[ Something ugly slams clean into his features. Anger and fear crystallizes enough that it shows a large fissure: betrayal. The whole twisting, hurtful thing. Fitting, somehow, that he can count his life by the beats of that feeling, the people who chose to bleed him out like it was nothing. The man who raised him, and the woman he loves. Jesus, it all just sounds so goddamn Russian. Dostoyevsky would've killed him off three chapters ago. ]
Yeah. [ Jake's voice flattens. Gives away nothing but a sneer inside of it, trying to aim for cold and neutral and coming up short. The house always fucking wins; men don't. ] You really got me.
[ Mean. Harsh. He sinks lower into her, body almost completely bowed over hers. The denim of his knee pushing hard against the chaise's frame. The span of his hand around her wrist locks tight. Moves her arm out until it's by the side of her head, pressing the back of her hand right there, into the spot of cooling ash from the end of her (his) cigarette. Ever the director. Ever aware of the strings he can pluck and pull like passkeys and pokerchips.
His thumb brushes against the burn. Just once. It's an almost tender sweep, despite the hot touch to the heated injury her skin still carries. No relief. Just adrenaline, air, and something scalding. The kinder thing to do would be to loop her arms around his and carry her into the shower stall, to run the spray as cold as it can go to soothe the sting. To pull his hand away from where she's invited it.
Instead, he stays there. Despite the thrum in his biceps, the impossibly tight way he still holds onto her wrist, his other hand on her thigh, his head lowers. Slowly, and almost gently, until his forehead comes to rest right over her collarbones. So close that his lashes blink and they sweep across her skin, a series of short, inadvertent butterfly kisses. And it's there that he says it, words loose and honest in that dark space. Below the hollow of her throat, their bodies far apart, except for where he holds her like a bruising anchor. Lowly, a soft and angry and vicious secret: ]
What the hell happened to you.
[ Whatever that means. Whatever that could mean. What the hell happened to you while I was gone. What the hell happened to make you hate me. What the hell are you going to do with me, now that you know I still love you? ]
no subject
Yeah. [ Jake's voice flattens. Gives away nothing but a sneer inside of it, trying to aim for cold and neutral and coming up short. The house always fucking wins; men don't. ] You really got me.
[ Mean. Harsh. He sinks lower into her, body almost completely bowed over hers. The denim of his knee pushing hard against the chaise's frame. The span of his hand around her wrist locks tight. Moves her arm out until it's by the side of her head, pressing the back of her hand right there, into the spot of cooling ash from the end of her (his) cigarette. Ever the director. Ever aware of the strings he can pluck and pull like passkeys and pokerchips.
His thumb brushes against the burn. Just once. It's an almost tender sweep, despite the hot touch to the heated injury her skin still carries. No relief. Just adrenaline, air, and something scalding. The kinder thing to do would be to loop her arms around his and carry her into the shower stall, to run the spray as cold as it can go to soothe the sting. To pull his hand away from where she's invited it.
Instead, he stays there. Despite the thrum in his biceps, the impossibly tight way he still holds onto her wrist, his other hand on her thigh, his head lowers. Slowly, and almost gently, until his forehead comes to rest right over her collarbones. So close that his lashes blink and they sweep across her skin, a series of short, inadvertent butterfly kisses. And it's there that he says it, words loose and honest in that dark space. Below the hollow of her throat, their bodies far apart, except for where he holds her like a bruising anchor. Lowly, a soft and angry and vicious secret: ]
What the hell happened to you.
[ Whatever that means. Whatever that could mean. What the hell happened to you while I was gone. What the hell happened to make you hate me. What the hell are you going to do with me, now that you know I still love you? ]