"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
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
She doesn’t understand how this can feel like a mistake and also completely right. She doesn’t understand how she can feel Ophanim pressing at the back of her mind, like he is digging claws into her heart, and then in the next breath Lie is kissing her hip and everything fades away and all that is left is only them. She can tell herself that she was simply swept away by the tides of lust and intoxication, but something in that doesn’t feel right. There had always been a lingering desire with Lie – of course there had been, it was undeniable. But there was also a genuine love that had grown inside her heart, even if she had tried to avoid it. She doesn’t know if it’s romantic, or if it was just one of those friendships that grew to be something so fierce that it transcended all definitions.
She knows that she would do anything for Ophanim, that she would die for him, just as Lie would die for Kensa.
But there is a part of her, even if she refuses to acknowledge it, even if she locks it away so tightly that she could deny it until she runs out of breath, that knows she would die for Lie, too.
“Always?” She echoes his statement, and there is a hushed disbelief when she does. She can read his mind, and she still doesn’t believe him. She finds it impossible that someone could always want her. He’ll grow tired of her, tired of her games, tired of her stubbornness, just the way everyone else did.
But she doesn’t argue with him, because in a heartbeat, he is on her, and then inside of her. Her slender neck arcs with a soft, breathless gasp, and she is suddenly enveloped by the warmth of his body and the feel of his breath against her neck. Without thinking, she curves her head around, and her lips caress the silver snowflakes of his muzzle that rests near her shoulder, and then beneath the groove of his jaw as shes says softly, almost desperately, “Just for tonight, pretend that I’m yours.” Her blue eyes close, her lips still near his mouth as she adds in a quieter whisper, “Please.”
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
Litotes wants to scream at her when she asks, even if the surprised whisper is innocent. He wants to yell yes, always, forever, I fucking mean it. He does mean it, means like he means it when he stares over a cliff’s edge and decides he can keep living for one more day. There is that passion that will never die, that little spark that will remain burning in the pit of his chest until the day he dies - and maybe even after. Perhaps the love he finds on this earth will keep him hovering in the Afterlife, ever desperate to find those that sent fireworks across his mind - the kind of love you do not give up, the kind that brings the dead back to life.
I do love her, he concedes, leaning into the arched curve of her neck. This admittance is a defeat simply because of the sadness that permeates it: neither of them wanted to fall into an affair that will cause so much pain. Lie does not have to read Starsin’s mind to know they did this on accident.
Starsin’s lips to his muzzle is almost enough to drive him absolutely insane. The cremello leans into her touch and eats her words as if they are his last meal. “Mine,” he whispers fiercely back then latches onto the skin at the base of her mane. The pleasure sends his heart into overdrive, and he thinks it might just stop if they cannot find some ending to the ill-fated romance they have found themselves in; but the only thing he can think to say is “yours,” gruff and gravelly and needy -
yours.
He finishes on that thought, and there is no emptiness like he thought there might be. For a single, blissful second he is whole - content. “I love you,” he whispers. It is an accident, something that slips out on the peak of emotions, but he does not regret it.
It is the truth.
i don't want your pity, i just want somebody near me guess i'm a coward, i just want to feel all right
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
Yours.
She doesn’t understand why he says that, doesn’t know if he means yours right now, or yours forever. And if he means forever – if he thinks that’s what he means – she can’t help but to feel that it’s only the lust and pleasure coiled so tightly around both of them that leads him to think that.
But she is greedy and ravenous, and she wants him, and so tonight, she takes him. She takes him just as much as he takes her, and even if it’s not meant to last forever, even if it’s only this single moment in time, they belong to each other.
When they finish, when they are both damp with sweat and gasping, she almost isn’t sure if she hears him correctly. Her hearts stutters to a stop, and her breathing stills, but her blue eyes find his and she can still hear the thought in his mind. “Lie,” she murmurs his name, touching her nose to his and closing her eyes for a moment. No one besides Ophanim has ever said that to her, and she has never said it to anyone besides him.
And she knows, she knows that he still loves Kensa; she knows that she is second, that he is not trying to say that he loves her, and only her, but the words still feel like barbs in her heart, because she can’t say them back. “You mean so much to me. I know you know that. I would do anything for you,” she can taste the salt of the tears on her tongue as they rise in her throat, and her eyes darken to an almost black when they gather there and she whispers achingly, “But I can’t.” She shakes her head, closing her eyes to will the tears away, and even though they still glitter their threat to fall, none of them find her cheeks as she adds, “We can’t.”
But she makes no move to pull away from him, and instead she just lets that heaviness take root inside her chest. When dawn fully broke, she would leave this, and him, behind her. She would work to fix everything she had destroyed – if it was even salvageable – with Ophanim, and she is sure he will do the same with Kensa. But until morning came, she would spend these last few moments in the alternate dimension they had created, pretending to be ignorant of their reality.
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
