( X'D I'M DYING )
Zeke's cheeks flamed red, his eyes wide. Every muscle in his body tensed as her lips met his, and his heart stopped altogether. He didn't move. He didn't think. He didn't breath. It was as if the floor swayed beneath him now, as if the whole world around him spun– but he remained frozen in place. Frozen was the wrong word. He was too warm to be frozen.
This should not have been. A man like himself should never feel this way. A man like him should never feel. This is precisely the sort of feeling he had been fleeing from! Precisely the sort of vulnerability– the sort of sentiment– he had been trying to outrun. And oh, how vulnerable it made him. His knees were weak, like his legs might just give out beneath him. But they didn't.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and there it came back, his heartbeat. A rapid thump-thump-thump that reminded him he was not dead. Not even close. In fact, he was very much alive. More alive than he had been in a very long time.
He relaxed a little, wrapping an arm around her middle if he dared. He kissed her in return now– voluntarily, this time. His heart shuddered, as did his entire body, and for the first time, he wondered if this feeling that he'd been running from was one that he should've been running to all along. And if it wasn't, then he needed to flee all the more, because it had the power to destroy him.
