BEXLEY BRIAR
my carnivore heart comes out after dark -
Denocte bubbles and brightens with flame. The lowest silver tips of Bexley’s hair start to smoke; then the fire that encases them sputters to sleeping. Smoke curls from her nostrils in two cool gray plumes. Ash crumbles under her hooves, splits and cracks - she trembles with the enormity of emotion - her heart is a wild tattoo, hot and hard and unrelenting, and so casually arrogant that she feels it thrashing in her throat, the iron-thick back of her mouth, so huge there is nothing else left to pay attention to.
Under those dark lashes, in blue eyes glassy from the fire, and sickeningly bright with desire, something monstrous, emphatically repulsive, wakes and rages.
Acton steps forward, and disgust throws Bexley into a visceral shudder. Drumbeats throb inside her head. Her lip curls. On anyone else it would be ugly; on her it is somewhat enticing. Acton speaks - his mouth moves - it’s visible through the smog and spark and the hazy redness of her vision - but Bex’s blood pounds so loud she can’t hear him, can’t hear anything but the drumbeat of her pulse, smashing at her ribs, her chest, every inch of her body. Does it even matter what he’s saying? There are no words for the chaos of the scene, flaming glitter like the movies, bomb-smoke like the guts of wrecked forests - so does it matter?
No. No. No.
She steps closer. Like a badly dubbed film, finally the tail end of his words reach her, grainy and muted, as if spoken underwater. His eyes still track the chain around her neck with obsessive intensity. Learning you were too stubborn to die. Her heart bang-bang-bangs against her chest.
The world tilts and swirls, and Bexley does not lose her balance. She looks him dead in the eyes. Unselfconscious, she drools: long, sanguine lines of blood.
Fuck you. A Glasgow grin, baring all of her teeth, barely holds back slime and gore. Learned. Another long, leonine stride pulls her across the cobblestone. The space between them is now negligible. She can pick apart the black freckles on his face, the hairs made glossy by dancing light. The way he looks at her with that gut-wrecking desire. For a moment it’s dizzying to feel the want that sizzles between them, and Bexley fights desperately not to sway on her feet, fights against the light-headedness that suddenly consumes her, turning her eyes to glass, her head to steam. Smoke blurs her vision with stinging and tears, but she meets his gaze evenly, trembling and unafraid, her snarl spastic, her hair wild. As if I didn’t know already.
And in one quick movement, Bexley’s golden head dips down and near-instantly snaps upward, the thickest part of her forehead meeting Acton’s lower jaw with the crunching thud of bone or cartilage. A shudder passes through her body, one of carnal satisfaction, and barely a moment later she lunges forward, flat teeth sinking into the side of his neck, pulling down in a hard scrape that floods her mouth with the hot taste of iron. Something bitter and violent pricks at her brain.
This makes sense. This is how it’s supposed to be - an eye for an eye - blood for blood, no? Why is it so unsatisfying?
Disgusted, she tears away from him, spits his blood onto the cobblestone. Iron salts the air. Darkness closes in, oppressive and warm. It’s hard to breathe, now, against the smell of blood and the electricity in her body and the broadness of her anger. In her eyes tears brim, opalescent, overwhelming, and Bexley moves them away in a fit of furious blinks, don’t cry, idiot. Don’t cry - the chain around her neck burns hot now. Singes her yellow skin. Smoke and gunpowder fill her lungs, blaze in her vision. She inhales. The sound rattles and shakes, and Bexley is unsteady, unstable, almost feels as if she might die thinking about the possibilities ahead of her, but the Briar is nothing if not persistent: she stalks toward him again, predatory, violent, and hunger blooms like violets in the pit of her stomach.
@acton <3
