[mature] don't close the coffin yet; ry

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

He can’t decide if he is relieved that she shoots both of his offers down or frustrated that she hasn’t allowed him even in the smallest chance of righting this situation. He thinks about fighting her more on it—on pushing the issue—but she doesn’t seem overly upset and he trusts her parental instincts more than his own. So he settles back, the frown line at the corner of his mouth deepening as he focuses on the way it feels to stand there and hold her, to feel the gentle touch of her ghosting down his throat.

Had he ever allowed himself quiet moments like this before?

“You’re right,” he says and he manages an easy laugh, arrogant and breathy as though they had just been relaxing, enjoying the weather. He preens for a moment, stretching out and feeling the way the skin catches on all of his old scars and knotted flesh, before he settles back down beside her. A frown crosses his features for a moment like a storm, hooking at pieces of him he had long ago tried to forget, and he brushes it away. But the rot of it remains. The pain of the memories persist, digging into him.

He looks back at her, pulling her close again, a little too hungrily, a little too needy. “You definitely don’t deserve me though,” he murmurs as he presses his face into the silken white of her mane. “You don’t deserve a murderous bastard with dozens of children whose name and faces he has never known.” He opens his mouth as though to say more, to confess more of his sins, more of his wrongdoing, but the selfishness of it—the way that it would only hurt her in the end—stops him cold.

He laughs again, although this is just a ouch more strained as he kisses her cheek.

And the words that he would say dissolve right away.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING