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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    all the ashes in my wake; kensa
    #11

    Since the very beginning, he has fought to restrain himself.

    He has fought to buckle down the anger and the resentment that so quickly surges in his chest—the way that he nearly hated her for the way that he so quickly responded to her. He wanted to hate her for the way that he felt instantly challenged by the glint in her eye and the way that she made him want to protect her instead; the way that she made him feel combative and enthralled in the same breath as one another.

    But he doesn’t fight it now.

    It is almost with a breath of relief that he relaxes into the hurricane that whips through him. The rest of it melts away and it’s just the two of them. Her chest is against his, her breath against his cheek, her teeth against his skin, and there is nothing but that in the moment. He feels violence and desire whip through him until he is nearly dizzy with the predatory need of it and he almost buckles beneath its weight.

    Instead he growls, low and throaty, teeth against her jaw and skimming down the elegant curve of her neck. His nose presses against the velvet of her and moves underneath her mane to where her skin is soft and warm. “Okay,” he says to her demand, suddenly unable to deny her. “Okay.” His head spins and he feels dizzy with it, suddenly aware of the way that she is laid out before him like a feast, but he doesn’t know how to stop—doesn’t know how to temper himself. “Kensa,” he says and her voice is like honeyed poison because even now, he knows that she will be the end of him. “Kensa,” again, quieter this time.

    But he doesn’t stop.

    He just pulls her close, rough, taking from her what he wants and drowning in it.

    BRIGADE

    when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
    but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake



    @[Kensa]
    #12

    you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you

    All the things he does not know about her could fill, nay, overflow the banks of the glassy lake that lies over the mountains beyond them. Though dark tendrils of thought try to creep in and remind her of the things within that 'lake', it is futile, they are swept away.  All that should keep her from feeling what she does when he shelters beneath the blond fall of her locks, his face pressed to her neck and breaths falling barely measured and honest against her skin is drowned out.

    Kensa should be able to fall away into herself, to become just a feral body released into abandon but instead she is keenly aware in mind and body of Brigade. She cannot know what he feels, with others she has been so sure of her standing but now she is reeling into a terrifying darkness, thrilling and dangerous. They yield to the tension between them, though it looks nothing like surrender.

    Brigade’s name lives on her tongue and leaves her lips like no other name belongs there as she invites him, commands him, and even (ragged) implores him. Shame does not show its hideous face, it will keep.  His touch is a brand upon her skin in the cold winter air. Kensa does not shrink from the stallion’s violence but presses in to it, allowing him to take, to try and break her as pleases him. His body is a burgundy fortress, shelter and prison and Kensa savors the possession, whimpers but snarls too. She is not a delicate thing of filigree porcelain and teaches him this even as she invites him to tear her sails from their rigging and shatter her against his rocks.

    She should be frightened that this will be his tiring of her but there is no room for this thought because she is full of him, Brigade leaves room for nothing else when he touches her and the horrible beauty of this will destroy her more easily than the stallion himself ever could. Litotes has her deep and resilient love, Starsin tugs on her thoughts with confusing frequency, but Brigade… Brigade consumes her like a sun.

    Kensa



    @[brigade]
    #13

    The heat nearly explodes between them and he is dragged under by it.

    The violence of it is physical and demanding and he is reminded of the wildness of the wolves his father commands—the way that they run through the forest, yipping and howling and biting at heels. It drags rivers through is flesh until he can barely breathe around it. She is everywhere and he continues to breathe her in, continues to feel the way that each moment pulls the strings around him tighter and tighter.

    She matches him blow for blow and he hears her snarls and feels her teeth. His body shudders as he drags her closer, as mouth finds flesh again and again, until the rest of his prison continues to fade away.

    He would continue, he thinks.

    He would continue if it were not for that thing within him—that sense of otherness—that pulls at him like the gravity pulls at the waves. He breaks away but it’s not to spurn her. Not this time. His face still glows with the intensity that leaves him sharp and wanting, the angles pulled taut across his cheekbones and the tension put in perfect clarity in the arch of his neck and the muscles that jump in his jaw.

    “Kensa,” his voice is a growl across his tongue, grey eyes bright. “I want you to be more than this to me,” he swallows hard and feels the words weigh on him. She is so beautiful, he thinks, and he cannot deny the way that he wants to consume her; the way that he wants to learn the curves of her, to lose himself in it.

    But, for all of his flaws and perhaps because of them, he stops.

    He breathes hard and shakes his head as if he could escape his own boiling thoughts.

    BRIGADE

    when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
    but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake



    @[Kensa]

    he's a dumb virgin
    #14

    you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you

    Sweat has turned her skin dark, red black and sleek across her back and shoulders. In the softness of her winter raiment she is rumpled, more beautiful for being tousled, bitten, kissed, and so flushed that she glows. The tangle of her blonde locks around her face lends a look of sultry innocence  especially when he backs off and her liquid eyes round. When he rejects her this time she isn’t going to have the fury in reach, and so she does nothing but stare at him, her breathing too fast and loud.

    Shoulders shiver, and she is so close to Brigade that she is learning the rivers and roads that live in his light irises. The few seconds between confusion and fear become an eternity before he speaks. Her name the first word and it does nothing to ease her tumbling heart but she tips her ears forward, trying to be still instead of backing away from the heat of his body in a too-little-too-late effort to protect herself. I want you to be more than this to me.

    Tears should not well to her eyes so easily for him but once again they do. None fall, just a line of diamonds on her waterline. “Okay.” An echo of his earlier surrender, whispered breathlessly. The anchor tied to her ankle drags her ever deeper.

    “Let me be more.” Kensa touches him tenderly to stop him shaking his antlered head and rests her cheek against his, every movement slower, quieter. “I could…” love you but she doesn’t say it, just exhales, lets the words belong to the set that came before them. This has already happened too fast and some small part of her knows not to let that go lightly into the world. Only one has ever had those words from her lips, and never ever have they been without all the weight of her honesty behind them. Even in just admitting she could, she must take care. "I want to be more."

    It is one thing to enjoy her body, but another to extend her soul.

    Kensa



    @[brigade] i love him so much
    #15

    He finds solace in the silence between them.

    It is enough, perhaps to still the way that everything within him rages. He finds a core of stillness and holds onto it, growing more and more still as she comes close to him again, her touches soft and tender. He stops shaking his head and exhales low and deep, emptying his lungs of the air that he has clung to in the moments between. Her cheek finds his and he keeps his grey eyes closed, focusing on her breathing.

    “I don’t know how,” he confesses and he feels all of the tangles of his wild heart—the jealous and the guilt and the possessiveness that runs rampant through it. “I don’t want to ruin it,” his voice is quiet and he doesn’t know how to tell her about the destruction his hands have wrought. He knows she is strong—he knows she is not a tower to be felled by him alone—but this thing between them.

    It is delicate and sweet and he devours such things.

    “I want to try, though” and this confession is a piece of vulnerability that he nearly chokes up. It is a painful thing to admit such things to her—to let her see him stripped bare of his usually callous armor—but when he pulls back to look at her, his face is washed clean of anything but the feelings that she has stirred within his youthful heart so quickly. “Can I try, Kensa?” he reaches out to brush wine-red lips across the sweet curve of her jaw, losing himself in the perfume and the gold of her.

    A muscle his own jaw jumps as he finds her eyes, holding onto it and studying the depths.

    “I can’t promise to be perfect,” his lips quirk just slightly in the corner, “but I can promise to be yours.”

    BRIGADE

    when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
    but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake



    @[Kensa]
    #16

    you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you

    He is even more beautiful when he quiets under her touch, settling into the smoothless of glass so that when she looks into him she sees just what he feels. There are others who have bared their feelings to her and she wonders if they have ever been this sharp, clear and close. It is likely they have but she couldn’t understand until Brigade, with all his intensity coiling up to meet her own violent passion and showing her a likeness to herself that she hasn’t met with before.

    She does not have words for him at first, but closes her gemstone eyes and listens to the quiet roughness of his voice. He doesn’t know how to make this more and she isn’t sure if she has the answer either. They do not tumble together with the soft fumbling of young lovers but collide dangerously knowing they should get the fuck away from each other. He does not want to ruin what they have not yet attempted, and Kensa should know she has already spoiled it but instead she wishes once again that she could be a prior version, an unencumbered version of herself for him (always knowing that it is this self alone that he could want, and that could want him).

    We can try.” She whispers on the wake of the almost indiscernible fracture in his voice, as his lips brush tenderly along her jaw. Her lashes frame her ochre eyes in dark softness as she gazes steadily back at the burgundy stallion. He yields and still she knows she should go but once again it is much, much too late.

    “I’ve no interest in perfection, my Brigade.” Her own pale lips tip slightly, drawing back a golden freckle at one corner of her sweet mouth. She cannot promise to be only his, but she is most certainly his. She luckily doesn’t consider if he would understand the distinction or the way her heart can contain more than one, or even two great loves. For now there is only this man. Hyaline’s mountains feel further away than they did before, and she can steal a little more time.

    Chastely, she reaches out to brush her muzzle against his, tracing the lower half of his broken blaze. “I could stay with you tonight, if you wanted.” The evening is still hours away, and her silvery words are only offer a gentle promise to while away those hours with him. “Only if you ask me. We can go slow.” Not a tease, but a desire to be gentle with this part of them, as careful as if she held their two twisted hearts in her palms.


    Kensa



    @[brigade]
    #17

    All of the heat and the rage and the beauty of the moment implodes and they are left in the quiet aftermath of it. He feels as if he has swallowed the sun and is now left with the ringing quiet—left with the world that they can not make in their own likeness. She is quiet and he feels a strange, dull echo of it in his own chest—the raging tides slowing beneath the gentleness of her touch, the promise of the slowness.

    She calls him hers and there is a small shiver up his spine, something possessive that sparks in his wolfish heart, but he doesn’t try and reclaim her now. It is enough to feel it pounding in his youthful chest—a heart that is so naive and so sharply contrasted with the man’s face that he wears. He is but a boy beneath the muscle and the steel and has never had love turn its knifes edge on him but it will. It will, it will.

    “Stay,” he whispers into the tangles of her hair, smiling despite himself, feeling that wonderful rush of nerves and excitement in his belly. It is a relief that washes through him—a tentative hope that somehow blossoms in his chest—and he melts into it. This chance and this moment to simply be himself.

    He lips at her jaw and down the delicate curve of her throat.

    He is soft and quiet, now trying to stir heat but rather exploring, tasting the sweetness of her and marveling at the way her skin turns from ivory to gold. “I want to know more about you,” he says quietly, feeling the gentle breeze race across the Loessian soil and across their backs. “Come with me?” He looks up and then squinting against the sun. “I—I have a place I like to go.” It’s the only real home he has any more, but it’s more home than this naked, exposed expanse of land where they have been fighting.

    “We can go—just to talk,” he explains, his grey eyes intense beneath the gentle sweep of his forelock

    BRIGADE

    when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
    but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake



    @[Kensa]
    #18

    you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you

    She remembers again the winteryness of the day and the frost-rimed barren hills on which they stand. Colder now for the sweat drying on her skin and the fleeting worry that he will suggest something much slower, sending her on her way with a goodbye that would only leave her preoccupied and then sleepless in the night ahead. Even in her reluctant to leave she might end up making a mess of things, going too far when it becomes hard to say goodbye. For all the months that have passed since their first meeting she has tried not to think of how another encounter would go and now that they are here she finds that she does not know what might break the spell.

    Brigade’s whispered request is a welcome command to her anxious heart and the chestnut smiles again at the laughter in his voice. Her lips press below his ear, brief and soft. “I’ll stay.” As though it were not her idea in the first place, an attempt at making this last at least until the waking hours of morning. So that the world cannot try to tear them apart in the hours in between and her life cannot show her how he eclipses and drowns out everything for her.

    “Take me there.” Her reply is eager and soft and and her hind hooves shift in a half pivot, light ever ribboning over her sides when she moves. “Ask me anything.” Though her stomach tumbles when she says it, though only for a moment. Litotes is far away, further still than Hyaline with his Queen and his menagerie of snowflake featured children and she was never going to wait in her mountains with all that she is tied up in him alone.  Ever. This feels different than all the other entanglements but it doesn’t change who she is and has always been.

    All the unspent tension of earlier puts a heaviness in her limbs that she wants to run out of them but she lets Brigade lead instead of pushing him. She is given to do that she knows, pressing in until she gets her way. Too if they run she will have less time to ask her own questions, to know him as he is now, calmed and open to her and she might find herself lost to the heat of a flight and therefore less interested in conversation than the perfect angles of his wine colored body. And she wants to know him, and see this part of him as much if not more than she wants his violent desire. Reining herself in she places herself beside him so that he may lead her, though she cannot help arranging a feather or two that lies within her reach. “Were you born with wings, Brigade?” It may be an odd question to ask, especially if he has always lived in this magic saturated place. “I was born very plain, so I always wonder.” Kensa does not say this sheepishly, she was happy to be the rough-cut-pretty, ordinary filly she had been when she arrived. She does not need all this beauty to be herself, though it has changed her in unexpected ways.

    Kensa



    @[brigade]
    #19

    He smiles when she accepts and it is a rare and fleeting thing—changing the harsh angles of his face and revealing a kinder mask beneath. It morphs his features into something more similar to what he would have looked like as a boy: wild and free and constantly yearning for the sky. His teeth are white and straight and flash beneath his dark red lips and even though it doesn’t stay for long, the effects of it do.

    He lifts a wing, stained as red as the rest of him, and cradles it over her back as a shield to the wind that runs so recklessly throughout Loess as he moves them forward. She opens up quickly, telling him that he could ask her anything, and he wants to—wants to know so much of the woman beneath the gold and the beauty—but he has no words for the questions just yet. So he just makes a note of consent in his throat, a low rumbling growl, as they continue to move forward and he begins to form his thoughts more.

    But before he can think to turn the question on her, she is putting one at him.

    “I was,” he answers, cautious with the question even though it is innocent enough. It is difficult for him to force himself to be so vulnerable—to open up—but he swallows his instinctual need to remain guarded and instead angles his head so he can study her with light grey eyes. “I don’t know where they came from because neither of my parents have wings and my twin sister Wonder,” his voice catches on her name and he swallows hard but continues, “Wonder doesn’t have wings either.” He frowns for a second, thinking.

    “Actually, I don’t think May and Phesque have wings either.”

    It’s the first time he’s really thought of this—how he is the lone pegasus in his family—and it stirs something in him: a feeling of otherness that he has always harbors and need only a spark to take flame. He chews on it for a second as they reach their destination—a rocky part of Loess where magnificent stones stand sentinel, guarding the haven from the wind and prying eyes—and he ushers her further in.

    “The antlers come from my mother though,” he says. “Wonder has them, too.”

    It is a little easier to talk to her here where he feels like other people are not listening and when he feels like he has some momentum but he pauses to study her again, the twilight setting her aglow and twisting his heart in his chest. He reaches over to press a kiss to her cheek and push her forelock from her eyes, looking at her intently for a moment before his lip quirks. “You could never be plain, Kensa.”

    He loves the ornate beauty of her, but he knows that he would love her stripped clean of it too.

    “Where do you come from? What was your childhood like?”

    BRIGADE

    when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
    but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake



    @[Kensa]
    #20

    you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you

    Kensa laughs as she is nested beneath Brigade’s vast wing and as her side bumps lightly against his own she presses her lips behind his jaw. This kiss is followed by a nip, just soft enough to be alluring without overstepping. She feels his smile still, in the set of his shoulders and the tension that has bled off his frame and that is more than enough. It feels like freedom, seeing him this way, like being turned loose of any obligation on a summer’s day.

    Brigade speaks to her still in the halting way of one too accustomed to holding their tongue but she draws him out carefully and listens raptly when he volunteers a little, and then more. The names he lists are unfamiliar, May, Phesque, Wonder. Wonder and Brigade. Like most would be she is intrigued to know he is part of a set and though she does not know anything about the bond between twins herself she watches his face when he speaks of the girl with whom he’d shared  a womb. When he releases her into the grotto of stone she trots a half circle around it before coming to face him. “Wonder. Does she look very much like you beyond the antlers?” Kensa has wound back to him, settling close once more. Now that she feels free to touch him she can’t seem to stop.

    Her smile is as close to shy as it ever gets when he smooths the flaxen fall of her forelock from her face. She believes him, though she has only rarely been given cause not to trust someone this is different. Kensa is often convinced that too much of who she is has become wrapped up in the gold and the beauty and whatever else has changed about her.

    “I was born in another place, I think it is very far and I would not know how to get back.” Her arrival in this land had just happened one day, like she’d wished to be here and suddenly was. “I am the oldest of who knows how many siblings now...I was raised by four mothers and two fathers and to this day I’m not entirely sure of who I belonged to by blood.” She shakes her head, it amuses her more than it concerns her. “It was simple, though it may not sound like it. I always had someone to keep and comfort me. I was given far too much freedom and spoiling and never learned as much patience as I ought to have.” This last she thinks he knows already, she has been impatient with him a time or two. Kensa’s smile drifts into sadness, but only just, reflective. Her lips trace the side of his face, and she tips her forehead against his cheek lightly. “You came from Tephra.” She remembers, recalling the hard set of his features when he’d told her that on that day that now seems so distant, and so she is careful with him. “Tell me what it was like to be small there.” Only this, she will not force him into the darkness she senses is tangled up in his childhood story.

    Kensa



    @[brigade]




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