and you say that i hurt you in a voice like a prayer, leliana

[vulgaris]

VulgariS

take me, take me back to your bed. i love you so much that it hurts my head.
say, i don't mind you under my skin. oh, let the bad parts in, the bad parts in.

He watches her warily as the lines of her face turn sharp and cruel, her anger spilling into the words she spits at him without hesitation. But he does not recoil from her or the awful shame that coils tight around him when she speaks. The word ‘sister’ twists his stomach into tight knots until he can hardly breathe with the weight of his awful guilt. Never in the silent winter nights had he ever breathed a word of the sick desires that hung like bait from cold metal hooks. He kept it all stitched inside where no one could see it.

But she knows, she knows. God, she fucking knows.

His gaze drifts between the ground in front of him and her chest, never daring to stare into the heat of her eyes. She is red like fire, he thinks now. And still she claims to love him and every wicked facet of his being. A trick, a trick. It has to be. Because if it isn’t, then Shiya lied and he pushed his lover away for nothing. All his fault for nothing. The thoughts flicker in and out like a bad fluorescent bulb, buzzing and scraping at his skull. He wants to bash his face into a rock to make it all stop.

“I don’t know what to do, Leliana. I don’t even know how to begin,” he says as he finally lifts his head to look at her face. Her cheeks are thin and tired while blood trickles from her lips. If only she could claw him open and use the parts she needed, he thinks. But that’s not how these things go. At the end of the day, he is alone with what he’s done.

“I need you. I’m sorry I never said it, but I do. I need you with me or I just lose it,” he finally confesses. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. No more secrets, no more bent truths. I’ll give you everything you want.”

He dares to take a step closer, then another, until his lips touch her cheek with a feather-soft kind of delicacy. It fills his mouth with ash to even think of finally cracking open his ribs and revealing all the festering secrets within him. But she is worth it and he finally relents to his needs instead of his repulsive desires. Slowly, he kisses until his lips are just behind her ear.

“Please don’t leave me. Please, please stay with me forever.”

His voice shakes around the words and comes out so thin he’s afraid she won’t hear him. But then he is silent, holding his breath that she’ll agree to be his one more time.

@[leliana]