"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
For a second the hypnotism of his future breaks: Kensa’s face before his is so real and high definition it takes all of his strength to not reel back. There is heartache that pulses too intensely behind his eyes to be able to clearly understand the reality before him. The hairs that make up her face are so close and consuming, her scent too powerful in his nose, just like every minute leading up to this meeting of skins - too overwhelming.
He wants so desperately to break like the last syllable of the fuck you she’s throws at him. He wants so desperately to fall to the exact pieces he was in as that sad, hopeful boy in the lake. Who that boy was, though, is so vastly different from the actions of the man that squirms in his own skin.
What the fuck have I done?
The entire world crashes around him when she says I love you.
The sky is fucking falling, he thinks, the earth is cracking beneath his feet - there is no balance, tunnel vision is next, a rush in his ears - he is choking. It is not exactly shock, or fear, or pain - just the cold, gripping palm of realization upon his neck. He does not realize he tipped his head back to welcome her bites, that blood is smeared warm upon his neck, that her chest is strong against his shoulder. The eyes that are cast to the sky are absent in their thought:
I know what I fucking did. I am exactly like my father, but that does not matter. I am unforgivable.
A gasp rings in the air, gargled and almost masked by the noise of the breeze. Lie presses his nose into her tangled golden mane. The glaze over his eyes remains. Every muscle in his body is stiff: he knows he should tell her he loves her, the words dangling a single foot off of the ledge of his tongue; but he cannot. She deserves to be loved but does he deserve to love her? The confusion of her offer for his freedom, his unchecked rage . . . Where does one mistake begin and the other end?
Litotes would do anything for Kensa. Anything. If she asked him to launch himself over the cliff’s edge that protects their home to atone for his sins, he would do it. If she told him to punish himself forever, to wallow in his pain, to never right his wrongs - he would do it. He would do absolutely anything to make her feel better.
He realizes, though, that he will never be able to heal those wounds. And there was no forgiveness in that bitter I love you.
“Kensa,” he whispers. He hopes she can hear him for he cannot muster a higher pitch than that. Lie shifts so that their chests press into each other, lips pressed to the side of her neck but no kiss is placed. Tears stream down his cheeks but there is no emotion, no choking or sobbing. The cremello cannot help the tracks as they come, cannot deny the lump that grows and grows in the center of his chest.
“I am so sorry.”
She will be even angrier, he thinks. Furious and scornful, she will probably spit in his face. But for this moment he wraps his neck around hers and holds her tight.
@[Kensa]
i never said that i would be your lover
i never said that i would be your friend
i never said that i would take no other
Kensa knows he loves her, has known for so much longer than either of them realize. Its that safety, the cocoon of certainty that makes the fracture so intense. If she had believed he would hurt her perhaps if she could have found a way to prepare or protect herself but she hadn’t. Litotes had always been a constant until the day that he wasn’t.
Trying to stop loving him in the aftermath had been impossible.
And still she knows he loves her, his love feels like home. His whispers and the comfort of his embrace try to settle her raging heart but each word of his apology drags her out of the reverie. I. Am. So. Sorry.
She hears a goodbye in his words, though he may not mean to bid her farewell at all. It makes her angry, as he expects, but also calls up memories of those first few days after he had disappeared into Loess. All the vulnerability, the quavering weakness, the destruction of all the the ephemeral beliefs she’d had about her life up until that point. He had challenged her, hurt her, and she had given up. Weak again.
Her cheek drops against his neck and she breathes him in deeply, oxygen to feed the fire. Kensa is so certain of her next words, and they fall against his skin, drawn along the curve us his neck, a spell to bind them. A vow. “I will never trust anyone but you again.” She had wanted to, had tried, had looked for the living breathing connection she had with Litotes and found nothing. Sex, chemistry, friendship could exist beyond him but not the certainty, the stone solid guarantee that had unquestionably existed between them. They had been unevenly matched perhaps, with his devotion and her roaming they might have come apart eventually had there been no shift. They had grown, changed… but do they still fit together?
This time it is her lips that brush his ear, her vulnerable throat bared between them. “Fight for me.” Kensa murmurs huskily, exhales...for us. She cannot hate him for what has happened to them. To the both of them, together. They have been wrong about a lot of things but not each other, never each other.
Kensa’s vulnerability in those first days of Litotes’ capture mirror his own: the universe’s knack for bitter irony simultaneously drawing them together and tearing them apart. The accusations and betrayal he experienced, she also experienced. If only they could find a way to express that to each other, to fathom each other’s suffering; but the cremello would never place that weight on her, he does not think - the weight of his own actions. In the beginning - the steal, his dethroning - those were all chance mistakes. Everything after - hurting Kensa, burying his anger - he must live with.
The swallow that follows his thoughts is loud and miserable. All of nature seems to go quiet in the face of their collision.
A breathe he did not realize he was holding is released when Kensa presses her check to his neck. The gentle force of her touch soothes him in the way a massage would: painful but a necessary relaxation. Whatever she has to say will be harrowing. He thinks he has done this to her, saddened her. A piece of him wishes she would spit in his face, scorn him, send him packing with a kick in the ass. Almost nothing he has done is redeemable, he thinks - a thought that catches violently in his throat.
I will never trust anyone but you again.
Her statement is both grossly agonizing and cuttingly accurate. Lie feels the weight of its velocity as it plummets into his ears and digs a hole through his brain. The statement is a brand upon his chest. I will never trust anyone but you again. He wishes he could see the future, see if their tight coiling will harm them, if the betrayals piled on their backs will break them.
Goosebumps travel from the top of the cremello’s body down to the bottom, little ridges that add a strange darkness to his fur. Her lips against his ear almost too much - an invitation he is not certain he can resist. Would it be right to fall into each other once again? There is still so much aching that lingers between them. He is not sure their relationship will ever be the same.
There is no hesitation when Kensa’s last words are uttered. Litotes steps forward, pressing his weight into her with enough force to push her back. There is passion in his touch, in the way he drags his teeth against her soft neck, in the way his kisses are sloppy and wet as they trail to the top of her leg. There is also anger: no consideration for how much weight is behind his canines, no thought of how she might be knocked off balance. Whatever push back she offers is welcome - that same cruelty in Kensa he now finds so attractive.
Litotes steps to her right, pressing his lips to the bottom of her stomach. His body never leaves her side, the heat between them growing as he slides along her. Low on her stomach his mouth stays, until he finds where her leg meets her barrel and trails hungrily down the inside of her limb. Around her body wraps, settling with his chest pressed firmly to her hindquarters. Her skin is hot when he places kisses down her spine and stops at the dock of her tail. The trees rustle, loud amongst the rush in his ears, when he pauses there. It is a few second pause, but enough to send a low growl rumbling down his throat.
Lie moves to her other side, pressing kisses to her stomach once again, offering Kensa the control.
@[Kensa]
i never said that i would be your lover
i never said that i would be your friend
i never said that i would take no other
In the hour that she should be rearing back from him, spurning him, driving him away she is pressing in, turning her cold shoulder toward the world rather than Litotes. This woman is loyal, she is honest, she is true. She continues to be all of those things even though it has only hurt, even though her heart hardens and her love grows barbs. If it is wrong to choose him then she will bear the weight of the wrongness. She will face a world that accuses her of loving a monster with a smile and a fury of love that will never again be mistaken for weakness.
Fight for me. She commands and her monster obeys, pressing into her the weight and force of his larger frame, pushing her back until she shoves back into him. They jostle, and their hooves turn the pretty stream and delicate grasses into a muddy mire. Kisses leave behind a trail of wetness that the cool mountain air chills even as her skin heats with the molten flush of desire. Those teeth that wounded her in Loess drag over her pelt like plowshares, catching on the curves and angles of muscle and bone. Shuddering, Kensa presses her lips against his his shoulder, stamping as she drops her teeth against his withers. Her lips trail along his back and side as he makes his way along her body, He is merely lusty, rough, but she nips him hard on his side, his flank. Resisting, kicking at him even as she feels her stomach grow taut when his lips brush low along her belly and tickle her flanks.
He coils around her like the reptiles he’s been keeping company with. Behind her he presses close and she clamps her flaxen tail but leans back into him. Her head is thrown high, chin tipped heavenward arcing wantonly when he burns a trail of kisses down her spine, his breath like fire on her back. Litotes pauses at the dock of her tail, rumbles in a way that makes her hocks give a little.
Kensa bucks, throwing her haunches against the cremello stallion to shove him away, though he is too close for her to make much if any impact with her hooves. Undaunted, he curls up her opposite side even though she’s not done fighting and has thrown a smattering of mud over both of them. His kisses come hot again, tracing constellations on her belly. He is out of her reach, but she has turned her face back toward him and her eyes are not the wild of a frightened mare but the smoldering dark of a woman who demands submission even as she craves a little violence.
The sabino turns into him, and light travels along the veins of gold that delineate her markings before she throws herself into him. Mud sucks at her hooves and turns her white limbs filthy, her lips blaze a trail along his ribs. Her tail flags, and snaps whip-like a distraction from the kisses that mirror the ones he’d given her, but she punctuates them with a nip to his belly, daring him to kick at her like she had him. Smugly observing the quiver of a hind limb as she butts her muzzles against his belly, unpredictable teeth too close to his apparent arousal for him to be too comfortable. Kensa is not to cruel as that, her lips only brush close, a taunt along belly and sheath to drive him to the madness she’s felt since he first set foot in this whispering grove.
Litotes quivers beneath her touch. There is a certain way that she moves: an artist’s touch, so delicate in the way she presses her skin to his. Kensa is violent just as she is gentle: the trail of a brush here, the loud spattering of paint there. She is both intimidating and welcoming. The fire of her eyes could set him aflame, burn him to complete ash, and he would still bow at her feet. Even in his rage, he would die to be the soil that nurtures the grass that feeds her. Her golden eyes are his universe: Lie is but a dark speck of a planet reflected in them.
Pointed kicks and bites land their blows and the cremello melds to them. He finds himself leaning into whatever violence Kensa wishes to thrust upon him. She is such a brilliant amalgamation of energy, his point of being. For a moment he wishes his purpose in life is found purely within himself; alas, he belongs too wholly to Kensa and their family to search any further. Here, against her betrayal and absolute need, he bows. He subjects himself to his own torture. He submits completely.
Where her lips go, Litotes remembers. The paths she blazes across his skin are forever marked by her lips. The pleasure is blinding - his back legs buckle, he moans. There are sharp teeth tossing empty threats but the cremello does not shy; instead, his mouth grows wide with a full set of lion’s teeth and a vicious growl. His neck curves around her hindquarters, lips hungry and furious against Kensa’s skin. She demands and he meets her wishes, dragging those cruel canines against the flesh of her hind, digging in as he groans into the blood he draws. She tastes so good he wants to dig deeper, and he does for a moment; yet, restraint finds him, and he pulls away in a frenzied whip.
Dark mud mars the gold and white of Kensa’s back legs. Lie’s wild eyes stare at the marks, wanting to wipe her clean, return the fresh ivory to its natural state. He settles, though, finds another place for the screaming energy ringing in his ears. The wild locks of her tail are tangled in his mouth when he drags her close, chest heaving into the firm press of her legs. He rests his head on her spine, breathing heavily while holding her tight to himself. Her scent is too much and he rears back, then nudges the thick of her tail out of the way. It is here that he fully remembers the nights they spent entwined, the memories they made teasing each other until one of them succumbed.
Innocence, he thinks, games we played in innocence.
There is nothing gentle in they way he teases her, never directly kissing exactly where she loves it the most. For a second it is for his own pleasure, feeling her body lean into his touch as he hesitates. He presses first just the tip of his tongue, then his mouth, moving against the vibrations of her body. Whatever she asks, he gives.
@[Kensa] part of me wants her to be like "the clit is an inch up you idiot"
