06-21-2021, 01:58 PM
Dark
He is too much like what she knows for her to be properly afraid of him. Too much like the dark of her own father, someone violent and corrosive, driven by emotion like this male is, even if neither of these men would ever admit it. Too much like the wild of her mother, unpredictable and untethered, ruled by the living storms inside her chest. There is something dark that drives him, something fueled by the fury she has unleashed inside him by simply being here, by wanting to know him. By staying when she should have left.
She knows she should be afraid, knows that this isn’t someone who bluffs. If he says he will kill her, then she can count on that.
Yet it is so hard, so impossibly hard not to feel drawn to the wild of what is familiar. The chaos she knows.
“Dying has no purpose.” She says, and there is nothing defiant in the gentleness of her starlight voice, nothing stubborn in the liquid warmth of those dark brown eyes. “And I very much don’t want to do it.” She isn’t sure why she tells him this, why this is a secret she shares with a man who would likely be more than happy to wield it against her, to weaponize the things that wound her. But it is too late to take it back, and when her dark eyes find his face again there is a new kind of wariness that shows just a hint of the brokenness she has learned to conceal so well behind gentle gazes and gentler smiles. If he were a man patient enough to study his prey, he would realize that she is the blue of sorrow, of bruises, of lonely ocean depths. He would know a glimpse of her heart, just a sliver of her soul.
But then he is a roil of anger, more wrathful than any ocean as he commands the water up her delicate body to seize her by the throat, by the chin and force her gaze to him. He needn’t do it though, needn’t force her when there was no where else she wanted to look but at the violence and fury of a face changed by the way she had reached for him through his water. Where his gaze is something that cleaves and simmers, hers is like the balm of cool starlight when she looks back up at him.
Then he dissolves, and finally, finally her heart is a symphony of racing fear that maybe he will disappear into the dark and she will never see him again, never know him.
“Wait,” she says, and her voice is a whisper that betrays this sudden ache inside her chest. But he hasn’t gone anywhere at all, and when she strains against the water to reach for him she finds that she is still locked firmly in place. Even stranger is the relief this brings her. She disappears, suddenly like the darkness that surrounds them, suddenly no more than a silhouette beneath his climbing water, and when she tries to reach out to touch the water again, she realizes why he holds her so tightly in place. “You don’t like it when I touch your water?” She asks, letting the camouflage fade from her skin again so that she is once more mottled blue and shining white. “Then I won’t do it again.” She promises, holding so impossibly still so that he’ll know she means it.
His grip tightens, and she cannot stop the gasp of fear startled out of her when it is suddenly harder to breath, harder to speak beneath the pressure of his fury. “I don’t want to win,” she says, and the words are rough and raw as she coughs on them, “and I’m not trying to escape you.” It’s too hard to breathe, too hard to speak, and so she lets her armor flare beneath the grip of his water until there is enough space to breathe again.
It is many long moments before her heartbeat has calmed enough to speak again, many long moments but her voice is still painfully raw and there are bruises of mistrust in the bottoms of her liquid eyes. “My name is Dark. Have I earned your name yet?”
She knows she should be afraid, knows that this isn’t someone who bluffs. If he says he will kill her, then she can count on that.
Yet it is so hard, so impossibly hard not to feel drawn to the wild of what is familiar. The chaos she knows.
“Dying has no purpose.” She says, and there is nothing defiant in the gentleness of her starlight voice, nothing stubborn in the liquid warmth of those dark brown eyes. “And I very much don’t want to do it.” She isn’t sure why she tells him this, why this is a secret she shares with a man who would likely be more than happy to wield it against her, to weaponize the things that wound her. But it is too late to take it back, and when her dark eyes find his face again there is a new kind of wariness that shows just a hint of the brokenness she has learned to conceal so well behind gentle gazes and gentler smiles. If he were a man patient enough to study his prey, he would realize that she is the blue of sorrow, of bruises, of lonely ocean depths. He would know a glimpse of her heart, just a sliver of her soul.
But then he is a roil of anger, more wrathful than any ocean as he commands the water up her delicate body to seize her by the throat, by the chin and force her gaze to him. He needn’t do it though, needn’t force her when there was no where else she wanted to look but at the violence and fury of a face changed by the way she had reached for him through his water. Where his gaze is something that cleaves and simmers, hers is like the balm of cool starlight when she looks back up at him.
Then he dissolves, and finally, finally her heart is a symphony of racing fear that maybe he will disappear into the dark and she will never see him again, never know him.
“Wait,” she says, and her voice is a whisper that betrays this sudden ache inside her chest. But he hasn’t gone anywhere at all, and when she strains against the water to reach for him she finds that she is still locked firmly in place. Even stranger is the relief this brings her. She disappears, suddenly like the darkness that surrounds them, suddenly no more than a silhouette beneath his climbing water, and when she tries to reach out to touch the water again, she realizes why he holds her so tightly in place. “You don’t like it when I touch your water?” She asks, letting the camouflage fade from her skin again so that she is once more mottled blue and shining white. “Then I won’t do it again.” She promises, holding so impossibly still so that he’ll know she means it.
His grip tightens, and she cannot stop the gasp of fear startled out of her when it is suddenly harder to breath, harder to speak beneath the pressure of his fury. “I don’t want to win,” she says, and the words are rough and raw as she coughs on them, “and I’m not trying to escape you.” It’s too hard to breathe, too hard to speak, and so she lets her armor flare beneath the grip of his water until there is enough space to breathe again.
It is many long moments before her heartbeat has calmed enough to speak again, many long moments but her voice is still painfully raw and there are bruises of mistrust in the bottoms of her liquid eyes. “My name is Dark. Have I earned your name yet?”
The heaviness that I hold in my heart belongs to gravity.
Dovev x Luster
@[Maugrim]