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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


    you let me complicate you. || isle
    #1
    you can have my isolation,
    you can have the hate that it brings.
     The evening is hot, and the air is stagnant. The humidity has settled, washed ashore by an updraft of wind that seemingly halted at the very border of the waters’ edge. In the distance, the rhythmic churning of the endless sea laps gently at the impacted sand, whittling it away piece by piece, carving its wayward mark into the island. The horizon is dimly lit and hazy, with a low-lying fog that ostensibly clutches tightly to the rim of the volcano, tracing its jagged edges and tendrils of molten lava with its bleakness. 
     
       Still, the fading sunlight manages to peek through the translucent cloud cover, draping the dry, golden vegetation in a fiery display of crimson and rust, imitating the burning fire that flickered deep within the hearth of his chest. He can feel it, even now, amidst his vacant reverie, touching the delicate tissue lining his rib cage, stirring discomfort in his tired bones.
     
       The fatigue has faded away, and it has given into something more – something more than any mere emotion or physical ailment. Where the fire burns, something else burns alongside it, pushing him forward, invigorating him with prowess that slowly burned its way through his worldly flesh, carving its fiery presence into his very essence.
     
      He is uneasy – the world is changing, and with it, he is changing, too.
     
      The scent of sulfur and the salty brine of the sea are lost on him; he is fully immersed into the land of volcanic matter and ash – no longer does he shy away from the stillness of the summer heat, nor does he grimace as his own movement stirs the beading of sweat along the slope of his broad spine, tickling his marred flesh as the individual streaks of his own perspiration slide down along the girth of his flank, staining the darkness of his skin. It is as natural and as much a part of him as the ice once had been – and though there is still a piece of him that yearns for simpler times, tucked within the damp shadow of a mountain cave while the onslaught of a winter storm does its worst, he no longer hungers for the ice to be a part of him.
     
       Where there once was ice, now there is fire, hot and scalding against its iron cage, seeping from his pores and enveloping him in its warm. Searing with a feverish warmth, his behemoth form of wiry muscle and fortified bone is no longer worn down by the stifling heat of day, nor the uncomfortable stickiness of evenfall – it is nothing to him, and he is indifferent to it now – for he is as much a part of it as it is a part of him.
     
    .. The heat of dusk is drawing him out of his thoughtful pause, pulling him away from the soothing whisper of the ocean tide and towards the distant rumble of the yawning volcano. Above him, the hazy sky darkens, and the bright, wholesome moon rises into the two-toned sky, entrenching it in its brilliant light, even as the atmosphere itself dims into a deep, endless navy, speckled with twinkling starlight to light the way.
     
       He does not need a guide, though – for it is well-trodden.
     
       His powerful legs carry him through the dense vegetation, as delicate tendrils of dry grain caress him with each sweeping stride, but the fire is burning brightly within, and he cannot think of anything else. Her gentle kiss pressed against his hip, and her wary, watchful gaze upon him – she had a part of him that no one else had, and yet she looked upon him as a stranger, as an outsider, and though there is a fragmented piece of him that is filled with misery and sorrow at the thought of their estrangement, there is a larger part of him that is angry, that is enraged by her reproach. No words need be spoken. Her bright, doe eyes of the richest chestnut had searched the hardened plane of his face, and had looked upon him with indiscernible emotion – hesitance; uncertainty.
     
       He felt angry; hurt.
     
       She looked upon him as if she had never known him at all.
     
       His searing eyes of brimstone and fire search the dark shadow of the mountain base, seeking her soft, supple curves, her delicate posture – and upon finding her linger close to the quiet, yawning cave that they had come to call their own, the raging fury bubbling inside of him quiets to a slight simmer, and in its place, a tepid warmth lingers like the heat of burning coal.
     
       He presses the flattened plush of his nose against her hip, inhaling her scent (she, too, carries the stench of sulfur, but with it, flora and fauna, and everything sweet) and tasting the salt on her skin. His lips press urgently against her spine, crawling the length of it with his teeth slightly bared, raking across the sensitive skin of her vertebrae before biting gently onto her withers.
     
       Lust rouses from somewhere deep within him, and longing for a time where they had not been strangers – where he had known every part and crevice of her body, pressed neatly into the folds of his own – once a perfect fit, now unfamiliar and jagged along the edges in where broken fragments lie. There, entangled with her dark tresses, and feeling the dampness of her against his own marred skin, he burns again – not so hot that she will be unable to bear the heat of him, but enough.
     
       ”Isle,” he murmurs against her skin, searching for some semblance of what had been, of what was. Could it still be? ”Look at me.”
    you can have my absence of faith,
    you can have my everything.
    OFFSPRING
    #2

    out of the woods, out of the dark
    When the sun sinks and the sky turns autumn, shades of red and gold and rust, she returns to their cave. It smells like him now, sulfur and brimstone, his sweat and his musk made resonant by the humid stone she runs her nose across pensively before stepping outside again. She can barely remember the ice from before, not the scent of it on his skin anyway. It was like a faraway dream whose details faded the faster she tried to remember, watered down and vague and purely theoretical. There was no ice now, no winter. No hint of the Tundra except for the faces of those who had served it. Only brimstone and fire and a pensive king with a strange fever that never seemed to leave him.

    Night falls and dark stretches across the sky to erase all color, pinpricks of impatient, twinkling silver the only sign of life. She watches for a long while, counts two stars that burst and fall, chased by their tails as they cut across the black. There is enough time to make a wish before they fade near the horizon, but her eyes are unfocused, her thoughts elsewhere.

    It is the heavy stride and the rustle of vegetation brushed aside that calls her back again, and those gentle brown eyes drop from the sky to find him. “Offspring.” She says in that quiet way, her face soft and unreadable as he approached, wondering at the tension she saw in the furrow of his brow and cheeks. She turns hesitantly to greet him but he pushes his nose against her hip, tastes the salt on her skin and she softens instantly, leans into the touch with a whispery sigh that looses itself from her pale and pink lips. His mouth finds her spine next, that dark, gentle ridge, and he travels it with the graze of flat teeth and a warm breath that makes her shiver beneath him. “Offspring?” She says again, a tremulous whisper, breathless and beautiful. His teeth close over her withers in a request she recognizes and she stills reflexively, turning her head to watch him with soft, needing eyes.

    But he doesn’t take her, doesn’t touch her further except to bury his lips against skin that shivers expectantly at this closeness. Isle, he says, murmurs against her, look at me.

    She does, twists so that she can claim those beautiful eyes lit red like living coals. She traces the furrows in his cheek, long lines of quiet tension, traces the soft hollows of a strong face she had long since memorized - a face she would know by touch. “I am,” she says, so quiet, reaching up to press a kiss to the heat of his forehead, “I see you.” But she saw all of him, more than she understood, more than he had shared. So she saw it in glimpses and hints, in echoes and instinct, and none of it made sense. A silhouette full of holes, familiar and same, yet somehow so changed, unrecognizable.

    But still hers.
    Always hers.
    Always?

    She turns to his chest, curls against an impossible heat that prickles at her skin and draws dampness in the curve of her dark shoulders. Her mouth lifts to find his jaw, to trail whisper-soft kisses along the curve and to his mouth, claiming it with a kiss that drew him deeply to her. “You’re changing,” she says against his lips, and it isn’t a question, isn’t an accusation, but there is a soft worry in her voice when the next words take shape, “but you’re changing without me.”  Her kisses shift sideways, finding home in that impossibly soft hollow just past the corner of his mouth where she closes her eyes and settles, breathes in that familiar scorched scent of brimstone. “Not allowed,” she whispers, finds his mouth again with lips that are soft and smiling in a light, quiet way, “you’re mine.” Her nose reaches to the curve of his throat, follows his neck down to his chest with teeth that pinch gently and lips that soothe with quiet kisses. “Do you still want that?” She asks, and this question is so quiet, so vulnerable, etched in shadow across that dark, beautiful face. “Do you still want this?”
    i am well aware of the shadows in my heart
    #3
    you can have my isolation,
    you can have the hate that it brings.
      Where there is only a dark, dimly lit fire burning in his own gaze, there is stardust and the pale reflection of the bright, wanton moon shining in her own – a plethora of color reflecting in the deep, bottomless depths of her eyes, boring into his own, while a heat long since thought to be dormant slowly stirs to life between them. The air is thick and rife with electricity; he can feel it crawling the length of his dark, scarred skin, seeping into his flesh and finding its way into his bones – his heart, hammering relentlessly against the wrought iron cage of his broad chest, thrums with adrenaline against her body. Gently, his teeth press yet again against the ridge of bone and muscle at the nape of her neck, and his warm, wanting breath brushes across her skin, while his dark lips lightly caress what lay beneath.

      So many times before, he had taken her beneath a starlit sky, entangled with her with fervent need and insatiable desire – and it had been too long. Too long since he had pressed his teeth into her soft, supple flesh; too long since he had drawn her closer to him, his mouth hot and greedy against the tender flesh of her neck, tugging the wavy, carefree tresses away from her dampened skin. The memories emerge to the forefront of his mind as his lips press higher against the length of her slender, beautifully carved neck, tracing the thick muscle that lay beneath, before breathing hotly with the deep rumbling of a growl that he had never meant to let into his throat.

      He could take her, even now, with tension and too many unspoken words lingering in the atmosphere, enveloping their bodies in an unseen but palpable apprehension of secrecy and uncertainty – he could take her, with his teeth gripping at her, pulling at her, with a writhing ecstasy that would bring the seemingly distant starlit sky to them – but he does not. It is not enough to feel her merely yield to his own desire; it is not enough for her to simply submit to him – he wants her to feel the same longing, the same urgent need churning through her own veins, the same insatiable hunger, the same unquenchable thirst.

      Her lips press softly against his forehead, with rivulets of perspiration trickling down the length of his hardened features. All the while, the fiery brimstone of his gaze is settled upon her, unmoving, though he presses his own cheek to hers, tracing the curve of her jawline with his mouth, tasting the sweetness of the soil and the sulfur of the air on her as his tongue presses into the delicate crease of her neck. I see you, she murmurs, and he does not doubt it – she has always seen him; she has always known him. 

      But his mouth does not linger against the fragility of her throat, nor does he taste her pulse for long – her own searching kiss finds him, and it is him that is drawn in deeper like the moth to a flickering flame, though the fervent, feverish fire inside of him is burning brighter with each ardent moment passed. Breathless and aching for more, her words are a delicious torture, stirring him out of the hazy lust clouding his mind just long enough to keep his desire at bay. You’re changing, she says, and he can only open his half-lidded, smoldering gaze to seek out her own, glancing from one eye and to the other, and then, but you’re changing without me.

      Not allowed, each syllable lined with one part humor, one part solemnity.

      ”The fire,” he breathes against the crease of her mouth, where his own lips press again, and again, breathing her in slowly. ”I cannot stop it – it has become a part of me, in ways I cannot even begin to describe.” He murmurs, his voice ragged and raw, his confession laced in precarious danger. But then the heavy lashes close over the endless sea of her eyes, and he is outlining the delicate curve of her jaw, the hollow of her cheek – the simple, yet beautiful way the russet of her skin gives way to the bright, gleaming alabaster, framing her beauty and grace in its light.

      You’re mine. Do you still want that?

      Do you still want this?

      He touches the coiled muscle of her shoulder then, the girth of his massive, towering physique circling around her, grazing the blunt ridge of his teeth along the swell of her rib cage, feeling the gentle rise and fall of her breathing against his tongue. His eyes, brooding and wicked, seek out her own, while his jaw rests at the small of her back.

      ”I want this – I want you, he breathes, his voice dark and dim, though the burning ember in the hearth of his chest stirs the light to the surface of his skin, and the once dark canvas of his skin is glowing with heat – a simmering coal, hot to the touch, alight. ”I have never stopped wanting you, Isle,” and another kiss brushes over her two-toned skin, his memories shifting to the chasm growing in between them – her wary glances, her worried stares, the flinching of her body beneath his touch. ”but you’ve kept yourself apart from me. You do not look at me as you once did – I see the uncertainty, Isle. The fear.”

      He is quiet, then – the weight of his words settling into the heavy night air. He is all too aware that he might never touch her again, with the burden of his confession expanding between them, distancing her all the more from him. As such, the heat of his mouth finds the curve of her hip, pressing one kiss after another, bracing for her to pull away from him, to scorn him. Bracing himself for the inevitable heartache to find its way into her beautiful face (still so beautiful, even with the gentle caress of time leaving its mark – so beautiful; more beautiful than he had ever known or seen). There is a familiar ache inside of his chest – he did not deserve her forgiveness; he did not deserve her.

      He had always known it. He had been a fool to think he deserved anything more.

       ”I have betrayed you again,” he murmurs against her skin, the fire inside of him lowering to a quiet simmer – nothing but a flickering, wavering flame.
    you can have my absence of faith,
    you can have my everything.
    OFFSPRING




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