𝐖𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐍. ˢᵗᵉᵛᵉ ʰᵃʳʳⁱⁿᵍᵗᵒⁿ ¹

039

038. 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆, 𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗹𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙥𝙞𝙙𝙡𝙮
𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂. 

𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐈 𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔,
and it suddenly occurred to me how beautiful your smile was. I heard music in your laughter, I saw poetry in your words. You asked me why I had that look on my face, as though a shadow had fallen across it's sun-drenched landscape, heavy with premonition, dark with revelation. The second I tried to tell myself I wasn't in love was the moment I realized I was.

LANG LEAV

𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐖𝐎𝐊𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆, the sun was spilling through his eggshell curtains. The beams of unusual sunlight streamed past the fleece of them, and casted the room in a blissful morning glow that she could see even behind her closed eyes. Her eyelids, usually tinted with a dark color because of the constant gloom in every part of Hawkins, now shielded her morning vision from the harsh sun— the sun that was so unusual for such a gloomy town. When her brain first awoke and she took in the surprising bright color of her closed eyelids, her eyes formed into slits before slowly fluttering open.

Slowly, her eyes opened in a tired, aching way— and the very first thing she saw when they opened was Steve. Through her squinted eyes and foggy eyesight from after-sleep haze, the first thing she noticed was Steve's face, still directed to the ceiling but slightly turned to face the window now, just the same as when he'd fallen asleep. His arm wasn't around her back anymore— because Lori was a mover in her sleep— so it lay there between both of their bodies, the other one folded up to rest on the pillow next to his head. She was on her side, she'd woken up like that, facing him, her head a little lower on the adjacent pillow.

Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him, and she couldn't help but stare— suddenly struck by something. Stared at the side of his face, illuminated in the sun, right there beside hers. She stared at his hair, the way the light bounced off the strands of it and curled into the tiniest swirls at his ears. And then she trailed her eyes down to his neck, and then his shoulders— wondering why there was so much skin exposed. And then she realized, with a tiny gasp, that he had no shirt on.

She nearly sat right up in the bed, heart immediately jumping into a race because, for a second, she'd forgotten how the night ended. Sometimes waking up does that to you— the morning haze can make you forget things in your first waking moments. And Lori was a sucker for morning haze. Lifting her head from the pillow, she looked to his side of the room, where his shirt lay on the ground— seeming like it had been thrown in the night. And still, the situation not catching up to her, she inhaled sharply at the thought of them last night— was she forgetting something? His shirt was on the floor.

And then it clicked in her brain. She let out a breath of refreshed air and slowly placed her head back down on the pillow— finally remembering exactly what happened the night before. She'd fallen asleep in his arms, no sex, and he must've taken his shirt off sometime in the night from being too warm. Her breathing returned to its normal rhythm when it set in and she realized they actually did not have sex— even though it looked that way and seemed that way at first. But her heart did not return to its normal beating because she realized, with delicious nervousness that he was still very much shirtless even so, right there next to her. His bare bicep just an inch from her own.

She couldn't help but stare at his chest, noticing the way the light danced off his bare skin and contoured every curve. The way it tiptoed down his stomach, all the way to where the blankets cut off the rest— right at the hem of his pyjama pants. Sweet honey sun rays painted beautifully on his skin, she stared at the crystallines pinned on the valley of his chest and the dawn slipping to the faint crimson of his cheeks. She revelated in his silken bare shoulders lying underneath the sun, and the satin kiss of his sheets on her body— clinging to their bones. The gleam of lost incandescence from the night before lingered in the air, the air adorned with the tiniest crystal particles that floated around them and bathed every inch of his face in glorious tranquility, streaming in lines from the curtains.