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[insectisyd]

sapphirescales.

     ` mm. okay. ‘

she’s pliant, loose-limbed. she doesn’t believe angel, but it seems … important to angel that she does. so, she gives in.

and then. angel’s face so close to her own. her mouth, soft, at the corner of raven’s. 

her breath catches in her throat, eyes wide, and honey clear. she can’t look away.

     ` —- okay. ‘

angel’s hand shouldn’t hold her cheek like this, shouldn’t be warm against the soft curl of her ear. and it’s hard to not, to suddenly devastatingly not --- but, she does. because she doesn’t want raven’s disappointment, doesn’t want her regret. doesn’t want them to avoid each other. 

she clears her throat, her throat that bobs and swallows. 

fuck it, she thinks. fuck this feeling; the heart, the chest, the punishing pit of the stomach. she won’t be subtle, she won’t tiptoe. she doesn’t want to be soft and quiet, the two of them water in the  palm of the other’s hand. 

cradling raven, it’s easy to push her up so she’s sitting and off her lap. she stands and pulls  raven by her hand, grip warm, so the fuck it  sentiment isn’t harsh anywhere but inside her own head. 

               “Let’s go and get something to eat.”

at the doorway, a false spring in her step, she  lets go of raven’s hand and turns to her, holding the doorframe, hiding her body. 

      “And -- if you don’t want me to kiss you, you gotta stop looking at me like you do, blue.”

[insectisyd]

[insectisyd]

cryhavok.

After a silent moment Alex ducks his head as he starts laughing.  It’s kind of a rusty sound, but when he throws his head back and keeps laughing it’s unmistakable.

     “—turns out being this hot       gets doctors going pretty       good, at least.”

that’s cute. the laugh. endearing in the kind of way that makes angel’s eyebrows do that i’ve-seen-a-puppy thing before she schools them.

“ --- that’s gross.” 

“and hugely inappropriate. and  your abuse of euphemisms  disgusts me.”

she hands him her magazine.

“could you fan me?”

[insectisyd]

ruinaa.

she refuses to look at emma. even a sideways glance, which she sneaks from behind the fall of her hair, feels like too much.

          “Yikes,”

emma does. emma looks exactly like that and josephine hopes she at least has the decency to – never reveal any of it.

          “I hope not.”

“I’ve had one about her in the past week so   --- no lie --- I’m leaving the brotherhood. I gotta go.”

[insectisyd]

[insectisyd]

sapphirescales.

something crosses angel’s face, just for that split second, that raven can’t put a name to, right now. she will, later, and she will think over it, and wonder, but she lets it pass without comment. with- -out the ability to comment.

     ` i’m not talking about my skin, though. ‘

almost as a direct response, like a silly protest to angel fixing the scrunch of her nose, a furrow starts across her brow. she reaches up and twists one of angel’s braids between her fingers.

     ` but, maybe. i used to think i was all      alone. just me, being different on the      outside. charles is different in ways      no one can see, but not me.

     but then i wasn’t. i met you. and i met      darwin, and i know emma and azazel.

     —- maybe, one day, it won’t be just me. ‘

her hand drops to her side. angel, in spite of the fire, and the glittering wings, and the sharp whip-crack of her wit, has always been the soft roll of her eyes, the deep brown of them, downcast, as hank pulled the curtains shut at the base.

raven feels suddenly so small in the face of angel’s soft hands, and the slope of her shoulder making the light glow around her like a halo. 

instead,

     ` my pasta’s not that bad. ‘

angel scoffs, and it almost sounds normal.

      “It really is.”

she picks the thread out of the knee of her jeans, leaning over raven. her hair touches her forehead and she tucks it behind her ears so it won’t. 

“There’s something wrong with all of us,” angel says, after she’s thought about it for a while. 

                 “ --- But ... I don’t think it’s this.”

with raven’s head in her lap, it’s easy to put a hand on her cheek, to lean down and press a quiet kiss to the corner of her mouth, to her almost-cheek. 

she swallows and sits back up, and strokes the baby hair off raven’s forehead.

                “ --- It’ll be okay.”

[insectisyd]

@ruinaa

angel keeps staring even as emma walks past them into their shitty hideout kitchen.

“ --- don’t you think Emma always looks like she knows about every dirty dream you’ve ever had.”

[insectisyd]

cryhavok.

Alex thinks about saying, it’s not lava, because he’s seen lava and he would know, but then he realizes he doesn’t know what it is and that it totally could be lava because maybe all lava doesn’t look the same.

He’s still pretty sure it’s not lava, but not sure enough to protest.

     “—I—don’t know.                    —I don’t feel hot?”

“You don’t look it either.”

a pause.

and then her mouth stretches open in a huge, silent laugh. it takes her a second to reign it in so she can tap her fingers against the dashboard in a little drumbeat. 

           “Ba dum dum tsh.”

[insectisyd]

[insectisyd]

sapphirescales.

     ` you were. you are. i was thinking that, at      the time, and you are. and i’ve seen other      beautiful things but you are. nothing else      compares. ‘

her breath catches in her throat, halting her earnest insistence. her eyes are caught, not knowing whether to follow the soft touch or to watch the smile blooming on angel’s mouth.

she decides, firmly, on the latter.

     ` —- really? i don’t … ‘

she struggles, again, with words. she hadn’t ever needed to tell charles anything; he had picked it out of her head, in the beginning. and, after, when she had said no, he’d already known her well enough to guess.

if he couldn’t, they both had assumed it was irrelevant. but this isn’t irrelevant. her heart in her throat, and angel sneaking into her room at night is not irrelevant.

     ` charles and erik. and then, dar and      alex. and then there’s no one like me.      —- but you’re like me. ‘

and then her nose scrunches, because, yes, they are alike. from the moment she had seen the wings unfold, she had known but she isn’t talking about their mutations. she is talking about something else. about the early mornings, right after raven’s woken up, and angel looks at her, and they don’t have the cover of night or the drugging sleepiness, and they smile at each other, like a secret they’re both in on, and go about the day.

except, raven doesn’t know the secret.

     ` but even then, you’re not like me. i think      that there’s something wrong with me, maybe. ‘

not beautiful enough, she thinks, familiar with that old bitterness that rises --- thinking of the kisses that didn’t happen, of erik appearing in doorways to steal raven away from their sleepy afternoon lounges or the middle of films they love. the bitterness is uglier than she is, though, and  she lets it go with a bob of her throat and a tight smile.

            “I don’t know. I don’t ---” 

she sighs, and smooths the wrinkle of raven’s nose. 

           “There’s no one like you, chica. No one else has your skin. --- No one else --- in the whole world --- who can burn pasta like you burn pasta.”

she shrugs her shoulders, chin tight, feeling a deep breath in the middle of her chest for a reason she can’t name. 

          “ --- Maybe that’s okay.”

[insectisyd]

@CRYHAVOK 

darwin’s car is nice against the heat, tucked away in the garage. cold seats and opened windows, like they could still catch the wind without moving.

              “how are you sweating? you shoot,                like, actual lava out of your body.”

[insectisyd]

[insectisyd]

[insectisyd]

sapphirescales.

& —- @insectisyd​​ !

her head in angel’s lap, the thick haze around them lulls her into a sense of security. her hair tumbles over angel’s knee. her eyes, golden, lazily watch the ends of angel’s hair, just inches away from her mouth.

     ` you know, when i saw you that first time, and you      shook your wings out, i thought you were the most      beautiful thing i ever saw in my entire life. ‘

there’s no shyness in her voice, no censure. her words are a little slurred from the pot, but she’s sure of what she’s saying.

     ` and sometimes, i think about it. about all those lines      on your skin, about how your wings fold in and out.      about your smile when you were showing us, that first      time.

     and then i think about emma, and when she turned to      diamond. you know? fucking diamond. and then, her      damn boots.

     and i think that maybe —- ‘

and she pauses, here, unsure. not of what to say but rather, how to say it.

she can’t explain this to anyone else, can only explain it to angel. she can’t talk about this to jakob or erik or charles, alex or darwin, who are all busy with their own … issues. she wants them to be happy and not feel the way she does, but convincing them doesn’t help at all with convincing herself.

     ` do you think there’s something wrong with me? that i’m —-      i don’t know. like this. ‘

“I am the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen,” she says, grinning, even though her heart is throbbing in her throat. 

her hand has been lying on the crown of raven’s head, on her bright hair. while she’s talking angel lets a soft finger lift from that self-imposed constriction and trail between her brows over her forehead and into the middle parting of her hair. the journey is slow, tender.

after, her hand drops next to her thigh. heavy.

her smile shakes.

            “--- no.”

         “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”

[insectisyd]

Zoe Kravitz for NYLON Magazine (July 2015)

[insectisyd]

[insectisyd]

sapphirescales

( crowded against raven’s back with her   hands on her shoulder-blades angel   screams and jumps, whipping her   head around. ) 

What was that? Raven--

( she drops her voice to a whisper, )

Let’s go back. Cheese on toast isn’t worth getting possessed over.