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He could almost feel it–there!—the matter of sensing the blood running beneath one’s skin was never so frustrating for him. He tightened his grip around her wrist, almost in anger, almost desperately.
She didn’t flinch from his bruising grasp. Her fingers splayed on his scarred chest, looking for the same thing as him. The same sensation of merely existing in this plain of consciousness, in this world they share together, albeit as different people. But if they were two people before, now they weren’t anymore.
She couldn’t find what she was looking for, his heartbeat.
He couldn’t feel her warmth through the dull feeling of numbness on his fingertips.
(At one point, after the brief moment passed … he was almost certain his fingertips were getting warmer ever so slightly)
She brushed her lips against his, but he didn’t reciprocate right away like he usually did.
He knew that the taste of death was unappealing; otherwise he would let the sweetness of her invading the bitter bile rising in his throat, melting his senses and making him whole.
Their dance was not the same anymore. They could never recreate the feeling, the same degree of intoxication. Not when his heart was virtually rotten. Not when her breath felt like a void on his skin.
But the unshed tears remained. She challenged the emptiness in him with the hard stare of her glazing eyes. Maybe it was the one certainty that they were waiting for since the moment they consummated their lust and desire for each other.
Together had always been impossible.
Now, the looming fear had disappeared and replaced by a calm assurance.
He survived the real death, after all. He wouldn’t be going anywhere else.
For now.
As he finally opened his cold mouth to her invading tongue, he heard a surprised groan coming from the back of her throat.
“Does death really taste like Strawberry-flavoured Pop Rocks?”
He suppressed a smirk. “It was an experiment.”
Her delightful laugh warmed him from the inside like an embrace that he couldn’t feel.