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Conte and Kat had just put Cedric to bed. They knew he'd stay up reading again but at that point they'd given up on trying to make him understand the harm of it (Kat kept reminding Conte they weren't the right people to judge him on the subject, Conte realized there really was no joy or magic comparable to a midnight novel). They knew they couldn't do anything about it other than the usual reminders and then a check-up on the situation, if they managed to wake up during the night and then actually had the strength to get up from the other's side. They also knew full well the boy could've just put everything in place and blown out his candle right before they'd enter the room.
Of course! Cedric had to inherit his father's ears and hear every step, every move! Yet, to his misfortune, Conte possessed more than just two good ears and a good heart; his nose was also good enough to tell the difference between a normal room and one where the tiniest bit of fresh candle smoke still lingered in the air. Kat probably never had a working nose instead.
Ultimately they couldn't do much about it... Ultimately the pride Conte felt for his son recognized no bounds and he was happy for even those small wins against him… Yes, the two could only ever be proud.
Now they were laying in their soft, soft nest of a bed, off-white bed curtains between them and the world, blankets crushed by their summed loving weight.
Conte had been staring at Kat for a while, with his usual smile. He was laying on his side, with his maroon clawed hands steady and comfortable under the always rosy cheeks, the granite freckles. Kat knew it before she even turned to look at him. He just always did that, and it was disarming. Sometimes knee buckling.
She lay there, hands on her chest like a mummy forever at peace, but her mind was the furthest thing from peaceful, rattling and battling as if her brain had been trapped in a barrel and kicked down an endless mountain. One of her fingers had started tapping over and over in the meantime, once for every barrel bounce, maybe twice...
And Conte still smiled.
Mh…
...Maybe thrice.
She was blooming into the middle of her thirties, Conte said, brighter the more her smile lines deepened. If it made him so happy, Kat thought, she might've as well dug them herself with a dagger, but Conte and Cedric's jokes were a fast enough alternative too. She'd been Conte's beau for a decade, his devoted admirer for... maybe since the day they'd met, his spouse from the garden's den for just a bit over two years.
A pair of years...
A pair of years...
Kat kept thinking, even while helping tired Conte undress when they got to their bedroom.
And six years since—
It was their sacred, drowsy ritual. However it appeared that all of Conte's drowsiness had washed far away, to some beach they hadn't a map for.
How was he suddenly so awake?
She feared if she turned to him then she'd realize he wasn't even blinking the whole time, because that was how much he loved her. Not like she would've been scared of it, oh no, she just feared his eyes could get too dry, start to pain him, and her love deserved only the best, no pain, no pain…
With a final tap Kat rolled up closer to him. After a bit of surprise and wonder he too moved again and kissed his way onto the warm crook of her neck, right where he could hear her heartbeat the clearest and loudest. He'd given her the same courtesy with her clothes too, and he'd been smiling like a child since.
He passed his gentle hand over her chest, over its white curls and the little bumps of the scar right above her heart. “C O N T E” it read. He'd written it himself one night, with sharp doting fingers, lulled by the sea when they were both too lost in each other. To his embarrassment it never went away: that white-haired fiend made sure to pick at it just the right amount and to then put it on display.
Six years since then…
He only thought of those sparkling nights, the moonlight swimming, not so much about the crucial moment that kept troubling the other.
They'd come so far, since then. For just a second he got plunged downwards by cold, inhabitable memories, and he wondered how they could've ever been possible. How! To live starving, hollower than hollow, when his silent procession had been blessed with an impossible, feeble first drumbeat – a miracle! – and then another drum, louder and in pieces: ever since then he'd spent his days never losing track of either of them, because they were his deliverance!
His spouse moved just a little to kiss the top of his head. He basked in the touch and the creaks of the bed.
Yes…
…Deliverance.
His lonely procession had turned symphonic parade. Merry and hearty. One of a kind. His and his only. He would've enclosed it in a perfect crystal dome, or perhaps not even allowed it to be viewed from the other side, hid it completely from the world, to keep to himself and preserve. And love. And nurture. Kat would've never minded.
He noticed her heart was racing just a bit more than what he was used to, one of the parade leaders stumbling over their own feet. She was still pondering those times: he'd come so far, yes, but had she done enough? To change? To not fall for false spirals and codes made up on the spot? Conte's embrace was a blaze, Kat's body a coal pile.
She pulled him even closer to herself. In the bed's off-white curtains it really was all fine.
“Conte?” she spoke after taking a long unsteady breath.
Conte nuzzled his head against her chest and throat, his hair looking more and more like the not-so-distant cousin of a pink fluffy cloud, and one of his hands traced faint circles on her back.
“Conteee…” soft, she tried again, half-mumbling and half-humming.
“Mmm…?”
“Would you…” she started, then came another pause.
“Yes,” he replied, “my love?”
“I’d like to have more children with you.”
The circles stopped.
“…Would you?”
Conte froze.
No, wait.
No, Conte started burning even more! “What!” He jumped up sitting immediately. “WHAT!” He pounced back in front of her.
Kat sat up against the bed frame. Conte was pinker than the color pink, dappled with so many freckles everywhere and mere inches from her face.
He smiled at her madly. “WHAT!!!” He grinned, eyes twinkling. What a sight to die for.
His second burst of energy was startling but, even if she was exhausted, Kat couldn't help finding it was contagious as well. She just grinned like a madman too and dove head first into his frenzy, both stealing and mingling and then gifting back kisses and air and sleep and sweet everythings ten folds to each other.
In the night reigned only one cry: "Oh, burn, my coal fire!!"