#threesentencefics

there was a life to live, an aching to abate, others who would not have her falling into the loneliness that had been unconquerable before him. kingdoms were merged, and years pulled her further from him, into the arms of another, towards a family, until he fell from sight, into history, into the grave that holds everyone she ever loved and lost. her daughter pushes him forward all the same, a stranger to the court, sticky with his youth and not yet unmade by his pride, but his eyes have never left her feeling so hollow--

whatever name he might bestow on edmond, whatever attempts he might make to claim such a man as his own, he knows there is some part of the immortal that will drift beyond his reach. the scent of the sea clings too dearly to him, the companion of dust and longing, and dream supposes that the three all flow together in the captain who sat so contented at the head of his vessel. he watches this man smile into the waves, laid bare before the sun and the long horizon, and decides that love must be allowing edmond to love this, too. 

a darkness settles heavy over her now, velvet as it slithers across her bare shoulders. his warmth threads across every inch of exposed skin, before he eclipses her view, fingers curling into uneven blue locks. in a moment his lips find the curve of her jaw, the night of his eyes dragging across her half-asleep face, and falls into the safety of his arms gratefully.

billie is not wrong, in the way that she is never wrong about these things, when she says that the coffee shop is nothing to write home about in any capacity. he has never been the type to write, though, never been anyone willing to exert the effort of putting himself out there -- making it all the more striking that he undertake the daily pilgrimage to the snug brick building with a world tree stenciled onto the window. as the two-faced barista’s voice sounds out the whale noises that he had etched on his cup, cian settles easily into the idea that customer service is everything in the city, smiling into the way every head turns towards a girl who has never turned down his little amusements.

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