14. marmoreal

[exnihilo]

[Private to Iris and Simon, text]

thank you for trying


[Private to Mal, text]

What happened to you?

[After you saw me.]


[Private to Luna, voice]

Do you like pancakes?


[Spam for Mickey, Helena, Cassel, and Stephen]

[Sometime in the night, she breaks into their cabins, quietly. She just wants to watch for a while. Just wants to see that they're okay. If they wake, they might find her perched nearby, scribbling in a notebook. Or maybe just staring, small and still, chin on her knees.]

Comments

[exnihilo]

[She starts, minutely, but doesn't pull away. She doesn't know whether she expected to be stone or smoke, but - it still surprises her, plain human warmth. Her pinched, perched shoulders, hunched like something off a trim medieval gargoyle, unknot a little bit.]

The things your body does when you feel things. Breathing, heartbeat, muscle tension.

[A low murmur, and . It's a much easier thing to explain than herself. She twists her wrist, slight and slow, until she can curl her hand, fingertips brushing his wrist back, like the shy echo of a handclasp.]

[americasdirtiest]

[It clicks in an unpleasant, unexpected way. He shakes his head slightly and circles her wrist with his fingers, tugging her lightly down to sit next to him.]

Not always. Not when you're a vampire.

[He gets being changed, he means. He gets looking out on the world through eyes that should be different but aren't really different enough.]

[exnihilo]

[She nods, slow. Stares at her hands. Shame is foreign to her, but there is something cold and bitter in the pit of her stomach, curdled and reminiscent.]

I've liked being held down. But it was - different.

[americasdirtiest]

[He lets go again and hugs his bare knees loosely, staring down the steps into the warm living room below.]

It's... yeah.

[It's the difference, he thinks with a shudder, between not fighting because you don't want to and not fighting because you can't. But he doesn't say that, or anything else; he's not sure what else to say. Maybe the silence, mournful but companionable, is enough.]