wants to stretch out this moment, because even if this play fight is absurd, it's an excuse to hold her, a reason to draw her close and hopefully set a grin back on her face, the one that'd been steadily turning down since the market. Even if it means she's smiling over the triumph of beating him, he'd fall on his sword to manage it.
He meets her gaze, rough grin threading in on his face like it can't be helped when he beholds her. Except, her look isn't one that flashes with the heat of competition, nor does it roil with the same airy joy that's lifting his smile up now. Instead, something heavy gathers, a different sort of storm than her usual.
Every part of him turns rigid when she mentions the kisses. A roar rises up to his ears, threatening to drown out the sounds of the world. His heart rises up in his throat, choking out breath and word alike, while every hair on his body prickles, a shiver running from his toes to his scalp. He had not expected that. He isn't sure what to do, what comes next, what he should say. All of it feels wrong, it has every time he's let it circle inside his mind, the curling bite of doubt picking apart every foolish angle he hadn't seen before, making the quiet seem like the smartest choice in the end.
What she ends with though, that's like a cold snap on bare skin. His eyes widen, and his voice rises up around the lump of his anxiety. "No." His stare on her is sharp, utterly terrified. He has to take away all the accursed doubt he'd let bleed off him and pool against her. He can hear it, that all too familiar pitch of uncertainty lilting through her words, the whine of metal dragging against stone. It's unbearable, that he's done this. "No, Mel. That’s not—gods, that’s not it at all." It comes out fierce, almost desperate, as if he could drag the truth out of his chest and press it into her hands.
He's not thinking now, and perhaps that's when he's at his best, acting instead of pacing in the dark corridors of thought and analysis. He reaches up to hold her, bracketing her hips, fingers curling around her side like he means to sear the understanding through the heat of his palms. "I want to do it every time I see you Mel. I always have. I just..."
He meets her gaze, rough grin threading in on his face like it can't be helped when he beholds her. Except, her look isn't one that flashes with the heat of competition, nor does it roil with the same airy joy that's lifting his smile up now. Instead, something heavy gathers, a different sort of storm than her usual.
Every part of him turns rigid when she mentions the kisses. A roar rises up to his ears, threatening to drown out the sounds of the world. His heart rises up in his throat, choking out breath and word alike, while every hair on his body prickles, a shiver running from his toes to his scalp. He had not expected that. He isn't sure what to do, what comes next, what he should say. All of it feels wrong, it has every time he's let it circle inside his mind, the curling bite of doubt picking apart every foolish angle he hadn't seen before, making the quiet seem like the smartest choice in the end.
What she ends with though, that's like a cold snap on bare skin. His eyes widen, and his voice rises up around the lump of his anxiety. "No." His stare on her is sharp, utterly terrified. He has to take away all the accursed doubt he'd let bleed off him and pool against her. He can hear it, that all too familiar pitch of uncertainty lilting through her words, the whine of metal dragging against stone. It's unbearable, that he's done this. "No, Mel. That’s not—gods, that’s not it at all." It comes out fierce, almost desperate, as if he could drag the truth out of his chest and press it into her hands.
He's not thinking now, and perhaps that's when he's at his best, acting instead of pacing in the dark corridors of thought and analysis. He reaches up to hold her, bracketing her hips, fingers curling around her side like he means to sear the understanding through the heat of his palms. "I want to do it every time I see you Mel. I always have. I just..."
ISKRA
// I'd wanna hold you just for a while and die with a smile //
