storms with skin {darren}

[✨ zozo.]

There is an absolutely logical and valid explanation as to why Pyrite Shore is marching down the street to the grand Fray mansion at 5 o'clock in the evening.

Addison told me you've been hitting on her and if you don't stop pestering my best friend I will be hitting you several times in the face.

Liar.

I left my jacket in Maddox's room after our rowdy fuck last night and I'm here to collect it.

Liar.

I am just here to inform you that you are, in fact, a complete ass-hat and I don't ever want to see you ever again. Good day.

Liar, liar liar.

It's not because she cannot stop thinking about the stupid, arrogant, imbecile of a fuckboy that Kellan Fray is. It's not because she's absolutely furious with him and even more terrifying without. And it's not because there is a thunderstorm where her heart is and it won't stop sending bolts of lightning through her core when someone mentions his name. (Thunder rolls by seconds after she is jolted awake and warns her of secrets spilt like sunlight for all the world to see.) Or maybe it is, and she is finally giving in to the nagging she has pushed away for so long. In any case, it doesn't matter, because she's halfway down the street with her head held high and a rumbling in her wake that promises a storm.

She shouldn't feel guilty for being human even though she's been training to be a Capitol-loving robot for just under two decades. The sun sets and with it her guard, vulnerability peeking through her skin like stars piercing the night and there's too much rage inside of her to hold within her midnight-coloured head. (There's always too much - anger, fear, guilt, more anger. Never love. Not for anyone but Addison, and maybe Petal.) The world shakes, cracks are left instead of footprints. She's always sworn she absorbed the earthquake that shook her home when she was small and poor old Kellan will have to swallow magnitudes of rage in three, two, one-

The disaster begins with three pounds of her fist.

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

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?"

[✨ zozo.]

The second she walks through the door she bursts into flames.

She remembers rage - it wouldn't be one of her memories without it. She remembers white - sheets, walls, hazy outlines and pillowcases. White-hot slaps, red-hot skin. Scattered clothes and a mirror on the wall. A smart-ass and a hurricane, a kiss and a curse. A tug of war bound by secrets and lies and the fragile truth they don't dare to spill, and he pulls her over in triumph whilst she falls to the ground in defeat. But she doesn't remember defeat: she remembers release and safety and a moment or two when he world felt right.

It felt a bit like this.

Skin on fire, her lightning has struck every vein in her body and what was once fleeting and sudden and gone in the blink of an eye is now consuming and stealing her oxygen. Stop it, she thinks, and the flames cease to exist but heat still rises and burns her cheeks red at his sister's words. 

"Have fun you two."

Pyrite is a fool.

Pyrite is a fool for this stupid, stupid boy.

And she hates it. Hates the fact that it is true, hates herself for letting it be, and hates the smirking little shit behind the closed door for letting it show. It would be so easy to turn around and walk herself out of the room, out of the house, out of his life. But Pyrite has never done easy. She is not a cop-out, or lazy, or boring. Challenges are her fuel and determination slams her mouth shut, her fingers to her palms and her feet to the floor.

"Miss me?" he asks, cocky and arrogant as ever.

Yes.

She smirks, folding her arms and leaning against the walls of his room. "Never."

("Convinced yet?"

"Never.")

 

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

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.

[✨ zozo.]

He frightens her. And being frightened is unfamiliar and sickening. She wants to claw at her insides and rip out the fear hammering away inside of her and leave it lying by her feet but she doesn't move when Kellan does. Pyrite is used to frightening others and having the tables turned on her is terrifying. 

She swallows her pride and lets him advance, steel gaze locked with his. She can see for herself that he is terrible to the core. So close that within his eyes she can also see her own reflection staring back at her - faint fragments of herself that are just as bad. Just as awful. And two wrongs don't make a right but my god, it feels as if they might when their lips collide. Ice thaws for one second, two seconds, three-

Palms find his chest and she pushes him away.

"Then you must have heard before that you're an ass" she chides, but her words are lacking their usual bite. Laughter almost manages to slide along the syllables, a half-hearted attempt at breathing and speaking at the same time. Heat still lingers on her lips and it melts her freezing tongue, heart on a high and skin on fire. (This is awful. This is awful. He will be the destruction of her.) She's tired of fighting him, herself, this - whatever this is. But Shores aren't raised to give up after one defeat - they keep fighting, even if it kills them.

Pyrite is not going to fall apart today. Not tomorrow. Never.

If he wants to play pretend then she'll play until she conquers.

"How's your face?" she asks with a smirk, raising her hands to touch the ghost of a red mark she'd left the morning after it all fell apart. If she closes her eyes she can still hear the slap and feel the stinging sensation of skin on skin colliding at a thousand miles an hour. Launching herself into his challenge, her fingers stay at his face for one, two, three seconds - slowly tracing his cheekbones and settling the tip of her thumb on his lower lip.

"Still pretty" falls out of her mouth as both a whisper and a tremour.

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

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.

[✨ zozo.]

She shouldn't have expected for him to fall so easily. She shouldn't have wanted him to, either.

"No," she replies almost instantly, a flash of what is yet to come disguised as vulnerable honesty. If Pyrite was anyone else in this world and wasn't born with salt skin and fire in her eyes she might have stopped there but she is programmed to bite back and defend herself whether she wants to or not.

"I mean, sure - you are just a dumb drunk mistake who happens to have a pretty face, I'll give you that" she continues, insults locked and loaded ready to fire off of her gunpowder tongue. "But to me you're just a pretty face with a head full of sawdust only capable of thinking with your other head." Eyes skit down for half a second and flick back up to join a smirk.

They are caught in their circle - smirks and cut-throat conversations and attempts to drag little bits of themselves out of each-other whilst refusing to lower their guard. He see's her slipping and in her frantic attempts at climbing back on her pedistool of pride she gets chinks in her armour. Someone once told her that you're only as strong as your weakest point and maybe that's the reason she folds her arms over her chest to hide the beating proof within her rib cage that she is, in fact, human.

Her heart is reserved for the family she created when she realised how terrible her own really was. Addison and Petalite and Pyrite. Addy and Petal and Py. They were all she ever needed and it took her nineteen years to discover that family is not made up of blood and genetics and lineage but fingers intertwined since kindergarten and bandages placed on cuts and bruises without looks of disapproval at her tears. You cannot fill an empty house with children and expect them to love you so much that they would be prepared to die for your approval. You cannot fill a void your parents were supposed to house with a boy who shares his attention amongst your sisters.

You cannot force Pyrite to care. She can't force him to care about her, either.

"And that's all you'll ever be to me, Kellan Fray." Because neither of them can lose to each-other, and neither of them will let the other win.

"Any more questions?"

ooc; this is really fuckin dumb and i go off on an irrelevant tangent i'm sorry

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

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.

[✨ zozo.]

PS

The thought  of reaching out and demanding his attention with her mouth crosses her mind and she shivers. She imagines all the stupid girls doing just the same, desperate for a temporary high and for someone to pretend that they care. They've done a lot of pretending around each other. It's never amounted to anything worth fighting for and yet here they are, stuck in a never ending battle with no trace of giving up any time soon. She wonders what would happen if they stopped pretending and started fighting for something real. She wonders about that a damn lot more than she'd like to admit.

"I'm bored" she admits - not a lie, but not the whole truth either. "Thought Maddox would be around, he's always a wild ride if you know what I mean." There's bite in her voice and venom on her breath and she wants him to turn green with envy, but smiles and throws herself onto his bed like she'd been there a thousand times. The mattress bounces underneath her weight and her legs swing against the side, a drum to mask the cacophony of rising tempo in her chest. "So I figured you'd be an acceptable alternative."

Arms extend and fingers snatch at the papers on Kellan's desk, returning them back to her new-found sanctuary. Whether or not he wants her to deface his homework is a question she hasn't bothered to ask and never will - disregarding people's feelings is subconscious to her and ignoring Kellan's is second nature. Angry diamonds and sharp thunderclouds loop around the borders of irrelevant text she never bothered to read, attention drawing to things she thought were more important like training and siblings and polishing the fucking pedistool her parents saved for anyone but her. Lightning turns to tornados, to rain, to puddles on the ground and the sun creeping out behind a cloud. 

She looks up from her artwork and fires yet another question with a thousand subjective answers. "Put me out of my misery?"