JACK
Flora's movements in the shadowed space bloom to life along one of the filaments as a series of fuscia pulses, ones that are echoed in all the places on her body where she might pose a threat - hands, elbows, shoulders, feet, knees - before fading again. "Sorry," Jack mutters, distracted, "force of habit." To orient a body and its relative distance to his own. His fingers twitch a moment before her hand brushes his, likely for the same reason, but he doesn't draw away.
If anything, the touch ignites an entirely new series of thought and feeling and sensation, drawing deep from the well of Jack's own mind and combining with the hesitant, tentative care with which she treats him now. There's his reluctant acceptance of affection that manifests as something softly warm wrapped in too many layers of paranoia, like barbed wire snaring a young animal. There's a flood of scarlet fog and golden heat - the captain's memory of Flora's own pleasure that washes through, potent and stifling of any of his reservations. There are quiet moments that, knowing now that this network exists, have never truly been quiet at all, and the fever heat of conflict, of crackling bolts of adrenaline to sharpen the webbing to a razor's edge
"I was. It was," he says, the irony of his short and clipped response utterly lost on Jack as he speaks. And then mageglass - the opalescent shine crystalises along some of the webbing towards the edges of his telepathic range, the captain managing an almost apologetic smile towards Flora. "I'm not a good enough man to say no to power. You know that." Not even when it's bad for him.
"How could you have known? It's not your fault." He shakes his head. "No, this is all me. And I can't let it go now, not even if I wanted to. I'm not strong enough to go without this."
If anything, the touch ignites an entirely new series of thought and feeling and sensation, drawing deep from the well of Jack's own mind and combining with the hesitant, tentative care with which she treats him now. There's his reluctant acceptance of affection that manifests as something softly warm wrapped in too many layers of paranoia, like barbed wire snaring a young animal. There's a flood of scarlet fog and golden heat - the captain's memory of Flora's own pleasure that washes through, potent and stifling of any of his reservations. There are quiet moments that, knowing now that this network exists, have never truly been quiet at all, and the fever heat of conflict, of crackling bolts of adrenaline to sharpen the webbing to a razor's edge
"I was. It was," he says, the irony of his short and clipped response utterly lost on Jack as he speaks. And then mageglass - the opalescent shine crystalises along some of the webbing towards the edges of his telepathic range, the captain managing an almost apologetic smile towards Flora. "I'm not a good enough man to say no to power. You know that." Not even when it's bad for him.
"How could you have known? It's not your fault." He shakes his head. "No, this is all me. And I can't let it go now, not even if I wanted to. I'm not strong enough to go without this."
no more than I was or than I want to be
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights
when you fall on me like night, I wanna kill the lights
- Secret Telepath
- Functionally Immortal (Forever 35)
- Two small star tattoos beneath his left eye
- Click for The Ark!
