#draqqn

it’d been too long since he’d last attended a place such as bacchus.  the clubs are ecstasy in mere presence, like liquor inhaled through the lungs and injected into your wildly beating heart within seconds of entering through the neon doors.  alec experiences it no differently than anyone else.  some part of his mind did try to cling to images, things he could turn into art within the morning when his mind is clear.  but even those are mostly gone now.  just feelings, a trickling weight in his stomach that makes the golden thing feel like nothing as he stumbles outside and raises his hand almost immediately.

cab.  he needs a cab, needs to get home and collapse into his bed.  

he’ll wash the glitter off later, clean the sweat that’s drying on his skin away and brush his teeth of the taste of liquor and nothing else -- too old for anything else -- when the sun rises again.  he’ll rise with it inevitably, but for now it’s the risk of curfew that has his mind filled more than anything.  wavering in place ever so slightly as alec keeps his hand up.  brightens when a cab begins to sluggishly slow down and pull to the side of the street.  

alec steps forward.  at the same time, so does a woman he didn’t notice at first.  it takes a second to recognize her as the bouncer, less time to have asked her to stop stealing the cab from him as he slips barely into the open door like a physical claim.  the odds of another one coming by aren’t terrible, aren’t wretched, and she can have the second.  alec tries to smile.  look gentle, not slightly lost to himself.  

doubtful that it’s working.

so doubtful -- she’s stepping into his space now, this woman, asking questions in a rapid pace that blurs in alec’s mind.  there’s no space between them.  just her, and him, and the golden thing inside of him is twisting up until it’s a pressure in his throat.  like he could spit it out instead of the words that he fumbles for.  maybe that’s what it wants.  to hurt her?  she’s done nothing, alec’s fuzzy mind insists.  just existed and mistaken him, confused him for someone else.

(did she say persia?  that time -- is that even plausible, is she mad?)

     “i don’t --” alec swallows, gripping onto the cab door with white knuckles like a life line.  “i’m alec, an.  i’m alec gibson and i don’t know... are you the.  the bouncer?  i don’t know what you’re asking me, forgive me.”

@draqqn

it’s her day off, and she just wants to walk down to the grocery store after work and buy a few things, enough to make some approximation of dinner tonight. florence makes it down to the street corner near vertex, quiet and pensive, one earphone in and the other hanging limply out. one side’s dead. she’ll get to it eventually.

she glances back on the corner, waiting for the signal to cross the street, and stops. 

it’s like the back of her skull’s been blown out and her rationality has fled the scene. she’s there, behind herself, and she’s watching her body turn, and she sees the woman at the end of the street. shit. shit. she knows that person, who is walking towards her, innocuous as anything can be.

the woman on the tape. dressed a little differently, sure, but the same jacket and the same haircut and the same posture and the same everything.

florence wants to fold in on herself. wants to disappear. wants to say it’s you, oh god, it’s you, i didn’t think this far ahead. she coughs. freezes. realizes she’s back in her body, the black of her sleeves just a little too long, the layers of fabric swallowing her up, feeling somehow infinitely heavy.

she dug up a 35mm print of kurosawa’s high and low today. people swear by throne of blood, and that’s good, but to her these two films have always been siblings, or at least connected in some ungodly form. she likes it so much, and that in combination with knowing that zahra is in the audience, means she doesn’t indulge any of her usual proclivities. no splicing of her own clips. just a simple film, and florence descending from the booth to sit in the audience. half of her wants to put at least three seats of distance in every direction from zahra, but the other half, the one that doesn’t seem to have any sense of self-preservation, has confined her to the seat right next to her.

she’s stretched out during the running time of the film, the heel of one brown boot set in between two seats of the row in front of them. 

“i mean,” she says after a moment, “i don’t really have people i want revenge on. like, who am i going to yell at about not being able to finish my bachelor’s? university, as a concept? it’s just me. everything bad that’s ever happened to me just… comes back to me, i think.” she doesn’t really blame other people. all of her is so entirely internal, inscribed against the inside of her skull for her to examine over and over. rarely does she outsource the blame to someone else. 

but at the same time, the question makes her want to squirm. because of who’s asking it. because of what she knows, and what she keeps secret, and the fact that it makes her tilt towards the other empty seats, an awkward motion that she tries to disguise as merely leaning towards her arm in order to prop her head up. yeah. it’s just an innocent motion, like that, not some half-made attempt to get away, some prey instinct that settles in her body and tries to send her skirting for the door.

no. she’s just fine. she breathes out hard through her nose and reaches for the bucket of popcorn, shoving a few popped kernels into her mouth and chewing, listening to the crunch that’s too loud inside of her skull. she always hates how loud the sound is, even if she likes popcorn on its own. everything’s too loud, all the time, her own thoughts and her own voice and her own chewing, molars grinding things into dust.

( for @draqqn )

that’s not something people just say.  maybe as a joke, a teenager girl at prom who’s so sure that she’s going to be queen that she goes around bragging about it, teasing her friends with her confidence.  but they’re adults here.  surrounded by the light of dusk turning into darkness and neon halos from all the signs surrounding the building that noah has only briefly been inside of.  she wanted fresh air.  she wanted -- she got the perfume of this bouncer in her senses, thick and heady and dizzying as she leans against the building.  a smile full of teeth.  conversation that noah isn’t even sure she was part of, and now this.

it feels like a threat as much as something nostalgic, and noah’s more scared by the latter than whatever the former was suppose to imply.  she swallows past the weight growing in her throat.  tries to clear it away.

     “you uhm.  you’ve worn a crown often?”  noah asks, hating the tremble in her voice.

     “that’s tragic.”

he can only be sincere to her, it’s part of a curse that has grown since that odd first meeting.  in return for the small truths that zahra gives him in snippets like lines from epic poems, ones so long forgotten that he will never find the rest, alec gives her his own truth.  speaks it into the air where there is no removing it and lets her judge what he has said for herself, decide each word like justice weighing them on her scales.  it’s what she deserves.  there’s a damage in her after all, wordless tragedy that speaks of a warning as much of a request.

beware, the damage in her says, i will destroy you with my teeth.

please, a smaller voice whispers, be true to me and i will feel welcome.

or so the mind of an artist imagines.  this is one thing that alec has not told her, words that he has not felt coaxed to speak in some relief that he cannot let go of.  zahra speaks this to him without words, yes, but he doesn’t think it’s something she wants to say.  the first maybe.  with her job it would suit her at least, she wants to scream that she is dangerous with a glance of her eyes and nod of her skull.  for most it is effective.  even for him some evenings, when the falling of the sun rises something inside of her that brings him to pause.  

now he pauses again.  for different reasons than fear, or so he tells enough of himself that he believes it.  maybe for consideration.  trying to fathom what those words mean, not in the sake of how they are said so much as how they aren’t.  a puzzle to be put together.  zahra speaks in riddles enough that she couldn’t deny even her tone can be a thing to piece together; would likely tell alec that it’s the fun of it.  she likes watching him puzzle in silence, use his cooking as an excuse to think longer than he often would.  

it’s a beautiful part of her, alec would tell her that the second that she asked.  like the rest of her, even her words are beautiful.  he would make art from them if he had the time, piece something together to show her the collage of picasso like imagery she creates with only her throat, tongue and teeth.  maybe a cityscape.  each letter is a building, or a street, or a vehicle upon them.  some for the skies in lighter shades and others curved as clouds.  she would tease him for it, but alec doesn’t doubt she would take it.

made for her, after all.  what greater joy is there than knowing you inspired something in another living being?  

     “i don’t know what you’ve seen in your life, but i know you’ve seen plenty to fill your years and then some.”  alec tells her after a moment, turning the heat down beneath one of his pans and moving to the other.  he stirs what’s within.  glances towards zahra and lingers there, eyes to eyes in a shameless moment of contact.  “and i hope you know that you’re safe from it here.  to let it go if you want, or to forget it, or even hold it a little lighter.  i’m not asking you to give it to me, just to feel like this is another home.  that’s what i want for you, as cheesy as it must sound.”

she says things like this sometimes, when they’re alone together.  they seem to mean nothing to her.  just musings from her mind, spilling free from her mouth because it is relaxed; because she is relaxed, positioned on whatever piece of furniture or floor or window that she’s deemed appropriate for posing in just about any clothes that she’s chosen to wear.  

zahra, he has learned quickly, is nothing short of an enigma.  both youthful and terribly ancient in a dueling sort of dichotomy that alec struggles to wrap his head around at the best of times.  it’s undeniably part of what drew him to her.  art isn’t about the body after all, it’s what the body contains and is made to carry from place to place.  a play is tedious without the right actors -- or so a teacher told him once. a small piece of advice he’s clung to from those years and uses whenever he has the moment.  but no one has fully exemplified such a thing as zahra does, and in truth alec isn’t sure how he can explain that to anyone.

after all, it’s a mystery to himself.

today she’s being made out of watercolors and oils.  it’s a combination not unlike herself, nonsensical yet functioning with the right artist.  that explains them in a way, doesn’t it?  nonsensical person with a nonsensical artist, the collaboration of years.  alec can’t help that it feels that way sometimes.  

not unlike how she can’t help saying such things, he imagines, for she never seems to realize how they sound until seeing his face.  

today: pensive.  almost withdrawn until alec soothes himself, lets his mouth upturn as he peers at zahra over his canvas.  

     “you’ve had more experience with that than i have, there’s little doubt in me there.”  it’s something philomene consumed without intent, a moment of life alec had not truly missed until she was old enough for him to realize it was missing.  has zahra had many partners, he wonders, unbidden and turning his face pink.  does she realize what he means?  “but it’s also a skill, and one i know you contain.  after all, why else would you be here?”

he means it teasing, hopes she’ll take it so.  with another glide of the brush in his hand dark colors spill across canvas and almost dried layers.  zahra’s skin coming together into something detailed, something so beautiful that alec feels briefly free from the golden thing’s hold on his creations.  even as it stirs within him, twists as it always does when he speaks with this guest.  a jealousy, alec thinks, and a worthy one.  zahra is a companion.  maybe even a friend.

what is a golden thing to something like that?

     “so then, are you stealing my joy with each painting i make of you?”