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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


    [mature]  on the right side of rock bottom, Ophanim
    #1

    and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.

    Some may wonder if Starsin would grow to regret her choice of words on the mountain that day. She had offered to show Ophanim her heart – a figure of speech, even though it was something she had also meant to her very core. She would show him her heart, if she could, because god only knows how horrible she is at showing him love in any other way. She knows if he could see it, if he could feel it, that it would lay to rest every shred of doubt, every shadow of suspicion that he could ever have. 

    She just hadn’t expected it to actually happen.

    Her chest still felt bruised and torn, with blood dark and dried against the gray of her skin. The raw, jagged wound was stark and ugly, a vivid reminder of what had transpired. If there was anything Starsin hated, it was being helpless, and when Carnage had ruthlessly ripped her heart from her chest, leaving her frozen and half-dead but less than half-alive, that was the most helpless she had ever been. 

    And maybe to some, they would have found it romantic, in a peculiar and strange way, that her love’s heart now beat so steadily inside of her own chest. It could be almost considered sweet that she was now the true keeper of his heart, and he of hers. Her ribs could shelter it from every blow, and maybe she could even sleep at night when he was away knowing that it was tucked away safely inside of her.

    Except, Starsin is not a safe place.

    She has proven time and time again that she is careless and reckless, that she breaks everything that could be hers. And Ophanim – her sweet, perfect angel boy – he didn’t deserve the burden of carrying her broken, faulty, angry heart for the rest of his life. Her heart was like poison, and she wonders how soon it will take for the toxicity to settle in his veins. She wondered if he could feel it, the way those thoughts were weighing so heavily on her, she wonders if he can feel the way her heart twinges with a sick, sorrowed feeling. His heart already had such a melancholy feel to it. She always been able to read his mind and recognize the emotion tied to them, but she had never been able to feel them. His heart didn’t harbor the same darkness as hers, but it still felt like someone had scrubbed it raw, and maybe there were small parts of it that were growing calloused in places.

    Almost every scar across his heart was her fault, and now, there was nothing to protect it from her.

    She is quiet for much of the trip back, drowning in her thoughts, letting them consume her. When the trees finally give way to the yellow and crimson of Sylva, she stops, and abruptly she turns to him. “We have to find a way to switch them back,” she says with desperation, her dark blue eyes locking with his. “I can’t...what if I ruin your heart, the way I do everything else?” She tries to choke down the panic she can feel bubbling up her throat, but all it does is give the tears a chance to flood her eyes. “What if it ends up broken, and angry, and…” Her voice breaks, and she clenches her jaw and swallows hard, tilting her head away from him as she closes her eyes and steadies her breathing. When she looks back at him she cannot control the stray tears that find their way down her cheeks, the words tremulous and collapsing in on themselves when she whispers, “What if it ends up exactly like mine?”

    starsin

    it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
    ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )



    @[Ophanim]
    Reply
    #2
    OPHANIM
    Anger has always found him to be all salt and scorched earth – no place to make a home and take root. Even now, it has begun to wither and die on his tongue when only moments ago his rage had devoured him entirely. One look at her heart and her blood spilled across the ground and he knew he would set this entire world on fire for Starsin. He would chew a god’s face from his skull and rip into his spine with ravenous teeth. Ophanim could erect an empire built only from his fury and sentence this entire plane of existence to death. The world could heave with the agony he felt in those seconds, but it all melts to nothing when she needs him to comfort her.

    The blood has turned an ugly shade of brown across his glimmering gold and white chest, outlining the weeping wound where her heart beats. He can hear the way it aches between his ribs and how desperately it tries to sink into the depths of despair. But he cradles it so carefully and he doesn’t mind the way it sobs and shakes. Perhaps it had felt like anger and poison to hurt, but to him there is only a quiet loneliness that it can’t seem to shed. The angel boy is content to spoon feed it his love for the rest of eternity, if that’s what it needs.

    What’s done is done,” he says with a simple shrug when she finally speaks. The corners of his lips manage to smile even if his eyes are still so melancholy. He pauses to think when her worries come flooding out, lifting his chin while all his thoughts go tumbling about. Could his heart ever turn to anger? It had always been such a barren field to those sorts of things but she seems to think she can perform miracles. If he had to count the number of times he had felt genuine anger in all his life, it would be a number he could actually count.

    He laughs at his own joke and unfurls a wing to curl delicately around her. “It’s yours to ruin or destroy then. And besides, yours only feels broken. It just needs to set and heal for a while,” he says as he presses his lips to the corner of her jaw, kissing his way up to her tear-soaked cheeks. Can she feel the way his heart bursts into life when it remembers how she feels beside him, tucked up under his wing where she belongs? Does she have any idea at the flood gate of warmth and love that she opens in him? Hatred could never make a home in him because his adoration for her is all-consuming. It leaves no crumb or scrap for anything else to make use of.

    My heart has always been yours, from the second you found me.
    you could drown in those eyes, i said.
    @[Starsin]
    Reply
    #3

    and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.

    She has never needed anyone the way that she needs him. And she will never understand what she has done to deserve him, because one look into her life, her history, and every damning thing she has done, and it was clear that she didn’t deserve anything as pure and untainted as his love. Every time she started to soften, the world did something to twist her back into iron, and somehow, he still loved her.

    He loved her when she was cruel, when she was jealous, and when she was distant.

    When others would have sharpened themselves against her like a flint, until they were both cutting each other to the bone, he almost always softened. Somehow, he knew that when she was stubborn and bristling with unfounded anger and begging for a fight, all she really needed was for him to pull her close. He knew how to quiet the storms that raged inside her soul, he knew how to placate her fury into something tamer.

    And so when his wing comes to rest across her back, it is like suddenly all the tension melts from her. Her taut muscles go soft, and the restless, anguished heart that twisted in his chest is all at once tranquil, the closest to being at peace that it can ever be. She leans to rest her shoulder against his, the warmth of his own heart spreading like liquid gold through the network of her veins and wrapping around her like an embrace. She sighs, a trembling, shakey sound, and her blue eyes close as he trails his touch along her jaw and up her cheek. She curls tightly into him, the weight of his wing over top of her serving as a way to ground her, to remind her that he was really here. If she had ever been angry at him for being gone, that has long since disappeared. In the ashes of her hurt and her anger she was left with only this; exhaustion, sorrow, and an almost defeat.

    “I don’t want to ruin your heart,” she says as she worries a tangle in his mane with her lips, a fresh wave of emotion welling in her chest and inciting new tears to spring to her eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore.” Her lips press against the golden, glowing marking on his cheek, tracing a path to the groove of his throat, lingering in the place where the dragon’s talon had once pierced it open. Even though she can’t feel it, her heart flinches at the memory of the fear and anguish she had felt on that day, and she lays her head against his neck. “I’m sorry, Ophie. I’m sorry I let my pride and my anger get the best of me. I’m sorry I pushed you away when I should have been trying to fix us instead.” His heart beats so rhythmically inside of her chest, like it was exactly where it was always supposed to be, and her heart breathes a sigh of relief, like it had finally been rescued. “But I hope you can feel it now. That my heart has always belonged to you, even if I don’t know how to show it.”

    She doesn’t pull away when she grows quiet, when her lips stop caressing his skin and instead she is only still. She stays with her cheek against his neck, her pulse quickening as she asks him so softly, so hesitantly, like she is already afraid of his rejection, “Please tell me you’re staying. I don’t want to wake up without you anymore.”

    starsin

    it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
    ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )



    @[Ophanim]
    Reply
    #4
    OPHANIM
    She is, to him, everything it means to be strong in a world that has only ever sought to tear them down. Starsin remains unapologetically herself and she is the constant with which he anchors himself no matter the cost. A slow sigh escapes his lips when she leans back against him and everything seems to suddenly click into place in the world. The air is a little easier to breathe and the air smells like crisp autumn air instead of smog and filth. Ophanim remembers how easy it is to love her and he’s pleased to feel her heart flutter against his ribs delightedly with each little kiss he presses against her head.

    Does she feel the way his heart is so eager to resign itself to her? It has always come running to her, tail tucked and belly up for her adoration. How perfect that it’s hears forever now.

    The angel boy doesn’t mean to laugh when she says she’s afraid to ruin his heart and he feels some pang of anger in his chest at the sound. He’s quick to nuzzle his face to hers in reassurance, though, as he breathes her in once more. “I would rather have my heart destroyed by you a thousand times than to ever let someone else lay hands on it. It’s yours or it belongs to no one at all,” he explains as he retraces the curves of her face with his lips. It’s been less than a year since he got to feel her skin against his but it feels like an eternity and now he must relearn every inch of her. It sets his soul on fire with want every time she’s close to him like this.

    When her heart flinches, he hardly remembers the way Casimira had torn him open and nearly ended his young life. The only thing that ever came into focus was her standing over him and crying, begging him not to leave her. Even if death ripped him from her arms tonight, he would surely find his way back to her before the morning came. Their love is greater than even death, than any magic or cosmic forces. His passion for her could dwarf the galaxy, he thinks. Solar systems would be humbled to see the enormity of his love.

    I will always wait for you. There is no one in all of eternity for me except you. We were made for each other,” he whispers against her temple, eyes closed as he treasures the steady thump of her heart in his chest. If he’s still, if he’s quiet, he can feel his pulse thrumming and thriving in her veins. “I’ll follow you anywhere. Home has only ever been beside you.

    He lips softly at the skin behind her ear and smiles at the nectar taste of her skin on his tongue.
    you could drown in those eyes, i said.
    @[Starsin]
    Reply
    #5

    and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.

    She remembers before, when they were younger, and how she would fight against moments like this. She would feel herself begin to settle, feel all those masks and facades begin to fall away but always she would snatch them back at the last second. The idea of him seeing her – all of her – had been terrifying.


    But at some point she stopped pretending to be something else around him. At some point she learned to be unapologetically herself, whatever that may be, and he knew better than anyone that it changed by the moment. He has seen her quaking with anger, only to dissolve into tears at his touch. He has seen how quickly her sunshine smiles could be clouded by a storm of anger over seemingly nothing. He has seen how blinded she can be by jealousy and how carelessly she acts.


    And still, he loves her.


    He has loved her when she least deserved it, which was nearly all of the time. He has loved her and taken her back when she should have been cast aside, and instead of letting the guilt eat away at her the way she usually would have, she simply sighs into his mane. She lets everything else fall away, until she is stripped bare and curled into the warmth of his side. “I won’t destroy it,” she says softly, breathing in the familiarity of him, “Not this time. I promise.” Involuntarily she trembles at the feel of his lips against her face, leaning into him and savoring the warmth that it spread through the network of her veins and into the marrow of her bones. There was something indescribable at being touched by someone that knew you inside and out, and realizing that she had almost lost it, lost this, made her throat feel tight. 


    “No one could have ever replaced you,” and even though he can’t read her mind, he could feel the sincerity of her words, the way they were born from that steady beat of her heart inside his chest. She knows she had taken things too far with Lie; she knows she had let the line between friendship and romance, between her manipulative games and true feelings, to become blurred. And she knows, most importantly, that she had hurt Ophanim in the process. She had let him bear witness to it all, had let him suffer in his heartache and let him think there was a possibility that someone else could have her. She would spend the rest of her life, if she has to,  proving to him that that would be impossible. “I’ve been stupid, and I made such a mess of things. But I love you, and I am completely yours,” her own lips trail his cheek, and down the curve of his jaw, each kiss hungrier than the last until she pauses to breathe against his skin, “and you’re mine.”

    starsin

    it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
    ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )




    @[Ophanim]
    Reply
    #6
    OPHANIM
    Loving her has always come so easy to him, like drifting in a river on the hottest day of the summer without a care in the world. Even when she fought him and tried to erect walls around her heart. Even when he betrayed her and she wanted to tear him apart. Even when she broke him and left him bleeding out on the floor. He could find a way to love her as easily as the moth finds the flame, fell for her like wings catching on fire. Such a pleasure to burn. When she sighs against his skin, he imagines this must be what angels in their heaven feel like each day. With her curled under his wing, he doesn’t envy them at all.

    He smiles when she speaks and maybe she can feel the change in his expression on the soft skin of her cheek. Ophanim can’t bare to have his lips anywhere but there. She doesn’t have to promise him anything at all to keep him feeding from her palm like the most well trained dog. Moments like this have always been enough for him to come circling back and tethering himself to her again and again.

    His heart quivers at the sound of her words when she swears he is irreplaceable and he feels the way hers quakes with remorse. But more importantly, he can feel that it’s the truth, and it sets his heart thumping wildly against her ribs. It’s enough to make the angel boy almost cry, but he manages to keep his composure. “I wonder what I did to meet my soulmate so early in life,” he mumbles against the curve of her jaw, recalling the way she casually sidestepped his question when he first asked her to be his. Even back then, he knew she was forever. She was worth everything and so much more.

    I’m yours, until all the stars die and the last light goes out,” he promises, lipping at her neck and drowning in the warmth of her skin. He could get lost in her touch for the rest of his life if she would only let him. Ophanim closes his eyes and mouths endless vows against the heat of her skin. His heart could burst with the weight of his want for her, he thinks, but he resists for a while longer. At least until he’s saturated with this moment.
    you could drown in those eyes, i said.
    @[Starsin]
    Reply
    #7

    and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.

    She can feel herself beginning to relax. She can feel the tension and fear and sorrow slowly begin to fade, at least for now. She has grown so used to them fighting, so used to them being on the verge of an explosion and so used to that fear that she just lost him forever that she doesn’t know how to accept this newfound armistice. And she was so tired of trying to claw her way through the walls she had built around her heart, so tired of fighting her way through the bricks she had laid herself. This serenity that was trying to wrap around her was like waking up to realize that he could just open the gate and let her out.

    He could save her from herself, if she would just let him.

    The feel of his heart quivering in her chest makes her jaw tighten, and she leans into him. She shakes her head, staring at him with something that is a mix of disbelief and adoration. “You deserve the world, did you know that?” She doesn’t know if she can give it to him; she doesn’t know if she could be everything that he needed her to be so that he no longer felt like he wasn’t enough, and to erase all the damage she had caused. “Do you know what I thought when I first met you?” She asks him when the thoughts of their first meeting flash in his mind, and she cannot help but to laugh quietly at the memory. “I knew from the moment I saw you that you were too good for me. Even at that young of an age, I knew that you were better than I could ever dream of being, and that I was exactly who you should never be with.”

    Coiling herself tighter around him, if at all even physically possible, her lips find his jaw again. “But I’ve always been selfish, and I knew I could never let you go.” She could have walked away from him that day. She could have left him and let him live his life, and maybe spared him all the hurt and heartache that came with loving her. “I just wanted to see what it was like, to have you be mine.” Her lips leave a trail of kisses along his jaw, and then his cheek, and then the groove of his throat and up near his ear where she stops to whisper, low and sweet, “And once I found out...that was it for me. I was, and still am, completely and absolutely yours.” She weaves herself through the thoughts in his mind again, heat racing across her skin at the feel of his mouth against her, and the wanting ache in her voice is undeniable when she says into his neck, “And now I’m just wondering why you’re resisting how badly you want me.”

    starsin

    it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
    ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )



    @[Ophanim]
    Reply
    #8
    OPHANIM
    Perhaps his favorite thing about her is the way she stands like some ancient monument of strength, but she crumbles like ash beneath his touch. Is it because his heart pinpoints all the tiny weaknesses of the walls she had erected? Or was she always like this and he just couldn’t read her? She says he deserves the world but he couldn’t care less for any of it. A thousand little granite pebbles mean less than nothing with a diamond in his palm, he thinks. How fortunate for him that she’s a sucker for fool’s gold like him – nice to look at, but hardly worth a thing.

    But he doesn’t say any of that aloud. She always gets upset when he talks like that.

    And besides, he’s already distracted by her voice. He doesn’t mean to laugh when she says he’s too good for her but the sound comes tumbling from his mouth anyway. Who would he even be without her by his side? What else could be out there for him? The answer echoes across his mind the moment he thinks of the questions: nothing, nothing. He is hollow and cold without her stars to warm him.

    Ophanim leans his head into her kiss and smiles with his eyes closed at the feel of her lips on him. She could be the empress of everything if she didn’t have him weighing her down and holding her back. “I think I’ve always been too hungry for your attention to even dream of loving someone else. You’re my first thought when I wake up, and my last before I sleep,” he confesses, trailing his teeth down her neck. The corners of his lips form a grin when she points out how he’s holding back and he bites softly at her shoulder.

    I want to see how long it takes before I can’t stand not having you under me,” he murmurs before kissing the bit of skin he just nipped. But the way her heart thrums in his chest pushes him to and over his limits. Her hummingbird pulse has him kissing down her spine, each little peck a bit more desperate than the last until he’s sinking his teeth into her hip. Ophanim has to pause and let out a shuddering exhale across her skin to regain some semblance of composure. She always calls him an angel but the way he wants her is awful.

    He steps back only to press his chest against her, his chin coming to rest over her hips. The way the stars across her body accentuate the curves of her body make him fall a little more in love with her. It would be so easy to stare at her forever, but his heart is on fire with a hunger for her. Slowly, torturously, he lifts himself up and over her. Ophanim remains poised there as he watches her, skin burning with the electricity between them.

    Completely and absolutely mine,” he repeats as his hips surge forward at last.
    you could drown in those eyes, i said.
    @[Starsin]
    Reply
    #9

    and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.

    Her heart cringes a little inside of his chest when he says that he had never loved anyone else; it shrinks further into the cavern of his ribs like it was trying to hide from some buried shame. He had told her before that he didn’t love anyone else, that none of his other children had been born from love and that he didn’t remember most of their mother’s faces. She had tried to believe him, because she had been desperate to keep him. To lose him would be to lose everything, to lose the only one that had ever loved her from the beginning and seemed unable to see all of her flaws. And for the most part, she had believed him – except for one. Except for the name Adna, and just the very thought is enough to stir a faint glimmer of lingering jealousy.

    But that jealousy walked hand in hand with her shame, because she had taken her retaliation to the next level. She couldn’t love Lie when she loved Ophanim; it was impossible, in every sense of the word, but she had let herself get too close to someone else, and maybe that was just as bad, because it had had the same effect. And she regretted that the most; that she had let Ophanim doubt her love for him, that she had let him feel replaceable and second best. “I’ve never wanted to love anyone else either,” she tells him softly, her skin trembling every place his touch lands. “And I’ve missed you every single day, my angel boy.” He would always, always be her angel; even though his thoughts right now are anything but pure.

    His response to her coquettish question incites a breathless laugh, her lips still caressing the arch of his neck and down to the slope of his shoulder. “I’m not sure if I like that game,” and her own teeth scrape lightly across his skin, her svelte curves pressing impossibly closer to him. His touch travels further back, and with the increasing urgency of his kiss comes the quickening of her breath. She has never gone so long without having him before; they’d never spent so much time apart ever since they first met, and with that absence came a near insatiable want. She was good at hiding behind walls and good at playing games, but never with him. For him, she did not mask how badly she wanted him; she did not pretend to need the upper hand or to be in control. She had always wished that she could be something softer and sweeter for him and finally, she was.

    The rest of Sylva fades away once he is on top of her, and all she is aware of is both of their hearts thundering recklessly in their chests. But the way that he waits, to admire her, feels like torture, and she trembles with want as she presses into him. Until, at last, he is inside of her, and the soft moan that gasps from her lips almost sounds like one of relief.

    starsin

    it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
    ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )



    @[Ophanim]
    Reply




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