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anatomy
[take flight on the wind of wishing you were here; I'll be fine, I'll be fine, I'll be fine]
She is warm.
It is something his hands know intimately well.
Sasuke is not a poet, but he knows if he had the patience, knows if he found the peace of mind, he could describe the hard muscle of her upper arms, the bubbling flesh, the press of her face against the grooves of his shoulder blades, the call of his name. Her arms around his chest, the desperate, tangible caress of her voice.
No one, he thinks, has ever said his name quite like that.
He knows he could describe the exact curvature of the shape of her neck, pulse fast under his grip.
The weight of her, heavier every time he sees her. The way her skin stretches over her knuckles, the brilliant warmth of her eyes, the burning agony that catches and falls from her eyelashes.
He knows this, but when his hand plunges into her chest, through the heart that he has been told time and time again beats for him, he somehow does not expect for it to feel like this.
Her eyes are locked with his, and there's something in them that feels like a betrayal, like a weakness, but he ignores it for the whisper in his mind that sounds something like paradoxical, unquenched need is telling him that this is the only way.
His life has never been enough of a bedtime story to deserve the things she has set out on a platter for him—a plate of sliced apples or her heart.
He can feel his hand pass through phantom veins and tissue, feel her breath catch in her throat, the choking of a mouth around something that he refuses to try and comprehend…and he did not expect this.
But she is already swaying backwards, and he cannot do anything but watch it happen. He cannot cave to the instinctive tug of the muscles in his forearms, cannot fall prey to the want that wants him to cradle her from the fall.
He has always been the one to catch her, and this time it is he who pushed. This time, he's watching her collapse on the ground, her pink hair fanning around her, her eyelids slipping shut to cover the searing pain in her green eyes.
He did not expect this.
He did not expect her to feel like the personification of her lips wrapping around the words I love you.
He did not expect it to feel like something he'd lost before he'd even lost all of his teeth; he did not expect it to feel like coming home. But more than all that, he did not expect to want it so badly, to want to feel like still, there was somewhere where he belonged.
His fingers tremble, and turning away is one of the hardest things he knows he has ever done.
He can still hear the echoes in his ears, and his eyes no longer miss anything. There was nothing I could have done for you, but still, I care about you more than I can bear.
It doesn't matter anymore, he thinks. She's in the past, now,—she has to be—and he's already walking away.
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tbc