[ He wishes that time would drip into stillness. Wishes everything that's pincering him in different directions would narrow down to one thing. Just this.The warm weight of her hand on his arm, as if nothing exists between them or around them, but those thrumming cells leaping off his skin beneath her palm. ]
[ Because if he focuses on anything else, it is difficult to imagine how, after three years, they'll relate. What they'll say to each other. Whereas most of their relationship the actions and emotions have pounded themselves out, sometimes spectacularly, sometimes messily, the intimacy and sex piling up as fast or faster than life can offload them, like planes at a terminal lined up for take-off. This is challenging, to have been separated for such an enormous chunk of time, the distance wringing such emotional exhaustion out of them both that he is at a loss how to move them forward. ]
[ Especially because he is mindful of not wanting to succumb to the old bad habits of fast sex and stunted talks, the easy immediate choices of physicality with no subtext. ]
[ Maybe a reconciliation will happen in clumsy little steps. Or maybe in terrible lurches. He doesn't know -- but he's careful not to push or presume. He just wants to be honest, for them to have a conversation the way normal people do instead of him always carefully constructing the most suitable sentence for the moment. ]
[ He waits a beat, then two, before his hand closes on hers, lifting it to press her warm little fingers to his lips. ]
[ In a half-whisper, ]
All the while I was trying to get back, sometimes it made it easier. Thinking you were waiting. Other times I'd catch myself thinking that you couldn't be expecting me, and it didn't matter if I floated off to nowhere. [ His lips twitch, a dry self-deprecation. ] Lucky for you I'm not the float-off-to-nowhere type.
no subject
[ Because if he focuses on anything else, it is difficult to imagine how, after three years, they'll relate. What they'll say to each other. Whereas most of their relationship the actions and emotions have pounded themselves out, sometimes spectacularly, sometimes messily, the intimacy and sex piling up as fast or faster than life can offload them, like planes at a terminal lined up for take-off. This is challenging, to have been separated for such an enormous chunk of time, the distance wringing such emotional exhaustion out of them both that he is at a loss how to move them forward. ]
[ Especially because he is mindful of not wanting to succumb to the old bad habits of fast sex and stunted talks, the easy immediate choices of physicality with no subtext. ]
[ Maybe a reconciliation will happen in clumsy little steps. Or maybe in terrible lurches. He doesn't know -- but he's careful not to push or presume. He just wants to be honest, for them to have a conversation the way normal people do instead of him always carefully constructing the most suitable sentence for the moment. ]
[ He waits a beat, then two, before his hand closes on hers, lifting it to press her warm little fingers to his lips. ]
[ In a half-whisper, ]
All the while I was trying to get back, sometimes it made it easier. Thinking you were waiting. Other times I'd catch myself thinking that you couldn't be expecting me, and it didn't matter if I floated off to nowhere. [ His lips twitch, a dry self-deprecation. ] Lucky for you I'm not the float-off-to-nowhere type.