#( montjoy: v: isn't bite also touch? )

[dullahaunt]

@fatewoven ♥’d for a starter

Beyond the window, the sky glows red. Loudspeakers play a song and his nose starts bleeding.

Iara has stepped inside. He can recognize her by the sound of her footsteps. Charlie, even a day into withdrawal, his eyes glassy and sweat pooled within the dips of his collarbones, can discern every person who has stepped through the barrier of his room, his fingertips trembling, his nerve-endings sparking, hot, then on fire. A strangled pain stirs in his chest, but never leaves as sound. He swallows hard.

"Everything is loud,” he says, strained, as she comes near. His body quakes hard. His sheets are damp. “I hear them — in my sleep. They’ve followed me there. They come closer. And I’ve locked the door. And sometimes the daylight comes, and they’ve gone” —a sound deep in his throat, then gone— “but mostly,” he says, “it doesn’t.” 

Charlie turns to her, red-eyed and face steady. “Where is it?”

[dullahaunt]

@bellecosebabe

Water licks the walls of the tub. Humid warm, the air in his lungs. Charlie pads barefooted down the tiles, the candles swaying in his wake, and he climbs inside across from her, silent and undisturbed.

Something warbles outside: a record in another room. Charlie Montjoy has lucid eyes, the water lapping his naked skin, and possessed by the lateness of the hour, the pair of them wet and warm and unknowable, he reaches to a nearby table and lights a cigarette.

The bath is murky soapy. It swirls in the space between them, and a moment crawls.

"A dream a night. And you're never in it." The water rolls silently. There isn't heartbreak in his voice, the words slow, and the candles wave in his eyes. "Then I wake, find the empty space you have left me, and I think... 'Am I still dreaming.'"

[dullahaunt]

@sevient asked: ‘  you  have  never  been  like  the  others,  and  you  never  will  be.  ’ from orion  the language of thorns sentence starters (accepting)

The thing speaks. Machinery whirs. Orion, built from metal and wires, hums quietly, and outside, through the pitch black sky, bleeding and glowing, the moon oozes violent red, spilling out into the streets, the alleyways, his windows. A bellow echoes through the night. Something burns alive.

Orion is here. So is a circle, goetic and surrounded inch by inch in waving candles. Montjoy sits in a chair, his head pressed to the back, and drinks a glass.

"They wouldn't want to be Charlie Montjoy." The words creep onto the floor, low and plodding. His eyes are cloudy. "They wouldn't like what Charlie Montjoy sees."

[dullahaunt]

@fatewoven asked:  ‘  bad  fates  do  not  always  follow  those  that  deserve  them.  ’ / iara and charlie the language of thorns sentence starters (accepting)

Charlie's chair sighs. The end of his cigarette sheds over the rug, a book spread open across his lap. Tonight, he has begun rereading a poem. It is well-remembered. One he loves. The spine, wrinkled. The pages, yellowed. He blankets a hand over the lines, the ink slightly worn from the times he has touched them.

The cold earth slept below. It watches over him, long-limbed and warped. Her shadow bends over the wall, and it is no longer human.

"You have your hands," he tells, steadily. "And you have your teeth." Smoke curls out from his mouth, and he thumbs a line over his book. "If Fate doesn't have him --- he's yours to have."

[dullahaunt]

@devilscharity ♥’d for a starter

"'And once we are forgiven... and our innocence restored, she will return, at last, in winter’s first thaw.'”

Dust sleeps over the pews. The church moans and settles, a cold wind hushing against the windows, and Charlie sits alone where only the light of the candles can reach him, the wax melting slowly, sticky and silent. There, it lingers in the dark. Charlie succumbs to memories. 

Twenty years ago, a young pastor, sandy-haired and standing where it is now, stepped behind the pulpit. Now, never again has he seen the same pastor. He has not heard the same sermon.

His eyes are far away, and the wind whistles. It brushes against the window. “Does a man restore what he's never had?”

[dullahaunt]

@indeath

The door creaks shut. The lights are dimmed and dying. His boots stick-shuck onto the whining floorboards, and quiet as the night in winter, through the smog of burning cigarettes and the clouds of pluming ash, Charlie Montjoy passes through the den without a word, surrounded by soft moans and people lulling far away, high in the clouds. A bead of rain rolls down his cheek. It slaps the floor.

His pocket watch reads late and it itches under his skin as he finds a table, that old, familiar rocking ache, the cravingwantneed. He jabs a cigarette between his lips and rummages through his pockets when he stops, exasperated. He'd already used his last match.

A man snorts a line in the back, and someone's chair whimpers.

[dullahaunt]

@bellecosebabe asked:  " if your heart stopped, you would die. " words were spoken into a soft smile as she crossed the room and helped herself to putting on Charlie's tie.

The ball has started. Fireworks glitter in the sky, oozing red into his room. It drips over her, and Charlie beholds.

Verin Cacia, all black and draped in night. She drifts toward him, her heels clicking the floor, and smiles that smile of hers, one that promises to coax him into her oblivion, dark and black and tender. His lover smells of honey. Has cognac for eyes. She reaches out, a whisper beyond the grave, and settles her hands over his tie.

Verin Cacia, lovely in her perfection. In imperfection.

She has stars on her face, and he should like to kiss the sky.

“Not when you've given yours," his voice crawls to her, soft. He brushes her cheek. "Not when it's mine to have."

Charlie turns thirty-seven today. The fireworks glimmer, and he kisses stars.

[dullahaunt]

@magioffire​ ♥︎’d for a starter​

The moon glows. It hangs overhead, weeping soft cherry red over his face. It spills onto his hands. In the folds of his jacket. It yawns and crawls through the fields and the empty, barren trees, and within the city, their curtains pulled and everyone tucked inside, turning in whimpering beds, the moonlight bleeds through their windows and seeps past the skin of their eyelids. 

Charlie stands, face up at the sky.

A weak wind blows.

"And this,” he starts, voice rumbling, “is why I’m here.”

He’d felt him there like a presence in your home... A thing at your door. He exhales deeply, airy. Something died here.

“All their power... and what do they do." Charlie's cheeks are hollow and the red moon shines. “...They burn," he says.

[dullahaunt]

@bellecosebabe​ asked: “ you need to try a bit harder than that. something like… going down on your knees and begging. “

His hair has come undone. It's glued hard against his forehead, the blood dried tacky and stiff; tacky against his skin, his starch white collar, the shining tiles, dribbled red. 

A razor, glinting in the lowlight, gleams brilliantly on the floor between them. 

The cut on his cheek stops leaking, and his voice pours low. 

"Vera... You are every shadow in my hall. And you are every knock on my door," he drawls, aching and hurt. He peels his hand from his side, slow, beleaguered, then lowers his head back, the chandelier glowing over his face. "But you wouldn't have begged for me when I was yours. And your heart will have fucking broken before I've begged."

[dullahaunt]

@bellecosebabe asked: ‘ it’s dangerous to go looking for the dead. ‘ for Charlie

The fireplace crackles. Charles, draped behind his desk, prods a thumb in the deep groove of his eye, knowing, now, that he is at the mercy of a roiling headache, the temptation to crush pills under a paperweight inching on intolerable, brain matter sloshing. A throb pulses behind his eye. A wail howls outside his window. Something is dying. 

"Vera.” It’s low. His voice is croaky from disuse. “They are shackled, and they are… and they will be… drunken - like - gin,” he murmurs, slow. He lulls his head on the back of his chair, and she swims into his vision. Golden-haired. Splendid. ”I say, love, and without loss of sleep, they find the living more frightening."

A line of ash sits outside his window. He turns his palm over the arm of his chair, inviting her to him.

[dullahaunt]

fatewoven​:

In a palace of silence,  they tell of stories,  each one longer than eternity and older than the world.   No one remembers the face of the divine.  No God has ever graced the earth.  Nevertheless,  Iara prays for the deliverance of peace as the prince struggles in his bed,  hand curled over her heart as it bleeds with sympathy at the sight — the sound of his breath rasping like parchment against fire.  The piano notes trill without interruption,  a metallic din that pricks at her sensitive ears,  and she makes something drown him by,  to smother the pain into something manageable rather than tormenting.

“I can give you a diluted dose.  I can do no more until tomorrow.”  The compromise offered in a firm tone,  her hands cluster into a weaving of work and concentration,  tinged with the scent of herbs.  “Do you like lilies too?”  It’s a fitting flower for the family,  symbolizing both love and grief in abundance.  ( Are there mirrors left in the house of Montjoy?  Do ghosts echo in the halls? )

His hand shakes,  the cigarette rolls further away.  In a land where nothing happens twice,  there are always new discoveries to unfold.  Iara holds out the tea within reach instead of what he wants — and unhooks the last vial of tincture from her belt,  the weight of it negligible,  barely more than a feather as the dust settles,  each grain more precious than gold.  “Drink.  It will help.”  Brazen though she is,  Iara never sits by his bedside,  the mere notion daunting ( frightening ),  but a need to converse cuts at the tongue.  Makes her consider the topic as the tea cools.  “I’ve always been fond of irises.  My family planted yellow ones near rivers to purify the waters.  Perhaps you should visit the queen’s grave and leave flowers, my lord.” 

Iara's voice is watercolors. It slips and smears into each other. Fires burn. They're screaming. He listens to the piano, warbling, tinny, swirling, and the cigarette finally rolls away, tumbling off his nightstand.

A diluted dose, she'd said. His head slides on the backboard. Iara offers tea. He goes for the vial. Just a gram, a drop. Forehead sweating, eyes red. Charlie drinks and lets the blood roll down his throat, wanting, now, the familiar sensation of drifting away like swimming in Andromeda, drowning in stars. Fires burn. They're screaming in them. He wants his constellation and powder euphoria, a relief, release, to live.

Nothing comes, and she'd asked if he likes lilies.

Music fills the void. The taste of iron coats his mouth.

"Do I like lilies," he repeats, gravelly. His voice is muffled and barely audible. "They never last."

No more dust until tomorrow. He wishes he had a cigarette. He wishes for a lot. Charlie looks to the mug in her hand, an eternity thinning out between them, and needs something for the pain. His fingers twitch, but he only drops the vial. It rolls empty by his side.

"She wouldn't want it… Not from me," he tells her. "Not by my hand." He looks elsewhere and swallows hard. His face betrays nothing. "Would you purify me, Iara, if you left me irises."

[dullahaunt]

bellecosebabe:

"Should I be worried then? Another one of your prophecies?" Verin prompted him in a slight joke, delicately taking the cigarette between two fingers and she brought it to her lips. Watching Charlie and through the haze of steam and smoke, could he be sure she was there?

“—Can’t say I'm quite fond of dreams either." She mused, another drag from the cigarette and she straightened up in a stretch and she sank back into her prior posing, cigarette in tow. And dreaming was certainly the worst part of sleeping, she often opted to wait until exhaustion overtook her before gently and quietly she went into that good night. She'd rather his prophetic dreams than her recitative.

"How can you be so sure you're not still dreaming?" Soft smirk and nicotine stained lips, she proded him further. Elbow kept on the edge and submerged arm crossed across her chest. "Or maybe you're having a half- decent one for once?"

She plucks it away like picking petals off a flower. 

It smells of vanilla and melted honey. Now, burning ash and cigarettes. 

"I lose what I dream," Charlie breathes deeply, slowly, the back of his neck pressed to the tub. "So, love… If it's all the same," he draws out, "I'd like you to stay where you are."

Here. In the waking world.

From the faucet: the slow drip of water. One. Another. Three. Vera tells him she has no love of dreams, those things that keep company in the dark, and he imagines, bleary-eyed and lucid, that in the dead of night when she slips from his side and into the cold sheets of another, lonely bed, she stays awake to a memory, old and whimpering, never leaving, never leaving, never leaving.

Scars on her palms, a mark on her neck. She smirks, soft, and Charlie's smiles never reach his eyes. "Do you kill it." His voice rolls. "Or does it kill you."

The memory of whatever put the scars on her palms, the mark on her neck. His fingers are gone, underwater, elsewhere. They find her waist and Vera wonders the way she wonders, brilliant and awful.

"In my dreams, it doesn't hurt," he answers her, low. He's nearer. "Would you hurt me?"