bitch you gotta take it
I can see myself in the cold, clean reflection of his glasses. Behind me rises a sooty-gray snowbank, run through by rivulets of coalescing, misty rain. My hair is frozen stiff but not dead, arranged around my head in a perfect serpentine halo with unblinking black eyes, as if caught by the cold air mid-movement. My eyes are no longer molten; they are bright and warm, still ferocious, but now they are nearly still, the kind of amber that traps bugs. I am wearing a smile, but it doesn’t look like I thought it would. It’s not as sharp as I expected. Not as self-satisfied.
It’s softer than I meant it, much softer than I want it to be. In the reflection, I see myself frown for millisecond, how it makes my scales rattle and shift in the cloudy light, the way my eyes go dark as if suddenly docked in shadow.
Then I’m grinning again, easy and light. Something inside me feels drawn tight—forced, like I am biting down on a stick in pain, like someone is pulling at each of my joints—but I don’t think it’s visible, at least not in the warped glare of his lenses, where I stare back at myself with a heart-stopping mix of disappointment and anticipation.
I lick my lips unthinkingly.
You tell me, Andras says, and I’m watching the movement of his mouth with something like reverence, It’s impossible to hear the words over the level of attention I pay to the way he looks like he says it, leaning forward, smiling dark and uncertain, like I’m in charge of his falling apart.
Something inside of me grinds. Shifts, then snaps into place. He says he’s busier than I am; I don’t believe him, but I won’t argue, there’s more important things to fight about. Despite the icy wind, I am suddenly flooded with heat. I feel sweat beading on my neck. We are too close for comfort, too close for anything but combustion. I am sparking. My body is tense, too electric. Suddenly I feel my breath squeeze in my chest, a white-knuckled fist, and my throat is closing fast and dry, but something in me still manages to curl my lip in something almost like a smile.
“Attention. Just like you.” I grin for real this time, dark and cocky, my head half-turned.
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