02-01-2020, 11:44 PM
Natalie watched quietly as the thoughts thundered a storm behind his eyes. They closed when she pressed too deep, but she found no fault in it. Her comfort was a sharp thing, blinding in darkness, both unforgiving and unapologetic, yet the weight of his hands around her waist kept her captured when he might easily have urged her away. She was in no great hurry to vacate. Grief prowled too close to call it peace, but it had its own rhythm nonetheless; a bubble within which an entire world was encapsulated. Everything that mattered in this moment anyway.
The sudden gasp caught her off guard. Jay’s grip tightened like he clawed a cliff-edge -- bruising deep, and enough to spring sharp tears to her eyes. A reflexive touch of power only heightened the pain, her own hand bracing his like she might pluck it free, but it was the battle of his expression that claimed her attention. She didn’t truly know what Orion had done to him, and she feared the jaws of loss more than the dig of his fingers. For a moment she really was afraid of what might be happening.
It’s back.
Jay shifted and she slid free even as he fought blindly for the space. A pinched gaze tracked his movements, and a step took her back to brace the desk. Fear burned her throat like the coiling smoke of a house fire, smothering her composure with a touch of something primal. She wasn’t stupid, and she had no intention of being ripped apart like a leaf in a tornado, but neither did she run -- even in those brief moments before she began to understand. The wallpaper charred and curled and fell in black ash. Her heart hammered in the cage of her chest at that. She wanted to close her eyes against the memory of a burning room and her trapped within it, but didn’t, caught instead in powerless witness.
The surge passed into silence, but it was the curl of Jay's grin that finally loosened the knots in her muscles. She stared a moment longer, expression as blank as snow. Something like a half remembered dream beat its black wings at the edge of her consciousness. At the casino she remembered telling him what it felt like for her, among a flurry of other things a sobre tongue might more wisely have kept to herself. If he’d replied in kind she did not remember it; had never truly had cause to consider that it might even be different. She realised she bore witness to the chasm between their experience now, and it was like staring into the jaws of an abyss. Utterly unknowable, a war fought and vanquished. And over, for now.
Her side throbbed. The desk bore her weight.
“Which time?” A brow rose, but there was a sly tease to the way she said it. Forgiveness was not among her virtues, and she had a cynic’s armour. But apology was not something she sought from him. Despite the dichotomy of her porcelain appearance, there was little truly fragile about Natalie. It always chafed to be seen as such; worse when it isolated her to a pedestal, and often it did. The cut of her humour now threw suspicion on the direction this was headed. Even so, she chose to linger on the sudden sun of his expression more than the fading pain of frayed control, or how it might distance him. It shouldn’t have that power over her, but it wasn't the first time the hint of his smile had pulled her in directions her feet were unwilling to go. The gift still suffused her blood, and maybe it was only that casting new light on a familiar face.
The truth was Natalie fully expected him to withdraw. The moves of this dance were well versed, and she knew its melody by heart. When he drew close again instead, surprise flickered her expression before self-awareness attempted to shield it from her expression. The sweep of his thumb against her knuckles ghosted a shiver that parted her lips, his words striking somewhere so deep even she didn’t follow the trail of it. She was wary of the feelings stirred in its wake, but these were waters still enough to lull the sting of repercussion from mind. Her fingers laced his and departed. Palm soft on palm, a touch never far. The power heightened sensation in a way she’d never much considered before. It felt like something brand new. It felt like something ancient.
This power could shred a man’s soul or knit his flesh before death’s scythe could finish the cut; it could raise a monument from the bones of the earth or wipe it from existence. It didn’t seem such a wide leap to speculate how it might bridge two distances like folded paper; open a window to somewhere else. Or a door. But if it were even possible, Natalie did not know how to do it. The gift still hummed her skin electric, but it was only a spell of words she painted in its stead. “There’s a peninsula on the western coast of Sierra Leone,” she said. The silver of her voice fell low, breathy with the tease of innocent touch; beckoning a closer ear. His body was maddeningly close, and caution was by now a lonely pennant in the wind. The play of her hands drew him into a closer welcome, slow and deliberate. “Tourists don’t know about it. White sands span untouched. The clearest waters.”
Maybe he wasn’t even listening; she could never tell when he looked at her like that. But she courted his attention nonetheless, ensnaring herself at the same time in this foolish dream, until she wasn’t sure there was any breath left in her lungs for the waiting. “It’s warm, Jay. Even by moonlight. Just melts into the skin.” A tease lit the depths of her eyes, and her palm traced a path low beneath his shirt, like the touch of those promised waves. Hot skin flared, making cinders of remaining control. A different escape. The last words whispered against his lips. “That’s where I’ll take you, one day.”
The sudden gasp caught her off guard. Jay’s grip tightened like he clawed a cliff-edge -- bruising deep, and enough to spring sharp tears to her eyes. A reflexive touch of power only heightened the pain, her own hand bracing his like she might pluck it free, but it was the battle of his expression that claimed her attention. She didn’t truly know what Orion had done to him, and she feared the jaws of loss more than the dig of his fingers. For a moment she really was afraid of what might be happening.
It’s back.
Jay shifted and she slid free even as he fought blindly for the space. A pinched gaze tracked his movements, and a step took her back to brace the desk. Fear burned her throat like the coiling smoke of a house fire, smothering her composure with a touch of something primal. She wasn’t stupid, and she had no intention of being ripped apart like a leaf in a tornado, but neither did she run -- even in those brief moments before she began to understand. The wallpaper charred and curled and fell in black ash. Her heart hammered in the cage of her chest at that. She wanted to close her eyes against the memory of a burning room and her trapped within it, but didn’t, caught instead in powerless witness.
The surge passed into silence, but it was the curl of Jay's grin that finally loosened the knots in her muscles. She stared a moment longer, expression as blank as snow. Something like a half remembered dream beat its black wings at the edge of her consciousness. At the casino she remembered telling him what it felt like for her, among a flurry of other things a sobre tongue might more wisely have kept to herself. If he’d replied in kind she did not remember it; had never truly had cause to consider that it might even be different. She realised she bore witness to the chasm between their experience now, and it was like staring into the jaws of an abyss. Utterly unknowable, a war fought and vanquished. And over, for now.
Her side throbbed. The desk bore her weight.
“Which time?” A brow rose, but there was a sly tease to the way she said it. Forgiveness was not among her virtues, and she had a cynic’s armour. But apology was not something she sought from him. Despite the dichotomy of her porcelain appearance, there was little truly fragile about Natalie. It always chafed to be seen as such; worse when it isolated her to a pedestal, and often it did. The cut of her humour now threw suspicion on the direction this was headed. Even so, she chose to linger on the sudden sun of his expression more than the fading pain of frayed control, or how it might distance him. It shouldn’t have that power over her, but it wasn't the first time the hint of his smile had pulled her in directions her feet were unwilling to go. The gift still suffused her blood, and maybe it was only that casting new light on a familiar face.
The truth was Natalie fully expected him to withdraw. The moves of this dance were well versed, and she knew its melody by heart. When he drew close again instead, surprise flickered her expression before self-awareness attempted to shield it from her expression. The sweep of his thumb against her knuckles ghosted a shiver that parted her lips, his words striking somewhere so deep even she didn’t follow the trail of it. She was wary of the feelings stirred in its wake, but these were waters still enough to lull the sting of repercussion from mind. Her fingers laced his and departed. Palm soft on palm, a touch never far. The power heightened sensation in a way she’d never much considered before. It felt like something brand new. It felt like something ancient.
This power could shred a man’s soul or knit his flesh before death’s scythe could finish the cut; it could raise a monument from the bones of the earth or wipe it from existence. It didn’t seem such a wide leap to speculate how it might bridge two distances like folded paper; open a window to somewhere else. Or a door. But if it were even possible, Natalie did not know how to do it. The gift still hummed her skin electric, but it was only a spell of words she painted in its stead. “There’s a peninsula on the western coast of Sierra Leone,” she said. The silver of her voice fell low, breathy with the tease of innocent touch; beckoning a closer ear. His body was maddeningly close, and caution was by now a lonely pennant in the wind. The play of her hands drew him into a closer welcome, slow and deliberate. “Tourists don’t know about it. White sands span untouched. The clearest waters.”
Maybe he wasn’t even listening; she could never tell when he looked at her like that. But she courted his attention nonetheless, ensnaring herself at the same time in this foolish dream, until she wasn’t sure there was any breath left in her lungs for the waiting. “It’s warm, Jay. Even by moonlight. Just melts into the skin.” A tease lit the depths of her eyes, and her palm traced a path low beneath his shirt, like the touch of those promised waves. Hot skin flared, making cinders of remaining control. A different escape. The last words whispered against his lips. “That’s where I’ll take you, one day.”