Told me not to cry when you were gone
Oct 3, 2021 12:32:41 GMT -5
Trey Bouchet and Johnny Bacchus like this
Post by niamh on Oct 3, 2021 12:32:41 GMT -5
There’s something unmistakable about Irish air in the autumn. It has a crisp edge to it that lands like whispers on bare skin. Hairs standing up and goosebumps freckling flesh. The jasmine scented sheet that covered them both wasn’t nearly enough to save them from the early morning chill. But she didn’t care, rolling over to face the man who slumbered beside her, Niamh smiled.
Rough around the edges, all blonde and stubble. He slept soundly, eyes fluttering as though he were dreaming on the precipice of waking. She chased the goosebumps up his exposed arm, kissing his bicep, his shoulder and then nuzzling against his ear, a breathy sigh before she spoke.
”Morning.” It was the first time he had slept in her bed, the first morning after. She felt as though her skin glowed with joy and newness. If this was love, then on this day, she understood precisely why people died for it.
”Morning, Mo Cuishle.” Came those words in a tumbling growl before that muscular frame shift, sliding powerfully corded limbs around her to draw her in tight against a scarred chest. Long and lanky, but long and lanky in the same way that a wolf was: lean and hungry and ready to fill his belly with whatever meat was on his opponent’s bones. Patrick MacNamara wasn’t much, but all that he was was muscle, bone, and sheer animal sinew. Those stonelike hands that seemed to be wrought from concrete and rebar were almost soft as they palmed her cheeks, letting his lips make contact with her forehead. ”I slept terribly, I’d lost you in my dreams and I couldn’t find you, no matter how loudly I howled for you.”
For just a moment, a fleeting second Niamh’s eyes flashes with concern, even fear. But she blinked away the sinking feeling in her stomach, the gnawing out of dread that let the world feel as though the bottom was about to fall out. When she had first discovered that she wasn’t like her father, that she was instead like her mother. All dreams and tenderness with no animal within, she had been afraid of what the future held.
Then he arrived and in all of five seconds, she knew. As though her heart knew his and since then their love had blossomed and become more than just a flight of fancy. She had found her mate and as he wrapped those lean, muscular arms around her small, slender frame she felt safe. The kind of safe she hadn’t felt since she lay in her mothers arms.
”Just a bad dream.” She kissed the tip of his nose, her fingers dancing about his shoulders as she shook her head. ”I’ll always hear you.” Her tone was barely a whisper, pillow talk and promises. Pillowtalk promises for someone who walked through hard men like they were tissue paper, relegating animals in the flesh of humans from present to past tenses before they could get out their final words, and yet? And yet, here with her, he was nothing short of a school boy, a face that the blonde haired wolf could never show to the world.
That he couldn’t show to his own family.
”A bad dream, Love? Try one of the worst nightmares I’ve ever had.” Murmuring out, gently dragging the back of his knuckles along her jaw, a smirk starting to tug across the corners of his lips. ”Without you, I can’t hear the moon whispering to me and the strength to fight leaves me. How could you just say it’s a bad dream? Trying to prepare me for when you leave my stupid arse for someone better? Och, is that it!?” Taunting, teasing her as those fingers delved south, starting to lightly dig into her ribs, tickling the woman he kept captive in his arms. ”C’mere! I’ll get you for that!”
She shrieked as he tickled her, burying her face in his chest as laughter rolled from her lips, scrambling and words she was trying to form. As she nuzzled in at his neck, her quick breaths from laughing allowed her to inhale his scent. There was something soft and quiet in the way he was with her, a something that she would never have believed when first meeting him. A wayward beast whose name drew fear in any who heard it. Sent by Connor to right a wrong she had been fooled into.
But with each kiss, each smile that she knew was reserved for her and only her, those memories faded into the distance and she could finally look toward a future. ”There is no me without you.” A gasp of breath as her arms wrapped around his shoulders, their bodies fitting together as though they were only complete as a pair. ”The sun rises and sets with you Mo fhíorghra.”
”No.The sun rises with you, and it sets with me, because without rising? I’ve not a single sense of direction.” Pause. Beat. He withdrew from his battery of kisses with a dopey grin plastered over his face. ””Unfortunately, but not as unfortunate as my corny one liners, Love?” He asked, leaning in to press yet another kiss to her skin, right at the hinge of her jaw before speaking against the shell of her ear, his baritone nothing short of a whisper.
”...You have to wake up.”
And she did.
Not to the crisp breeze of Irish autumn, not to the feel of muscular arms holding her safe from the chaos of the world outside. Instead, Niamh forced her eyes open to the same nicotine drenched yellow walls; as she blinked her eyes into focus she was assaulted with that yawing black desolate hole of agony that accompanied every morning without him.
Niamh pushed herself up to a seated position, her body a little slow and bruised thanks to her newly chosen career. As she felt the full ache of exhausted muscles in her back, she cursed her memory. Despite the misery of morning, she almost smiled as she thought of how easy it used to be to forget.
Unlike Lethe, named after the very river that ripped memories from the damned. Niamh had been unable to forget a single second since she laid a rose on that dirt mound and cried an ocean of tears shared by none. Whilst her upcoming opponent made it abundantly clear she took nothing seriously, that everything is nothing but a game she’ll forget as soon as she drops the mask, Niamh had been working to remember.
”See, here’s the thing.” She spoke as soon as she flipped the camera on. No grand setup or flash to distract from substance - or others lack of - instead she sat on the edge of a bed that had as many stains on its surface as she did scars on hers. Dressed in a shirt that clearly once belonged to someone else, her hair mussed and eyes still heavy as though she longed to return to her dream.
Part of her did, there was a part of her that wanted to live in the past. To focus on what was, to act like so many others in this business and put importance on yesterday, as opposed to tomorrow. But she couldn’t do that, she knew she couldn’t.
”Sometimes, your body is ready before your mind. You work and you train and you pass all the little tests laid out to decide if it’s time. Then you get out there, you stand toe to toe with someone whose passion is a contradiction. You look into the eyes of people who aren’t there to overcome, to be the best, people like Lethe and Josiah, who just want to change their words from week to week. People who fear being held accountable.
They can forget what they meant or where they were going. They can shrug their shoulders and distract themselves with some ‘LUL’ tweets as though there’s shame in wanting to do better. Know better. It’s nice, I’m sure… to never say what you mean or mean what you say. To discount the value of your own words and in turn, devalue the place you find yourself in.”
She looked away for a second, her fingers curling in against the once white sheets, driving her nails into the starched barely-cotton. Her teeth grinding against one another as she bit down on her jaw. All the venom, all the disappointment and failure; it wanted to pour out of her. She wanted to grab the phone and scream, to spit up all the poison and scars that made her heart feel as though it was rotting there, in her chest. But she didn’t.
”You can choose, at any time, to walk away and forget. It won’t matter how you failed or where your successes were. At the top or the bottom, you can forget and be forgotten.
I don’t have that luxury, whether I succeed or fail, I’ll be remembered. There are people, those I welcome and those I don’t, who are watching. Their expectations have nearly drowned me and in wanting to be the animal they destined me to be… I have let myself down. Whilst most in my position would focus on the fact that they weren’t pinned in those losses? That isn’t enough for me.
I was shown my feet and now it’s time, I stand on them.”
Niamh pushed up from the bed, pausing and looking back to the disheveled bedding she sighed. Her hand reached out for the ghost from her dream, fingers twitching as though they were interlocking with his. She was awake, but her mind still reached for the dreaming, spanned out for any sign that his constant presence in her mind at rest meant something more than loneliness seeping in at the sides.
”There’s no escaping the past, be it the eyes that stare back at you from the mirror, or the dreams that never let you stay. It all follows you, it all makes up a part of you.
And you can throw a mask on.
You can struggle your way up from the dirt you were birthed into.
But in the end? You’ll overcome what you were, you’ll find ways to leave it like shadows melting into the sunlight. But it will always be a little piece of what you are. Nothing you ever do whilst hiding from yourself, will still exist in the minds of those who love you, when you come out of hiding. So what then? If your history isn’t yours because you dress up like a perversion of a bigoted money-grabbing capitalist, if your future only last as long as the lies you’ve told?
You forget.
You’re forgotten.
Win, lose, don’t show up at all. There’s only one door at the end of a path built on lies. Whilst I may have stumbled on loose bricks, my path may have begun uphill, the doors at the end of this path are vast and endless, because I am giving all of myself. Because I refuse to be forgotten.
It’s my turn to begin counting, Lethe. And it’s only poetic that it started and will end with you.”
Niamh surrendered to her own hunger, crawling back into the bed she had forced herself out from. Wrapping the scratchy sheets around her form and fluttering her eyes closed.
”I slept terribly, I’d lost you in my dreams and I couldn’t find you, no matter how loudly I howled for you.” his words whispered close to her ear.
”Just a bad dream…” she whispered, hands searching the empty bed for the feel of his flesh beneath her fingertips. But instead she found nothing but pillows and sheets, as his voice began to soften, echoing in that ear where she felt the hot, heaviness of his breath. ”I’ll always find you.” She lied.
Just please, she thought.
Please don’t make me wake up.
Rough around the edges, all blonde and stubble. He slept soundly, eyes fluttering as though he were dreaming on the precipice of waking. She chased the goosebumps up his exposed arm, kissing his bicep, his shoulder and then nuzzling against his ear, a breathy sigh before she spoke.
”Morning.” It was the first time he had slept in her bed, the first morning after. She felt as though her skin glowed with joy and newness. If this was love, then on this day, she understood precisely why people died for it.
”Morning, Mo Cuishle.” Came those words in a tumbling growl before that muscular frame shift, sliding powerfully corded limbs around her to draw her in tight against a scarred chest. Long and lanky, but long and lanky in the same way that a wolf was: lean and hungry and ready to fill his belly with whatever meat was on his opponent’s bones. Patrick MacNamara wasn’t much, but all that he was was muscle, bone, and sheer animal sinew. Those stonelike hands that seemed to be wrought from concrete and rebar were almost soft as they palmed her cheeks, letting his lips make contact with her forehead. ”I slept terribly, I’d lost you in my dreams and I couldn’t find you, no matter how loudly I howled for you.”
For just a moment, a fleeting second Niamh’s eyes flashes with concern, even fear. But she blinked away the sinking feeling in her stomach, the gnawing out of dread that let the world feel as though the bottom was about to fall out. When she had first discovered that she wasn’t like her father, that she was instead like her mother. All dreams and tenderness with no animal within, she had been afraid of what the future held.
Then he arrived and in all of five seconds, she knew. As though her heart knew his and since then their love had blossomed and become more than just a flight of fancy. She had found her mate and as he wrapped those lean, muscular arms around her small, slender frame she felt safe. The kind of safe she hadn’t felt since she lay in her mothers arms.
”Just a bad dream.” She kissed the tip of his nose, her fingers dancing about his shoulders as she shook her head. ”I’ll always hear you.” Her tone was barely a whisper, pillow talk and promises. Pillowtalk promises for someone who walked through hard men like they were tissue paper, relegating animals in the flesh of humans from present to past tenses before they could get out their final words, and yet? And yet, here with her, he was nothing short of a school boy, a face that the blonde haired wolf could never show to the world.
That he couldn’t show to his own family.
”A bad dream, Love? Try one of the worst nightmares I’ve ever had.” Murmuring out, gently dragging the back of his knuckles along her jaw, a smirk starting to tug across the corners of his lips. ”Without you, I can’t hear the moon whispering to me and the strength to fight leaves me. How could you just say it’s a bad dream? Trying to prepare me for when you leave my stupid arse for someone better? Och, is that it!?” Taunting, teasing her as those fingers delved south, starting to lightly dig into her ribs, tickling the woman he kept captive in his arms. ”C’mere! I’ll get you for that!”
She shrieked as he tickled her, burying her face in his chest as laughter rolled from her lips, scrambling and words she was trying to form. As she nuzzled in at his neck, her quick breaths from laughing allowed her to inhale his scent. There was something soft and quiet in the way he was with her, a something that she would never have believed when first meeting him. A wayward beast whose name drew fear in any who heard it. Sent by Connor to right a wrong she had been fooled into.
But with each kiss, each smile that she knew was reserved for her and only her, those memories faded into the distance and she could finally look toward a future. ”There is no me without you.” A gasp of breath as her arms wrapped around his shoulders, their bodies fitting together as though they were only complete as a pair. ”The sun rises and sets with you Mo fhíorghra.”
”No.The sun rises with you, and it sets with me, because without rising? I’ve not a single sense of direction.” Pause. Beat. He withdrew from his battery of kisses with a dopey grin plastered over his face. ””Unfortunately, but not as unfortunate as my corny one liners, Love?” He asked, leaning in to press yet another kiss to her skin, right at the hinge of her jaw before speaking against the shell of her ear, his baritone nothing short of a whisper.
”...You have to wake up.”
And she did.
Not to the crisp breeze of Irish autumn, not to the feel of muscular arms holding her safe from the chaos of the world outside. Instead, Niamh forced her eyes open to the same nicotine drenched yellow walls; as she blinked her eyes into focus she was assaulted with that yawing black desolate hole of agony that accompanied every morning without him.
Niamh pushed herself up to a seated position, her body a little slow and bruised thanks to her newly chosen career. As she felt the full ache of exhausted muscles in her back, she cursed her memory. Despite the misery of morning, she almost smiled as she thought of how easy it used to be to forget.
Unlike Lethe, named after the very river that ripped memories from the damned. Niamh had been unable to forget a single second since she laid a rose on that dirt mound and cried an ocean of tears shared by none. Whilst her upcoming opponent made it abundantly clear she took nothing seriously, that everything is nothing but a game she’ll forget as soon as she drops the mask, Niamh had been working to remember.
”See, here’s the thing.” She spoke as soon as she flipped the camera on. No grand setup or flash to distract from substance - or others lack of - instead she sat on the edge of a bed that had as many stains on its surface as she did scars on hers. Dressed in a shirt that clearly once belonged to someone else, her hair mussed and eyes still heavy as though she longed to return to her dream.
Part of her did, there was a part of her that wanted to live in the past. To focus on what was, to act like so many others in this business and put importance on yesterday, as opposed to tomorrow. But she couldn’t do that, she knew she couldn’t.
”Sometimes, your body is ready before your mind. You work and you train and you pass all the little tests laid out to decide if it’s time. Then you get out there, you stand toe to toe with someone whose passion is a contradiction. You look into the eyes of people who aren’t there to overcome, to be the best, people like Lethe and Josiah, who just want to change their words from week to week. People who fear being held accountable.
They can forget what they meant or where they were going. They can shrug their shoulders and distract themselves with some ‘LUL’ tweets as though there’s shame in wanting to do better. Know better. It’s nice, I’m sure… to never say what you mean or mean what you say. To discount the value of your own words and in turn, devalue the place you find yourself in.”
She looked away for a second, her fingers curling in against the once white sheets, driving her nails into the starched barely-cotton. Her teeth grinding against one another as she bit down on her jaw. All the venom, all the disappointment and failure; it wanted to pour out of her. She wanted to grab the phone and scream, to spit up all the poison and scars that made her heart feel as though it was rotting there, in her chest. But she didn’t.
”You can choose, at any time, to walk away and forget. It won’t matter how you failed or where your successes were. At the top or the bottom, you can forget and be forgotten.
I don’t have that luxury, whether I succeed or fail, I’ll be remembered. There are people, those I welcome and those I don’t, who are watching. Their expectations have nearly drowned me and in wanting to be the animal they destined me to be… I have let myself down. Whilst most in my position would focus on the fact that they weren’t pinned in those losses? That isn’t enough for me.
I was shown my feet and now it’s time, I stand on them.”
Niamh pushed up from the bed, pausing and looking back to the disheveled bedding she sighed. Her hand reached out for the ghost from her dream, fingers twitching as though they were interlocking with his. She was awake, but her mind still reached for the dreaming, spanned out for any sign that his constant presence in her mind at rest meant something more than loneliness seeping in at the sides.
”There’s no escaping the past, be it the eyes that stare back at you from the mirror, or the dreams that never let you stay. It all follows you, it all makes up a part of you.
And you can throw a mask on.
You can struggle your way up from the dirt you were birthed into.
But in the end? You’ll overcome what you were, you’ll find ways to leave it like shadows melting into the sunlight. But it will always be a little piece of what you are. Nothing you ever do whilst hiding from yourself, will still exist in the minds of those who love you, when you come out of hiding. So what then? If your history isn’t yours because you dress up like a perversion of a bigoted money-grabbing capitalist, if your future only last as long as the lies you’ve told?
You forget.
You’re forgotten.
Win, lose, don’t show up at all. There’s only one door at the end of a path built on lies. Whilst I may have stumbled on loose bricks, my path may have begun uphill, the doors at the end of this path are vast and endless, because I am giving all of myself. Because I refuse to be forgotten.
It’s my turn to begin counting, Lethe. And it’s only poetic that it started and will end with you.”
Niamh surrendered to her own hunger, crawling back into the bed she had forced herself out from. Wrapping the scratchy sheets around her form and fluttering her eyes closed.
”I slept terribly, I’d lost you in my dreams and I couldn’t find you, no matter how loudly I howled for you.” his words whispered close to her ear.
”Just a bad dream…” she whispered, hands searching the empty bed for the feel of his flesh beneath her fingertips. But instead she found nothing but pillows and sheets, as his voice began to soften, echoing in that ear where she felt the hot, heaviness of his breath. ”I’ll always find you.” She lied.
Just please, she thought.
Please don’t make me wake up.