The sky is painted in pastels, soft and delicate as a Monet. Cooler colors, by now, but the warmth blooming in Eros’ chest as he holds the gaze of his beloved pays the breeze no mind. Damp sand clumps at his hooves as they drift down the shoreline, peeling the gold paint off in flakes with each step. It doesn’t matter to him, though, not now.
Nothing matters, save the smile on his mate’s face; the smile that makes even a profile carved of marble seem cotton-soft. If someone had shown Eros a picture of Aion now when they had first met, he isn’t sure he’d recognize him. Then again, he isn’t sure he’d recognize himself, either.
When they had first met he’d been acquiescent, embarrassed of how his life had turned out yet unwilling to risk his fragile security to change it. After all I’ve tried, he’d thought, maybe there isn’t anything I can do to find myself something happy. He’d settled for lonely, settled for shy. In Aion, however, he’d seen something worth chancing his comfort for. And when he did give it up, he gained greater things: confidence, optimism, and love.
Once he’d found them, he never wanted to lose them again, which meant never losing the person that had helped him to see they had been inside him all along. So he’d begged Aion to promise him he’d never leave—that they’d be together until the end of time—however unfair it might’ve been to ask of him, then. Still, Aion had drowned Eros’ doubts and fears in reassurance and love. Over the months and years, Eros had finally come to believe he’d never lose him.
But he did. It feels now as if it had been in the blink of an eye—a crack of thunder, a flash of lightning, and he’d disappeared. For a year—a whole year—he’d felt the searing sting of grief in his deep open wound. Even once they had found one another it had taken months for it to heal; months of waking in the middle of the night out of breath and clammy with worry only to feel his mate was still at his side.
It’s easier, now, with the sun on their backs and the expansive ocean beside them, to cast aside that worry. To believe, earnestly, that they will be together forever.
“I wonder sometimes if we were always destined for each other—if you were made with the idea of me already written into your story. Or maybe I’ve just never had good enough luck to believe meeting someone like you was pure chance. Either way, I’m grateful to have found you and been found by you.”
A glass smile, delicate and reflective, lifts his face when Aion asks.
“Will you marry me?”
He’s positive there had never been any doubt of what his response might be, but there’s a tangible line separating the rehearsed fantasies in all their iterations and the reality of searching for a studied answer during one of the most important moments of his life. It’s waking up late for an event, forgetting your lines in the play—something you’d had all thought out but slips away at the last moment.
@aion
