irritation darkens his eyes, turns them the colour of malachite instead of spring leaves, and makes his shoulders tense in a way that can’t be comfortable - she’s half tempted to offer to draw him a bath or give him a massage or something - as he glances pointedly at her lips. “that.”
that, it turns out, is her habit of biting her bottom lip in thought - a habit he’s well aware of, considering just how much thinking they need to do in their line of work, so she doesn’t actually know what the issue is this time - and, honestly, who could blame her for being too deep in thought to clock on immediately?
lust’s perfume just has so many applications in potions that it’s kind of funny how it’s named for the spirit of lust and not one of its many uses, like how it can be used to create a potion capable of relaxing a person to the point they almost die.
reflexively, she bites her lip again. an aggravated groan leaves him, his jaw now also clenched in irritation, as he stands and circles the table to stand over her. his left hand, covered by a leather glove as it always is, is warm against her skin as he cups her face and presses his thumb against the centre of her bottom lip.
she looks up at him, eyes wide, and traces the stoic line of his mouth, the furrow between his brows her fingers almost itch to smooth out, the way his hair is out of place after several hours of staring at schematics and books in frustration.
it is a semi-unfortunate truth that, under the single mindedness and the sarcasm and the pride, fitz is an attractive man.
“it’s like you’re consciously tempting me.” he mutters under his breath, almost to himself, fingers absently stroking her jaw line. “but i know you are not so, please, stop.”
her skin is soft, her eyes are bright and clear, and everything about her is so damnably light that a part of him - the parts of him soaked in blood and revenge and possession - aches. a lesser man would forget the dragon fire that seeps through her veins, would forget her wit and her mind, would forget the magic that curls around her like smoke and fog and mist, would forget her rage and her biting tongue and the blood that stains her hands, but he cannot because it is the presence of those traits that makes her brightness even more brilliant.
the smart thing to do, she knows, would be to agree - he would step back, go back to his work, and she would return to hers, and they wouldn’t acknowledge this one tension filled moment ever again, wouldn’t acknowledge his apparent fixation on her lips or how the feeling of his hand on her skin made her shiver.
“make me,” darya says, because sometimes she wants to be stupid (also she kind of wants to see how he’ll react), and nips at his thumb for good measure.
there exists a place where people say death cannot touch you, where so long as you remain under the mountain, you will not cross the glade and enter the garden of death.
in a world where death is so revered, so accepted, there exists those who seek to prevent it, to put it off for another day.
it doesn’t quite work like that for, you see, when a death is predicted by a loulrívon, there is no place they will not go to see that their duty of predicting (and delivering) the end of life and the beginning of death is carried out.
they don’t take kindly to those who attempt to cheat them out of their prize, or those who attempt to play games with them and win; they don’t take kindly to those who run.
and so it goes that a man is fated to die by the appearance of a loulrívon. and so it goes that the man flees beneath the mountain where death is said to be unable to touch you. and so it goes that a loulrívon follows him beneath the mountain to drag him across the glade and into the garden of death herself.
it would have been much easier, much gentler, if he accepted his fate.
for, again you see, the loulrívon who follows him beneath the mountain, who dons a mask beneath a wedding veil to walk through a world where everyone wears a mask, has built a reputation amongst her fellows for being a little too sadistic, a little too cold, a little too ruthless.
the moral of this story, if there must be one, is that when the electric blue lilies bloom and a blonde dressed in white crosses your path, delaying the inevitable is an exercise in futility and how to make your last moments alive and breathing hurt.
objectively, they’re not wrong. objectively, they’re not bad compliments. objectively, she shouldn’t hate those words and their synonyms as much as she finds she does.
something unpleasant scratches at her ribs, bubbling and snarling and clawing at a prison made of something more than human-
(did she even have a ribcage? or was that just the impression of one she felt beneath her hand? an intrusive thought that wouldn’t leave her head until she peeled off skin and muscle and fat to find that she did, indeed, have bones curling around her lungs.)
-it’s always those kinds of compliments.
a pretty voice.
gorgeous eyes.
a lovely body.
the most beautiful sculpture in the world brought to life and given power beyond that of most mortals, reduced to a prize to be won, reduced to the catalyst of wars and murders and bloodshed-
(-the cause of bloodshed and murders and death-)
-reduced to an object she’d long since stopped being.
it’s always about her looks, always about her body, always about ownership and claiming and being able to say that the most beautiful sculpture in the world belongs to you.
it’s never about who she is. it’s never about her personality or her talents or her interests, never about her love for animals or her loyalty or her sculpting.
it’s always about being prettygorgeousbeautiful like she’s nothing else.
if she was actually capable of moving her mouth, she might have laughed.
as it stands, she just-
watches.
watches her fingers start to twitch, watches her hands move to push her body up off the ground, watches her eyes blink open and silently watch her headless self feel its way towards the missing piece.
there is so much blood.
i am so burning that dress when i’m able, she muses. one of the works of the “greatest seamster ever” be fucked.
a spirit cannot die.
well.
unless they wish it so.
a spirit cannot die.
but a spirit might be scarred.
(a ribbon tied around her neck. she quips that it’s the only thing tying her head to her body. she is only somewhat joking. what would you do if you knew? what would you do if you saw that scar?)
unbind me? (preferably from a curse, but depends what you’ve got)
hi lizzie sorry this took several weeks (i think??? idk man) asdfghjkl you know how it is. this is called once upon a dream in my docs bc i think i'm funny or cute or whatever.
.~.~.~.~.~.
falling asleep after brushing his finger against a particularly pointy thorn, or after stabbing his finger with a needle, or even from a splinter, are expected parts of his everyday life, at this point.
(it's been happening since childhood and he still wants a word with whoever's doing it, not that he expects he'll ever get answers.)
that doesn’t mean he likes it; not in those fuzzy few seconds before he slips into unconsciousness, when he realises what’s happened for the millionth time, and not when he wakes up on the floor, since no one ever really bothers to move him unless he fell in public. a side effect of this being a common issue, he knows.
still, he’ll admit to liking the fact that the first thing he sees when he wakes up tends to be one rojda kartal leaning over him. he especially likes the amused smile that crosses her face, the way her purple eyes glimmer like precious stones, and the way she brushes a strand of purple hair behind one of her pointy ears as she straightens up.
“one of these days,” she says, although they both know that it won’t happen, “you’re gonna remember to be careful with flowers with thorns.”
“that would mean being careful with myself,” he quips back, sitting up. typical, he fell in his own shop.
“that would be a minor miracle, considering…” she trails off, still smiling in amusement.
falling asleep, or as he calls it ‘the princess curse’, aren’t things he particularly likes. he sure as death wouldn't allow them to continue if he could stop it.
but… he does like that rojda is the only one who seems to break the sleeping curse. he does like that she’s the one to free him from the various towers he winds up in.
he has to find something to like in this situation, right?
the cloak is spotless: its red colour still as bright as the day it was made, stitches as strong as ever, no tears in the fabric from claw or thorn.
it remains as it did the night scarlett left it on her bunk and disappeared into the forest, never to be heard from again.
in truth, silvia knows that she should have passed it down to another sister long ago… but there is something that keeps it tucked away in the back of her wardrobe, hidden in a box.
it’s the only physical thing she has to remember her by.
(and sometimes, if she brings the fabric to her face and breaths, she thinks she can catch the faintest hint of forest and books and flowers.)
before, time for painting was stolen in increments – barely more than five minutes, if that – in between the myriad of other duties she had. paints were sparse, passed to her by marlene when she was able to, and the work itself was small and easily hidden.
now, she could paint for a whole day if she wanted to – her husband would pout and whine, but smile and remind her to take breaks all the same – but rarely does. her collection of art supplies is vast – oils and watercolours and chalk pastels – and she still remembers the day vesper presented her with a studio, with canvases large enough they would be impossible to miss.
it’s different, strange even, to have time for what was once her only passion, the only hobby she clung to as her status was stripped from her. it’s even stranger to find she doesn’t want to paint all day, for doing so would mean less time spent with her husband and her family.
