[ i spent hours writing something feely and elaborate for this and then scrapped it because this will always be the proper imagery. ]
Cinder:
There’s no question in his own mind that Henrik is fire and Alurien is the one trying to handle and hold him close between two scorched hands.
If it consumes him, hollows him out and leaves nothing more than a husk of the man he used to be, he imagines himself alright with it in the end.
Henrik has tells. He rarely outright asks for what he needs — and while it’s great fun pushing him to that point, right now Alurien wants to be pushed back.
So, even though they’re both stripped and Henrik’s on the ground working a hand around his own half hard cock, Alurien makes no move to sit up off the wall. He just takes another drag off of his cigarette and watches him with eyes that narrow a little more when his nails scrape across the ground.
But, the moment Henrik really pushes back the best way he knows how, the second he says those words and curls his mouth into a sly, knowing little smile, all bets are off. Alurien flinches and goes tense (jealous, but suddenly alert and angry — the threat of it —).
And while he carefully and deliberately snuffs the cigarette out into the floorboards, he isn’t nearly as precise when he lunges forward and roughly grabs Henrik by the back of the neck.
(Source: fancymonochrome)
“Henrik hides guns, Alurien hides romance novels.”
- TheBeccaBeast
(Source: dissend-ium)
It’s the Kaldorei who properly teach him how to use a bow. His father had patiently tried instructing him when he was a child, but the bow had been light and felt fragile. The arrows seemed clunky and grabbing another and another out of his quiver added even more strain to his already exhausted arms. It didn’t have the satisfaction of a rifle or a pistol — the weight of it, the metal and touch of wood, the simple ammo and the sharp, piercing sound of a gunshot that meant a kill.
He’s tired and alone when he meets the Kaldorei for the first time — tall, savage Elves with tribal marks, eclectic wooden jewelry around their necks and feathers in their oddly colored hair, and scraps of mismatching leather sewn and tied together for armor. He’s tired, alone, but he’s not leaving with everyone else. To hell with their boats and the rest of Gilneas trying to secure passage — maybe his family is still… maybe they just need…
He isn’t sure what he says — he doesn’t even know if they can understand everything, but suddenly they’re outfitting him with armor. Suddenly he has a weapon. Suddenly he has a teacher.
Sometimes he thinks he understands what his father was really trying to teach him all those years ago. It makes him feel closer to the man though, and that’s all that really matters.
And then I meet this beautiful man who looks like he walked right out of the galas in the city, a war veteran with scars and a leg brace — likely a decorated soldier — who has an elaborate system of contacts stemming from all walks of life, who codes his fucking notes — actually codes all of it so that no one but him can comprehend it. And the first thing he does is treat me like an absolute idiot, and after that he reminds me over and over what a simple man I am. It’s like being sixteen again, like having to swallow my shame and pride and hurt down at a room full of people who don’t think I’ve proved my worth, all except Lucas, because he’s too damn patient.
(Source: barney-barrett)
This is new.
He catches the stray thought between pouring coffee and remembering the exact shape of the man’s mouth when he spoke and scowled, but mostly when he smiled.
This is… different.
It’s not that he’s run off with the delusion that any of this is perfect and only going to get better. There’s a reason he’s had no real relationships, let alone any lasting ones, and Henrik, himself, tends to be…
Difficult.
Whatever this is, it’s not really a…
This is merely an arrangement — one that works in his favor, but an arrangement nonetheless.
There are rules and risks. There’s a possibility that no one walks away from this unscathed.
But, Alurien tells himself as he picks up the hot cup of coffee and heads back to bed, things are more far interesting with are rules he can bend and break.
And if he’s learned anything about Henrik, it’s that the man knows every risk, always — that he doesn’t merely accept challenge, but flourishes under its pressure. When he emerges, after he’s done out maneuvering opponents with whatever tactics that brilliant mind comes up with, it’s with poise, eloquence, and a telling glint in his grey eyes.
Alurien once tried to tell Henrik he was playing with fire by keeping at all this.
That was before the younger man touched his skin.
Before he burned the imprint of his fingers all the way down to his cinder bones.
Before he left him with a thrum in his chest he still can’t quite name.
“Coffee,” Alurien murmurs with a rough, groggy voice before setting the mug on the nightstand. When there’s no immediate response, he starts the difficult process of untangling Henrik from the sheets.
There’s no question in his own mind that Henrik is fire and Alurien is the one trying to handle and hold him close between two scorched hands.
If it consumes him, hollows him out and leaves nothing more than a husk of the man he used to be, he imagines himself alright with it in the end.
(Source: beautboys)
“Mister Black?”
“Hm?”
“We’ve all finished. …We’ve been done for a while now, actually.”
“Oh. Right — pass your papers forward, everyone.”
Quietly. “Are you alright, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Because you look a little —”
Tired. Distracted.
“Thank you for volunteering to read from where we last left off, Miss Turner.”
“…Of course, Mister Black.”
A sharp whistle cuts through the idle chatter.
The man that enters the classroom is most certainly not Professor Tirrell.
I always felt like prison didn’t just strip a man of his armor. Once you have no defenses left, it starts chipping away at your humanity, little by little.
He’s read the letter four times now — all three pages — and each time he comes away more frustrated than the last. There’s nothing here but the bland, sparse details of where he’ll need to go, what he’ll need to fetch, what problems he may run into.
The sun’s barely up but Alurien is. He’s bathed, coffee’s made, and he’s slowly getting dressed in clothes that are worn, but warm. The three pages of Berkelley’s letter stay spread across his small, chipped counter top, right beside his mug and the ashtray currently propping up a burning, but near spent cigarette.
It’d almost be a relief, he realizes, if he had filled the letter with snide remarks and petty quips. But, that would mean giving Alurien attention and admitting he was upset, for one. And two, he thinks with a little spite as he pulls on his shirt, whatever finishing school Berkelley had attended likely frowned upon ending letters with a cursive “fuck you.”
He finishes buttoning his shirt, then grabs the small, filled cat bowl to place it near the matching water dish. It isn’t until he’s slowly shrugging on his vest that he stops and finds himself back at the counter, studying the three pages.
Everything with Berkelley was about the unsaid, he’s coming to find out.
Alurien washes down the final drag off of his cigarette with a large gulp of coffee, and then finds his coat. He’s out the door within moments and sliding the folded pages into an inner pocket.
Berkelley gave him two weeks to do the job. That’s quite alright, he’ll do it as quickly as the last assignments — then spend the rest of his time doing everything but making Berkelley’s drop off.
(Source: omega5002)
With every meeting, Henrik finds himself coming away with the distinct impression that he should wash his hands of whatever this is — of the uneasy inklings that maybe, just maybe, there is a discomforting possibility of something complicated under it all — and with each and every encounter with this man — this employee — the lines he’s so painstakingly drawn up between his professional and private life are being assaulted as though he were under siege simply by virtue of the other man’s countenance.
Its unacceptable, and its unwelcome; at least, it is when he rests warily in the large chair behind his desk, staring at the lines and lines of ink on paper, hardly making out a word. Its unacceptable, and unwelcome, and its complicated. And he has not the time, nor the desire to pursue any such complications. He thinks, perhaps, that this man is singularly the most aggravating person he has ever had the misfortune of encountering. And he thinks, maybe, he should leave it alone and cut off all ties. And he thinks, surely, he should be perfectly capable of keeping the former rebel at arms length.
And, as he lifts his coat from its place by the door, tired and aching and with a pistol at his side, he cannot help but think, despite it all, how he has never been very good at leaving a puzzle unsolved.
(Source: doloreshase)
It’s been years since he’s stepped foot inside his home — a small, sturdy cabin nestled deep in the heart of the Northgate Woods — and now there’s barely anything left of it.
(Source: thebowtielife)
He hates him the moment he sees him — when he’s sized up differently from the rest and the man’s teeth glint when he flashes a smile that’s far from friendly. He’s casual, commanding, poised, and always two seconds from lunging at the first who steps out of line. Everything about him screams general—leader—alpha and he does nothing to mask it.
“Gentleman, we do things a little differently here on the front lines.”
Something in the man’s posture shifts and almost involuntarily, so does Alurien’s. It’s how he finds himself pinned on his back with a leather gloved hand wrapped around his throat. The man’s knee is lodged firmly in his chest, his teeth are bared sharply in threat, and only when Alurien lets his head fall back does the pressure go slack.
The man picks himself up and straightens out his uniform, ignoring how Alurien rolls to the side and hoarsely gasps for air.
“As I said, gentlemen, we do things differently up here on the front.”
(Source: streetfsn.blogspot.com)
