five story fire when you came
love is a losing game
love is a losing game
It is strange to watch him against the backdrop of Solterra. In her mind’s eye Acton is forever a silhouette silvered by the moon and belonging completely to Denocte, nothing but jasmine and gunpowder given a body, and some part of her - as smirkily content as she is that he’s traveled all this way presumably just to see her - is sort of uncomfortable, seeing him in the light like this. He seems bizarrely made against the sand and brick. Bizarre like a sea in the middle of the desert or finding a canary dead in a coal mine or the way Bexley’s pulse speeds up in her throat when she meets his eyes, canine-amber and aestival.
(Still she’s glad to see him, disregarding how much it hurts.)
As casual as ever she leans her cheek against his neck, letting her head drop heavy to rest against him, lashes fluttering faintly against that orange skin: the warmth that reverberates between them is enough to make her skin prickle, near-electric, but she weathers it with a practiced kind of effort. (By now the choke and swallow of pushing down her reactions is easier than letting them escalate.) When he speaks, she can feel the rumble of it more than hear the sound, the same way the noise of a wave crashing doesn’t hit quite as hard as the feel of it.
Sure, she answers.
It’s an absent agreement, nothing but an automatic yes, because - when is anything a no when it comes to him?
One day it will get them in trouble.
Bexley sighs against his shoulder. For a moment it seems as though the world is closing in around them, irrelevant but for their bodies, the sun and Venus in the sky. Her breath slows, her heart murmurs. Then reluctantly she regains her footing, and turns back toward the inner Court, hair trailing behind her like corn silk in the warm breeze.
A golden spectre exactly where she belongs, Bexley finds her step easily. Her skin glimmers cold now, as if missing Acton’s pressed against it, and half of her wants to slow down so they can walk together again, shoulder to shoulder, as horribly attached as ever, but as soon as her step falters she picks it back up again, all forced confidence and tightening poise. Hard-headed as ever, the glance she tosses over her shoulder as a beckon to follow is little but glamour and poorly concealed degeneracy.
So, she starts, a smirk tugging to show bright-white teeth, Quite the walk to make it over here. They squeeze through a crowd ogling at a vendor’s stall, deeper into the city center, past crumbling sandstone buildings and mosaic glass painted in hundreds of colors; Bexley traverses it with casual expertise, winding a loose path seemingly without destination, almost lamenting how well she knows her trail. Seems, I don’t know. Like you’re committed?
An awful word for the two of them, but Bexley doesn’t quite have the forethought to stop herself from saying it, nor the common sense to regret it afterward: all it brings is a thrill of nervousness and white light to the pit of her stomach, as wild as every other part of them.
@acton
