I'm fine in the fireBack into the fire, pinned between his hands, face to face so that this time I couldn't pin my ignorance on a scrap of a miserable hearing skill. Face up staring into hell. Hell looks a little like a cross between Richard Armitage and Clive Owen. Hell is a god-dammed handsome motherfucker and hell now seems to want to tell me he loves me every chance he gets.
I feed on the friction
I'm right where I should be
Don't try and fix me
If only he could control my mind the way he controls everything else, Christmas would come in March, heralded in on a matte-flat equinox just like spring, muted by the chill of the nights, decorated with snowdrops and crocuses and soot.
Instead of responding in kind, I warn him.
You shouldn't.
Don't tell me what I can do. He lobs it back gently, threateningly.
I'm pointing out the obvious. That's all. I bite my lip to stop it from trembling and he puts his head down against mine. Somehow in the past ten days he's figured out what he missed in the first three decades. How I am driven by affection, swayed and bribed, fuelled by it. He pulls me up into his arms and says he wouldn't be able to help himself even if he could. That maybe if he just leaves it there it will become accepted. Even by Loch.
And I laugh because I don't have time to check myself. No, it won't. It never has so it never will.
Never say never, Princess.
I wait until he is in close against me and I repeat myself in case we both missed it. Never, Diabhal. Not in thirty years so not in a million, either.