𝐊𝐋𝐄𝐎𝐒

i vow a ravenous undoing. i vow to love the fire always.

[ferocitas]

𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐂𝐀𝐏𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓. 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏𝐒 𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍, 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐊𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒, 𝐖𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐅𝐄𝐃.

about  — dynamics  — navigation — application  — skeleton 

[ferocitas]

𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐕. 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍.

"As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us."

recklessly frank, often irreverent, occasionally heartfelt.

[ferocitas]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐓 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐀 𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐏𝐒𝐘𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒.

starring SUTTON DETLIE as MARION CRANE.

celia kritharioti nude illusion gown. phillip treacy for valentino half mask. wet look hair & makeup.

[ferocitas]

𝐇 𝐀 𝐃 𝐑 𝐈 𝐀 𝐍

Hadrian knew - through every shift in feature and expression, the raw desire to indulge in the physical act of domination was a game Sutton could never reject. Despite all the enraged frenzy, he beckoned her further. Eyes glinted with such charm, I dare you. 

And as always, the huntress stalked forward. Her lips betrayed the actions that commit through her body. Hadrian allowed it, almost chuckling against it. Ever the same - the soft lines of her form against his, his body reacted naturally to it, in perfect practice and precision. The desperation and wrath of her lips gnawed away against his. In her honor, he returned the same passion, a fervor that was almost guttural. She tore away as if she were playing the same game of cat and mouse. What a fucking tease. 

“If Hell is where you want to be, all you had to do was ask Sutton,” he brought her wrist closer to his face, downing the rest of the wine against his lips. “Intoxication, hedonism, eroticism - aren’t they all your favorite genres.” The glass was emptied, and in ever the show of bravado, he threw it away from them, where it shattered against the wood of the library. Fragments littered all over the carpet. 

He brought a hand around her waist, the other tracing her face before coming closer for a bite - teeth to her supple neck as if he were devouring something so soft and sweet. “I’ll know if you lie, Sutton,” his fingers trailed lightly down her skin, words muffled against the scent of her skin. 

“Oh? Is that so?” Sutton’s laugh is practically a purr, both bitter and amused in spades.  “A bit easier said than done, that whole asking thing, when you won’t reply to my fucking emails.” But though the words are pointed, the tone so permissive that it’s clear she’s not gunning for any kind of resolution, too caught up in the respite from years of being deprived of him to treat this moment with anything besides a frenzied indulgence, like that of a recovered alcoholic finding themselves returning once more to the bottom of a bottle. They say out of sight, out of mind, but Sutton couldn’t think of a saying any further from the truth.

She doesn’t even glance away from him as the twinkling shards mottle the carpet, so entranced is she, intoxicated, her free hand moving to tightly clench his hair, his every touch an electric current hooked up right to the center of her gut. She feels as though struck by a febrile delirium, unable to even breathe right.

But where the destruction fails to register, his comment, breathed hotly against her skin, unsettles her deeply enough that she bristles in reply. How, with the circumstances of her arrival here, the Sword of Damocles swaying over her head like yet another Cervantes chandelier, could those words not ring in her head like a threat? Or maybe (though even the thought feels vaguely like a betrayal of Hadrian) an admission? She tries to picture him as the one devising this madness in Julian’s stead and is distraught to find a certain logic to it. Perhaps she hadn’t been so far off about a round two.

But surely this present moment wouldn't be happening if he were privy to the little mistruths she’s caught up in? She settles again. “Should I remind you I lie for a living?" she replies, obliquely a challenge, "If I were going to now, you'd never suspect a thing." Then, in a particularly cocky move, almost as though playing to an invisible audience, she adds, "Luckily I've got nothing to hide."

[ferocitas]

𝐇 𝐀 𝐃 𝐑 𝐈 𝐀 𝐍

There it was. 

Maniacal glee almost exploded through his bones. He had forgotten what kind of fun Sutton was capable of. She was prone to fits of rage and well, he had grown quickly accustomed to the tactics which she used to express herself. The book that promptly was thrown in his direction he artfully managed to catch. He tsked under his tongue, Ilyich, never really liked it. Wasn’t there Machiavelli here somewhere? 

He tossed the book behind his shoulder, promptly shoving one hand into a pant pocket, approaching, predator to predator. He nodded as if to validate every word that came out her mouth, the words flitted by like the wings of butterflies. He couldn’t help but smile, in a twisted sense of things, it always gave him an adrenaline rush when he pissed her off. He was surprised, in all the time that had passed - she still had the energy to react so endearingly. 

“Cruel? Desperate? Won’t deny it, a bit of both,” he stopped in his tracks. He doesn’t corner her, not Sutton. They were equals, even now. “Still the same as ever I see, angry, feral, full of fire…” a wry grin as he leaned in, as if to say the next words ever so intimately and only for her. He was smug. 

“Missed me?” 

Is there a quantifiable difference between overwhelming desire and need? A discernible line, however narrow, that could definitively separate one from the other? Because right now, Sutton fails to have even the barest grasp of where it might be.

This sudden fury to have him all to herself is unbearable— Not just symbolically, but actually, physically intolerable, like her existence will begin and end with her ability to satisfy herself right now. It’s as though cortisol had been released into her bloodstream in preparation for the showdown she’d attempted to start, and though the cortisol proved unnecessary, she’s cornered into the fight-or-flight instinct of it anyways; And when, in her entire life, has she ever, ever defaulted to the latter of that famed dichotomy?

Her reply comes through gritted teeth, all but a snarl. "Like hell."

In a rush, she surges forward (to what end, even she wonders) and grabs his shirt with her free hand with enough force that when she lets go there’ll surely be wrinkles leftover in the fabric, abrupt flaws against his perfect façade. Her wine glass is still clutched in a white-knuckle grip in her other hand, the sudden movement having sent amber drops of Eiswein to stain the plush carpet underfoot. And then she kisses him. It’s nearly a bite; Her mouth catches his, she breathes against him, and abruptly breaks away, eyes gleaming with mad fervour.

[ferocitas]

𝐇 𝐄 𝐂 𝐓 𝐎 𝐑

For someone who’s accustomed to being elevated upon the untouchable dais of fame, worshipped and deified by admirers and critics alike, Sutton speaks the honeyed tongue of flattery with ease.  “No,” he echoes, a touch of sincerity edged with chagrin. It was a kindred thrill, the exhilarating rush of holding a captive audience in the palm of their hand with rhetoric or with performance.  “Politics was never for me. Without the bloodsport of ancient empires it all seems rather mundane. Building empires, on the other hand.” 

It’s not a novel idea, the cyclical nature of their reunion, paying homage to age-old traditions they’d abandoned in the wake of their fearless leader’s demise. Without that centre, the burning sun threatening to consume them all, the gravity holding their wildest temptations and obsessive fixation with each other had simply collapsed. The only way they know how to frame the story anymore is through theatre and device — players and characters moving through one act to the next, their hands bound and tied by fate.  “Maybe if Godot was a murderous, bloodthirsty tyrant, Vladimir and Estragon wouldn’t have wasted half a century searching for him. God is dead, fuck him.”  He takes a sip, a weighted, pensive air to his voice despite the light-hearted bombast of his earlier jest.  “That depends — was there ever any method to the madness at all? Or was it merely some twisted imitation of divine punishment? A would-be god playing with his toys and figurines?” 

As if to signify his stance on the great, unknowable mystery, he downs the rest of his drink, swallowing the little flames that spark and singe at his tongue.  “Besides, I wouldn’t say any of our flaws are necessarily fatal. We are each authors of our own fate, aren’t we? We chose this. We choose, too, which of our sins we still indulge.”  His gaze alights on hers, a ripple of incendiary mischief passing between them like static.  “Speaking of which — for old time’s sake, care to make a wager?”

Sutton, equipped as she is with a hedonist’s dispassion for the megalograndiosity of something like ‘building an empire,’’ just shrugs at the prospect. “True, the total and complete lack of bloodsport is a tragedy,” she agrees, languorously drawling out her words, “The whole bread and circuses aspect of politics is so much duller without real gladiators causing real carnage in said circuses.” (Perhaps these are bold words for one the grand American circus’ most prominent clowns, but she isn’t about to get bogged down by something as dull as over-mixing metaphors.)

"Maybe, maybe not. Somehow I'd think it'd take more to tear good old Didi and Gogo away from each other than that." The corners of Sutton’s lips twitch downwards, but the dip in her mood doesn’t take, and in a blink any trace of displeasure is gone from her features. Sutton simply looks blandly thoughtful, swirling the dregs of her drink around the glass absently, not even watching as it splashes around.

"Oh, I'm firmly on the side of no method - the idea that what goes around comes around or cheaters never prosper or  or even snitches get stitches, whichever catchy moral platitude we’re touting today, never really stuck with me - but I have to say this’d be a pretty terrible allegory without having some central thesis. Not that I think it can't both have some lesson we're supposed to have learned and have been just a sadistic game. Probably it was both." she explains, her demeanor now fully worked back to irreverent cheer, "Same thing with fatal flaws— I think, if anything, fatal virtues are more realistic, with people being more likely to get themselves killed for being too nice or too honest, but it isn’t much of a tragedy if our heroes don’t fall to their own folly.”

When their gaze meets, Sutton draws up from her recline into a pose of alert, tigerish attention. With a single swig, she finishes off her glass and shoves it away onto a side table, squarely out of the way. “You know me, always game. What did you have in mind?”

[ferocitas]

𝐁 𝐄 𝐋 𝐋 𝐀 𝐌 𝐘

Ever the tempest, Bellamy already knew Sutton’s emotions would be all over the place, crashing and swirling against each other after the dinner. They just had no idea it would be to this extent.  We enter the scene with Bellamy finding the door to her suite unlocked (slightly ajar, even). They push past the heavy wooden door, tentative and light on their feet, eyes scanning the entire suite with a quiet urgency — there is, yet again, a sense of foreboding. They could feel their heart physically pounding in their chest.  Until they step out onto the balcony, they were prepared to resign to the fact that she simply wasn’t there. Found you, they think, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. The view was amazing, but to see her standing on the railing so carelessly… well, it threatened to stop their breathing altogether.  “Sutton, what are you doing?” they inquire softly, looking up at her with concern. “Please get down from there.”  Bellamy didn’t want to think what it would be like to witness yet another fall. 

The look she gives them is initially of utter blankness, as though they’d interrupted and asked her to stop an activity as benign as brushing her hair. The effect of this look is, of course, diminished by her present situation, perched barefoot on the chill stone top of the balcony’s balustrade, one hand empty and the other holding a box of cigarettes, her lighter, and also the wall, balancing her as she sways ever so slightest in the placid summer breeze.

After that fucking mess at dinner, things had settled easily. Too easily. Everyone sequestered off to various corners of the estate to fall back into old routines of trading quips, content to just accept that yeah, sometimes you get served a head and implied to be guilty of murder. Sutton isn’t entirely sure what she was expecting - an organized witch hunt for those responsible or mass hysteria or what - but probably something as appropriately extreme as the event. It’s almost as if the horse head interlude didn’t occur— as if it were a brief and intensely vivid dream that, despite the fear it aroused, dissipated the second a drop of ‘blood’ hit Silas’ tongue. And yet, as the evening merges into night, the chats she’s had are a blur and the energy left buzzing in her from that moment is painfully urgent. Though she won’t deny that her current plan of action (clambering (somehow) up to the roof) is constructed on logical sand, the underlying urge to expel the nervous energy built up in her like electricity with no chance to ground is too compelling to disobey.

Not that these thoughts are what’s going through her head; She’s quite far removed from the context of her current activities to acknowledge the absurdity of her position. Instead, her expression flickers as she looks over her friend, failing to settle into any singular emotion.

“Jesus. Fucking. Christ.” Her features finally crack into grim amusement. “I haven’t been that wrong about having fun since, God, Fyre. You remember that? Way back when? It almost seems like a joke now, but, fuck, I almost signed on to attend. Did I ever tell you they asked me? I must have, but, God, how embarrassing." A beat, pronounced but passing too quickly for a word to be crammed in edgewise. "How long do you think before this’ll seem funny in hindsight too?”

[ferocitas]

𝐕 𝐄 𝐑 𝐈 𝐓 𝐘

Red suited her. Not because it complimented her complexion, not because it made her hair contrast like a splash of ink against it, no. It simply suited because she would make it do so. Verity, in her endless obstinacy - or foolishness, defied even the orderly nature and its shades. Red is her color. 

Because of that, exactly, red silk laid on the ottoman by the end of her bed, glistening under the burning lights and she leafed through a magazine she managed to bring with her last minute. “I wonder if I can find any of us in here…” She snorts with ankles crossed in the air, a teenage-like air to herself. 

They were in a nest full of snakes, and yet, Sutton’s presence made things bearable. Normalcy painted by their hands, in their very style - or maybe it was Verity’s way of coping. “Now tell me what are you wearing tonight? I am somewhat excited to play dress up this time.”

Sutton, from her spot peering so closely into one of the mirrors she looks liable to leave a bordeaux-coloured lip print, pauses mid mascara swipe, leans back with a thoughtful frown, and catches Verity’s eye in the mirror. “Well,” she starts, with the kind of disgruntled tone that implies she’s finally getting to complain about something that’s long since been bothering her, “I brought this strappy Versace dress for tonight, but now it looks less strappy and more like a bunch of ribbons with golden clasps at the end. I think I’d have better luck with a Rubik's cube than reverse engineering how that is supposed to be done up to become a gown.”

As she talks, Sutton goes to inspect her handiwork with a look that says she could have done better, though it’s hard to see why— her nose is streamlined and stick-straight, her eyes twice their usual size with a dandelion ring of defined lashes, her cheeks shiny and sharp. Still, the very conceit of Sutton - the Sutton the world variably adores and abhors as it suits them - is (in her seldom considered opinion) an estrangement from any normal sense of consequence; Signs of anxiousness, borne of excited anticipation or otherwise, and even if only taking the form of overly precise makeup, is enough to leave her disconcerted with herself.

“So I might end up wearing that old Alaia I love so much or this sheer Mugler I bought on a whim or, hell, maybe I’ll say fuck it, tear down the curtains, and go for a closet-ancient-Grecian kind of look. That feels in the spirit of things.” She’s decided how to deal with her displeasure with her appearance— by ignoring it. She turns fully around, leaning back against the mirror and flashing Verity a sarcastic grin. “Actually I’m really leaning toward that third option.”

[ferocitas]

𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐈. 𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐄.

Heaven belongs to the impetuous who won't wait.

[ferocitas]

𝐇 𝐀 𝐃 𝐑 𝐈 𝐀 𝐍

Classic Sutton. She was pissed as hell - even as all the years had passed. She was ever the same in temper and beauty, like a goddess awaiting for war. He supposed she hadn’t appreciated the email that the intern had sent. He made a mental note : emphasize some more emotional sentiment next time. That should do the trick. 

He was conditioned to her rage, in all her rabid snarls and bared teeth - he knew what to do to press the right buttons, time shouldn’t have changed that if she was still the girl he knew. Tentatively he stepped forward, if only to tower over to get a better gaze. The softness of her cheeks had gone, replaced by sharper lines that defined the angles of her bones. Ever the sculpture, he had remembered the times he had wrapped his hands around her face, and the sounds that she’d make from her mouth. Perhaps he’d hear it again sometime soon. 

“Unless there’s something you want.” A slow drawn tease, a pull with his words as they roll effortlessly off his tongue, “you look like you have a lot to say Sutton, should I listen - or should I go?” He’d vanish again, it was easier when he did. 

How long after he first captured her attention did she decide (decide, realize, idiotically fabricate the belief that) she loved Hadrian? Not that love was the word. She doesn’t know what to call it - that free-falling sensation she feels every time the thought of him so much as brushes against the periphery of her mind, like her hands closing again and again on emptiness - but it’s not love; A brutal, excruciating proto-love perhaps, worked into a hateful lather by his apathy. Sutton breaks her eyes away from Hadrian because she knows if she were to hold his gaze she would smile, succumb to the softer impulses that plague her. Fuck that.

She turns her gaze instead to the nearest shelf of books, running a finger idly over the line of spines, not searching so much as remembering her way to something. “If those are my options - you listening or leaving - well, then I’m sure I can come up with something to tell you." Sutton’s tone is bone-dry, with only the minutest hints of wryness and hostility mingling therein. "What to say, what to say?" Her hand stops at a diminutive tome tucked between the much grander volumes around it, slipping it out and tossing it not to Hadrian, but at him. The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

"How about: You’re a desperate little parvenu, so obsessed with your image that you’re turning into a bargain bin version of your dad, minus the capacity to love.” Rage is filtering generously into her monologue. “Or how about: You're so far gone, you don’t have the decency to acknowledge or care how cruel you’re being.” Full fledged fury has stricken, her heart beating double or triple time, her features arranged into a look of pure, undiluted contempt and her eyes glittering madly. "But then, maybe you do care that you're being cruel, in the way blondie cared that he was being cruel— Proud of it. What are you, trying to give us a target for round two?"

[ferocitas]

𝐇 𝐀 𝐃 𝐑 𝐈 𝐀 𝐍​

Once upon a time Hadrian enjoyed books - but today was not the day. Rather, he had enough of the gang in all their usual conceit and bravado. He’d have preferred it if they all kindly fucked off - which he had done a fantastic job of doing so himself in the past couple of years that had flown by. Communications were limited and truly, even the few exchanges that had been passed between were all committed by a nervous intern who lived day to day serving Hadrian Villier’s every command, no matter however nonsensical. 

He had wandered into the library with a champagne glass in hand, scoffing at the pretentious stacks of literature. If he were feeling devilish, perhaps his wrist would drop and the liquid would slip - sweet satisfaction in destruction of the very treasures the holier than thou Cervantes adored. It wasn’t the first time he had ever considered taking a royal shit upon Julian and co. Even if he was dead, this was his way of tribute to the blonde bitch below. 

His thoughts however were interrupted when he recognized the other in the room. “Oh, it’s you - what’re you looking at me like that for? If you’re still hungry, go ask for more meat.” His voice dropped in octave, “Unless.” 

After the ordeal of dinner, Sutton feels horrified and bitter and relieved and anxious and dejected, a broken compass manically pointing to every direction, to the point where she keeps feeling the urge to laugh or to smash something or possibly even to take a bite out of her glass of dessert wine, feel the shards splinter and crunch between her teeth— An emotional chaos only exacerbated by the appearance of Hadrian, inflicted upon her like an unshakable fate. For too long, her resentment for him has been sitting listlessly, packed down like dynamite by the absence of both him and any discernible resolution to their whole tête-à-tête-à-tête.

Initially, her plan (although the word plan is being used generously here and there was possibly not enough thought put in for it to apply) had been to make an absolute scene the instant he ended up in the crosshairs of her focus, but after that dinner, she’s too busy reeling to follow through. She’s overcome by a rush of confusion bordering on hostility, a rage that burns like lust, and a low-pitched, humming longing that makes her head swim. And, as if it weren’t already difficult enough to manage her internal weather, he greets her with that. Her glare isn’t even conscious, more's the pity.

Sutton makes a sound somewhere between a short, incredulous laugh and that little cough that people make when punched in the gut. "Unless?" she asks, disbelieving but also failing not to sound interested.

[ferocitas]

𝐉 𝐀 𝐒 𝐌 𝐈 𝐍 𝐄

There had been a time where no place had felt more like home than Castilo de Cervantes. The first time she’d seen it, she had been no more than a young teenager, her eyes sweeping broad glances at the artwork lining the walls, the architecture, the grandeur that exuded from every possible crevice. She’d been nothing more than a wide-eyed girl presented with a place to call her playground, and a king to rule who had offered it all to her on a silver platter.

She’d loved it more than Sutton could ever understand, much in the same Jasmine herself would never get the other woman’s feelings towards this place, but she bit her tongue on the words pressing against her teeth, always choosing silence over words that could be used against her.

“I’ve always felt at home here,” she said, taking a step closer to Sutton and tapping one nail against the side of her glass, the closest she would allow herself to telling the truth. “It just doesn’t seem like the same place as it was.” Emptier, somehow. Julian, one single human, had taken up every inch of this place and called it his own. “Maybe five years isn’t enough for my heart to grow fonder.”

The expression Sutton’s features school themselves into, lips pressed into a smirk and brow raised skeptically, and the sumptuous recline of her position make her look like a queen bestowing benevolent condescension unto a petitioning subject; The security of someone who could, at any moment, yell off with her head and be done with it.

She registers the subtle symptoms of sentimental recollection in Jasmine's demeanor and recognizes the difficulty of her soft, restrained admission, but offers no vestige of understanding. Perhaps if it were someone else blinking at Sutton with those big doe eyes, she’d be struck with sympathy and the affection that comes with it, but with Jasmine she feels nothing, at most a mild schadenfreude. And she barely cares enough for that. Whatever it is about the girl before her that garners such adoring, protective instincts from the others, Sutton is seemingly blind to. That being said, she takes a unique pleasure in handling Jasmine without the delicacy Sutton suspects she’s grown far too used to, taking from it the same primal satisfaction that comes with minor destructions, knocking over precarious stacks or burning papers over candles.

“And yet,” Sutton drawls, stretching out each syllable, “It’s exactly the same place it was. If you’re not feeling fond or at home, that’s really a you problem, not a reason to come to me with your passive-aggression.”

[ferocitas]

𝐁 𝐄 𝐋 𝐋 𝐀 𝐌 𝐘

“Ah, that’s just like you, isn’t it? To turn even this to a competition. If I say every minute, you’d say every second…,” they remark in idle amusement, eventually trailing off, their eyes staring hypnotically at her smile which gleamed defiant against the ominous atmosphere of it all. Her apparent glee was almost infectious, and though it hadn’t made its way to Bellamy’s heart, it had at least succeeded in soothing a fraction of the quiet nerves that simmered underneath their skin. “Fine, then, if I say I only miss you everyday, but love you for eternity, does that absolve me?” A sigh. It sounds like a weight being lifted from their shoulders. ‘We’re going to have fun,’ she promised them. And they believe her. They always have. In there lies the core of their bond.  Bellamy observes her through the same set of soulful eyes they’d laid upon her the first time they met, watches every minuscule movement of her features with the usual quiet appreciation, a look on their face which so transparently betrays how much they are thinking thinking thinking about everything and nothing at the same time. They wonder if she notices. They think she always does. “Your smile is blinding, mortelle. Wicked. Never a good sign,” they mutter with a small tut, the ghost of a smile touching their lips. 

“...And if you said every second, I’d say every instant. I’m afraid there’s just no winning with me.” Sutton raises her shoulders up in an artful, almost Vaudevillian shrug. “Though I do resent you saying I made this a competition,” she says in a way that implies she resents nothing of the sort, “It’s been one since the second you introduced a quantifiable element.”

The moment Bellamy exhibits some relief, the suggestion of a smile gracing their ethereal features, she feels that same emotion twofold. Sutton believes she feels their distress and consequent reprieve from it as acutely as she feels her skin and flesh, the muscle and sinew and bone wrapped in grey spiderwebs of nerves, and though she knows she hasn’t fully abated their despondency, the brief crowding of it from view is enough to reaffirm her own ease. It isn’t that she’s unaware of how alien and possibly gauche her delight is against the stark, phobic dread in the air, it’s that she won’t allow herself to succumb to the same neuralgic disquiet without a damn good fight.

“I promised fun, not the absence of trouble,” she replies, the explicitly devious glint in her eye summoned up by their use of the nickname she oh-so-adores, “But I get the feeling you don’t get into nearly enough trouble without me around. Good thing we’ve got the full two weeks to make up for that.”

[ferocitas]

𝐇 𝐄 𝐂 𝐓 𝐎 𝐑

It’s early in the day for a drink — but when have they ever let wayward indulgence and fickle instinct bow before propriety? Hector eyes the martini glass dangling from her fingertips like a chandelier pendalogue, shrugs, and makes for the liquor cabinet to make himself a drink. Whiskey, neat, he’s found, is his palliative of choice when it comes to untenable conversations. It isn’t even Sutton, per se, though her glinting, leonine smile gleams with history, sentimentality born of a hundred conversations in rooms like this, over drinks like these. Here they are, in a dead man’s house, drinking cocktails from his family’s invaluable fine liquor collection. It’s grotesque, almost profane. Hector’s certain it’s precisely the kind of blasphemy Julian would have hoped to elicit. In the opened vein of a haunting, or a bloodletting.

“You haven’t changed a bit, Detlie.” The Glenfiddich glides across his tongue, a controlled, honeyed burn. “This places makes for a poor stage but you are, as ever, our lovely, chief protagonist.”  He deflects from the question, circling back around her point as one palm settles across the back of an eighteenth-century chaise lounge, an ostentatious rostrum upon which to make his point.  “Do you figure our motley reunion will unfold as a tragedy or an allegory?”

Sutton laughs her approval, the deflection both noted and capitulated to, partially because of the mollification to her ego and partially because of the art with which Hector sidesteps her demand. “Nor have you,” she replies, amusement saturated through every syllable, “Still talking circles around all the rest of us. You’d be a wonder in politics, but I suppose you’re a wonder in civil engineering as it is.”

She considers his query only for as long as it takes to drain about half her glass; The rationale is formed and expressed practically independent of conscious deliberation. "Easy. Neither. This'll be Theatre of the Absurd.” Her explanation is delivered with this deep satisfaction at the prospect, as though instead of picturing the nightmarish, Kafkaesque stasis of the genre, she’s referring to something no more fraught than the syrupy sweet ease of a comedy’s conclusion. "Look at us— Half a decade after the fact, drinking the same liquor on the same couches with the same people, with no clue as to why we’re really here. We're all just waiting for Godot, only some of us have the good sense to enjoy it.” Then, in sharp contrast to the confidence of her theory, she punctuates with a brief one-shouldered shrug. “At least that’s my guess. What about you? Expecting us to succumb to our fatal flaws or find some moral method to the madness?”

[ferocitas]

𝐉 𝐀 𝐒 𝐌 𝐈 𝐍 𝐄​

Sutton’s smile, her sharp teeth bared in a false promise of welcome, was like a shock to Jasmine. Even the bitter taste of an almost-forgotten feeling that was too sour to be nostalgia couldn’t keep the corners of her lips from twitching as she stared down the woman she had once known. Not well enough to call her a companion, but there had once been familiarity.

It was the spark of joy in her face that unsettled Jasmine the most. Where Jasmine felt like there were vines threading through the bones of her ribcage, sprouting and growing, threatening to choke her from the inside out, Sutton remained the complete picture of ease. She was not stoic, not cold—if Jasmine were cruel enough, she would accuse the woman of thriving in this place. “I daresay I’ve missed you just as much as you’ve missed me,” she replied, eyeing the way Sutton had sprawled her figure across one of the couches as if she did this every day. “Tell me, have you always felt so at home here?”

Sutton’s laugh overflows with mirth but is devoid of any softness, the sound somehow jagged and dentate; Laughter like a knife, gleaming and serrated. “Somehow I doubt that."

There's no question that Sutton's iron-willed enthusiasm is only reinforced by the subtle twitch of Jasmine's lips, the wariness pooling in her dark eyes, and, most of all, her precise, brittle politeness. It's a talent, really, to find something to savour even in the hair-raising tension of old conflicts, revived with the wrongness of a faded scar reopened along the seam.

“Always,” she confirms without even the briefest flicker of hesitation, “Since the very first day I got here, way back when. And you know what they say: absence makes the heart grow fonder.” She cocks her head to one side, a move that comes across both curious and challenging, an invitation and a dare all in one. “Why? Don’t tell me you never felt at home here. I know for a fact we all loved this place."

[ferocitas]

𝐁 𝐄 𝐋 𝐋 𝐀 𝐌 𝐘

“Ma chérie, you know I miss you every single day,” they reply, voice and countenance soft as always, as they turn away from the grand piano they have been trying (and failing, spectacularly), to play. Bellamy has been coping with the haunting bizarreness of this entire affair by doing what they do best — escape reality through art. Piano doesn’t seem to work, however, so they welcome Sutton’s conversation, finding comfort in her lounging form. The fondness they held for her is truly immeasurable, and the smile they return is with ease and a tinge of love.  Bellamy saunters over to sit next to her. “I see you’ve already made yourself quite at home,” they say, looking around. Their voice lowers to a whisper, eyes downcast. “I’m glad you’re here… your presence makes all of this bearable.”

"Only every day?" Sutton asks, faux-disappointment sullied by the fact she refuses to suppress her joy, “I miss you every hour.” But where her show of false emotion failed to dim the éclat of her smile, Bellamy’s dawning gravity manages to drain some of her stubborn levity. As their voice lowers, her gaze softens, and as her gaze softens, her expression twists, as if she’s displeased with how much she’s affected by their gentle melancholy. Sutton rights her position somewhat, sitting further up and leaning slightly towards her old friend, elbow propped atop the couch’s back.

“My presence is going to make this much more than bearable,” she says, firm and uncompromising but vaguely conciliatory nonetheless, “We’re going to have fun." With a flourish, she puts a good measure of her drink out of its misery and reignites her smile to full-force. "It’s meant to be a celebration after all, and I won't accept anything short of a riotously good time for us.”

[ferocitas]

𝐏 𝐑 𝐎 𝐋 𝐎 𝐆 𝐔 𝐄 . The drawing room. Open.

Sutton is more comfortable at the scene of the crime than some people will ever be even just within the privacy of their own skin. While others attendants of this macabre little fête might struggle to loosen the not-so-dearly departed's grip on their soul’s throat, her luxuriation, draped over one of the couches with a distinctly animal grace, is downright defiant, a boastful show of blasé ease. Over the rim of an overfull martini glass, she watches an old compatriot with a satiated predator's indulgence and beckons them over with a brief wave, incandescent with a languid delight. Her eyes are unquestionably alert but her voice is unhurried and evinces a sensuous, breakfast-in-bed sleepiness, as if she hasn't quite woken up all the way yet. "Well, go on then," she says, baring her teeth in a brilliant smile, "I'm ready to hear all about just how much you've missed me."