Let me in. He is surprised when it is more than a whisper. It feels like it barely leaves his mouth at all, caught in his throat like the breath that follows.
Pilate huffs--from here just the sharp rise and fall of his shoulders, the indignant twist of his head that makes Andras' mouth twitch--and Andras watches the doorway swallow him whole.
He tries to force patience (something he has never really had), tongue pushed up to the back of his teeth. But patience does not come easily, and Andras is still as a housecat, waiting in rapt silence, straining to hear the tap, tap, tap of approaching footsteps. Maybe there should be uncertainty in him. Maybe he should think, if? and not when? but he doesn't. Andras chews the inside of his lip in thought.
He knows, somehow. The if never enters his mind. When the door opens, and then the gate, Andras is shocked by the certainty with which he meets it. He is stilll chewing the inside of his lip when their eyes meet, close enough now to see each molten string of his irises, the light on his scales that squeezes the warden's chest with an unkind sort of severity. For a moment that something rears its ugly head, soft and comfortable and desperate skidding across the black, black skin of his fear-need-hatred and then gone just as fast as it came.
Andras hate this. The something. Maybe more than he hates the self-satisfied half-smile that makes his stomach snarl.
"Or what?" Pilate purrs.
Another sharp fork of electricity pops off the point of his hip. He smiles like the dead of night, like a threat, like a kiss--eyes narrowed, full of his own electric hum--and steps through the gate. There is nothing but the shifting light of his glasses to betray the glance that says--
We'll see.
Pilate's world is so full of color and light - green cut through with blots of yellow and blue, the panels of sheer curtain piled over every window. The gate itself, wrought-iron and heavy as the rock in his stomach, is more of a work of art than anything else. The clatter of work, the sigh of opulence--it is just as loud as his electric hum.
Suddenly, Andras feels very, very small. He sort of looks it, too.
"This is..." and he searches, for some word that makes him feel bigger, chases away the trapped-animal feeling in him. "what I expected."
One last spark, barely there at all except for the sound it makes, a crackle that's no more than a groan. Fitting, probably. His mouth is dry. He doesn't realize until far too late that the drum of his magic is not that at all, it is his heart, pounding and pounding and pounding. "Well?" he asks. "Show me who you are."
Pilate huffs--from here just the sharp rise and fall of his shoulders, the indignant twist of his head that makes Andras' mouth twitch--and Andras watches the doorway swallow him whole.
He tries to force patience (something he has never really had), tongue pushed up to the back of his teeth. But patience does not come easily, and Andras is still as a housecat, waiting in rapt silence, straining to hear the tap, tap, tap of approaching footsteps. Maybe there should be uncertainty in him. Maybe he should think, if? and not when? but he doesn't. Andras chews the inside of his lip in thought.
He knows, somehow. The if never enters his mind. When the door opens, and then the gate, Andras is shocked by the certainty with which he meets it. He is stilll chewing the inside of his lip when their eyes meet, close enough now to see each molten string of his irises, the light on his scales that squeezes the warden's chest with an unkind sort of severity. For a moment that something rears its ugly head, soft and comfortable and desperate skidding across the black, black skin of his fear-need-hatred and then gone just as fast as it came.
Andras hate this. The something. Maybe more than he hates the self-satisfied half-smile that makes his stomach snarl.
"Or what?" Pilate purrs.
Another sharp fork of electricity pops off the point of his hip. He smiles like the dead of night, like a threat, like a kiss--eyes narrowed, full of his own electric hum--and steps through the gate. There is nothing but the shifting light of his glasses to betray the glance that says--
We'll see.
Pilate's world is so full of color and light - green cut through with blots of yellow and blue, the panels of sheer curtain piled over every window. The gate itself, wrought-iron and heavy as the rock in his stomach, is more of a work of art than anything else. The clatter of work, the sigh of opulence--it is just as loud as his electric hum.
Suddenly, Andras feels very, very small. He sort of looks it, too.
"This is..." and he searches, for some word that makes him feel bigger, chases away the trapped-animal feeling in him. "what I expected."
One last spark, barely there at all except for the sound it makes, a crackle that's no more than a groan. Fitting, probably. His mouth is dry. He doesn't realize until far too late that the drum of his magic is not that at all, it is his heart, pounding and pounding and pounding. "Well?" he asks. "Show me who you are."
sleep like dead men, wake up like dead men
let this whole town hear your knuckles crack
let this whole town hear your knuckles crack
@
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
