Rough To The Touch

Too late

In the beginning it was easy to tell what my feelings were. I didn't like her. She was cocky and stuck up, always found new and inventive ways to hurt herself and liked to poke fun of me. She annoyed me to the core.
Her constant flirting with me didn't faze me and I certainly did not find her body in any way pleasing to the eye. I hated how she always put her duty before herself and never took care of herself. I hated how not in touch she was with her emotions and tortured herself. I hated her.
And yet I stayed. I followed her everywhere she went. Even when she was at her lowest of lows I held her.
I told myself it was out of pity. I wasn't doing it for her. I was just bored and needed something to occupy myself with.
I didn't cry while patching up her chest wound. I didn't laugh at her stupid jokes. I didn't open up myself to her.
I didn't tell myself the truth.
At one point lying to myself started getting harder.
Her smiles started getting infectious. Her laughter sounded like bells in the still winter air. Her gaze put me over the edge and whenever she touched me I seemed to lose whatever train of thought I had.
Every night during the winter we would huddle close under the sheets of the inns we were staying at. I would tell myself it was because I was cold and her body was warm. But we held each other even during the warmest of seasons with no sheets covering us.
One night she was having trouble sleeping. She was moving in her bed restlessly, whimpering. I should have been angry at her because of that. I should've scolded her for waking me up. But instead I let her use my chest as a pillow to rest her head on and lulled her to sleep with a song my brother used to sing to me. She fell asleep. But I couldn't. I was too aware of her features in the dark and how nicely her head fitted in the crook of my neck.
After that I realized that maybe I didn't hate her.
I thought I was indifferent still, until her lips touched mine one early morning. She was still half asleep and her words were slurred when she dipped down her head to kiss me. I was sure my chest was going to explode with how fast my heart was beating, but she didn't seem as phased. Not until I pulled her down a couple of days later for a payback.
Her lips tasted like blood after the bar fight I had dragged her away from and her hands were shaking as they wrapped around my waist hesitantly. It was rough and impatient. A little too rushed and inexperienced. But it was all I had needed to relieve myself of the tension that had been building up.
After that kisses became a regular thing. We never bothered with deciding on what our relationship was. Because we didn't know. And it was fine like that.
Or at least I thought it was.
We didn't talk about our feelings at all now that I think about it. We only communicated our feelings through implications and sentences with double meanigs. But sometimes the second meaning got lost with one of us and the feelings were left in the dark.
The last time I got to show her how I feel was me begging her not to go to war. The idiot wanted to go and protect the queen one last time for all times sake. Or that was what she said. All I knew was that she was going on a suicide mission. As she always did...
Her arms were secured around me and her lips were on my forehead as she told me this. That was the moment I realized that I never hated her. She was never an extra luggage for me. I was just trying to protect myself. Prepare myself for the moment she would leave me. And that was that moment. I didn't do a good job at protecting myself at all. I just sank further and further, but never acknowledged it.
I loved her. I loved her too much. She slipped a piece of paper in my hand and told me to burn it when she came back.
She never did come back.
When I opened it I realized just how many things I regretted not doing. One was slapping her. And the other was telling her how much I loved her.
Now all I am left with is a piece of paper and bitter words on my tongue as I whisper to the paper.
"I love you too."