Things are changing. Quickly. A growing tension in the air, a crackling scent-feeling of fire and smoke. This is the kind of change I like, the kind I spent my childhood trying to chase, the kind I squeezed out of poisonous berries, chased the bottom of champagne flutes. The hairs on my spine are starting to rise; I am alight, prickling with anticipation, still wearing a smile that ebbs and flows sort of in sync with the way Andras’ expression changes as he watches me.
Dark and almost angry. Then confused. Suspicious, even, and more than a little skittish. A moment later he is wearing something like deep want, eyes downturned; I can see the way his mouth moves as he swallows—once, then twice.
I am grinning and grinning and grinning again. A sly, wolfish flash of teeth. It sits on me solid as any gold chain. I am flooded with smug self-satisfaction, a white-hot weightlessness in the chest that drops through me, then pools in the pit of my stomach, a feeling so intense and unexpected I am finding it hard to stand still. My body is buzzing like a frayed wire; I know that if he reached out to touch me every inch of my skin would be inhumanly hot.
When he speaks, his voice is heavy, almost guttural. It makes me shudder with—with something.
The snakes, forever the bane of my existence, are fully awake. They are stirring ever-quicker against my cheek, nipping impatiently at my neck, the thin skin just behind my ear. I lick my teeth. My will to wait is coming up short, far too short, pulling me down like a noose around the neck. When I swallow my throat is dry as the Mors, and I am growing dark and dark and dark—eyes, mouth, heart, gut.
Dark and dark and dark and—
I blink and the space between us is dead. Gone. My pulse ratchets into the back of my throat. I can feel the way his body heat fills the air; I can see the thick, dark, curl of lashes under the glare of his glasses; now I can make out the way his lips curl just so, the grin feral and barely-there. As if he’s weighing his options. As if he’s testing the waters, the way I might react to the way his eyes linger on me—hungry and unstable, like something is about to blow.
I don’t care. I’m not afraid. It could be beautiful.
Prove it.
I’m not afraid, I don’t care—
There is a crackling noise like something inside of me has burst. There is the cold roar of blood rushing into my ears.
And I am hungry, in a dark and lazy way: I know no matter what I do he will be wrapped around my finger.
Another crack. I think maybe an artery has burst. In the pit of my stomach there is a curling, like a snake, and a hissing in my ear that rises and falls, undulating in waves, and I cannot decide whether I am angry that he is telling me what to do or pleased that he has the nerve to try it.
“Or,” I threaten softly, “What.”
The thing in my stomach could be frustration or satisfaction, or some tooth-breaking combination of both. But either way it is making me tremble, and my muscles tighten, and my jaw clenches, and despite my best efforts I am reaching out.
I am reaching out, and exhaling a faint, deliberate breath onto the curve of his throat. I am reaching out and grinning as I press my mouth (and teeth) against his shoulder. I am reaching, growing bolder and bolder until I am standing with my face just an inch away from his, my eyes dark and steady, and almost purring.
and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding
Closer still, he can see the things that he could not: the dark cup of Pilate's ear, the mottled brown of his coat stretched over each curved muscle--not the muscles of a warrior, or a beast, but beautiful in the way that Michaelangelo's statues are beautiful with their bodies of smooth rock. For a moment he's a little breathless, taking it in, and his longing grows deeper and deeper still.
He wants to touch him, more than he has wanted many other things. The thought is in him bigger than Warden, bigger than Delumine, bigger than his singing rage and the endless thunder in his heart. He wants to touch Pilate so badly it aches in his jaw, his knees, a warm pain that radiates in every direction. Oriens help him.
Andras grins like a punch, wild and bright.
He is a living verb, a compass needle always spinning wildly with no true north: immense anger, immense joy, immense boredom and here in the hazy winter light and the fist of some nameless desperation he is filling with immense need that crashes into him over and over like so many stormy, gray-green waves.
He is impulsive. Savage. Reckless. Explosive in every direction--even this one.
Or what. Pilate asks, dark and vivid but so, so quiet that he almost cannot hear it over the blood in his ears. It sounds like rich chocolate. It sounds like the color of fat, juicy strawberries. Andras does not feel his whole body shiver until it is sprinting over the hill of his shoulders.
Pilate touches Andras, a warm breath on his dark throat and far warmer lips on his shoulder before he leans back, smiling the way Andras imagines that he must be smiling--like it's a challenge, a dare, a command--with eyes so deep and so patient that it makes the warden angry. His heart beats so loud and so fast he is dying, surely. There is no crime, no duty, no old library, just him and his racing heart and this big dark hole that he didn't realize he had until it was out in the open--
--and a pool of lava, daring him to jump. Andras looks at the many pairs of eyes that look back at him, all gold, all smug, like they've known all along he would jump. He would. He does.
When their lips touch new electricity crackles out of his skin.
I am forcing myself to breathe slow. Measuring the inhales, measuring the exhales, because I know if I’m not careful I’ll gasp or choke and drown in the hard gray-blue of Andras’ eyes, in the way his smile curves like Solterran steel made into a scythe.
The world is still. I am the only moving thing left in it, and only moving because my blood refuses to stop. Leaves rustle overhead. Breeze rushes through the trees. I am inside a snowglobe without snow, in a glass bubble, and what little noise filters through is dull, muffled and bubbly like I am at the bottom of a pool, like someone trying to scrape out of their grave, Alternatingly my skin is bruise-hot and bone-cold. Living, dying, fainting: I am measuring every breath, every blink, every heartbeat, because I know if I don’t I will do something I will regret. Kiss him. Punch him. Die, explode—
I grit my teeth, but I am grinning, a sharp, feverish thing. It hurts my cheeks to smile so tight. Like all the rest of me, I know it looks handsome but not kind.
When I touch him, he shudders, spits out flickers of blue lightning. His whole body is wracked with the movement. The dark thing in my stomach coils tighter with satisfaction, and for the moment my teeth are pressed against his throat and I can hear and feel his heartbeat, rattling into my mouth—panicked like a prey animal, fast and faint as the fluttering wings of a hummingbird—
I feel like a god. I feel like he is the vessel for his power, but I have with one well-placed kiss become the master of it. I am the master of him.
My head pounds. I like the feeling. I like the feeling so much I think I would do anything for it.
I like it so much I almost think I would kill him to keep it. My mouth is dry; I am becoming desperate. I smell something, oak rings and deep dirt and the hard iron of blood, all at once. My vision is black, but it could be lack of oxygen or just the fact that I am so close I can see nothing but him and him and him.
Especially when he leans in to kiss me.
I am startled for less than a breath, less than a millisecond. Then I am satisfied; darkly, cruelly so, smiling even as our lips touch, even as I lean delicately back and meet his eyes. My smirk has become dangerously crooked.
For a moment I am silent. Far too serious. A beat passes.
“Have a good one,” I purr, rough and far too casual, and then I am pushing past him and into the next aisle, swatting my tail against his chest as I pass.
and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding
Impulse is a strange thing: cunning, often unkind, always blinding.
And it is loud, with their lips presses together, all crackling lightning and heat and he hates it, the way Pilate smiles, the curve of his mouth, the hissing snakes--but he has maybe never known hatred in his life, not suffering, not rage, until Pilate leans back and he looks-- something. Whatever it is, it isn't good.
Andras can't think, not that there is time to, because the air is sucked out of his lungs when he sees--really sees--the lopsided smirk, as if barely held together. His rage is asking if Pilate sees it too, reflected in the shine of Andras' glasses, cold as as the icy woods. It is too close to fear to be anything but.
Andras knows because for perhaps for the only time since Isra, and her festival, and her beastly, godlike magic, his fear is a sinking feeling, not one that sets him on fire.
Pilate steps forward. When is tail stings the Warden's chest it is worse than any broken bone. He feels something in him, breaking for the first time. Breaking like waves. Breaking like glass.
Andras watches him go. The library is colder than he remembers. Colder than he has ever been. He thinks, out loud: "Coward."
Andras walks to his room, a long walk with his head down and face burning. His steps sound so, so loud in the suddenly far, far too crowded hall. He steps through his door, throws his glasses on the table, and sinks into a bed of pillows.
