loch | txt me maybe

SENT: 2:36 AM
Found a tooth in the drain. Yours?

SENT: 2:36 AM
Chuck's.
You two don't exactly have a monopoly there.

SENT: 2:40 AM
I almost don't want to ask.
You're coming back later?

SENT: 2:42 AM
I could always show you later.

SENT: 03:21 AM
Are you worried?

SENT: 3:25 AM
For you, always.
I'll wait up.

SENT: 3:26 AM
I can take care of myself, Raleigh.

SENT: 3:41 AM
12 hours. Less than 24.
Promise.

SENT: 3:27 AM
I know you will.

SENT: 3:44 AM
Things are going well?

SENT: 3:46 AM
They're fluid.

[ So not exactly "well" but not bad either. Hence the twelve to twenty-four. ]

SENT: 3:47 AM
Could be worse.

[ This is what counts for optimism with them, nowadays. ]

SENT: 3:48 AM
Could always be worse.

[ And this is what counts for companionship when they're apart from one another. Could always be worse. Could never come back, but she will. ]

SENT: 5:15 AM
I miss you.

[ Sometimes, after Raleigh gets up in the morning and he's washed the sleep-sweat from his face, he looks into the mirror and wonders if this is the kind of life his younger self would be proud of.

And he always comes to the conclusion that he really doesn't care what his younger self thinks anymore. He has her, and she has him.

It's always been the one thing he's wanted in life. ]

[ It takes her a long time to answer. Partially because she's genuinely busy and partially because these are the parts that Mako has the hardest time with. Accepting the steady stream of Raleigh's graces, convincing herself that she deserves him, that there is honest to go absolution found in his arms and in his bed. It's a constant internal debate, one that Mako wishes she'd settle once and for all. But in until then, in the meantime, there was no other option.

She made him wait and wait and wait. And Raleigh — he waited. ]

SENT: 5:42 AM
I know, baby.
I'll try not to take too long.

[ Sometimes, after Raleigh gets up in the morning and he's washed the sleep-sweat from his face, he looks into the mirror and wonders if this is the kind of life his younger self would be proud of. And he always comes to the conclusion that he really doesn't care what his younger self thinks anymore.

He doesn't type the three words he'll tell her when she gets back, because those words are private. Secret. Words you don't demean or devalue by bandying them around like ornaments or gifts. Raleigh is affectionate, or passionate, or overwhelming - but only to the small group of persons for whom his life is only a suggestion and a favor, that small handful of names that Raleigh would not hesitate to retire himself to if they only ask.

Of them all, Mako's name sits at the top. Waiting is easy, when he's been waiting for her his whole life. ]

SENT: 5:45 AM
Okay.

SENT: 6:01 AM
xo.

[ It's the sort of affectation that young girls send to boys they're stupid over. xo: hugs and kisses, initials drawn on the inside of balloon-shaped hearts, shiny and iridescent and run through with arrows that never manage to draw blood. Mako skipped that part of growing up, her adolescence having been given to the Academy instead. It's a fact she never dwells on but every once and a while evidence of it emerges nevertheless — there in the effervescent music she still listens to even as the world grows dark and dim around them; found in the tiny, almost sweet gestures that escape her like mistaken miracles.

Two years, that's how long circumstance had kept them apart and during those two years Mako had grown lean and mean, stripped of so many of her former sentimentalities, the lion's share of her emotions boiled off like so much wasted steam. Only the ones for Raleigh (and for fellow rangers, for the Hansens) remain, but even they have grown hard over time, leaving bruises on the both of them whenever they surface.

True to her word Mako doesn't keep Raleigh waiting for very long. More than an hour, less than two and she's slipping into the house with the winter dew frosted in her hair, the very first of the January light seeping over the tops of the trees. ]

[ He's sitting at the foot of their bed - their bed, like it's a concrete concept - with his legs folded under him, an old book open in front of him. It's a book on hydraulics engineering, the same as one of the books his father had maintained on his shelves when Raleigh was a young boy. It's the one with the many pictures and diagrams, how-tos and the fundamentals of building dams and aqueducts. Raleigh understands more of it now than he did when he was twelve. Reading it feels like closure.

(He bought the book for two dollars at a thrift shop and he feels as though it's a metaphor for the childhood he'd lost when the man walked away.)

But then— noise, downstairs, and Raleigh is reaching for the brass knuckles in his pocket when he hears the cadence of the footfalls and recognizes them — and like a light switching off, Raleigh's whole body comes loose, the line of his shoulders slipping to ease. Raleigh snaps the book shut, the old paper crinkling, and slides it under the bed.

He waits, breathes, holds. Counts one, two, three, four—

And then he's up on his feet, opening the door for her before her hand touches the knob. ]

Hey.

[ There's movement across the sliver of light that shines through the crack at the bottom of the bedroom door and Mako knows that it's Raleigh waiting for her, counting down. My door'll never be closed to you, he'd once said, his hands curled so tightly into her hair that her whole scalp had ached and her spine had bowed. Raleigh had meant it in every way possible — figurative, literal, emotional, physical. Still, Mako reaches for the doorhandle all the same, never wanting to take that offer for granted, never thinking she has to work any less to deserve what's waiting for her beyond Raleigh's doorstep.

She doesn't say hello, doesn't take the moment to look at him lingeringly from the hallway. Mako simply steps inside over the threshold and into the warm air of their bedroom, the early morning chill fresh on her lips as she crowds him with her chill hands on his torso, mouth yawning open to greet him with a kiss.

Raleigh's hair is short, still cropped close to his head, the tips of it just dusting the tops of his ears. The longer Mako stays away, the longer it gets, but she's been keeping close recently. This time she might not even cut it for him. It'd be a different change of pace. ]

[ She's been coming back earlier, these past few months. The itch of growing hair is a physical marker for the days and day (and weeks, and months, years) that they've been apart, and Raleigh knows that when his neck is warm in the cold of Alaskan weather and he's wearing little to protect himself from the wind—

He knows in those moments that she's been gone too long.

His neck's been so cold every morning, lately. ]

Hey, [ he says again, because the sound is solid in the silence of the room, and soft like battered milk against the plastic of a feeding bottle. ] I missed you.

[ He kisses her softly, just brushes of skin on skin, wettened by their mouths - and he kisses her brow, the rise of her cheeks, the curve of her ears when he crowds her up against the door. She smells of outdoors, and cigarette smoke - of powerful men's perfumes and their women's diamonds, and maybe he scents poisoned wine but it's not his memory. He's fairly sure. He hasn't poisoned anyone in some time, not after—

Not since two years and eight months ago.

Not since two years and eight months ago when the cold couldn't touch his skin, because it already sat inside the spaces of his bones. He could not sleep, could not eat, could not dream a single moment without thinking of when she'll come back, when when when. He never thinks she wouldn't, doesn't mind that he thinks the silence will suffocate him in his sleep and he'll never wake again to hear her sneak in through the windows, her foot steps as light as sunrise after a long night.

He unbuttons her blouse, unclasps the locks of the skirt she's wearing, and Raleigh kisses his way down; neck to clavicle, to shoulders, to the swell of her breasts, to the narrow scar that cuts between her eighth and ninth rib, to hipbones that are no less sharp, nor more pronounced than they were before today.

(What he would have given to kiss her, two years ago—)

Raleigh kneels at her feet, head bowed, hands steady on the back of her thighs. ]

txt me maybe

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#ROMANCE

#FUNCTIONING HUMAN BEINGS

JFC DANZY YOUR OTHER TAG aksjd

IT'S THE FIRST INSTINCTIVE REPLY HE HAS OK

HE IS MY FAVORITE THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS SO FUCKED UP

AND YET HE'LL NEVER TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING ELSE jfc

HE IS PERFECTLY FORMED IN HIS FUCKEDUPEDNESS

;A;!!!

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