[1] WEEPING MONK // you're not what I was looking for

23| The Fine Line {Part Two}

Ari's world turns upside down after Lancelot goes missing.

Lancelot could see that he had overstepped, he chided himself for being so foolish. His shoulders sat tensed as he swallowed down and turned his face away. In one motion he went to stand but he felt her touch his cheek.

Ari had thought that they were leaning towards something, and she didn't want to scare him off, but when he started to pull back at her silence she realised that she didn't want him to leave. Ari placed all of her bets on him and tested the feelings that she thought were true. His face turned back quickly and his eyes locked onto hers, she didn't know how to say it with words but she cared about him too. He hadn't gotten far but he slowly settled back down, twisting more to face her.

Ari's hand came further up his cheek and he felt the spark again like he had done before. He leant into her soft palm as her thumb pressed over the stream of his weeping tears. His eyes drifted shut while he just breathed her in. Ari was it for him, the cure for all his heartache. He knew he should not covet her touch, but he did it anyway. She was the antidote to the poison that was his past life which seeped through his veins like the deep roots of an old tree.

Ari had wanted to do this before when they were sat beneath the hollow tree, when they entwined their hands together so tenderly, but she had restrained herself from reaching out to him then. She had always told herself that she couldn't, that she shouldn't but... what if she did?

The softness of her skin warmed Lancelot in a way that he had never known. He felt the pad of her thumb rub across his marks, they had never been touched so gently, not even by his own hand. Lancelot found his eyes began to sting as he opened them again slowly, his scarred heart beating strongly inside of his broken chest. It felt so personal, so intimate. He had held her hand before and she had held onto him not even an hour ago, but this, the way her simple touch turned into a gentle caress, these things held a deeper meaning. Lancelot didn't know what exactly he wanted, but whatever this was, it felt right. He looked at her in the dim candlelight which lit half of her face, but still he thought she was beautiful. Her unbound hair had fallen and tried to hide her from him.