breeding | SALTBURNT

[history does not repeat itself. alicent disappears late in october, slipping away from her slumber like morning dew in the face of the sun.

but sometimes it rhymes. alia wakes in the new year to find paul gone. she sits with it until the sun rises, then picks up her phone.]

Paul has gone. Are you awake?

[ Paul has gone. Funny, how the departures are constant, yet seem crueler each time. ]

i'm coming to you.

[ Instead of how she'd come to him, last time. A rhyme of its own. ]

are you in your room?

[returned to a world where death is his choice -- more cruel or kind than alicent returning to a world where homelander can never touch her, hold her again? alia used to tally up her grief, compare it, see if her pain was greater or lesser than those around her. she finds the concept of such a thing abhorrent now, when grief is so intangible, insurmountable a thing.

but, eclipsing it all: i'm coming to you. and the sun rises.]

yes. [yes he's coming, yes she's in her room, yes and yes and yes because if she cannot place hands, eyes on him, her mind will spin stories that he too has vanished and alia will be the one eclipsed, the one blotted out.]

[ Yes, she says, and barely a second passes before her door opens.

He speeds through the house with no heed paid to the way blood rushes in his ears, reminding him of the limitations set upon his powers, here. (He's still prone to the same math — the idea that his pain outweighs that of others — but the thought doesn't cross his mind when it comes to her. Her pain is his. That's the bargain of love.) The carpets split and sizzle in the wake of a half-run, half-flight, honing in on the thudding sound of her heart until the door is the only thing separating them, until the door opens in his grasp and she's in his arms.

And he touches her the way he always longs to be touched. Tenderly, lovingly, brushing back her hair and tracing the long lines of her frame, reminding her of the fact that he loves her without stepping on what she's just lost. ]

[is it modesty that has kept alia from witnessing what homelander is truly capable of? no; he knows that such a thing is unnecessary, that she delights in his might, his power, that false modesty is abhorrent to them both. perhaps it is more that he hasn't felt the need to show his full power, until now.

the scent of burning, the rush of blood through his veins, the thrum of power in the careful hands that seek out alia's body, as she rises, as she reaches for him. her eyes are bright, wide, wet (she'd wept when paul arrived, she weeps at his departure) and she turns her face into the hand he has cradling her face. leaves the tears in the palm of it, presses her lips to the steady thump of his heart that beats in his wrist.]

Alina too. [quiet, a second dimming star, a second shift on an axis alia knew was only ever borrowed time. there is a void in her heart, in his, and she kisses his wrist again, lifts her aching, sorrowful face to take in the features of his face, his concern, his care, his tenderness. she whispers, echoes:] Will you stay? I can't be here without you. [a small voice, human and fragile and breakable, the way she loathes being seen -- unless it's him. unless it's him.]

[ It nearly cleaves him open to see her hurt like this. She should be radiant — the sun, shining brightly in the sky, not covered by grey clouds. But the two brightest stars in her map of constellations are gone, and even he can't wrench them back into orbit. ]

Of course I will.

[ A thought with jagged edges rears its head: maybe this is the fate all monsters share. Maybe all monsters are cursed to born and die alone. Except they aren't alone — they have each other, after everyone else has gone. When every world ends, when all existence is snuffed out and only loneliness remains, they will still have each other. The line of his mouth twists with the thought, half-smile, half-grimace. ]

I'm right here. [ His other hand searches for hers, drawing it upward to settle her palm over his heart. ] I'm right here.

[the corner of his mouth twists, and alia reaches for it, fingers pressed to the tangled unsurety of it, lightly – i’m here, at every subtle hint of pain, of grief, of things homelander carries on his shoulders the way she does. unasked-for, unchosen, yet inescapable. children who were never children, who learned loss in an all-encompassing way: your existences harms your mother and you lose her. abomination as crushing a fate as the embrace of a child who doesn’t know his own strength.

and then, beyond it, you harm again and again. your existence is revered, reviled, simultaneous, and you cannot escape it and you cannot stop smiling, lording, leading. you are a figurehead and you ache for something different, and perhaps you are punished for that by losing each, every, all you love.

and then: i’m right here. the beat of his magnificent heart, the thrum of his sunlike power. bright enough for them both, and alia’s fingers taptaptap in time with the pulse, looking up with aching and adoration in her eyes.] You are. [wonder in it, in the gift of his continued presence.] Here you are.

[she leans up, suddenly, kisses him the way she had when alicent went, when the warm feeling of his presence went shaky, grief-stricken. when he held her and wrung comfort from her sunlit soul, and she gave it with every ounce of her strength. as he gives it now.]

[ The thing about giving affection to a creature unused to it is that it will always doubt. Is the caring hand a ploy to fix a collar around its neck? Is gentleness not a prelude to violence? And yet, even after betrayal after betrayal, they crawl back to the font, desperate for just one more drop of tenderness.

The thing about Alia is that he doesn't doubt. He doesn't doubt because he can't. There's no other way for him to parse the singular, strange ways in which she touches him. Her fingers tracing the shape of his smile, her mouth over his pulse at his wrist, the way she's shaped the sound of her heartbeat and her very blood for him.

He can't give her that in the same way — doesn't know how to — but he's thought about it. About her Voice, about— ]

Come stay with me.

[ Spoken between kisses, like he's afraid that if he gives her enough space to think about what he's suggesting, she'll turn away. ]

The— the room next to mine hasn't had anyone in it since I got here.

[ Empty, always empty, a reminder of bleaker days. ]

Mighta been waiting for you.

[she very nearly misses it between the kisses, between the sweet wonder of his mouth on hers, again and again, each time it’s own little eternity, each one worth pressing into the warm clay of her mind (hers, not the mothers, not the ancients, the mind that is just-alia, where she holds her most cherished, precious thoughts and sensations and instants). but he says it, kisses her, lets the words tumble out, and oh – if he were this sweetly earnest, boyish in his wanting, youthful and bright to any, all, the world would split itself open with loving him.

because she does. her chest aches, her ribs seeming to spread like flower petals, the pulse of her blood going sweet-pitched and humming, a melody only he can hear, joy made manifest in cells and veins and breath and bone. and alia smiles, smiles with her teary cheeks and her aching eyes, and cradles his lovely, magnificent face between her palms and drinks herself tipsy on him wanting her.

she nods, once, twice, the tumbling bounce of her golden curls, the smile feeling odd, unique, just-cast like the edge of a new knife, a blade made just for him. for this question, for this offer, invitation, declaration.] Yes. Yes, I will. [to say it aloud, to harmonize her want, her heart’s desire to his.

alia’s slender hands slip down, rest on homelander’s shoulders for a moment before she twines both arms around his neck, rises up on the tips of her toes to rest her forehead to his, to bump their noses together, playful, warm, genuine in every movement, in every shining instant of her eyes fixed on his. because he must know it’s true, when she says it, when she says soft into the place between their mouths:] It was waiting for me, and I was waiting for you. My answer would’ve been the same were you to ask me in the snow, in the village when you returned to me from death, in the lake where you touched me first.

[again:] Yes. Yes and yes and yes. I don’t – [a hitch, a furrow in her brows, her fingers finding the loose hair at his nape, petting, stroking.] I have not wanted to be parted from you for some time. Some…some great long time.

[ Each memory she names settles into the core of him like a handprint, too warm and too raw — the culmination of the shield and spear paradox, the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object in a collision that ought to break them both. And maybe it does, in its own way. Her heart opens to him, her blood sweetly singing a melody that he knows only exists for him to hear, and the trellis of his chest yawns open, too.

So many years ago, they make him to be loved. Without it, he rots and withers, turns inward upon himself. It doesn't matter that he gorges himself upon it when he has it — doesn't matter, so long as it's a true thing. He'd drown in it without hesitation, would happily gorge himself to death. Tries to, in a way, as he kisses away the tears upon her cheeks, aware twice over that she doesn't cry like this often, that she doesn't smile like this for anyone except for him. The least he can do to repay that debt is to keep it on his tongue, safe in the hollow of his mouth. Because he's safe with her. Allowed to be vulnerable and young, allowed— not to be weak, exactly, but to be defined not entirely by his strength.

She loves the parts of him that others call monstrous. Loves him where the people who created him call him a failure. And for all that he resents those labels, pushing back against them when he was created to be perfect perfect perfect, he hates being neutered more. The sun will blind and burn, if stared at too long. Are either of them, ultimately, any different?

The spear and the shield. Meant only for each other. ]

I'll— I'll tell the maids to move your stuff. [ Ineloquent, in comparison to her, but no less earnest, mumbled as he tries to think of how long they could keep company with only each other before anyone asked after them. What he means is I want that, too. What he means is where you are, I will be. ] Or I can move it all. Whatever— whatever you want.

[in a tome alia has read (with her eyes and others, with her mother and her mother’s mother and her mother’s mother’s mother, back into millennia), there is a book of prayers, of praise, that calls each being made by god’s hand fearful and wonderful, i praise you, i praise you, you knit me together in my mother’s womb, the miracle of life, the possibility contained in each human.

but alia was made by the will of jessica, consort of duke leto, she was knit together to serve, to protect, to shed the blood of billions for the boy that should’ve been a daughter, for the god who shared a womb. and homelander was made, designed, crafted to be perfect, infallible, without reproach. they were made fearfully, but not wonderfully. and when they failed, they were cast aside, cast out, left unknit and fearful and inhuman and impossible.

when homelander holds her, touches her, smiles at her with sweetness, kisses her like she’s essential, alia thinks, perhaps – perhaps they were wrong. jessica, the reverend mothers, vought, the world who’d made and discarded them. perhaps they were wonderfully made all along, more wonderful than any before, any after. perhaps that was what made the world fear them so. perhaps there is nothing to shrink from, not a thought or a deed or a word in their vicious, violent, vindictive golden heads that should be feared.

these thoughts click through alia’s mind, even as she softens the flow of her blood, the beat of her heart, the incandescent bubble of her body’s cells dividing, multiplying, creating and creating and creating her. she tucks herself up under homelander’s chin, finds the jugular pulsing in his throat and kisses it once, twice, three times, a thanks for carrying his blood, his life, his thrumming energy. an honor and a privilege.]

You would look very nice carrying all my boxes. [hummed, lips still teasing over his neck.] Very handsome. But – if you carry them, you cannot hold me. [alia tips her chin up, wiggling out from her nestled spot and wrinkles her nose in disapproval.] I don’t want to share. The maids can do it.

SALTBURNT | inbox.

@coan_tean | early new years day

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject