TIME TO DANCE

ciro m. capecchi: boys will be boys / hiding in estrogen and / wearing aubergine dreams / give me a break / have some composure / where is your posture?

[cirocapecchi-blog]

A gleaming silver jet, sleek and silent, touches down in London, and the city shudders beneath it. Yearning or fearful? Both. Neither. Its passenger—a man, small in stature, intimidating—steps onto the tarmac; his presence breathes new life into the pavement. Dark, brooding, he strolls lazily away from the plane, late spring sunshine beating down on his broad shoulders, sunglasses drawn over his bronze face, shielding him. Masking him. Both. Neither. He laughs and retrieves a purple banknote from his wallet, flings it carelessly in the direction of the uniformed boy carrying his luggage, punctuates the gesture with a lewd wink.

“Buy yourself something nice,” he drawls in accented English, and the city trembles again, like it knows the chaos that’s been brought to it.

He slides into an inconspicuous black car and lounges against the leather seat with his legs spread and jacket thrown open, breathing in smoke and exhaling strife. He stays like this until the car creeps to a stop in front of an imposing (familiar) club, stewing in his own anxieties and methodically ashing cigarette after cigarette, until his driver glances reproachfully back at him. A signal to go. A signal he must return to a life that nearly ruined him. A signal his break is over, and now he must attend to the chaos the heist has erupted in, fear in his veins and throat. The car door swings open noiselessly, sunshine streams in, and Ciro’s mouth twists into a wolfish grin.

(Because it’s expected. Because he’s nothing if not Capecchi. Because he came back from the dead and learned no lessons from it at all.)

Still, he feels small as he strolls through the Victorian’s grand entrance, feels undeniably unwelcome as a cool wind whistles past him and the door clicks shut behind him, feels out of place even as he locks gazes with a familiar face, lurking among the velvet sofas and heady smoke and glittering chandeliers.

“It’s been awhile,” Ciro says around his cigarette, head tilting to one side. His dark hair bounces with it; it’s longer and lighter, not gelled, soft curls untamed, a laziness he’s grown used to in his weeks away from the melodrama of the heist, although the garishly colored suit stretched across his shoulders nullifies the possibility of a complete transformation. Some things simply never change, and when he continues, words spoken with playful vitriol through a tight grin, it’s clear that his brash Capecchi wit is one of them: “Miss me?”

[thelovejournals]

I’m not used to being loved. I wouldn’t know what to do.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, More Than Just A House

[cirocapecchi-blog]

Maybe there’s something valorous about carrying yourself in the aftermath of a war, or maybe there isn’t, or maybe he isn’t carrying himself at all. These days, he can’t tell the difference anymore. Sometimes, when he looks in a mirror, he sees a bloody, mangled thing, a beast torn from limb to limb to limb, left to rot and decay in a dusty subterranean tomb. Other times, he sees victory, he sees a man who came face-to-face with the Reaper himself, who slogged through the muddied banks of the river Styx, who had every card in the deck stacked against him and survived anyway. Others still, he sees nothing at all, nothing but a gaping black chasm where a person should be. What’s worse is that sometimes, he feels it, too, that oppressive and overwhelming darkness seeping into his lungs, his heart.

“I wonder when those Lohovary bastards are going to make their next move,” the fissure says absently, edges rippling, so full of blackness that it threatens to spill out, to taint anything unfortunate enough to stand in the way. It—or is the chasm somehow still, after all this time, a he, in spite of all of his grotesqueries, in spite of all that he has lost, in spite of his claws and his teeth and his ichor, spilled out onto the cavern floor?—makes a soft noise of disapproval, a sound plucked from somewhere between contempt and disapproval. “I’ve always fucking hated chess.”

[xanthebeauregard-blog]

Some men crave touch like oxygen, taking in the soft clasp of her palms and rustling their worn cheeks into its cusp. It is solace, an irreproachable comfort, and still it says a thousand words like a weaved web, constantly intertwined. Touch is want and affirmation, touch is the teller of worth and covetousness – touch is desire and control, a greedy lust. I’ll touch you here, there, shall I touch you everywhere? No two men mirror one another, though Xanthe argues they are all too similar, and so ensues her careful selection in this residual game of cat and mouse, the trap ensnaring the culprit. What merit has the language of touch over the tongue? She dares not touch Ciro now – there can be no part of it that could bring him comfort.

February isn’t often devoured by an inherent chill, but instead, as a general rule, stomachs and swallows the frigidity whole. 

Xanthe is not acquainted with the bruises that line Ciro’s cheekbones like harsh chars, but is instead privy to gentle lesions between thighs and carefully concealed discolouration at the nape of the neck – symbols of lust, no wrath (though both sins deadly). She studies him now and crosses beguiling legs one atop the other, resting her elbow’s crook on top the bar’s marble surface. Golden locks rest in the joints of her arm, cascading across one side of her face, and her expression remains near neutral – if it were not for the negligible, almost insubstantial upturn of her lips. Above all Xanthe has known her Italian devotee one committed to his cause (his cause being, of course, obtaining the unattainable), but he sits silent, almost, words fetched from the breadth before him with obligatory consequence.

“Now, now, there’s always something around to entertain,” Xanthe starts in a heavy-drawn French accent, “Finding something that is worth your time, that’s the tougher part.” Behind her words live obscurity. Within there is a constant restlessness, a need to pursue – her next target, her next game. A vicious cycle of lust lost and won. Her lips curl into something of a maverick, growing insistent with the surplus of Ciro’s attention gathered. “Oh, we need something to warm us through,” she lilts as she turns to the bartender, “Two Irish Coffees, s'il vous plait.”

[cirocapecchi-blog]

He remembers loving her once, not in the dirty way that he does now, not in a way that allowed his gaze to roam and his fingers yearn, but like a brother. His childhood was steeped in hers, a decade of gallivanting across idyllic French pastures, of lounging on stunning white beaches, and despite allowing his affections for Xanthe to be twisted and marred by the encroachment of adulthood, there is a part of Ciro that still loves her like he used to. He catches glimpses of her on occasion, the forgotten girl of their shared childhood. She is not completely ice, not beautiful in that inescapable and heartrending way that the woman before him is now. That girl is just that: a girl, small and slender and lacking the frosty pretense that Xanthe has mastered since her youth. He notices her, not because he cares about precisely what lies beneath her mask, but because he wears one, too.

His intention here, today, in an unfamiliar bar in a familiar city, is not to peel back her layers, nor his own, so Ciro brushes the thoughts aside effortlessly, shelves them for another day. Boredom runs thick through his veins, like sludge, slowing him, slowing his heart to the dullest of beats, and Xanthe is the angel that hearkened to his prayers and pleas for excitement, that answered them with arms open wide. She addresses the bartender, her voice as honeyed as her hair, and his gratitude glints off of his smile. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you’re trying to get me drunk,” Ciro murmurs, jaw wrenching open reluctantly to speak; whatever restlessness currently pervades him has rooted itself deep in his chest, his throat, his bones, and just for a moment, it makes him want desperately to cast aside the masquerade, to see her, to have her see him. “Merci.”

He thanks her as an afterthought, but what comes next is not, could never be. It is but a momentary lapse, a careful dance atop the tightrope on which they and so many others walk, thin and fragile and looming far above a chasm of authenticity, an abyss of all of the ugliest things that he can think of. “Do you get tired of all of this, too?” he asks, and the question fires into the space between them like a gunshot, like something damning and bloody and terrible. He wants to take it back, to stitch up the hole that he left in his façade, but he cannot, so he simply clutches the cigarette between his fingers like a lifeline, like it is going to save him when everything falls apart. Maybe it will. Maybe it will not, but it is the only chance that he has.

[quantumpunk]

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[esmeraldaknight]

A man’s soul lies in his hands, the way he reaches out, the way his fingers curl into his palms, the way they look covered in blood. And a woman’s lies in her eyes, the way they look wet with tears, the way they light up in the dark, the way they plead without words. And his hands are dripping red and her eyes are desperate. They’re not the same. She is the girl who laughs, he is the man who kills: Atwood. She is instinct, driven by emotion, he is reason, battle-hardened and prized over and over again. She is hysterical, he is stoic. 

But — she is the predator, and he is the prey. So easy, all along, and she never saw it. Esmeralda will be the spark dressed in coal-black that burns the ancient Italian empire to the ground, and she is it now, light eyes glowing in the dark, his own smirk reflected back at him. If she falls, he falls with her. They fall with her. And all it took was what she thought she could never stoop so low as to say, a tacit promise.

She’s going to fuck that Capecchi arrogance right out of him. And then he’s going to suffer the way she did, the way she does now, the way no woman ever should and the way every man must. Her lips curve into that dangerous half smile of hers, the one that looks playful, charming, until it doesn’t. Just like her, shedding her lacy coat and slipping out of her silk skins.

Men are so weak, aren’t they, with their hands that tremble more than a gaze can ever lower, and she feels his pulse under her fingertips as she closes them around his wrist. There are two breaths between pulling him in, before ruining herself but ruining him too, taking him for all he’s worth, wrapping him around her fingers and tugging, and letting him go. Mercy. No one’s ever showed her mercy. Not the world, not herself.

To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and, by opposing, end them.  She takes him by his arm.

And then, when she’s done with silence, with inaction, she leads him through the Eden she used to call hers, to her bed. 

“Come with me.” 

[cirocapecchi-blog]

FIN

[esmeraldaknight]

It happened in three breaths: one, she looked at him, long and questioning and serious and determined and alarmed all at once. Two, she plucked the cigarette from his fingers and let it tumble to the ground in the space between them, watching the embers spill out of it, flowing like the water that had extinguished it, crushed under the toe of her stiletto. Three, she moved closer. That’s what she had said to do, wasn’t it, move. This was something Esme could not return from. This was something that could bring her back.

And then — would she scrub him from her body until she bled and rise again with her new pink skin like she always had or would redemption seem as futile still as it did now? Just for another breath, she hesitated. All that she knew, all that was safe and good and that she thought has saved her lay just a few steps away, a few more inhales and exhales but she wasn’t so cold and maybe it was better to do it here, anyway, and lead the Capecchi son inside when it was too much to bear.

Immortality lay not in wealth, but in who remembered you, and he would remember her.

“No. I mean the opposite.”

[cirocapecchi-blog]

He wants to ask her why. All of pride aside, all of his synthetic egoism stripped away, he knows that nobody offers themself up like this to someone without a good reason. Nobody shifts from biting their tongue to keep their resentment from spilling out to this, not without some kind of catalyst. Ciro is arrogant in the most detestable way, but he’s certainly not stupid. He’s never been stupid.

Maybe it was that night in January, when she invited him up to his room, when they shared tea and coffee and part of his authentic self bled out. Maybe it’s the bruise on his face and the gash in his side. Maybe it’s his blood and how it proves that his invincibility is a sham, a ruse.

Maybe it has nothing to do with him at all. Maybe he’s stupider than he thinks.

He doesn’t ask, doesn’t dare, so he doesn’t know, and because the question doesn’t come now, it won’t, not ever. Something like confusion ripples across his face, for a second, for a breath, and then it’s gone, nearly as quickly as it came, replaced by an expression, a smile, so familiar that it feels strangely artificial here, with her.

Still, Ciro murmurs, his mouth only inches from Esme’s: “Show me the way.”

[esmeraldaknight]

It was cold for February, a temperature more suited for the north of England, Scotland, Shetland and Orkney, the Arctic, and any other night her hands might have gone blue with all the blood rushing to heat them up, but she couldn’t feel it. She knew there were goosebumps rising on her arms, on her legs under the black velvet she wore, her hem brushing wet ground and surely getting ruined, but it lingered in the back of her hand. Like she’d been plunged into the Norwegian Sea and had soaked there for so long her heart had stopped she wasn’t cold anymore. That happened, didn’t it, acclimation, a person could grow accustomed to winter and mountain-top elevations and suffering and then they wouldn’t care so much anymore. 

A tipping point. Numb.

She couldn’t hate him, and maybe that was worse than standing under the stars in hiding and not running back to the warmth she knew was just beyond those doors. Esme knew bruises like that; they didn’t come easily. She could count all of hers, even the ones had long since faded, and, of course, there was the one that had grown into something that should have concerned her on her thigh, hidden under a long skirt and a head turned away from stolen kisses.

“I know restlessness,” Esme said, one purple-tinged hand lifting her hem from the ground, like she was going to turn and go back inside, just another of Ciro Capecchi’s spectres. “I know a cure for it. You have to move.”

[cirocapecchi-blog]

There’s something peculiar about Esme, something he hasn’t been able to put a finger on for months now, and as much as it bothers Ciro, he thinks that it might intrigue him more. He knows that she resents him, knows it in spite of pretending not to; it radiates off of her lithe form in waves, in clipped words and pinched expressions, in subtle digs and pursed lips. What he doesn’t know is why, and even though he wonders, he knows that it doesn’t matter nearly as much as he likes to believe that it does. He laughs at the thought, soft, under his breath, and sucks down another stream of smoke.

“Oh?” Ciro asks, half confused, half interested, a cloud of gray spilling out of his mouth with the syllable. He phrases it like a dare, like he’s asking her to show him precisely what she means, and maybe he is. These days, he’s surprising himself more and more, and that scares him, but it’s strangely exhilarating, too. Never knowing that’s coming next, never knowing how it’ll end. His jaw aches as his vision swims with Charles’ face, Charles’ fist, but instead of regretting, he revels. Maybe what happened in Rome is exactly what he needed, or maybe it’s exactly what he didn’t, but it’s too late to change anything now, isn’t it? 

His tone shifts, and when he speaks again, it’s something soft, something slighted: “Are you asking me to leave, cara?”

[cirocapecchi-blog]

adelaiderothschild:

Monaco ━ oh, how it had her frigid, splintered heart. It was a city that consumed her all at once ━ a city she had visited when life went quiet and no work was to be done. France’s greedy, lustful hands wrapped around the length of her neck and refused to let go. It was selfish ━ it was lonely. No one accompanied her but that’s how she wanted it, wasn’t it? Even so, people knew better than to approach the rotting beauty in her time of self-loathing and wrath.

She had one too many flutes of champagne, the alcohol thriving in her frostbitten veins. And though she should have stopped after her fifth, the bartender of the Monte Carlo was a little too eager to drown her sorrows in the expensive, gold-encrusted liquid.  

Adelaide found herself nearly stumbling to the nearest balcony ━ she needed air, she needed to breathe. The crowds, the incessant, bullshit laughter, the sight of people actually enjoying themselves ━ it made her nauseous and unsure of herself. So she’s opted for isolation, the strap of her Givenchy dress hanging from her shoulder like past lovers once had. The wind is biting and harsh but she’s completely numb. 

And just like that, her moment of silence and self-deprecation is abruptly torn from her, a familiar voice haunting the depths of her ears. So she’ll turn her head slightly, eyebrows furrowing in near vexation. But she can’t seem to muster up a biting comment ━ she’s too indulged in the fact that they’ve found her sniveling and falling apart at the seams. It disgusted her. 

“Don’t.” Her brash tone is fleeting, yet to the point. She wants her sudden, undesired company to disregard her tears ━ disregard her disheveled presence. Because this? This is not the Adelaide that people are supposed to know. When they’re consumed by her existence, they are meant to feel fear ━ not god-damn pity. 

Drunk off glory, high off victory and a pinch of cocaine, Ciro Capecchi is a goddamn mess, and he knows it, he adores it. His favorite casinos are the Lees’, the ones riddled with lies and theft, the ones where he can hide cards up his sleeve and get away with it, but tonight, the Monte Carlo, in all of its palatial elegance, is serving as a satisfactory substitute, and God, is he grateful. Ever since Shanghai, ever since the Lohovary twins played their final hand and hedged their bets, Ciro has been jet-setting across the globe, avoiding his home, avoiding his family, avoiding the sweet beckon of Palermo. It’s a siren’s call if he’s ever heard one, and the temptation to return, to bathe himself in the radiance of his most favorite place, is sickening. He needs this now, tonight, if only to keep himself from Sicily’s shores.

His tie is loose, his hair is mussed, and the first couple buttons of his shirt are undone when he steps out onto the balcony, nearly gasping for relief from the muggy interior of the casino. At first, he doesn’t quite realize who he’s with; he’s preoccupied, his attention stretched in a thousand different directions, the glass in his hand nearly drained of its liquor, the burn on his nostril still fresh, and then he notices, and then he speaks without thinking. His words are honeyed, sweet, but he knows that she knows better than to believe it. Funny seeing you here, he murmurs, and Adelaide’s response is as sharp as a knife, sharper than the one that split him open just a few weeks ago. Ciro wants to laugh, but he doesn’t; he just draws closer.

“Excusez-moi,” he starts, sarcasm thick on his tongue, and even though she’s half a dozen feet away from him, he’s almost certain that Adelaide can smell the liquor on his breath. If he had access to any more of his faculties, he would find it nauseating. Swallowing what little is left of his scotch, Ciro moves closer, places the empty glass on the sturdy concrete railing encasing them, and grins like he’s about to share some great secret with her. “We have to stop meeting like this.” He gestures vaguely around them, at the balcony, at his suit and her dress, at their equally wrecked appearances, his drunken dishevelment and her drooping strap, but that’s all that it takes to get his point across. The ball feels like it happened a lifetime ago, but it didn’t, and they both know it, don’t they?

[cirocapecchi-blog]

fauxregard:

The cigarette burns down between her fingertips, betraying the fact it has remained there instead of near her lips, smouldering ash dangerously close to falling against her skin.  She couldn’t say she would care. The discomfort it would cause may not even be noticed, at least not beyond fleeting immediacy.  Her mind is preoccupied with a great many things more than the present, and while she is loathe to admit it, Ciro Capecchi is one of them. His past far more than their current, when she wonders not about the state of his face but about how such a thing had transpired. Wonders how he had reached such a decision to so vaguely conceal it, wonders whether he thinks it a vulnerability or a badge of honour. 

She is physically placid while he can’t seem to stop moving, but it is only his words and not his actions that require a response. She thinks with honesty, of shaking her head to relay some of the thrumming beneath her skin, of telling him ‘No, you aren’t.’ Of actually furthering the notion that they should do something, anything; just move, breathe, live like there’s no tomorrow (and not so long ago he had faced the expectation of that); no personal guilts or perceived judgements forthcoming.  Instead, a mere murmer from her lips, a hmm of polite agreement, as she shakes the ashes free to the ground (not because she noticed, but to look alive). “Can most really settle so soon after them.” Whether she’s referring to the Fiori’s or Lohovary’s is for him to decide. 

“Apparently, they can,” he mutters, part of him amused, the other annoyed. He hates feeling useless like this, hates lying in wait for the unknown. Without a new job on the horizon, boredom quickly consumes Ciro, and he absolutely loathes it, even though he’s been like this for nearly as long as he can remember. Even as a boy, younger than Isabel, he never felt quite full without some sort of excitement thrumming in his life. Maybe that’s why he turned to parties, to drugs, to the sweet burn of liquor sliding down his throat. Maybe that’s an excuse.

Either way, here he stands, unable to keep still, with a girl six years his junior. In a way, she reminds him of a former version of himself: placid and aloof and disconnected from the world. He was like that too at her age, but he suspects that their reasons are different. He was angry, broiling beneath his cool exterior, drowning in indignation and plotting how best to get retribution. Against who, he still isn’t sure. Isabel seems different, but Ciro can’t figure out precisely how. At the very least, she doesn’t seem resentful, as so many teenagers do, and that alone is difference enough for him.

He notices, after a long moment of studying her, that she doesn’t even seem perturbed by their circumstance. With smoke curling off of her cigarette, Isabel looks the picture of French elegance: a bombshell blonde wearing her indifference on her sleeve. It’s a demeanor that is both intimidating and envious, and Ciro can’t help but smile as he notes it. “They’re still a threat to us, you know,” he murmurs, his words soft, a gentle warning wrapped in hesitancy. Just like Isabel skirts around a name, he does, too. The Fioris and the Lohovarys both tread that line, and he isn’t sure who scares him more. “We’re all sitting ducks right now.”

[estelasalvarez-blog]

There’s nothing inviting about the life they have. It’s one deposited upon shoulders, it’s one few choose and even fewer waltz into gladly – you are whether born into it or circumstances drive you to extremes. Estela was born among exposed violence and ushered moments of unquestionable morals. She had learned, since the primal of her being, that the same hand that gives, takes – that you either kill or be killed, and a kid weaned on neglect burns the world to keep herself warm.

Her life had always been tainted red, blossomed violence, wretched depredation. Estela Alvarez was a bad named, and people whispered good riddance every time she exited a place. A bad name, knuckles knocked on wood, fingers crossed so she shall pass without causing harm – but she loved that, she craved that. What people couldn’t understand was her disinterest towards the heist. What she couldn’t understand was why those people would go to such long lengths to acquire something that would likely be stolen from them in a near future.  

Estela wrinkles her nose at the cigarette smoke that floats towards her – but the discomfort doesn’t last long enough. Her hands work on her hair as she looks at Ciro, turning away his bruised jaw, as if Estela didn’t find that beautiful. “Probably your amigos share the same feeling.”  It was quietly implied, subtle, the fact that Estela doesn’t include herself among those who craved the frenzy of the heist.

[cirocapecchi-blog]

Sometimes, Ciro wonders if Estela ever had a chance at being soft. He didn’t, and he knows this, it’s a fact that he accepted in the weeks after his mother left, a truth that he found in bloodshed and bullets, but that doesn’t keep him from wondering about her. He knows that, from birth, women carry softness with them; he admires it, but he envies it, too. Whether Estela was born with that gentle touch is not the question that he asks, because he already knows the answer. He sees it from time to time, when she allows her claws to retract, when her teeth are dull on his skin, when her walls crumble. It’s whether or not she allowed the mob to corrupt and break it that he wonders. Part of him is afraid that he knows the answer to that, too.

He ignores it. He fidgets, and he smokes, and he tries to hide, and he ignores it. He thinks it’s easier that way, because it is. To wonder is to care, and to care is to ruin it all. Scoffing, loud and disinterested, Ciro looks at her and says, “And you don’t?” Estela likes to hurt more than she likes to steal, and even though he knows that already, he asks anyway, skirts around whatever strange tension pulses between them like he has for over a month now. “I’d think that after Rome,” Ciro says the word like it’s dirty, like it’s tainted, and flicks the ash off of the end of his cigarette, “you’d be looking forward to getting back to work. Nothing like a little blood to get you motivated.”

[milomalloryhayes]

Ciro knows what he’s saying, and he knows that he knows. Of course he does. Milo’s attention is caught, and the drink tastes somewhat sweeter on his tongue. There is a tease in Ciro’s words, and an invitation; not spoken out loud, not clearly, and not direct, but it’s there, and it is like Milo needs to ask to receive a yes. Their glasses clink and he drinks up.

“Now you’re just being a tease,” he says, chuckling softly after. He remembers how much he enjoyed himself at Ciro’s party, and to attend one that was even grander? It was so tempting, a long, scarlet red nail raked down his jawline. Sure, come next morning Milo would be hungover, but it felt so good, to just let loose, drink himself into a stupor and enjoy himself. There wasn’t much of that; not since he came to London. Too much misery, too much self-pity. It is time that Milo, who is killed every night by a different person, learns how to live again.

The alcohol burns in his throat, but he has to ask Ciro. He has to. It’s a siren calling out to him on the sea and like most mortal men, he is not immune to her song. “You know, I would want to see a party of yours that is not impromptu,” he says, fingers slipping to the back of his neck and pressing in there. “If that’s okay with you, of course. You definitely have my curiosity now.”

[cirocapecchi-blog]

A grin twists onto Ciro’s mouth, something wicked, something devilish, and although he knows that he should feel badly for playing this game, he doesn’t. In fact, he revels in it. He loves knowing precisely when he’s snared someone, loves the feeling of toying with them and winning. He loves the glimmer emerging in Milo’s eyes, the way that they start to gleam with intrigue slowly, then lapse suddenly into a bewitched glow. It’s beautiful, and Ciro loves it.

Manipulation is his favorite game, and right now, he can feel himself playing Milo like a fiddle.

He shrugs, his sheepishness manufactured, and asks, “Are you saying that’s a bad thing?” It’s a question, but it isn’t, because he already knows the answer. There’s nothing that he teases that can be bad, because he teases the world: gold jewelry, silk bed sheets, expensive liquor, designer clothes, luxury and opulence and everything important. All that Milo needs to do is say yes, and he can have it all, so how can offering it be bad? He doesn’t give him the chance to answer.

Setting his glass down, Ciro reaches forward to tug gently on the lapels of Milo’s jacket, straightens it even though it doesn’t need to be straightened, smooths over invisible wrinkles on his chest, and says, “Of course it’s okay with me. I invited you, didn’t I?” And then he winks, like there’s some kind of secret being exchanged between them, like he knows something Milo doesn’t.

[skvoreshniki-deactivated2023020]

Should have been born that 19th century dandy boy who's doing opium and trips to Italy just to look aesthetic with extensive debauchery set against masterpieces of marble

[jeopardybot]

[A fire described as ‘self-aware and disrespectful’]

[runwayandbeauty]

Marlon Teixeira & Jon Kortajarena - Detail at Balmain Fall 2016 Menswear

[lifeinpoetry]

Lie to me. Say you forgive me for being born.

Suji Kwock Kim, The Tree of Knowledge

[cirocapecchi-blog]

There is something to be said about bruises. On some people, they blossom into something resembling beauty, into flowery shapes and pretty shades of purple, into gorgeous manifestations of pure violence. On some people, they web beneath their thinnest layers of their skin, tinging them yellow, tinging them black. On some people, they do not detract; on some people, they take something of profound ugliness, an injury, a map of discoloration and pain, and twist it into a thing of pure magnificence. On some people, bruises look like art. On Ciro, they do not.

He remembers the feeling of Charles’ fist impacting his jaw well: first shock, fingers crumpling against bone, bone thudding against fingers, then pain. In the days that have passed, the pain has largely subsided, but his chin is still tender to touch, still a mottled shade of purple, still swollen and ugly. Even so, Ciro does not regret provoking Charles at the Barking Dog; the skin stretched taut over his ribs, stabbed and now stitched, is still bruised itself, a greenish shade of yellow beneath his shiny blue jacket and crisp white shirt. Now just barely out of death’s grasp, he cannot fathom regretting something that amused him in the moment simply because of where it led.

Still, as he speaks to his companion, Ciro keeps his voice quick, his tone buoyant, his face angled away. They are all transparent attempts to gloss over the bruise; the discoloration is concentrated on the left side of his jaw, but webs up toward his eye and down toward his neck in equal measure, too obvious to ignore. He lights a cigarette between his lips, fidgets openly, tries to mask his discomfort as he murmurs to the person beside him, “It’s strange, isn’t it? Three weeks of nonstop work, and now… nothing.” His pause is brief, his chuckle smoke-scented. “I can’t be the only one restless, can I?”