And I will capture this moment as a good memory, for another time I have trouble falling asleep or when I am feeling anxiety.I have heard him laugh in my mind before, but I never saw him laugh out loud.
Because of me not reacting, he seems to catch his mask slipping. He pulls himself together as fast as he can. He smashes my daggers into the cliff and pulls himself up. He must be at least 6 feet up before he looks over his shoulder.
“Are you coming?” he mumbles. He stares at my mouth, and it is only then that I notice my mouth and my eyes are spared wide open as I stand there looking at him all baffled. He is clearly waiting for a reaction.
“Yes,” I answer. “I will be right up.” I cough, trying to get myself together and swing my arm in the ‘you got this’ movement, only after I realized how silly that must have looked. I follow him, climbing, and sadly enough he doesn’t give me the satisfaction of laughing again.
Even though I don’t care about a bit of a struggle, sweat or fight, I am done with climbing this cliff. It isn’t that far anymore. I look over my shoulder to look at how much I have climbed already, but because of the dark, I can’t look further down than a few feet. I put another dagger in the stone wall and pull myself up, my feet looking for a hump to stand on. My feet slip on the dusty stone, and my eyes go up towards Braxton. He pulls himself up, clambering over the edge.
“Give me your hand,”he commands. I am not sure why he doesn’t say it out loud, but I do as he says. I let go of one dagger reaching for his hands. His rough, calloused and big hand grab mine. As I tried to reach for the other hand, my foot slips.
My heart drops to the ground.
I don’t scream.
Fuck.
My other hand tries to reach for a dagger in the wall, but I can’t find it. I don’t want to ask him for help, but right now I am only holding on because of his strong arms holding on to me.
I look down in the abyss, still nothing there to be seen other than the sharp rock coming out of the mountain.
“Don’t let go of my hand.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
I swing a bit, my hip clapping into the wall, a sharp rock piercing through the fabric on my hip. My ribs feel like they are going to break as my body crashes against the stone. I want to hiss from the pain in my ribs, but I stay quiet. I bite on my lip as the only reaction to the pain. My free hand finds the dagger and as if nothing happened, Braxton pulls me up in one movement, like I am as light as a feather.
“Thank you.” I sigh, exhaling shutter, lying over the edge to pull my daggers out of the stone. I try to avoid lying flat on my ribs as much as I can. Braxton doesn’t as much blink in my direction. I sit and turn around, looking at the rest of our climb. The climb to the tops isn’t as steep as the wall we just climbed, but it is still a big slope. There are not a lot of trees anymore, almost none and it looks like a big rocky range with some plants and grass here and there. “Now can I get my daggers back?” I tease, gesturing my hands as an invite. He hands them back to me without saying a word. Back to the silent treatment I guess. He starts walking in front of me again. The top isn’t that far away anymore, but I feel like it is getting really late. A yawn escaped my mouth. If I want to stay alert, he should do something about it. Besides, I’m not- not talking again. We have been walking quietly before this climb and I respect that he is a more subdued and hardened person than I am, but come on. Nobody likes being completely silent. It makes me question myself. Is my hair looking good, am I the problem? Is the difference between our personalities that big a contrast? Do I smell gross? Is he going to kill me later on?Why doesn’t he talk about himself? Did I do something wrong? What does his tattoos mean? Why does he have these huge scars over his body? Does he think I’m being distant because I don’t ask about it? I don’t want to be a whining box or a weight on his leg.
If we don’t talk, I won’t know the answer to these questions and it is driving me nuts. So I must do something about it. I crack my fingers and twist my neck a few rounds to release the buildup tension between my neck and shoulders.
I should start a conversation—and that’s what I do.
“You could have just let me fall, you know, since we can’t win both.” He gives me a stern look but doesn’t answer. I just keep on talking.
“So what is your favorite color?” I ask, smiling softly.
He is a few steps in front of me and stops as I end my question. He turns around slowly and has this silly face. He furrows his eyebrows, and I notice that he starts tapping his fingers on his leg.
“I don’t have a favorite color,” he mocks.
Naturally he has no favorite color—everyone else does, but he doesn’t.
“Of course you do, you probably just never thought of it, or it is pink and you’re just too scared to tell me?” I grin, teasing him. I hope I can get him loosened up a bit. I can see him look down at the ground and a trickle of sweat leaps down his face.
“It is okay if you don’t. It is just a favorite color,” I hurry, not wanting to make him insecure or uncomfortable. I feel his presence in his mind, and I really want to find out what he is thinking. It might be wrong, but before I can talk some sense into myself—I am in. I can hear him think, or read his mind. I am not sure what it is. I can feel his anger. He is thinking about how fucked up his life has been, that he never even thought about that, such a simple but impacting thing. I slip out before Ioverstep. I probably already did. If he wants to tell me about it, he will.
“Golden like honey,” he chimes in.
I repeat his words, letting them sink in.
“Golden like honey, huh?”
He turns away, letting his feet drag him forwards. I grin widely, because he shared such a personal thing with me.
“Mine is pastel yellow, but you probably already guessed that,” I share, hurrying forward to match his pace.
“Of course it is.” He grins.
