[se] between two lungs

Deimos

we are all b r o k e n
that's how the l i g h t gets in

He wouldn’t throw away anything of her, couldn’t cast her aside, couldn’t warrant or permit segments of abandonment and ruin based on feral natures – not when he was just as feral, just as wild, just as voracious and wolfish, merely lacking the rounded ears or the fur features. He was likely more savage and untamed than her, sculpted and shaped, honed and reborn, straight from the darker corners of the battlefield, kill or be killed, assault, siege, devastate, and demolish. Opponents were no longer human, but adversaries and enemies, a nonchalant venue made for his blade to lacerate and destroy; a numbing aperture once he’d come across too many fallen bodies, once he’d mauled and maimed a few of his own, once his compatriots had become part of the slaughtered, the broken, the beaten, and the damned. His judgment refused to press, his reserve didn’t raise hackles or employ detachment, admiring and reverent all the same, pondering the limitless talents and gifts she’d always managed to correspond and display. The Reaper could swing a scythe, could plunge a knife, could throw a dagger, a spear, a cutlass into acrimonious sides, but that was when his talents ended, seared, imploded. He was nothing compared to her, and she must’ve known it, must’ve seen it, must’ve sensed it – anyone could be brutal, anyone could be savage, anyone could be pushed to rapacious, seething, contemptuous means and measures. But not everyone could summon strands of kindness and benevolence over and over, could reel past glowering walls and towering infernos to accept and regard, could show chinks in armor and wait for the sign to continue, to persist, or to reel, flee away, when the enchantments and invocations dug too deep. Amalia was far stronger and better than he, and one day she’d realize it.

Their laughter chorded off the books and shelves, rang alongside starlit wonder and exploration, a comfort even on the depths and crusades of the unknown. His flush remained, poised there beneath dark lashes and piercing depths, a fraction of devilry mingling within the youthful glow, the boy there and back again, exasperating the world to no end. “Do I know all of them?” His snicker tormented and teased just as she had, a billowing pattern of mirth and folly, the silly, inane stretches he garnered and gathered with few others, and none so intimate, so pervading, so enticing. The temptation lingered there, in the corners and pockets of their hallowed sphere, in the devouring, swallowing contortions of his throat, in the pulsing sear and smolder of his fingers, but they didn’t chase, they didn’t rampage, they didn’t provoke unless she craved them – biding, waiting, endless patience brewing behind his mind. The images and refrains were wanton and longing, cravings he couldn’t have, a serpentine beat to his heart and soul; more, more, more colliding in his skull, rushing in his ichor, passionate and persistent, but only just so. Deimos could breathe them into life, the hungering movements of his hands beneath shirts, skin finding skin, molten finesse, discarded clothing, raw and real and mesmerizing, but it would be meaningless without her permission, without her agreement. So he breathed and lingered, adjusted to her tactics, to her furtive nature, ducking his head for a few seconds, hooded gaze catching on wooden beams and arcane tomes, paths of starlight, remembering what it meant to inhale, exhale, without the catch of something else sizzling below his flesh.

Then, his hands were on her ears, soft, dulcet fur lingering on his fingertips, and he bellowed a wild chuckle, deep from his lungs. The beast could feel the grasp on his chest, on his hair, tangled in sable and amber, but didn’t relent, pressed on by her purr. Lips were on his palm thereafter, fire and heat and everything coiled and contorted within him again – control, composure, a singular onset, rigid in his spine, forgiving and unrelenting, the whole realm sent to goad, taunt, and harass his frigid nature. He couldn’t feel any chill now, no remnants of the icy, mountainous behemoth, scalding and smoldering on the fringes. Her mouth drifted down to his wrist and he resisted the tiniest groan, a moan, threatening to burst from his throat, not knowing where the hell to place his hands now, one hovering along her other ear, one curled in her grasp. “Is it?” He whispered, deep and hushed at the same time, the oxygen escaping his frame as he worked and whittled on which way to sculpt an answer, a beacon, a response. One portion of his machinations replied with the notions of swallowing her whole, laying her down upon the bed of dust and earth, pleasing and tormenting, ravenous and hungry, until they were both sated and content; another knew they wandered on the borders of it, and he’d have to oblige with something else. Magic for magic? Enchantments for enchantments? Stories for stories? The war waged on in his skull, bristling and tempestuous; they’ve played this game before, but he never quite knew the right rejoinder or reaction, making it up as he went along, fettering and toying at the seams.

The demon had no transformation; only the subtle, unwinding changes in his figure, in his thoughts, as time pressed on and eroded, as she carved her way into his heart and rolled aside the anguish, the melancholy grinding there so perilously. Practically won out in the end, but just barely, lingering on the verges and boundaries of some history he hadn’t mentioned (coldblooded kings; death again, bound into the summits, peaks, and valleys along his chilling throne) – withdrawing the hand, the fingers, the palm occupying her ear, and holding it in front of his chest. The briefest glow in the hallowed shadows lilted in its refrain, creation instead of devastation (and he’d never understand it, how he could hold opposites in one vessel, in one void). The object materialized in his grip, and then he held it higher, for her to see the cloth woven and stitched suddenly; threads pooling, one seam on top of another, until it came together as an apron. Viability and usefulness for the baker far outweighed the notion of pretty, ornamental things, and truthfully he wouldn’t know the half of what was liked or not. His gaze flickered back to her, awaiting approval or disapproval; if she unfolded the contents she’d find a little starwhale molded to Jyoti’s likeness on the front, stars on the straps and ties. All of it had been in the midst of silence, hushed and poignant, the gift now settling along his grasp, extended to her, waiting.

keep the ones who
h e a r d y o u
when you never said a word