catching fire

right now everything you want is wrong
& right now all your dreams are waking up

She's small against him in a way that feels fragile, even if it isn't. His is the body providing warmth here, but tucked under the blankets and with her pale skin reflecting it back against him, she feels like she might have once have done, years and years and years ago before both of her deaths.

At first Remi doesn't quite kiss her back. He's tense and frustrated and wily all over again, but her lips soften him by degrees, and eventually his shoulders melt into the mattress. "Well." Remi says against her lips, wanting to rake his fingers through his curls but not wanting it more than he wants the feel of Isla beneath his palms. "If that's true, then I'm a living example of handsome only being skin deep." Ronin had called him monstrous, and others had said far worse.

But what Remi was slowly realizing, was that this wasn't a phase. There was no soap and water to scrub clean what he'd become. Ludo might once have purified his soul, but what he was now was exactly what he was made to be. He was loveable on the surface, just as he was handsome. But deep down?

Deep down he was something to be feared.
Something to walk away from.

The Lullaby