Not One For Weddings Ch. 06

Chris

It was dark, and I couldn't breath. I wanted to scream, to scream so loud it would be heard throughout the city, the country, the world. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I felt a crushing pressure on my chest, squeezing my lungs and tightening my throat shut. My mouth was stretched wide, trying to scream for someone, for anyone, but not a breath could escape me. The shouting in my head was deafening, why couldn't I let it out? My arms were heavy, so heavy, I couldn't even move my fingers. My body felt like lead, and I couldn't breath, and I couldn't scream for help. My corpse was a prison, a dead weight, while my mind was alive and racing. It was dark, darker than black - I was surrounded by nothingness, without light or feeling or sound. Crushing, gruelling, ethereal nothing that ground me into sand and sewed my throat shut. My mind screamed, but my tongue was limp, my mouth dry, my lips unable to form my words. It was too torturous for life, but it couldn't be death. The nothingness gripped me, tightened around me, and I tried to scream, and I couldn't breathe--

And I woke up gasping, but breathing. My heart was thumping in my chest, but at least I could feel it. I didn't scream, but I knew I could. It was dark, but the moonlight shone in through the window. I sat straight up, panting, coming to terms that it was only a dream and that nothing had actually happened.

"Chris?"

Julian. His muffled voice hit my ears in a wave of relief so sweet it made me fall back into bed beside him. He threw his arms over me as he felt my body against him.

"Are you okay," his raspy, sleeping voice asked.

"I'm okay, Jules," I sighed. "Go back to sleep."

"Okay." He brushed his lips over my ear mindlessly, and was asleep in half a second.

Julian. Julian. Julian. I repeated his name in my head over and over again, his presence alone holding me to reality. The weight of his arm over my shoulder, of his leg over mine, grounded me to the present.

Already, the beating of my heart was normalizing. I wasn't petrified in fear with him holding me. I could breathe, I could see clearly around me. I squeezed his hand as if to prove he was real, that I was. He made me feel protected and safe.

Safe. I was safe with him. He was my anchor, my saving grace.

I turned myself around so I could face him. This man is beautiful. Even in sleep, his inner beauty radiated out of him, an unpenetrable force. His unconscious features were perfect, his hair a mess of curls that I always had to be touching. I kissed his slightly parted lips, unresponsive to mine for the first time, but no less yielding. I brought a hand to his stubbly cheek and stared at him for a time without measure. His breathing was deep and even. There was no doubt that he was dead to the world.

I spoke the words into the deaf night that had been gnawing at me for days. The words that twirled around my soul and plucked tauntingly at my heart. Words that didn't make sense, not so soon and so arduous, but were the one truth of the universe. They stole out between my lips in a whisper, evanescent and fleeting, without a trace that they'd ever been there at all. They fell onto sleeping ears, but were no less real.

"I love you, Julian."