and he washed me ashore
chapter 1 : turmoils at sea
Zain is temptation. His face is tainted with luxury and his body twisted full of desire. As she sees him now on the bed, feeling like seas anticipating a fierce crash against a steep precipice — she wants to let herself go, let herself lose mind, loose from the daily necessities of life, loose like languorous waves.
Zain is colored warm with affection, yet his shadow casts blue stains on her.
pairing : alisha / zain
word count : 1582
ao3: chap 1
The waves crash on the damp sand and she hears their sound like cries of help at sea. The sky casts cold, gray hues on the room’s walls, like a transparent mirror to her soul, marking her silhouette with dull ink. It’s morning, it’s quiet, mostly lonely. And he’s there.
Zain’s body lies heavy on the messy bed. His face half buried in the comfort of the white pillows, he looks serene. Alisha always thought he looked particularly handsome, but seeing him like this — eyes closed, bare back exposed to the world (her wandering eyes) — was quite different. A luscious scenery, a temptatious one. The embodiment of a tempered luxury.
Sat on the edge of the bed, half secured by the sturdy frame, half exposed to the danger of a fall, she gazes at him, almost in a voyeuristic fashion, not daring enough, yet still adventurous. Her back to him, her head turned, she relinquishes herself in the sight of him.
“Zain”, she mouthed, as if to embed the feel of his name into her muscle memory. One thing she truly feared was Zain suddenly disappearing, slipping away from her grasp, leaving her aghast and appalled. Because she knew that he was like those footsteps left on a sandy beach : gone, with one swift wave washing ashore. As simple as that.
Good things never come full. Zain is one of those things. He was in the range of her grasp, in the field of her vision, present, at her reach — yet, the wall between him and her wasn’t tangible like he was. Even if she let her fingers wander along his limbs until she knew every nook and cranny of his anatomy, scoured his body for hours on end, memorized his each and every beauty marks and scars, learned the way his skin curled like lazy waves at the connection of limbs – it did not matter. In the end, it truly did not matter. He wasn’t hers to keep. It wasn’t right, she knew it.
Zain is colored warm with affection, yet his shadow casts blue stains on her.
She lets out an audible sigh, bringing her hands to her head, firmly grasping her hair. It seemed like everything she did aggravated her anxious tendencies.
Rustling sheets. “Already up…?” Calls Zain’s raspy, morning voice. She turns around, eyes alarmed, before giving him a slight, timid smile, nodding. His eyes are foggy with sleepiness, matching the cloudy scenery on the cold hotel windows. “Well, doesn’t surprise me,” he follows breathily, letting out a grave moan as he fully stretches his frame, taking advantage of the king-sized bed, “since you have the spirit of an eighty year old grandma, right ?”. Voice tinted with amusement, his face twists with a playful smirk. She lets out a laugh. Recalls their first solitary sailing on the yacht. His dusky complexion by the water. Alone together.
“Don’t worry, it’s not four thirty in the morning this time.” She interjects, mirroring his playful attitude. He chuckles faintly, teeth barely showing, before readjusting himself on the mattress, exposing his bare chest to the wan window light. His chest rises and heaves along the rhythm of his laggard breathing, and like waves at sea, its movements lull her into a tranquil drowsiness, heart and mind abandoning themselves to the heavy water currents. He looks dreamlike, as if an illusion. False. “If you don’t mind me,” he says suddenly, clearing up his throat, “I’m going to lay there for a little more.” Closing his eyes, he finished with a teasing stance, “you can rest next to me if you want a bit more fun and action in your grandma life, though.”
Taken aback, yet not totally surprised by his answer, she laughs out loud, the playfulness ringing in her ears, before picking up a lone pillow on the floor and throwing it at his face. “Stop it with the grandma references!” Her voice calls, a large smile tearing her cheeks apart.
“Hey! You didn’t have to hit me full force, you know!” He immediately answers, as if suddenly woken up from his drowsiness, practically jumping on his feet. “Although I will say, I didn’t know grandma’s had that much power in them.” And it’s the flirtatious smirk.
“Oh shut up.” She exhales, giving up, still beaming. Her eyes as full as her heart.
“What! It was you that started the grandma joke! I can’t help but try to live up to the greatness of it by constantly paying it homage!” He laughs, amused, now sitting cross legged at the edge of the bed, where she rests. He’s painfully close. She wants to abolish that distance. “Now come,” he suddenly says, holding his hand out to her, “Join me in the comfort of the morning bed.”
Zain is temptation. His face is tainted with luxury and his body twisted full of desire. And as Alisha sees him now on the bed, sees him naked with nothing but desire (love ?), as she feels like seas anticipating a fierce crash against a steep precipice — she wants to let herself go, let herself lose mind, loose from the daily necessities of life, loose like languorous waves. She wants to, she craves so, so she reaches, but.
Zain’s phone buzzes on the side table. Like burdened by the heaviness of an appalling sentence, laden with the anxieties of terrible news, its vibrations send electric shots in their bodies, like a bullet to their guts, a tangible reminder of reality.
A violent tide. Zain grunts, annoyed, letting his hand fall to his side. “Who is it.” He hisses, the words barely making it past the narrow grid of his clenched teeth. Movements irate, he angrily picks up the phone, before rolling his eyes at the content of the screen. Alisha feels her throat tightening. It might be her. “Just give me a second.” He the declared, standing up to answer the call. Leaving her alone, vulnerable to the overwhelming blue cast by the window.
Alisha sighs. Zain, while being a number of things, remains a void. Leaving hurriedly, hastily saying goodbye in the middle of a call, suddenly needing to leave, swiftly avoiding questions and answers. Zain remained a distant, fuzzy silhouette on a foggy sea. Unreachable, yet in the field of vision. Visible, yet unable to discern its true nature. While this blurriness made it possible for her to continue living in this fantasy, it also made everything very unstable, very anxiety-inducing. Like she was running after a false premise. A dangerous trap.
Suddenly restless, she stands up. She must do something, occupy her empty hands dangling along her sides. Like did hers.
She starts picking up the clothes that were left scattered on the floor last night, gathering them up in the crook of her arm, before heedlessly folding them. She throws those decorative pillows back into the center of the bed, strewing some of them on the armchairs next to her. And in the middle of her haste, she notices.
On the rumpled bed can still be discerned their two figures, bodies previously pressed against each other, as if grasping for something vital, as if gasping for air while abandoned at sea. Like trying to breathe underwater. Alisha stares and stares at the disheveled bed, perhaps to try and make a copy of it in her memory. Standing foolishly in the middle of the room, body upright next to the laid-out bed, she stares and stares, stares and stares, and stares again, again and again, because there, in the languish waves formed by the ivory sheets, can be found the tangible proof of their existence. A palpable testimony of their love, the attestation of their intimate confessions, the clue leading to their downfall. Because with discovery comes retaliation, for their actions are nothing short of heinous. The divulgation of their sin. Their shameful, shameful adultery.
But Alisha doesn’t want this to stop. She doesn’t want to let go of Zain, even though she keeps pushing him away. She doesn’t want him to cease looking at her, with those sharp, resolute eyes that burn something in her, even though she keeps turning her back at him, closing her eyes when he stares at her. She doesn’t want the attention, the affection, the love to end. She doesn’t want him gone. To be left to herself, again, stuck in the loneliness of her apartment, and its memory-filled walls. Alisha doesn’t want to make a choice. She doesn’t want to make the choice of effort. The choice of life. The choice to bear her own company, and accept who she was. Who she is, but also who she could be.
So she tidies up the bed. Throws the sheets in opposite directions, fixes the pillows stained with Zain’s perfume. She cleans their mess, clears the evidences of their relationship, like a hasty criminal on a sloppy crime scene. And her chest heaves and she is unable to breathe, unable to tame it all, because they are both gone, both forbidden to exist, the shells of their bodies on the once warm fabric no more. But she doesn’t stop, doesn’t complain, simply moves on, simply runs away with Zain. And once he comes back from his not so mysterious call, once he takes her in his embrace and tightly wraps his arms around her, leaving her little to no room to breathe, Alisha will let herself go, let herself indulge in her fantasy. Just once more. Just this time.
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