He takes a ragged inhale, sighing heavily as he turns onto his back and stretches out his arm, a silent request. I shuffle next to him, placing my head on his chest and molding my body against his like I was made for it.
He twirls a strand of my hair around his finger. We don’t speak, but I won’t allow myself to fall back asleep until he does, so I trace the patchwork tattoos over his chest, barely able to make out the art in the darkness. “Do you ever remember them?” I ask. “Your night terrors?”
“No.” He sighs. “But I know what they contain.”
“What’s that?” I whisper against his skin, unsure if I want to know the answer.
“Him. It’s always him. But sometimes I think it’s you too.”
Part of me wants to beg him for details, but another part doesn’t want to cause him any additional distress, and truthfully, I don’t want to know the depths of the damage I’ve caused. How thoroughly I obliterated his trust and broke his soul, when I’m the person who’s always supposed to mend it.
I kiss his collarbone, over the violets he has tattooed against it.
“You know…I started writing poems again. It’s been years, and it’s brought back this strange sense of déjà vu. I don’t have my old notebooks anymore, but it’s like I can feel my old self resurfacing through new words…or something.”
“Give me an example.”
I contemplate for a minute, tracing his skin quietly. “I used to think love was only black and white. It was either something you had, or you didn’t. You either fought to stay, or you got up and left. You were all in, or completely out. No other options. I’ve been reminded of that lately, but now…”
“Now you feel like you’re living in the gray area?” he muses.
“No.” I shake my head, lips brushing over his skin. “Now I feel like love is an entire spectrum of color. It’s light and it’s dark, full of multitude. It’s something you have to choose, something you must fight for, but it’s also unpredictable and unexpected. Felt through every sense, yet intangible. Frustratingly complicated and delightedly simple.”
Green eyes study me in the darkness. He lifts a hand, cupping my face, running a thumb over my lip like he wants my words imprinted on his skin.
“I feel like love is ultraviolet,” I whisper. “A color I never saw before you.”
He studies my face for a long moment, caressing my skin but saying nothing. Finally, he nods, full lips forming the boyish smile that feels like home to me. “I ultraviolet you too, Little Vice.”
I frown, lightly slapping his chest for making light of my revelation, but truthfully, I know exactly what he’s doing. I didn’t realize it myself. I often don’t see my own nuances the way he can, but I now understand exactly what I was trying to say. I can’t handle the words themselves, despite the fact that we’ve each said them a million times to the other.
They mean something different now—it feels different now.
I can’t say them, and I don’t know if I can hear them either, but as always, he reads the pages of my soul that are written in a language unknown by all others.
“Go to bed.” I laugh into his chest, and he joins in, the sound like kindling to my soul’s flame. It was his laugh I missed most in those years apart, that I’ve longed for desperately since finding each other again.
“I’m trying, but my high maintenance bedmate won’t stop pondering life and shit.”
“You’re annoying.” I nip at his pec. “Am I really high maintenance?”
“Yes.” He grips my hair at the nape of my neck, pulling my head up. “And if you keep biting me like that I’m going to shove my cock down your throat and give you something to choke on.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat? Because I’m an enthusiastically willing participant.”
His eyes roll back, and he loosens his grip, head falling onto the pillow as he murmurs, “My chaos.”
“Is it bad that I’m high maintenance?”
A rough laugh pierces the darkness. “Not for me, Little Vice.”
“I don’t like being taken care of. It makes me feel weak,” I admit quietly. “You’re the only person I’ve let take care of me before, but sometimes I think I’m a burden. I don’t want to think I’m something that needs to be maintained.”
“Okay.” He turns his head toward me. “I won’t use that phrase anymore, then. But you’re certainly not a burden. I want to be the rock you lean on. The shoulder you cry on. The chest you sleep on.”
“I want to be your rock too,” I say on a breath. “But sometimes I don’t think I do a very good job.”
He nods in understanding before staring back at the ceiling. “When you left me, it broke me, but since you’ve returned home, it often feels as if you’re all that can put me back together. You’re doing a good job, Elena.” He brushes his hand over the top of my head, urging me back to his chest. “You’ve been shouldering your own pain for years. Nobody was leaning on you, and you were refusing to lean on anyone else too. It takes time to learn that again. I’ve always had our support system around me.”
