demimondc - Tumblr blog

[demimondc]

hello hello. my name is jess as well ( two in one tag, yikes ) but i respond to jay ( like the letter ) or jessa if that makes things easier. i’ll be applying for catwoman // maybe harley and oracle. yikes yikes yikes. so pumped. this is absolutely amazing, and i’ll have a place to channel my nerdery. 

[demimondc]

    Delilah perched upon the leather of the luxe club seat, draped in her diamonds and silver and reeking of exorbitantly priced perfume. A woman of the kind to intrigue him, entrance him. Every smile she tossed his way was in service of the greater good. Every delicate sip of her drink was for her own benefit. Somewhere, her partners listened in. Poised outside his home, crouched in an exterminator van. Palms firm against the steering wheel. Seated before an array of computer screens, hands hovering over keys. Gun-trigger primed beneath the pad of a finger. They all had their own tools; and Delilah was an expert with hers. 

   She pressed her chest ever so slightly forward, cleavage blossoming from the plunging neckline of her dress. Liquid -- molten -- it was. She was blistering hot, and worth every penny he’d spent on her. A few drinks in, and he was comfortable. Looking the other way, rather than carefully fingering the key-card in his pocket. The unique, individual chip that bypassed the biometric security system. The first hurdle, but certainly not the last, standing between them and thirty-five million in solid, glimmering gold. 

   The voice sounded in her earpiece. Delilah turned into the boisterous noise of the nightclub, whispering in a husky hush. “Almost.” 

   A laugh, and she had her palm pressed upon his shoulder. A simple roam, and she’d have it— but another hand stopped her short. Two fingers, clapped delicately on her collarbone. Attached to an amiable face, hair clipped short. The mark was far too aware now. His grip was back on his card, hand severed by the fabric edge of his pocket. 

   “Miss? A call for you. Down the hall and to the left.” 

   Delilah withdrew with a decadent cheek-kiss, her ruby-red impressed upon his flesh. Several clicks of her heels, and the figure came into view. A familiar expression greeted her, just as it had so many times before. Not a call at all. Her voice was laced with impatience, flashing like a knife in the dimness.   

    “In case you hadn’t guessed, you’re interrupting.” Hand poised upon her hip, she stared icily forward. “Though I take it that was your intent.” 

[demimondc]

     Delilah observed silently, trailed the stronger fighter’s every hook. She was wearing her most recent persona, and the one that suited this particular mark: a semi-casual, button-up-and-jeans type. The kind of immodest woman a dirty man could appreciate. A secret femme with explosive breasts and a filthy mouth. It was no mistake, no mere coincidence. In the proceedings of the fighting ring, Delilah had her own un-manicured fingers pressed heavily upon the scale. Soon, after just enough time, she’d make her move. Another flame extinguished, a man she didn’t need to deal with any longer. Money in her bank account the likes of which most could not imagine. In the meantime, it was monotony. 

     A woman had caught her eye. One unlike many of the others there, though they were few and far between; not a trophy wife hauled there against her will. Not a blonde without a lick of English who stood beside her ancient husband mutely, glazed eyes staring forward. No. She watched with hunger. And so Delilah moved toward her, her own blue irises devouring the silhouette of her. When the woman spoke, Delilah slowed to a halt. 

     “Just admiring,” she murmured. “I could no longer do so from afar.” 

    To be fair, watching people tear each other apart was a lot more entertaining than meeting her husband at the hotel for dinner. How she had gotten sucked into this whole ‘underground fighting ring’ scene was beyond her but ever since she had stepped into it, she wasn’t planning to step out. Rowan was going to watch every punch, kick, and knock out that occurred tonight or so be it she would have the cops bust into this place if anyone dared ruin her fun. The only problem was that she reeked of money and eyes were starting to turn her way. So she hung in the shadows, arms crossed in a look of disinterest although she was anything but. 

    Until she heard footsteps approach her.

    “Come another inch closer and I’ll take you into the ring and beat you senseless myself.”

[demimondc]

She felt the change in him as acutely as she felt the air upon her skin – felt him melt forward, sinking ever deeper into their exchange. Felt him relax into the warmth of her false smile, basking in its deceptive beam. Felt his stare on her, as unguarded and kind as it had been when they’d held one another with love ( feigned, she told herself ) rather than dreamt of gripping one another with the intent of harm ( what she thought he had to feel, given all she had done ). 

It froze her in place, that look. An expression of affection, eyes hesitantly hopeful and also hopelessly fond. It was the look he had given her many times over, all those years ago – before her wings had come, before her banal and anticlimactic death. Before she’d hardened her heart into a dark, inhospitable thing, much like the cell he currently inhabited. Before she’d lost all shred of naive optimism that still lingered stubbornly within her, luring her toward the delusion of a blissful, happy life. If life had held any opportunity for joy, death was the absence of it. The only moments in which she found some semblance of it were ones of violent excitement and skillful trickery. Delilah had never liked chaos and unrest in her first life, and she found it difficult to embrace in her second; yet within her was always the draw to gameplay, to manipulation, to gleeful coercion. And she had a gift for it. The conflict in her was strong, and so she sputtered a moment at the glint of love in his irises, still persisting after all these years – because while it was what she had meant to elicit, it stunned her in its reality. Delilah found she was entirely unprepared for it. 

She had forgotten. 

Her face did not falter as he continued on. His second statement was much easier to swallow – it went down smoothly, caramel-sweet on her tongue. He was more cunning she’d known. Not as easy as any of the other men had been; not so easy as he himself had been, before meeting her. She felt a twinge of pride at having catalyzed that change; at having galvanized him. She had taught him to be distrustful even of those who claimed to love you. It took her fifteen years to be exposed to that undeniable truth ( and that was a lesson she wish she’d have learned far earlier ). 

It complicated her next move. A pause, and Delilah considered. Her fingers flexed long around the cool metal of the bars. That sensation was comforting. It fixed her firmly in reality – made her cognizant of her body, cold itself. Made her aware of the barrier that separated them. Of her own infallibility. Losing this game, the one he had begun between them, held no consequences for her; though Delilah would never allow herself to lose. In all schemes, she reigned victorious. And so as she spoke, she retained her honey-smooth tone, her hesitant, begrudging honesty. A child stubbornly admitting to committing a forbidden act, jaw clenched and heel digging into the dirt. An accused’s testimony being dragged out of them by an adept attorney. It was the only way he’d believe her – the only way he’d perch himself upon the venus fly trap that was Delilah’s intent. 

“Bheil cuimhn ‘agad Eilean Ì? Chaidh na gàrraidhean. Bha fàileadh chrysanthemums anns an adhar.” Do you remember Iona? The gardens. There was the smell of chrysanthemums in the air. Her eyes cast downward, skimming the ground beneath their feet with shyness, with modesty. He knew her tendency to shield her emotions, a fragment of herself that she had retained even while seducing him. An air of mystery she felt was best to ensnare him. “Tha cuimhn 'agam gu bheil. Mi a 'bruadar gu bheil.” I remember that. I dream of that.

Delilah then lifted her gaze, ice-blue eyes meeting his, frigid cold and boundless warmth mingling in their connected stare. “’S e sin mar chuimhneachan airson thu?”

Is that memory hateful for you? 

He hadn’t meant for anything he said to be interpreted as the opening ploy to a game. Had he known she thought of it as such, his heart might have broken further. It was one thing to know that she wasn’t what he had thought, but to think that she had misunderstood him in such a fashion, that she thought he was capable of such a thing - playing a game designed to hurt at a moment like this when the darkness was so far away from spilling from his lips, was quite another. Their past was not a weapon in a moment like this, but instead a thing he longed for.

In his eyes, it was really just a simple thing, expressing thoughts that lingered in the wake of a dream that was indubitably a better reality than the one he currently found himself within. Admittedly the choice had been born too from a desire to see her smile if he held that sort of power, as well as a desire to understand just what went on underneath that polished veneer. She had always been so incredibly polished, even when they had both been human. At the time, he had thought it was just another piece of her charm, even as he was aware that secrets lurked beneath. After all, she had been polished in a fashion no one else he had ever encounter could be, what with their small life and small world. But the time for finding polish charming had long since passed, replaced by a remarkably strong desire to just see the truth. It was what he ultimately ached for. The truth.

Did Delilah even know the meaning of the word?

Her smile lit up his world, made him forget that he was stuck in a dark, cold cell, if even only for a moment. (How pathetic was he that such a thing was true? How pathetic was it that he felt gratified by such a simple thing?) Perhaps it was the sheer recognition of the thing, knowledge that it was the smile he had once been so familiar with and he had sought after, willing to perform whatever was necessary in the quest. It was the smile that had been his downfall and his ruin. But he loved it anyway in the same way he loved her still. It was that smile that made him ache at the agony that followed it.

There was something inherently convincing to him in that stubborn admission, it was an admission in the fashion that reminded him of something his older sisters used to do - speak begrudgingly because they knew it was what he wanted to hear, resenting the fact that the truth would either prove him correct or satisfy him in some fashion. They loved him dearly, there was no debating that, but then, they had liked to be correct too. It would have been enough on its own, if she had left it at that to leave him more convinced than ever that Delilah deserved the little bit of love that he had left for her. It didn’t even cross his mind for a moment that she could have been lying, at least not with the mannerisms of that first comment.

But the last bit of her speech roused him some, made him see something of the reality that was in front of him. As much as he wanted to believe, there was something in it that struck him as disingenuous. Perhaps it was because he truthfully didn’t believe that she could have possibly endured simply on the thought of him, for if she had, surely she would have said something to him before, surely she would have been more kind and surely, surely the regret might have been enough to give her white wings rather than dark, or at least not stay amongst the demons now, for what was Heaven if not forgiving? Unless… another thought crossed his mind, this one he voiced. “A bheil thu fuath dhomh gu bheil mòran?” Do you hate me that much? he asked first, before elaborating further, feeling a twinge of guilt at the selfish nature of the question. “A bheil thu a dh'fhuiling dìreach a chionns thu fuath?” Have you endured simply because you hate?

[demimondc]

It’s just something that I do, that I’ve always done. I see that look in a guy’s eyes, like he wants me. I don’t know. It’s the only thing that makes me feel real.

The Girl in the Book (2015)

[demimondc]

Heartbreaker Bar Melbourne, Australia

[demimondc]

Zip (: Me (:

    The manor had fallen into stillness. In the basement, no stubborn sand-bag swayed on its chains, collided into motion by a forceful, demon-wielded punch. In the halls, not a single footstep echoed; no soul scurried, no watchful eyes peered. In the library, no page-turn sounded, soft as an intimate, erotic utterance. The very world seemed held in suspension, awaiting the beginning, the moment, the night’s event: The humans were to come. The angels would be released from their cells. It was to be an extravagant, devastating affair. Somewhere, young Holly worked her flaxen tresses into a smooth chignon, or perhaps virginal braids, or maybe merely smoothed them to a sheen. Somewhere, Samson reluctantly pressed his sinewed arms into the sleeves of a tuxedo ( maybe thinking of her, maybe not ). Somewhere, Lilith adorned herself modestly, knowing she needed nothing more than her most basic and carnal form in order to attract, entice, capture. 

    In Delilah’s quarters, though, there was only she and one another. Two seductresses of a different kind. Two artists of vastly different medium. Two women pigmented in varying shades of the same hue. Poised at her vanity, Delilah carefully swiped her smile into reality, painting it into existence with a slash of her wrist. Rowan – the crimson horse, the dame who chose to kill rather than be killed for, War herself – danced just across from her, moving at once with brutal precision and playful abandon. A thing at once liquid, and flinty like a blade’s edge. Her words jolted Delilah from her reverie; tore her forcefully from waking daydreams, idle fantastical thoughts. They dripped like honey, viscous and richly sweet.

    And all she said, with voice nothing more than a murmur: 

    “Could you?” 

    Delilah could not help but be entranced. Contained in her was all the power she’d longed for since she was a girl; all the gall and ferocity she’d lacked. All the graceful, feminine dynamism. She was woman in its purest, most unforgivingly true form. It was shocking to look at. It was frightening. It often caused Delilah’s breath to hitch in her throat, struggling to climb its way up the cavern and enter her lungs, as if she drew the very oxygen from the air with her mere presence. Everything had a way of angling toward her, as if emanating from the fire of her tresses. Like the Earth spun around her axis.  

    And so when she turned to Delilah, a smile lilting her stained lips, an innocent inquiry on them ( oh, but nothing sounded innocent from her mouth ), the woman in red could only comply. Lift herself from her settee. Fix her grip upon the silver zipper. Straighten the metal-toothed pathway. Pull. 

    The demon’s wings exploded from her exposed back in an inky conflagration, like plumes of smoke trembling under Delilah’s strokes. Her hands trailed the material of the fabric, roaming under the guise of smoothing. There was scarcely a roll or rumple to be found, and yet her fingers touches with hunger, light as a feather upon the opposite woman. Delilah had a ghostly way about her, and her touch was, thus, utterly ghoulish. Breath whispering over brutally colored silk. And then the tickling, warm flitter of flesh on flesh as she surreptitiously brushed Rowan’s bare shoulder. 

    As slowly as it had begun, its conclusion was abrupt – she stepped away with a single press of her heel, leaning back to appraise. 

   She was gunpowder and a knife’s lash. She was the acidic stench of blood mingling with the aroma of dewy belladonnas. She was everything, all at once, in full, dazzling color.

    “You look like a dagger,” she breathed, working her tone into nonchalance. Tilting her head, elbow cocked from her hip. The smile that spread her lips was undisguisedly un-innocent. A transparent acknowledgment of their irresistible gravity, where Delilah was usually given to playing coy. “Truly one of the utmost wonders of the world.” 

[demimondc]

Offer Me

LEAVE A “OFFER ME” IN MY ASK, AND I’LL WRITE A DRABBLE ABOUT MY CHARACTER GIVING YOURS A GIFT.

Venice, Italy. The late 1500s. She could remember it all, as she could remember everything. The perils of a memory that relied heavily on the visual; that snapshotted moments and kept them indelibly impressed upon the mind, until they began to weigh. Until her back ached from carrying all of it. Nothing was lost. She could remember the buildings, stretching high in their charm and imperfection. She’d fancied it, and had almost cared for it enough to want to stay. Ultimately, the man was the least of what she remembered. A man she’d destroyed. Rather, it was how he had treasured his copy of a particular book that she could not forget. She had meant to steal it from him – she wanted that particular token, that memory – but had been run out of the city before she could. His men looking for her, spewing accusations she’d heard too many times. Seductress. Witch. Whore. Of all the words, she’d encountered those three most frequently. Mankind did have quite a limited vocabulary. 

It had nearly fallen into her possession; an edition similar to the one the man’d had, sitting upon his luxe mantle, comparatively primitive and simple. Set in black and white, some pages stamped askew. The man who’d made it had been the first, even before the more widely circulated copy – Delilah knew things of movable type, of bookmaking, of the artistry of it. The first edition translated into Italian. A name not many individuals knew, though in Italy he surely loomed large: Nicolò Malerbi. She could not say why she wanted it, other than the ease with which she could get it. The man’s own name had departed her long ago, and yet she remembered that book. The reverence with which he regarded it. The way he had run the pads of his fingers over the edges, as if any sort of certain grip would damage it beyond repair. Corrupt its nature. He’d never let her touch it. Once, she believed it would have scalded; but there she stood, holding it within her grasp. Poised in front of Abel’s cell, her heart inexplicably quick-paced. It was all hers. A joke she would have laughed at, had Rowan or Salome ever glimpsed it. A thing she could not have explained, if Gale were to have found it. The pages were hers. The print on the back, signifying its authenticity. The detailing along the cover, impossibly dark ink wound into filigree, making the whole thing appear wrapped in otherworldly vines. 

Within, words that he could understand – a language she had once wrapped about her tongue, fixed into the muscling of her jaw, whispered in moments of ecstasy and clipped in the turn of deceit. It was not her language to own, and so the book had always felt far from her. Its words all but nonsensical, even though they read perfectly in the cavernous darkness of her mind. It was nothing as simple as the divide between Italian and English and French that separated her from its allure; the language of the Lord, as saccharine and useless as Delilah dismissed it as being, was simply incomprehensible to her. It meant nothing, even though the words married in phrases and birthed sentences lovely in syntax. She could never grasp its larger purpose – get lost in its fantastical appeal. 

She might not be able to, but he could. 

“I acquired this years ago,” she said simply, eyes downcast. Voice entirely composed, lax. As if gifting something to a prisoner so casually was in the realm of acceptable behavior. “Right after the war, in fact. Funny how instability allows for opportunistic hands to take what they want.” 

Delilah ran her palm lightly over the set of the cover, the embossing of the binding. It was a luxuriating, longing touch; a parting travel of her hand along the raw edge of the vellum, a single glance at the print on the title page.��

It was not a Gutenberg, but it was beautiful. 

“You should have it. It’s taking up precious shelf space.” 

[demimondc]

Drabble Me

Leave a “Amuse Me” in my ask, and I will write a funny drabble about my character trying to cheer your up.

Leave a “Break Me” in my ask, and I will write an angsty drabble about our characters.

Leave a “Call Me” in my ask, and I will write a drabble about my character asking for yours [be it at the brink of death/in a battlefield/knocking on the front door wounded, feel free to specify.]

Leave a “Drink Me” in my ask, and I will write a drabble about my character taking shots with yours.

Leave a “Enamor Me” in my ask, and I will write a fluffy drabble about my character trying to woo yours [be it out of the blue/Valentines Day,feel free to specify.]

Leave a “Fight Me” in my ask, and I will write a drabble out my character fighting with/or against yours.

Leave a “Get Me” in my ask, and I will write a drabble about my character saving yours.

Leave a “Haunt Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character watching over yours[as a ghost, watching from a distance, or otherwise, feel free to specify.]

Leave a “Invite Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character asking your character to

Leave a “Join Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character giving your character an offer [be it a proposal for an alliance, asking them to join them in an activity (you can get dirty if you want), feel free to specify.]

Leave a “Kill Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character killing yours.

Leave a “Love Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a fluffy drabble about our characters.

Leave a “Mourn Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character mourning your character’s death.

Leave a “Nurse Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character healing yours.

Leave a “Offer Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character giving yours a gift.

Leave a “Paint Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character drawing a picture of yours [like one of your french girls~ be it painting them or drawing them, maybe offering a picture of them as a gift, feel free to specify.]

Leave a “Quite Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character trying to calm yours down [be it from crying, from lashing out, feel free to specify.]

Leave a “Remember Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character trying to get yours to remember them [be it from an accident, meeting them after years apart, feel free to specify.]

Leave a “Shag Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a dirty drabble about our characters.

Leave a “Tell Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character confessing something to yours [be it a love confession, a secret, feel free to specify.]

Leave a “Unbind Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about your character freeing mine, or the other way around, or something among the lines [be it freeing them from jail, from handcuffs, from a trap, from a curse, feel free to specify.]

Leave a “Value Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character telling yours how they feel about them.

Leave a “Wed Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about our character under the subject of wedlock [be it my character proposing to yours, or marrying yours, feel free to specify.]

Leave a “X Me” in my ask, and I will write whatever it is that you wish, [specify.]

Leave an “Yahoo Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about our characters celebrating something [feel free to specify.]

Leave an “Zip Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about your character dressing mine, or the other way around [this can also be used for shutting them up as well, but feel free to specify.]

[demimondc]

[demimondc]

They were frozen there, two fixed statutes; her hand upon his cheek, and his hands clutched around her throat. A display of explicit affection, and one of explicit violence. A touch in tenderness, and one in hatred. They were two individuals always in flux, constantly shifting between two diametrically opposed positions, two emotions separated by vast caverns, yet somehow only a breath away. Their places could have easily been reversed; instead her fingers -- sharp-tipped, nails the black-red of dried blood -- upon his neck, inching tighter and tighter like a constricting snake. Him touching her as he once had, as if she were the only being who existed on the planet. The only one he saw. The only woman he would ever need.

                            ( She is somewhere inside of you. ) 

A statement she wanted to dismiss as pure fiction -- as his naive, wishful thinking. A man lusting after a love who had never existed, a being whom she had crafted. It was true, she had created that woman; but Delilah, ever the skilled actress, lived and breathed her characters. Even after they had long exceeded their usefulness, long after their voices and their words and their mannerisms had grown stale from stagnation, she felt them. Dozens of masks mounted upon hooks, lining her bedroom walls. There was his Delilah, somewhere amongst the sea of them, just as there was Diane, and Donna, and Dahlia, and even Dauphine. The woman she had created after her mother’s likeness, an imagination of what the woman could have been had she survived Delilah’s violent creation. Delilah had brought tragedy into the world from the moment of her birth; her destruction had only continued, her destiny to demolish rather than erect. Each one of her porcelain facades was also a gravestone, a souvenir in memoriam. 

She stifled a cackle, roaring low beneath his palms. His Delilah was a monster, just as the woman who stood before him. They were all monsters, merely dressed up in guises of purity and loveliness and warmth. They were venus fly-traps adorned with waxy petals in vibrant pinks and intoxicating reds. They were succubi, each and every one. 

She had never been good. Within her, there was no potential for kindness. What kind of creature ravaged her own mother from within? What kind of beast was the destroyer of the being who gave her life? 

She might have fooled him, once. Might have had him believing that her embraces were not merely blade-lashes in disguise. Might have concealed beneath her diamond smile the fangs fixed in her jaw. She might have done all that, had him rested neatly in the palm of her hand -- but she had never been his Delilah. His Delilah was a simplification, a figure rendered in two dimensions. In all her three, she was messy -- too messy to be loved. Too fragmented and contradictory for anything so absolute. This she told herself as he gripped her tighter, gaze boring into her own. She repeated it, her prayer, her mantra, her requiem hymn. 

No, Delilah could not be good. But he -- the man before her, irises ignited by hatred -- oh, how bad he could be.

                            Corruption was easier than purification.

“You cling to the delusion of goodness within,” she wheezed out, voice merely a hiss at the back of her throat. “And I believe wholeheartedly in the wicked.” See how I’ve drawn it out of you?

The small channel of breath Delilah had was extinguished with another punctuating compression, until her gasps sputtered and struggled and still were empty. The air would not come. The world about her was cast in blinding white, fraying at the edges like age-worn textile. Washed out by a flashbulb. Painted into pastel by a gentle, adept hand. One like either of those at her throat -- and yet they squeezed, strangled, pressing upon the column with force meant to kill. He had seen. He had finally seen. Delilah herself had escorted him, with only her tongue and her heeled feet, into revelation. She felt the resolution in the grip of his fingers, each one blindingly hot against her skin -- she could count them, poised as they were upon her neck. Brands upon her flesh, already smarting. Above that, the satisfying horror of fading life. Alastair had performed the same move upon her many times, smothering her until an inch of death before easing up. Each time, she urged him to drive further. Until the hands beneath her prickled with lack of oxygen. Until the world erupted into sparks, like a final, lovely conflagration. Death delivered by Samson’s hands seemed sweet, a fantasy, in comparison to her first. A bookend to a tale that she could not resist. A climactic conclusion fit for a literary classic. It would not come to that, but Delilah was determined for it to come dangerously close. Let him see what he is capable of. She was at once incredibly sad, and unspeakably joyful. The joy won. He can trade his bare back for ink-black wings soon enough. 

While she still felt her limbs beneath her, she was compelled to intensify her earlier demonstration -- he tightened his grip upon her, and she in turn lifted both hands from her sides. Ivory palms pressed flat against his face, encompassing his features in the tenderness of her touch. In her eyes, all the solemnity and pride that was lingering within her. The apology, the steely stubbornness, all battling for control. Then the grin spread her face, devastating as a dagger knifing through flesh. It was dripping with pure, unadulterated, sadistic elation. It was the expression of one who had tackled an obstacle and triumphed. It was the shameless grin of a victor. 

She still smiled, utterly the cat with the canary between her teeth, when movement at the edge of the flat expanse flashed in her periphery. 

He could be grateful for Delilah’s first utterance, that was much was certain. It was a thing his rage could feed off of, a challenge which only served to ignite him further. It was almost as if Delilah thought she was calling his bluff, as if she thought that he could not finish what he had started. But with words such as those, it wasn’t nearly so difficult as she might have thought. It was possible to block out the affection and think only of his rage and the darkness.

However, what followed removed any certainty from him, for her emotion robbed him of the blinding rage and made him feel. It was almost unfair, that she could not just give him what he needed for once. For what more had he wanted than acknowledgement for her and some sign that she wasn’t simply the heartless creature she seemed to be now.

But he just wanted to choke on it. Choke on the rage, choke on the affection that was fighting the rage at every turn. He was a man, surely he was supposed to have better control of his emotions than this. Surely, he ought to be able to take care of business and do what needed doing, regardless of the emotional cost. After all, how many of the farm’s animals that they had once raised had he slaughtered simply because of the necessity of it, affection for the animals be damned? He simply had forced himself to ignore the feelings, close off anything except coldness and just do it for the greater benefit. Why couldn’t he apply the same principles to Delilah? Why was it not so simple, when there was a large part of him that very sincerely wanted to take care of business once and for all? 

Was it not for the larger benefit?

Perhaps not. He held sneaky suspicion that it was might just something that was purely selfish, a desire to find himself freed one way or another. And if he were being truly honest, he was a touch appalled at the idea of committing a sin such as murder. Was it worth it? He wasn’t sure.

But even so as his resolve wavered, he didn’t remove the hand from Delilah’s neck or decrease the pressure in any meaningful fashion.

Instead, his left hand, one that had thus far laid inactive at his side moved into action, spurred on by the placement of her palm upon his cheek. Fingers brushed her cheek for a moment, a gesture of inherent fondness that lingered on for a moment longer than it perhaps ought to have. “You look just the same, smile just same. She is somewhere inside of you, Delilah. I know you could be her if only you would let yourself,” he said words surprisingly gentle for a man who still held a hand upon her throat. 

But still, his own speech roused him some, reminded him of how he had come to be in this position in the very first place, tormented. It was Delilah who had been his ruin, and she was guilty. It wouldn’t be enough for her to be that woman now, not when she had dark wings upon her back. “But instead you’ve become a monster, and what’s worse is that you revel in it,” he said. This pronunciation sounded like a sentence and a verdict, all in one, because it was that. And upon the back of that pronunciation, he did what he had meant to do at the very start - he tightened his grip upon her throat in an effort to cut off her air once and for all. He had never done this before, obviously, and so was uncertain whether he was doing it right. But it hardly mattered, time would tell whether he she could still speak or whether her air supply was well and truly cut off.

[demimondc]

Closed: @alastairofdivinecruelty Date: August 31st Location: Lucifer’s Mansion 

  Delilah had few homes in this world, though many places where she’d made her bed. Her quarters were spare, undecorated, impersonal. Nothing save for the furnishings provided by Lucifer, decadent as they were. One could scarcely distinguish her room from any other guest’s quarters. It was as if a ghoul lived there, ephemeral, barely present. 

  Her presence was instead impressed upon the expansive archive of books. Fingerprints smudged upon their ancient edges, scraps of paper with scrawled notes inserted in their folds, the occasional strand of hair trapped in new adhesive. 

  The library contained her very heart; in the worn spines was the rhythm of its beating, in the vellum and parchment the rushing of her blood. Literature was the most convenient means of escaping reality -- years ago, when she was a girl, it had been the only way for her to leave her own story and inhabit another, to slip into the skin of a character unlike herself. She was fifteen when she decided she was to be the author of her own story; when she discovered that one life was not enough for her. She was sixteen when she met him, and sixteen, still, when she unleashed him upon her father. 

  The conclusion to a story, but not her own. Diane’s was finished, but Delilah’s was only beginning. Delilah was a woman in motion, a woman hungry for new worlds and foreign experiences. Inhaling the perfume of the luxe mahogany room, she paced slowly, trance-like. A lover of new worlds, but still holding nostalgia for the old. All of her loathed the idea of artificial lighting; despised the harshness of the white-glow, disliked how it flattened one’s features into two dimensions. Poised in her hand, instead, was a single erect candle, and all about her she had lit others, cautiously encased in glass.  

  She was holding Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre -- the name Currer Bell penned in place of the woman’s own -- when the door creaked open behind her; a rich, luxurious sound that resounded in the vast quarters. A short glance behind her yielded the information she needed. 

  “’I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will’,” she said richly, eyes once again tracing the inked pages. Her voice swelled with the quotation, tone mocking and droll. A clip and she slammed the book shut. “How oxymoronic.” Delilah paused for a moment after she had finished, exhaling sharply. And then, formally: “Alastair.” 

[demimondc]

★

JOSEPHINE: 

i ( secretly and reluctantly ) like you // i love you // i’m indifferent toward you // you’re one of my best friends // you’re like family // you are family // i dislike you // i hate you // i’m jealous of you // i’m scared of you // i would adopt you // i’m attracted to you // i’d date you // i’d sleep with you // i’d marry you // i’m worried about you // you confuse me // i pretend you’re annoying to MOTIVATE YOU // i respect you // i want your respect // i feel ( strangely ) protective of you // i’d like to cut loose with you // you’re good-looking // i’m suspicious of you // i’m hiding something from you // you’re fun // you’re boring // you’re nice // you’re mean // you’re smart // you’re stupid // i think you’re a better person than me // i think i’m a better person than you // i want to apologize to you // i want an apology from you // i wish i’d never met you // i never want to forget you // i want to get to know you better // i see myself in you ( but i’m OBVIOUSLY the better version ) // I WANT TO TEACH YOU HOW TO BE A DEMON SEDUCTRESS AND INDUCT YOU INTO THE DEMON LADY SQUAD 

[demimondc]

thesaintofsin:

It took Gale only a moment—the span of a single breath—to recognize the presence of the haphazard collection of shadows and sunrays at his side. He knew it was her before his eyes fixed on the familiar lines of her face ( it was one of the few faces around here that frequented his dreams more often than his nightmares ) and before the quiet, barely audible lull of her voice reached his ears. He felt Delilah. He felt Delilah in the way only two souls made of the same stuff could feel each other; in the way the ends of magnets stirred with vibration in response to the nearness of their counterpart. 

With her face still turned in the direction of the landscape of blood and tears, Gale couldn’t quite get a read on her—but that didn’t matter much, did it? Gale didn’t need interpretations of body language or expressions or facial tics to decode the messy web that was Delilah’s mind ( and even if he did, he knew she would afford him no expressive tells of revelation, for her eyes and nose and lips and chin and cheeks were carved of stone so impenetrable that not even Michelangelo himself would’ve been able to chisel the mask away to reveal the beauty beneath ). No, no—Gale needed no help in unknotting Delilah’s tangled thoughts, for he’d been unknotting similar thoughts in his own head for nearly a century now. Delilah, of course, having far more experience in the art of coding oneself, of making oneself unsolvable and unreadable, wore masks far better than Gale did, and while he suspected that more than one bystander could discern his discomfort, he couldn’t imagine that anyone but himself would be able to accuse Delilah of the same. 

When she did turn to him, he found himself pinned in place, rendered incapable of both speech and action. There was a moment—a quick, fleeting moment, one that would have been imperceptible to someone unused to watching her—in which that mask of stone cracked, revealing truth and torment—torment that was so great it eclipsed his own. He didn’t know if this crack was intentional or not, but he felt inexplicably blessed to have been gifted with the sparse treasure of an unmasked Delilah. Gale wished he could thank her for this small gift, wished he could do something to smother the flames of anguish that scorched her eyes—but he didn’t know how to do that. He was a giver of pain, yes; a keeper of pain, sure; but a taker of pain? Not in this lifetime. Sometimes, as her eyes seemed to tell him, there were simply no words. Action, Gale supposed as he straightened to his full height and moved to Delilah’s side, was a fair substitute for words. He unfolded wings of onyx that had burdened his back since the day he’d joined the ranks of the damned and spread them outward, effectively drawing a curtain between the two demons and the carnage at the whipping post. It was a strange thing to do, really, and Gale wasn’t entirely sure why he did it. He knew Delilah had more than once wrought the kind of destruction that made Abel’s lashings look like a firm pat on the back, and the thought of blinding this legendary creature of ruin to spare her from the spectacle of a brief whipping was, in theory, rather ridiculous. But he did it anyway. Maybe he did it for himself, so that he would no longer have to watch; maybe he did it so that he and Delilah could speak privately; maybe he did it because Delilah, with her reputation as a legendary creature of ruin, could not. 

He wondered at her inner turmoil—wondered why, exactly, this tormented her so. Gale’s softness was easy enough to figure out ( Petra, humanity, moral conflict—the end ); but Delilah’s soft edges ( if you could even call them that ) were much more difficult a puzzle to solve. It was obvious ( to Gale, at least ) that Abel’s punishment had roused something—something almost human—in Delilah—but why? Was it because she favored Abel as Gale did? Was it because the lashings reminded her of some similar torture she’d once suffered as Gale was reminded of his own whippings at the hands of the Americans? Was it a matter of morality? Perhaps it was none of those things. Perhaps it was something else… “It could’ve just as easily been him tied to that post instead of Abel, you know,” he mused idly, eyes focused on the fence beyond the yard. Him. Samson. Gale didn’t bother clarifying, for Delilah would know full well exactly who the him was. “What would you have done then, Delilah?” he asked, his gaze finally returning to a sea of unreadable icy blue. It was a bold question—maybe even a stupid one. But his words were not poisoned by malice or manipulation; they were weighed down only by sincerity and curiosity. Delilah was the only other demon who appeared infected ( at least to some degree ) by the plague of humanity, and so rarely did Gale get to speak with someone who understood this terrible plague that he often found himself invasively picking Delilah’s brain, hungry for more revelation and more truth ( if only in hopes that she would reveal a truth that would make him feel less alone in his humanity—less isolated ). 

Delilah started as darkness shrouded them in its protective hold, the scene before them eclipsed entirely. There had been a moment -- fleeting, infinitesimal enough that one lesser than she could have dismissed it as illusion  -- where she was sure she felt something like tenderness transpire between them. It was hanging in the air, as dense as smog. A curious feeling, and one made tangible as he drew his wings around the both of them. A shield.  She could have smiled at that, if not for the thoughts that devoured her from within. Suddenly, with the dangerous precision acquired only by one who knew someone’s soul, Gale made manifest those exact thoughts. 

( What would you have done then? )

A question that, from anyone else, would have been met with only venom. A blade-sharp tongue, a cutting wit. They would have endured only that, her lethal weapon disguised. A knife behind her back. Delilah’s destruction would be forthcoming; it would take days, perhaps even weeks, for the reality of her work to impact them. Then, they would have been surreptitiously and deftly disemboweled, whether in actuality or in the metaphoric sense ( Delilah certainly knew enough individuals eager for such a job ). But it was him, perhaps the only other demon who understood her plight, and echoed it. One whose strength and honesty she respected, and so she deemed worthy of her own. Her gaze fixed upon Gale with unforgiving focus, stare unwavering. She needn’t dodge his eyes, compose herself in sideways glances in order to maintain her careful facade. They were shielded, and so momentarily it fell from her face, revealing only the wide, translucent blue of her eyes. The same eyes that had seduced so many somehow appeared like that of a babe -- unknowing, but curious. In their crystalline waters was all her weariness laid bare.  She need not ask Gale what he would do if someone he cared for was mounted upon it: she knew his loss. And, as for Rowan -- she was positioned to yield the whip rather than receive its lashes. 

“Why should he be any different?” she intoned, voice almost lost in the rustle of wind. It was a question in earnest, an agonized plea for some sort of explanation. Tone riddled with vulnerability, a pureness that was not Delilah’s custom. Almost fawn-like naïveté; a child begging for true clarification of a concept they could not grasp. He shouldn’t, this she knew -- and yet he was. What would Delilah have done? 

She had once possessed the ability to halt his death, and yet had done nothing. In fact had led him directly to the slaughter. Her feigned indifference ( that she maintained was real ) had been his undoing. If he were on the post, would she attempt to atone for such a thing, to set it right? Unlikely. The truth of who she was had taken years for her to grasp. Accepting one’s own cowardice, and then beginning the much simpler process of fabricating cowardice into strength, was quite a lengthy task. And so she told him, voice plain, unguarded: 

“I would have stood here with you, as I’m doing now. In action, it would be no different.” And within? That insuppressible part of her would be shrieking; the Delilah whom he had loved, the Delilah who had even loved him. The fictitious character Delilah carried with her, back threatening to give beneath the weight, each day of her endless existence.

[demimondc]

★

GALE:

i like you // i ( could ) love you ( in a platonic way) // i’m indifferent toward you // you’re one of my best friends // you’re like family // you are family // i dislike you // i hate you // i’m jealous of you // i’m scared of you // i would adopt you // i’m attracted to you // i’d date you // i’d sleep with you // i’d marry you // i’m worried about you // you confuse me // you’re annoying // i respect you // i want your respect // i feel protective of you // i’d like to cut loose with you // you’re good-looking // i’m suspicious of you // i’m hiding something from you // you’re fun // you’re boring // you’re nice // you’re mean // you’re smart // you’re stupid // i think you’re a better person than me // i think i’m a better person than you // i want to apologize to you // i want an apology from you // i wish i’d never met you // i never want to forget you // i want to get to know you better

[demimondc]

★

SAMSON:

i like you // i ( probably did ) love you, and probably could again // i’m indifferent toward you // you’re one of my best friends // you’re like family // you are family // i dislike you // i hate you // i’m jealous of you // i’m scared of you // i would adopt you // i’m attracted to you // i’d date you // i’d sleep with you // i’d marry you // i’m worried about you // you confuse me // you’re annoying // i respect you // i want your respect // i feel protective of you // i’d like to cut loose with you // you’re good-looking // i’m suspicious of you // i’m hiding something from you // you’re fun // you’re boring // you’re nice // you’re mean // you’re smart // you’re stupid // i think you’re a better person than me // i think i’m a better person than you // i want to apologize to you // i want an apology from you // i wish i’d never met you // i never want to forget you // i want to get to know you better

[demimondc]

★

CAIN:

i like you // i love you // i’m indifferent toward you // you’re one of my best friends // you’re like family // you are family // i dislike you // i hate you // i’m jealous of you // i’m scared of you // i would adopt you // i’m attracted to you // i’d date you // i’d sleep with you // i’d marry you // i’m worried about you // you confuse me // you’re annoying // i respect you // i want your respect // i feel protective of you // i’d like to cut loose with you // you’re good-looking // i’m suspicious of you // i’m hiding something from you // you’re fun // you’re boring // you’re nice // you’re mean // you’re smart // you’re stupid // i think you’re a better person than me // i think i’m a better person than you // i want to apologize to you // i want an apology from you // i wish i’d never met you // i never want to forget you // i want to get to know you better