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The breeze kisses Lucy Gray and Coriolanus’s damp skin as they lay beneath it, their cheeks pressed against a soft blanket on a bed of grass. It tousles her hair, and cools his scalp. The sun's out and shining, but its beams aren’t hot today. Just gentle warmth that slowly dries them from the lake water. Today is Sunday, and tomorrow Coriolanus will return to the barracks, no longer in Lucy Gray’s embrace. It will be another week before he will return to her, and the Covey, and the lake. Their lake.
Coriolanus traces the petals of the pink rose Lucy Gray picked for him up and down the curvature of her waist. She reaches for his face and softly cups his cheek. “M’gonna miss you,” she says.
“I’ll miss you too. I always do.”
“I worry about you, Coriolanus. I know you get lonely there.”
“I’ll be fine, darling. I have Sejanus and our roommates,” he circles the petals in one spot on her hip. “I worry about you too.”
“You don’t have to,” says Lucy Gray. “I’ll have the Covey, and the meadow always calms me down.”
“I know, but I’m not convinced.” He leans in and kisses her, his lips soft, and warm, and a little salty with sweat. The birds sing their tunes above them, and Lucy Gray loses herself in the moment, smiling into the kiss. She is no longer thinking about their separation. Coriolanus sets the rose down on the grass behind Lucy Gray so as to not poke her with its thorns, and wraps his arm around her waist, pulling their bodies together.
His skin feels like velvet, but there is also a firmness to him from all of his physical training. He feels secure and strong, but still so supple. Coriolanus moves his kisses to Lucy Gray’s neck, overwhelming her with a rainbow of sensation. She opens her mouth and releases a sigh before he moves his lips back to hers, swallowing her soft moan.
Lucy Gray breaks their kiss in favor of staring into his blue eyes again. They’re blue like the lake, or maybe the ocean. She once got to see the ocean as a little girl before she was locked away in District 12. The memory is so distant now- her being small and free, and in her father’s arms while she giggled at the squawking seagulls. But she remembers very clearly just how blue the waters were. Coriolanus’s eyes have a shimmer to them too. Especially at sunset when the world slowly grows dark. They look as if they hold every star in the sky.
Coriolanus is equally obsessed with their eye gazing. He thinks her warm, brown eyes to be the most beautiful pair he’s ever seen. They’re brown like the soft soil of the Grandma’am’s rose garden back home. He remembers the smell of it. Earthy and rich. Coriolanus used to dislike the smell, instead preferring the fresh, light smell of roses. But he’s gained a certain fondness for the earthy scent as he’s spent more time in the wilderness with Lucy Gray and The Covey. Only, Lucy Gray’s eyes don’t root roses, but they’ve grown a garden of things within Coriolanus that he once thought couldn’t exist. Safety. Comfort. Love. Curiosity. A willingness to grow. She is his earth, and he is her rose.
It was love at first sight with them. The moment Coriolanus met Lucy Gray’s eyes at the train station, he was gone. It was the same for her. And somehow, despite all odds, they’re now free to be together. As free as they can be. And from now on and forever they’ll be each other’s valentines .
Still tangled in embrace, Coriolanus kisses Lucy Gray’s nose. “I love you,” he says.
“I love you too, gorgeous,” she replies.
His cheeks flush like they always do when she calls him that, and he beams. His smile is as warm as the sun above them, and Lucy Gray can’t help but smile back.
Lucy Gray has been full of fear every single day since the area. Always easy to fright, always waking up from terrible nightmares. The Covey commonly wakes to Lucy Gray’s screams, but Barb Azure and Maude Ivory are there to hold her when Coriolanus isn’t.
But he always manages to lift her fear from her faster than anyone else. Maybe it’s because he is the one who saved her. He was there with her after all- as there with her as he could have been. He kills her fear like a snake does an unlucky mouse. Wrapping around it and squeezing it to death, leaving her calm and at peace in his arms. A kind of peace she hasn’t felt since her mama tucked her in and sang her bedtime songs when she was a little girl. And Lucy Gray does the same for him.
The truth is, they don’t know what they’re going to do. They’re both unsure of their futures. But as they lay wrapped in each other’s arms in the safe privacy of their lake, they know that as long as they have each other and their families they’ll be okay.
~*~