Getting clean takes few minutes, habits long worn no matter how much they are necessary or mandated. It's easy, regimented, the space of a few breaths and he's out, again, toweling his hair and pulling on cargo pants, soap and shampoo as forgotten as any attention he might have paid them at all while using them. Finding news his under and over shirt, socks, boots, a badge clip and holster for his belt.
Headed back down very nearly on five minutes, or shortly after. Which isn't really a problem at all, being late or early, when he comes back down to a very empty living room. Kitchen. Dinning room. Her bag still present and accounted for, on the couch, where he stared, so he tries her name once, in case she ended upstairs somehow and he just didn't hear her. Even if the possibility is slight. It only takes a moment, scanning the back lawn to spot her.
Dark brown hair and bright teal shirt laid out against the sand and the sky. Sending him that way, quietly. Or maybe it's more than when he gets as close as the break between the grass and the sand, where the rocks are heavy and dividing, loitering the top of where the stand stops, that he does, too. Stops. Watches her laying there, eye closes, face tipped toward the sun, breathing in and out.
Letting the past ebb in and out, on those waves not very far from her. Any other day, he'd walk down, pretending not to see the way her smile curved when he was close enough she could hear him walking. Lean down and kiss her, taste the sunshine right off her skin, until the sound of her breath was louder in his ears than the wind, and her fingers were getting sand in his hair. Lets it come in, and fall away. Watching her.
Like an island all her own, floating beyond it all. Him. The world. Everything. He can't even label the feeling that curves at all the edges of his head and chest. Can't even get it to define if it's more about something he can't possibly touch or can't possibly consider letting go of. It's a minutes maybe two there, watching the breeze toy with her hair, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath in and out, catching this moment more than any camera ever could, before he finally speaks.
Hands in pockets, instead of crossed in front of him, soft by distant expression, trying not to let his voice be too jaring against the wind and the waves, when it's forward-facing. "You could stay here, if you wanted."
It's not even that they have to go this very second, so much as that she looks peaceful. She looks like she belongs there. Breathing in and out, the sea and the sand and the sun. Pale skin and dark hair, equally soaking up the brilliant warmth. At once only feet from him, and still whole worlds and worlds away.
Which she shouldn't have to give up, simply because he isn't. Any of those things.
no subject
Headed back down very nearly on five minutes, or shortly after. Which isn't really a problem at all, being late or early, when he comes back down to a very empty living room. Kitchen. Dinning room. Her bag still present and accounted for, on the couch, where he stared, so he tries her name once, in case she ended upstairs somehow and he just didn't hear her. Even if the possibility is slight. It only takes a moment, scanning the back lawn to spot her.
Dark brown hair and bright teal shirt laid out against the sand and the sky. Sending him that way, quietly. Or maybe it's more than when he gets as close as the break between the grass and the sand, where the rocks are heavy and dividing, loitering the top of where the stand stops, that he does, too. Stops. Watches her laying there, eye closes, face tipped toward the sun, breathing in and out.
Letting the past ebb in and out, on those waves not very far from her. Any other day, he'd walk down, pretending not to see the way her smile curved when he was close enough she could hear him walking. Lean down and kiss her, taste the sunshine right off her skin, until the sound of her breath was louder in his ears than the wind, and her fingers were getting sand in his hair. Lets it come in, and fall away. Watching her.
Like an island all her own, floating beyond it all. Him. The world. Everything. He can't even label the feeling that curves at all the edges of his head and chest. Can't even get it to define if it's more about something he can't possibly touch or can't possibly consider letting go of. It's a minutes maybe two there, watching the breeze toy with her hair, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath in and out, catching this moment more than any camera ever could, before he finally speaks.
Hands in pockets, instead of crossed in front of him, soft by distant expression, trying not to let his voice be too jaring against the wind and the waves, when it's forward-facing. "You could stay here, if you wanted."
It's not even that they have to go this very second, so much as that she looks peaceful. She looks like she belongs there. Breathing in and out, the sea and the sand and the sun. Pale skin and dark hair, equally soaking up the brilliant warmth. At once only feet from him, and still whole worlds and worlds away.
Which she shouldn't have to give up, simply because he isn't. Any of those things.