The Black Panther (Discontinued)

Lover's Day (New Chapter)

Please listen to music linked with chapter.

Chapter inspired by this photo ^
Stayed tuned for authors note below.

T'Challa Pov*

I pushed back my meeting another 4 hours. Another 4 hours just to pull her under the covers again and repeat everything we did the night before. When we weren't under one another, I was watching her sleep. I had gotten her tired all over again and I promised her she could get a late start to the day. I could have gotten out of bed right after she drifted off but I stayed and watched her. My mind wondered back to our debate in the rain. Hair clinging to her face, clothes soaked through, hot tears mixing with the cold droplets. Her feeling of not belonging may not have been fixable due to her home life. If her home life was never fixed then I'm sure she would always feel like a apart of herself would always be broken.

I didn't see her that way. In fact I saw her entirely different from how she felt about herself on the inside. I had a feeling something happened back in Cai that she wasn't talking about. I decided to hold off on asking her. Our talk yesterday about the gilded cage theory reigned true. I was all too familiar with how she felt. The palace was beautiful but it could suffocate or worse, you could believe it was all there was to this life. I had no intent on clipping Harper's wings unless she was in immediate danger. I knew we'd clash over her right to live and explore. To hold her back would mean to lose her in the long run. The harder you pushed against Harper the further she'd fly away. I had to leave the door open for her. Just because it was open didn't mean she'd never return. She truly was a dove.

That was a hard realization to come to. I wanted nothing more than to keep her clasped tightly in my hands. The harder I held on the worse things would get. I'd lost someone I looked up to all my life, my very best friend- my father. I didn't want her to meet that same fate. Letting go was the hardest thing I'd ever done but nearly losing her yesterday put a fire underneath me. She was still so young and figuring things out. There would be more outbursts, mistakes, misspoken words in the future from her. I was a different man at 20 than I was now and I had to extend her those same casualties. If I sat back and truly thought about just how powerful Harper could be when she reached her prime, it was freighting. It made my attempts to keep her grounded here look silly. She had the power to catastrophically blow my entire country to the ground on a bad day but instead, she just wanted to visit Newyork to tour the mutant academy. It took very little to make Harper happy, so I could do this for her.

As far as the dom/sub arrangement went, I still had no idea why she wanted it. We'd barely had time to see each other as of recently. Later on I'd explore her mind and get out the real reason as to why she was interested in this. Until then I'd continue to watch her eyes flicker behind her lids as she dreamed. She still wore my grandmothers ring daily, I was proud of that. Everything I ever bought her she held dear to her. I still wore that ring she bought me everyday as well. My Kimoyo lit up with more emails. I couldn't put the meeting off any longer. I leaned into the back of her and kissed her neck.

" I have to go Entle ", I whisper her awake. She groans and pulls me into her, still half asleep.

" Stay ", she whines. I chuckle at her pout. She and I both knew I had serious matters to attend to.

" No, I've already pushed it back as far as I could. I have to go. I'll see you at dinner and tonight it can just be you and me, sound good ? ", I promised her more alone time. I could tell we'd be clinging to each other for the next few days, especially with everything that happened and how it explosive we had been to each other.

" Okay ", she sighed and rolled over to go back to sleep. I slipped out of bed and finally got ready for the day ahead of me. After a shower, coffee and a late breakfast my secretary handed me some documents and I made my way to the throne room.