"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
She can feel it bubbling in her veins—the exhaustion, the fear, the confusion. Ever since that encounter. Ever since the sickness rose up and took her down, dragging her to the edge of consciousness. When she woke up to chaos. To fury and love in Vulgaris’ eyes. To the bank of the river giving way and carrying Dovev down and far from her. To Heartfire’s dismissal and she followed the armored stallion.
None of it had made sense, and the sickness that has blossomed in her stomach since then was worse than the one that had dragged her to the ground in the first place. In the aftermath, she has withdrawn into herself, growing silent and quiet. She went home and pulled her daughter close, taking comfort in the small snake girl’s embrace, but she still couldn’t bear to look at Vulgaris—couldn’t bear to see what surely must be hate in his eyes for dragging into the enter of a drama that has always overtaken her life.
Why had Dovev been there?
Why?
But, cowardly as she is, she knew she can’t run from the fear forever. She can’t go on pretending that nothing happened. She can’t busy herself in taking care of their child, their home, watching the young girl blossom as her limbs continued to take shape and her beautiful face elongates.
So, finally, when the moon washes Loess in silver milky light, and Adna is curled on the ground, tiny nose making soft huffing noises in sleep, Leliana rises. Her wings are oil-slick scales as they hug her sides, her body thinner than usual. The toll of the healing has not quite left her yet, and the exhaustion of it remains etched onto her features, as she makes her way toward the snake stallion who she loves so fiercely.
“Vulgaris?” her voice is quiet as it reaches for him. She stands several feel from him, afraid he doesn’t want her near, but as she finally gathers the courage to look into his emerald serpentine eyes.
To find what she is sure she deserves.
it started with a perfect kiss, then we could feel the poison set in
Normally he’s able to rein in his emotions, keep them bottled tight and packed away until it’s time for another cleansing. His hunger only gnashes its teeth when he drops the muzzle. But lately it surges just beneath the surface and tests the boundaries until it finds a little more give in him. Vulgaris hates the way his skin is always burning hot now as though the adrenaline will never stop dumping into his veins like toxic waste. He’s on edge where before he was always so self-assured and relaxed in his own domain. He knew that even if he wasn’t near, then Wolfbane and Kaurma were keeping an equally watchful eye on the kingdom.
But now he’s got a fever that only blood will break.
Now he can never be full again.
He gives Leliana her space but even that picks at him. He wants to tear her shell apart and demand answers as he would with anyone else. Yet he remains silent, brooding in the heat of his rage as he watches from afar. Vulgaris manages to choke down the embers of his hatred whenever Adna is near and he vaguely remembers how to be gentle with her. He kisses her forehead each night and professes his love for his tiny daughter at any opportunity, but the second she leaves him it’s all misery again.
He turns his gray head when she speaks his name but he says nothing in response. There is no control over his tongue when he opens his mouth so he thinks it best to just keep it shut. A slow sigh eases from him but it feels like the smog of some great fire in the crisp spring night, dirty and coating anything it touches. Still, he draws closer to Leliana and presses his lips to her cheek. Loving her is a language that comes as easily to him as breathing.
His head has been so full of all the questions he could gather the past few days but he finds nothing of use now. Instead he has an exhaustion that only the warmth of her skin can soothe. So he leans his face against her neck and he frowns at how small she feels against him. Vulgaris kisses down to her shoulder and explores the edge of her shoulder blade for a while before moving on to her spine. She’s always beautiful to him but he worries, always troubles himself with his woes for her.
“I’ll always love you, Leliana,” he mumbles against her back lazily. He’s still tense with his finger on the trigger but his grip is a little loosened with her around. “But I’ll kill anyone who looks at you wrong.”
It goes without saying what he wants to do to anyone who would hurt her. The scars of his face and the point of his teeth say more than words ever could. No one worships pain the way he does, whether he’s giving or taking. No one could ever lay at the altar of agony and relish in it like Vulgaris.
" ancient language, speak through fingers. the awful edges where you end and i begin. "
She doesn’t know what she expects but it’s not this.
She doesn’t expect to be scooped up and pressed into his chest. She doesn’t expect to feel the warmth of him surround her, his lips to run down her neck and spine. She doesn’t expect to feel his chest to hers like it did in those early nights when she whispered promises and gave him the broken, shattered pieces of her heart as if it was a treasure that anyone would want.
But he does, and she breaks.
She breaks because she knows he’s strong enough to handle it.
All of the emotion she has kept so tucked away. All of the ways she has pretended that she’s okay when she’s not. She’s not. They come tumbling down. She is no longer the calm, dependable sister. She is no longer the reliable, self-sacrificing healer. She is no longer the warm, stable mother keeping a watchful eye on her daughter. Instead she is the broken woman she is inside.
She is flooded with her grief and confusion and pain.
Hot tears form in the corner of her eyes and she begins to tremble, the warning signs of the rumblings along her faultlines. She begins to sob quietly, ashamed of herself but unable to hold them back any longer. She grits her teeth against the soft cry that builds in her throat and she presses her cheek against him.
He is so sturdy and she hates herself for finally releasing all of her to lay at his feet. All of the jagged parts of her that she never wanted him to see. All of the ways life has mangled her heart.
“I am so sorry,” she finally chokes, her voice thick. “I am so sorry.” She pressed a kiss to him even though she knows she doesn’t deserve it. Steals it anyway to tuck it away. “I am so broken, Vulgaris.” She feels the tears as they trace down her too prominent cheekbones, the path of them burning. “I love you so much and I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve any of this.”
it started with a perfect kiss, then we could feel the poison set in
10-03-2018, 10:41 AM (This post was last modified: 10-03-2018, 10:42 AM by vulgaris.)
Vulgaris
He frowns when he feels the early quakes of her sobs breaking through her but he only presses tighter against her. His lips feel wrong every second they’re not on her skin. Vulgaris wants to pour all the strength he has into her and he tries his best to build her back up with his love, as if it could fill in the space between skin and bone. Before her, there was never a time when he felt weak. There was power in every fiber of his being and he never knew how to yield, to step back and surrender even when he could triumph. He never had to pick his battles.
But now he has her and Adna to think of.
Now there are reasons to come home at night.
Then she’s speaking and he’s listening to her every word. Words have never come naturally to him and he breathes a slow sigh as he tries to gather what little he can think to say.
“Leliana, I was alone when you met me. I have been alone for so long,” he says softly into the cradling warmth of her trembling body. There were bodies and sleepless nights but they never curled up in that void of his soul and called it home. They never cared to run their fingers through the tangled mess of his life and pick out the pieces they liked best. No one ever tried to kiss him back together like she did, and so he considered himself isolated. “Maybe if we were never broken we would never fit together.”
The thought sounds stupid when it leaves his lips but it’s too late to take it back now.
“You are my life, my salvation. I love you. For tonight and forever.”
He traces his lips across her skin until he returns to her cheek, kissing the trail that her tears have made down her face. Maybe he doesn’t deserve her but he doesn’t dare say it out loud. If she ever realized how much greater a love she could find, she would surely leave. Vulgaris is greedy for her affection and her touch. He wants to drown in the ocean of her heart.
" ancient language, speak through fingers. the awful edges where you end and i begin. "
He soothes her, and the sobs begin to subside, leaving nothing but the soft trembles in the aftermath.
She wants to press into him. She wants to lose herself in his touch. She wants to forget everything but the way it feels when he is wrapped around her, the way that he causes her mind to go numb, the pain of everything else to slip to the wayside. It’s not fair, the way that he does this to her. The way that his mere presence can unravel her, picking apart her threads until she is laid bare before him. She has no defenses anymore, she has no way to pull back pieces of herself, no way to shield herself from the destruction.
She is utterly and completely vulnerable before him—
and it is terrifying.
But the way his lips skim over her, the way his body melts around her, makes it slightly less so. She melts into it, taking several steadying breaths, the static of her thoughts gently buzzing from the fresh pain of a coming headache. It was all too much to bear. It was too much for any one person to try and handle.
At least too much to handle alone.
“I love you, Vulgaris,” a thousand times over. She could repeat the words for ever and they would never taste stale on her tongue. She could her every breath to affirm it, and she would never tire of the way that the words sound slipping from her lips. I love you, Vulgaris. I love you. I love you. I love you.
She drops her head and curls into his chest, tucking her wings close into her side. She could get lost in this moment. She could lose herself in that steady thrum of his heartbeat. She could spend forever just listening to the way it sounds echoing against her ears, a lullaby somehow made perfect for her.
“All I have ever wanted was a family. All I ever wanted was to find someone to give my heart to.”
She doesn’t look at him when she confesses these things, when she strips herself of even the last feeble armor she carried. “I spent so long believing it wasn’t possible for me.” She doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t want to turn this conversation down that path, to remember all of the pain and the agony. “But then I found you.” She steps back so she can look him in the eye now, finding herself in the serpentine of his gaze, in the perfection of the scales scattered beneath his forelock. “And you’ve given me so much more.”
but there you go again, turning golden, right there in front of me
He breathes a sigh of relief when her quakes turn to weak trembling and the tears don’t come quite so easily. At least he can manage that much. He’d always believed he was the worst at comforting others. His hands were simply not made to cradle others’ hopes and dreams but rather to crush the life from his enemies. How could he ever learn to foster things like joy and happiness? But here she is, overcoming whatever darkness envelops her while he holds her. Vulgaris begins to wonder if maybe he’s not quite so useless as he thought.
She says she loves him and the words send a shiver down the entire length of his spine. Somehow it disarms him every time she speaks those three words, sends him headfirst into a kind of tranquility that was never offered to him before. It leaves his skin electrified.
Vulgaris relaxes his gray head over her as he continues to lip at the delicate inches of her neck. She knows that one bite could end her, especially while she is so weak. She knows and still she curls tight against him without a thought as to what he is or the things he’s done while she slept. He breathes into her while she speaks and it hurts him to hear the pain woven into her words. There is no remedy for the sort of ache she professes, he knows, and so he keeps her close where he can shield her from outside this moment.
“I cherish every piece you give me. It feels like I can’t breathe when you’re apart from me,” he says when she steps back to watch him. “I never dreamed of even meeting someone so unattainable as you.”
Then he kisses at the corner of her lips, starved for more of her divine touch against his skin.
“I worship everything that you are.”
And it’s true. Her heart is the cathedral where he confesses his sins and washes the blood from his hands. A single kiss of her lips is absolution, a baptism from all that he’s said or done with hatred on his tongue. She washes the guilt from his skin and untangles the mess of lust from his ribs – keeps it all for herself, leaving him blind to the beauty of others. (And it’s true. His fire burns only for her, forevermore.)
When sleep clouds his head and leaves him drifting, his final thought each night is wondering how he could ever deserve to be loved by someone like her. Where before his dreams were always red and fevered, now they are only ever of her smile and the sound of her laughter.
" ancient language, speak through fingers. the awful edges where you end and i begin. "
It’s easy for everything else to fall to the wayside in this moment.
In this bright and shining moment, the pain and the fear and the agony strips away, curling from her like the edges of bark peeling from the tree. She is left new in its wake, molded into something restored in the heat of his love for her, and she wonders how she would have survived without him. He has shielded her heart. He has fortified her spine. He has helped her create a family. He is the core of everything now.
Her eyes brighten slightly, the tears washing away, leaving her face soft and naked and clean.
“I have a lot of pieces left to give you,” she murmurs, stepping into his embrace again, always hungering for it when she was away. There was something about his touch—something rough and calloused and yet perfectly gentle where she was concerned. She never felt the torn edges of it or the bruises across the knuckles or the danger he put himself in to earn them. She just felt the way they softened around her, cradling her face, pulling her close, helping her create a haven for their family—create a home.
Her lips find the edge of his jaw, roaming over the scaled edges of his face. It lights a soft fire in her belly, not that she was brave enough to tell him that. She wasn’t brave enough to tell him about the way that he turns her hot and cold, undoing her defenses and leaving her vulnerable before him. She had been many things in her life, but her favorite was his. “We did a pretty good job with Adna,” she muses into his skin, her voice breathy as she lips at the corner his mouth, the velvet there achingly perfect.
“Maybe we should have another.”
but there you go again, turning golden, right there in front of me
There’s always been a hole worn into him, a pit where he stuffs everything he would rather not think about. Leliana reaches in and makes him whole again. She rips the cancerous pieces from him and kisses the marks she leaves all through him. In truth, he is terrified of how much power he has given her (continues to give her, endlessly, ad infinitum). It sends a sick shiver up his spine when she presses back against him and speaks her perfect offering to him. Every breath is a new covenant, a testament to their love as it grows into something even greater. It dwarfs the simple adoration of those around them.
But her words aren’t needed. He knows what she feels as it churns through them both like some ancient tide. The hormones breathe relief and joy into them after the ache of failure. The world is more vivid for a moment and the warmth of her touch is too much for him to bear. Their first night plays through his head and he’s trailing his teeth across her skin without a thought.
He’s careful when he tests the softness of her skin with the razor edge of his fangs. They prick and pull but never enough to draw blood from her tired body when she invites him to relive the last autumn they shared. There is a desire gnawing at his bones but he never bites into her the way he wants to. This body never learned how to cherish the things it loves; it only knows to crush and consume, and God he wants to crush her with the weight of all this want.
But he remains gentle with her. Every kiss up and down her spine is restrained. He fits over her hips like they were made for one another and he mumbles prayers through his teeth and against her skin. Vulgaris lets his lips map the curves of her body until he’s memorized the perfect slope of her back a hundred times. He wants to ruin her, God, he wants to rip her from the altar he’s built for her. But he must be content with this. He must only imagine the way he wants to break her this time.
He closes his eyes and the dream blends into reality. She offers up her skin and he takes it.
" ancient language, speak through fingers. the awful edges where you end and i begin. "
He understands the shifts of her body, the soft fluttering of her breath, the gentle spike of her pulse in the delicate slope of her neck. He reads her completely, unfolding the edges of each and every page and laying them out before him. She presses into his side and closes her eyes on a sigh, breathing in the musky scent of him—that masculine edge of spice and earth and copper. He always smelled of danger. Of the entire world and yet completely of home and her stomach twists with an undying love.
If only he knew the way she loved him, of the way her heart fell apart and reformed in his hands.
Of the power he wielded.
She doesn't have the words to explain it to him, but he doesn’t require it. The language between them, learned over the last year, is something more, and she communicates in the only way she knows how. Her wings turn scaled and serpentine, oil-slick in the way of their new family. She feels the fang against her flesh and she doesn’t shy but only murmurs her consent, affirms her pleasure in the moment. She has nothing to fear from him, nothing to keep from him that is not his already, and she doesn’t try.
The moment is as beautiful as the last, the two of them fitted together so perfectly, but there is a different depth this time. Before, it had been the fresh exploration of a land not yet explored. Love me for tonight, he had pleaded, and she had known—even then—that she would love him for so much longer. So, this time, it is more. It is familiar, bodies retracing the same steps, picking up the same dance.
But it is no less thrilling, no less beautiful for the familiarity.
Warmth blooms in her chest, her bones igniting with something that he beckons forth.
When it is done, her mahogany body is darker, her legs weak, and although exhaustion creeps the edges of her mind, all she can feel is the dull static of joy. She blindly finds his chest again, curling into him, her lips tracing mindless patterns into the places she can reach. “Vulgaris,” she breathes, her voice syrupy on her tongue, thick with emotion. “You asked me once to love you for the night,” she remembers the first time, surrounded by the roar of the river. “I hope you do not mind if I choose to love you forever.”
but there you go again, turning golden, right there in front of me
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