thinking out loud >> niam

The light of the morning sun hadn’t even reached the window yet, and so I sat beside the hearth with my feet tucked close to my chest, book propped against my knees as my eyes skimmed the pages. I had been careful not to wake Tweed as I pulled myself from the bed we now shared, and to my knowledge she was still deep in slumber, unfazed by the sunlight that had just begun to streak in. We had spent the night side by side, talking about pointless things until the only replies to my questions had been the soft sound of her breathing and the trace of my fingers upon her back.

The book I held now contained words much less precious than those spoken the night before, considering the former had been pulled off of Cody’s shelf, and anything that came from there was bound to be full of definitions and diagrams—this one was no different. However, I skimmed through it for the sake of reading something different, since all of my books had been read three times over, and I could almost recite some of them word for word.

About the time I reach to turn the page, hands from behind wrap around my torso and knock me from the chair, causing my limbs to automatically flail about in an attempt to separate myself from whatever danger’s befallen me. However, flailing does nothing but cause the two of us to go into a movement similar to an alligator’s death roll, and after spanning almost the entire length of the living room floor, we come to a halt as I pin pale arms to the floor and sit carefully over the hips of a squirming girl.

“Okay, you win.”

The annoyance in her voice causes the tension in my muscles to relax in the slightest, and I chuckle as I reposition myself to sit more firmly atop her, making sure to hover just above her face before touching my nose to hers.

“Checkmate, babe.”

♢♢♢

“Only in strength and height, babe.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong. I towered over her with little to no difficulty, keeping her arms pinned beside her head with the strength I would use to open a door or close the blinds. She wasn’t weak, not in the slightest, but her size put her at a massive disadvantage when it came to my six foot four frame.

I’m about to mouth off again, letting my mind work through various smartass remarks and things of the sort, but before I can say a word she’s cut me off, kissing me gently. “Checkmate for what?”

“For—for uh.”

But my mind’s gone blank, too caught up in her. Too caught up in everything she is and everything she’s doing. She’s caught about the lip ring, tugging gently and causing the slightest whimper to leave my lips, goose bumps shooting down my body at her gentle touch. She’s picked this moment as my most vulnerable, correctly, and gently shoves my hand aside to pull at my neck, and I don’t attempt to stop her. She’s moving faster now, making her actions known and intentions clear.

Good thing our thoughts are usually aligned anyway.

I shift off her to sit up, lifting her to sit against me as I kiss against her neck.

“Checkmate for—for this.” It’s not so much spoken as whispered into her neck, spoken into her being rather than into the air around her. But this is something that can’t be whispered into the air, so it’s fitting that it’s pressed to her like my life depends on it, because frankly, it does.

It seems as if it takes forever to pull myself to a standing position for I’m so focused on her, so enthralled with her being that I can’t bear to look away. I offer my hand to her before picking her up, wrapping her legs so that they meet behind my back as I press my mouth against hers once again.

"Your move." 

fade to black mAKE GOOD CHOICES KIDDOS

♢♢♢

There were no words to describe the last twenty-four hours I had spent with Tweed.

It seemed as if we had covered the full spectrum of emotions, ranging from a split-soul to lust-clouded hearts, and each second passed was one that had not been wasted in the slightest. And even now, when the time for the latter has come and gone, I cannot pull coherent thoughts together for the life of me. Thankfully, she’s taken the task upon herself and with a tender touch she’s tracing, drawing, marking my skin like a journal of her own, and with each graze of her fingertips across my neck I imagine words scrawled across pages. If I was to be an outlet for her mind so be it, for she was an artist and I was a blank canvas, and most certainly she had left a mark that would not be erased.

I didn’t want to forget, anyway.

It was in these moments of incoherence that the previous events of the last hour or so scroll through my mind in rapid succession, yet none of them stick and it’s rather a blur of mumbled compliments and hot breath on shivering skin.

”My god, you’re beautiful.”

The feeling is revisited as I feel the touch of her lips upon my chest, and the same reaction that was drawn forth earlier comes again, but this time it’s followed by momentary silence, the silence that stops a crowd and stills the heart of the terrified.

“Duncan, do you have any regrets about me?”

But asking if I had regrets about her was asking if I was glad to be alive.

I press a kiss to the top of her head, rubbing small circles across the plane of her back in the same way she did that unfortunate afternoon just a year ago. There’s nothing to regret about a love unbound, and I suppose we’ll both come to realize that in due time.

“Tweed, if I had regrets about any of this I wouldn’t be here to tell you.”

♢♢♢