#⥂ a study of aphrodite ; thea delacroix. ╱ threads.

[maggotmouth]

        “they say if you get hungry enough, you start eating your own HEART.” thea mutters, bleary-eyed, bed-headed, crumpled like a flightless bird. the bed’s a familiar territory, light peaking through the blinds, hair scattered about her head in a dusky blonde halo. still in that space between sleeping and waking, she comes to when her knee knocks against the body of another, a low grunt on her lips, a thrumming bruise blossoming on her shin. remnants of bacchanal intoxication, of the hedonism of half-gods, linger in her bloodstream, still – white lines and half-frantic fever. 

       and arlo, sun glinting off the edges of his features ( it must be almost noon ) as thea reaches her hand up to tousle his hair, a smile stitching itself onto her lips. “maybe i’ll eat your heart, too.” it feels pointed, though not enough to question it. they’re more than friends but less than lovers. something that strays in the periphery of both, but isn’t quite family either. she’ll never know what they are other than in a scattering of images, the two of them curled around books, his head in her lap and her hands in his hair, a promise to keep him safe. 

       “wait, don’t move...” she starts, when it feels like he might, her side of the bed sunken in like a snake where she’s slept curled onto her side. the t-shirt she wears could be caspian’s or arlo’s but she’s slept in it so often that it smells like her perfume. idly, her hand wraps a strand of his hair around her thumb. “please don’t move just yet. let’s just... let’s just lie here a little longer.” the sound of his breathing could lull her to sleep again if she let it. instead, she simply gazes with that starry eyed smile she saves for him and trails her toes over his feet.    @superpcsitions

[maggotmouth]

august !

IT’S THE SAME SCENE every night, but it never seems to bore him. 

cigarettes and desperation smell surprisingly similar, and it only reminds him that his last pack had been finished off just an hour prior. for a house full of smokers, however, everyone’s pockets seem to be barren. either that or kaos locals were cheap.

alcohol soaked hues and steps influenced by the very same coursing through his veins lead him straight towards the same face he had encountered at the beginning of his arrival, and the reason for his empty pack, really. the stress of keeping up with logic as senseless as hers tended to have him reaching for them more often than not.

“you got a bogie?” he still asks once he reaches her, alcohol having soothed his tone with her, and at the same time having placed the memory of their earlier disagreement at bay.

@wilderviolets​

           perhaps the reason she likes games so much is because there’s always an element of risk. in the push-pull of uncertainty, thea finds thrill because the reward out weighs the risk but nothing that ever came easy would hold her fickle attention. ( not the way he does ). and their game of cat and mouse --- or rather cat and cat --- is an exquisite one that she could play for hours and hours until the taste of bitterness on her tongue dries up and she’s left simply howling please just touch me, i need to be touched. 

           she won’t say it. because he wants her to. and thea’s never been good at doing what people want. hadn’t the convent --- before she left for the warm embrace of the commune, and the addicts and the stars --- taught her that jesus loved the sinners most of all? she didn’t believe in jesus but she did believe in gods and in this game they played the two of them became almost godlike. “you got a bogie?” thea mimicks in his drawling new york accent, a roll of her eyes because isn’t that much clear in the roll-up that sits between her fingers. “maybe. maybe not. depends who’s asking.” the words are brittle on her tongue, her mouth curling into a smile as she reaches beneath the lace of her bra and pulls out another cigarette, slipping it into her mouth to light it, and then sliding it between august’s lips. for a second, her thumb lingers on his mouth, roaming along that lower lip and remembering the way it had fit against hers. 

          but a second is all, and then it’s gone. she’s back to the usual coldness she reserves only for him, satan in a slip dress and an ironically worn rosary. “you hooking up with anyone here tonight?” it’s asked with the half-hearted disinterest she only wishes she could actually feel for him, hand grazing her arm to adjust the strap that had fallen loose from her shoulder.

[maggotmouth]

@eleutherixs

          she walks the halls like a fallen angel, a purposefulness in her airy stride, slowed by the drunken weight of her limbs. her hair is wet ; at some point, she’s fallen into the sea, and returned to the club with the smell of ocean breeze on her hair, hungry for the feeling of a body pressed against her own. it won’t be arlo. it won’t be florian either. for someone who seems to harness love in the flicker of her smile, she’s wound up trapped insufferably in love --- or out of it --- with two people who have eyes only for each other. but then again, she’s never really loved arlo. he’s just a way for her to wile away the small hours, playing games with love and lust.

           so it seems somehow inevitable that she ends up seeking out sihyun, a fixed point in a sea that’s always changing. an anchor. she’s blissfully aware of him edging into her periphery, yet the quality of her movements is still airy, almost removed from herself, tucking her elbows up onto the bar as she swigs from her glass of malbec. for a moment she’s silent – a rarity for thea, so often bursting with excitement to tell a story – and then her hand sinks into her bra to tug out a baggie, body slinking closer to his. “y'want an eccy? i’ve got two left. no telling!” she plucks out a pill the size of her smallest thumbnail and pushes it onto his tongue. her finger lingers, roaming around his mouth, and pressing the pill to crunch against his tongue beneath her fingertip. “don’t waste any,” is muttered in almost childlike vitality, removing the digit from his mouth to strike it against her own tongue, licking up the excess. angelic, yet sickening – thea somehow existed in both polarities, mouth drifting to trail against the bones of his nose as she pulled his fingers into her mouth, eyes on his as her lips popped to pull against the skin. touch me was said in the scream of her eyes, blown pupils, ecstasy in her veins. want me was sung by the flit of her clothes in the wind, white slip-dress half-muddied, her angel wings tatty with wear. “are you here with anyone tonight?”   

[maggotmouth]

APHRODITE & ARES — no choir.

        hllo!! this is a thread moosh ( @svlhouette ) n i started (bt never finished) for the gods event between aphrodite & ares. there’s only 4 replies / sections but i’ve put it below a read more bc i dont wanna clog the dash up! i didnt know wht to call it so i called it no choir, felt apt. listen to it if u like. its a song abt stillness n the temporary nature of love n ppl never remembering ur love story or smthn.

APHRODITE.

       she smells of lavender, warm honey on the tongue, of summer. of the seasons, aphrodite most resembles summer – the warmth, the pristine happiness that seems to spread like a virus under the coppice of a heatwave, the long afternoons that seem endless in youth and so distant when looking back in later years. 

       “tell me what you were like when you were little…” she murmurs, her index finger tracing against the skin of ares' abdomen, bare beneath egyptian cotton, the sweat of both their bodies still ripe in the aftermath of a heated, burning love. neither had spoken for what felt like half an hour, their bodies entwined like rope, tender touches and the lingering feeling of weightlessness. her free hand toys with a stalk of grapes, fingers reaching to press one into his mouth, and her finger lingers against his lips. “what were your dreams, your hopes? who did you want to become?” 

       hands against his chest ripe with the purple juice of suckling grapes from greedy fingertips, she’s swinging her leg over to straddle him, the hot flesh of her thighs against his hips. as she takes him in her arms her chest drops against the hard muscle of his own. her lips find his, not in a kiss, more of a tickle, gliding against the rough skin in a way that makes her quiver, her hips rocking against his stomach, hands trailing over a scar that marks his torso. her beautiful soldier.

      “i wish i’d met you when we were young. that we’d had more time.” 

       because despite the rare weekends when the god with whom she’s vowed to spend her life is gone from olympus, leaving her dutiless, free to roll her passion into the sweet pants of a feral love in their wedding bed with a man who could make her wet with just a look, it’s never enough. there’s always a hunger within her for more time, more love, more ways to unfurl his body into the sweet, tender shudder of ecstasy and memorise the twinge of every muscle, the way his face scrunches like a locked palm as he reaches it, and the way it feels to be the cause of that passion.

       her nose slides along the arch of his own from her position perched above him, knees locking around his waist, her hands travelling to cup around his throat. “do you think you’ll ever run out of hunger? cease to want me? or will it just feed on you until there’s nothing left. nothing but the memory of my kiss.”      

ARES.

      just another taste, and he’s lit to life with a hunger that goes beyond his control, and an addiction that never seizes to dwindle in intensity. he knows not whether the ordered matrimony speaks of his father’s anger towards her, or his hatred towards him — all he knows is that it drives a wedge into the chasm of their relationship, one that had been hanging from a thread in the first place.

       she asks him of his desires, of his youth, and he wishes he could speak words that mirror her essence of lavender, of the heat of july ... but all he’s ever known is the fever of bloodlust and the sea of loneliness he had been dropped into as a child. “more time,” he chooses to repeat, instead of allowing her the answer she searches for, calloused palms coming to press against the soft skin of her thighs and fingertips forming dips in her skin at his grip. oh, how she fits right in his grasp, as if his hands were formed for her and her alone.

      “for you, my love? never.” he speaks the truth, his words grazing over plump lips that had graced him with her taste. she had fallen into his grasp before he had known tenderness, and in a touch, she had managed to melt away decades of grief, of suffering, of not knowing his hands were capable of more than taking lives. and just like how gracefully she had been gifted to him, she had been ripped away by a petty feud. how utterly childish of his father.

     in a swift motion, he comes to roll across the expanse of his back, his grip tightening on her thighs as he effectively repositions the two of them, her back now pressed against the surface below and his hands now sinking into it. scarred hands gingerly push back locks cascading down her shoulder, revealing otherwise flawless skin marred by marks of his love. “and you? do you yearn for me while sleeping besides him every night? have you missed my touch against your skin?” dipping his head below, he comes to press his lips against the column of her neck, chaste kisses decorating her skin before he continues, “or do you call me here out of loneliness?”

APHRODITE.

         they've learned to understand each other in half-translated languages, touch -- once so foreign to him unless in the carnage of war -- slowly becoming a tongue he can recognise, reciprocate, pluck apart the vowels of and mimic in his own voice. still there are secrets that stretch further than the valleys of olympus ever could, there are silences they cannot ignore, and their are childhoods and histories too bloodsoaked for him to unearth, even for her. "we don't have to talk about it," aphrodite utters, a kiss pressed against the softness of his lips, and this is what it means to be a part-time lover. it comes only with the understanding that despite their heavenly bodies and the tales that the mortals will sing of them, theirs will be a story riddled with strife. perhaps that's the saddest kind of tragedy -- when two people who love each other can't be together -- but tragedies have always been her favourite kinds of tales. they breed the best lovers.

         he tells her that he'll never cease to want her, though she's seem the flame of zeus' love flicker and die, seen the ways he seeks out other women to quench his boredom, and she finds herself idly wondering if ares will be the same when she is not so new or exciting and there are younger nymphs whose love puts less at stake than the kingdoms their love could unmake.

        "never is an awfully long time, fair ares," her breath escapes in a laugh, the roll of their skin made paramount as he places himself above her. there's always a push and pull when it comes to love and lust, so often the same thing when she's buried in his arms, the giving and taking of power like a rush to lovers that time can't compete with. "loneliness..." aphrodite utters, her lips twisting into a gasp as he meets her neck with his mouth. she hungers for the cut of his teeth. "you're just a body, at the end of the day... i'm sure a mortal could sate me as easily." she's toying with him like a cat does string, though it'll only make it more rewarding. games are a common tongue between them, hips rolled like they're dice in a constant battle of who'll crack first. "maybe moreso. there's something exhilarating about the futility of it. from dust they come and to dust they shall return. whereas you'll be here forever... less poignant." can he smell the lies on her teeth? a mortal could never match him. a god never could. the sun itself is no match for the heat he makes her feel.

ARES.

       just a body. her words bite, seemingly with teeth sharp enough to pierce skin, but he’s become accustomed to such harmless words masquerading as sharp edged glass, meant to hurt him, meant to push him away. a slight curve of his lips take her words deep into his chest, turn them around, examine them and mull them over, before they’re spit out and labeled as unsatisfactory. “a mere mortal? then why not call upon one in your times of loneliness? why take the risk in angering zeus with our secret affairs when another could sate you just as well?” or perhaps that was exactly the reason why — out of spite for the one who had entrapped her in such a situation ... but then there are glances spared towards one another on days lacking such intimacy, when diplomacy is the setting and their love has no place to settle, and he swears she feels a love for him identical to the one that burns so brightly for her.

      a kiss, one with much more strength parts his lips and attaches itself to her neck, drawn out by her gasp. the soft noises that slip past her wine tainted petals leave him wanting more, an unfortunate addiction he cannot seem to curb, despite the warnings that have been laid upon his neck by his father. did the risk push him further into her arms? or was it that while he overlooked the words lacking in what he truly desired to hear, there was a deep fear that she spoke the truth, and there was an urgency to change her mind?     

       he’s a fool, and he knows this. the mortals sing of it, though they do not know the depth of it, not when it comes to her. even through words that hold none of the feelings he desires, even kept hidden in the shadows, he’s still fully and wholly hers. tainted hands intertwined deeper within her locks, fingertips grazing against the width of them as they fall through like silk. “tell me. why do you return to me?”

[maggotmouth]

           it arrives in a black velvet box, the hilt of it cushioned on silk. the first of her thoughts is that it looks --- strikingly so ; elegantly so --- like the sword of godric gryffindor, only the size and shape of a letter-opener. the dagger is decorative, olivier carved across the silver hilt, which -- on reflection -- seems a tad excessive, though the pawnbroker said it would add a personal touch. she need not know the gift --- lovingly selected --- was ransacked by burglars from the bureau of a dead woman still warm in her sheets. 

           christmas is about giving --- but what can she possibly give to the woman who has everything? so the jewel-encrusted knife, while her method of coming upon it is unfavourable, is tasteful, elegant, refined in all the ways olivier is though cutting, too. and that’s why she won’t find out it’s not from a parisian jewellers, but rather an athenian cash converters.

           now that it’s sitting on her coffee table, she’s not even sure olivier will like it. still --- a gift’s a gift. if nothing else, she can leave it on her mantlepiece to scare away the thieves. giftwrapped, she makes her way over to olivier’s the ribbon-trimmed package in one hand and a bottle of merlot in the other. “knock, knock,” is called, for her hands are too full to rap her knuckles on the door, beret pulled down tight over her ears. “express delivery from the north pole for madame olivier kang?” @ofmannequins​

[maggotmouth]

           a rare night off from the bar, and somehow thea still winds up there, the promise of a good night weighing heavy in her stomach as the feeling of tempest’s hand clasped in hers. red wine. white lines. tempest’s borrowed cowboy boots. a red dress that clung to her skin like she’d been stitched into it. and then caspian, right when she wanted him least, her thighs pressed against a strangers hips under the glow of blacklight skin. there’s a sour taste in her mouth, like having eaten a spoiled fruit. she feels outside of her body, drifting somewhere that’s both absent from the club and outside of her own head, only the weight of tempest’s hand on her back keeping her rooted. “it’s not your fault,” she says ( for what feels like the third time ) and takes another hit from a filched cigarette, the smoke spilling in a thin plume from her lips, smudged crimson marring her mouth from a lover’s kiss. while blind dates were usually thea’s vetted interest, she’d been feeling flatter, deflated, and so tempest had taken matters into her own hands. a group date on tinder, with a guy name luke and some white-collar he knew. your type, tempest had said. broody and good with his hands. “you didn’t know. how could you? it was months ago. when i was staying in london.” tapping ash into the sea, thea leaned out over the rail, the thrum of electronica still humming from the club behind them. “come on. let’s go somewhere else. our night’s not going to be ruined by an asshole like caspian.” righting herself from the piers railing, thea forced a smile, and reached out to curl her hands through the other’s hair. “and we can still have a date night without your tinder guy. he looked like five minutes of missionary, anyway.”     @queen-tempest​

[maggotmouth]

            it had been tempest’s idea.  usually, the notion of a night on the town and a strangers body in your bed was thea’s joie de vivre, but after running headlong into a former lover on black pebble beach, she felt winded, deflated, body lying flat against the throw pillows. it’ll be fun, tempest had promised, rifling through a closet in search of the outfit that sung to her soul. confined to the bed, thea had merely groaned in response, but somehow three hours later she found herself glitter gritted and wrapped in red silk on the dancefloor of eleutherios, her hips pressed flush against a strangers waist.

           funny. it isn’t until she’s swaying in another man’s arms that she even spots him. wouldn’t have at all, if not for the hand trailing up her thigh, sliding beneath her dress and causing her eyes to flash open with a gasp to find him. a stare that feels like a knife, and suddenly he’s the only thing she can see, her body stiff as a bolt, frozen stiff at the sight of him. “fuck. fuck, no i’m sorry-- i don’t---” her tongue tripped over her words as she pulled a wayward hand from her underwear, breath short --- but not because of the dark-haired athlete in the hawaiian shirt. “actually, can you leave? feel a bit sick. did you see where my friend went, she’s short, brunette, kinda---” her question never concludes, for hawaiian shirt’s gone, leaving her stranded beneath the glow of neon lights, dress crumpled. “caspian...” she starts, with the hoarseness that’s seemed to follow her ever since they split, eyes bright and willing their stare not to falter. her lip curls. still, she pushes on, closing the distance between them, her fingers catching his arm before he can run from her. not this time. “caspian, what the fuck are you doing here?”   @hephaespian​