Glimmer

Hope is a waking dream. – Aristotle

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Rain falls. A simple breath becomes a helpless gasp. Hands tremble. Blood flows. And cruel death embraces him and carries him to a place I cannot follow.

But all I can feel is cold.

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The storm clears. The sun rises. The waves foam and rush against the ship. My hands can only grip the railing, but my mind repeats the image of a lifeless hand stabbing a cursed heart. A little glimmer in the darkness flutters faintly.

I begin to feel the warmth of the sun again.

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An embrace that, some hours ago, was thought to never be. But the angry scar upon his chest reminds me of his sacrifice, and I feel some of the returning warmth tremble to a halt.

“How long?” I whisper. I already know the answer.

He closes his eyes. “Ten years.”

The glimmer gets fainter and fainter, then. But before it disappears altogether, he opens his eyes once more and kisses me.

I forget the inevitable.

I cling helplessly. His hands find my upper arms and he pulls me closer, kisses me harder. My fingers twist in his hair. His mouth conveys both passion and desperation and forces my own to open. I have no reason for protest.

The sun is hot now. I taste salt on his lips, feel light perspiration dotting the back of his neck. And then we fall to the hot sand. The grains rub against my skin.

Kisses are dotted along my jaw now, down my throat, the inside of my shoulder. The belt around my waist is undone, the leather of my coat is peeled away, pale skin is revealed. I inhale.

The heat, the inevitable make us mad. Now we’re skin to skin; the kisses move from shoulder to breast and I gasp. A calloused hand skims my thigh. My throat closes at the touch; a tear falls down my cheek onto the sand; it quickly evaporates. I must have made a sound, though—or perhaps, my body simply conveyed what sound or words could not—and he looks up, his eyes unfathomably dark. And with a sad smile, he reaches up to caress my cheek and kisses my eyelids.

“I love you.”

My heart is full. The touches continue, the kisses seem to imprint upon my entire body. Behind my ears, the indentation inside my elbow, dimples on my knees, the slender formation of my ankles.

Then, as we join, he kisses my mouth again, and my heart recognizes the glimmer returning. And it grows brighter and brighter as we move together, no longer two separate beings, but now only one. The kiss is broken with gasps—by whom, I didn’t know—and the glimmer is no longer a glimmer, it’s a full-fledged light that burns my eyes as we shatter into blinding, glittering pieces. And the light brings the tears, and even the sun is not strong enough to evaporate them entirely from the sand.

His trembling breaths fan my cheek. I smooth my hand down the scar scoring his chest before whispering in his ear.

“I love you, Will. Come back to me.”

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Shine with all the untold

Hold the light given unto you

Find the love to unfold

In this broken world we choose

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A/N: This actually wasn’t what I had planned on writing, precisely, but I think it turned out decently. And this is the smuttiest thing I’ve ever written! Be proud, people. (I like to refer to it as artistic smut, ha). And while writing this I was listening to Vienna Teng’s album Warm Strangers, which is gorgeous and the slow songs fit the tone of this fic perfectly (and the above lines are from the song “Shine”). Oh, and the last line of this fic was a shameless ode to the Atonement trailer. ;) Anyway, let me know what you think of this thing, and I promise to update Not Yet soon. :)

-Miss Maudlin