#also i…am sorry about putting s.pice in your soft

[neverhangd]

Nothing while she still breathes—Christ alive, what can she give him dead and cold? Her throat, her heart? Those are both his, on offer at his leisure. Like as not he’s being morbid again, circling back as he does so strangely often to cannibalism. A part of Anne truly wonders if he plans on eating some part of her postmortem. (What would he pick, if he does? The heart and throat are such obvious answers, but what does that leave that he would want if not them? The brain? The eyes?)

Silva can bullshit somebody else. The problem in becoming an expert in Anne, especially up close, is that it affords her equal opportunity to become an expert in her observer. Silva’s no different. Harder to pinpoint than the others she’s met, maybe, but no harder to read when she puts her mind to him and focuses. The ghost of a smile on his lips, the…something in his eyes, gone too quick for Anne to parse through, the grip he keeps on his thigh, the sharp stare she’s gotten used to not being able to see past—he might not like to hear it, but he needs. Something Anne only knows to recognize because it stares back at her every time she meets her reflection. She’s never known how to care for it in herself, can hardly guess how she might care for it in somebody else (never mind in him, so much more than anyone else she’s ever known), but when the weight of expectation settles back down upon her, she does what she’s always done: the first thing to come to mind.

Which in this case is to strip off her shirt (often the answer), close the distance between them (sometimes the answer), and pour herself into a kiss (seldom the answer). She holds the side of his face with one hand and reaches the other down between them, moving his hand aside so she can next pour herself into his lap. She isn’t full-sure what she’s doing anymore, only that the roll of her tongue against his is something she’s been craving for a while. (That’s what she’d pick off him, she decides, his tongue, an errant thought no sooner had than lost.)

Her thighs bracket his on either side but she doesn’t settle her weight down. Anne’s poker face has long since fallen away, leaving nothing there but naked yearning, desire that came not with heavy-lidded eyes and salacious smiles but with an empty stomach and a starved expression. Welcome to try, is she? How welcome? She lifts his captive hand to her chest, hardly daring to breathe.

—Right. Except that she probably needs to talk. Anne pulls away and pulls her thoughts together, pressing a kiss to his jaw, then high on his cheek towards his ear, before gently biting the ear itself. Call it a hunch. A toe dipped in the water to test it.

“Don’t maim me. Try not to kill me. And anything I can give ye is yers.”

@neverhangd said : ❝ You need relief. I can give you that. ❞ to Raoul

HE NEEDS NOTHING MORE THAN to see the world brought to its knees ; to lick the blood from the wounds on the necks of those who wronged him bleeding out from his own hands. What he needs is simple, what he deserves is a different sea beast entirely. Short nails dig into the flesh of his own thigh as he watches her not at all unlike the way a hawk watches its prey. Am I not repulsive to you ? Lingering smile tugs at the corners of a misshapen mouth, demands not to be seen but shows the bleeding true colours of the slightest spark of joy regardless. Bested at his own game !

❝ I need nothing you can give while you still breathe, cariña. ​❞ Wrong. He needs everything she can offer       ⎯⎯⎯⎯ sometimes more even. It crosses his mind ; flashes through his eyes like a plea for mercy shown before the snap of the noose. Please. As quick as it came, it left too. Fitting, for all of him to be a ghost now. ❝ But you are welcome to try. ❞