Warm Up 16 | Mortals
#18 of Daily Warm Ups
Had more emotional ups and downs but I feel myself recovering again. I feel like this is the step up I needed from Warm Up 15 because the last one lacked emotion. Almost tempted to remake it.
And with a lot of emotional changes in real life, so do my characters in the story. I hope to keep improving. And I feel it.
Thanks for reading, enjoy!
Warm Up 16 | Mortals
There were two ways in which pushing in deep would hurt, the sensation would linger that it stops hurting moments after. In the same two ways that pulling out gave me that feeling of relief, tingling my spine as I moaned out.
"Hun, we're not fucking." Ethan told me, showing the same dagger he impaled me with months ago. "Give it a day until the wound closes. So no jerking off." He bandaged me with linen cloth, rolled several times around my torso as it pooled around the gaped wound several times over. It would stop in moments, feeling my body slowly relax itself to ease the bleed.
"Fine," I replied, miffed that I couldn't just go off doing what I wanted to do like I did. I reached my hand out to me asking for the same dagger, and he offered it to me hilt-first. A cold sensation pierced my wound the moment I touched it, startling me and my partner. Echoes of our fight that day resounded in my head.
"I'm sorry," Ethan told me before the past could be visualized in my head. He sounded genuine, hurtful, and guilty.
I looked at him with a smile and he felt undeserving of it, that he owed me a greater deal. Yet he had repaid me when he saved me as the Great Flash happened. Those supposed echoes were replaced by a far more recent memory; I recalled in the shadows that enveloped me the desperation, my hand reaching out to anyone as I yelled for help. I, a Prospect then, felt powerless, and you were there Ethan. "It's okay," I told him, holding his hand and wedging my fingers between his as I gave it a gentle squeeze. "Truly, I'm almost over it."
Ethan gave me a confused look, those eyes searching within mine what was left before I could feel true comfort despite our powers being stripped. He mouthed what he thought, "What's left? Tell me, please.." And he said it just as genuine, rearing to follow me to the ends of the Infosphere to help me.
I admired this aspect of him seeking redemption. I gave him a kiss on the cheek, that I then held his chin after as I went over his lips. A beak so sweet that I could still taste the milkshake he had earlier. Our relationship was too complicated, but once you've truly played God, even the bad things were inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. All I wanted now was what's good. Love being one of them. "I love you."
"You too," he whispered as he wept. "I'm still sorry for my paranoia, for stabbing you, Nicky. I'm so so sorry." Ethan started crying after and I couldn't let him do that.
My crocodilian claws massaged his feathered cheeks, feeling him lean to it as I hushed and cooed him. Told him that it was alright, everything was now. Despite Ricky, despite the Shades, the campaigns, and his betrayal that made me tear up not because of what happened, but because of how far we've already gotten through. I tried to hug him as best I could without moving my body too much, and Ethan moved closer to connect us.
Ethan kept apologizing to me in whispers, buried against my scales. And he went on about the decades of ignorance, and how he crash landed in my world. All he did just to be with me, and that I was such a fool to not have empathized with him. I should be the one apologizing to him, which I did.
"It's my fault." I said to him, "I didn't believe you about Point, and casted you aside after discrediting your gut feeling."
I felt his beak rub itself in a nod, and hugged his arms lower as he kept crying. "It's okay," he whispered. "I'm sorry for not believing in you, when I should've been there for you."
I kissed the top of his head, "You tried at least, hun, and that's what matters. We're together now, okay? As it was always meant to be." Even if this promise was made under the pretense of our immortality, and nigh invincibility, it felt more impactful as mortals. We've lived a lot of it. Trillion times over. Horrors, privileges, and everything in between. I looked into my partner's eyes and saw my bandaged self in them- a normal being.
I proposed to him, "How's about we finally live that normal life, hm?" He said yes.