@stingslikeabee | "It's a full moon tonight, Al," Melissa murmured right into his ear, her voice sounding both eerily distant and intimately close (probably because it was both). The words were simple, but they also carried a deeper meaning - they liked to sneak out to watch it at their backyard, laying on the grass and exchanging little horror tales about the things that used to hide and transform under the blessing of moonlight.
Her arms enveloped him then - their weight just the average one for a girl in her mid-thirties, warm despite the chill of the evening. The fragrance of her favorite body lotion filled his nostrils and she used the right hand to card fingers through his hair, enjoying the soft texture of the tresses and sinking digits there as one would with a fluffy, comfortable carpet. Melissa did that often - including the way she would sometimes grab a fistful of it, pulling Albert down to be rewarded with a kiss.
"We should go watch it. Like old times," she proposed, voice as sweet as it always sounded when speaking to him, "Max is busy watching TV - he won't even notice if you come over to my place."
It always made him nervous, taking Melissa outside. Albert never doubted her desire to stay by his side, but there was very little he understood about shining; sometimes he worried that one day she would disappear, and it would be no-one's fault but his own. The thought of it chilled him to his core.
"You'll have to hold my hand, Mel." The slide of it over Melissa's forearm was gentle, but didn't mask the calluses he'd earned over the years. Between the military and the years of hard labour that preceded his attempts to learn magic, Albert's hands hadn't been soft in a long time. Melissa, meanwhile, had been soft forever. "I don't want you to get lost in..."
Shutting his eyes, he heard the ring of the phone in the basement. There were whispers wherever he went, and the cacophony of them was a snowstorm.
His temple pressed briefly to the top of her head, solid and smoke to him all at once. "...I just don't want you getting lost."
I wouldn't know what to do with myself.
Albert was simple, though, once he slipped the face mask on. Sunglasses on his nose, he led Melissa through the house, and without a sound snuck out of the kitchen door to his yard. As Melissa predicted, his little brother didn't notice (but Albert suspected he was coked out of his mind, anyway).
The grip on her hand was firm, steadfast in its promise not to let Melissa slip away. For a moment they were kids again, looking both ways before crossing, and in the late hour the crunch of the grass beneath his feet was almost magical.
If he strained hard enough, he could hear Melissa's heartbeat. That was a relief.
"It's been a while since we've gone out, huh?" Albert sat on the grass (he tended to it meticulously), pulling Melissa to him so she could sit in his lap with her back to his chest. "I'm sorry. The house must feel suffocating."
