You’re almost done, there’s two sips left and then you can have another two cigarettes on the walk home and that’s comfort enough to make the rest fade. You turn and lean against the smooth walnut bar and raise the glass to your lips and it takes all of two seconds for your whole life to change forever.
It’s a gut punch:
his eyes on your eyes.
Dark. Intent.
He’s dressed in a navy blue uniform, one of many RAMC officers standing in the far corner. A matching beret sits on top of his neatly trimmed blonde hair. He’s tanned a sweet tawny brown and he’s watching you. Blood pounds up to pinch your cheeks and tingle in the very tips of your ears.
He’s been watching you, you can tell the instant your eyes meet.
He’s been watching you and his gaze doesn’t skitter, doesn’t waver, doesn’t flee. He’s been watching you and the way his gaze rakes over you, like two hot, smouldering coals, he sees you and he wants you.
Wants you.
Desire like the bite of a needle and the euphoria that unfurls through your veins after a hit, he’s all of these things and more. He’s a calm placid pool with untold fathoms stretching beneath. He’s commanding in a quiet way that makes you stand up straighter and take notice. He’s reined in and on parade and yet you catch tantalising glimpses through the veneer he’s painted. Glimpses of the heart of him. He’s soft jumpers the colour of marshmallow and biscuits with milk tea and that place called home you’ve never really known.
Across the room, he’s drenched in candlelight. He burns against the soot black window, the colour of the spirits cupped in his hand; the deep topaz gold of a whiskey neat. He has the same effect: heady, intoxicating. You watch as he licks his lips, drawing his tongue, deliberately slow, across the coral pink seam, and a shiver cascades down your spine: rippling. You watch him, utterly bewitched, as he tilts his head ever so slightly towards the door.
Inviting.
Read on AO3
Fanart by the awesome amazing @johix
thanks for commissioning me again!! 🙂
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 