(Leo)
***
*Hm.*
At some point, I must have fallen asleep, I thought. After all, there was a crust in my eyes that came out with enough rubbing. Sinclair had not moved since the previous night, and their bright eyes stared me down as I shifted in place, tangled up with their body. The spheres were full of hot pink—tender but searing.
I did not know how I was expected to react as we gazed at each other during what must have been the morning.
They smiled at me, and that soothed my soul enough for me to wiggle into a more comfortable position.
"Good morning. Did you sleep well?"
"Mm." My voice was groggy. "Yeah, I guess so. I don't even remember falling asleep." The lucid memory returning to me, I pursed my lips. "Sorry. I know I told you I'd stay up with you all night."
"You needed the rest," they stated as a hand massaged my back while another combed through my silver hair.
How I wished they would use their hands to seize my jaw and kiss me senseless when we were like that…
"Do you remember what I asked you before you fell asleep?"
I had to sit there and ponder that question as I rearranged my thoughts. What *did* they ask me? Things went fuzzy sometime after our astronomical musings.
I blinked a few times. "I dunno."
An airy chuckle exited their lips. "You said you liked my definition of a promise, so I asked what a promise was to you."
"Ah, really?" Grinning, I scratched the top of my head where Sinclair wasn't rubbing. "I can't remember a thing. I wasn't even the one drinking the alcohol either!"
"Do you still want to answer?" they inquired rather seriously.
"Do I?" I asked more to myself than anything. "Maybe I will."
They stopped the motion of their hands for a moment, wanting to hear every delicate word from my mouth. I did not understand how such a tiny action could create enough noise to obscure anything other than a whisper, but maybe it made a difference to them. Somehow.
All the pressure was on me to say something. Responding to introspective questions like that was always one of the hardest things because of the assumption that everyone had a concrete personal philosophy.
Opinions were too fluid; what I said today could easily have changed tomorrow. Yet I knew I had to give them an answer applicable to most days for me—the closest to a set-in-stone idea I could provide.
"I… think a promise is a commitment you make to someone that nobody can force you to uphold, but you do it anyway out of love. I think it's something special. You don't see a whole lot of strangers making promises. I mean, if they do, they probably get their expensive jewelry and coins taken away like,"—I snapped—"*that*."
"I never considered it from that perspective," they whispered next before moving their hands once more. Their eyes went mostly black—a color that was unreadable to even Sinclair. "The idea you'd do it out of love."
I quipped, "I didn't either until right then."
They chuckled as I said that.
"If that's the case, then does that mean you love me?" they asked, clearly joking with their exaggerated eyes and pout. They ceased caressing my head and instead braced their neck. "You've made a promise to me before and kept it."
I crossed my arms and sat up, knocking their other arm from my back. I scrunched my nose.
"I don't know. Do I?" I said with a weak sting before devolving into that same kind of laughter.
Had they asked me before that day, I would have easily affirmed the statement, but I couldn't bring myself to right then, too caught up in my head to want to enter theirs. Everything was fine without crossing that line.
It was strange that, when we headed to the castle, there was a peculiar distance between us that I had not experienced with Sinclair before. I was unsure about how to act when the silences were stifling or when the touches felt contrived. Sure, we were fine in the morning while in that heady daze that lingered until the consciousness fully awakened, but a dark haze loomed over me soon after.
And it was all my fault for being jealous.
It was difficult to understand why I behaved in such a way—even if only slightly—when we should have been at our most emotionally intimate.
They told me everything I wanted to know. I should have been happy about the way they trusted me, but I couldn't grow comfortable with that. It felt like opening the gates and having them slammed back in my face.
The changes were only minute on my part; I was touchy and friendly in general. However, I wondered if Sinclair took notice of how the internal shifts affected my external actions—wondered if they would take a step away or come forward to mend something that wasn't their fault.
If they couldn't deny their feelings for someone else, who was to say they wouldn't profess those emotions to that man once more? That absurd thought rattled my mind, and I used it as some kind of justification for my apparent detachment.
I swore I tried to act as normally as I could, but watching broken strings heal in front of me highlighted how ours slowly unravelled. The intertwined hands we held came apart as Sinclair departed for their round of deliveries, which they did subtly, quietly, unlike their previous chariot crashes and animal mishaps.
I missed those days already…