08-29-2021, 09:48 PM
His mind is lost someplace within a thousand fragments of thought and feeling. He is himself - noble to a point of arrogance, loyal to the point of stupidity, and yet he is also someone else entirely. He is basal and reduced to instinct, reduced to reaction because his mind is something slow and unfamiliar, something sluggish. It is like sinking and drowning, like dying.
Maybe it is death.
Maybe death knows it has sunk it’s claws into this leonine beast, maybe it waits forever in the periphery for him to stumble.
You’re sick.
It is a voice so familiar that it almost pulls him back to the surface of sanity, a hand reached into a dark so thick it chokes him. But it is also a voice of impossibility because it belongs to a girl, not a woman, and that girl belongs in brighter places than this one. “And you’re a liar.” He says, his voice a cracked snarl, his face a tangle of fury as he carefully looks anywhere except her eyes, those twin spots of pale spring green.
But he is weaker than his stubbornness, weaker than his pride, and when his light brown eyes lift to her face he can do nothing but take her in. Her sameness is uncanny. Same eyes, same gems, same shade of green. Even the same beautiful scowl he is arrogant enough to think is something she wears especially for him. Except, of course, that she isn’t real.
He snarls at the weakening of his own resolve, snarls at this creature who wears the face of someone who managed to make herself matter to him. What magic is it that knows him so well, knows these secrets he keeps buried in the darkest parts of his heart - hidden, but apparently not safe.
And it knows her so well, knows her stare and that scowl hidden like a promise at the corners of that beautiful mouth, knows her stubbornness and her ire and the way she is so good at threatening him. He even smiles, for just an instant. If he is a storm, then she is the quiet, watchful center. She is the thing that tethers him. He is best when trapped in the gravity of her.
It is the way she trembles that catches his predator eye. It wakes something primal in him, a fire he had thought all burned out but now flares to life in the snarl on his lips. “Pick a different face.” He is almost roaring now, more than furious as he stalks close enough to breathe in the smell of earth and dew and forest from her skin - more impossible things he can not reconcile but yearns for all the same. “She is mine.” To keep, to enrage, to protect. It is a kind of madness, a kind of poison that creeps through him, burning like a fever until he is damp and raving and lashing that knifed tail.
And yet.
And yet.
When he touches her, when he finally closes the distance to press his fanged mouth to the smooth dark of her flawless skin, it is with a gentleness he should no longer be capable of. His teeth drag across her flesh, sharp and curved, but he does not press hard enough to break such perfect skin. “I wish you were her.” He says, admits, presses a kiss to her neck with a kind of broken finality that should come to her as a warning. Then his wings flare wide and his lashing tail falls, buried barb first in the thick golden-maned fur of his own broad chest.
It takes a moment before his legs fold beneath him, his body too heavy to be made of anything but stone - and he had meant to say one last thing, one last smug parting shot about winning. But the words are trapped inside the stone of his mouth, and as the world starts to darken he is vaguely glad that this is the last face he’ll see.
I’m too tired. He tells her, but the words die unheard inside the prison of his mind.
Maybe it is death.
Maybe death knows it has sunk it’s claws into this leonine beast, maybe it waits forever in the periphery for him to stumble.
You’re sick.
It is a voice so familiar that it almost pulls him back to the surface of sanity, a hand reached into a dark so thick it chokes him. But it is also a voice of impossibility because it belongs to a girl, not a woman, and that girl belongs in brighter places than this one. “And you’re a liar.” He says, his voice a cracked snarl, his face a tangle of fury as he carefully looks anywhere except her eyes, those twin spots of pale spring green.
But he is weaker than his stubbornness, weaker than his pride, and when his light brown eyes lift to her face he can do nothing but take her in. Her sameness is uncanny. Same eyes, same gems, same shade of green. Even the same beautiful scowl he is arrogant enough to think is something she wears especially for him. Except, of course, that she isn’t real.
He snarls at the weakening of his own resolve, snarls at this creature who wears the face of someone who managed to make herself matter to him. What magic is it that knows him so well, knows these secrets he keeps buried in the darkest parts of his heart - hidden, but apparently not safe.
And it knows her so well, knows her stare and that scowl hidden like a promise at the corners of that beautiful mouth, knows her stubbornness and her ire and the way she is so good at threatening him. He even smiles, for just an instant. If he is a storm, then she is the quiet, watchful center. She is the thing that tethers him. He is best when trapped in the gravity of her.
It is the way she trembles that catches his predator eye. It wakes something primal in him, a fire he had thought all burned out but now flares to life in the snarl on his lips. “Pick a different face.” He is almost roaring now, more than furious as he stalks close enough to breathe in the smell of earth and dew and forest from her skin - more impossible things he can not reconcile but yearns for all the same. “She is mine.” To keep, to enrage, to protect. It is a kind of madness, a kind of poison that creeps through him, burning like a fever until he is damp and raving and lashing that knifed tail.
And yet.
And yet.
When he touches her, when he finally closes the distance to press his fanged mouth to the smooth dark of her flawless skin, it is with a gentleness he should no longer be capable of. His teeth drag across her flesh, sharp and curved, but he does not press hard enough to break such perfect skin. “I wish you were her.” He says, admits, presses a kiss to her neck with a kind of broken finality that should come to her as a warning. Then his wings flare wide and his lashing tail falls, buried barb first in the thick golden-maned fur of his own broad chest.
It takes a moment before his legs fold beneath him, his body too heavy to be made of anything but stone - and he had meant to say one last thing, one last smug parting shot about winning. But the words are trapped inside the stone of his mouth, and as the world starts to darken he is vaguely glad that this is the last face he’ll see.
I’m too tired. He tells her, but the words die unheard inside the prison of his mind.
sorren
i'll take my heart clean apart if it helps yours beat