[P] take a chance and roll the bones;

[Acton]

When the bird (some grey-black desert thing with beady mean eyes, he was no ornithologist) approached him, Acton was surprised for a small multitude of reasons, but the first was this: how the hell had it found him? He’d barely admitted to himself that he was living in Dawn, much less anyone else.
 
For a moment he’d just stared between the letter and the bird, and the bird stared back. “Who’s it from?” he’d asked, but the bird had only darted in, bit the thin skin on the bridge of his nose, and flown off like a bastard before he could bite back.
 
“Yeah, fuck you too,” he’d called after it, but by then it was just a small black blur in a big blue sky, and he dropped his gaze back to the scroll, rolled up tight as a snake in the grass.
 
He was irritated to find his heart tripping in his chest, pounding out an uneven drumbeat. And he was almost ashamed to find he wanted it to be from Reichenbach. That he wanted to be begged back, courted for his favor like a wronged girlfriend. Who else knew he was here, anyway?
 
But as soon as he touched it, as soon as it unfurled with the bleached scent of sand and sun and sandalwood, he knew it was not the Night King. His nerves were still alight as he took in the blue, slanting ink, but already there was a little hint of a grin snaking across his lips.
 
It was in full bloom by the time he finished.
 
--
 
Conveniently, the Dawn Court had also received a heavenly courier bird, and a delegation was headed up to the summit. It was a large enough one Acton could join in with little fanfare, trailing along behind them, trying to sort out the razor-wire tangle of his thoughts. It stood to reason that Denocte had received the same invitation, that his king would be moving even now for the same destination as him. The buckskin kept trying to force his thoughts away from Reich; he much preferred the mess of feelings surrounding Bexley. The former was a dull, dark ache, but the latter – ah. Anticipation prickled like a sharp shallow cut, just enough of a sting to make him feel alive.
 
Probably he ought to have been worrying or wondering about the gods, but Acton had never had a head for religion, and little interest in third-party judgment.
 
It was a strange atmosphere that greeted them at the base of Veneror Peak. Half festival, half firesquad, the crowd was a livewire jitter of nerves, all flashing eyes and shivering skin. Acton slipped through them all, warring with his wants – to look or not to look? There was not yet the scent of jasmine, of cedarsmoke, and maybe he was grateful for that.
 
Finding the Solterrans was not difficult. Finding Bexley among them was even easier – sharp as a sword, bright as a sun, she carried her own kind of orbit, a glittering gravity. For a moment Acton only observed her – he had never seen her around her people, and there something fascinating about it, the thoughtless dance they did.
 
Gods, it made him homesick. Before the black wave could take him, before he changed his mind, he stepped forward. At first he had to fake his swagger, but as soon as her blue eyes found him it became real as a bad habit.
 
“Hey,” he said by way of greeting, very intentionally ignoring every face but her own. She looked like some bright burnished goddess, all her hair braided and coiled up tight as a vow; it made this meeting seem more different than their others than even the memory of the note she’d written did. “Some bird gave me a letter from someone pretending to be you. I knew it was fake, ‘cause it had the word sorry in it.” His smile was a half-sickle on its way to full weapon and a thousand tiny things with sharp edges seemed to have taken up residence just beneath his too-tight skin.
 
It was awful. It was amazing.
 
“Just thought you should know there’s an imposter before you get smitten, or whatever.”

WELL I SAW A SNAKE IN AN APPLE TREE
YOU KNOW I DIDN'T TRUST A WORD THAT HE HISSED AT ME, NO

@Bexley oh look a book

[Bexley]

MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON.

---

At the top of the Summit, bodies crackle with cold fire. Electricity runs rampant in the icy air. No matter how close Bexley packs herself between Eik and Seraphina (always careful to keep a millimeter separating them for posterity’s sake), the warmth that should be seeping into her seems false and far-away, utterly unreachable no matter how she tries to grasp for it. The presence of the gods seems to have made Veneror unseasonably cold - so cold that the chain around her neck contracts, leaves metal bite marks at the curve of her throat. What power does pass through the air is come to life from metaphysical tension, not so much electricity as an omen pressed into the wind like a living prayer.

Still Bexley bites her tongue and waits. The massive wooden doors have not opened an inch, and there is no sign of any divine movement. The regimes, and the citizens that follow them like pack dogs, have spent hours now wasting time in any way they can - exchanging meaningless gossip, readjusting armor - but, prickling with white-hot anticipation and too tightly wound to socialize, Bexley stalks and glowers from her place next to Seraphina with little regard for social niceties. The blue of her eyes is fervid and inhospitable. Despite the elegant loop of her braids, the scintilla of glitter brushed over her shoulders, something about her still leaches venom. Anyone looking on would see a girl, become, in an indescribable manner, the physical expression of gold still being soldered: burning hot, melting and reforming, a painful sort of beauty.

And most of them would take it as a warning. But oh, not him. Never him.

The scent of smoke reaches her as easily as a wraith on the wind, and, disgusted and amazed by how easily anticipation overtakes her, Bexley’s gaze snaps away from Seraphina and up, up, up.

A bright, wolfish smile splits her white lips in two. He’s here, so close, and so real, and it sets her heart to running in double time, nerve-shreddingly quick and deep and loud. All the lines of him are so familiar - the luminescent orange eyes, the casually ruinous stance, the incorporeal cloud of something irresistible that is always on him like a damn leech - Bexley is still catching her breath when he begins to speak, and by the time he’s done the grin on her face is wider than ever.

Thank Una you’re here, she laughs, disregarding his comments with an easy smirk, and the glimmer in her eyes is so light-hearted it could almost be childish, if not for that small, deadly want omnipresent her the blue gaze whenever it catches him. Something rhapsodic winds like honey through her voice. I was so bored -

Dulcet and nonchalant, eyes incandescent with mischief, she saunters toward him, then past. There is no space between them when it happens: her shoulder brushing against his, mane trailing over his spine, hip bumping with practiced casualness as she steps the way he just came, tossing an almost degenerate look over one shoulder as a beckoning to follow, and even through the tingle that spreads through her skin, the ethereal feeling that pools in the pit of her stomach, the expression on her face is nothing but halcyon.

I didn’t say smitten. I guess you just heard what you want to hear, hm?

Bex bats her lashes at him unselfconsciously. The world around them seems inconsequential now - nothing but a smoggy Gaussian backdrop for whatever wild thing is setting all her nerves on fire, cranking up the temperature the longer she looks at him. For once she does not ignore it. She doesn’t even try.

For once, she lets it all overtake her: the warmth, the electric impulse, the butterflies, the slaughterhouse hum deep and constant in her bleached bones, and Gods, it feels good.

I’m glad you came, she adds, and it’s surprisingly sincere. Nice that I get to see you before Tempus beats me to a pulp like an overripe peach or whatever vigilante justice he’s in favor of. Will you miss me?

The edge in her voice - one that asks for honesty - might be the biggest dare she's ever offered to him.

---

@acton <3  

[Acton]

Acton had never been the kind of boy to listen to a warning. He’d pick up a snake after being informed it was poisonous just to see the bright bands of colors a little closer, just to feel its tongue flick against its skin and wonder what next?.

He’d called her a snake the first night he met her, and by the gods she’d bitten him, and here he was, still too close.

The feeling her lupine smile summoned in him was becoming far too familiar – a surge of nerves, anticipation and excitement and a memory of pain, like a shot of epinephrine straight to his shuddering heart. It was easy to look at her and remember fire, easier to meet her gaze and feel his heart mimic the cave-in, all tremble and crash.

He wondered if it was possible to go on like this forever.

Acton watched that grin grow and grow into an expression he’d never seen her wear before. It snared him as well and thoroughly as any of her others had, and the buckskin could not look away from that sharp-secret thing in her eyes. His mind could not quite settle on the meaning of it, but his body knew. Altitude and want made his blood feel like static racing through his veins, made his mind fuzzy-clear like trying to find just the right station.

“The hell is Una?” As for her comment on boredom, he answered with no voice, only a flash of teeth that was as good as a promise. Acton was always willing to be her distraction, so long as she would do the same.

She drew near and only then did his eyes flicker to the Solterrans around her, as if one of them would dare try and stop either of them. But he forgets them again from the first brush of her body, emanating a heat it had no right to on a mountain in autumn at the feet of the gods. Before he thought better of it he touched his muzzle to her hip as she passed, half expecting to be burnt by that molten gold. Almost he nipped at her glittering skin as her hair whispered over him, but for this he did manage to refrain: maybe there was something superstitious in him, after all, but suddenly he imaged the weight of gazes of gods and men heavy on him.

It did not, of course, stop him from turning to follow her.

“I guess I did,” he answered her, but he was still grinning, walking near enough to still feel the desert heat of her, “though if that were the case I’d be a lot more inventive.” When she batted her eyes at him, he again battled the impulse to press teeth to skin.  

Instead he only huffed a breath, and arched a brow at her next comment. Acton settled his gaze on her, almost searching, like he was looking for the lie – but at her mention of Tempus he laughed.

“Terribly,” he said, and it was the truth. “But you think it’s you Tempus is after? Hate to bust your ego, but unless you’ve got sins you’re not sharing…” It began as a joke, but then Acton remembered that the last time he’d been here was to share information with Raum. Spying, attempted murder, beating a member of another court at their own party – he’d never been a choir boy, but now he thought more seriously about the word smite. All the bloody potential, lightning and wrath.

For the first time, he did feel a little chilly, and leaned in nearer to her.

“Unless you’re planning on committing further sins,” he said then, his voice low and smoke-rough. For an electric heartbeat his burning-ember gaze met hers before he stepped away, flicking his tail at her golden side. “Like tempting me up here so you can use me as a sacrifice. I’ll tell you now that won’t win you any favor.”

Acton was no first son, no unblemished oblation – and there were far more fun offerings for bodies to make.

AND IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SUFFER
WELL, THEN YOU'D BETTER RUN

@Bexley

[Bexley]

these, our bodies, possessed by light.

---

The feeling that overwhelms her might be love or it might be magic. And really, Bexley thinks as they fall into step, what would be the difference?

The world is so wide and so liquid and so generally vast. The sun bright above their heads, a watching halo. Acton falls into step beside her and they are together again, unfettered by the need for okayness or gilded lies or the sort of horribly draining political respect Bexley has had to keep stapled to her side since the moment she arrived here. None of that anymore. Just Acton, and

          his mouth on her hip, and suddenly she is falling, she thinks, or might as well be for the anti-gravity pooling like so much water in the pit of her stomach. She thinks this might be the first time of a touch of theirs has not culminated in violence. For all the grief it’s giving her, that one simple touch of lips to skin, she’s almost sure she would have remembered anything previous. (How sweet and stupid.) For a brief moment her skin glows bright-gold, her eyes flash aureate, her skin sizzles - for a brief moment she is reminded of the gifts her god has just given her, and for that brief moment she quashes the urge to use them. No more false magic. No more pretending for goodness, or godliness, or purity. Why not enjoy this for what it is, as long as she can remain human enough to enjoy it -

I’d be a lot more inventive.

Again, that cursed heat flares. If Acton had been touching her, he might have felt a brief, violent burn. As it is, when Bexley’s eyes snap to meet his, they burn a vicious molten gold, everything but the pupil swallowed whole by that aureate madness. The glimmer across her skin flares and brightens until it hurts to look at, though only for that one brief second before she manages to push down her wicked want, the throat-closing surprise: what a fool she is, laying out all her cards in such a disorganized, childish manner. What a fool she is to lose so much of herself in him. To be so desperately wild and degenerate when the eyes of the gods are but a mile away, looming omnipresent over the craggy, mist-shrouded horizon behind them.

She knows this, and yet. And yet. No part of her cares enough to stop it.

She stops and wheels to face him. They’re far away now from any crowd, from any watching eyes. Her gaze glimmers deep-blue in the bright light, the saturation almost primitive, and a smile curls her lips. And then, for a few brief seconds, they flicker into existence beside her: a twin on either side. They are Bexley’s carbon copies, down to the canine tilt of her head, the near-lecherous smirk on her lips, solid and bright and utterly corporeal in their gold-and-gild and blood until they flash out of existence moments later, disappearing as suddenly as they came. Favor, she repeats. Funny. Seems I already have mine.

As quickly as it was summoned, the glimmer leaches away from her. A girl again - wild and wanting. Somehow, this is more dangerous than anything.

So, explain this, thanks. Tempting you up here? Bexley’s tone reeks of mock-surprise, and even those who know her best would be hard-pressed to hear the anxiety that’s hiding like sapphire in the soft corners of her mouth. She tilts her head to one side and watches him, bright with mischief. With what would I be temping you?

Peril, then, in the butterfly-wing batting of her lashes, the near-nervous gleam of want in her blue eyes, never moving from his own. The distance between them is tiny. Negligible, even.

If she wanted, she could count every freckle on his skin.

---

@acton<3  

[Acton]

For Acton there has never been a difference between magic and love.

Both set his body alight with their peculiar chemistry, that flutter-rush of blood in the veins that crowed alive alive alive. The world was a stage but so many stages had also been Acton’s world, and even before there had been real magic it had felt the same, a promise made again and again and never broken.

What was real magic, anyway? What was real love? It only mattered to those who could see the difference.

Only –

In that moment after he touched her he could tell the difference. There was nothing of a god in their own strange alchemy; Bexley was her own religion, blazing light for illumination, for rage, for burning everything clean.

He had to close his eyes against the bright flash; for a moment his mind told him it was a reflection of sunlight off her necklace, nothing more, but the fire that washed through him what belied that. So quick, so strong it felt more like cold than burning, and Acton jerked away, startled.

There was no comfort in her gaze (but when had there ever been?) nor any across her skin – just light, just heat, just moving, molten gold. He made a little noise of surprise, of something just short of understanding.

Acton had already forgotten about the gods (the fact of their summoning, not his twist-mouthed jokes about such things as sacrifice) but the prayers he’d had on his mind had never been for them, anyway. You couldn’t be accused of sinning when you didn’t believe.

She spun to face him and he stopped short, a little cloud of dust rising up, coloring his black-flecked legs with touches of gray. He was still too surprised to say anything, and when his vision tripled in a drunkard’s mirage he was reminded of nothing more than that night in the markets, vision dizzy, cloudy-brained, wondering if Bexley Briar was really truly going to kill him.

“So it seems,” he agreed, and there was something both frightening and exhilarating about this girl in triplicate. His own magic – rarely used since his departure – seemed like nothing better than a parlor trick in comparison. “Hell of a trick.”

Maybe there was value in being devout, after all.

Even when the figures faded, even when her bright-burning dwindled like the sun slipping behind a cloudbank, the brightness lingered for a moment, hazy in his vision, a little echo of her light.

He blinked once, twice, and was grateful for the tone of her voice, a return to familiar ground. Acton’s lips started to shape a grin, all muscle memory.  “Your dazzling wit, obviously. And all the things you could teach me…”

Acton thought of the last time they had been this close, near enough her breath stirred the fine hairs on his cheek, the bridge of his nose. He thought of the time before that, and before, and before. Each time a little closer, like circling, dying stars – but each time, just maybe, a little further from violence. Headed for a different kind of crash.  

The realization of his nervousness is as surprising to him as the reveal of her magic; how much easier it is, to disguise the truth with a crooked grin, with phrases with double-meanings. For all his swagger and bravado, for all his chasing thrills, Acton is just a Neverland kid, the little orphan boy who defied the world to make him grow up.

“Like insults, and how to bring a man to his knees.”

YOU'VE GOT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER
BUT YOUR TRIGGER FINGER'S MINE

@Bexley

[Bexley]

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  

[Acton]

He’d thought it might be easier, away from all the eyes on them – hell, between Raum and Seraphina alone there were likely a hundred well-earned judgments – but he was wrong.

Away from the noise, away from the crowd and the nerves and the god-sealed gates, there was no distracting from their own energy. They might as well be alone in this high and holy place, where the air was thin and the wind sighed through the trees and he thought about the similarities between hate and want. A couple four-letter words with the same red feelings, but one of them had left him – when? Maybe with that bright cut of Raum’s knife. (But had it ever been Bexley he hated at all? Was it not just carry-over from day, or his own burning need to rearrange the world in his wake, at least a little, just to prove he was there?)

And did any of it matter now? Maybe the end of the story justified the middle, maybe their scars cut skin and canceled sins.

Or maybe she did still intend to kill him, but hell. This much effort into it, he didn’t mind making it easy for her.

This was why Acton didn’t like to spend too much time thinking; his thoughts all chased each other around into a wicked jumble he could never untangle without making a mess. It was so much easier just to act.

Bad poetry, she said, and he grinned and ducked his head as if she’d paid him a compliment. “Seems fitting, then,” he replied, following her gaze down to his black-flecked knee with its web of scars, but he pulled his eyes back up to hers after only a moment. “for us.”

Because they were – must be – an us. And gods knew they were bad poetry; only a drunkard with no sense would write a tale like theirs, devoid of all logic.

She touched him then and it was almost a caress, if such a soft word could be used to describe anything between them. He wondered, as his skin shivered and his heart hammered his ribcage like it wanted his attention, what other soft things she knew.

Acton leaned toward her, his mouth drifting along the curve of her shoulder, the touch delicate as light. It was not all he wanted (nothing ever was), but he could wait for that – for the press of bodies, for teeth and noise.

Patience, he cautioned himself, for fuck’s sake you’re in a holy place.

At her next words, he smiled lazily against her skin. He wondered if she could feel the curve of it against her bright gold, wondered if all their meetings would be shattered-mirror reflections of their previous ones. He hoped they would.

There was her necklace, just a thin line of gold. His breath on it clouded the metal to matte for only a moment, then vanished back to gleaming. Carefully, carefully, he gave it a tug.

“I always get it right the second time.” Another echo from that night, and up here in the god-heavy air it was as good as a vow.

YOU'VE GOT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER
BUT YOUR TRIGGER FINGER'S MINE

@Bexley

[Bexley]

these, our bodies, possessed by light.

The moment is stunning and not quite livable, like summer cutting to the bone, or the ruined bodies of fireworks. Never mind the cool air around them, never mind the glass-frost on the leaves, they are bright-heat and impending apocalypse, as wild and unknown as anything can be. It is a kind of comfort that their fire has become not only recognizable but dependable, a light at the end of the tunnel when everything else is up in the air. A solid presence in the back of her mind.

All that solidity falls away when he touches her, light as a feather, sweet as honey. This is not something they’ve done before - this is nothing comfortable, nothing known, and she shudders at the feeling, his lips a curse on her skin, breath sifting the golden hairs with something almost like gentleness, something that has never been part of their repertoire. It fits him well, Bexley thinks, or maybe she’s only hoping it does.

That’s been a talent of hers, recently, hoping, and as much as she wants to hang onto is, she knows (doesn’t she?) it will only curse her. Curse, if she’s lucky. So what. It sticks to her like a burr on a wild dog, like fog to the mountains. Hope and all its awful repercussions. Gods help me, she thinks, and realizes in the next instant that it’s a thankless kind of effort, as most of her efforts are.

Acton’s smile against her skin is crescent-moon, bleached and feral and sharp as a wild thing’s. It makes Bexley shudder, and she’s almost thankful for it.

I always get it right the second time -

Something divine, something anxious and unholy, tingles deep in the pit of her stomach as his mouth closes around that wispy gold chain, pulls until its clasp is pressed deep into that nest of white hair, a gentle, insistent pressure just barely threatening to break against the curve of her neck: Bexley’s breath hitches in her throat, almost nervous as she thinks of how easily the necklace could snap, fall right away from her and be gone forever. How dangerous it is to play along with this game.

(When hasn’t it been?)

She swallows her qualms, as small as they already are. Heat blazes across her skin, almost a blush, if a blush could glow. With composure so intense she finds a way to move in fractions, Bexley raises her jaw and tilts her head back, degree by degree, so that the soft curve of her throat is open, vulnerable, the threat of the chain omnipresent against her neck, and pauses there, glittering like a dare and a half.

You should come back to Solterra with me. A languid blink, a lazy smile. Her eyes gleam with something suppressed. If you want to make good on your promises. You did say you'd visit.

---

@acton<3  

[Acton]

Of course he did not break it.

When she spoke he could feel the muscles of her throat as she shaped the words, as she swallowed. As tenderly as he’d taken it in his teeth, he let it settle back against her skin.

He grinned at the irony of it, how different this conversation had gone a year ago. How much had changed, and how much still lingered – the firework-feelings between them, the way he always walked on holy, unsteady ground when he walked next to her.

“Okay,” he said simply, and followed the curve of her throat, a golden bow pulled back, to where her pulse ran just below her jaw. A breath there, and a touch, and his own heartbeat running hot in his own throat, pounding away in his chest like it was trying to catch his attention.

But it didn’t need caught; it wasn’t wandering anywhere. His body was all want turning to need and the heat rolling off her only built in him a kind of pre-storm anticipation, the crazed energy that ratcheted up and up before the lightning scattered everything to bits.

He traced the line of her jaw up to her cheek, barely touching. His chest grazed her shoulder and he wondered if she could feel the stutter of his heart, the way she made it too big to fit his ribcage. How easily she set him on edge.

“I promise.” He whispered it into the curve of her ear, soft enough the words hardly did more than stir the fine golden hairs. They were rough, cinder-and-smoke syllables; how quick his body was to betray him.

If he caved to it now, the things it sang for, would it be a sin? Acton has never been an innocent man.

But even his breathing was near to hitching, and he stepped away from her with regret, already missing the heat. His gaze was ravenous, bright enough to burn where it met hers. “You should get back,” he said, as casually as though they’d strolled away from some picnic. The way he watched her, though, belied any composure; Acton devoured her with his eyes. “Or Tempus might smite you after all, and I’d hate to miss my tour.”

Or stay, his expression said, and we’ll worship together and both be struck down–

“Good luck, Goldilocks,” he drawled in the end, and nodded back the way they’d come.

In the end it was a relief to watch her walk back alone, and he waited until the last of her gold had gone from view before letting out a long-held, shuddering breath.

He wondered if Raum would believe him if he said he’d been praying.

YOU'VE GOT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER
BUT YOUR TRIGGER FINGER'S MINE

@Bexley  <3 closing his end here. a pleasure as always

[Bexley]

these, our bodies, possessed by light.

Above their heads, the gunmetal sky watches and waits. Clouds murmur the threat of rain. Bexley’s eyes are caught on Acton, as they almost always are, but behind his head and the soft line of his cheek and that wild black hair, she can still see something dangerous looming, glimmering in and out of visibility in the far distance like a scotoma in the corner of one’s eye. Danger crackles in the damp air. Heat ripples from Acton’s skin, so close she feels it like another sun. Against all of it, Bexley has to try hard to steel herself: has to put real effort into the tense square of her shoulders, the way she manages not to shudder at his touch, his voice in her ear, no matter how much her body wants to.

She swallows against a mouthful of pink quartz, a mouthful of waiting to say I love you, or I’m sorry, or please, please don’t leave.

I should. The murmur is unlike her, too soft and too concerned. She hardly hears herself saying it, so far removed is her voice, so disembodied is the sound of it, silk and silver in the air rather than filled with its usual ire; when her eyes meet his, they are unbalanced, unsteady, but not vulnerable, not yet. (At least she’s retained some modem of control.) Bexley’s heartbeat finally slows and settles in her chest. Clearing her throat from that rock-salt, that suppressed hunger, she flashes him an almost catty smile, all teeth and glitter and feline charm - I won’t need luck, the golden girl teases, but thanks.

That casualness is an enormous effort, but as usual, Bex finds a way to manage it.

The empty space where his lips have left her skin almost burns. It is a cold fire, sparking hoarfrost over every golden inch. The hedonist (and the lover) in her aches in protest as she pulls away, takes her first step back toward the Summit, leaves him behind, an ache that goes all the way into her bones - but there is nothing left to say, at least not here, and as bitter as that feeling is, Bexley swallows it with a strange kind of satisfaction, knowing that there’s always next time.

---

@acton<3