but we are alive, here in death valley
but don’t take love off the table yet
‘cause tonight it’s just fire alarms and losing you
we love a lot, so we only lose a little
but we are alive
n. the desire to be struck by disaster—to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall—which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp, not just a stiff prefabricated beam that barely covers the gap between one end of your life and the other.
LOOK ME THE FUCK IN THE EYE AND TELL ME RHYS AND LACROIX WOULDN’T TEACH EACH OTHER TO DANCE
I DARE YOU TO CONVINCE ME THAT THEY WOULDN’T TIME NIGHTS PERFECTLY WHERE ZATHE WOULD BE OUT SO THEY COULD REARRANGE THE FURNITURE AND WALTZ ALL OVER THE FLOOR
rhys asks lacroix how many poetry blogs she has to follow in order to understand him whenever he comes back to the flat saying something about elsewhere dreams and where ‘gone’ is
he says “you never will, but you might as well start trying” and starts e-mailing her chapbooks and a couple trustworthy translations of greek literature and she starts saying it ironically at first but then at some point she’s reading this shit while she’s waiting for someone to come by with that ‘special delivery’ bye
fandom: Corpse Bloom :: A Zombie Apocalypse RP
verse: red-light district
pairing: Lachesism (Rhysling Connors x Cybille Lacroix)
rating: M
A/N: Cybille Lacroix belongs to @reminisciient && Rhysling Connors to @l-achrymose
based off this prompt:
“Write about a character who happens to be a god. The catch? This character is practically powerless, as nobody worships them anymore. Double catch? Suddenly, one day, they feel that someone is… praying for their protection.”
i.
Cybille Lacroix was born to a family of lost gods. Generations and generations of divine blood that traced back to the golden blood of Zeus himself, king of gods. A dead god, to be sure.
People nowadays loved to say that the gods were dead.
On rainy days he tosses a dice across a wooden table and watches it land on a one, or a two. Rarely a six whenever he wants it to be one. The gods aren’t dead, he muses, watching the porcelain thing skitter across the surface and land on yet another random number.
They’re just not anything to be worshiped, in this day and age.
Besides, nobody’d expect to find a god wandering around the red light district, with a faint smirk on their lips and a glitter of deceit in their sea-glass eyes. He doesn’t touch, doesn’t kiss, doesn’t thrust some filthy worship down someone’s throat like it was some kind of innuendo. A wave of his hand and a flash of coin and he’s gone to spend his nights listening to the wit of courtesans and their mellifluous croon. (His sister never minds as long as he returns home before the moon’s set again.
“As long as I never have to see what you’re doing there, I don’t care.”
“And you don’t consider that dangerous?”
“I’ve seen scarier things than a courtesan.”
“Like what?”
“You on a Sunday morning.”)
ii.
There’s a girl. There’s always a girl.
In the last life, it’d been a boy with eyes deep and dark enough to drown the seas themselves.
After a while, he’d hoped that there’d just be no one. Alas.
iii.
Rhysling Connors is neither wolf nor woman. Her brother, who owned this house of ill repute, had gotten used to calling her some monster in-between since she was a kid. Some of the guys around there liked that idea, came flocking in every turn of the moon. Not that it ever affected his own influx of clientele.
The little spitfire thing was a liar, to be sure, nothing if not that. A dismissive wave of her fan, a genial titter, and she could have anybody believe she was anyone. She was the type of person who could grab your hand and pull you out your own bedroom window, away from your disapproving parents.
And she would’ve, once upon a time, if it wasn’t for the money.
“I still think it’s funny that they actually believe you’d run away with them.” Trey drawls from the door-frame, which creaks in protest of his weight.
She dusts her clothes down, over the bruises that smear across her olive thighs. “I would.”
“But?”
“Life’s better here than it is out there.” Pause. “And I’d rather not, with some of them.”
iv.
Once, she thought she’d fallen in love with a lord: some ebon-crowned thing with daemon eyes and a curling snarl for a neutral expression. Or a lady. It could’ve been a lady. She hadn’t minded much, with how precise their pale hand had murdered a man in front of her.
Then again, it was hard to stay in love with some wealthy kid who’d wiped their dagger on their sleeve then called you a whore (even though it was technically true).
v.
“Okay, so you’re a god.”
“Of sorts.”
“Of, like, large dicks being stuffed into personalities?”
The two of them, deity and unbeliever, sat across each other in a lavish room that had been borrowed from the establishment’s proprietor. Not demanded of, no, never. Just suggested. The former of them raised an eyebrow, glancing up from the teacup that was nestled in their palms.
“Would that I have mistaken you for the god of one’s cunts, though you have neither the warmth nor the depth.”
There’s a laugh from her. “But seriously, though.” And her fingers are drumming across the table as she’s leaning forward, boring into him with mortal curiosity the most violent shade of blue he’s ever seen. “Prove it.”
He cocks a brow. “That remains to be something out of my abilities.” The trap is set,
and like all rabbits, she is quick but not quite quick enough to avoid his own maw. “Then,” With a coy smile, quickly hidden by the snap of her fan. “How shall I take your word? For granted?”
Cybille grasps the tawny, graven, tip of her chin and pulls her forward. “Worship me the only way that you know how to worship a god.”
