#casseo

@sunkissedscribbles Mattheo fanfiction - Prejudiced

Casseo has always been confused by the way that humans speak of fire.

It burns, the humans say.  Casseo doesn’t understand this sensation.  Their kind doesn’t have a word for it.  A rippling purr of fire against scaled skin is a pleasant sensation.  Humans flinch and pull their hands away from hot surfaces, as though heat could draw blood.  

And yet it seems to Casseo that humans pine for the same flame that would scorch them.  For a human, fire is both fear and lust.  They draw towards it, lured by the heat, but never too close.  Humans speak of fire with their most poetic language — the fire of passion, the spark in someone’s eyes, the flame in their chest — yet they would all scream if they touched it.

One day, Casseo met Dex.  On that day, Casseo understood how humans feel about fire.

Fear and lust.

Casseo wants to be close to Dex, needs it, and at the same time, doesn’t dare.  It feels good until it doesn’t.  Casseo huddles around Dex the way that humans huddle around a flame, they give Dex their most poetic words, but deep down they know it’s not safe to touch.

I-I’m sorry...

Unsettled.

That was how Cassidy felt. Her heart was thrumming hard and fast, her veins almost shuddering with how tense she was. But it wasn't a familiar tense; it wasn't the straight-backed tense that she felt before a kill, or the tenseness she felt when she walked through SHIELD buildings, always a little wary that one misstep would mean her end. It was an entirely different kind of tense, one she had never experienced or understood. This was...nerves. Real nerves. Nerves that, no matter how hard she tried, her training couldn't surpress or push into the back of her mind. No matter how well she compartmentalized her experiences, and her life, these nerves seemed to be the one part of her that she couldn't hide from tonight. That was why she felt so damn unsettled as she slipped on the bracelets and watch that she had bought in Prague of all places.

(Fucking Prague. God, she hated Prague. Loathed Prague. Associated far too many negative memories with Prague. But still, the bracelets and the watch were nice.) She ran her hand through her hair, wondering for the first time in a long time if the sort, fluffy pixie cut was flattering (well, she was a fan of it, and a lot of people thought it suited her, right?). And god, what were these thoughts? She'd never paid this much attention to her appearance for her own benefit. It was just Theo. He was her mark. She wasn't meant to be seducing him, she was meant to be killing him. (But if she was supposed to kill him, why was her outfit completely devoid of weaponry tonight? Not even a knife strapped to her thigh. She was forgoing the thigh holster entirely!) 

Her fingers carefully clasped her necklace and she watched in the mirror as the small circle, a gift from her brothers when she'd graduated college, fell to just above the curved neckline of her dress, where her cleavage was just barely visible when she inhaled. And god, she'd put more thought into this entire outfit than she did into her plot of getting Billy out of the school! Maybe because plans were her forte.. She shook her head, sighing and looking towards the clock. Six fifty meant she had ten minutes to walk the two flights of stairs up and few doors down to his apartment. She looked in the mirror one last time, glanced towards the weapons she kept in her bedside table, and left the room without touching them.

Leaving her apartment completely weaponless wasn't something Cassidy was in the habit of doing. Like most of the Agent professors, she kept a gun with her during classes, and unlike most of them, she kept knives up her sleeves when she had a cardigan, or in her thigh holster when she wore a dress. Leaving without a single knife on her was... almost uncomfortable, but as she moved through the hallways, she convinced herself it was fine. She wasn't trying to kill Theo tonight. She was just... God, she didn't even know what she was doing. And she had spent over a week ruminating on it, even after seeing him with Tigra on Wednesday when she had gone to try to do her damn job.

The idea of Tigra and Theo still made her feel as though someone had punched her in the gut, but after the brief conversation with the young woman the day before, she knew that it didn't matter much. What did she care who Theo slept with? Sex barely mattered to her to begin with, and she couldn't imagine why people did it for pleasure. Sex had always been a tool to garner information. As she moved swiftly up the stairs, she shook the thoughts from her head. There was no need to think like that. Right now, she just had to try to be as normal as possible. But what was normal? She'd never really dated. She had, of course, but she'd never understood it. It had never been something she was taught. Sex, kissing, seduction, killing, manipulation; she'd been taught all of those things. How to convince people she was kind, and sweet, and the perfect daughter or coworker, she could do all of that easily.