the motherland don't love you
so why love anything
so why love anything
H
is eyes are full of laughter and mischief, a smile tucked away at the corner of his lips. Toulouse is as feverish as a kid with a secret that everyone else begs to know, satisfied in having something everyone else wants.When he joins her at the rose-painted door, the rest of the room fades away. All the whispers, all the music, all the sharp clinks of glasses being moved. Everything about them darkens, like flames winking out of existence one by one, until she’s the sole fire remaining in an otherwise dull world.
And his eyes want for nothing less.
Here in this den of liars and sinners, they are no different. Toulouse can see it in her eyes, can feel it in the way she brushes by him at the bar, in the energy that makes the air crackle and glow around her. He can’t remember the last time he’d met someone like her, someone with the same ichor flowing through her veins.
"Don’t antagonize me." Her words are like pouring gasoline on a fire, and the temptation inside him grows like a ravenous wolf. Do you mean that? he wants to ask, as he tucks the rose safely away into his scarves for safekeeping. Or are you antagonizing me now?
Surely she must know - from the moment the warning left her mouth, she ignited in him an innate need to defy her, the desire to find her triggers and press them one by one until she gave in. It was a game to him; his heart skips a beat inside of his chest, his blood roiling with the promise seared into the look she gives him. And when she steps closer - so close he can feel the heat of her breath and the brush of her lips on his skin, her voice echoing in every corner of his mind - his smile grows.
Remembering her was not a question now - it never had been.
Her touch was gone in an instant, short enough that for a brief moment he even wonders if she had kissed him at all. But his skin remembers the feel of her lips, even as she steps away and pushes open the rose-painted door.
For a moment he thinks that will be the end of it - her way of leaving an air of mystery he supposes, leaving him hooked on her memory. But then she turns back to him, and the liquid in her glass sparkles as she holds it out in the air between them.
"The Red Rose," he repeats quietly, and there’s amusement dancing in his tone. "How fitting." He doesn’t ask what it will take, or how long it will take, to earn her name. He had her title, and her gift, and now he had her time. The rest would fall into place soon enough.
"And what’s a Rose doing here, hiding in the Scarab?" he asks, following her into the room. The door shuts with a soft click behind them, sealing off the world. Inside it’s just the two of them, with a hundred flicking candles and blood-red roses watching them from the walls. He turns slowly to examine the room, keeping one ear tilted in Manon’s direction. "I thought they were better suited to fairytales and gardens."
He thought she would fit there well enough too - with a face like her own, any King would gladly welcome her into their courts and ballrooms (and bedrooms, he was sure.) And yet it was a less-than-honorable establishment that he found her in, a gamblers’ den that she’d made herself quite comfortable in.
Just another mystery to unravel, along with her name.
"Do you often bring strangers into your room?" his tone is deceptively innocent, and he lifts his glass to his lips to mask a smirk. The smell of the liquor is strong and strangely sweet as he drinks. Or am I just special?
@Manon | "speaks" | notes: all the eyes rn
rallidae
