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dolevalanA little one.
Title: Between Them
Fandom/original: Original (with a nod to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rougen's characters, because it happens)
Characters: The ubiquitous Nicolas Willoughby, again
Rating: PG
Word count: 186
A child was such a solid thing. It… he… could sit there between them, wanting to touch them both, to be so close. They could see his smile, hear his laugh. Could watch him grow, inch by inch, into the man they would both be so proud of.
Could have.
And as much as he could feel the shadowy silence, it wasn’t concrete, not the same way. It didn’t run from room to room, or crawl in bed with him at night. It simply was. You couldn’t run your fingers through absent curls; you couldn’t teach a hole to ride with you around the ranch’s perimeter.
Now there was nothing between them. Nothing but breath. Want. Loss. Nothing you could set store by, or paint a picture of. Nothing that would hold them.
He lay with someone else. With a second chance. While she slept, he traced absent patterns across her stomach, as if he could soothe the tiny life waiting there. And in the dark, he whispered apologies to his son, whose presence in the midnight stillness of the room was surprisingly solid after all.
Title: Between Them
Fandom/original: Original (with a nod to
rougen's characters, because it happens)Characters: The ubiquitous Nicolas Willoughby, again
Rating: PG
Word count: 186
A child was such a solid thing. It… he… could sit there between them, wanting to touch them both, to be so close. They could see his smile, hear his laugh. Could watch him grow, inch by inch, into the man they would both be so proud of.
Could have.
And as much as he could feel the shadowy silence, it wasn’t concrete, not the same way. It didn’t run from room to room, or crawl in bed with him at night. It simply was. You couldn’t run your fingers through absent curls; you couldn’t teach a hole to ride with you around the ranch’s perimeter.
Now there was nothing between them. Nothing but breath. Want. Loss. Nothing you could set store by, or paint a picture of. Nothing that would hold them.
He lay with someone else. With a second chance. While she slept, he traced absent patterns across her stomach, as if he could soothe the tiny life waiting there. And in the dark, he whispered apologies to his son, whose presence in the midnight stillness of the room was surprisingly solid after all.
