[P] if you could call it living

[Michael]

*/

I swear to god
I wasn't born to fight.
Maybe just a little bit.
Enough to make me sick of it.

Michael prefers the markets baked by sunlight: the sleepy steam rising from stall after stall, long evening shadows cast the length of a street. If he looks in one direction he can see all of Denocte as it should never be, a blanket of bagged fabric waiting to be set out for the night and slowly boiling pots and the sluggish pace of merchants plodding to work. The markets at night make Michael into a trapped animal - he cannot place why it draws him in the way that it does, because his bones shake and his skin crawls and he can barely breathe for all the internal howling.

But Isra asked him, Michael, will you stay, and Michael is nothing if not sworn to agree to anything that she could ever ask of him - that anyone could ever ask of him. He is thankful that these days he barely draws attention at all.

He is slightly more buoyant.
(A tired bird, awash at sea, waiting and waiting and waiting with the end circling below, and his fellow scavengers above

(but not a drowned bird, not anymore - not a bird that sits with sand in its lungs, sand like cement-- a heart like cement.)

It is as if the world turns on an axis that dictates the weight of his skin and he does not know what sometimes makes it feel as if he is knee deep in mud and then sometimes allows him to feel the warm sun on his back and think words like peace. He suspects he will never knows. He knows only that no matter what phase of the moon or turn of the tide or pleasant smell on the breeze (cinnamon and vanilla - one bakery that cannot wait for the sun to swing low) he is always tired. He knows only that no matter how tired it is, it still does not allow him to sleep.

And this is why he is perched here, the thick curtain of his mane wrapped in a bun and secured by the iridescent blue of his scarf here as the hottest part of the day lays itself down to rest - and Michael is drinking tea.
And he is so, so tired.

@Bexley

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

my carnivore heart comes out after dark -

---

At first she thinks she is dreaming, when she sees him. She thinks he is her.


Bexley draws to a sharp, startled stop. Her eyes are wide. In the lapping golden tongue of the sunlight streaming down from overhead, he is bright and perfect as false gold, just like her; his hair is stark, shining bone white, just like hers; he looks tired. Just like her. And the blue of the scarf bound against his neck is as deep and icy, she knows, as the blue of her own eyes.

The market is empty. Baked by sun, the stalls sit whistling-quiet, and the vendors doze off under what little shade slips off the rafters. Bexley’s skin dazzles under the light like so much incandescent glitter; her lashes beat hard against the glare. And warmth seeps into her like water through fine silk. She breathes slow, calm, deep. Hoofsteps and laughter and the faintest suggestion of music ring through the streets. It feels like… home. Almost. If home were calm. If it even still existed.

Gingerly she steps forward. The meeting of her hooves against the stone sends a shiver all the way up her spine, though it shouldn’t, and her lips curl down, though they have no reason to. This is strange, too strange. One Bexley has caused enough trouble, enough hysteria, enough catastrophe. Why in Solis’ name (or Caligo’s, for that matter) would anyone want another?

Cinnamon and vanilla waft through the air, singeing the insides of Bexley’s nostrils. She’s passed enough bakeries in her time to know the signs when they come to her. And a brief, sad kind of smile curls her lips as she thinks about it—what her life might have been like if she weren’t doomed from the star, what her life could have been if she settled down, married a baker, had a child with the normal number of eyes.

No use.

“May I?” Her voice is soft, and unusually pleasant; her eyes are cast demurely down to the small stretch of cobblestone that separates them, as if sheepish about really watching him. But oh, the streets are warm, and a nap sounds awfully enticing.

---

@Michael <3  

[Michael]

I swear to god
I wasn't born to fight.
Maybe just a little bit.
Enough to make me sick of it.

Michael is so tired, staring into his tea, huddled in the damp warmth that rises from the cup as if he might trip and fall in at any second. He is too tired to feel the streets pressed in against him, too tired to heed the nervous flutter of his agoraphobic heart when he glances up from the table and hears the din of voices slowly rising. Hour by hour the sun is tick-tocking away in a sluggish arc toward the horizon. And Michael is far too tired to care.

He inhales deep. He breathes it out in a sigh. He casts his attention out over the street to his side, lifting the cup to his lips but forgetting to drink at all. Michael does not miss Bexley Briar, does not pretend that he does not see her and does not avert his gaze as she investigates him though it makes his heart thump loudly within him. The sound of it bounces back and forth against every wall.

He is more comfortable with Isra and her bubbling anger, Isra and her digging hands, Isra buried up to her neck in the dirt of living. When he looks at anyone else they are warped and unclear, fuzzy around the edges. When he looks at himself he is little more than a hole into which all bright and happy things disappear. He thinks sometimes that it takes the mouth of a dragon that could swallow him whole to make anything at all clear. He thinks that if Isra did not turn sand to dandelions to rocks that beat against his shore and bruise his ankles, he may not understand anyone. Certainly he cannot fathom this Bexley Briar, poised on a sword's edge at the curb.

Arched over the thin porcelain of his teacup, the pink of his lips pressed just barely against its delicate rim, Michael is watching Bexley with some far-off, unfathomable expression. When she asks, may I, he can only nod.

"Of course," he answers, because he can do nothing else, because the rapid thump of his heart is as loud as his curiosity, like hummingbird wings in the cup of his ear. "my pleasure."

And, now, here they are.
A mirror reflected, gold against gold as Michael finally takes a deep sip, still fixed on her face. It is scarred. Jagged in places. He wants to ask why. He thinks so many things but he does not say any of them aloud. Michael very, very rarely says the things he wants to. 

Instead, his gaze flicks away for a moment, to pluck another cup and saucer from a passing tray and offer it to her.  
"I've heard of you, I think. Nothing in particular. Just that you exist." He smiles. It is kind and genuine. "You must tell me if you always look that sad."

@Bexley

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

my carnivore heart comes out after dark -

---

Not all that glitters is gold, and not all that is gold glitters; Michael and Bexley are all of these things at once—beauty that is worthless and worth that goes unnoticed, gold, tarnish and soft-mouthed defeat. Bodies of trauma, gilded and lace. She knows she would (should) rather die bright than go out gently. (What a shame she would be to her family, the Briars and their morior invictus). But oh—it would feel like a gift, to go out gently now, like God’s biggest blessing bow-topped with irony.

She sinks down to the cobblestone.

Baked through by the sun, the slabs of rock lap a kind of seeping warmth against her skin. She stretches out in increments. One leg extending, a clump of muscle opening up. Hair falling in new white waves. The steam of the tea rises up between them like a veil, scented with something like but not exactly raspberry. Bex chews absently on the inside of her cheek, and then the smell of the fruit is salted, freckled with blood.

He does not look as much like her from this close. From this close the blaze on his face mismatches hers, too wide, too sharp; from this close she can see the blue of his eyes is lighter than hers, though nearly as pained; from this close she notes that it’s only his front legs dipped in white, and that his hair is far, far longer than hers.

Bexley is at once relieved and upset.

And her smile, when she offers it, is mournful: it casts her face in faint shadow, it makes her eyes a little unsteady. “Yes,” she confesses, so soft it almost cannot carry. “Recently.” With a long, quiet breath she rolls her head to the side, rests her cheek against her chest; when she meets his gaze it is through a thick swath of lashes, sheepishly kind, softhearted and with genuine interest.

“It’s funny to know that strangers have heard of me.” It isn’t, not really—Solterra’s golden girl, the ex-regent, the girl with scar—but she is at least a little surprised her name has made it through the waves all the way to Denocte, now that the people who made her famous are all missing-presumed-dead or dead-presumed-dead.

Bexley blows a measured breath out through her nostrils, pulls one in. “I don’t think I’ve heard of you,” she says, with a shy, suddenly-awake smile, “But maybe that's better. We can start over. I’m Bexley, and you—?”

Without thinking she brushes her nose against the soft blue scarf.

---

@Michael <3  

[Michael]

"I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."

Michael shifts to give her space. "That's okay," he says. "You can be as sad as you want. We'll match."

If he were different, he would think she's beautiful. Bexley's lines are soft curves crashing into sharp angles, and each angle echoes something else. She has this look of completeness that he has never been able to master or even mimic.

Michael has always had this sense of lacking that he cannot shake. If he is a pit, if he is a yawning jaw sucking light from around him and turning it black and dirty, he is a pit with ineffable depth. It is in his body: the way he stands (as if trying to be small, to be safe, to be anything but what he is) or the way he smiles (warm, but tight, and almost too bright - he is hoping the light bounces off enough of his edges that it shines back at them from within, but it is always cold light, always sickly light) but especially in the way he laughs, like someone panicking.

Like someone hiding.

Here he is, with more things that he either can't or won't say - full to bursting.
"I don't blame them," he says, "--not that anyone deserves to be talked about, just that I imagine you make quite the impression. Speaking from entire minutes of experience."

Michael all but winks, raising the cup to smile against it, taking one long drink that leaves it drained and glistening. Its heat rolls down his throat and pools in his stomach but still he is so, so cold.

I don't think I've heard of you, Bexley says, but maybe that's better. Michael laughs like sunshine, laughs like thin clouds and sick green light - it is mirthless but he doesn't notice.

"No, you wouldn't have. My name's Michael, and I'm wildly unremarkable."

Then she is reaching for him, pressing her own pink muzzle against the blue of his scarf, blue like deep oceans and dragons and a place in him that he cannot go - he is caught between her warmth and his, the sleepy sun in opposition to his bleak sickle moon. "This," he says, almost too quietly, "is a gift."

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

my carnivore heart comes out after dark -

---

Bexley stretches out like a cat over the sun-warmed cobblestone, a long, graceful arc of movement which collapses within the next moment as she relaxes into drowsiness again. Warmth settles deep into her bones; it washes over her skin.

When her eyes flutter closed, this feels like home.

We’ll match, he says. Bexley smiles faintly. (No one can match this, she thinks—the thing in her chest that is blacker than black, the feeling in her stomach that sinks deeper than river-stones. No one can match the threat of tears ever-present in the corner of her eyes. No one can match the scar. No one can match the still-living, already-ruined body she inhabits, like an ill-fitting coat from a seamstress who only knew her as a child.)

Sun filters in like diamonds through her wave of curled lashes, sharp, bright shards of white that no amount of blinking seems to dislodge. “That’s nice of you,” she murmurs back. “But if I do make an impression, I think most people find it—irritating.”

She thinks of Acton and their smoky walk down the first mountain; she thinks of Tor’s scathing glances, the open teeth in his chest; she thinks of Maxence’s derision and Seraphina’s distrust and—

Bexley inhales sharply. Her chest hurts with the market-smell of cinnamon and incense and whatever perfume lingers on Michael’s sky-blue scarf. Suddenly her brain goes black; a soft, pretty blackness that swarms like butterflies; Bex blinks rapidly, and her ears ring like she is dying, and the world’s movement picks up speed, then stops completely. Her eyes close.

Calm down, she murmurs to herself, calm down, calm down, calm down.

And then, just like that, the world’s greatest actress, the sickness abates. Bexley smiles back up at him—a faint, warm, childish thing.

“I don’t think you’re unremarkable,” she says. For once there is no decoration to it. Her voice is plain—intent—completely honest.

For once she is not interested in hiding.

---

@Michael <3  

[Michael]

"I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."

Michael smiles as if someone else is smiling for him, as if each motion is a practiced and deliberate routine that brings the cup back to his mouth and asks him to drink until it's empty. 

(I wonder if Bexley Briar is right, if the sea of her grief is primordial and black enough that Michael cannot swim in it, even clothed in centuries of suffering. I wonder if Michael might look at it and feel, for the first time, that he might drown in the undertow. I wonder if he would care.)

Somewhere there is the groan of machinery, the whistle of stoves and cinnamon and a breeze that blows the hot sun down his back, onto the cobblestone where there's dust gathering against the curb outside of their pocket of silence. Michael still has not put down his teacup - he is holding it in a grip that trembles - because surely the tinkle of it would dispel this magic moment where she is laid bare and even as she speaks he is swearing to guard each and every secret as closely as he can.

He shouldn't look. He shouldn't. Shouldn't see the fog of her gaze and hear the breath sucked in too quick and think Caligo help me, like it's a hymn and not a prayer but it blooms in him nonetheless, cool and blue. And he shouldn't stare at her with his shaky grip and bend his expression into one of concern, but he does - it is not a beautiful expression, and it is not particularly poetic. 

And the sin of all sins, the one thing he hopes, is that his face does not smooth out the same way hers does, following her into this song where she is not shattered glass and he is not some old, sunken ship.

Bexley says to him, I don't think you're unremarkable, and Michael has to stop himself from dissolving where he stands. "And I don't think you're irritating," he says like it's a secret, like he has known this all along but just now found the words for it. He cannot quite find the reason why.

Michael pauses to set his teacup down, finally. The sun glances off the rim and off his body and off hers and the breath he takes feels too warm and too slow. "I'm curious why you think you are."

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

my carnivore heart comes out after dark -

---

They are strange. Especially together. Gold-and-gold, two glittering, swirling suns in the cloudy gloom of Denocte, in streets marked with silver crescent and half-moons Bexley still finds herself suspicious of.

They are strange. They do not belong here. (Right? Perhaps that is only her wish. A childish desire to know she has found someone else like her, someone who does not belong but wants to. Or pretends he does…)

If things were different—if she were someone else, maybe, looking down on this instead of out from it—they could be a painting. Shiny as the satin of a Rococo, like the statue of Solis on top of the mountain, like Bexley’s chain, cold and bright in the cloudy dark.

The smell of cinnamon is still hot and sharp in the air. Steam swirls up from the teacup between them; it casts a veil which is warm like a dream. Bexley lets out a breath and watches it turn the vapors into a plume like dragon-smoke. Something about it is poetic. A thing like fire reduced to a little cloud, rising from the surface of a lake of tea.

His stare does not bother her, though she does find his concern almost endearing—weighted gazes like his she is more than used to being the subject of. When he smiles, she smiles back. It is the easiest thing she has done in many days.

And it feels good. Like falling asleep dead-tired on a mattress stuffed with feathers. Like a bracingly warm drink. Like a heart that knows when to beat, and how hard, and how fast. “Because people tell me so,” Bexley admits.

Suddenly she is a little shy; when did she learn to listen to anyone but herself?

“Besides, if you’ve heard of me, you must have heard of the trouble I’ve caused.”

Not death. Not despair, not passion, not crime nor punishment. Trouble, only, because there is no word specific enough for the fanged, deep-black part of her which causes

all this

trouble.

---

@Michael <3  

[Michael]

Steam like ribbons. Steam like lazy clouds that rise with the sun and fall with the moon. Steam that every second is growing thinner, cooler, until it is gone altogether. And Michael has not stopped staring at Bexley.

Michael's private sin is ruthlessness, not in the way someone might say that man is ruthless, and not in the way his father was ruthless, but in the way that moths are ruthless, or worms are ruthless in a way that nobody quite sees except in hindsight.

Michael likes to pry. Michael likes to crack people open and look at their fears and their hopes and their sadness. Michael likes to dig his dirty hands into the meat of them, and read their bones like a story he is not skilled enough to write. But not Bexley. Michael sees her, sees her naked pain and her thick pink scars and he does not wonder why.

She is smiling. He is still smiling back at her. Together they make a simulacrum of two things that are whole, two things that are not so very sad that their hearts feel like lead in their chest. Bexley says, because people tell me so, and Michael, after pausing for a moment to draw in a long breath, says "Fuck people."

His eyes finally stray from hers, across the street where she had stood before. "I like trouble," he says, with more gravity than it probably deserves, "but I've been alive a long time. Maybe 'everyone' lacks perspective."

"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us."

@Bexley <3