I didn’t knock. I didn’t have to. Some doors remember the weight of you. Some rooms never exhale after you leave.
He opened it like he’d already been waiting,
not just today.... but for every second I’d been gone.
He didn’t speak. And I didn’t smile. Not because I wasn’t glad to see him... but because glad is too soft a word for what it feels like to walk back into a fire that once kissed your ribs from the inside.
Verlaín looked… older. Not in years. In ache. Like time had passed through him without asking permission.
I expected him to hesitate. He didn’t.
His hands found me like a sentence that had been paused too long. Thumb against my cheek, jaw, then my lower lip...... like he was re-learning the language of me. His mouth didn’t ask for mine.
It just found it.
And I let it. I melted, not out of weakness, but out of recognition.
Because this.... this was what he did. He ruined the air around him. Made it impossible to breathe without tasting his name.
His kiss was deeper than I remembered. Not patient ...
never that. Just precise. The kind of control that hides a hunger underneath. I gasped softly against him, and something in him broke. He lifted me like I was nothing and everything. I wrapped my legs around him before I could think.
He carried me inside, never looking away, as if blinking might make me vanish again. The wall met my back. His hands slid beneath the hem of my shirt, and I felt his breath stutter against my neck.
Not rushed not voilent either. But trembling with the weight of wanting something that had already once been lost.
His fingers paused against my skin...... a question he didn’t ask. So I answered with my hands on his chest,
pulling him closer, making it clear.
I wasn’t here to be forgiven. I was here to be remembered. He whispered my name once.... twice....against my shoulder. Then again, against my ribs, as his mouth followed.
I could feel the shift in the air: Not reunion. Reckoning. Because this wasn’t love. Not anymore.
This was something far more dangerous. And I let it happen.
Because sometimes, when you return to the cage,
it’s not because you want to be trapped. It’s because you want to see if he’ll lock the door from the inside this time
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