"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
hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive
Atrox has never been one to go back for long. For his dozens and dozens of children, not many were with the same woman, and if they were, it wasn’t his own doing. He just grew lazy about looking for others. Grew lazy about having standards. They asked and so it came to be. But she was entirely new, every time. She was a hunger that he could never sate—a thirst that was never quenched. No matter how many times he has mapped the curves of her, he has never found them dull. No matter how he memorized it, he found something new every time—something that hooked at him, dragging his attention every moment.
It happens again and his vision nearly blurs with want.
He can feel himself shudder, with ice that laces up his spine and he breathes heavily, closing his eyes as his chest heaves. “Ryatah,” he says again at her coyness, her name through gritted teeth. He swallows and instead of sinking teeth into her flesh, just presses a kiss there instead. “You will never be close enough.”
But that doesn’t stop him from trying.
He circles her and then rises up, his legs gripping her sides and then pulling her back hard. Teeth find her neck and he loses himself in the rhythm of it. It is nothing but agony, a heat that erupts in his chest as he kisses her shoulder, her back, the places that he can reach. He says her name slowly at first and then nothing at all as the darkness around them swallows them further. There’s nothing but her and that soft glow—nothing but the black of him surrounding her and pulling her close and closer.
It continues to build in his chest, dark and potent, until he finally loses himself to it entirely.
And when the wave of it washes over him, he feels nothing but her.
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
She lived in fear of the day that he would grow tired of her.
It was not a new fear for her by any means, but it was a new version of it. She has spent her entire life being afraid of being cast aside and forgotten; by Dhumin, Skellig, Carnage, or anyone else that gave her the attention she craved, no matter how brief. She let herself be broken and remade to their liking, she twisted every part of herself to fit what she thought they wanted. It was never enough, and she did it knowing it would never be enough.
But this fear—it was something different, something with a mind of its own. There had always been a careful divide kept between herself and the rest, a guard that while invisible and clearly able to be seen through was still solid and impenetrable. It was what kept her from falling apart when Dhumin did not follow her back from the afterlife. It was what allowed her to brush aside every time Carnage killed her or ripped her eyes out, the guard that kept Ashhal’s scathing words from actually leaving scars.
There was no such divide between the two of them.
He could end her with a glance and then heal her with a touch. If he left, she would be entirely undone in a way that could not be fixed, in a way that she does not even want to imagine.
When he pulls her beneath him, she doesn’t have to.
There is only the feel of him and the hunger in the touches he leaves on her neck and back, the feel of his breath on her skin. He consumes her, ignites every part of her, and she does not even care if he were to reduce her to ashes. He pulls her closer and it is not enough, just as he said; it will never be close enough. No matter how she presses into him, no matter how many times his name is an involuntary moan on her tongue, there is that endlessly aching, coiling feeling that she is afraid will last forever.
Until she unravels entirely, and she is left glistening in sweat and trembling, still gasping.
The cool air touches her damp back where he had just been, but she wastes no time pressing into him again once he is again alongside her. She has learned that she could tangle herself around him in the minutes after and that he would not resist, that instead, she could steal more moments of this side of him. Her pale cheek rests against his neck, her dark eyes half-closed when she murmurs without even thinking, “I love you, Atrox.”
there on 's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive
She is like sunshine—and for someone who has loved his life nearly entirely in the shadows, it is nearly blinding to look into it. But he doesn’t turn from it. He doesn’t shield himself from the light. Instead he just lets it wash over him, feeling that sensation build in his chest and rise up his throat. He feels it wrap around him and nearly pull him under, and when he slides from her, he feels only peace.
The kind of peace that he has never truly known.
She comes to him nearly immediately, and he wonders at the softness in the moments after. The way that he can rest next to her so easily—the way she twines around him and he feels no immediate need to leave. He just feels something precious in his chest, something that bubbles up, and he pulls her closer, closing his sharp yellow eyes and breathing in the honeysuckle of her as she rests her cheek against him.
The words are said softly, but he still feels them like a punch in the gut. They’re words that he had never said easily—and hadn’t said for centuries. They were words that had meaning and he had made a reputation for only dealing with words that had none. A reputation for throwing out barbs or words that could slice up an opponent as easily as a haphazard, crooked smile or a twist of his fang.
But he doesn’t want to say meaningless words, not to her.
So he just smiles softly, a rare genuine one, and he reaches to kiss her forehead, feeling a heat in his throat at the importance of such a casual gesture, at the sweetness of a moment stolen.
“I love you too, Ry,” he whispers.
And wonders why it has taken him so long to admit it.
