UNDRESS. ❪ Steve Rogers ❫ ✓

nine

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She allowed him to stay in her home because she enjoyed his company. He had many homes in the past before, but he realized - after more time spent with her - that she was his home and he had been waiting his whole life for her.

They grew close with time, and while time was a fleeting thing no one could really grasp with their hands - no matter how big or small - he felt attracted to her like an insect to a bright light.

While Florence didn't dislike love, she found it odd. Love was easily mixed up with infatuation and murder. She loved her father but seeing as how he died when she didn't want him to - no matter how unreasonable that was - she questioned love. She questioned it the same way her mother did since Florence's mother was the product of a man forcing himself onto her grandmother.

Once she learned about Selkies, she brushed up on their customs, but she didn't know much since they mainly lived in the sea and rarely interacted with humans.

Steve was a different story, she learned. He yearned for the land when he was younger after his mother died due to fishermen hunting near for meat. The ocean brought bad memories, but it didn't mean he hated it. It was his birthplace, after all.

Florence was never a freak, even with the Witch blood in her veins, because the world was changing and humans had to get used to what they thought to be myths and fantasies, but she never felt welcomed in her tiny town that turned larger each year. Her mother had her on a tight leash because she was afraid of what laid in the shadows in forms of drunk men and their disgusting urges to grab the nearest pretty woman.

Oh, but Florence liked Steve. He was kind and warm, and she had never met a man like him before because she never cared about men or women. She hoped he would stay, but she was afraid he would leave her too, just as everyone else she loved had left.

He believed her to be God's masterpiece, even with the sin in her veins and the dark memories in her mind.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" she questioned.

She was sitting in a seat in the corner of the room that was full of soft pillows. There was a book on her lap, and he realized it was full of writing he couldn't understand.

"You're just beautiful," he admitted.

Her cheeks were warm. "Thanks," she mumbled, looking back down at her book.

He felt absolutely proud of himself, and she didn't have to look up to know that there was a grin on his face.