"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
your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.
Her lungs ache, filled to the very brim with the sulfurous air and yet still feeling entirely empty and devoid of oxygen. Her heart weighs heavily, urging her into the shadows but a voice lingers in the back of her mind, scolding her for shying away from anything at all. Time seemed to be slowly trickling away, each second ticking away lazily with the rolling movement of a rusty old clock hand, and the loneliness had finally begun to set in. Though she craved solitude, the very fiber of her being now felt broken, torn and frayed at the edges from the mere weight of her own thoughts.
It was her own fault, honestly. She had withdrawn, recoiling into the very recesses of her own mind and within the dark craters of the uncomfortably warm volcanic land - her mind thoughtful; her skin bristling. But now, solace had grown tiring, and a hefty guilt settled into her bones. Magnus. He had never asked anything of her, nothing but her occasional presence beneath a waning full moon, bodies slick with sweat and heat, or nearby during the thick of another meeting. She had little to say in such situations (a shocking thing, really - her opinion had always been hefty and scathing, but not with Magnus).
Her mind and heart were fully confident of his abilities, in his vision, and she knew that their children and the many others that followed him would be safe and secure within his care.
Alas, her anxious mind seeks him out today - the heavy stench of brimstone and sulfur lingering in the stagnant evening air as the sun gently caresses the distant horizon, bathing the wavering stalks of drying greenery in its pale rosy light. Her limbs carry her swiftly through, her heavy plumage tucked tightly along her sides, and it does not take long for her to find the stoic, too-still outline of gold-painted wrought iron muscle.
Wordlessly, she emerges from the brush, her footfalls heavy as she has no need to startle or surprise him. Gently, her whiskered muzzle brushes across his hip, though she soon lines the length of her body along with his. A single hazel eye observes his chiseled faced for a long moment, before her gaze drifts away to the falling sun once again.
Quietly, "I have been absent; and I apologize. I have grown too content in the lull of war. Just know that I am always here, in whatever capacity you may need me, Magnus."
He had given it away before, completely, without reservation. He had taken it back. He had it stolen. He had it broken. It was not whole, not anymore; it was, in his opinion, an ugly, twisted thing. Torn too tight in some corners, burned to ash in others. The sight of his daughter, his beautiful, perfect daughter, still on the ground may have caused the worst of the damage. He was not sure he would ever recover from that.
Yet, it still beat, thrummed, in his chest. It pushed him forward up each morning, pushing him to work past the worst of his depression, to beat it back, although the sadness of it still nipped and ached in the center of his bones. His heart still pulsed violently, still urged him onward to carve out his vision in this sulfuric air, in the volcanic soil. He would not feel content, not truly, until stability had been reached.
Tonight, as the sun dipped below the horizon, and he stood watch, his gaze washing over all the dips and crevices of the land he was learning to know, learning to love, he was raw with emotion. All of his fears for his people, all of his worries for the future, all of his loss, bore down heavy upon his spine so that his mouth was drawn into a frown, his gold-flecked eyes stormy with emotion.
It felt right that she was there.
His flesh reacted to her before he did, shivering and rippling beneath her touch, although his head did not turn toward her, not yet. “Ellyse,” was all he responded at first, his voice thick with emotion, husky and warm as it pooled onto his tongue. Finally, as the sky began to grow darker, the orange of the sunset bleeding into the mauves and indigos of the night, he swung around to look at her. Finally see her.
“I always need you,” he confessed, taking the words and pressing them into her as his chest touched her, as he reached down to gently press his muzzle to her neck. “I need all of you.”
your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.
Something is awry. Perhaps it is in the way that his flesh moves beneath her touch - not a flinch, but a shudder, which ripples through the entirety of his broad, muscular frame. Or perhaps it is the way that her name lingers on his whiskered lips, as soft as the whispering wind but loud enough that it draws her nearer to him. Her brow furrows, if only slightly, as she presses the warm breadth of her cheek against his, feeling the sinewy muscles of his hardened jawline shift against her golden skin. Her thick lashes fall in the way of her hazel eyes now, her breath warm and mingling with his own, and she knows she has allowed herself to move too close, to fall too far into an embrace she had grown to crave and to need.
Time slowly fades as the sun descends lower beyond the darkening horizon, bathing the once vacant blue sky in vivid hues of tangerine and magenta, giving way to the deep, lustrous shade of navy that blankets the starlit sky. Her cheek finally parts from his own, golden-flecked eyes searching his as her own heart palpitates tightly within the confines of her chest. It is not often that he buckles beneath the weight of his own mind, that vulnerability seeps through his stoic exterior of calm decisiveness. Yet when he falls away, anguished by old memories, tormented by bubbling emotion that cannot be stifled, she presses nearer to him - each time and always.
Her own heart is a mangled, tortured thing - one she guards fiercely, terrified of the agony of heartbreak but all too aware of the pain of loss. With him, her resolve is weakened, and the hefty walls built to surround her aching heart fall away, leaving her bare and exposed in a way that she has never known before. Still, she conceals it. She hides her weakness away, knowing too well his allure and remembering the stench of others lingering on his flesh. She gives herself to him, taking from it what she can and she is content in it - but deep within, a vicious beast of jealousy simmers each time he returns from the embrace of another, and her blackened heart steels itself away once again.
He could never love someone like her - she knows; it is something that she can feel within the very marrow of her bones.
She cannot fool herself into thinking that he could.
His words are hushed, but earnest, and each syllable sends a deep-seated shiver down the length of her sloping spine. Her eyes meet with his, perplexed by the raw emotion wrought within each word, and soon he presses against him and she is powerless to pull away (though not even a single fiber of her being desires to do so).
Gently, her own neck drapes over his, pulling her chin towards her chest as she pulls him nearer still, using the flattened line of her chin to caress his matted tresses away from his thick, muscled neck. Her eyelids close again as her senses fill with his musk and dried sweat, her own heartbeat thrumming powerfully against her rib cage, along her hollow bones and reverberating from her chest to his ear. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"You have all of me, Magnus," She murmurs quietly, breaking the silence shared between them at long last. "you always will."
It is unfair of him to hold her here, to cradle her, when he has so little of himself to give. It is unfair to press his forehead into her, to breathe in her scent, to allow himself to drown in this moment. He knows that. He knows that he is emptied, hollowed out, wrung dry. Too often, too many times, he had given of himself to others. First with Joelle, in a way that was pure and youthful and seemingly eternal. Their story had not been perfect—he had never been perfect—but it had seemed untouchable. The story writ in the cosmos of his life, seared into his heart. And then, he had watched her die, bleed out but feet from him.
There had been others. Minette, soft, gentle and steel underneath, surviving the worst of circumstances and coming out stronger, straightening her shoulders to be there for her children, even when they bore the same eyes as he who had carried her ill fate. But, she too, was wrenched from him. Gone.
Magnus feared there was nothing left to give, nothing else worth having, but he could not push her away. Not when she had carved her way into his chest from the first time she had spat venom and bore her teeth. He could still remember the fire in her eyes, the serrated edge to her words. All the rock and stone exterior that gave way to this now, her nestled by his side, all heat, all strength, but restrained—for him.
He closed his eyes, hating himself for his weakness, but giving into the tide of them, falling into the pull of his need for her. “I should not ask that of you,” he half growled into her neck, his voice hoarse as he pressed into her, wondering that his skin did not alight from the heat. “But I cannot help myself,” he admitted, mouth traveling down her neck, at the curves of her he had come to know so well.
“I am weak when it comes to you, Ellyse.”
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.
His breath is warm against her cheek, and it reminds her too much of the evenings stolen away beneath the stars, of his lashes pressed along her flank and the warmth of his body chasing away a winter chill. Her mind is heavy, weighed down by wretched memories and unspoken words tucked away within breathless moments.
So often, her resolve hardens, but with him it crumbles - an infuriating loss of control that she is powerless to stop. Alas, though she knows she should not, she savors these quiet moments with him. He is a solid presence of stoicism and humility, and she is humbled by the way he seems to sift and change with the tide, the heavy blanket of seawater ebbing away at pieces of him as time goes on.
She cannot be so pliable; she is etched in stone and she cannot be moved.
His voice rises again, reverberating off of her golden flesh and she can feel the roughness of it vibrating off of what suddenly feels like hollow bone. A shiver courses its way along the length of her curved spine, and she cannot resist leaning into him, wanting to feel his words, more than hear. I should not ask that of you, he says, and a low but humorless chuckle rumbles within the core of her throat. But I cannot help myself.
"I am grown, Magnus. I know what I want, and I know what I need," Her voice wavers for a moment, hazel eyes cast away into the bleak emptiness of night, a heavy shroud of mist descending into the empty plain as if it were a dense cloud of smoke from an otherwise simmering, bubbling caldera. "you have not asked for anything that I cannot handle - I will take what I can get."I will take what of you I can have, she does not say. She does not need to.
The growling bass of his voice moves through her once again, and her heavy lashes close over her eyes as his whiskered lips travel along her skin, leaving her undone by the end of it. Her belly lurches uncomfortably as the tension rises, her heart dancing wildly within the confines of her chest with the heat of his confession.
"You are weak for no one," She muses softly, the quaking of her voice giving fault to her seemingly calm demeanor. "but I am weak for you."
She is all contradictions, and he is fascinated by them. She is soft and hard, smooth and yet rough. He cannot decide whether to fear the way that he responds to her or to revere it and so instead he chooses to do neither, instead closing his eyes and leaning into it. The salt of her skin dissolves on his tongue and even as he feasts, he feels as if he is stuck in famine, his stomach twisting with hunger pangs.
“Ellyse,” her name is wine in his mouth and he savors the feel of it, the syllables precious and savored as he wraps around each one. “I would give you all of me were it enough.” He does not want her to argue; he does not want to hear her say that it is enough (he is enough) because he knows the truth of it. He knows the empty spaces between his ribs, the places where entire chunks have gone missing. He has seen the way that time and sorrow has eroded at the cliffs of him, how the sea has washed away the edges.
He is not whole—not anymore; he has not been whole for a long time.
Still, he presses his mouth into her again, tracing the edges and whorls of her flesh. “You deserve so much more,” he murmurs, greedily pulling her closer to him, consuming all of her fire and heat so that entire infernos spark and flicker between them. “I would give you it all if I could.” One day, she would find someone who would do just that—someone who would pour themselves into wholeheartedly, someone who would not have but droplets left. He could not tell whether he would rejoice or mourn on that day.
In his chest, he begs for her to not leave, to stay just a little longer, but he keeps that held back for now. He manages to bite back that request at least. Instead he closes his gold-flecked eyes and rests his weary head against her, breathing in her sweet scent and soaking in the bliss of this stolen moment.
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
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