between the shadow & the soul /av + e [95th]
Feb 8, 2024 2:57:55 GMT -5
Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on Feb 8, 2024 2:57:55 GMT -5
a v r i e l .
"though I burn, how could I fall
when I am lifted, by every
word you say to me?"
His feelings have always been these big, unwieldy things. Too difficult to carry on his own so he'd just lay them back down where he found them, like they could stay like that. It wouldn't work, they'd just fester slowly, getting darker in the sun, curling in on themselves until they became something sharper. From time to time, he'd pick them up again and try to ignore the way they cut him. The secret would be there though on his palms, plain as day.
By the time Eden came along, he was so used to living like that he didn't know there was another way to be.
He didn't know that he could give himself time, he could feel the things he needed to.
Avriel closes his hand over the rings.
"Hmm," he hums softly.
Eden's gone away from him. So close that he can feel his shallow breaths on his cheek, but gone further than Avriel can follow at the same time.
He slips the rings back into his pocket. He's never been good at timing. Knowing what to say and when has always been a riddle he's never understood. This time though he knows he's gotten it right. It's not that.
His feelings are too much. Sometimes their overflow can hurt people, except he knows it isn't that either. This just happens sometimes with Eden, it always has, even before he started talking.
There's a cramp in his arm from the way he was holding the rings for so long. He shakes it out a little. The pain is a rubber thing, soft on the edges and it's gone in seconds.
Then he folds his left hand over Eden's right, his other rests on the small of Eden's back.
The offer isn't off the table, he just needs both hands right now.
Avriel pulls Eden in close, until his boyfriend's chin rests on his shoulder and their bodies are pressed against each other. He knows that Eden needs to feel it, Avriel's heart beating against his. He starts to hum softly, this old song his mother used to play on their scratchy old record player on sunny afternoons. His hand on Eden's back slides up and down, and they stay like that, swaying slowly back and forth.
That's what love looked like to Avriel when he was a kid.
He was lucky to have a mother and father that loved each other, lucky to know what it felt like to be loved so that when Eden holds him he knows without knowing. The kid who grew up dirt poor in Nine's projects could never have imagined any of this. When he was little, Av had thought he'd go to school and then graduate into a factory job like his parents. He had a vague idea that he'd meet someone and have his own family one day but even then he didn't believe it for himself.
He felt different even then, like there was something wrong with him but he couldn't quite put his finger on it ever.
It just always felt like he was kind of just there, but not necessary for anyone. That feeling only got worse as he grew older, no matter how loud he was or how quiet, it never mattered. It was like everyone else had just been born with the right script and the things they needed to fit in. For Avriel, Sometimes it felt like he was standing behind a glass wall, watching life go on from his place on the sidelines.
He convinced himself that he was better on his own, that it was easier.
But he'd watch his father dance his mother around the living room from his spot at the kitchen table and feel this tight little sadness in his chest over the understanding that he'd never have that.
Overtime that sadness just became a dull ache, a feeling he got so used to that he hardly recognised it as pain anymore. He grew older, life twisted him all up in ways he hadn't been designed to be. He became a liar then a killer, finally a victor. For a long stretch of time, Av made himself believe that he felt nothing at all.
Then he'd met Eden and the ache had come back, but it was okay, Eden could see it somehow. He put his hand over the place it'd always lived and he promised to plant flowers, even if the deer came to eat them, he'd still try.
All Avriel had ever wanted was for someone to look at him and just see him for once, nothing else.
Every single time Eden looks at him, with every touch, Avriel knows he is seen for exactly what he is and he is still loved.
"I've got you too, E" he whispers, hand moving up to cup the back of Eden's head, to push his fingers into his feather-soft hair, "Always."