Smoke of Sighs

Bonus Chapter - "Hallelujah"

A/N: Was inspired by the Jeff Buckley version of the song, obviously. All the feels. I felt like writing something passionate but raw, like that gut-punching feeling of emotion, you know? I'd recommend listening to the song first, with your eyes closed, to get into the mood of this one. xoxo Ami

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"Hallelujah"

a Smoke of Sighs bonus chapter
by Ami

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KAYDEN

Happiness is a strange feeling.

I don't know if I was ever truly happy, before she and I became this real, living, beating thing.

I do know that nothing ever used to feel like this. This strange fucking feeling, of being soft inside, of letting her hands reach in, all the way in, deep. So deep she could twist, and yank, tear the softness inside to pieces. But she doesn't. Her fingers are gentle.

They say old habits never really die. I know it's true. I wish I could bury it all beneath the ground, far, far fucking down, but it doesn't work like that, I guess. Happiness is a strange feeling, and I don't trust it.

Every single fucking morning, I wake up, and her hair tickles my chin, warm skin and warm breath tucked close, the smell of her, the feel of her. And the air is quiet, and still. No chaos, no carnage.

Just her and me, wrapped up in our refuge of arms and legs.

She smiles, and shreds of brightness tangle and squirm in my stomach.

She laughs, and it hits me in the ribs, joy and terror all rolled into one.

The sugar-sweet moments are the ones that hurt the most. They hurt like hell. When she scrunches up her nose at me, swoops in for a sloppy, giggly kiss, a smear of cake batter slashed along her cheek. Chocolate cake, my favourite, for my thirtieth birthday. (Are people supposed to have their shit figured out by the time they hit three decades? Because I don't.) When she gets grumpy and cuddly on her period, and when she blasts old music and drags me to dance with her in the middle of the living room, and when she falls asleep against my chest with me still inside her.

I don't know how to tell her, that I'm absolutely fucking terrified. That this, this whole, perfect thing, feels fragile in my coarse hands. I could press too hard, or the universe could strike it violently from my grasp, or she could pry my fingers apart, let it splinter to the ground.

When she crushes close, squeezes her cheek against me so my aching heart thuds into her skin, it isn't calm, or easy. Happiness isn't a flood of ease, it's a roaring, clenching feeling. Fierce, so fucking fierce sometimes it knocks me to the ground.

I don't know how to tell her, how to explain.

Communication. Openness. Honesty. Trust.

New skills, unfamiliar. I've been trying, really. I tell her when it's been an excruciatingly long day, when the suddenness of an old memory makes my throat crawl with a craving for liquor.

But this feeling, this heaviness, as if happiness is some kind of burden, is irrational. I'm not sure that she'd understand it.