E-mail: angelchildr@freaky.nu
Rating: PG
Summary: The other side of words.
Series: "An Affair of Words" - Part 2
Distribution: http://penned-insanity.freaky.nu/ (My site) or ask.

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We had been sitting in the library for close to an hour. The fire behind the grate warmed the room and gave off a soft crackling glow that forced its way into the corners where the lamps didn't reach.

On this night, we both read, each in our own seat, and other than the occasional page turning and the rhythm of our breath, the fire was the only sound in the room.

I finished a chapter and glanced across the room to where he sat. His dark eyes were fixed on me, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. I raised my eyebrows in question, not wanting to be the one to break the silence of the room. He was the one with the mastery over words, and in these moments I felt ill-equipped to use them. I sat and waited for his voice.

"I've been watching you read for the past quarter-hour," he finally said, just as I returned my eyes to the pages. I raised them again to find his gaze still upon me. "The words make you even more beautiful than you already are."

I felt my face flush at this. While each of us knew the love of the other, we seldom voiced it. It remained an unspoken understanding between us. When we did talk of it, we often surprised and almost frightened ourselves with the depth of our feeling.

He acknowledged my blush with another smile, this one tender, and continued to speak.

"When you read, on evenings like these, I watch you tuck yourself up into that corner of the sofa like a child, waiting to be told tales of wild adventure. That lamp over your left shoulder always casts a light onto your hair that turns it to glowing metal. Gold, silver, copper, bronze. I feel that if I were to reach over and touch you that I would be burned by that molten fire.

"Your eyes darken when you read, much like they do when I make love to you, and sometimes I grow jealous of the author that makes you feel so deeply. I can tell if you particularly enjoy a story. I know because a faint flush rises to the tops of your cheeks, and even your ears grow pink, not unlike they are now.

"Most of the time, you are drawn so far into the story that you don't even realize I am watching you. I've wondered before if I should tell you, but I didn't want to distract you from the words. Tonight, though, you are even more beautiful that usual; I couldn't stop watching you, and I couldn't help but tell you..."

His voice drifted off and our silence returned. I didn't know what to say to him in response. Anything I thought of seemed inadequate after such beautiful speech.

"You should write that down," I finally managed in a whisper.

"I have," he responded with a wry chuckle. "Many times over. Pages and pages on your beauty that I'm far too embarrassed to show you. They flow like hopeless children's rhymes, and when I read them I find them laughable. For no matter how true they are as I write them, the words are never enough to show how I feel. There is only one way I know how to do that."

"Show me then?" I requested, with a soft smile of my own.

He was right. No matter how beautiful, the words alone are never enough.

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