It's the longest he's ever held her since the change, save for at the end of the night when they fall into torpor together and often reach for each other there right before going unerringly still. She isn't about to take it for granted, either, knowing that neither of them will be likely to get tired or need to change positions out of a sudden discomfort the way a human body might after a time. Neither of them generates any natural warmth, but there is something that permeates from him and into her, only to be circulated back into him again, deeper than skin's heat could ever penetrate.
By the time he begins to speak again, she doesn't move, doesn't attempt to respond while he's feeling through his response; only after he concludes does she finally let her head tip backward, shifting across his shoulder until she can regard him more directly. One of her arms is pinned in between her side and his frame, but the other hand she keeps resting against his chest, fingertips lingering weights rather than fiddling out of unconscious habit or a need to satisfy tactile urges.
"Hardness and strength can be independent of one another," she murmurs. "Not possessing the former doesn't mean you have lost the latter, by any means. It simply means you're going to derive said strength from different places than you might have reached for in the past."
She sits up then, just enough to be able to look at him straight-on, a quiet insistence in her words when she lets herself continue.
"The door is open now, and look at what's become of it. Look at us." The hand at his chest rises to his face, thumb sweeping the line of his jaw. "And yes, the emotion of it can be complicated, and disorderly, and very, very human," and a small chuckle escapes her then, soft and brief, "but it does not mean you are weakened. It means that this piece of you has been awakened. Think of it as a limb long-deadened that has since rediscovered feeling. Is not the whole of you stronger with it, rather than cut off from being able to possess it at all? There is power in full awareness of one's self, and I swear to you that I can see it in you now, even as you may struggle to parse through your feelings."
no subject
By the time he begins to speak again, she doesn't move, doesn't attempt to respond while he's feeling through his response; only after he concludes does she finally let her head tip backward, shifting across his shoulder until she can regard him more directly. One of her arms is pinned in between her side and his frame, but the other hand she keeps resting against his chest, fingertips lingering weights rather than fiddling out of unconscious habit or a need to satisfy tactile urges.
"Hardness and strength can be independent of one another," she murmurs. "Not possessing the former doesn't mean you have lost the latter, by any means. It simply means you're going to derive said strength from different places than you might have reached for in the past."
She sits up then, just enough to be able to look at him straight-on, a quiet insistence in her words when she lets herself continue.
"The door is open now, and look at what's become of it. Look at us." The hand at his chest rises to his face, thumb sweeping the line of his jaw. "And yes, the emotion of it can be complicated, and disorderly, and very, very human," and a small chuckle escapes her then, soft and brief, "but it does not mean you are weakened. It means that this piece of you has been awakened. Think of it as a limb long-deadened that has since rediscovered feeling. Is not the whole of you stronger with it, rather than cut off from being able to possess it at all? There is power in full awareness of one's self, and I swear to you that I can see it in you now, even as you may struggle to parse through your feelings."