these, our bodies, possessed by light.
Anyone else might have been biased by the divinity leering behind them, perhaps been a little more careful than they were now, all sauntering steps and threat-of-burning, Bexley throwing around her magic as if it were something she’d gathered all on her own and not a reflection of what she had started to realize was misplaced devotion - but she had at least grown to recognize that they weren’t anyone else, that they were their own particular brand of impulse and disregard, and maybe there was some power in that.
Grass smolders under her feet as she walks. Acton’s presence is ghostly at her hip, insubstantial but psychologically weighty. Feeling him there makes her pulse thrill loudly in her chest, strikes a hummingbird heartbeat through every chord of her body, and each step feels somehow weightless, each moment that passes its own lalochezia, her heart expanding and retracting in adamant, baleful stubbornness, in an attempt to crush the strange, awful, anti-gravity anticipation that has her falling all over him in schoolgirl foolishness.
For all her efforts, the sound of his voice still makes her shudder. Her steps still falter in the clipped grass. When she catches the smile on his lips, vulpine and treacherous, it still makes her think twice about God, about want, about danger-versus doom.
When he speaks, the tone is almost warped, like the sight of a fish through broken waters. It doesn’t seem real. No matter how still Bexley tries to stand, she knows that there is still a tremble in her legs, that her gaze, where it meets his, is not nearly as steady as it should be. Maybe it should be expected by now: that things, with him, are always harder than they need to be, always a challenge where they should be a comedy. And yet still she is always approaching him with that reckless, shot-foot optimism, always reckless and wondering and angled for a triumph, as if there’s something else to be unpacked, as if, if she just pushes hard enough he’ll surrender, his life in her hands, just like the last time.
How to bring a man to his knees - she’s done it before - she could do it again, if she wanted - and, looking at him, she does.
Bexley tilts her head to one side. At this angle, the flood of white hair that shifts to match her now-askance gaze, waterfalling all to one side, almost covers the spoil marking from her eye to lip.
Bring a man to his knees. That’s just bad poetry...
She motions, with a modest grin and a slow blink, to Acton’s scar-silvered front leg. Behind the dry humor in her voice is something almost like anxiety, but she’s not sure either of them are familiar enough with the concept to recognize it.
Bexley’s starting to think it’s bad poetry to have a body at all. Worse still to want something with it, and to be allowed those wants must be the worst of all.
It’s easy enough to reach out, when the space between them is so negligible, so implausible, and easier still for Bexley to actually touch him, breath stirring the fine yellow hairs, her lips grazing his skin from shoulder to mane, so easy, so ridiculously easy, that she almost hates herself for not giving in earlier to the want that still licks flame deep into her stomach - before she can stop herself, the Solterran continues absently, Maybe I could teach you how to keep promises. Her teeth tug at a lock of his hair. I get the feeling you might not be good at it yet.
Bexley’s gaze is hunter-moon now, full and fervent, and everything in her is thankful that Acton won’t see it from where he’s standing.
@acton<3
