More Dysfunctional Relationship Fic?!
I think Angsty April came a little early. It must have been the news that we're once again under winter storm warning.
I suppose it can be a companion piece to the other fic I posted the other day here.
Title: Wind and Fire
Ship: R/J
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love. - Shakespeare, Hamlet
Prologue
Love is for the weak, a pretty lie perpetuated by fools who still believed that others could be trusted. Smiles hid hate and contempt and indifference, and kisses meant less than the lipstick prints they left behind. Those who mooned over red roses pricked their fingers on thorns. The only love stories people remembered were those that ended in fire and blood.
People use each other. She accepts it.
The other girls would have been shocked to know the depths of her cynicism, her selfishness, her lack of faith. The most spiritual of them all, warm and strong as the flame she commanded, but she knows that all the ideals that they fought and bled for were daydreams for the foolish.
She knows who he is the moment she sees his angel face in her fire and incinerates him without a qualm.
Just another user, another traitor, another immortal beloved. When their eyes meet for the first time, when he has her in a choke hold, when her punishing fires catch on his golden hair, it feels like a kiss. As he twists and screams, their eyes meet in an eternal challenge, gas-flame blue to bruise-purple, and she smiles.
&&&
I
He comes back, as she knew he would. He doesn't have Nephrite's warmth and humour or Zoisite's sensitive charm or Kunzite's soul-deep, unflinching devotion.
She faces off with a hard, beautiful man with a seraph's face and a heart as unyielding as her own. She remembers white dresses on her birthdays and sympathetic looks behind fashionable wire-frame glasses. She remembers the neatly pressed back of a three-piece suit disappearing into the distance.
Even more vividly, she remembers fierce kisses in unthinkably tranquil gardens and finger-shaped bruises on her hips and arguments that always ended with him crushing her against the wall and the molten copper scent of his blood jarring against the sweet scent of roses as her nails scored gouges down his back.
She remembers dying. And she remembers never feeling so alive. And she meets him head-on.
He brings her casablancas in a crystal vase and a smug, knowing smile, a silent mocking reminder of those days when she let her heart get broken by someone so much less worthy. She throws them viciously on the floor and over the shattering of crystal and the splash of water she can hear his laughter.
It's not friendly.
But they never were.
&&&
II
Days, weeks, months go by, and unlike Minako, who flits in and out of love's terrifying grasp like a thoughtless butterfly caught in a rainstorm, she stands her ground. She doesn't bar him from her home, her company or her bed. High summer finds both of their tempers fraying in the heat, as she insults everything from his nasty cigarette habit to his overweening arrogance and he calls her names that no gentleman would say to a lady. But the aloof elegance which she'd cultivated and worn like a second skin around herself dissolves around him, as ever. He punches the wall hard enough to crack the wood, leaving a smear of blood and a razor-nest of splinters. She spits in his face and storms towards the door, and lets him catch her, pin her down to the ground before she can make it there.
"I hate you. I hate you so much," she imprints the words into his bottom lip with her teeth.
"You should," he growls as his blunt fingers make quick work of her robes.
Later she runs her fingertips over his torn knuckles as he holds her close enough that their overheated skin sticks together, stinging whenever they try to pull apart.
The floor is hard and his chest isn't much better underneath her face. But she'd never been a cuddler to begin with.
&&&
III
One fight is vile enough that they don't speak for days. He doesn't drop by, irritating her with his smirk and his snide comments and the reflection of her own face in his bright blue eyes. She nurses her bruised pride and her astonishingly strong grief in private like a tigress licking its wounds. The isolation hurts more than any of the nasty things they said.
&&&
IV
Then, after three days, five hours, and sixteen minutes, she gazes out the window and sees a telltale head of tousled blond hair. She dashes out, the wind whipping through her own raven locks, and comes to a stop about a foot away.
"Where were you?" she asks harshly, accusingly. Then her voice breaks. "I thought you'd never come back."
He closes the remaining distance between the two of them and hauls her into his arms. "I love you," he says baldly as he tips up her chin, brings his lips a hairbreadth away from hers. "Don't you ever doubt that." He's almost gentle when he kisses her, but the pressure of his lips is still enough to smear her lip gloss. His big, calloused hands quiver as they clamp down on her hips, and a part of her knows that he's just as exhilarated and terrified as she is.
That part of her also knows that he'll keep his word.
&&&
Epilogue
She can name twenty things that irk her about him at any given time.
They frustrate, enrage, and clash against each other, neither willing to compromise, both passionate and stubborn and cynical and too proud for their own good. He by no means worships her or fawns over her beauty, her mystery. She decidedly doesn't tuck her arm docilely through his and bat her eyelashes.
They meet like wind and fire, feeding off each other, all the more devastating together than apart, and it's not balanced.
But it's the greatest happiness that she's ever known. This is the very ecstasy of love. And she realizes that maybe people prize the roses for their thorns as much as their flowers.
I suppose it can be a companion piece to the other fic I posted the other day here.
Title: Wind and Fire
Ship: R/J
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love. - Shakespeare, Hamlet
Prologue
Love is for the weak, a pretty lie perpetuated by fools who still believed that others could be trusted. Smiles hid hate and contempt and indifference, and kisses meant less than the lipstick prints they left behind. Those who mooned over red roses pricked their fingers on thorns. The only love stories people remembered were those that ended in fire and blood.
People use each other. She accepts it.
The other girls would have been shocked to know the depths of her cynicism, her selfishness, her lack of faith. The most spiritual of them all, warm and strong as the flame she commanded, but she knows that all the ideals that they fought and bled for were daydreams for the foolish.
She knows who he is the moment she sees his angel face in her fire and incinerates him without a qualm.
Just another user, another traitor, another immortal beloved. When their eyes meet for the first time, when he has her in a choke hold, when her punishing fires catch on his golden hair, it feels like a kiss. As he twists and screams, their eyes meet in an eternal challenge, gas-flame blue to bruise-purple, and she smiles.
&&&
I
He comes back, as she knew he would. He doesn't have Nephrite's warmth and humour or Zoisite's sensitive charm or Kunzite's soul-deep, unflinching devotion.
She faces off with a hard, beautiful man with a seraph's face and a heart as unyielding as her own. She remembers white dresses on her birthdays and sympathetic looks behind fashionable wire-frame glasses. She remembers the neatly pressed back of a three-piece suit disappearing into the distance.
Even more vividly, she remembers fierce kisses in unthinkably tranquil gardens and finger-shaped bruises on her hips and arguments that always ended with him crushing her against the wall and the molten copper scent of his blood jarring against the sweet scent of roses as her nails scored gouges down his back.
She remembers dying. And she remembers never feeling so alive. And she meets him head-on.
He brings her casablancas in a crystal vase and a smug, knowing smile, a silent mocking reminder of those days when she let her heart get broken by someone so much less worthy. She throws them viciously on the floor and over the shattering of crystal and the splash of water she can hear his laughter.
It's not friendly.
But they never were.
&&&
II
Days, weeks, months go by, and unlike Minako, who flits in and out of love's terrifying grasp like a thoughtless butterfly caught in a rainstorm, she stands her ground. She doesn't bar him from her home, her company or her bed. High summer finds both of their tempers fraying in the heat, as she insults everything from his nasty cigarette habit to his overweening arrogance and he calls her names that no gentleman would say to a lady. But the aloof elegance which she'd cultivated and worn like a second skin around herself dissolves around him, as ever. He punches the wall hard enough to crack the wood, leaving a smear of blood and a razor-nest of splinters. She spits in his face and storms towards the door, and lets him catch her, pin her down to the ground before she can make it there.
"I hate you. I hate you so much," she imprints the words into his bottom lip with her teeth.
"You should," he growls as his blunt fingers make quick work of her robes.
Later she runs her fingertips over his torn knuckles as he holds her close enough that their overheated skin sticks together, stinging whenever they try to pull apart.
The floor is hard and his chest isn't much better underneath her face. But she'd never been a cuddler to begin with.
&&&
III
One fight is vile enough that they don't speak for days. He doesn't drop by, irritating her with his smirk and his snide comments and the reflection of her own face in his bright blue eyes. She nurses her bruised pride and her astonishingly strong grief in private like a tigress licking its wounds. The isolation hurts more than any of the nasty things they said.
&&&
IV
Then, after three days, five hours, and sixteen minutes, she gazes out the window and sees a telltale head of tousled blond hair. She dashes out, the wind whipping through her own raven locks, and comes to a stop about a foot away.
"Where were you?" she asks harshly, accusingly. Then her voice breaks. "I thought you'd never come back."
He closes the remaining distance between the two of them and hauls her into his arms. "I love you," he says baldly as he tips up her chin, brings his lips a hairbreadth away from hers. "Don't you ever doubt that." He's almost gentle when he kisses her, but the pressure of his lips is still enough to smear her lip gloss. His big, calloused hands quiver as they clamp down on her hips, and a part of her knows that he's just as exhilarated and terrified as she is.
That part of her also knows that he'll keep his word.
&&&
Epilogue
She can name twenty things that irk her about him at any given time.
They frustrate, enrage, and clash against each other, neither willing to compromise, both passionate and stubborn and cynical and too proud for their own good. He by no means worships her or fawns over her beauty, her mystery. She decidedly doesn't tuck her arm docilely through his and bat her eyelashes.
They meet like wind and fire, feeding off each other, all the more devastating together than apart, and it's not balanced.
But it's the greatest happiness that she's ever known. This is the very ecstasy of love. And she realizes that maybe people prize the roses for their thorns as much as their flowers.