He didn't take the hat off until late last night when it tipped itself off his head as he bent down to kiss me, framed between his elbows, pinned by his weight. We don't like it when people pull apart our relationship, picking through the flaws in our love and judging our choices when it comes to each other. It feels too private, too invasive, as if they're right there watching as he pushes me down into the quilts and smiles softly when I bite against his lower lip, mewling against his skin. His hands are so tight, embedded in my skin, searching for my heart. When he finds it he flips the helmet down and welds it to his hands.
There. No going back now, Peanut. I said you were mine and I meant it and if this is what it takes then it's done.
I closed my eyes and drifted along in his dream until the alarm sounded and I opened my eyes to daylight and comfortable chairs of the war office, AKA the library. Claus was asking me if I were to have a normal life, what it might entail.
Oh, dear. first of all, what in the hell is normal? Second of all, I think it would look like this. But I'm a soccer ball in a deathmatch. I'm a prize. I'm a shooting star that you wished for all night long and I'll be the biggest regret of your life. I'm Pluto, once the destination of every astronaut who ever dreamed of space, now stripped of my status and destined for obscurity. Except that they came back to me and saw that there was life. And where there is life, there is hope.
When I tried to move away from Lochlan, stretching his rules, finding my limits, it hurt. It hurt a lot and so I came back in close and remained there.
I told you that would happen. That's been the feeling I get when you leave me for the past thirty years or so.
I look up at him in surprise but he's put the hat back on and this is no longer open for discussion.
Ben sits back in his chair, resigned. For him this is a risk but when I asked him about that he only quoted me a song. Or maybe it wasn't a song but it sounded like a song to me.
