"Home."
The word was weighty, carrying with it ideas of safety, of comfort, of peace. The idea that she was in his home struck Aldous both as unbelievable and inevitable. In leaving the party, it was as though they had left the real world behind them: here, all was as it should be, Mr. Crouch and his beautiful wife. That she was not his wife but someone else's was an unnecessary, troublesome detail that nagged irritatingly at the back of his mind even though her closeness, the feeling of her breath upon his skin, was like an opiate, drowning his senses.
A hand on either of her arms, Aldous held the woman back so that his eyes might drink her in even as other organs screamed for a closeness they had never before known.
"How right you look here," he offered softly, filled with wonder. "As though you have been here always, and must always be."
The word was weighty, carrying with it ideas of safety, of comfort, of peace. The idea that she was in his home struck Aldous both as unbelievable and inevitable. In leaving the party, it was as though they had left the real world behind them: here, all was as it should be, Mr. Crouch and his beautiful wife. That she was not his wife but someone else's was an unnecessary, troublesome detail that nagged irritatingly at the back of his mind even though her closeness, the feeling of her breath upon his skin, was like an opiate, drowning his senses.
A hand on either of her arms, Aldous held the woman back so that his eyes might drink her in even as other organs screamed for a closeness they had never before known.
"How right you look here," he offered softly, filled with wonder. "As though you have been here always, and must always be."
![[Image: TrSGeWR.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/TrSGeWR.jpg)
— graphics by lady ❤ —