her yearned home

i'm choosing to love you despite how afraid my heart was — i'm placing it in between your palms and hoping you wouldn't break it. but even if you chose to destroy me, crack my heart, i'm letting you shatter it a million times if you would like. it was only ever yours to rupture anyways.

(Wren)

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I had no idea if it was statistically possible to only ever love a single person out of the billions of many others. I had no idea if it was too much to only love this one person with the entire force of the universe. Pushing to close the door beside me, I cornered Aillard up against the wall behind him. He stood before me, his grey eyes weary with the weight of emotions while he asked me tenderly, "What would you do if you cannot resist me?" 

There was a thundering storm in his eyes — with his affection, his fears, and all other thoughts that I couldn't tell them apart. I took another step forward, pressing my skin against his and intertwining our individual temperatures together. My colder skin against his, my burning heart against his. I only wanted to convey everything that words couldn't possibly describe.

"From the first moment I met you," I whispered. "My heart had already decided that it would be you, and only you." 

"Wren." 

"My life began with you—"

"Don't," Aillard interjected, with hurt in his voice. "I don't want to hear the rest."

"I want to say it," I murmured, before continuing, "My life would also end with you, and it's all in my heart's will."

"Wren—"

"Shh," I hushed, placing a finger against his lips to stop him from saying anything. 

Lifting my gaze to meet his, I was seeking his approval before I close in to seal my lips against his — slowly, intricately. I was wearing my heart on my sleeves, willingly to be vulnerable to the man ahead of me. It suddenly felt like my life was held in his palm, but I knew that Aillard would choose to love me than shatter me.

We moved together into my room while putting our hands all over each other. Our clothes lay scattered around my bedroom floor as I looked at Aillard, his face dimly lit by the moonlight shining through the glass windows. His fingers traced the curves of my body, following the path of each vein as he carefully touched through every inch of my skin. At that moment, I could feel his yearning for me — together with his desire, his affection, and his love. Like the high tide, the current rushed through my body.

Aillard pulled me up into his hold, with my arms around his shoulders and my legs wrapped around his torso, as he inched deeper into my room. Pushing me down gently against the soft sheets of my bed, his storm grey eyes were staring right into my eyes. In them, I saw turbulence of emotions and my heart ached. Even when life had always been cruel and complicated to this person right ahead of me, I wished he could find kindness and simplicity in being with me. Murmuring softly, I said, "Hold me."

And he did, in the gentlest way possible. Aillard wrapped his arms around me and trailed a path of kisses along the curve of my jaw, down the length of my neck and through the ridges of my collarbone. I grabbed onto his shoulders, feeling filled to the brim with every sensation he was bottling me with.

He moved slowly but with strength, firmly grounding me within the sphere of his warmth. I felt him, every inch of him that was drawing out every breath of mine. He whispered my name tenderly, "Wren."

"I love you," I gasped out, holding onto him tighter. 

In my quiet room, there was us — and the sounds of my soft pants against his rougher ones. We were whisked away into a world of our own and in that moment of us, nothing else mattered.

Wren nodded asleep in my arms after I carried her out from the bath and placed her back in bed with me. In the dimness of the room, her pale skin glowed softly against the silver moonlight. Whenever I see Wren, I always have this uneasy feeling that she would disappear anytime. 

As if she's a fragment of the moon, that would one day return to where she belonged.

Stirring in her sleep, her eyelids fluttered open to reveal those mesmerising blue eyes. Wren murmured, "Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Don't worry about me and sleep, my little songbird," I cooed, pulling the blankets up to her shoulders and inching closer to her. I was desperate to feel her warmth, afraid that all that I was going through right now was just a dream. It frightened me to know that if all these weren't real, I would wake up alone tomorrow morning and I would once again belong to a world without traces of her.

"Should I sing you a song to lull you to sleep?" she chuckled softly.

"Because you're a wren?" I laughed lightly and a sudden thought went through my mind. Unsure if it was something she would like to recall, I asked cautiously, "Is there a meaning behind your name?" 

"For reasons that I would never know, I was left at the front gate of a church on a cold wintry afternoon," Wren mumbled sleepily, but unaffected by the memory. "If not for the little wren singing by my bassinet to catch Sister Angelica's attention, I wouldn't have survived through that night."

"Have you ever thought of finding your family?"

"I have accepted the family that I grew up with," Wren sighed, with sadness in her voice when she continued, "I miss Dad and there are days that I wish he would still be here with me."

"Clarence is watching over you every step of the way, angel," I whispered, cradling her closer to me. "I'm here with you right now."

"I know," she smiled.

After our little conversation, Wren was fast asleep again and with her body snuggled close to mine. I patted gently on her back while staring out of the glass windows. To the bright moon and the stars outside, I asked quietly, "Will she still love me if she knew?"

ᚔ the next morning ᚔ

I thought I was going to wake up without Aillard but he had his arms wrapped around me, cradling me in his embrace while he was still deep within his sleep. I didn't dare to move, only wanting to enjoy this moment for a little longer. Closing my eyes, I focused on the comforting scent of white musk and patchouli that uniquely belonged to him. My heart finally settled in the fact that I was back — right in the warmth of my home.

My happy moment was suddenly put to an abrupt end by the shrilling ring of a phone. Shocked, I jumped at the sound of it and Aillard shifted ahead of me. He groaned while reaching for his phone and putting it to his ear, his voice was strangely firm when he said, "Speak."

I couldn't hear everything properly, but I knew it was a lady's voice that said something along the lines of, "When you're available, do look at the documents in your mail. The Suttons have made their move."

Aillard didn't say a reply and swiped to cancel the call. Throwing his phone aside, he wrapped his arms tighter around me and his voice was heavily hazed with sleep again. He mumbled, "Good morning, angel."

"You're not going to wake up?" I asked, urgently looking towards him when I overheard about the Suttons through the call.

"Weren't you confident when you contacted me?" Aillard breathed out a laugh, smoothing his fingers through my hair.

"What was that call about?" I checked.

"Lorelei tracked the group that the Suttons had an alliance with," Aillard replied simply and a sour, bitter feeling surfaced within me again. Even when we shared a relationship, I had forgotten that Lorelei remained his arranged fiancée. Suddenly, I felt powerless.

Perhaps sensing that I wasn't in the right mood, Aillard added, "Lorelei and I are merely business partners, we annulled the arrangement."

"You, what—" I gasped, unaware of the news at all.

"We decided to remain unambiguous for convenience's sake," Aillard explained, unhurriedly. "I planned to explain it to you the moment you're back."

"That's the thing you wanted to tell me?" I wondered, feeling that it wasn't as simple.

Aillard remained silent for a long time and finally exhaled, "For now, angel. That's all for now."

I always knew that there was more behind Aillard's silence. Growing up with him, I knew that he had a lot more that he couldn't speak easily because there's a knot in his heart that he couldn't untangle. Folding my arms around him, I snuggled closer and cradled his larger frame against my smaller one. I whispered, "Alright, that's all for now."

I only wished that he knew that I would be right beside him regardless of anything that had happened or would happen in the future. That's just how love works I supposed, you either love them forever or you never loved them to begin with — he happened to be the one that I desperately fall over and again.

Three years apart, now I'm finally home again.

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a/n.

i was hitting a block and sorry for the filler chapter. i will do better for the next chapter!