heaven help us, says your unholy mouth, your hands on my hands
I don't know where the darkness ends and you begin.
The last time his father hit him, it was Bondike he had gone too. It was the sea where they had met, on the cliffside of their island so wrapped in magic they were drowning in it. It was on the cliffside overlooking the setting sun, and they were teenagers, and the night was straining to overtake the island. The sunset was a rare one, a bleeding red in a sky typically too swathed with clouds. Torix had been bleeding, too.
But it was Bondike he had gone too.
It was Bondike who had cleaned the cuts and tended the bruises. It was Bondiek who said, “You will be more of a man than your father ever was.”
Vercingtorix wishes the memory hadn’t come back to him, in this moment, the rain slicking him. He wishes to say that when he smiles, the tug at the edge of his lip where the scar catches there is from war, and not a broken bourbon bottle.
He wishes the rain didn’t make him think of the way the clouds came in late that night and drenched them. The way it had been like a christening, or a sacrifice; and he and Bondike had howled from the cliff-side, had screamed at the sea, and he had known there would never be anyone like his companion again. Someone who could smooth the rough edges of his soul, hem his hatred, and teach him to love the way the cold air felt when he laughed.
I will forgive you this time.
Yes, and that smile he wears is the same crooked smile. His eyes are gleaming with an animated life false to his heart.
You could tell me—what kind of man you are.
He recognises the look, veiled by heavy lashes. Faux innocence; a woman’s stare. He wonders, a little apathetically, if she finds him handsome. His smile is fleeting, then; as brief as a bird overhead. “Why don’t you tell me what kind of man you think I am?” Vercingtorix challenges, but his voice is liltingly soft; nearly suggestive. The voice that says, do you want me to buy you a drink?
Are you a troublemaker? He almost laughs with genuine amusement, then. “No,” Vercingtorix says, and he means it. He has never seen himself as that. He loves law and order too much for that; he is too attached to justice, duty, organisation.
Can I just say a walk. She already knows he doesn’t believe her. Then, she jokes with him; she moves to press past his side and her warmth is brief, searing, as sharp as an insult against his side. Then she glances over her shoulder. It is hard for Torix not to interpret the gesture as something coy, flirtatious; perhaps she means it as chastely as she had a glance from beneath her lashes, but he is well aware of the look of those who play with fire.
Do you see my scars, my disposition, and think I am some exciting adventure? he wonders. Do you think I exist to soften your sadness? A wild ride, to free you from your crushing mortality?
She moves closer again. I come to watch it, every day. I always thought it danced the tango, but in the rain, what do you think? The waltz? Her eyes are beautiful, he supposes, if one likes clear skies.
Vercingtorix shakes his head; but it is his turn to step closer, to teach her to dance. His leonine tail flicks and so faintly it brushes her side before he is past her and on the very edge of the cliff. If he were to step forward, there would be only open air beneath him.
“I don’t think the sea dances,” he admits. Vercingtorix is not looking at her, now. Because what woman loves a man who is not far away? What woman loves a man who does not, at the very least, evoke some tinkling bit of fear? Of danger? Of excitement? He looks almost lion-like there, on the precipice of sea and sky and land. “But if it did,” Torix says, more softly now. His voice is the rain. “It would be the dance of the wolf and the fawn.”
The last time his father hit him, he told himself he would never be a fawn again.
@
prophets sang of you, molded in your father's image
i'm not sure when they stopped; heaven help us, but no one is answering.
