[private] roll the bones; yadigar

[breach]

BREACH

I'd bare you my heart, if I knew that it still was there
I'm too nervous to look, too afraid to close the book

He touches her throat and there is a whisper.

The slightest hint of a breath caught between her teeth, a moment where she nearly keels. She feels herself nearly unfurl at the intimacy of them curled around one another and how, once, she had been a simple girl running wild who had dreamt of such a thing. Who had seen her future gnarled with his in the swirling of his milky gaze and known that it was a path she would gladly walk forever. A girl who had taken flight on a whim and burrowed into the earth on a fancy and always, always, dreamt of him.

And now he touches her throat and there is nothing beneath his surface.

She wonders if he would be better of lying beneath the veil of dust that covers her mother.

But it stirs enough want in her that she clutches at it desperately. She feels the spark of need, that love flare to life so desperately to life at his promise, and she is not strong enough to walk away from it.

Could she survive it, if this is all that he could give her?

Would she live off these scraps?

This mimicry of the life that she has always dreamt of?

Her throat closes and she just nods before burrowing her face into the thick muscle of his neck, breathing him in deep. Here, engulfed in the darkness of him, she feels wetness on her cheeks finally, but she is also able to imagine that he is there. All of him. That his heart thunders and wants as hers wants. That he loves her that way that she loves him. In the present tense. In the here and now. In the days to come.

“I’ll be there,” she whispers into the scales and the flesh, her voice nearly foreign to her.

He is no shifter, she knows, but she has bent the rules for Atrox’s angel.

She would not deny herself her own ghost.

so take all the wind from my lungs if you're out of air
just deliver me truth, deliver me you

[yadigar]

YADIGAR

there’s a hole in my chest but it’s mine, baby, it’s all i got.

He has learned that the world is bitter cold without his fire to warm him. Yadigar relies on the heat of the beach to keep him warm or nestles himself into the little pack of young drakes. But when Breach presses herself so tightly to him, it is the closest he has felt to comfort in so long. She begins to cry and he feels the corners of his lips dip into a brief frown at the sound of her sobs shaking against his scaled chest.

Even before, he was no good at comforting others.

He rests his chin over her neck and holds her close, engulfing himself in the impossible heat of her skin, because he doesn’t know what to say. What would a better man do?

“I still think you’re beautiful,” he offers her. And it’s true. Even if she’s caked in mud and he’s got no heart, he can tell she’s as lovely as she’s ever been. Maybe she can knit together little truths like this and make them feel like being loved. Or maybe one morning she’ll wake up beside him and realize how tired she is of all the waiting and the wishing. But until that day comes, he’ll handle her bruised heart gently and try his best to be whatever she needs.

He traces the delicate arch along the back of her neck as he tries to memorize the way her body feels against his. Someday, when this is all he has left, he prays it is enough to keep the winter-thin wolves of his loneliness at bay.

@[breach]

[breach]

BREACH

I'd bare you my heart, if I knew that it still was there
I'm too nervous to look, too afraid to close the book

He feels like an endless, yawning canyon. Split open and emptied, carved out by eons of the river’s relentless thrumming. It causes a ringing in her ears that is nearly deafening. A keening cry that nearly breaks her, shatters her against the shore more than the blast had done in Nerine. She closes her eyes tight against it and shudders slightly, focuses on the way that his lips feel as it traces up the ridges of her spine.

It’s enough, she reminds herself.

She has told herself that this is enough.

It would be.

His compliment falls on deadened ears. She has never wanted to be beautiful. She has never hungered for simple beauty, lest he mean the beautiful way of a predator stalking prey. She had always loved that beauty the most. The way her mother had looked just before the kill—her coat bunching, muscles coiling right before she sprung. The wilderness in her mother’s gaze. The refined power of her father’s gift.

That was the beauty that spoke to her.

Not the marbling of her legs or the blue sheen of her coat.

But she accepts it with a hum. Takes the scraps that he can offer her and hoards them away as though another may never come again. Because she knows that they never will. This will be the all of it.

“I would make you a bird,” she whispers, recalling their first meeting.

“I would make us both birds and we would fly away.”

Into the yonder. Into the wild. Into the places where even this nothingness could not touch them.

so take all the wind from my lungs if you're out of air
just deliver me truth, deliver me you

[yadigar]

YADIGAR

there’s a hole in my chest but it’s mine, baby, it’s all i got.

What would he give to see her happy for once? He wonders this as his lips hover over her skin. She had died for him, after all. Offered herself belly up with her heart just aching to be called his. And she had never asked for a thing in return. Would he set himself on fire for her? Would he walk backwards over the ledge just to bring his old self back from the dead? He doesn’t know that it could be done, but he doesn’t know if he could face the storm again.

He is selfish and he can’t even find it in himself to be remorseful about it.
But he decides he will give her anything else.

She speaks and the words make him smile even if all is lost to them. In another life, they are both hawks who mate for life and wander infinite miles of forest together. They hunt side by side until a cold winter night takes them both in their sleep so not even a second is spent apart. If he could dream of anything, he would hope to dream of this.

“I thought of just flying away. I wanted to abandon everything,” he admits quietly against her neck. “But it would have meant abandoning you, and I’m too greedy not to see you again.”

That, he can feel. Greed. Lust. Sometimes, a flicker of anger even finds him. Everything else seems so far away but maybe he should be grateful that he knows he wants her attention to himself. Being curled against her like this takes the raw edge off his hunger for all of her, at least.

@[breach]