[P] dirty valentine

[Marisol]

Marisol falls into drunkenness as easily as she falls into anything else - whole-hearted and determined and overzealous.

In the crowded dimness of the bar, it’s easy to get lost inside her own body. It’s too easy. The burn of alcohol in the pit of her stomach is intense enough to draw her attention, turn her normally-sharp brain to black static, but even that is nothing compared to the warmth that burns across her skin everywhere Theo touches her, as fleeting as it is intense. They bump shoulders, and Mari thinks she might be losing her balance. She can’t remember the last time such a subtle touch wrecked her so horribly. (Has it ever?)

Her heart catches in her throat when their wings touch, when she catches the blush on Theodosia’s skin. Especially when her voice hits the Commander’s ears, and it is rougher and darker and freer than anything she’s heard from the cadet before.

Hey, Mari protests. When her gaze meets Theo’s in the dark, it is too hot to be gunmetal-gray: the color is melted down to its barest components, her eyes vitreous and almost hungry. (That expression - hunger - seems exaggeratedly unchaste on the face of someone as cold as the Commander.) For a moment she is still and quiet, as though thinking hard about what will happen next. It’s my job to beat the crap out of you. What do you want me to do, kiss it better when I’m done?

A faint smile curls her lip, gleams a crescent-moon of teeth. She averts her gaze from Theo’s, purposefully casual, and watches the cadets throw their badly-aimed darts like there’s nothing to the words that have just left her, no effort put into their ease, no matter how far that is from the truth. No matter how her heart pounds and thrashes in her chest.

@Theodosia