[P] a deer climbs the altar -

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

---

For hours, the only living things around are these: flowers violent in blooming, trees bent at the waist with knotted skin and quietly moving leaves, and honeybees with their low aureate hum.

Then, under the quiet summer sun, Delumine blossoms. Girls in silk and chiffon go whirling through the meadows; boys laze in the heat, sprawled  for miles like an army as they crush the new green grass. Harps and flute float from over the hills. For once, it seems as though Novus is at peace with itself. Denoctans and Solterrans intermingle over steaming cups of  tea. Merchants set up stalls up and down the cobblestone, selling all kinds of wares to all kinds of people. In the shade of old oak trees, huge groups of people gather, the tone of their conversations oscillating in carefully timed response to the chaos around them.

When Bexley Briar emerges into the heart of Woodstock, she is quietly abnormal. Her usual scowl is gone, replaced by a look of cool, pleasant interest; her gaze is dulcet rather than bitter; around her head rests a crown of waxy light-pink dahlias and intricately woven greenery, a glut of bright color against those bleached curls. In the light she is a slippery thing, a fish underwater, gold and white and blue and pink moving soundlessly through the crowded markets, the pockets of people, the lush, flower-freckled grass. And for once she is utterly unconcerned with the crowd around her - rather than with judgmental interest, she regards the other visitors placidly, happily, even.

A good day has come to her, finally.

She will not take it for granted. No, today is for flowers and fairy lights, for feeling-better that lasts more than a moment. She buys a new necklace - a thin drip of gold, encasing, at the end, a tiny, teardrop opal - slips it over her neck, clasps it tight and moves on, giddy to feel normal again, to feel sated, for a moment, by a material possession. A memory of her childhood returned. A simple day come back to her, and Bexley swallows it greedily, sinks her claws in deep and won’t let it go, traversing the streets with unbridled enthusiasm, humming and flirting and dancing in the white-hot sunlight, petals soft and saturated in her hair, glittering gold and white, a once-again-living being.

Her scar still attracts stares, but Bexley wills herself not to mind. And mostly, it works.

She’s gazing at a collection of ribbons when something familiar sounds behind her - a well-known voice saying something about card tricks, a voice that brings fire to mind immediately. Should she freeze? Run? Scream? Her body tenses for a moment, inexplicably, and Bexley forces herself to throw off that cloak of fear, to disintegrate her own aura of shame. Instead, she smiles. A wolfish thing at odds with the pleasantness of her current state. She turns, one hoof over the next, to look at him, and tilts her head: clicks her tongue in a mockery of maternal disappointment, curls brushing her shoulder, crown still in its place, absolute mirth playing over her face.

Acton, she drawls with a dead-eyed smirk. What a nice surprise.

---

@acton <3  

[Acton]

 
When he closed his eyes, Acton could almost imagine he was home.

There was the music, there was the laughter, there were the scents of food and wine. Of course, Acton knew an illusion when he saw one, and to think Delumine could ever stand in for Denocte was a leap not even the greenest audience would make.

But the buckskin was also good at pretending, and so for Isra and Sabine’s sake he buried the rage that simmered inside him. Anger was nothing new, but he felt hurt – betrayed, even – by the man he had called king. It was a wound that would heal crooked, if at all.

Acton didn’t know who led the Night Court any longer, but it sure as hell wasn’t the Reichenbach he loved.  

Still, there was nothing he could do about it at this moment. Instead, he performed a version of himself that wasn’t gut-wrenched, bone-weary, or badly homesick. Earlier he’d let Sabine twine blue flowers into the dark tangle of his mane, and now he stood before a gaggle of children, teaching them how to shuffle a deck smooth as water and pulling coins from behind their ears. They were a good audience: they couldn’t tell his laughter was fake, couldn’t tell his heart was a black bruise, couldn’t tell the rare moments of his dreaming lately were filled with smoke.

And then a flash of gold caught his eye, and the coins all vanished. Acton’s knee gave a sympathetic pang, and his lips curled out of muscle memory. He told the kids to run along and, shockingly, they obeyed; maybe it was the promise he’d show them more later, or maybe it was the wicked glint in his eye, a window to the blaze within.

He was almost grateful for the way his heart kicked when she said his name. It made him feel like himself again.

“Hey there, Goldilocks,” he answered, and his grin was a crooked kind of thing. There was a ghost of an ache in his jaw, but he managed not to limp as he closed the distance between them. The trek from the Night Court to here had been a hell of a thing, but it had at least made him stronger.

“Never thought I’d see you wearing flowers,” he said, and stretched out his muzzle to touch one but dropped it just before contact. All the while he watched her, mindful of her tongue, her teeth, her true-blue eyes. Waiting for impact. “Damned if it doesn’t suit you.”

He made no effort to draw away again; he was too fond of the way his blood raced hot hot hot under his skin when he was this close to her, too eager for the memory of chaos, even of pain. Anything but the numbness that so far defined his life in Dawn.

But he said nothing of the bet or the blood that stood between them, or why he was so very far from home.



@Bexley <3

these violent delights have violent ends

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

---

It is strange, to look at him again. She watches closely to see if he limps, and he doesn’t - she watches closely to see what bruises remain, and only a few do. He is healed again in the sunlight, and a smile almost crosses her lips: it’s charming to see how coolly he regards her, to see how easily they both ignore the undercurrent of whatever it is that is, has always been, passing between them. Ah, to be young.

The sun is hot overhead, and Delumine is a possibility unfolded, is so many worlds opening up on each side, and Bexley cannot help thinking I want him, and this admission is one of those worlds.

Bex bats her eyelashes as she watches him, heart tattooing a soft beat against the inside of her chest. They are not far apart, and to see the lines of his body so perfectly, the bites of blue flowers in his hair, that way he looks at her with those strange dark eyes, is almost nauseating. She hates herself for the way it warms her to be near him. Hey there, Goldilocks - and all her bones are weak. She feels her body slipping apart, her brain warm and hazy, and she hates herself for it. Hate-hate-hate. She tries to repress a smile and gives up almost immediately, and in the white sunlight she glimmers in and out of focus, gold sparkling off her skin, brightness flashing from her curls so violently that she becomes a mirage, almost, moving back and forth even as she stands still, watching him as quietly as she can.

Never thought I’d see you wearing flowers -

He moves toward her then, quick and brutal, and Bexley flinches without forethought. She feels it before she can know to stop it. For all that she wants of him, still some part of her brain begs for healing, knows better than to trust his mouth so close to her skin; as much as she wills herself to turn it off, it remains in the back of her head, black and foreboding. His breath on her neck is dizzying. His eyes, meeting hers, are deeply rattling. Bex is half-turned toward him, the soft part of her chest exposed, and the prey part of her knows it is a mistake.

She does not correct it.

Instead, she pauses in place, watching him with those cool blue eyes. Though outwardly she is still, inside her stomach seizes and rolls, and her brain goes fuzzy-black with unintended pleasure, and heat crawls across her skin, makes a livewire of her spine.

Her shoulder brushes his as she steps forward, and it takes Herculean effort to keep her eyes down, to keep her shudder contained, to keep her cheeks cool, but she does. So, she says, those long lashes fluttering, you’re here. What for?

Of course, her mind is somewhere else, is back inside that dripping fire, in the Night Court, watching him bleed - her mind is replaying what they said about that bet, everything they promised each other. Of course, she doesn’t mention it.

---

@acton <3  

[Acton]

 
There was a part of him that was grimly satisfied to see her flinch, and a part of him that was sorry, and Acton did not try to measure which side was more. He had spent a hundred days and a hundred nights trying to untangle all the ways his thoughts and feelings were wound up with this beautiful, brutal girl and not a one of them had been rewarding.

Instead he lingered, and felt a little thrill when their shoulders touched. Almost he leaned against her, just for a heartbeat, but Acton thought better of it: there was something heady about the butterfly-feeling the contact gave him, but he knew how quickly it could turn to wasps, a blood-buzz that was a far darker kind of pleasure.

For once he did not care to make a scene. Not when he’d only just been exiled from one home.

“What for?” he echoed, mock wounded. “Even Dawn’s most sheltered scholars know they couldn’t have a party without me.” It was easier, much easier, to toss his head (all that wild hair, thick and dark and hot against his neck), to flash an insolent grin, to beat down the real reason for his presence. To pretend, if not quite outright lie.

Acton was not a liar, but he felt no need to share his truths with this sunstruck girl and her electric eyes. They gave each other scars instead, and maybe that was better. It was certainly easier.

Around them there was music and chatter and a dozen strangers all with flowers in their hair; it seemed impossible to Acton that anyone here could not know of them, could not look at them and see powder and flint. That they might look like anything other than what they are, angry and deadly and eternally wanting.

Even the way she avoided his gaze made his blood hot, made him want to press in closer. Instead his molten eyes only challenged hers, demanding to be met. He had never noticed before how close in height they were, how similar the colors of their burnished skins.

To be fair, it was hard to get a measure on such things when blood was in your eyes, or roaring through your head, or when you were on your knees.

“My turn, then,” he said, and leaned away like he was utterly disinterested in the answer – but his gaze on her belied any indifference. “Why are you here, Bexley Briar? If it’s a grudge to settle at least let me know so I can warn the poor bastard what he’s in for.” He smiled like it was a joke between them, the way they had almost killed one another – all that blood. Did she have nightmares, too? Did the campfires scattered through the picturesque meadow make her skin prickle with warning, make her heart beat hard hard hard like a bird’s in her chest?

He knew that she was part of the reason he stood here instead of drinking or gambling himself into a stupor with the rest of the Crows in Denocte, but he would never tell her. There was no potential reaction that would not make him seethe: not smugness or schadenfreude, and most of all not pity.

Any of those would make him want to lash out, and what a shame that would be, when they were having such a pleasant time.




@Bexley <3

whatever you feed me I feed you right back

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

---

The cooing of the birds, and the light-winged movements of the butterflies, and the quiet, intricate sounds of harp and flute: everything around them is so obscenely calm, and it near-ruins the sanctity of Bexley’s anger. The gossamer sky would crack overhead, she thinks, if either of them said anything to ruin it, and so with effort she staves off the hunger deep in her gut, the heat in her cheeks, the cotton blackness rampant in her head. She eats her words even as they threaten to escape. Strange, how reluctant she is to let the moment in - strange that she cares for it at all, but she does.

A beat passes as their shoulders brush, and it is gone as quickly as it comes. Bexley does not lean in, as much as the idea tempts her, but she also does not step away. The half-inch between them sizzles and sparks. What for, he says in that wildfire voice, and she glances at him with dull amusement - those blue eyes warm, the thick lashes fluttering. Suspicion reigns. Her expression flickers, as if she can’t quite believe that’s the whole truth, as if she knows he still has something to hide, something sub-surface. As if he’s lying.

When is he not, though. When, she realizes, have they ever been honest with each other. Their relationship is gunsmoke and strange magic, falsehood on fiction on falsity, and Bexley would be a fool to believe anything else. She tries her best to be smart, and to be cautious - not to let her heart, soft and vicious, implode as it is wont to do - but it is difficult under this gauzy-pink sky, looking into Acton’s molten gold eyes, her pulse a drumbeat in her mouth, bang-bang-banging incessantly against her bones. Delumine is a vacuum of decaying flowers and candlelight, and romance gone sour, and light netting on glass. Long black hair and returning-to-roots.

Why are you here, Bexley Briar?

She turns to him. The scar on her cheek is latent in the dim light, moonstone and lace. Bex swallows before she speaks, clearing sand and sugar from her throat, and her white hair is a cloud as she raises her head to meet his eyes. How easy it is to fall back into that foolish old habit, how strange it is to love the fear in her chest, how very little difference there is between them - not in height, not in color, not in anger or ichor. No, she answers, voice lilted in amusement, no grudges. You’re special. Her nostrils flare in almost-laugher, the blue of those ice eyes sharpening.

And is it a joke? Who’s to say.

You know, I don’t believe you for a goddamn second, Bexley begins abruptly. Her tail snaps against Acton’s leg. Bang-bang-bang goes her heart inside her throat, and thank Solis, he'll never know. Just for fun, hmm. Plenty of alcohol to be drunk and girls to be fucked back in Denocte. Looking for something special? She tilts her head at him, undeniably coquettish, unmistakably evil.

Looking for something. If he isn't, she is: her name in his mouth.

---

@acton <3  

[Acton]

 
Acton was likewise affected by the serenity of the day, the way the breeze set the petals of her flower-crown to trembling, stirred her white-blond hair against her cheek like a girl’s. It was unbalancing to stand here like this beneath full sunlight, no blood, no smoke, no swearwords. It made him feel like a fever-dream version of himself, a thing only heightened by how everything else had changed.

Who was this man, no Denoctian, no Crow, no copper in his mouth? Was he anyone?

When he was with her, he was. He could tell by the electricity in his blood when she looked at him with disdain, could tell by the spark in his skin and the way his heart turned over like an engine at each little cut of her words.

He watched her as she looked away, not trusting her long enough to turn his own gaze to anything else. Not wanting to, either. It settled on her scar light and brief as a dragonfly touch, and for the first time he wondered if he could make it vanish. If that was something she’d want.

Here was a truth uglier than her scar: he liked having marked her.

By the time she turned back to him, his gaze was elsewhere. It was on her throat when she swallowed – he did not miss the twin necklaces, thin lines of gold – and on her mouth when she spoke, and on her eyes when she almost laughed.

You’re special, she said, and he grinned, all teeth, and hated the way it made him feel as good, as alive, as a punch. “So my mother always told me,” he said, though his dam had died long before she’d said such a thing.

Idly he stretched his neck, glanced away, like the proximity of her didn’t make him feel like burning. Like she was anyone else. Until she spoke again, and her tail slapped against his leg, and he felt his smile stretch slow-slow-slow across his mouth.

Maybe this was what he’d been waiting for. Certainly his body seemed to think so: he could feel the muscles tense, readying for something. “Oh?” Acton flicked his gaze back to hers, those eyes bright sparks against the dark of his mask. His heart kicked into a higher gear, and he remembered exactly who he was, and he leaned nearer to her before he could think better of it. Once again they almost touched; her skin was only a shiver away.

“I’m not dumb enough to tell you for free,” he said, parroting her words to him from, oh, seasons and months and a hundred hazy nightmares ago. Back when the woodsmoke had been a darker sort of scent. It should be strange, maybe, that he remembered so well everything she’d said, down to the twist of her mouth when she said it. “Careful, Bex. You’re starting to sound jealous.” His grin felt as dangerous as a knife, and as much of a threat.

Acton pulled in a slow breath and let his gaze slide down the curve of her neck, the darker gold of the shadow of her throat. He paused when it reached the opal, small and glittering, a distant star. “This is new.” Would she, he wondered, let him linger near enough for his breath to stir the yellow hairs of her coat? To be this close and not touch was enough to make him dizzy. How like a sinner he felt, ready to atone only so he could sin again. “Planning on breaking another promise?”

There it was. The seconds that followed felt to him like the slow arc of a Molotov cocktail – nothing to do but wait for impact.




@Bexley <3

whatever you feed me I feed you right back

[Bexley]

BEXLEY BRIAR

---

This is incorrect. So utterly strange. Even disregarding Acton’s oddity, his unnatural docility, Bexley does not recognize her own sudden girlishness, the warmth stubbornly blossoming her chest, the - the - way her lashes flutter, languidly, when the Decoctian meets her eyes, and not of her own accord. How stupid. How dumb of her to lust for something like this. And who even knows what “this” is - attention? Desire? Violence? Something hot and painful and impossible to put words to, and far, far too loud for the warm silence of a peaceful night, for a place like Delumine, all flowers and perfume.

This incorrect. They are fire and gasoline, powder and keg. They should not be able to stand this close without bursting into flame, without pulling each other apart to the bones. Why aren’t they at each other’s throats? Why, when she looks at him, is her gaze so awfully soft? Damn this animal heart of hers, so bloody and impulsive. Damn it for putting her in this position.

Careful, Bex. You’re starting to sound jealous.

Some small, childish part of her almost begs to cry. Bex. How - how dare he call her that, and how dare she let him. She’s letting him. When did she become so Gods-damned weak, a girl again, flowers in her hair, her tongue bitten, her heart wild and violent and unattended to. Solis-In-Heaven, strike me down now, strike me down early, deep in the dirt. It’s embarrassing. The heat in her cheeks, blistering deep in her stomach. The many long seconds it takes her to gather a response, to clear the grit from her throat, the heat from her eyes, and the fact that for all this effort, when she speaks it is still a near-whisper, uncharacteristically soft and lacking venom.

I - Bexley’s voice, already a murmur, drifts into silence. She glances up at Acton through thick lashes. Bang-bang-bang, her heart in her chest, so nerve-wracking, so school-girl crush, it sickens her, and - and -

Sickens her and saves her, all at once.

Don’t flatter yourself, she restarts abruptly. Relief snaps through her like a gunshot. For a moment she came dangerously close to admitting her own weakness, to cutting open her own chest, but Bexley is a Briar and thank Una for the strength she uses not to show her vulnerability. Her heart stills again, at least a little. Her blood cools. The world is quiet again, a low, musical stillness, and she plants herself more firmly in the dirt, loathe to sway again.

And then. His eyes. On the curve of her throat. And all of this practiced poise disappears.

Bexley holds a caught breath deep in her chest. It makes her utterly dizzy. Planning on breaking another promise?

Their bet. Of course, their stupid bet, come back to haunt her where it doesn’t belong, utterly out of place somewhere like these. Still, something about this is tempting: his breath stirring the fine hairs on her neck, warm and soft and sinful, and the chills it sends racing up her spine, dragging strange fingers down her sides, catching her by the throat. She is a puppet. A plaything. And Acton is jerking her by the strings.

She hates and loves and hates it, the way her control has been pulled out from under her.

Another breath on her cheek, and the effort it takes to swallow is visible. Bexley blinks. Ashamed, she answers quietly: Are you planning on making me keep it?

Silence, then, as the world becomes vast. Desire is so huge, she realizes, and so imminent, and so vastly general. Bexley meets his eyes and is not afraid.

---

@acton <3  

[Acton]

 
Don’t flatter yourself, she said, and his grin grew, expectant, waiting for the crash. This was what they did, wasn’t it? Slick words with killing edges, little threats that turned to physical blows. Almost it was a game and adrenaline itched through his veins now, quickening his pulse, ready to play.

It meant even locked outside Denocte, even a crow cast out, he was still himself.

When her answer came, the words were right, but the tone was all wrong.

It was the shame in her voice that caught him, made him pause. It was not a dare. It was far more unsettling than anger, than hate, and he tilted his head so his gaze might find hers, something black opening up inside him, empty and toothless.

“Am I not a monster?” he asked, his voice strange-soft like smoke from a dying fire, and his smile was strange, too, there in the summer sunlight. When her blue-blue eye at last met his, he held her gaze for a long moment, and then he stepped away with a careless shrug.

His skin felt too taut, his heartbeat too fast. Acton wanted to break, wanted to burn, wanted to make a demonstration of all the tangled wounded thoughts in his head. It was harder by far to refrain. But he had always acted on instinct, fed himself on anger, the very same way she did. What she had asked, the way she had asked it – that wasn’t him at all.

Maybe he was not honorable, but when she’d caught him meeting with Raum in that cave, his impulse had been to protect their secrets as much as to get revenge for her earlier slights. This was different – this was personal.

He realized now some sick part of him had thought she understood him as well as anyone; disappointment felt oily-slick and dark, like gasoline. It was getting to be a familiar feeling.

“I know the difference between love and war,” he said at last, and dropped his chin in a mock-bow to her, all easy arrogance, inhaling one last draw of the scent of dahlias. “Enjoy the festival, darlin’.”

And then, for what most certainly be one of the first times in his life, he walked away without a fight.





@Bexley <3 not what I expected

whatever you feed me I feed you right back