⌜ liability ┆ brentley&perdita ⌟

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

PERDITA
LETO

( You keep your mouth closed because you're afraid of losing him. )

He broke your jaw when he crawled inside all those months ago, limbs making space in your chest by pushing your ribs apart with a snap, but you forgive him. His torture is the sweetest form of it that you've come to know, and for all the stories the both of you hide behind tired eyes, what Brentley offers as payment for the shelter of your bones is the closest thing to peace that you've ever felt.

( Once before, but blink that thought away.
You're learning to forget. )

He taught you irony. Kissed your jaw and told you that it was okay to be a stone. Then your petals would unfurl beneath his fingertips, and you'd laugh. You were young when you lost the lover that came before this one, a stubborn heart that wrapped itself in thorns just because it could, but what Brentley had to pry away was of a different kind. A girl burdened by an estranged family, by a future that was gambled away on terms that could have been avoided — and who would have ever thought a peacekeeper would be the first to crack your shell?

Just barely, but he's able to slip his hand into your being and you let him. Not always, and there are still times that you shut him out and bury yourself under the covers with hissed requests to be left alone, but he's healing you. He's making it better. And you know he's content with piecing all of your shards together, even if it means scarring his hands. He thinks himself a devil, and he calls you his angel, but you disagree. Is a man with black wings not just as heavenly as the rest of his kind? He doesn't know his worth, but that's alright. It'll be fine. Self-destruction can come in pairs, too.

"Brentley?" you whisper, early morning sunlight slicing across your throat. You don't wince. Once, your thoughts strayed only to death, to a sister's betrayal, to all the things that you played a hand in fucking up — but he distracts you, and maybe it's selfish, but that's part of why you pull yourself closer to his form and curl up beside him. The bed scratches, but you've gotten used to the itch. The tsunami took everything away, but then gave it right back. A little shack by the sea, and you remember with a smile how you spent weeks rebuilding it as a team. Not home forever, but home for now, and it was perfect for the two of you — for his ragtag group of friends; for all the lost boys and girls.

"I love you," you confess against his chest, and you swallow not because the truth tastes bitter, but because you're still terrified of losing him. He holds you tighter on impulse. "Thank you," you go on, words muffled by his skin, and you wish that you could say he's heard it all before. But you don't say it enough, and today, you want him to know just how grateful you truly are. "I'm happy, Brentley. With all of this." You pause, digging deep for all the soft words that your storms tried to steal. "With you."

What a life. What a glorious, fucked up existence. The memories come in flashes, an anxious habit of replaying all your troubles, and you close your eyes. An excuse of a daughter. A girl that should have loved more. A sister that didn't do anything to keep her siblings closer. Shoes thrown against doors, dinners missed, throat closing, flooded bathtubs and water in your lungs — and you exhale, eyelids opening without any grace. He's still there. Maybe not always, and perhaps fleeting, but you're willing to risk your stability for him. You've rebuilt yourself after worse falls.

"Don't become a peacekeeper," you urge with arms snaking around his torso, dry cheeks flushing red. "Let's just stay here. Me and you. Wouldn't that be nice?" You don't want a big house with a white fence, a garden in the front where your children could run and play. When it's just you and him, only one person is at risk. You're a forgiving woman, but you're still flawed. You're not willing to give others the chance that you gave him. "Don't let me become my mother, Brentley. I'm not worth a peacekeeper. I'm afraid." A pause, your gaze searching his face and holding onto the memory of it.

"I'm a flight risk. Don't let me ruin us."

[✨ zozo.]

BRENTLEY.

please could you be tender
and i will sit close to you
let's give it a minute...
guess this is the winter
our bodies are young and blue

They gave him apologies and enough money to buy a house but he'd already found a home within her instead.

He took their offerings with a grain of salt and built a home for him, for her, for the both of them. Brentley never wanted their sorry words - only for Perdita to hear his, to swallow them whole, to let them disappear inside of her and bloom from them trust and love. He was sorry that he could not heal the scars left by her sister and her malice, sorry that he could not drink up the ocean so the water didn't seem so menacing. Sorry that he could never buy her flowers or shake her father's hand. Sorry that he could not stop apologising, sorry that she deserved so much more and yet he still stole her heart, let her steal his. Sorry, sorry, sorry, and with every kiss his sins were forgiven.

Lips spilled poisons from his past and yet she still stayed.

And he built that house by the ocean and framed the blue seas with glass and windowsills - it was theirs, nothing to be afraid of. The walls shielded her from Calypso's terror and looked her father in the eyes, took her hand, lead her from a house to a home filled with love. Real love, not bestowed in blood but chosen with forehead kisses, her favourite colour on the walls, news articles like photographs of family. He grew not to be ashamed of his past, his poverty, his peril - for in it, he fell in love with an angel and she saved him from damnation.

He felt her eyes on his neck every morning as he shut their front door behind him, dressed in white and posing as some saviour like he'd never felt the aching thirst in his throat to prove himself. It tasted like his love for her: longing, heartfelt, forbidden.

The moon tugged at the storm within him and it ripped him in two - his love for her, his lust for redemption. They lingered, never touching, always knowing the other would return. The closer Brentley stepped towards one the further he slipped away from the other - his love, his life, how he wished he could have both.

In his locker he finds a page of the Peacekeeper Accords, bold letters circled in blood-red ink:

PEACEKEEPERS MUST SERVE THE STATE FOR 20 YEARS WITHOUT MARRIAGE OR CHILDREN.

Scrunched up paper and white-hot fists, he slams the metal door and damns Calypso Leto to hell.

Aine sits upon their old brick wall in the afternoon, all guts and glory and smoking a cigarette. Once they would have sat up there together, spitting acid words at the children below them - Gods, exiled from the ethereal worlds of Four. She watches him exit the academy classrooms with sad eyes and he glances up at her, pausing for a moment, contemplating whether to sink or swim. The ocean calls and Brentley sets sail from his old friend and her wafts of smoke, leaving her gaze to mourn him in the currents he creates.

He prefers to smoke alone these days. In the living room. On the porch at 3am. Up in smoke, the night breeze whisks him away from all that was once good about having nothing and the next day Aine rushes past him like the storm that she is, an elbow the side of his uniform and a scowl ripped across her face.

Mistakes pool around his feet and he hears the rushing of water coming for him: sink, swim, sink, swim, he's damned if he does and he's damned if he doesn't. Some days are easier, laughing with his love until the sun goes down. Some days she won't even look at him. The white elephant hangs in his closet and it gleams across his chest, crawling back up the ranks of the Academy - still, the ocean calls.

"Brentley?"

Sink or swim, it sings in Perdita's heavenly voice and rouses him from sleep.

"I love you," oh, how blessed his rotten soul is to be loved by her. "Thank you."

And he braces himself for the fallout, the other side of a turned page, the ultimatum that will surely fall from her lips any second now. He feels it, heavy in the air and simply everywhere - like static clinging to his skin and refusing to let go.

"Don't become a peacekeeper," - and the static falls from his skin, a wave and she is the shore, he crashes, pulled back, crashes again. Slamming his head into the ground over and over and over, damned Brentley Gray who thought he could bend the pull of the tide like the moon in the night sky.

"Let's just stay here. Me and you. Wouldn't that be nice?"

She confesses that she is at fault and he scoops her up into his arms, lips at the crowns of her skull. Darling love, he kisses the bruises in her mind and whispers through her hair.

"You could never ruin this."

He could. He probably would. Damned Brentley Gray who poisons everything he touches, all cigarette fumes and stubborn pride.

A moment of silence passes between them both and his words turn over in his mouth. For leaving the Academy is admitting defeat but Perdita Leto does not look like defeat. He won, with her, he must have. For she makes him feel good, right, careful and whole.

It's a nice change from feeling worthless.

20 YEARS WITHOUT MARRIAGE OR CHILDREN. 20 YEARS WITHOUT MARRIAGE OR CHILDREN. 20 YEARS WITHOUT MARRIAGE OR CHILDREN. 20 YEARS WITHOUT MARRIAGE OR CHILDREN. 20 YEARS WITHOUT MARRIAGE OR CHILDREN. 20 YEARS WITHOUT MARRIAGE OR CHILDREN.

It's an omen printed against his closed eyes, slashed into his skin, scar tissue forming words he dare not speak aloud. 39 years old and she would have found some better by then. Kinder by then. Had children, perhaps, all with brown eyes and gold hair and pale skin. Let him sing her to sleep, given her more than a tiny little home by the ocean built from mistakes and hush funds. 

More than he ever could.

"I just need to show them that they were wrong about me," he confesses against her freckled skin. "About us."

Skin or swim, he doesn't know which way leads him to break the surface and which way will take him to the bottom of the sea.

"Let me prove them wrong."

Rock-bottom, where he belongs.

when the sweet words and fevers
all leave us right here in the cold
alone with the hard feelings of love
god i wish i believed you 
when you told me this was my home