Broken- And Fixed Again- (A Jamilton Fanfic)

Chapter 23: The Bird, The Cat, and The Wolf

//TW: swearing, implications of sex\\

Alexander

Part of me was terrified to wake up. I was terrified to open my eyes and find the bed empty and cold and so unlike the dreams that had filled my head with their lofty aspirations, their unhidden desires. I was terrified to watch as the light streamed into a dull and lifeless room once again, my body hunched over the desk, my heart shattering against the floor now that there was nothing left to hold it up. Every last bit of my soul was deathly afraid of waking up and being forced to come to the slow, chilling realization that my Thomas was not with me, that it had all been some perversely beautiful fantasy world my mind had spun to save me from another, agonizing night.

I couldn't face that. I couldn't live with myself if I had to wake up and find him gone just as he had been for three long, terrible months full of nothing but heartache and absolute fear of what would happen between the seams that remained unaccounted for. My mind would not have been able to persist knowing that Thomas had been nothing more than a dream, fading away as the fog swirled in once more, forever masking the starlight.

But I woke up, and those fears were unfounded. I woke up, and my heart did not break from a perilous fall through a long, winding abyss. I woke up, and the warmth remained pressed against my side, clinging to my body. I woke up in a state of absolute euphoria, my Thomas right where he belonged.

I was not afraid. I was not inches away from losing my mind, from giving up on myself.

I'm so happy I'm never going to have to feel that again any time soon.

I planted a soft kiss against Thomas's forehead, switching off the alarm clock that had pulled me from a blissful sleep. I smiled as he shifted forward, sighing softly as he pressed himself into the safety of my arms. I held him tight to me, until I could feel the slow pulses of his heart against mine. I could exist like this forever, our bodies intertwined in all the right ways, and I would be the happiest person to ever walk the earth. I could not bring myself to leave his side, not now, not ever. He was mine.

I sighed to myself, kissed him again as gently as possible, and basked in the slow sunlight that danced through the windows, bathing his beautiful face in a warm, light pink glow. It made him look ethereal, like a being born from the sky itself. I brushed a lock of hair out of his face, forever content to watch the minuscule movement of his fingers against my chest, as if playing the violin even in his sleep. My eyelids grew heavy, and the animalistic part of my brain briefly wondered what horrible motivation had ever attempted to coax me out of the arms and out of the bed of the most beautiful boy to ever grace this earth with his presence.

It all seemed like something from a fairytale, a perfect scene from a perfect painting. Here we existed yet again, in our garden secreted away from eyes that were all too quick to pry. And looking around at the plants in the room, the ones that had suddenly seemed to perk up and find new purpose in the wake of Thomas's return; looking at the bird whose song had sounded so much more hopeful, so much happier the second Thomas had returned to us; hell, looking at myself as I hugged my boy close to me and promised I would never let him go again, it wasn't hard to understand why the world seemed so fresh, so renewed.

I leaned against the pillows, drawing lazy circles along the length of his back. He was practically on top of me, his face buried against the crook of my neck. The locks of his hair tickled my face, the bare skin smooth to the touch. He held me close, one hand embracing mine, as though we were lost to a delicate dance with music that only we could hear.

My heart swelled. I loved him. I loved him, I loved him, I loved him. And for as much as I had yearned for him, for as much as I had dreamt for him while we were an entire city apart, absolutely nothing beat the real experience of having him here, his heart beating in time with mine, like they were joined together. There was nothing left between us. He was mine. I was his. And the world would fall away for us, if that's what it came to.