#a hungarian who loves rozsa miklos' el cid soundtrack

[terrence-silver]

Picture this. End of S5. Two days after that humiliating ambush on his turf. His turf!

They put him behind bars, for however insanely short time it took to figure out who exactly they were dealing with, but nobody puts Terry Silver in a cage and lives. He will get on that.

But what nags at him more is the feeling of betrayal. Kim Da Eun and her haughty favouritism. Chozen - a man he showered in hospitality and warmth. Daniel LaRusso, whom he had given every chance, Tory Nichols, whom he had gifted a championship, Kenny Payne, who he had mentored. Time itself.

John.

He had tried to fill the empty spaces time left before, but he always knew he was a romantic. All or nothing. Fake is worse than nothing, as Cheyenne showed. And maybe he'd been wrong? He felt that there were chances, paths not taken, with John and Daniel, with Da Eun, and he committed, because the screaming emptiness deafened him. Amends. Maybe the answer was in the past.

But all it left him with, again, were ashes.

So here he is, feral drunk, in some L.A. nightclub. Of course his revenge will sustain him, it always has. But the hollowness has to be filled with something, and music has always been a balm.

And there they are. Beloved. An honest to God thunderbolt to his heart.

Terry knows when things are real.

And he has no time for games. He corners his Beloved like a beast fighting to mate, all raw power and violence, but Beloved - they'll find out what that means soon enough, Terry has not a breath to waste - meets it with as much fire, maybe they've seen war as well. When he has them, he's still enraged.

"Where were you?" he spits, grip vice, this side of tender. "I needed you!"

Beloved raises their eyebrows. "Maybe you didn't deserve me yet."

Terry's response?

---

-"Screw deserving!"-

Terry snaps, leaning on his elbow sinking into the mattress in the neon-lit backroom of a crowded club, the bass of the music on the stage echoing against the sound proof walls covered in multicolored wallpaper, still hungering for more even after counting round three on a bed in a Beverly Hills nightspot he came to unwind in, fresh from behind bars and a meeting with his lawyers and attorney, the end goal being getting drunk, getting high, getting pumped for the epilogue of his battle dance. Honing his taste for blood in the electrical current of midnight and the blazing pump of humanity. In Vietnam, nearly half a century ago from now, the boys would smear each other with war paint before heading out into the bush, never to return again. Here, Terry had nothing but himself and rituals guided by instinct. There would be no talks of deserving here, only destiny. Fate. Chance. In the most unlikely of places. Lighting. Recognition. I know your face, whispers an oddly familiar voice from the crowd. Maybe love at first sight exists. It does. It really does. Maybe life could be an old silver-screen picture once in a lifetime, when two people meet, the credits say 'Fin' and devotion is forever.

-"You should've been born forty years ago!"- He adds, gritted teeth.

-"You should've been there when the world was fucking bullshit for decades and decades at a time and I was clawing from the gates of hell for someone's hand, practically paying these pieces of shit for an ounce of anything real!"- His fingers graze that vulnerable spot between the outline of your neck riddled with his bites and your warm cheek as he rubs, feverish, taking in patterns of softness, patterns of skin, every curve and outline, wanting to burn it all into memory so it never leaves, all the long years of his life flashing in front of his eyes, alongside every moment he wished contained you; an existence without falsehoods, pretending, holding back, without loneliness, self-denial and masks. An existence denied to him by the juxtaposition of time itself. -"You should've reached out from the darkness to hold this."- Eyes meet in the subdued haze of your shared nest secured by a locked door, and he removes his palm from your face, entwining his hand with yours, fingers squeezing each other like a salvation raft, fitting right. Fitting perfectly. Like one being. His breathing ragged from rage, desire and serenity all at once. Catharsis.

-"I'm holding it now, aren't I?"-

You remark, gentle and warm. Nuzzling into him, comfortably serene in a post-coital glow. Terry no longer hears the music from the top floor of the club. There's no thumping shaking the room and the ground. He hears a string of amorous aria of violins shaping reality.

---

I like to imagine this is the song he envisions in his head (x) @msfbgraves