and love in some ways is just a rogue wave

marked me like a bloodstain

Flora lets out a soft, incredulous huff, her shoulders rising beneath the too-bright silk as though shrugging off imagined splinters. "Sure—if you trip over lust in the middle of a moonlit grove and have to pin each other to the nearest tree, bark digging in and moss hiding your shoes, that’s its own kind of poetry," she concedes, voice lilting with reluctant amusement. "But there’s another sort entirely in building a world on purpose—laying out every detail like a banquet and saying: here, I thought of you while I dreamed this." She tips her head to look around the room with a soft sigh. "You could show Caly the room you grew up in—the posters, the scuffed floorboards, all your secret hopes stuck under the windowsill—or she could spin you some place she only ever sees when she blinks between waking and sleep. Planned magic can be just as romantic as impromptu bark-burn."

Flora steadies herself, bracing for the crisp sting of the salve across her skin when suddenly his words have her breath catching—sharp, alarmed—and she twists just enough to glance over her shoulder, the motion dragging pain across half-healed tissue and pulling a faint wince from her lips. "You...what?" Blinking, the corners of her eyes soft despite her confusion. "Why...were you even talking about me at all?" The question isn’t accusation—there’s no flare of anger, no defensive snap—only startled concern brightening her sea-glass eyes. How had it gone from your dad's an asshole and I hate him, to I slept with Flora.

And gods, at her birthday? With Jack around to hear?

"We're...we said nothing changed between us," she says, shakily but firmly, as if repeating a mantra she needs him to hear as much as Caly.

I'm not giving up, kicking off the rust

He stops fiddling with the cap when he sees the hurt tug along her, exhaling through his nose to settle some of the slosh of his word vomit. He dips his fingers into the salve and closes the remaining distance between them, gently applying it to her wounds with a steady, liberal care that focuses him away from his own ruin. "What?" he repeats, catching the side of her widened gaze with matching confusion. Had he missed something, trying not to make it sting more than necessary just now?

"Oh," he realizes with a twist of his lips, catching where he went wrong. He swipes for more ointment, kneeling down to better align with the carvings against her ribs. "No, I meant, us as in me and Jack." He holds the skin steady around the wounds with one hand, some of his fingers still clutching the tub of medicine, while his other paints something as close to healing as he can manage for her, gaze drifting from his work to her worried stare when he can spare it. His frown only deepens though, despite the newfound clarity. "You did come up though," he admits with no theatrical display of displeasure.

"She wanted to know why I picked a fight with Jack, and when I said because he hurt a friend, she asked who. Your name really cut into her for some reason," He stills for a moment, assessing his application on her skin, and remembering the night at her bar, when an attempt at a dance had been enough of a fracture that it seems silly now he tried to build anything on top of it at all. "She thinks I picked you first, because I tried to dance with you at your party. Wouldn't listen to me explain, then fucking Jack let slip that we—" A pause, because what had they done, exactly?

More than sex. More than a night over. More than just getting to have her for a night, in all the ways he'd like to always have her, but it doesn't matter anyway. It's behind them, and like she said, it changes nothing. Just a memory, they both knew that then, and now. So she can rest assured, he didn't destroy what they decided.

He rises next to her, moving onto the deeper marks on her back, clearing his throat. "Well, he knew. I'm betting that lackey he had stay on the boat with you saw and told him everything." Jack knowing hadn't really been the problem, it's the way he just dropped it in Caly's lap like an explosive device, uncaring that it did that much more damage to his daughter. If he'd been able to properly explain...

"Anyway, Caly promised we'd talk later, after they kicked me out of the party, but I can't see it going well and I feel like she just said that to get me to leave." Probably for the better, he can recognize now, given that most everyone in her family had begun to bare some assortment of fangs at him.

Kaisel

I keep acting tough but maybe I'm not good enough

marked me like a bloodstain

Kaisel’s clarification lands like a stone in a pond. Even though there's no malice behind it, the ripple of consequence spreads fast all the same. Flora’s flush deepens at the realisation, a bloom of mortification creeping up her throat to stain her cheeks with rose. Of course he hadn’t meant them, and gods, how foolish she feels for thinking he might have. For letting that old, fragile hope flutter in her chest even for a moment. Her smile falters, barely perceptible, and she shifts slightly beneath the sting of salve to mask it.

Taking a breath, she listens as Kai continues, and for all her own messes, it turns out he's tangled in just as many, each thread wound tight with emotion and misunderstanding. She hears the frustration in his voice, the clumsy ache behind every word, and she knows what it’s like to try and say the right thing only for it to come out all wrong. What it’s like to fight for someone while the person you’re fighting for misunderstands the entire battle.

The salve is cool against her back, biting gently into the broken skin, but she grits her teeth and endures it, because the real sting isn’t physical. She wants to reach for him, to curl her fingers around his wrist and ground him, to smooth away the pain pinched into his brow, only she knows better. Touch is dangerous between them now. Touch could feel too much like more, so instead she shifts, turning carefully until she’s kneeling down with him, the black silk of her dress pooling around her knees like ink spilled between them.

"It probably isn't about every little thing so much as you probably just embarrassed her," she says gently, reaching for the words like puzzle pieces, trying to assemble them into something that won’t break further what’s already cracked. "It’s her birthday, all eyes on her. And then suddenly someone she cares about—maybe someone she hoped cared about her—is picking a fight with her dad and talking about another girl. She might not even be mad so much as...hurt. Or blindsided."

Her eyes drop for a second, lashes fanning across flushed cheeks. She exhales slowly, then lifts her gaze again, steady despite the heat that lingers in her face. "I doubt she wants you to be the kind of guy who’d ditch a friend for someone he'd literally just met, but...probably you need to make her feel like she's just as important to you." Pausing, quieter now, Flora's voice softens further. "Maybe she thought things were more official than they were. Or maybe she wants them to be, and finding out you slept with someone else makes it seem like you don't." Which, to be fair, really is how that reads.

The mention of Jack—of course it comes back to him—draws a small hitch from Flora’s breath, her body tightening instinctively. She covers it with a faint nod, her voice careful, too careful. "Yeah. Could’ve been Bassian." She doesn’t say what’s screaming beneath her skin. That Jack wouldn’t have needed Bassian to report anything. That he could’ve sifted through Kaisel’s thoughts like pages in a book and pulled out the worst of it, the details of it.

"I need to stop by the Hanged Man soon," she murmurs, her voice easing into something more practical, more composed, though her thumb fidgets with the edge of her dress. "If I see Caly, I’ll tell her the truth. That we’re just friends. And that night...that I was the one who..." Her gaze drops again, lashes fluttering as she exhales. "That I kissed you, even after you'd already been telling me about the date you were planning with her, so.." She looks back up, steadier now, though guilt colours her voice and sets her cheeks aflame. "If anyone’s to blame, it’s me."

I'm not giving up, kicking off the rust

He looks up at her with every bit of splintered confusion and wounded longing he has. Not even all of them broken off of Caly. He'd been able to hide it when it'd just been her back staring back, but as she kneels next to him, he can't quite tug it away fast enough, and gods if that isn't the worst that right now she's the one comforting him.

She does though, comfort him. Her presence, even without a touch, and her careful advice. It all makes sense when she lays it out like that, and it smooths over some of the wrinkles that had been caused when that thread started to get snagged on that abysmal night. "Yeah," he says weakly, because the wake of all his breathless confessions just left him feeling empty and tired. Gods, what he wouldn't give to just going back to arguing with Rebecca in Stormbreak. "You're probably right. It's part of why I didn't..." He huffs. "I would have told her, just, not there, like that. She wanted to know though." Maybe he ought to get better at this whole, lying to protect someone thing. She said she wanted it, but look what it did. If he'd endured some of her anger for the evening, or been more suave about redirecting attention, he could have talked to her in a setting that didn't put her into such a spectacle.

His eyes drag up from the floor where they'd fallen in thought, drawn to her again. All those broken pieces seem to click together into one sharp certainty now as his amber meets her seagreen. "No, absolutely do not do that," his voice comes out a little too abrupt, edged with something fierce. "What?!" she might as well have slapped him for how her words land. "Flora," he insists, "we both played a role that night." His expression softens, a plea threading through. "We didn’t regret it, right? So you can’t start assigning blame, and I won't let you put that weight on your shoulders too." He'd already listened to her shoulder all the rest, he'd be damned if he let her take this one on.

Kaisel

I keep acting tough but maybe I'm not good enough

marked me like a bloodstain

Flora nods, slow and thoughtful, her gaze slipping to the faint lines in the floorboards as though they might offer a way to map through all this. "Sometimes what a girl says she wants and what she actually needs...aren’t the same thing," she murmurs, the words not judgmental, just worn with knowing, because, well, look around. "Just because Caly asked doesn’t mean she was ready to hear it. Not like that. Not in front of everyone."

She exhales through her nose, the sigh catching faintly against the rawness in her throat. It's so Kaisel to have been honest like that. Kai, who wears his loyalty like armour and tosses his heart around like he’s never been taught to guard it properly. Someone asked him for something, so he gave it—consequences be damned—and now he’s here, aching over the aftermath like it surprises him every time.

When he snaps, sharp and certain, it jolts her—eyes lifting fast to meet his, startled not by the refusal but by the sudden force of it. For a moment, she just stares into his copper eyes, finding it immediately too easy to let herself drift in them that she has to look away. Kaisel's opened a door Flora is undoubtedly sure he didn't mean to, and gods the temptation isn’t there, blooming like a bruise beneath her ribs, to step through it and ask what, exactly, it meant to him. To hear him say it. To hear him tell her in no uncertain terms. But she won’t. Can’t.

So instead, she shrugs, slow and deliberate, as if the movement might help shift something loose. "I absolutely can assign blame,”" she says, voice light but not flippant. "Especially if it smooths things out with you two." Her fingers twist in the fabric pooled in her lap, a nervous flutter quickly smoothed over. "I was the one who asked you to stay. I could have stayed on the other side of the bed, but I didn't. If I hadn't kissed you.." Her shoulders roll slightly as heat bleeds from across the bridge of her nose high onto her cheekbones before disappearing into her curls. "Then none of it would’ve happened."

I'm not giving up, kicking off the rust

"No!" he demands, the volume cutting through the plea that goes unheard. She just barrels on though, finding all the little corners where things are darkest and pulling them up like a familiar blanket for her to suffocate under. "Stop," he persists, reaching out with a hand to clamp it over her mouth like he could snuff out the thoughts and the feelings just as easily as the sound of them spilling out.

"Just. Stop." Quieter again, but the outrage still simmers. "Don't you do this shit with me Ro. Especially not about that night." Gods, he wants to just shake her, jostle up all those stupid thoughts, or press his forehead against hers so he can just meld the way he thinks straight into her brain. "I chose to stay. You didn't make that choice for me. I wanted to. Fuck's sake Flora, I was thinking of moving in with you!" The fact she also suggested that, is besides the point, he thought about it before she said it, he considered it, still does. "I kissed you back," he reminds, gaze flashing with the heat of the memory, with some insane desire to do it all over again just so he can convince her that he is just as guilty. "I'd do it again, too," he promises with unflinching honesty.

Kaisel

I keep acting tough but maybe I'm not good enough

marked me like a bloodstain

Flora falls silent, words smothered beneath the weight of Kaisel’s palm and the rare, sharp edge in his voice. He never yells—never at her—and the sheer force of it stills her like a bird caught mid-flight, confusion and heat blooming behind her ribs in a tangled mess of guilt and something dangerously close to hope. When he mentions their plan to move in together, her eyes shift, softening with a tenderness that’s impossible to hide. Of course she remembers. The way the idea had spilled between them like sunlight through an open window, easy and ridiculous and perfect. The image of him in her kitchen, tripping over Spice. His clothes in her drawers or in the sink. The sound of his laughter in her bed. Gods, the idea of it lives in her even now, curled up somewhere stupid and warm.

And then, just as she’s gathering the pieces of her composure, he says he’d do it again.

Her heart lurches, stomach flipping so fast it might as well be trying to flee her body. All those feelings she’s tried to bury bubble up so abruptly she can’t breathe past them. So instead she leans forward and presses her tongue—quick, impish, and absurdly Flora—between the gaps of his fingers, hoping the slippery sensation alone will break the spell long enough for him to pull his hand away.

When he does, her breath catches sharp in her throat, cheeks flushed and pulse hammering in her ears, before her eyes immediately drop away from his. It had been easy—safe to hold his gaze with his hand against her mouth—but now there's far too little space between them for her to trust herself not to complicate things further. Eyes lowered to her lap, voice almost inaudible, she whispers, "I would too." And that—gods, that’s the problem.

Her fingers curl in the fabric of her dress, knuckles whitening as she swallows thickly. "But we can’t, Kai." The words come out like glass wrapped in velvet, each shard in the shape of Koa's name, or Jack's. "That’s why I wanted to take the blame. Because you could still have something real with her." Her throat tightens, and still she doesn’t lift her gaze. "Even if it wasn’t just my fault...I was the one who started it, even though I knew you liked her. I knew you were planning something with her and I—I did it anyway. So if it has to fall on someone..." She breathes out slow, the corners of her mouth twitching like she’s trying to hold back a wave. "Let it be me."

I'm not giving up, kicking off the rust

"EwwWWww!" he drags out the word suddenly at the feel of her tongue, like a clamshell that's been picked up and still has an occupant. His hand whips back like she's bitten him, and his expression is at once contorted with disgust. It's such at odds with all the determined refusal of her guilt and the blistering worry over her grief that his laugh comes swift and real for the first time since entering the room. He swipes the remaining slobber off on his leg. "Gods you're gross," he complains with zero heart to it.

The humor fades soon enough though when she drops that she would too, and it seals something golden and grateful in his chest, even if it shouldn't. His gaze is softened with the meaning of it all, an ache he recognizes but can't appease. She tucks into the folds of her dress like a flower at dusk, and he thinks it's still the weight of the blame she's trying to wear, instead of a reflection of all his same wants. "I know, I know," he huffs out, "I'm well aware we can't undo the past." He won't bother her with the idea of choosing to do it again anew, not when they said nothing changes in the morning light.

He sighs audibly at her admirable way of trying to drive every knife in the world into her heart to keep everyone else from getting cut. "Doesn't that make me even worse, for not stopping?" he asks with the hollow ring of someone who has already been marked by the blade. Why have both them bleed over this? "All your reasons Flora, they're that much heavier weighed in my decision. Don't make yourself an enemy too, it won't help anything."

Kaisel

I keep acting tough but maybe I'm not good enough

marked me like a bloodstain

Flora’s mouth quirks in spite of herself, a ghost of a smile curling slow and reluctant at the edges. "Serves you right," she murmurs, affection mellowing the words until they taste more like a kiss than a rebuke—even if what she’s tasting now is a faint, unpleasant trace of citrus lotion. She rubs the back of her hand against her mouth, nose scrunching faintly as if that might scrub away more than just the flavour.

Her shoulders shift in a soft shrug, delicate and unhurried, a motion more about weariness than indifference. "It’s not the past I’m worried about," she says, voice low, but steady now, like waves curling against the shore rather than crashing over it. "It’s the future." Her eyes don’t rise as she says it, don’t flinch either. She’s not trying to hurt him with it, but they both know that Koa isn't likely to take the news well, and Jack, who apparently already knows the news, hasn't stopped casting a shadow over Flora's thoughts since he left her in this very room.

A breath escapes her, too heavy for how gently it leaves. "It makes you a horny teenage boy," she concedes at last, half-laughing through the words before they dissolve into something far sadder, "who was tired and hopped up on sugar, and who, at the time, wasn’t actually dating Caly yet." At his mention of her reasons—that they weighed heavier in his decision—her brows lift, hands rising only to fall in a loose, emphatic heap into her lap. "Of course they do," she says simply, as if anything else would be ludicrous. "You’re you, Kai. You don't deserve this."

Flora exhales, slower this time, like she’s bracing herself against something invisible. "I won’t be Caly’s enemy," she says, the words quiet but firm, like a promise carved into bone. "I'll tell her that all you ever do is talk about how great she is, how well your date went. That you and I are just friends. That what happened was a one-time thing.." Her gaze rises at last, lashes casting soft shadows as her eyes find his. "All true things," she adds.

I'm not giving up, kicking off the rust

"Yeah," he drags out a long sigh, weary with all the weight of, well everything here. As peaceful as she's made this room, it doesn't seem to be having the effect at relaxing him. "Sorry, for earlier." That kind of future worries him too, since he can't seem to look at her for long without the moonlight of memory spilling in on some edge or another.

His mouth firms up again, set with something a little more sad than he wants to admit. "Don't do that," he says with whisper-softness, unable to rouse anything stronger when she's just dealt him the second worst blow of the evening, the first being when he entered and finally laid eyes on how okay she was. Did she truly think so little of his decision? That it's not the ruinous want of her, the complete adoration of every part of her, and just the after effect of gummy worms? Fuck, maybe he took the words she let spill in the bedroom too much to heart.

"Don't whittle my choice down to such meaningless reasons." Confessing it all to her now would just make him look stupid, and it doesn't serve either of them for all they're trying to maintain going forward. Still, he'd not hear it tossed around so carelessly, like loving her had been nothing more than a coincidence. He flicks his gaze away, sitting back on his ass as he slumps into one hand over a pulled up knee. He needs something to support the heaviness settling in his chest.

"You sure as shit don't deserve it," he counters, but the bite is gone, just flat with something too near defeat. She's just as stubborn, it would seem. Maybe more so, because he's not certain how much longer he can keep listening to her take the blame over and over.

"You don't have to worry about this," maybe a new angle of attack. "None of this is your problem." She has more than enough, he should not have laid his out too.

Kaisel

I keep acting tough but maybe I'm not good enough

marked me like a bloodstain

Flora doesn’t answer at first—not with words. She only meets Kai’s copper gaze and holds it, steady and unblinking, for as long as she dares before the weight of it settles too deeply in her chest and she’s forced to look away. The air between them seems to still, quiet not in peace but in that aching way silence sometimes feels in places where something used to live.

When he says don’t do that, she nods, the movement small but sure. Her teeth find the inside of her cheek, a nervous habit softened by time, and her voice follows like silk unfurling through a crack in the wall. "I’m just trying to make it easier," she whispers, barely audible before she lowers it even more. .."I know it wasn’t just that." The words feel like an exhale, not quite a confession, but the closest she can come without unravelling. She shifts where she kneels, settling more fully on her calves, sleeves falling forward as she curls her hands into her lap, content now to simply watch the way Kai seems to fold inward like a paper house meeting rain. It tugs at something deep and old in her, something that still wants to reach for him, even now, no matter how much it will hurt later.

At his quiet insistence that she doesn’t deserve it, her mouth tilts sideways into the softest of smiles. "I know Caly has claws," she says gently, voice still wrapped in something far too tender for the sharpness of the subject, "but I doubt they’re worse than Dahlia’s." Her smile flickers, dimming into something more real. "And besides, I don't have anything to lose." She pauses, gaze on him again. "You do."

Then he tries the shift—tries to turn the spotlight back on her with a new angle—and Flora only rolls her eyes, the motion graceful and exaggerated. "Lest you forget," she drawls with theatrical primness, even as her tone softens toward affection, "I am the queen of Torchline, so you don’t actually get to tell me what’s my problem and what’s not." One brow arches, her gaze sweeping back to him as she smiles crookedly.

I'm not giving up, kicking off the rust

There's some relief to be found in the words she so barely forms he can hardly hear them over their breathing. He tilts further back on his hand to better look at her, frowning. "You don't have to make it easier." Of course she would. Taking on more than needed over and over again. How could he convince her she needn't grasp everything that drifts past like it's her responsibility? He'd never realized the extent to which she did it, because she'd always managed to seem so light, despite all the weight she smuggled into every portion of herself she could. Could a balloon even lift one of her fingers, or would she have to become the house from Up just to manage? "You can just let it be," he suggests, gentle as a bandaid sticking to wet skin.

Slowly, he slides one foot out towards her. Whenever they got all tangled up in words like this, it always seemed like holding each other helped, but if that's half the problem now... he could extend a toe in these trying times. He wiggles it in a stretch towards her leg.

He offers a weak, lopsided smirk as she compares Caly to Dahlia. "I think you're right there, but I'd much prefer a scenario where you don't have to meet any claws. They'll hurt no matter who is wielding them, and I'm not rubbing ointment on you every night." He would, of course, he always would. He just didn't want to have to, wanted her to use something other than her body as a shield.

A breathy laugh slips free, and though the shake of it threatens to collapse all the careful steadiness he's rebuilt, he can't contain it. "I would never forget, your majesty." He holds her stare, fondness slipping in, not that it ever truly left. "Figures, you're nosy as hell." There's no winning here, he'll just have to be armed with all the gauze and creams he can find.

Kaisel

I keep acting tough but maybe I'm not good enough

marked me like a bloodstain

Flora bites the inside of her cheek hard, a futile effort to dam the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. The moment feels far too precarious for it—fragile as sugar glass—but gods, she can’t help herself. "So...you want me to make it harder, then?" she murmurs, voice low and wry and as light as she can manage without splintering. The word hums like heat between them, flirtatious in the way she normally is, but teasingly warm. Familiar, dangerous, safe, all at once.

Her gaze drops to the leg inching forward, and something in her chest twists, not with pain, but with a quiet, aching affection that fills her to the brim. Of course he’d offer a toe in truce. Of course he’d wiggle it at her like it means something—and of course, to her, it does. Her fingers twitch in her lap, helpless against the instinct to reach for him, to pull him close and tangle up all over again. Instead, she sighs with theatric resignation, eyes gleaming as she says, "Only because I saw you wash your feet earlier," and presses her toes gently to the sole of his foot, resisting—barely—the urge to turn it into something playful. Her restraint is a quiet miracle, her smile a livewire just waiting for an excuse to mercilessly tickle the bottom of his foot.

When he speaks of Caly again, that momentary levity dims like the edge of a wave slipping back into the sea. Flora exhales slowly, eyes softening as she nods, the weight of his concern settling over her shoulders like a cloak she doesn’t mind wearing. But then, a sly flicker returns to her gaze, and her brows lift with exaggerated disbelief. "Well if you’re going to be so dramatic about it, can you at least finish rubbing the lotion you started?" she huffs, feigned exasperation wrapped in a ribbon of fondness. She doesn’t wait for a reply—just pivots with a grace that’s almost lazy, scooting forward until she’s seated in front of him again, back turned, curls spilling to one side so he’ll have room to work.

I'm not giving up, kicking off the rust

The stare he levels her over the crest of his hand could burn a hole into marble. Not that the joke threatens anything, he's just mad he set it up for her so perfectly, and that he didn't think of it first. "You already do," he says with the largest eyeroll he can muster, the only thing that suggests he means it more than one way, and she definitely knows both how difficult she is and how responsive he can be to her attempts.

Everything eases up when she connects her foot with his. His smile softens from something less frail, better fitting into the natural lines that will fully wrinkle with the well worn expression before he's middle aged. It's all the more settled for seeing hers resurface too, and for the first time tonight, he has a flicker of hope. Not that this well all end well and easy, but that she might be alright enough that he can manage it, not holding her.

Even as he watches part of her darken again, it doesn't ruin the color he just got to witness, and he holds firm with his smile. "Yeah, just don't lick it off this time, I can always grab you a spoon if you really need it." He'd take her mock irritation like thirst to water. Her reposition inevitably removes their toehold, but he scoots in closer to properly see and reach all the region that remains, so his legs slide near her thighs, his toes stretching back down towards hers from the outside, though they won't quite reach. The ointment still in his hand, carted around through all the turmoil like an anchor, is dipped into again with his other hand as he sets it to the side he'd abandoned. He's just as careful as before, but a little less afraid that these will be the things that undo her in perpetuity. Tonight, maybe. Tomorrow, likely. She's stronger through, and maybe, eventually, he can convince her she doesn't have to keep earning them.

Kaisel

I keep acting tough but maybe I'm not good enough