> @biblicalimage, " THREE DEEP BREATHS. WE'LL TAKE THEM TOGETHER. "

a wound, as anyone knows, must be sanitized: cleansed, disinfected. swept clear of debris, washed from the aftermath. removed, from the kiss of gravel. a laceration comes with infection, should it be neglected; but vincent refuses to turn away. ( a blindfold is nigh unforgivable. a mere glance is nothing of their routine. ) the marquis de gramont finds himself unrecognizable, a disappearing act that disintegrates through hitched breath and wide eyes; a stuttering tongue. mari dai's need for a lifeline, extended. if you searched how to sterilize a injury on wiki-how, you'd find directions that fall on deaf ears. the scars run too deep, the imprints of past, engraved. instead, vincent says deep breaths. he gestures, slow, and mari's chest rises and falls in a succession of one, two, three. a waltz of wounds, unwinding. her blink follows suit. ( once, twice, thrice. ) her spine relieves pressure. ' v, ' tone shrinks, shrivels underneath a ragged breath. ' i— ' a hand unfolds, refolds, and then traces the spot beside her. a hesitant gaze invites him in. ' come here. ' a beat. ' please. '

when has he ever served on his knees? the thought is absent even as the wood digs little daggers into his skin, crawling in that servile manner that says i will do anything you ask. [i will serve, i will be of service.] the tactics of the table are a faraway conduct, forgotten and neglected in the face of tending to someone better than you tended to yourself; he wouldn't call it love, couldn't, for then this thing between them was as real as the world around him [and you need only take a torch to the ground to incinerate the earth and leave it in dust.] a man who had everything could not simply command the affections of mari dai, she did not place her attention without reason and, for the first time, the marquis de gramont found himself having to earn; but then games and fiction started to yield to hidden truths, between small touches and the betrayal to innermost thoughts. it lapsed into candour, their best and their worst. [almost drags his way to her side and sits, like a dog; loyal to whomever kicks because at least you could call it touch.] he awaits with baited breath for something, nails or teeth. it feels something like being home; that hitch of his chest that forebodes an undoing. knows it's different, feels it's different, so why can't he convince his body of the same?

‘are you—’ a limb cast lazily across his knee, vincent looks dead ahead. their eyes meeting in that moment feels too open, too awkward. real. there is something about her reaction he is beginning to digest but can barely stomach, the lines that litter her body in ordained ruin; how selfish of him to be ensnared by her air and confidence, blind to the overcompensation that makes it so. their relationship had never been founded on sobriety; it was all teases and taunts and bending until broken, shattering to the hypnotic spell of bloody kisses and open mouths. he finds himself incapable of so readily adjusting, newfound significance weighing heavily against the air around them, likely suffocating them both. ‘do you need anything?’