Title: Waiting Chapter: N/A Genre: One-shot Rating: somewhere between PG-13 and R, sex is mentioned, but not blatant Warnings: Mild, mild, sex. No details. Sap. Slash.

They waited for each other, after whispering promises of always and forever into their skin. Leaving paths of love confessions into pale skin. The night sky never meant the same thing again, to either of them. They waited in the night for their troubles to end, for them to be able to walk arm in arm, and watch the pale moon rise, and the bright sun set.

They waited, watching the rain fall through separate windows, watched lovers come and go. They'd never promised to be faithful, just that they'd be there together when the time came.

His send off was a quiet affair, family that hugged and cried as he went off to war. His lover pressed a gentle kiss on his skin, and warned him not to change.

His return was an even quieter affair, in the darkness of night, while he scowled and glared at those who came close to him.

"He just came back from the war," they whispered to explain the way that his eyes always stared at the table, and how he never looked anybody in the eye.

"He's killed people," they told each other in private when he went outside to get away from the quiet stares at the rumors.

"He's been without love," his lover told himself as he went along his way, trying to forget love confessions burned into his skin by the soft breath of a young man about to leave.

A month passed, and soon he began to look about, realize that he couldn't just stare at the table. He took to carpentry, no harm there. It was only bad luck and coincidence that a woman in the town used a table leg from his shop to kill an attacker.

He never did carpentry again.

Everything he chose, he saw death in, covering his hands like the crimson blood of the many that had died so he could live. Food could be poisoned, wheels could run a child over, the trees that fell in the forest would be used to create the handles for arrows and axes. His lover still never came.

Sometimes, before the death marred his eyesite, he would see his beloved on the streets or at his small store that sold children's toys.

He didn't mean to watch, in those small glances, for the small smile that he'd once been privy to.

His lover caught his eye, one day, when he came back from speaking with some of the ladies that they knew. Slowly, the toy that he'd been working on was set onto the cabinet. The soldier moved quickly, afraid and ashamed that he couldn't get his mind off of a gentle eyed young man that had made it clear that they had given up on each other.

They greated each other softly, unsure if they wanted to stare at each other, at the changes. The soft, smiling curves of his lover that hadn't changed, except for the small lines of worry that gathered at the corners of his eyes. The hard lines of trouble and hard times that ran rampant through his face.

Softly, feather-light a hand fell to rest on the ragged face, a soft smile began and tears ran down their faces in warm lines. The sign at the front of the small toy shop was turned from "Open" to "Closed."

They cried together, they laughed together.

When night came, he was afraid of the touch of his lover. Afraid that the gentleness of someone never made to kill would kill him. There was nothing, just a small kiss on his lips, and a gentle smile pressed against his skin, like the petals of a rose, so gentle that it should have been missed.