A/N: The second half has some mildly dark descriptions, not *especially* graphic but related to the concept of the MC's memories of being eaten by the bird. If squeamish, you were at least warned.
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The kiss between them was desperate, years of longing poured into the point of contact between their lips. Ayla made a sound that might have been a sob as Renée's fingers tightened against her scalp. Sadness and happiness surging like they were the same side of the coin.
For a little while, everything else fell away. The storm, the years between them… all of it disappeared under the press of Renée's lips and the heat of her body. Ayla's hands found her waist, pulling her closer, needing more of-
Then the writer jerked back like she'd been burned. Her eyes were wide, lips slightly parted and glistening.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have... not like this. Not without..."
She was gone before Ayla could process exactly what had happened. The door clicked shut with a finality that felt like heartbreak all over again. The woman left nothing but the ghost of her touch and the taste of old wine on Ayla's lips.
The dark haired woman touched her fingers to her mouth, still feeling the echo of that kiss. Her breath quickened as she slid down against the wall. The storm raged on outside, but she barely heard it over the sound of her own ragged breathing.
"What… just happened?"
But the only person who could answer her was out in the hallway.
Renée pressed her forehead against the wall a half dozen doors down. She tried to steady herself as her whole body thrummed with the desire to make 'mistakes'. With the need to go back and finish what she'd started.
But she couldn't - not without explaining everything first, like a sensible, well put together adult. Not without being honest about why she'd left in the first place. At least, she knew she had to express in words and not just actions that her ex still occupied her heart.
That Ayla had never stopped living there, rent free.
She pushed away from the wall, forcing herself to move. To put even more distance between herself and the door she desperately wanted to go knock on again.
[Or knock it down… to blow at it like the big bad wolf.]
The sound of the wind outside was playing with her head. She couldn't go back to Ayla until she found the courage to tell her everything.
"But god, I want to."
⛌-⛌-⛌
The desk lamp cast a small circle of light in the darkness of her room. The writer had turned off the overhead a while ago while staring at her notebook in a fugue state. Renée's hand moved across the page almost without her conscious direction, her usual neat script dissolving into something more urgent.
/ Your lips still taste the same. How is that possible after six years? Like honey and something underneath that I could never quite name. That I never dared to name anything other than 'you'. /
She stopped to take a breath before starting again. It wasn't the first time she'd had this idea, but had never gotten the pen to move. Just like she'd never gotten her mouth to say the words.
/ I should have told you. Should have explained why I kept pushing you away when all I wanted was to pull you closer. Why I couldn't eat to the point I collapsed. Why I would sometimes wake up screaming from a nightmare. /
The cheap pen dug into the paper, nearly tearing it.
/ Instead of lying about not recalling the terror. Sometimes I remember the wind against my face as it carried me up. The way my bones felt like they had shattered when it dropped me in its nest. The sound it made when it started to /
Her hand shook and ink scrabbled the page. It was impossible to describe it without thinking about it. That meant embracing the feelings of the moment. Renée tried to get back on track.
/ How do I tell you… that I remember dying? That sometimes I still taste blood in my mouth that isn't mine? But it was mine. That I know exactly what organs look like being torn out of you? /
She pressed her palm against her stomach, feeling the phantom pain. The source of her OSFED. The stress that caused her physical health problems… but also led to her realization. That she needed real help, even if she had been stubborn to the end.
/ The therapist says it's PTSD but she doesn't know from what. How could she? I've never told anyone the whole truth. They'd think I was crazy. Sometimes I think I am crazy. But the memories are so vivid. I can still feel- /
Lightning flashed outside with near instant thunder making her jump. The pen skittered across the page. Glancing at the abandoned line, she decided to move on.
/ Tonight when you kissed me back I felt alive again. Really alive, not just going through the motions of being normal. My hands in your hair. The taste of you. I could breathe in something more important… without remembering what I know I can never forget. /
The intense wind rattled the windows and pelted rain sideways at the glass. Like she was guided by the energy outside, her writing became more frantic.
/ I ran because I wanted to stay. Because if I stayed I'd tell you everything. About the bird and dying. About how sometimes I still wake up thinking, for a few seconds, that I'm in that other life. That I fear this reality is the fever dream and I never met you because I am still hanging on to survival there. /
Renée took a deep breath. Then another. She wanted her handwriting to become as steady as possible.
/ I've gotten so good at pretending to be normal. I was always good at hiding, but now I know how to say the right things in therapy. At explaining away the eating disorder as subconscious stress or anxiety - or anything but what it really is. The memory of being torn apart. Being consumed. Of watching and experiencing my own entrails ripped from me. /
The pen stopped. Those lines were clear enough that it made her sick to her stomach to see them. When the writer started again, she had to switch back to something unrelated to that memory.
/ The wine made me brave enough to kiss you tonight, but not brave enough to stay. Not enough to tell you that I left because I couldn't bear to watch you try to fix me. To see you realize that I'm not just broken… I'm impossible. That my trauma isn't from anything that could have happened in this reality. This life. /
Her handwriting grew smaller. Controlled and legible, but tiny. Another attempt to phrase the truth.
/ How do you tell someone you love that you remember being killed by a giant bird in another life? That sometimes you still feel phantom talons against your skin? That you wake up tasting bloody screams instead of air? /
The words blurred as tears finally broke through the attempt to detach.
/ I want to tell you everything. Want to kiss you again and keep kissing you until the memories fade. Until there's nothing left of me but *your* hands on my skin. Your voice in my ear. Your taste on my tongue. /
She forced herself to stop. Breathing became hard. The writer was midway between arousal and panic attack. The next lines were barely legible.
/ Your door is so close. I could go back. Could ask you to press me against that wall instead, so maybe this time I couldn't run. Maybe this time I'd be brave enough to finally let it end for good if it's going to. /
Lightning scattered again. The drums of thunder rattled the building.
"The storm sounds like beating wings."
The writer parsed that with her emotional state. Then she added one final set of lines.
/ Dove. I called you dove because you brought me peace. Then I flew away before you could do it forever. Be with me. Or leave me. If you did the latter after knowing all this, then it meant another bird would have torn out my insides. /
The ballpoint pen slipped from her fingers. She stared at the pages with disgust. At the raw truth spilled across them in ink and desperation. Evidence of her far-fetched story made real… in her own handwriting… for the first time ever.
For a moment she considered tearing the paper out. Burning the words as if it would purify the spectre haunting her life. Destroying the proof of her fractured sense of reality before anyone could see it.
Instead, she closed the notebook with trembling fingers and left it sitting on the desk. Like a confession waiting to be heard. Like a wound waiting to be examined. The 'patient' stumbled over to the bed and crumpled onto the sheets.
For a brief while everything felt like too much, then like nothing at all.