#runnerleckie

They murdered sleep,

And yet Runner remains motionless, still and relaxed on his front, his forehead shone over with sweat. It soaks through his singlet, through his hair and into his pillowcase. The air is humid, acrid, suffocating in a way that Leckie’s certain he’ll never be able to properly describe. Hoosier had called it muggy once. Leckie’s thoughts are a bit more morbid than that. like breathing in death. And yet Runner sleeps. 

His eyelids twitch, his brow creasing in a gentle furrow. He must be dreaming, Leckie thinks. He doesn’t wonder what about. Runner’s eyelashes brush against his cheek and Leckie is struck with the urge to reach out and touch. To brush his thumb backwards through the dark hair of his eyebrow, then back again, smoothing it out until the line of his frown flattens out and thus banishing his bad dreams. 

It occurs to him that he can reach out, he’s allowed to touch. They’ve never shied away from affecion before. Leckie watches his fingers brush Runner’s hair away from his forehead. Some of it sticks, and it’s warm when he presses his palm flush with his skin. Runner isn’t ruggedly handsome like Chuckler or Hoosier. No, somehow throughout it all Runner stays distinctivley something else, something Leckie can’t put a name to. Like the air, the humidity. 

He rests his other hand on Runners back—warm, like the rest of him—to feel the steady rise and fall of his breath, his lungs expanding and deflating like Leckie’s touch alone has commanded them to. Runner shifts under his hand. Leckie doesn’t flinch. 

He thinks about Runner’s smile, then, something so far from the expression his face trains now, open and vulnerable in a way that’s somehow exactly the same as the grin that cracks across his face from time to time. The way his lips pull up into a curved line, how his cheeks dimple. It’s pretty, he thinks. Not like a girl, or a fascinating pattern on a tablecloth. Almost like the little curl Hoosiers hair gets sometimes, when the humidity allows it, or the cat-like appearance that Chuckler gets when he’s watching the line. Pretty in a way that’s hard not to notice, in a way that Leckie can’t write down. 

He still tries to, retreating back to his cot, wrapping skin-warmed fingers around a pencil and having half a mind to miss the sticky point of contact. Runner is pretty, he thinks, and doesn’t think anything of it.

Dear Vera, He writes, like battle cadence. The air is thick enough to cut with a knife. 

He pauses, and his eyes train back to Runner’s sleeping form. 

og meme