storms with skin {darren}

K E L L A N
i won't remember
save your breath

Somewhere between getting home and starting my homework I had sort of zoned out. It was like I was out of my mind, going through the motions. School check. Homework, check. Training, check. Running, check. Eating, check. Sleeping, check sometimes. I scribbled away at the paper in front of me. And I heard my door screech open. Pillar had a really, really bad habit of walking into my room without permission. So when it opened I glared at her from my desk. It was annoying, yes, but it sort of brought me back to myself, got me out of whatever world my mind was lingering in. I contemplated throwing my pencil at her so she would know she annoyed me, but ultimately decided I needed in to finish my homework with it and didn't want to be bothered with walking across the room to retrieve it once she had gone.

There really wasn't any point in trying to scold her, so I just scowled at her and raised an eyebrow. "What?" she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, her lips turning up in a mischievous smile. "You have company." I could tell just by her tone she found this all very funny. I just didn't know why. But she stepped to the side, and I knew exactly why.

In came a walking, talking blizzard. She was a shadow in the world of light and she, as per usual, met my gaze with her own. Blue and furious, her eyes showed no room for fear or second-guessing. The ice and the anger and the determination, that was what filled them. I stood slowly, eyeing her like she was hidden within the dark and I wasn't completely certain she was standing there or if my mind was playing tricks.

"Well, you look lovely." I said flatly. Her icy features remained frozen and I could feel the cold coming to shake my core, but I was my own weather and I was fine with fighting her ice with my flames if she dared to step into the ring with me. Heat radiated from me and chill from her and it was always an explosion when we touched, and I wondered what kind of explosion we would deal with that day: Pleasure or Pain.

Hopefully pleasure.

"Have fun, you two." Pillar said, closing the door as she went. Now that we were alone, I crossed my arms over my chest. "Miss me?"

K E L L A N
i won't remember
save your breath

Something happened then, something that I was sure I had only ever witnessed once, and I was far too drunk to remember it properly: Pyrite Shore faltered. Like a chink in a mostly well-oiled machine, she clicked for a second and he could see the cracks in the ice. I could see the heat within. I nodded slowly, taking a slow, calculated step toward her. I remembered that though her armor was faulty for some reason around me time and time again, she was still a warrior and she would still fight if provoked.

Her hair fell in a severely straight midnight stream down her back and past her shoulders. I didn't like the way she seemed so vivid to me, always so alive and pulsing beneath the frost. I was wrong before. She wasn't always just a blizzard. She was a gentle snow on Christmas morning. She was sweaters and hot-chocolate and old books. She was a person, not a thing.

No, not even just a person.

A beautiful person.

Another step.

I could feel my throat swelling and my pulse rising, but I refused to break her gaze. I had tamed this beast once before. I had talked her into lowering her weapons. I had talked her out of her clothes and into a bed, and no matter what shock we both seemed to harness the next morning, that night it didn't matter. It was my lips and her neck and her shutters and my breathing. It was a good thing. And that was why she was there. She knew it was a good thing just as much as I did.

Another step, and I was standing toe to toe with her. I still didn't break her gaze, but I did speak. Slowly.

"I've heard that before."

And I leaned in to close the distance between us.

Yes, this was a good thing. I knew it and she knew it. And there was no sense in denying ourselves from the pleasures of each other, so in that moment I was not Kellan Fray and I hoped she was not Pyrite Shore. I hoped we were whoever we were that night when it didn't matter.

K E L L A N
i won't remember
save your breath

Night time, shadows, shivering skin and frostbite. She was all of those things and I wanted nothing more than to care. I wanted to see her for the monster I had once saw her as. Instead, he noticed that where there had once been fangs now sat a timid smile. Where her horns were meant to be was a mane of beautiful, silky hair. Her claws were surprisingly soft against my skin, dancing across the fevered flesh of our last encounter. It's nice, and it doesn't hurt. I don't think it ever really did. But for wherever reason, I had been left marked a slave for the ice queen, when all along she was supposed to be the one falling into my own web of toys and lies.

"Did you just call me pretty?" I asked, smiling proudly at her. I knew she would hate me for it. I knew she would despise me for pointing out her sudden lack of focus in this game, just as I was pointing out my own. But wasn't that the entire point? The rules had changed when Pyrite Shore took a seat next to me that night. It wasn't a few poison-laced whispers to get her where I wanted her. It was a battle well-fought, a war that remained unwon by either side.

But I was determined to make the final blow.

"And here I thought I was just your secret midnight encounter." Which was true, actually. For the first time in my life, I was the one unable to drift away to a sea of dreams from a storm that was my own consciousness. Mostly, I had thought about if Pyrite enjoyed herself. If, like me, she secretly had a grand time and her pride was just dipped and gold and left to solid and priceless to damage. Surely, I remembered thinking, it was the case. Surely she was lying in a sleepless daze as well, staring at an empty ceiling and picturing my face as I pictured hers?

Surely.

Yet, perhaps not.

Not until now was I sure. Not until now was I certain that she, too, understood that form of pleasure was a form of the game we both could win. Only then did I know that she may have been the queen, and I may have been the king, but together we were an empire unstoppable by any who crossed us. Separate, we were strong. Strong and bold and arrogant and, ultimately, weak. So with this knowledge, the peasant became a king once again, and offered a smile to his queen.

"Or is that all I am to you?"

Because no matter how much i hated it,
It
wasn't
all
she
was
to
me.

K E L L A N
i won't remember
save your breath

Less than ten seconds out of my shell and I had found myself on a skewer. This was why I liked playing the part, dedicating myself to the role of a stone-forged career. This was why it was easier to pretend I couldn't feel, even if the times I could feel were few and far in between. For a second my eyes widened with shock. But only for a second, a fleeting moment where my pain could have been recorded, and I slid back under my mask. But I knew it didn't matter; a second was all people like us needed to see weakness. She saw it. I knew she did. I pursed my lips at the girl and crossed my arms over my chest.

"Fine, fair enough." I almost told her to get her frigid out of my house, but instead when I opened my mouth to speak again I was not telling her to leave. I was begging her to stay, albeit in my own way:

"Yet here you are in my room, and still you haven't told me why."

Which means you can't leave until you do, I wanted to add, but I kept my mouth shut tight, clenching my jaw to keep myself stoic and serious. Pyrite Shore was not as cruel as she dared to dream she was. She was not as angry and cold as she pretended to be. She was me. She was just the same, and I knew just how to work er and she knew it. She hated me for it. But just the same, I hated he for her ability to crawl under my skin and leech herself to me without my permission.

We hated each other. But that is probably the first time either of us ever felt something totally serious, something that didn't burn out after a night. And I think that is why I stared at her glaring gaze in my bedroom that day: because we may have hated each other, but we also felt something else.

What it was, I had no idea.