🗸 the quintessences of cherry & cigarette

4.8: zenosyne

Devin wakes to the blaring alarm on his phone. For a moment he is lost, looking about the pastel hues that surround him, the neat shelves of books, the embroidered lace curtains filling and falling with the draft from the heater, but then Cerise stirs beside him and memories of last night enliven. He watches her sit up and stretch, a peculiar warmth diffusing in his chest, his stomach, down his arms to his palms; he reaches out to lay a hand on her thigh. Turning to him, she smiles coyly, before plucking his phone from the nightstand and turning off the alarm. She hands the device to him.

"Time to go?" She sounds melancholic. She looks melancholic.

Letting his hand go up her thigh and around her waist, Devin pulls her back down to his side. "So it would seem..."

"Already?" she asks, hooking one lissome leg over his hip as she cuddles closer.

Devin tightens his arms around her. "Already..." he breathes out, his eyes sliding closed as Cerise's fingertips trace his brows, his cheeks, his nose.

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," she hums. He feels her lips brush gently over his eyelid, then his cheekbone. "Its loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness..."

Devin opens his eyes and draws her in for a long kiss; her mouth is as pliant and responsive to him as his heart is in her hands. She is the one who breaks it, withdrawing and looking at him with an intensity that burns. He cannot hold her gaze, and he takes to looking at her hair instead. His fingers follow, entangling a stray tendril. "You have to go to school," he hears her say.

"I know... in a bit."

"Will you come back?"

At that, Devin finds it within him to lock eyes with her again. The question is simple, until it isn't. It's not just about today, but about tomorrow, and the day after. And the days following. It has opened something raw in him, honest and familiar, but simultaneously so obscure, so new. "I said I would," he reminds her.

"Promise?"

"Where else would I go? You're all that there is..."

Devin has never felt so exposed before. Cut up and splayed open - a frog on a board. So very vulnerable. But at his core, he knows this is the only place he can ever truly be vulnerable. With Cerise. Cerise will keep him safe. But then again, she could stab him twenty-seven times and he would bleed out with a smile on his face. So long as it is Cerise. She could be the Selene to his Endymion, or the Brutus to his Caesar... so long as it is her.

"I will always come back to you."

***

After Devin's departure, Cerise cleans the kitchen, then straightens up around the house. When that's done, she works on the assignments that Devin had helpfully brought by. Finally, she cleans her room and goes through the list of chores that Jennifer had emailed, checking them off as she completes them. She would have felt the tiredness of all the work has she not anticipated seeing Devin again at the end of the day. She is suddenly struck by how big a part of her life, how much of her motivations seem to revolve around him...

I will always come back to you.

She turns the words over and about in her mind, feeling the honesty in them, holding the weight of them. And I will always wait for you, she promises.

Soon it is time for her to go to work. Cecilia, Jennifer's store manager, is nice and kind and surprisingly fun-loving. With her silly jokes, her contagious laughter, Cecilia is a breath of fresh air and Cerise is glad for it; she makes time at the store pass more easily than she expects. And so, the hours go by. Before Cerise knows it, hours become days, days become weeks, and weeks make the month.