Symbol Starters~

Send 📱 for my muse to send yours a random text.

To her the text might seem out of the blue because of the surrounding circumstances. After all only a few days ago, on his birthday, he’d more or less brushed her off. The truth was he’d been thinking about sending something on and off ever since he shut her out. 

He wasn’t aware of the tone such a simple text would strike just because it was Christmas here in Japan. His family wasn’t Christian to begin with and the Egyptians that were didn’t celebrate until early January.

                           :: are you free today?                           :: i can meet you at 2                           :: inner city

He didn’t want to sit and aimlessly wait for her reply so he put the phone down after the message sent. If he did he’d only be tempted to add more to what he’d said and those were things he’d rather wait and deliver face to face. Not that he actually expected her to seek an apology from him (if or when they next met). She was too forgiving, especially when it came to him, and in the back of his mind he wondered if he was inadvertently exploiting her nature.

His birthday had always been another strained event in list of painful anniversaries. He had to share it with his mother’s passing (for which he was considered responsible) and so there was happiness and sadness between him and his siblings. When he wasn’t with them he kept to himself, slowly steeping in his guilt, for he’d taken not one parent from this battered family but two. It made him think that he shouldn’t have ever been born at all.

Maybe everyone would be happy then.

Yet he had promised Rishid that he would struggle to live until the end, whenever that came. Dying was easy and therefore not suitable atonement for the evil he’d committed during his life. That was why he never spoke of his feelings to anyone, not even when they asked, and why it came as such a surprise that Anzu knew about his birthday at all.

He hadn’t made any plans to see her. In fact he hadn’t planned on seeing anyone. One of his siblings must have let her in. Before he could even formulate a way to alert her to the sensitivity of the situation she’d put her lips to his. Deep down, beneath his layered clothing, his heart dared to skip a beat.

             HE’D NEVER BEEN KISSED BY ANYONE BEFORE THAT.

Somehow he felt numb all over. Being touched by others after growing up in the sterile underground had made this mark on him. The anxious knots in his stomach worked against him with a slew of unsavory thoughts until the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He felt physically sick, upset with himself for allowing a flicker of enjoyment.

How could he say he deserved to be happy? He didn’t even deserve her.

❛ Anzu. ❜

She was already kissing him again. Her lips felt so inexplicably soft that it made his head spin. The warmth she possessed always threatened to slip into him and pick at self inflicted stitches to soothe the scars beneath. 

                                                                      HOW RARE FOR HIM TO FEEL WITLESS.

Every chaste brush of affection wore away at his tension. The guilt remained, keeping him from answering her properly, and his heavy hands were senseless at his sides. Should he take her hands in his or leave them? What did any of this even mean? 

                                                                                     ❛ Wait. ❜ 

He didn’t mean to rebuke her but the word came out with comfortable assertiveness (all too typical of him). The window between kisses had only seemed to get smaller as each sweet gesture came and went. If he didn’t interrupt her now there was no telling what he might do.

❛ What are you doing here? ❜

                                  Already he regretted asking his question like that.

It’d been a few weeks since he had raised the idea with Anzu and if he were honest with himself he had begun to suffer doubts. However long he reasoned with himself that she was genuinely occupied with her studies there were too many other factors at play to let him rest in peace of mind. Somehow the word had gotten out (he’d received quite a few uncomfortable messages from their other friends, well intended or not) and there was every possibility that it had given her cold feet. After all, to someone as observant as Malik, it was no secret that her affections were already promised to another.

What no one seemed to understand was that this wasn’t about cultivating a serious relationship. He had questions that needed answers, value experiences to explore, and a person he could trust to help him navigate the unknown (provided she was still on board).

The text message that at last came was therefore a private relief. A few brief exchanges sealed the deal and the next day he was waiting for her in the cafe she had mentioned. Half a drink was on the table by his phone, keeping him company. He tapped the electronic device, one brow arched. No new notifications. She wasn’t late yet though.