I call him the devil because he makes me want to sin
(and every time he knocks, I can't help but let him in)
He is still an oily, slick thing.
The Fear still drips from him, thick and tangible, coating his lean and roping muscles and seeping into his flesh with all of the certainty of a virus. He wears it well. He wears it like a crown, his sculpted arrogant head lifted high, the horns curving dangerously from his skull, his oil slick eyes sharp and watching. You wouldn't know by looking at him that he had been gone for years. You wouldn’t know that this land had been a kingdom he had cast off, a cloak shrugged to the floor. You wouldn’t know because he commands the same respect that his father had, the same nightmarish need for power, undeserved and yet taken.
His handsome, sooty face pulls into an ugly sneer as the other approaches him, and his thick lip curls back to reveal his blunted teeth. He didn’t like others to assume that he did not mind their presence. He didn’t like for others to simply pierce his bubble uninvited—the transgression unwarranted and unforgiven. But—but—the other has a bruised, haunted look in his eye that stirs the predator in him awake. The annoyance that had initially quickened gives way to something darker, something more insidious.
His motions are as quick and calculated as a viper, neck snaking out so that he can get a better look at the stallion of tarnished gold before him. “I am not,” he says simply, his voice nearly hoarse from the time of disuse. “But you found my anyway.” He tilts his head to the side, considering the stallion for a moment, the sneer giving way to a thoughtful smile, the undercurrent of thought unreadable as it passes across his features like a storm. Promise. So much promise untapped in this encounter, and he nearly shivers at the prospect of it, the Fear hovering beneath his grasp, vibrating with the desire to have him pull the strings.
Not yet.
Not yet.
“My name is Bruise.”
Perhaps a promise. Perhaps just a name.
