take it how you want it (take on my love) // carmuel one-shots

on the pulse of morning

description: prompt fill for taylor swift's song "out of the woods," particularly the line "when the sun came up, you were looking at me."

rating: mature

//

For as long as he can remember Samuel has always been an early riser, borne mostly out of necessity and not because he just particularly liked mornings. If he didn't have school, then he had work, and oftentimes he had to compete with Nano or their mom for the bathroom as they had their own places to be, too. And then he had to bike everywhere, so there was also accounting for that. While he doesn't need to rush nearly as much anymore now that he has his own apartment, car, and a steady, nine-to-five job, waking up with the sun is a habit far too ingrained in him to break. Hell, trying not to feel as if he's wasting precious time if he stays in bed for longer than a couple of minutes is already hard enough.

But he's gotten far better about that then he used to be, so when Samuel wakes at his normal hour he does it leisurely and without any guilt whatsoever. He stretches his legs and rubs his eyes, he lets out a yawn and scratches his head, and then he turns it to take part in what he considers to be the best perk of rising so early: observing the girl still asleep next to him.

The morning light is cutting into the bedroom in a burst of golden lines, highlighting freckles of lint floating about in the air and doing the same to the ones faintly spattered across the bridge of Carla's nose. She's lying on her stomach, cheek pressed into her pillow, and she's got an arm draped over Samuel's midriff that tightens in protest when he attempts to roll onto his shoulder to face her, so he doesn't. He will gladly suffer a crick in his neck from the weird angle if that means her sleep remains comfortable and undisturbed, because there are precious few moments where Carla looks as peaceful as she does now, and he loves seeing her like this. Walls down, bared before him in pretty much every sense of the word; it's not like she's guarded around him, not anymore—and not for a very long time, at that—but he doesn't get to look at her quite like this when she's awake to catch him. He loves the teasing face she makes when she does, of course, or the way her cheeks color slightly if he's being particularly open and unbridled with his adoration of her. To be honest, he won't ever get used to seeing her blush because of him and he doesn't want to, but right now, when it's just him and the sun and her breathing softly beside him... there's nothing like it.

It's his favorite part of his morning routine, and today he has the day off, so instead of jumping up to shower or cook breakfast after a minute of indulgence like he normally would, he contents himself with staying right where he is. He traces her lax features with his eyes instead of his fingers like he wants to, following a path along the fall of her eyelashes, down the slight upturn of her nose, over the kissable shape of her mouth. A deep but gentle sigh escapes her when he gets to the point of her chin, almost as if she's aware of what he's doing, and he smiles to himself in amusement. Even unconscious, very little escapes her notice.

The top sheet has slid down her back at some point in the middle of the night, revealing an expanse of smooth, lightly tanned skin to him. Her shoulders are also dusted with freckles, a few darker moles peppered in here and there across the rest of her back and arms that he mentally connects like constellations. And then he does give in to the need to physically touch her, dragging his finger along the invisible lines but keeping his touch just light enough that it doesn't wake her still; the tawny hairs on her arms stand up beneath the attention, and he smooths them down with his thumb, ending at the spur of bone in her wrist. Her hand flexes slightly on his abdomen before relaxing just as abruptly, and Carla snuggles deeper into her pillow, making another quiet noise. Samuel, not for the first time, can't help but compare how she sleeps to a cat: the way she tends to burrow and purr into whatever soft, tangible object is closest to her—him, usually—and how if she lies on her side she's almost always curled up in a ball, knees drawn to her chest. She even wakes like one, reluctantly and grumpily, a pair of green eyes peering out from behind narrowed lids.