Rado Brisingr

Logically, he knows he should keep his distance, but it’s hard. You run to him with a smile on your face that he can’t help but mirror. You beam at him like he isn’t disgusting. You sneak into his quarters just to spend more time with him. As if the war doesn’t continue to rage on nearby. As if nothing else outside matters. As if he does.

If he had fingers to twiddle, to absent-mindedly play with still, he’s sure he would. Instead, he spends the time next to you with both his arms twitching in his lap. He’s proud of his arms. He’s proud. But right now, he’d give anything to wrap human arms around your shoulders, pulling you close. He’d give anything to brush his fingers to run along the apples of your cheeks, coaxing you into a kiss.

But his arms are meant to rip and tear, and that is the last thing he wants to do to a sweet thing like you.

And he knows you’re not naive—that you are one of the only people to see right through him and care– it’s a hopeless endeavor to try to lie to you.

You immediately snap him out of his daze with a call of his name. Your fingers inch towards his arm as if to place your hand over it, but you stop short. Though his heart sinks, he cannot bring himself to blame you.

“Everything okay? You seem so deep in thought…”

And he is. Wrapped in thoughts of you being held in his arms, at peace despite the fact that it’s someone like him who’s holding you. Unperturbed by the wings that buzz rapidly at his back, speeding up in tune with his heartbeat. Could you love him like that? Like this—all that he is and will ever be? Is he selfish for burdening you with such a wish?

“Mm, nothin’,” He says, but then you squint at him and he knows he’s been caught. An insect caught in an unassuming web, “Seriously!” He insists, but his smile is just a touch shaky as it widens.

You inch closer. His heart sings.

Your hand brushes across the hardened skin of his arm. If he could, he’d retract it and reach for you, intertwining your hands. What he’d give for just one. To be just a bit more human. Just a bit more like you.

There's a giggle that falls from your lips. He doesn't know what's funny. But he's never once felt that it was him you found laughable, “You can't fool me, Gregor,” Ah. It's because he was obvious, “You never look at me when you lie,” Your fingers creep up what would be his bicep, then to his shoulder. He gets more human as you climb, and more anxious—more desperate—as you do so.

The hands that he so adores do not fully cup the scarred, human cheeks of his. They brush against the bristly bug legs that protrude from his skin. Gregor goes cold with anticipation.

“And even if you did, you’d still be awful at it.”

Your thumbs brush over the spot where vermin and human connect. Like it’s sacred. Like he’s sacred. The message goes unsaid, but it is loud: You do not scare me.

His arms move without him thinking. Those wretched limbs of his, sharp and unsightly, move to cross over your back.

He should want to retract them immediately. He should want to apologize for embracing you. But he doesn’t—not when you melt into his touch. Not when you shudder as if you’d been craving this, too, and press yourself further into his warmth. He has no hands to trail up your back. No fingers to tuck reverently under your chin.

But here, with you pressed against him like he means something, perhaps what he has is enough.

work by the @fairy-festival do not plagiarize or use for ai.