[ Impulsive, as always, a rolling blue tide he's never truly tried to stem despite the occasional spark of frustration or disapproval. They wouldn't be here if not for her. She held him first, throwing open a door — a world of possibility — he'd kept carefully closed, turning the knife in his hand into an afterthought, a tool to wield for her sake rather than against her. He doesn't even think to stop her or pull away as her teeth puncture his skin. Good — let the world know the claim they've staked upon each other. Let pain serve some other purpose than to remind him of a ticking clock.
It'd be a ways off the mark to say that the forest's magic begins to dissipate once the intended ritual is complete. There's no longer that clench in his stomach, nor the sense that his legs would buckle if he tried to get to his feet, but there's still a slight daze in his eyes each time their gazes meet, in between breaths that fall and collect like the leaves at his back. It's all new — tenderness of a different timbre than what he's given her before.
Her hands pull him close — his roam, slow, hushing each whimper, the occasional press of his fingers marking a last, ebbing rush of sensation. She chose him when no one else would.
(He thinks of it as a debt, a contract, where anyone else would term it love. Yours, mine, always, amounting to the same burning thing.) ]
🎀
It'd be a ways off the mark to say that the forest's magic begins to dissipate once the intended ritual is complete. There's no longer that clench in his stomach, nor the sense that his legs would buckle if he tried to get to his feet, but there's still a slight daze in his eyes each time their gazes meet, in between breaths that fall and collect like the leaves at his back. It's all new — tenderness of a different timbre than what he's given her before.
Her hands pull him close — his roam, slow, hushing each whimper, the occasional press of his fingers marking a last, ebbing rush of sensation. She chose him when no one else would.
(He thinks of it as a debt, a contract, where anyone else would term it love. Yours, mine, always, amounting to the same burning thing.) ]