"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
i've got a face of gold, i've got a heart of coal, but baby that's my cross to bear
“I can’t believe that fish bitch tried to take you again,” Draco hisses, furious red eyes scanning the horizon for anymore intruders. Dust coats his normally shining black coat and a trickle of blood runs down his cheek.
Rebelle isn’t someone the demon thinks kindly of. There might have been indifference before. Their first encounter wasn’t pleasant, but it was something Draco is accustomed to having grown up in Pangea. But now . . . after not one but two attempts to take one of the two beings he truly cares for, hate blossoms like oleander all over his body. He nearly shivers with the sensation.
“Are you okay?” Draco whispers, finally dragging his eyes from their surroundings to peer into the navy of Dove’s eyes. His heartbeat slows down and a tremor of relaxation loosens his muscles. At least in appearance she seems fine. If Belle had drawn blood, Draco would be hunting her right now. The demon is merely relieved that he doesn’t have to leave her after another attempted steal.
Before Dove can answer, Draco lips at her mane and pulls her tight under his neck. He sighs into her pale fur and closes his eyes. The dust around them finally settles.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you here.” Another whisper, one nearly lost on a light breeze. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever needed.”
LOVE COULD BE LABELED POISON AND WE'D DRINK IT ANYWAYS.
She didn’t understand why Loess kept trying to take her, but it was unsettling. She knew it was not because of her. Dove, on her own, was nothing desirable. She was quiet and meek, and she did not wield any sort of powers that would make her useful to anyone. She was, though, a useful pawn when trying to target Draco. She was a safer option than Ghaul, that was to be sure. It made sense that if someone was trying to retaliate against her brother that they would come for her – weak, unassuming, plain Dove.
When the dust settles and it is just the two of them, she finally begins to relax. She did not know who Rebelle was, or why she had fixated on her brother, but their brief encounters unnerved her. She doesn’t respond to Draco’s earlier furious statement, opting to let him vent. When he was angry she was never sure where it was going to be directed at; even though it wasn’t her fault she was always afraid of accidentally making it worse, and so she remains quiet.
But his whispered question brings her eyes to his, and she feels her twisted heart flutter in her chest. She doesn’t protest when he pulls her close, and she hates herself for how easy it is to melt against him. That familiar war threatens to rise up again, and she desperately tries to swallow it away, to smother it with logic and reason and remind herself how wrong it is. “I’m fine, I promise,” she reassures him gently, with a timid smile that is hidden against his chest.
The sound of his heartbeat drowns out the rest of her thoughts, and she almost forgets she isn’t supposed to want this. Isn’t supposed to want him, isn’t supposed to want every little wretched thing her heart can’t help but to want. “They wouldn’t be able to keep me away from you,” she says on a whisper, her lips hesitantly touching against his chest. “No one ever will be able to.”
i've got a face of gold, i've got a heart of coal, but baby that's my cross to bear
There is filth in this universe that sullies even the brightest, purest mountaintop snow. It trails like smoke, and then like ash—ebony darkness that finds a lovely gray once mingled with some glistening ivory. The kind of filth that stains pale skin, the kind that seeps into one’s pores until the smell just sticks—it falls like rain on it’s worst days.
Draco once bathed in it, the mire. He revelled and worshipped and craved to feel the way it made him just—just simply lose where his bad attitude’s scales weakened. The sludge hardened over those soft-spots; they painted him into the monster he convinced himself he wanted to become. And he changed for what?
All to pinch closed the tear of a daddy issue?
What does it matter, really—when looking down at the face of the one thing in his world he should protect from Beqanna’s evil, he isn’t strong enough to say no. He knows the catch in his throat is wrong, knows the surprised glance down Dove’s spine is wrong, knows that settling back into the fluff of her mane is wrong; but he won’t stop. I can’t, he thinks. I can’t.
“Dove,” Draco hisses out in a strained whisper. His skin burns where Dove’s lips met his chest. “What—” he starts to say, then interrupts himself with a quiet step back.
“What’s happening?” he murmurs, because at the end of the day—and for all of his worn evil—Draco is a stupid, naive boy. The red of his eyes goes dark and the droop of his lids makes him appear nearly innocent. There is almost a pleading in his gaze, one that aches for everything and nothing all at once.
i won't take you back
@[Dove] i am so sorry this is not good AND i made it extra dramatic please forgive me
LOVE COULD BE LABELED POISON AND WE'D DRINK IT ANYWAYS.
He steps away from her and she almost cannot hide the wounded look that bruises her dark blue eyes. She does her best to will it away, because she knows it’s wrong. It’s wrong to want him, it’s wrong to be hurt that he would question it and pull away from her. How can she possibly be hurt, when he responds exactly the way that he should?
And she, the shy and meek girl that she is, anything that resembled rejection would have been enough to send her drawing back into herself, but today, something is different.
Today, she wants to cross the line that they have been so cautiously walking. She wants to see what is on the other side, just this once – but of course, she is too young and naive to consider the irreparable consequences. That once they cross it there might not be any going back; that once he touches her, he will have a piece of her that can never be given to anyone else again.
“I don’t know,” she says quietly, looking up at him with eyes half-hidden by the silver of her forelock. She closes the space that he had opened between them, and touching her lips to the stars on his face, and then slowly down his neck as she says in a trembling whisper, “I just know that I will never be able to love anyone the way that I love you, and it terrifies me.”
04-16-2020, 09:11 PM (This post was last modified: 04-16-2020, 09:12 PM by draco.)
draco
i've got a face of gold, i've got a heart of coal, but baby that's my cross to bear
Somewhere in the Sylvan forest lies Draco’s heart. Beneath the damp, dark soil and the pallid, aromatic leaves beats that which he felt he must give away. To exist in such a world—as within it as he was without it, that is—a boy his age naively gave away what gives him life. What he lives now may be breathing, walking, talking, existing—even living, as life is without a false sense of purpose, but it lacks that special passion of those still with hope.
No, Draco doesn’t hope, because he buried himself deep, deep beneath the ground that others walk upon. So this physical self, the demon boy with the horns and the handsome yet misleading smile, runs wild with no consequences, no thought to what those around him might feel.
He does worry for Dove, though. In the shadows of her navy eyes, Draco often swims until he is nothing but melting muscles and dark, stormy ocean.
There is certainly an instinct to tense when Dove touches him; and he would have twitched if he wasn’t so painfully aware of how that would hurt her. Draco relaxes, turns his cheek to lean it into the neck she stretches to reach his own. He breathes out slowly, Dove’s skin mingling with his mouth enough to burn his lips, then violently sucks the air back in and closes his eyes. For once, Draco can’t think of a single thing to say. Not even Dove’s stray thoughts are registered. He knows it wrong but for whatever blasphemous reason, he can’t get himself to admit that any longer.
So, Draco leans closer, finding the gravestone for his heart and digging desperately. This hope he feels with Dove mustn’t go unnoticed. He needs a version of Draco strong enough to carry it. To make sure he doesn’t drag Dove into the grave he dug himself.
“I love you so much, Dove.”
It’s a feverous whisper, a desperate one, followed by a clumsy rising of limbs and the stuttered racing of a rediscovered heart.
