red spectrum of ours {quincy & amelia}

[kousei ♚]

I do not scream when a red fissure opens along my forearm, any fear that should be felt is drowned by adrenaline and the moment my pulse knots itself with my veins. I don't look in his eyes for there's no truth to be found behind his drunken rage and no clarity to be found in his knife wielding hand. A flash of silver replaced the marred skin on my arm, a spray of red covers his fingers and soaks into my shirt -- but I cannot bring myself to scream.

I just cannot so much as breathe.

I stumble back, good hand pressed against torn skin but I do not dare rip my vision from his bloodied fingers or burning blade. I glare at him as if there's sin to be found in confrontation and a redundancy in stating the obvious -- my pulse entwines with every blood vessel beneath my skin and I can only bring myself to scream one thing.

"Fuck you!"

It comes out more as an angered hiss and I barely hear the notation about the thunder storm within my chest. His face twists into a sneer and he raises the knife again, loose and sloppy in his drunken grip. He has long since lost the element of surprise, I did not catch the glint of silver in this darkened alleyway and his attempt at a lucky shot at my throat was stopped by an instinctive raise of my forearm.

A thousand colors swim before me but every opening his stance is tattooed before my very eyes, years of career training and handling the common criminal does not go unused. He steps forwards with a slur on his tongue and red in his eyes and fingertips. However, the next time his blade flashes down, it only meets the wall with a rigid clang! When I strike, he doesn't have time to scream. My fist collides with his temple and his head snaps to the side, cracking against the wall and he crumples to the ground before I've even drawn my fist back to my side. "Cunt!"

He doesn't stir, but he breathes.

It would be quick, to take the knife that spilled my and open his throat. After all, his blade's tasted my skin and it seems only fitting that the opposite should come into play -- no one fucks with me. However, if he was to be found before we could send a clean up to find him and the peacekeepers quickly and easily traced my DNA...

No, he can live today. For in this moment I may be Quincy Rathbone but I'm still just a bleeding man in an alleyway with nothing but the clothes at his back. That's definitely what he saw, and that's definitely what the peacekeepers would see. So, I take the knife sprawled on the concrete and clumsily tuck it in the jacket just in case.

I wince, a thousand shades of pain swim past my figure as I step and stumble, gritting and grinding my teeth so hard I'm surprised they haven't chipped. The streets are dark and empty at this time of night and the frost that's swept across the district only served to aggravate the angry sneer gashed across my arm. I press a shivering hand against the wound and every step draws a shudder and wince from me, the blood stains my skin only to form a reminder -- (stupid fucking idiot got himself cut by a stranger barely standing up straight). Ripred, I'll never hear the end of it. And fuck I hope that fucker didn't have the common sense to poison his blade, the thought of my wound festering and rotting me from the inside out brings panic through my tangled pulse.

Movement automatic, I step and weave between buildings. I know these back-alley parts of the district like the back of my hand, despite the fact I cannot so much as count the steps I'm taking to find any sort of reprisal. Home's too far away and I don't want to risk getting too many questions from a hospital. So I wince and take the dull pain pulsating through my body in stride.

I'm bleeding everywhere and I swear, I'm a whole shade paler than I used to be.

A shade of pain later, I'm at the door before I recognize the house. I ball my good hand into a bloodied fist and pound on the door. "Hey," but my voice is weak and cracked. I repeat myself, louder and more desperate this time. "Hey! Let me in! It's Quinn, I'm wounded and just-"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

My voice trails off, cut off by a sudden grunt laced with agony behind gritted teeth.

"-just fucking let me in!"

I smear the door with shades of agony.

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

MEL

"we don't need saving
there's no salvation for a bad girl"

Boredom is a goddamn plague. Restless fingers trace cotton sheets and I am a nasty little treasure hidden away in the folds of a broken home. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to sleep where you work, but I've got nowhere else to go. Amelia is long dead- and with her any weakness that might have once drawn me back to silken sheets and soft down. Sleeping bags are comfortable enough when a day's fatigue seeps down into your bone's marrow. Pain is what cures the drowsy numbness of predictability. Whether it be future scars brandished into fresh skin or the soft ache of hunger when coins run dry from in between shaking fingers.

Morning has come, but pain has not. I stare at the me who has only just become me in mirrors stained with smoke and blood and my brush catches on knots matted with just the same. Again and again, until smooth black silk lays across my shoulders and the ghost of a smile is found within this moment's absolute serenity. But moments are just that and boredom is a goddamn plague. Stuck pacing familiar halls, waiting for my colleagues to rise after the sun has settled into its clouded nest. I'm not stupid enough to call them my kin, but I miss them all the same. 

Memories tend to echo when only silence exists. My reputation proceeds me- one of anger and stupidity. Nothing more substantial than a greedy goon with newborn blood lust and although the glove is one that I have sewn from the golden silk, it's kind of a lonely reality. I'm not saying that I actually yearn for them - the friends I used to hold dear - but I do. Abandonment is cruel, but I thought of it a necessary evil. Maybe I'm just as stupid as I've lead myself to believe. 

And then I'm sprawled upon cotton sheets again, counting the dents in the ceiling and I wonder if this is what madness feels like. Empty hollow aching throughout my chest and though I'm sure my heart it beating it doesn't fucking feel like it. I know exactly where I belong - and that is here - but why does here have to be so dull? A headstrong fool, convinced that every moment would be packed full of the adrenaline and danger that I have been a slave to for years on end- that is who I find when searching the mirror for an answer. I think the cycle is repeating. Up and down and down and up again.

The clock says it's been an hour and a half.

Three more until the evening stirs. Heart sent crashing into my throat, hand pressed to the hilt of a blade slipped between the waist of my pants and skin that is suddenly cold and clammy. Bang! Bang! Bang! I creep closer to the door, settled on the balls of my feet and ready to run the minute this phantom breaks through the wooden barricade. As often as I waltz with death, there's no way in hell I'm ready to bury myself within her embrace. It's a game of cat and mouse, see?

But the specter takes shape soon enough. Gruff voice, laced with agony and the sour taste of absolute anxiety leaves my stomach churning the moment I realize just who seems to by dying upon my doorstep. I've yet to deal much with the Rathbones themselves. There is something so insignificant about a little girl with fire for blood and poison in her wings. Helping out with petty theft and patching up runners caught by bullets and blades is not exactly something that catches the attention of the higher ups, so to speak. 

And I was content with that, happy to fall into the monotony of faceless, thankless crime.

So of course, fate sent Quincy Rathbone crashing into cracking wood. "What's the password?" I'm not cruel enough to wait for an answer, almost as pale as he when flinging the door open and burying my fingers within the fabric of his shirt, heavy steps attempting to guide a man much bigger than I to a mangy couch only a couple of feet away. 

I've seen blood before, but never this much. Rivers of crimson cascading from in between his shattered skin and perhaps, had I not been so concerned with keeping myself in his good graces, I would have stopped to appreciate just how terrified it makes me feel. Mortality made real in every inch of his contorted expression and it's lucky I learned to keep a first aid kit beneath the cushions. "Holy fucking shit." I don't know what to say, hands moving with a grace my tongue has yet to master. Torn cloth tied tightly around his forearm, desperation to stop the pretty red rivers that remain of the ocean he has seemingly left in his wake.

I don't know how far he has come, but none of this can be good. If an actual Rathbone dies on this couch I am, in no uncertain terms, absolutely fucked. I bite a tongue rested upon the corner of my lip, breath turned ragged and concentration absolute in my furrowed brows. "Impressive entrance Boss, but you didn't have to be dyin' to make my heart race."

And I speak because memories tend to echo when only silence exists.

table by elegant

[kousei ♚]

Between ebbing bouts of fading hope and an animistic desperation for a sign of reprieve, there's a moment of half strung clarity and I almost expect to be left to bleed into the ground in the dirt on this doorstep. All it takes is a simple miss step; this house being abandoned or I knocked on the wrong door. The reasoning for my death would spell a correlation that can only be defined as stupidity, not cruelty. I let him lay his blade on me after all, thinking he couldn't do anything in his intoxicated state.

Spell it on my grave. Quincy Rathbone; the stupid, cocky idiot.

Fuck me, maybe I should die for being so stupid. I just need to look at the reasoning between the bleeding wound in my arm, the blade in my pocket and the unconscious man inert on the ground in that alley way, I have no one to blame for this predicament but myself. The words of father ring true in the half-strung moment of lucidity -- "if this is the path you truly want to take son then let my warning be clear, one misstep and you're fucking dead."

Half a misstep and I'm bleeding.

There's no pity either, just grim acceptance and pounding desperation for reprisal. Each second that passes equals another arbitrary unit of blood lost and another loss of rhythm in any cohesion in my state of mind. This isn't a rhythmic heartbeat with adrenaline rushing through my veins, this is desperation and death lacing up my boots.

"What's the password?" A female voice calls out.

Fuck.

I almost raise my arm to pound on the door harder until it begins to splinter and my fist is through the door just so she can see that it's fucking me asshole but the door swings open before the thought can form any lasting impression in the haze in my mind. My legs betray me, knees momentarily giving out as the floor rushing up to meet me. However, instead of the wind being knocked out of me, I find myself clutching onto her fabric and skin as I leave a blood trail behind me. The opposite comes into play, nails digging into my skin and clothes as we're guided towards the first torn and stained couch we see.

I look up, brown hair tickling my cheek and a face as pale as mine peering. Pretty face, shit perhaps this isn't the worst time and place to die.

She sets me down and I grunt as I hit the couch. Suppressing a cry of agony and a fresh wave of color swims before my eyes, the whole world threatens to tilt and fall sideways. I don't know who she is, what she's doing here or why she's here but all I know is that she has something resembling cloth in her hands and her hands aren't shaking as much as I would've thought. She knows what she's doing and I'm fucking grateful for the fact that she isn't going to drop the keys to free me from this limbo between life and death I seem so keen to tow. Through gritted teeth, I decide she can stay. And judging by the fact that this room isn't flooding with people coming to see what all the commotion's about I'd guess she's the only one, so she has to stay.

"Holy fucking shit." Yeah, she can definitely stay.

I groan, managing a weak smile. "Yeah, tell me about it."

Here lies Quincy Rathbone; stupid, fucking idiot.

It's not comforting, I'm grinding my teeth so much I'm surprised that they don't chip and crack when she begins trying the cloth around it to stop the bleeding. Better than bleeding to death and I have no right to complain because if I hadn't underestimated a drunkard in an alleyway and made him think I was vulnerable none of this wouldn't have happened. I'd be home making Fox some hot chocolate and I wouldn't be bleeding out on the couch in a warehouse I've visited one-too-many times.

There's concentration etched across her furrowed features and I wince and cringe with every movement she takes to cover the wound and stop me bleeding. She works in overwhelming silence, hands moving like a personification of divinity itself, effortlessly weaving, wrapping and tightening so quick I'd almost mistake her prowess of being possessed by some kind of angel. Perhaps the silence becomes too overwhelming for the both of us because she breaks it without so much as missing her stride. "Impressive entrance Boss, but you didn't have to be dyin' to make my heart race."

Weak grin and tense heart, I manage a weak sigh as I push myself up. "Quinn, just call me Quinn," I manage through calming deep breaths. Eighteen years old and it still feels so strange to have someone call me boss, it feels almost unearned despite the countless missions I've done, the people I've fought and the scars I wear like war medals -- they line my skin and my soul.

It's strange, how I let her call me Quinn and not Quincy; I suppose saving my ass gets you some kind of privilege.

I breathe, looking down at the wound and back in her eyes. "And you are?" I ask her, because it's easier to talk than be reminded of my own mortality.

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

MEL

"we don't need saving
there's no salvation for a bad girl"

Cherry seeps into the beds of my nails. Blood smells distinctly different when the guy isn't plastered. I'm used to a pungent odor, the kind that tears through my skin and into my stomach- the kind that makes the world start spinning. It’s drunken and angry; home of the dead and the damned. This house is fucked, through and through. Shadows expand to fill the empty space, swallowing silence with ominous vigor. I’m scared of it. Of the nothing that takes the place of everything. Of meaningless rebellion that fills the holes in my heart with something other than blood.

With apathy, with echoes. I’m terrified of being lonely and yet I’ve banished everyone who’s ever given a damn. So that they cannot see how absolutely raw I am ‘neath every painful callous. It’s hopeless, it’s pointless, to love something like me. An adrenaline junkie with cheeks stained red and rosy by bloodlust. Desperation and yearning. Always searching for something better so that I have an excuse not to stay right where I am.

The smile he gives me is strained, weight of the world resting upon the apples of his cheeks. I cannot help that his skin bears needles to which my eyes inevitably catch. They’re beautiful. Memories so spiteful they do not allow themselves to be forgotten. Filled with anger and unfortune and had my fingers not been busy dressing his newest wound, they’d have been dancing across the spirits it bears.

”Quinn, just call me Quinn.” Strangers have this awful habit of becoming less strange. Quincy becomes Quinn becomes hearts thrown into my throat and redness reaching my ears. Never have been one for conversation. Much easier throwing a punch or planting a kiss than sitting there thinking about it. Than prancing about hot coals and trying not to get singed. No point playing games when you could be winning them. ”And you are?”

His voice is hypnotic. The kind that dances to and fro, in and out of lazy smiles plastered so suddenly to my lips. Careless, more genuine than I meant them to be. Fuck. Answers bubble up in a swollen throat, all too honest, all too wrong. There’s nothing left of what I was, yet I’ve not quite figured out what I’m becoming. What if I’m nothing more than a pretty face to keep the wicked entertained? What if that’s all I want to be? ”Mel.” Simple answers for simple questions, forcing my eyes away from his so that I can focus on something other than the way I suddenly feeling like I’m burning from the inside out.

I wonder of he can see the smoke pouring from between parted lips.

”Just gotta sew you up now. Gonna be a bitch and a half, yeah?” Needle held above an open flame. Burning the lips it rests between. And it hurts so bad it feels damn good. It cools for a while, clumsy fingers struggling to force fishing wire through its eye and my incompetence turns to apologetic murmurs. There’s something in his eyes, something that keeps drawing me to them. But every gaze I hold feels so damn good it hurts so bad.

”Figure I should distract you before the first poke.” When I speak it’s like my throat is raw. Gravel resting in every single syllable bounced between dented metal walls. Swallowing us whole. Yet somehow it’s more welcoming than my broken home, the one hidden behind golden gates. With shackles made of white rose’s thorns, breeding anger with every laceration born by my struggling.

And oh, I struggled.

Rage knows me better than I know myself.

This is what I live for, metal positioned above his skin, concentration found within the teeth sunken in lips. This feels real. Not like a world where money is the solution to every equation, where failures become success when green is laid beneath the belly of hungry dragons. If I fuck this, he’s dead. So’m I. One chance, no do-overs. Our wrists are bound by crimson silk, hearts beating in unison.

I’m riding this high. ”Could do that a lotta ways, not much of a talker but I’m told I got real talented lips.” Gentle teasing, empty promises. Sly smiles that fade fast. Taking the shit out of Quincy Rathbone might not be a good idea, come to think of the fact that’s probably got a gun hidden somewhere in the waist of his pants. Careless thinking has earned one too many of those rested upon my temple. Lead threatening to shatter my skull and cradle my brain. I’d rather not relive that night, could I help it.

Though it was one hell of a rush.

”So, how the fuck did you end up like this, Quinn?” Name savored on the tip of my tongue He bears the suit of a survivor. Ones with hooded eyes that’ve seen all too much of everything. Loving blood spilled out on street corners, death and destruction and the absoluteness of them both. All that shit my parents hid away within the folds of their wrinkled skin, deciding to paint our world pretty and pink. You get stronger, the more you see. At least, that’s how I think it works. Life gets heavy and miserable and you start wondering if its even worth living.

And that’s when you absolutely can’t get rid of it.

I plunge the needle through his skin, sucking in air through my teeth and I didn’t think I was one for empathy.

But I sure as hell ache for him now.

table by elegant

[kousei ♚]

Scarlet stains my skin; I latch onto reality.

It's in her eyes, partly covered by brown hair kissing her cheeks and a hint of something there I can't bring myself to read. Maybe it's because I'm too wounded and too confused, I can't take anything in. I think it's nerves, or riding the high of elation or maybe she's shocked out of her mind because an actual Rathbone burst through the door and he's spilling his life's blood along the furniture. I latch onto reality, keeping my gaze locked onto every letter in every word upon every line but I can't comprehend a single thing.

Scarlet shakes the room, I can't read her.

But I can see her though, her eyes kissed my her hair and the scarlet wrapping itself around her fingers. Soaking into her skin and peeling like iron, all I can do it pray she knows what she's doing in the face of a blood flood because I don't. I don't know how to be dependent on someone else, for my lifeline to be entwined in someone else's and the continuation of my pulse resting in hands that aren't mine. I'm a Rathbone, not a sheep being cared for by a shepherd. Wolves aren't meant to be found on the edge of a drunken man's blade.

I latch onto reality, but I can't read a damn thing. My hand doesn't shake and I force myself to focus, on something beautiful and bearable. On the rhythm of her breathing, the shape of her figure and the sound of her voice. "Mel." She answers me so simply, but simple is divine in the eyes of a desperate man. Especially when simple comes from the robe of a savior, an angel almost.

Maybe, reality should be lost in that valley of red I saw when that blade broke my skin and the world shook because all I knew was scarlet. Yet here I am, finding it in the hands of Mel because she's the only one here and the last hope of stopping me bleeding to death. Mel, nursing the pain of reality because she's the only one left. She's nursing a pain that exists, she anchors me to the ground. I think she knows what she's doing, I pray she knows what she's doing.

Well, I suppose she isn't the worst sight to die to.

She's not letting that happen, she won't let me follow my birth parents through that dark crevasse of broken things. She sets a needle by a phoenix's flame and burns the potential for rot from the inside out. "Just gotta sew you up now. Gonna be a bitch and a half, yeah?" She explains and I only nod in response. I know what's got to happen, I've seen the eyes of this demon before. Too many times.

Burn, agony, Mel.

Oh, keep me anchored.

(please, don't let me bleed)

I don't let my eyes drift, I see it all. From the way she leaves the needle to cool and the way she fumbles and tries her hardest to get the thread through the eye. I wonder if she's nervous, holding the heartbeat of Quincy Rathbone in her hands. She should recoil at the sound of my porcelain pulse against her scarlet skin.

But I'm not allowed to fall through the rift and into limbo, I think she knows that.

I catch her gaze and it hurts less to be anchored, it doesn't hurt to feel anymore. "Figure I should distract you before the first poke." A weak nod, a glimmer in my eyes. I understand and she knows it. She holds hot metal above the angry flesh, an attempt to close the botched attempt at my throat, stop the red rift in my skin from expanding any more that it already has. She could fuck this up, she could infect it. I could die, I stop myself latching onto the thought.

I latch onto unreadable eyes, cheeks kissed by brown hair and the twisting room.

The sound of her voice, it's the heaviest anchor.

"Could do that a lotta ways, not much of a talker but I’m told I got real talented lips."

I try to laugh but I can only bring myself to grin. "I can imagine." I reply, chaining myself to the sound, watching the curling of her hair so that the room stops spinning. A dark rift twists and turns, threatening to shatter.

"So, how the fuck did you end up like this, Quinn?”

Then it's steady again, not so dark, not so scarlet. Her silhouette becomes fully-fledged and her face is clear again, I can see her. I can't read her, but that's okay. I don't need to, I just want her here. I just need her to anchor my tired mind to her and stop me from falling through this never-ending black chasm. Falling from the summit I've seen so many climb and yet far more slip from.

Fuck, I hate being so dependent.

"Funny story, actually," she holds the metal above the angry wound but I can't bring myself to care anymore. I just focus on her. "Got jumped by a guy with a hidden knife round the back of a bar," I leave out the fact he was wasted. Talking makes this so much easier.

(I'm screaming)

But no less painful.

I stutter, biting the inside of my cheek as she closes the crimson chasm splitting my skin. I try to talk between growls and screams, fingernails digging into the palm of my hands and the sofa material. "He got me good but..." I trail off, story punctured by the metal in the skin. "You should see him, p-probably still unconscious. B-back there."

Then I'm cut free, she lets go.

(I just want to be anchored)

No need to be strong anymore.

(I'm falling)

Right onto my side from my seated position.

But instead of biting wet asphalt, I'm taken by the softness of the sofa. "Fuck me, that hurt. And I'm tired, kinda dizzy." We were taught to latch onto pain, it meant we were still in danger and it meant we were still alive.

But she anchors me just fine.

"Thank you though, Mel."

I give myself to the arms of a softer reality.