[private] Offspring

[Offspring]

You're looking at an absolute zero;
I'm not the devil but I won't be your hero.

  He can see the hesitance in her posture, suddenly rigid and unbending – it is difficult for him to suppress the faint simper tugging at the corner of his mouth. Had he known she was so opposing of the water, he might not have suggested she wade through the mire with him. Alas, she does not keep away, nor does she scoff entirely at his invitation. She is soon dampened alongside him, with her winged appendages drawn tightly to her body, yet held just above the surface. The effervescent water is stirred up by a fissure that lay beneath the surface stemming from the core of the Earth, enveloping each of their bodies while the darkness of his gaze steadies upon her own – fire meeting with iron steel.

  ”Hardly,” he muses softly with a low, rumbling chuckle. “I am far from smooth – romance is not my forte,” (and there is an edge of bitterness, acrid upon his tongue – he had failed at love, more than once – he was undeserving of it) ”and you do not seem the type to be so easily wooed. I do, however, seek quality companionship where I can find it.”

  His gaze does linger, though – tracing the softness of her jawline, the thick muscle of her breast – where the once still water gently laps at her skin – and for a moment, a fleeting moment, he is left wondering how the salt must taste along the column of her neck. The thought is short-lived, as a stirring behind him and closest to the roaring, rumbling sea grasps onto his attention, drawing him back into the present moment. His heavy head is tilted toward the western sun, where its splendor has begun to fall upon the horizon, finding instead a familiar silhouette and a stunning set of eyes boring into his own.

  His heart stutters for a moment, and his stomach is drawn into a tightly wound knot.

  He is not often speechless, but his words are left dying on his tongue, while the heaviness of his gaze traces soft subtle gray of her skin (not at all plain – it reminded him of the rolling, thundering clouds that so often descended over the volcanic isle – powerful; a waiting storm). Time had long since passed since he had last set his eyes upon her, with little else but a fervent kiss and a soft warning.

  (I’m not worthy of love, he had said to her. I cannot give you what you seek.)

  He had been truthful.
  He had nothing to give – nothing he had ever given was enough.

  Nothing he could ever give would be enough.

  ”Reagan,” he says, and nothing more – soon, her voice has infiltrated his mind, and he is curious as to whether or not she can read into his conflicting emotions, drifting so close to the surface. He is quiet, though, his gaze darkening as the ridge of his brow line is furrowed. Taiga, she utters wordlessly to him, and though her dark lips are not moving, she is speaking to him with the same soft and gentle crooning she had along the riverside so long ago. Taiga, gone. Jinju? His mind wandered to his estranged daughter, to her blistering eyes of fire – she was of his bloodline, but little else. She had made it scathingly clear that she wanted nothing to do with him.

  Still, her name stirs a pang within his weary heart.
  She was still his own, try as she might pretend otherwise.

  There is brief conversation held between the two – the one before him, and the one beside him – but his mind is elsewhere, pondering the how, the when – the why.

  Why? Why Taiga?

  Someone you are going to want to meet.

  He does not say anything more than her name, in the end – Reagan is gone, the hurricane of her presence drawn back toward the sea, and his gaze is settled upon Tantalize once more, a flicker of regret in his gaze. It seemed the world was ever-changing, always moving. He was beginning to grow weary, to grow tired of it, and he is all too aware that she had once felt the same burden upon her shoulders – she knew, as well as he did, how exhausting it could be. How eventually, it would be too much.

  He reaches out, tucking a dampened lock of hair away from her burning eyes (there is a fire flickering inside of her, too – a fire of hardened resolve, of fortified strength – he can see it, and it is not unlike his own), before brushing his dark lips across her jawline, murmuring against the dark skin that lay at the crook of her neck. ”I must go - politics,” he says softly. ”but I want to see you again. Perhaps in your own domain. I will find you.”

  And with a last glance cast toward her, his heavily muscled legs carry him out of the water and toward the sea, as a lick of fire envelopes the entirety of his broad, masculine frame, drying his marred flesh of the remnants of water that fall to the ground.

OFFSPRING

another zealot with the weight of the fucking world