[P] DO THE HUNGRY EVER SLEEP?

[Acton]

Acton whatever you feed me I'll feed you right back   He had thought pain was a thing that hit all at once and then faded, an impact as sure and shattering as a comet’s collision. This was a new education. Each slight movement of his head or neck, each attempt to swallow or to speak, opened up some new burn or sting or humming ache, and it did not occur to him to wonder if this is how she’d felt there beneath the rocks. At her reaction to his words – visceral, rewarding – he found his mouth could still shape a grin, now as bloody as her own. They are two beasts with wet teeth, too stubborn to run as flames flickered and gasped and struggled to live. Even as she closed the space between them once more, like some mad dance, nothing in Acton told him to flee. Or maybe it did, but it was drowned out by pain and anticipation and the shine of fire in the reflection of her bloodshot blue eyes. It was only as she lifted a torch that his eyes widened, that the black smell of burning reached him again. Foolish boy. Even now he didn’t think she’d actually kill him – but the only thing that saved him was that he had no intention to die. Bexley swung the torch and he used his telekinesis to stop it halfway through its arc, to force it back at her. There was the bitter smell of burned hair, and the pain, strange animal it was, migrated to his chest. It burned more now than it had when the flame was against his skin, and finally his subconscious reached him and he shuffled a few steps back, into the open alley. There was clear air here, cool with midnight wind, and he drank it down in ragged gulps as he watched her. There was nothing beautiful about her now, only frightening, and Acton realized the difference between a ghost and a girl. A ghost could not hurt you. There was no time to do anything with his understanding. She kicked at him, quick as a viper, and he flinched away but not in time: a new chorus of pain burst into being and even over the burning and the distant voices and footsteps he could hear a sick crunch that meant nothing good. He didn’t hear it long; a guttural scream quickly covered it, and it wasn’t until he was stumbling, bleeding anew, catching himself on three legs that he realized it came from him. Oh, he’d thought he was awake before but he was wrong. Now he was alive, as if each nerve was desperate to show him what he would be missing if she touched him again. Shudders wracked his sweat-slick frame and he bared his teeth at her like a wolf. All games were forgotten, all bets off. “You mad bitch,” he panted, and snapped at her in an attempt made feeble by his compromised balance. Was his leg broken? It didn’t matter now; it would only matter if he survived. He did not grin as she began to speak but there was something savagely glad in his expression, watching her break without even touching her. Asshole she said, and struck at him again. With his weight on his hind legs, he lessened the blow, making it a glancing, cutting thing that meant nothing in the grand scheme of his pain. But the landing was too much and he stumbled again, this time to his knees. He wished fiercely he might instead have fallen into her, toppled her with him, but luck was not on his side tonight. He cried out again as his bloody knee hit hard stone, and rolled onto his side; you’re dead, screamed his brain, but Acton wasn’t listening. He was glaring up at her, cool stone soothing against his body, wondering what next. “The only thing you had?” he said, and laughed like a mad dog, once more tasting blood. “You have everything.” He tried to roll to his feet, then, to force himself to stand, but his muscles wouldn’t mind him. Acton only made it to his belly, one foreleg folded, one stretched before him, a bloody swollen mass. He would stare at it if there weren’t other things going on; there was something fascinating about a thing so badly amiss. Instead he stared at her, some new beast of blood and tears and ash, a devil to punish him for all he’d done. “You were an accident. Bad timing. This…” he coughed, the smoke stung his eyes; for a second his vision swam and she was just a swath of gold and white and red. “I didn’t think you had it in you. I’m impressed.” Acton did not want to die, but he still did not believe such a thing was possible; his mind couldn’t grab onto it, this blood-slick concept of his death. And so he kept pushing her, because she teetered on the edge, and because he was good at it, and because his body wouldn’t let him do anything else. “Go on then. I won’t beg. You wanna smash a man’s head in while he lies at your feet? We’ll both die monsters.” His grin was a grimace, and his heart raced like it knew it was the only thing that could get away. @Bexley oh my god so long sorry