T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
Tenebrae does not know all the ways she has given her heart away before. He does not stop to think about what her heart might have felt before the moment where she stands before him, trembling like a leaf as he breathes. He might smile, if he did not ache so, to think how their touches had been violence up until now. Until this moment where they are so close and he wants to touch, he longs for it, and yet he does not. There are things worse than violence, like love, like the agony of falling in love.
Tenebrae is not made for falling in love.
Though his heart is beginning to think it may know how to.
He inhales, desperate to clear the fog of her from his blood, his nerves. But oh, she is there in his lungs, upon his tongue he tastes the salt of her sea, the musk of her skin. Tenebrae’s eyes close as his brow lowers, his forelock dares to tangle with her hair that falls in wet waves down the elegant curve of her throat. It is the part of him bold enough to touch, it is the only part of him he cannot control and of course it reaches for her. Of course it tangles itself so completely with hers.
He knows when she nearly laughs at his warning, he sees the glimmer in her eyes. They gleam dark as rubies. She is untouchable and wild, she is more knowing than him then. Ah, he is a man, a warrior made by a god to end the course of the sun, and yet, he is a fool on matters of the heart. His lips press tight together as he feels the sharp prick of his own naivety. How can a monk ever be versed in the ways of the heart?
It was easier when they fought, when she had him pinned beneath her teeth, when he had a weapon angled at the groove of her throat. It was easier when there was violence instead of desire. He knows how to fight her, it is all he knows. To fight, to fight, to fight.
Why have one, then, if not to give it away? If not to share it? She asks as she leans in to him as she makes all his efforts not to touch her pointless, worthless. Her cheek presses against his shoulder, over his half-moon sigil and its glow is hidden. Tenebrae longs for the bite of the whip his brothers used upon him becuase the pain of that is easier than this.
Tenebrae’s eyes close, the angles of his face starker with his sorrow and his anguish. His chin tilts up in his effort not to touch her and the shadows pour their righteousness down upon him. “I do not want to see your heart broken,” He says that voice still like whiskey but it is rougher, it is something like breaking.
You are not meant for me.
I am not meant for anybody but Caligo.
And oh these are the truths that sit deep in his veins that are burrowed deep in his marrow.
I was not made for love.
If you want to find me, come to the sea, She whispers against his skin. The monk thinks her words feel the way a kiss might, but Tenebrae only really knows the bite of her teeth, the bite of a blade. That thought, that imagining, is enough to have him breaking. It has him daring to reach down and touch her as he once did...
Boudika pulls away before his mouth finds the curve of her neck and he groans with the curse, the blessing.. The absence of her blinds him with relief and remorse. Each are so acute his nerves are sharp as lightning. Tenebrae aches in his skin, his bones are stone and he simply stands as she peels from him. His shadows are banished from them and without their darkness Boudika moves as stark as blood across a bone-white beach. His eyes trail her, starving.
She leaves him empty. She leaves him so full his skin is tight across his bones and his whip-wounds sting with the ghosts of their crimson tears. She leaves him promising himself he is not weak.
He does not follow her.
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