to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
He had, of course, been expecting the snort. Such a foolish, bad-poetry compliment is its own kind of subtle weapon, another way to put her off guard. A little flirting that says oh, I’m harmless, I’m nothing at all - a grin and a wink. Now, tell me about yourself. August can do this kind of bartering all day, and enjoy it ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
Never mind that he’s still not sure what he wants out of this - the whole world or a pocketful of gold. He’s always been willing to meander a little, if the path is interesting enough.
She repeats him and he arches a brow at her, his moonlight-on-pavement gaze saying only see? What else was there to do - wait for someone else to find the riches, discover the secrets, build the new world? Wait for whatever flavor of doom to slouch to your door? Sometimes, August is fatalistic. Sometimes - probably - he is stupid. But let it never be said that he is not a man of inaction.
Except it is Bexley that then surprises him. Except it is his turn to laugh, bright as a bell, that smile she’d wanted it. But before he can shake his head - no, no, I meant the world - she touches him and August is reminded that he’s not the only one playing a game.
He begins to wonder if there’s a way for both of them to win.
The golden boy goes still beneath her touch as though it were a felling blow and not the brush of a butterfly wing. For a moment there is only his breathing, and the smile curling further along his lips, and the way the light falls through the blue of her eyes like shallow water at the edge of the world. August always makes himself forget how good it feels to be touched, but his body cannot be so coerced. He’s hungry for it, the way he always is - the desire to take and give, until he’s satisfied, until he’s exhausted, until he forgets what it’s like to live alone inside his skin. And then, almost immediately: starving again.
August is not so stupid to not know what he feeds himself is all empty calories. Not even golden straw can be spun into grass. It never stops him from wanting to eat his fill.
His white lashes lower as he regards her for the space of a breath, and then he’s touching that smile to the place where her throat meets her neck, tracing a line from her jaw to the jewelry she wears to the curve of her shoulder, warm as a dune beneath the sun. She is dappled, too, by the light through the crowded canopy; they must look, to the watching birds, like moving treasure, discarded wealth. He still hasn’t answered her question.
“Bexley Briar,” he says at last, to buy himself time, to say her name in a way that feels like claiming because she had done the same with his. He can feel his pulse running quicker, the way it does before every spar. Even in a pause only long enough for her name he wants to be touching her again. “You should take note that I’m a terrible loser, but a very good friend.”
August doesn’t usually give himself away for nothing, but Bexley Briar is hardly that. And anyway, the world might still be ending; who the hell wants to die alone?
@Bexley | woah boy
