#strxnzo

@strxnzo​  said,    ❛  well,  i’m an unconventional girl,  that’s what you like about me.  ❜

he knows she’s just teasin’,    but it comes on the heels of a confession he’d meant more than she maybe knows.    it’s not something he lingers on a whole lot,  but it’s there  —  a little more now whenever he catches sight of the two of ‘em in the same space,  reflections starin’ back.    her hair’s dark and falls just right over her shoulders,  and her eyes  —  they’re always shining up at him,  always beautiful,  always so full of life and bigger than the world.    maybe his favorite thing to do these days is trace his fingertips all over the tattoos scattered along the length of her little body,  then kiss the corners of ‘em,  too,  just for good measure.    and when she smiles   .  .  .   he’s a goner,  just gone.

          then he sees himself,  and he always sobers.

     they used to call him ears  —  just ears.    nothin’ new,  he’d always been awkward and ungainly through the years.   it didn’t last long anyway when he’d grown bigger and lumbering,  and they started just callin’ him logan,  save for a few jokes over drinks.    back in those days,  there wasn’t any time;   no one gave a shit,  no one thought too hard or long about somethin’ little like looks.    far removed from his family,  there’d be days he forgot to compare himself to jimmy,  with his squared off jaw and steely eyes,  charm drippin’ from his brother like nobody’s business.

          then clyde came back here,  back home,  back into his brother’s shadow.

     they say i’ve got unconventional looks,  he’d murmured,  stretching the syllables out in that four - dollar word like they were foreign  —  or like maybe he just hadn’t wanted to repeat it.    don’t know how you ever looked at me again,  he’d joked,  voice a little lighter to make up for the fact that he wasn’t,  not really,  his a half - cocked smile that didn’t go any higher than his lips.    maybe that’s alright though;   he hadn’t got jimmy or mellie’s nice eyes,  no,  he got their granddaddy’s flint ones and a big, pouty mouth like his ears had conspired with ‘em to unbalance the rest of his too - narrow face  —  a face she now cradles,  coaxin’ it down to hers like he wouldn’t live there in her bubble if he could.      well,  i’m an unconventional girl,  that’s what you like about me,  she says,  whole universes in those eyes.    dark like his.    he tries to see himself through them.

there’s no need to shout. all you have to do is bat those eyelashes at me and i’m SOLD

    “Don’t touch me, please. I don’t...Just stop it.” Staci shuffled back further into that curled up, fetal position against the wall. He only faced the wall. He didn’t want to look at Eliza. He didn’t want to be stronger. He just wanted to be himself. He just wanted to live. “I just wanna go home, Eliza. I don’t wanna be here.”

    He started to turn outward, back against the wall and his head in his hands, still not yet facing Eliza. But then he felt her hand under his chin. He flinched. He couldn’t look her in the eye. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know where to look. He didn’t know what to say. Why was she so kind? Why did she trust him? Why did she tolerate him? Why did she think this was right? Why did she listen to Jacob?

He was traveling back from a successful hunt; the morningstar once bloodied now hung at his waist, cleaned and ready for anyone unfortunate enough to mistake him as someone to rob. Ser Gervaise did not frequently go on quests with his subordinates; often they were ordered onto other tasks and spread evenly among the kingdom - a knight for every sector, with him walking among all. Of course that depended on what area required aid the most; like this quest’s monstrosities made of dead flesh, sent out to drag victims back to a damned land. It was handled with ease because of course it was - he was a Lord Knight for a reason.

One of those reasons being for his keen senses. The small shift in the air had his golden gaze tilting towards the right, following the wind current that moved in the opposite direction of how it had been blowing. Unnatural, a sign of magic or a potential creature stalking. His pace slowed, expression unmoved as he turned to follow the direction it came in. The knight moved through the trees, off the beaten path and into a small clearing where he found a humanoid woman. This could be any number of creatures that lured men from the road; yet the foulness of a hungry beast was not in the air. Something cleaner, the clearing did not hint at something vile and the cursed weapon did not warn him of any illusionary magic.