Archive of Our Own ^beta

1.

The man is made partly of metal, yet all you can imagine is molding him into your hands like some sort of clay. Pale skin glowing pinkish juxtaposed with dark metal, inky grey storm clouds in between clear sky. You joke how he is sometimes THE ABSENCE OF WARMTH PERSONIFIED. How he tries to be cold, emotionally, physically, literally .

Beneath metal plating and a shock of dark bangs, you’ve always been curious what he keeps in there . In his head, in his heart, in his darkest of brown eyes.

He stares at you, the gum on the bottom of his shoe, like lower level, lower class, uneducated scum but you will trail after him anyway. 

Duty is a funny thing that way. In both your family and his, it was always held to higher esteem than personal feelings and opinions.

You, like so many other girls, had been promised to a family, his family, at a young age. You were 5, wide-eyed and face bright in anticipation of the world. The object of your current affection is your age, but your sisters weren’t as lucky. 

Every one of them, all five, had gotten paired with a man at least 20 years their senior. Men that were the same age as your father or older.

As far as arranged future husbands could go, you are thankful.

“You’re dragging your clothes in the mud.” You say, avoiding the particularly muddy parts of the road with the grace of a wayward dandelion in the wind. Mud between the toes is not the way to go. Never the way to go.

He grunts.

One thing about you that teased him for, to no end, is your height differences. 

You are taller than him, if only by two inches. (Although, you’ve found that inches do matter.)

Your father always says it is emasculating for a man’s wife to be grander in stature than him. It hurts his sense of manhood. 

He has carved this into your frontal lobe, his voice telling you to make yourself meeker and slouch so you’re a little smaller.

However, your height may be the only aspect of you that your fiance is not infuriated by.

“They can be washed.”

He hadn’t always been like this, you recall. Jaded and quiet. You once knew a little boy with bleached hair that pulled your pigtails until infinity and smiled with all of his sharp baby teeth. You haven’t seen that boy in a lifetime. That boy is surely dead.

“And you’re going to wash them, correct?”

He laughs, mockingly, acknowledging you, but says nothing more, leaving you to entertain yourself. 

You splash in a puddle, dousing the edge of his pants in brown water.

“Cut that out.”

2.

Dinners with his family are loud. Warm room, yellowed light, inherent nostalgia for something you’ve never known before.

He and his brother argue while you watch, an amused face stuffed into your bowl. Their father, a patient, sweet man that makes you often envious, sits back, smiles calmly, and attempts to stop it, to no avail. 

Sibling rivalry is something you never experienced yourself. In any form.

Dinner has been where you have learned to enjoy the lack of stoic faces and occasional eating utensil thrown across the table.

3.

You have seen him many ways, have been his nurse, his doctor, his chef, his swim and sparring partner, his doormat. 

Seen him in pain, bleeding out, sick and feverish out of his mind, dripping sweat after a workout, pissed off, clothed, and bare as the day he was born.

And yet there is always something about his physique that is nauseatingly hypnotic and jealousy inducing to the likes of everyone. He has been sculpted. Where there isn’t metal or peeking scars, he is taut muscle, well built and well maintained.

His body, you think, is the only thing he really has control over anymore.

“Harder. Come on. Again.”

You strike at his leg but he dodges last second, weaving around you with 25 years of skill. Taunting you with that stupid look on his dumb, pretty face.

“I know you can do better than that.”

He reaches for your arm but you shrug him off. He smiles viciously, bordering on baring his teeth. 

“You’re always so distracted.” 

DISTRACTED, dis·trac·ted, verb meaning “unable to concentrate due to one’s mind being preoccupied” . 

Three little syllables and you get goosebumps a million times over.

It is what he always says. He repeats it to you over and over and over. It’s a taunt, one he whispers into your ear, even when you’re not fighting on the mats and are eating dinner with his bickering family or in the grocery store or running any other errand ever.

It is true and irritating, irritatingly true because he knows that the only reason you’re distracted is him . 

He uses it to his advantage. 

Swinging at his head, you pull back your arm at the last second and quickly go for his leg instead. 

He stumbles.

So you take the chance to softly throw him onto the mat, careful not to pull anything while lifting the heavy man.

He grunts, all of the air leaving his lungs at once.

You step back to admire your handy work. There are bruises all over his chest and legs, shining with sweat and several handprints. He is quite literally steaming, his vents working overtime to cool him down.

He looks infinitely younger like this. Like the boy you fell in love with. The one who brought you flowers and chocolates and flirted with you playfully, endlessly . Shaking your head, you hold out a hand, the cool air drying your sweat.

He looks at you. At your face. At your hand. And he takes it, much to your surprise.

“I’ll see you at dinner then.”

4.

Spit pools in your mouth. You swallow. 

The evening is cool, but not cool enough to stop you from swimming in the lake. It’s become routine. And you live here. You’re not trespassing, no matter how much you worry yourself. 

Water in ears is a special kind of pain. Which is why you would usually wear earplugs instead of rawdogging it. Things are easier that way, but you really just wanted to swim immediately and not spend time looking for them in the sprawling mess of your room.

Something splashes behind you and you flinch, sinking into the water until only your eyes are visible above the moonlit water.

He is there, standing up in the water, looking dead at you with this look on his face.

You emerge from the water, sticking your head up. 

“What?” The word echoes, fractals of cracked whispers.

He shakes his head, beads of water spraying everywhere. “Going for a swim. Ignore me.”

Which is cosmically impossible. Like pulling the moon out of the orbit of Earth by force. Like preventing the Sun from eventually imploding and putting an end to our solar system as we know it. Gravitationally, the two of you are attracted, in seemingly all ways possible, save one, pulling and pushing at each other for eternity.

He sinks into the dark water, purposefully floating in the opposite direction. 

In the moonlight, he is ghastly. Haunting. The light catches in places, unnatural. You cannot help but stare.

“You look at me a lot, you know.” He says out of nowhere, voice rough with the kisses of underuse. 

There are hissing cicadas and hoots and chitters of birds and you can still hear him over the ambiance. 

“One may begin to think that you actually like me.”

You laugh, high-pitched, grating, and as manufactured as the corn snacks he stashes in his room.

“One may think,” you say, “that it is actually the other way around. You came out here to join me.”

“Is that what you think?” He sucks his teeth, tucks his tongue into his cheek, and then disappears under the water.

Anticipation ( ænˌtɪsəˈpeɪʃən , say it softly) grates and drags against the inside of your veins as you wait to see where he will pop up next. The water ripples softly and you find yourself sinking on instinct.

Silence engulfs your entire being. Your heartbeat keeps time with your eardrums.

And then he’s there . Skin to skin. Cool against burning hot. Lips to the shell of an ear. 

“To reiterate: one may begin to think that you actually like me, no?” His breath tickles you. 

You exhale, relishing his lack of warmth. And you ponder. Whether to lie once or twice over. To tell him what you otherwise have confirmed yourself or to deny it all together, like you have tried before.

“No. I don’t.” You then seal your lips and eyes and wait, perceiving.

He laughs at you, deep and smooth and long, and you think you will always drink it in as if it is ambrosia. It is truly a delicious sound.

“A lie only works if you don’t wait for the echo to see if it sounded like the truth.” He says. The warmth fades.

You think he says more but your mind goes quiet after that.

5.

There is something lovely about a sunrise to you that can’t be fully explained. It is something fragile and short term and beautiful in the way only so fundamental and massive can be. The colors consume you, dizzying in their scale.

You tap your fingers against the table and stare out the window.

If dinners are always loud, breakfast is consistently a quiet affair. Father, older brother and younger wake and eat at different times. 

You always eat with him though. A shadow, his brother calls you. 

Often, it is a pejorative. 

He eats quietly. Says nothing. Stares at his phone.

You chew and reach over the table. He pauses, looks at you, wide eyed and cheeks stuffed. You wipe the bit of food from his lip. He looks back down, but not before looking at you once more.

You keep eating. The sun rises.