tag drop for some relationships

⭐ how could anything bad ever happen to you? you make a fool of death with your beauty ( @holyfated. )

⭐ a spider who spins red thread / a hunter who was trapped as expected ( @groazei. )

⭐ well you're a 'real man' and you do what you can. you only take as much as you can grab with two hands ( @quirofiliac. )

⭐ self-sabotage like art skyrockets in value posthumously ( @mortul. )

⭐ Even if I came to love humanity in the end I don’t belong anywhere do I? ( @cursedstitch. )

⭐ no chorus could come in about two people sitting doing nothing ( @strawberry-barista. )

⭐ all the feeling was all or nothing and I took everything I could ( @demonsfate. )

⭐ cause the older I get I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject ( @regensia. | vital )

⭐ with your gaze I'm captivated but I am finding it holds no warmth at all ( @pwophet. )

⭐ then bow your head in the house of god. little girl who do you think you are? ( @livingecho. )

⭐ everybody wants to hear about the big mistakes. everybody wants a piece of your heart ( @tozasemurcielago. )

⭐ relationship tag ( blog. )

❤️

11.11 ( POCKY DAY )

"It's, like... a game made up for marketing purposes or something, probably."

-> The cool air of her mortuary is just the right temperature for Lyric to be comfortable leaning back in the chair lumpy office chair, chewing on the end of a biscuit as they inspect the company blurb on the back, the memory of a teenager's game dug up from the recessed of their mind. Gita was busy preparing her many corpse experiments and jarred specimens, every incision a work of art built by her hands in service to her god, whatever one it was ( Lyric has forgotten again, a name so obscure it never sticks. ) They shake the box of chocolate banana flavor in her direction with a tilt of their head, ankle bouncing on top of their knee with leisure, a brow raise of amusement in her direction.

"Wanna play? Couldn't hurt you to take a break for a second."

-> There could be something said of Lyric's own leisure, but they had done their part of this bargain, lifting all of the heavy objects and corpses she needed for her work. It was fine. They didn't mind doing physical things like that, but they also desire a fraction of her attention on account of having to share it with things that weren't even living. ( she sets the scalpel down, removes her gore'd gloves. she leans on the desk next to them and makes a comment about how they are a distraction but it has none of the malice in it from someone who was truly annoyed. Lyric motions her closer, holding the end without chocolate in their teeth. ) She smells like copper and hints of rot, the sting of preservatives over that, the fragrance of roses bled deeper under that---Lyric brought some because they were black. They thought it suited her. They take bites a little at a time and while Gita holds her hair out of her face with one hand she seems content to let Lyric do all the work of approaching her first rather than meeting into the middle. It's the kind of teasing sentiment they know well, and rather than play hardball about the rules of a mediocre party game in a morgue, they just sit up straighter and lean forward, eating bits of sweetened milk chocolate and biscuit along the way. When they come nose to nose to her she takes another bite, and there is the click of their teeth meeting before Lyric can turn their head to kiss her ( perhaps too gently for her tastes. but Lyric was a merciful beast, and they felt no rush, so they kiss her gently even if their teeth find the flesh of her lip and snap shut on it and the tip of her tongue ( pennies, the air of too much salt, a taste of rust. ) They mouth comes away smeared dark red and her thumb wipes away a drop with immense fondness.

"... nothing really tastes that good with blood, in my opinion. It's an acquired taste."

bites :\

-> Bites you back

❝ kind? how boring that would be. i aspire to be wicked. ❞

A FEAST FOR CROWS

"Must you aspire only? I'm sure many would claim you a rather wicked woman as it is."

-> It's said with an air of humor that mimics her own---Lyric would not pretend to think Gita was saint-like in any capacity beyond that within the church her people holed up in, but it seemed even she had limits to how callous or shark-like she could be with her deals. It boiled down to this: she didn't have to help them. For the price they were paying, she especially need not assist them to the extent that she was, and yet she invites them into her parlor. She assists them in finding the pieces of their project to pull it together diligently, needle and thread, and for all that Lyric could not consider her wicked. She is no different than a fae requiring payment for its services, or a banker wanting insurance.

"You sound like someone who decorates their house with discount Halloween supplies, so maybe ease up on it a bit. You're already the local mortician."

❝ love can make a fool of any man. ❞

A FEAST FOR CROWS

-> Oh, they knew that well. Had seen it painfully first-hand; had written pages and pages of documentation about it---his feelings. His love, twisted just as tightly about him as thorns were these nights, how he breathed it in every moment and could not change or escape it. And Lyric? Lyric did not understand. Could not, no matter how much they wrote of it, or questions they asked, or books they peeled through on long nights by a single light in the library. You are cruel to him! they say to the shadow that bleeds out the night sky and them, clad in red and bored by their pleading, He only wishes you to think of him! But the Shadow only laughs and cares not; the Priest only loves and thinks not of himself, his own end, the better life the little Mage hopes he might live. Daylight does nothing in this fairytale. Its end has not yet come about. Lyric pours hot water over a spoonful of soggy looseleaf tea balanced on a teacup and saucer, letting the strained-out dregs give the last of their flavor to both cups they pour: one for Gita and one for themselves. They're certain she has had her fair share of desperate men on her doorstep, begging for their love beside them. Lyric---when they were younger---would have been among them, desperate to have their mother back as she was. Their brother, too.

"Do you mistake my work for love?"

-> As if life could not be any crueler to their lot, Lyric did not even have someone they would risk everything for to bring back, no shape forged with tender care. They would raise that poor Priest's son for nothing but vengeance; for no reason but the damning, all-consuming ferocity to prove they were powerful, that they COULD. That humanity was not a limit, but a title bestowed upon at birth to be bent and shaped to their will! That they would not succumb to the terror that stalked them before they had their last say, dragged a soul straight out of the grave to serve them and show the perseverance of humans before and after death, to prove themselves. Because there was no one else on their side in this matter. Love blinded men: the Priest would be too slow to raise a hand to stop his love's wanton cruelty against them. By that time, the No Life King will have had his fill of their terror and pity and open sobs, perhaps will have sheered their body clean of all its meat and left them nothing but a shivering heart and bones. He may not even eat them, content in their torture alone as punishment for failing to meet his expectations.

"Foolhardy I am, but love this is not."

❝ it is a good thing that i thrive on chaos. ❞

A FEAST FOR CROWS

"Is this chaos or did I just hit an artery?!"

-> A strained tone to their voice as the heel of their hand comes down hard on the too-deep incision in the throat of a barely-assembled torso, the formaldehyde gushing from the open slit as Gita gives a faint chuckle of amusement as Lyric's less than stellar surgery skills---they needed to check that all of the muscle filaments and his esophagus lined up correctly where it connected to the sternum, but they went in a little too heavy handed for the cold flesh and popped right through where they meant to check. A hiss of annoyance in the cold lab air; Gita, in no rush, comes to their side with a more gruesome looking form of a parrot clip and pinches the open skin together around a piece of gauze, using the clips to hold it shut as Lyric gives a heavy sigh. They reeked of chemical preservatives---the body kind, not for food---and exhaustion wore at their eyes from a number of things: one, the process of building a vessel to a certain likeness from scratch is far more difficult, time intensive, and expensive than they had hoped. It wasn't like books and movies made it seem: you couldn't just get an empty corpse in pieces and sew them together and expect it to live. It needed organs in good condition, it needed reinforcement to its joints and joining segments, it needed the spark of life that existed in all things.

It needed a soul. Which was the only thing Lyric did have waiting in the wings; someone scorned, betrayed, sought by death prematurely. Someone who surely would rise again, certain it was divine intervention ( but there was no divinity here. it was only them. )

"I'm glad you find my medical floundering to be amusing."

-> It's not meant to bring her down or hurt. At least one of them is getting something enjoyable out of this, because Lyric is reaching their limits of scientific experimentation for the day: their hands are getting stiff and achy from doing fine, silver thread stitches between every set of muscles and the skin, and their pages of notes are stained with fluid and congealed blood and sweat. The bright light of the lamp above their operating table was beginning to leave spots in their eyes, and if they didn't try to sleep soon ( no matter how illusive and plagued it was ) they would likely collapse and make an even bigger mess. They take a deep breath.

"I don't suppose your ghouls or whatever can take this back to cold storage?"

👑

PRINCESS CARRY

"---Not that I doubt your abilities, being able to move bodies and all..."

-> It's still a bit embarrassing, looking at her nose-to-nose with their one good eye; Gita was stronger than she looked, just hauling them up off the table like that. Upon a cursory glance, they see there are several papers and diagrams near where they were sitting---perhaps her research? Was she afraid of it getting wrinkled? There weren't exactly a ton of hospitable sitting places in the morgue, and Lyric preferred to stay on their feet for transactions which consisted primarily of business, but had sat for just a moment while she was going through her inventory ( the process of building a body and raising a corpse was a complicated, arduous one. they didn't expect them to be finished any time soon, but it didn't mean they could stop sourcing materials and running tests."

"... but are you sure you can just carry me around? You could have asked me to move."

-> They think they feel a faint tremble in her fingers where they dig into the meat of their legs and rubs, because it was one thing to move bodies quickly and another to simply bear the weight. Lyric, pink in the ears, brings their fingers to tuck a lock of hair away from her face.

"Not that I dislike your attention with my new-found shitty depth perception and all, but I think I'm probably more of the muscle type than you."