#quintesance

❛❛ not this one.   ❜❜ he stepped into the room half distracted and impatient, eyes glued to the newspaper bracket that reported on new haven crime for the week. ❛❛ not today.   ❜❜ in doing so, his boots had scraped the ring of salt she had been diligently working on, which she would have to forgive. after a beat he comes to a stop where she has knelt for her work and takes his eyes off the page long enough to flick his fingers against the paper, drawing her attention to their subject of the hour. ❛❛ grey. they've declared the tower missing, can't find her in the city.   ❜❜ he had stolen the roll from bass library's reception when his eyes had caught against a rather familiar face she would keenly remember.

it was a student newsletter at any rate, and wouldn't see the light of day outside of yale. he doesn't bring up the fact that he had nearly mistaken a girl for her on his way back, a brief glimpse, and a matter they do not discuss between them at all. not yet.

the world slowed to a few clicks, the sort of tar-like sluggishness that belonged to a dying machine. at least, that was the sound he thought his mind had made when ronan retorted back to him glumly, struggling to comprehend what to make of it. his mouth, half-open in question, closed with mild confusion. it wasn't that anger was a stranger between them, sharpness even less so, but he could not for the life of him decide which erosive category of conversation this belonged in, if it belonged there at all. all things he considered, he could make nothing of the response or rejection; the offer to smoke their synapses into a melt-down could easily be a solo mission.

the tower had exploded from within. kenneth watched it happen like stop-motion: an inverted detonation, his runes and grey's spores, toxic audacity, sinking oxygen in the lungs of the woman they had uncovered as a lead amongst the bonesmen. face unmasked, the tower was cecilia townsend. she had ranted with the rage of anyone foiled by their inferiors, but her death was a short warrant, a quick war over as soon as it started. when he looked up grey was standing in the place the boneswoman had been, the outward spires of her remains looked like blast marks. he looked down, eyes tracking past grey's collar, and stopped at his own hands damp with blood. but it wasn't cecilia's blood, she had injured him. it made him click his tongue with resignation until his eyes closed, like someone silently cursing time knowing what was coming. ❛ fuck. ❜

she had grazed the scalpel across his chest. it wasn't a terrible injury, and didn't justify hindrance. but he could feel where the blow had landed, and though the stitches were gone and the scar had faded, he abruptly felt as if his chest was coming apart, skin and threads falling open with panic.

overhead, he could hear the makeshift howl of the air-speeders against the bright morning sky. or maybe it was all in his head, a remnant of the buzzing before the crash. dark black smoke thick as oil disturbed the hay-bale yellow of the rolling hills. the wing of the fighter-class jet squealed in the near distance, before it thumped to the earth floor with a crash. his tired head tipped back against bark, blood down his nose, but his weak hand remained still in her stranger grip despite the itch, the snake-skin crawl of discomfort through his skin. hazy, he could make out the coat of leather, the chestnut hair, and the pinch between her brows and the crash site right above her head, like a destructive halo.

             ❛ you know they'll come down, ❜ he said, but he was sure she might know. she had to. they all had to know the capitol didn't second-guess. he shifted against his seating, more certain now that his wrist was fractured. ❛ like gannets and king-fishers. they won't stop until they find my body. ❜

❛ don't, ❜ he said quickly, a hint of a smile before he smacked away the thieving hand that was reaching for the patisserie and bread rolls — or him, he wasn't sure. ❛ hold off for a second, would you? the fresh ones are almost done. ❜ terry would admonish him anyway, claim it never escaped his eye whenever kenneth would thieve away a few pieces to his sister or the punk who popped up every now and then. but there was a worse crime in the bakery than theft: sale of the goods brandished behind glass (now, if only the cardboard tasting trash tasted as well and polished as it looked.), those were meant for show and ronan would only taste ash.

▮ knock it off,  what's the worst he can do? ▮         he knew what kazheir would say:  shoot you full of holes.  but kenneth,  high on delusion and a solid lead,  as well as the acceptance of an increasingly non-delusional apparation of eimile,  had countered otherwise:  there were only so many other dreamers out in the open with the moderators culling the loot,  and the rattenfänger needed them to make things disappear without catching attention.  additionally,  kenneth also had a gun to shoot holes into people.         ▮ bitta optimism would help right about now,  em. ▮

san francisco bay was practically screaming with ley energy,  enough that the sight of her hovering anxiously by his arm felt hysterically real.

‘ funny, ’ he said, and flicked someone's metacarpophalangeal joint off the lab table. ‘ like there's ever a time for that. ’ there was a corpse laying on the opposite slab that they had wheeled out into the room together. it was the distinct and very wrong shape of a yale university bonesmen. he hadn't bothered to lie about it when alex had walked into the cover-up, hadn't whisked into his half-truths and sullen glowering that discouraged curiosity. instead he'd shrugged, thought of grey swinging the lamp rod, and the scalpel he had recognised as intimately familiar. by lethe's protocol this should have been a field day.

this was the problem with phone cords. when ronan's thinly veiled confession had him sitting up abruptly over the bed, he thought he might pull the entire damn thing out with himself. it tangled in his rings, over his wrist, through his fingers, somewhere around very important arteries transporting oxygen to his heart. it wasn't that he hated cellphones, but that something about them didn't agree with the crackle of heat in his hands. the dreamt up silk was suppose to help with it of course, but that would break the illusion by admitting they wanted one another's numbers to begin with.

it left him with this: phone static, moonlight in his bed room, a quiet and sleeping house amiss of disruptions . . .

and ronan's voice on the other end of the line sticking needles into his cheeks. he bit down on his tongue, pursed his lips tightly, and pulled his knees close. the quiet between them felt less like a building crescendo now at least, and more a shared hypnosis. he started to speak, caught himself, then pushed the words out after negotiating with his better sense. ‘ what would you do . . . ’ he said, half a whisper in this small house, the clock striking two in the morning with light rain and mist. ‘ if i told you what happens in mine? ’ he realised with the start where the crescendo had gone. somehow, they had left it where his heart should have been, a mean and unfair gust of heat creeping over his face ( was there anything more damning than dreams? ) he wanted to put the phone down and never speak to him again. he wanted ronan to never hang up and pick him up. as if to make certain he had not been misunderstood, he chose to say what had dictated them before. ‘ cause nobody finds us out there. ’