Every time he spoke her chest would heave, taking deep breaths, exhaling just enough to avoid spontaneous combustion. Impulse after impulse — his beard, his touch, his voice, his words — threatened to drive her insane, but there was really nothing she could do other than go with the flow.  His words rang in her ears like a stupid song that gets stuck in your brain, playing over and over again, but fuck, it was so good to listen to.  She wasn't sure she could sing it that well — he seemed to have beaten her at that, but he wasn't dumb. He had to know it was true even if she didn't say it out loud.

Her knees went weak just as he started humming, sounds vibrating lightly on her skin, soft as a caress — she had to let go of his hair with one hand, and hold on to the table behind her, knuckles white with the need to not make a mess of this. "Shit—" was the low, graceless curse that left her lips, as she could barely stand on her feet.

Letting go of his hair, she pulled herself on the table and grabbed the collar of his shirt pulling him upwards, but no, not kissing him, she wanted him to keep singing and humming and making her head go nuts.  Morgan's arms wrapped around his chest like a trap, clinging to his back so tight her nails could almost scratch him, almost as if she wanted to keep him from leaving. Or keep herself from thinking he'd leave.

Ablaze || Graham & Morgan

"I love ye."

"Love ye."

"Love. Ye."

"God, Morgan, I…."

His words were woven through feverish, peppered kisses that were moving everywhere all at once and he was sliding down her body like she was a precious thing to be worshipped.

"I love ye," he said again, this time lifting up her t-shirt and nipping at the soft flesh of her navel.

She was squirming beneath him and he moved his hands to her hips and held her still, knowing that his beard was tickling her sensitive skin and not caring at all.

He couldn’t explain why he felt this way about her, didn’t know if there were words that would describe it in a way that rang true. But he could convey it through touch and melody and so he began humming as he worked her, a song that was borne of the powerful rush of emotions coursing through his veins.

She didn't realize she had been holding her breath until he spoke, and air started flowing again, her chest relaxing (as much as his flaming touch allowed it), the knot in her stomach untying now for the first time in months. A small voice in the back of her had (the one that never, ever shut up) suggested that maybe it was alcohol in his system speaking. Who, in their right mind, would admit they loved her?

—But maybe that was the point. Maybe he was just as fucked up as she was, as crazy and reckless and angry with the world, and even if he wasn't, she didn't want to know.  Morgan had been needing those words for too much time now, needed them for whole her life. And the way her hands raised to touch his neck (it felt so soft, so frail, almost as if she could choke him right in that very second), the way she looked into his eyes like she'd never look into anyone's was only meant to confirm that.

"Say it again", she moaned, as Graham's lips drew lines on her neck, her own hand getting tangled up in his hair. "Say it again".

Ablaze || Graham & Morgan

There was a small growl as she broke off the kiss and then he was fighting to regain focus and hear the words she was saying. And as he did, he saw the look on her face, so different from any expression she usually wore. There was no arrogance, no pride, just……need. Oh hell, he hoped he wasn’t about to fuck up, fuck up the one time she was actually letting him in, fuck she was so beautiful like this, he had never seen her like this and it was throwing him off, fuck.

"I…." he hesitated again, dipping his head down to her neck to nip at the skin there, watching as her ivory skin flared crimson from his teeth and stubble. He was buying precious time but he could only hold out so long before continuing on was necessary.

"…love ye," he said against her skin, quiet as a sigh. Both his hands dropped to her waist and rested firmly there. "It’s the worst thing, but I do and ye needed to know."

It was too late to back away now.  He was everywhere, keeping her anchored on the ground, invading every single fortress she had thought safe up until that moment. And he tasted so familiar, yet so distant, like some land she had conquered, then lost, but wanted badly to win back. Her hand (the one he wasn't blocking) found its place in his hair naturally, fingers tugging at his curls, almost pulling to make sure he wanted that badly enough to resist the urge to back off.

That same hand let go soon enough and trailed away from his head, grazing his neck, the outline of bones on his cleavage, his chest, and shivered lightly each time his lips came crashing again, stubble brushing against her skin, and yet it felt just right, just the way it was supposed to be.

Morgan pulled her mouth away just as her wandering hand stopped on his chest, his heartbeat pulsing behind his shirt, his skin so warm she almost feared he could burst into flames — and burn her down in the process. "Why are you here, then?", there was no smirk on her face, it was no game —  she was deadly serious. It had to be pretty obvious, but she needed to hear it. Needed something that could clear the fog in her mind and make her see, for once, that she was wrong.

Ablaze || Graham & Morgan

His own heartbeat was picking up now, thumping loudly, trying to burst out of his chest. Someone’s skin was electric and he wasn’t sure if it was hers or his own or maybe it was because both were still touching and the heat was nearly unbearable.

She had so little faith in herself, so little belief in her capacity to be a halfway decent human being, and he supposed that she had never really proved that she was capable of being one. For all her pretty words about wanting to protect him, the damage was already done.

"That’s the problem," he said, low and smooth enough that it was almost a purr, "ye already have."

Smirk met smirk as he brought his lips crashing down onto hers. He wasn’t gentle and he wasn’t loving but that was just how she liked it and he had nothing left to lose by giving her what she wanted. His free hand cupped the back of her neck firmly as he continued to ravish her and the hand on her wrist squeezed.

He was too close. Like a car you know you're going to crash into, but instead of turning, you drive faster. She wanted to drive faster, wanted the collision like she had never wanted anything else in her whole life — but, suprisingly enough, she still had a conscience, and if she was to crash the least she could do was take no victims down with her.

She couldn't pull him down. Morgan could smell his breath (was it whiskey, or vodka, this time? It didn't matter, it was too mixed up with after-shave, and dusty apartment, and sex), feel the warmth of his body grazing her skin, leading the feverish heartbeats in her chest, making her mouth water and dry at the same time.

"What if I did?", she looked away, trying hard to avoid his gaze as she spoke, low words that faded away as soon as they were spoken. "What if I said I wanted you? All of you, body, mind, soul, all that crap. What if I gave myself to you wholly, what if I stopped playing games?".

Her eyes shifted to him, lips half parted as they curved in a smirk (not the manipulative, clever smirk she gave anyone else — this was more of a grimace, something coming out of pain and uncertainty and good will). "I'd just destroy you, and hate myself for that".

Ablaze || Graham & Morgan

The bottle was out of his reach now, but suddenly he was holding her wrist of the hand that had moved it. He watched as she looked away from him, resisting the urge to jerk her head back around to face him. He was spared any further battle when her eyes found his again.

"Ye don’t fuck classy," he shot back, "Ye wouldn’t want me if I was." His head dipped down, too close for her comfort, he knew- he was invading the personal space she insisted on when they weren’t having sex. He knew this and he knew it would infuriate her and yet he did it anyway.

"Do ye want me right now?" he breathed into her ear, "Does it do it for ye to see me like this?" Because he thought it did, he could hear her breath hitching, could see color rising in her cheeks- and for Morgan, desire and rage often went hand in hand.

"Ye can have me," he continued, still whispering to her, deceptively soft. "Ye can always have me and ye know it. I’m like yer fucking dog." But even a tame dog could bite back.

Challenging his glare was far from the hardest task she could have been given  — Morgan had just the right amount of pride and stubbornness to stare right back into his eyes as if he was nothing more than a stranger to her. But there were other ways her body could betray her, like her pulse getting faster, her lips parting lightly to compensate her breath getting shorter, a tight knot twisting her insides right above her stomach. Still, she was a soldier, carefully focused on the task of defending herself from the enemy. As he reached for the bottle, she mirrored his movement, but grabbing it and pushing it further, out of his reach, never once taking her gaze off his eyes.

“Well, not a saint—“, she argued, her voice nothing more than a whisper, her face way too serious to be mocking me. “But a drama queen for sure”.

His next words were the first bullet to pierce through her armor, making her glance away, turning her head just enough to feel something else beside him (no, it didn’t work). Seconds ticked away as she refused to even give him the satisfaction of seeing her hesitate —Morgan Andersen never hesitated. She took what she wanted, and left desolation beside her. But him — the cost of wanting him was just too much.

“So, you came all the way here—“, her words came out calm, too calm to be a threat, as she brought back her eyes on him. “To give me an ultimatum? Wow. So fucking classy, Graham”.

Ablaze || Graham & Morgan

The laughter that left him then was a high, wild thing, feral and uncontrolled. “A saint? I condemned meself to the Pit the very first time I was in yer bed.” He ran his hands through his hair, shaking his head as he did. “I’ll never see Heaven, not when yer in me blood.”

He was close now, his body angled towards hers, backing her against the counter with his stare even though he wasn’t touching her- yet. Graham’s hand stretched out, though not to reach for the hellfire standing before him, but for the bottle in her grip.

"No," he said, "not tonight, not again, yer going to look at me with clear eyes and tell me if ye really want me to go."

Because that was the truth of it- he knew she didn’t want him to leave. She was too desperate, too starving for love to want that but also too bloody proud to ever admit it to anyone, least of all herself. The problem was convincing her of it, because words alone never worked with Morgan.

How far was he going to have to take this?

"I need a drink" was the first thought that flashed through her mind as she stepped away from the door — from him —, walking barefoot on the dirty floor, just as carelessly as she did anything else. Love and warfare included.

Her kitchen was a mess, as usual, but somehow she'd always know the way to the weekly special — a bottle of whiskey, this time.  Morgan poured herself a generous glass and downed it without even looking at him. It was dangerous to look at him.  She couldn't risk actually seeing him and deal with how much she had fucked him up.

"What do you want?", once she decided to raise her gaze to meet his, arms folded on her chest as if she was nothing more than an employer firing a careless waiter, her words came out low and sharp, the smirk on her lips already gone.

For minutes, it was all she said — she kept staring at him, much like a wolf stalking its prey — or maybe it was the other way around. When she finally spoke again, he had managed to drive her mad even without speaking at all.  "What the fuck do you want?", she hissed, stepping closer. "On what fucking planet is it alright to storm in here and lecture me like you're a goddamn saint, uh?".

Ablaze || Graham & Morgan

 If there had been any part of him inclined to treat her gently, her faked innocence as she stood there- pretending she didn’t know just why his eyes were bloodshot and his hands were shaking- extinguished it. That fucking eyebrow and that fucking little smirk and it was just all too much and he nearly growled as he took a step towards her.

"Playing games, Morgan? Even now?" His eyes were dark with a sheen that hadn’t been seen since his father’s death and the aftermath of it. His jaw clenched and unclenched in rhythm with the flashing neon lights he could see out of the corner of his eye.

"I can’t get ye out of my fucking head- and it’s ruining me. Ruined my set tonight too- does that make you happy? Did ye want to see me go up in flames over ye?"

If she didn’t wipe that goddamned smirk off of her face in the next ten seconds, he wasn’t sure he could be held responsible for what might happen after.

"Ye told me to get out, ye see," he said, "But ye didn’t return the favor."

Dull, gloomy afternoons, stretching painfully to become an equally dull, gloomy evening — it felt like it was all the world had to offer, lately. The thrill of the unknown, the juicy apples she had been craving a bite of just years before now were nothing more than a hazy mess of alcoholic vapors and bitter regrets — surely it could lead to one hell of a song, something so epic Bowie would have granted his blessing, something so filthy and divine even Lou Reed would have fallen in love.

But nothing, absolutely nothing came out of it. No lyrics, no music, not even a lazy tune to mumble under the shower. The constant need to keep every single dangerous thought out (although they all ended up wrapped in the same word, the same name, sweet and sharp and painful like vodka) was draining her, turning her into little more than an old woman with fragile bones. And she hadn’t even turned twenty-five yet.

Sure, it was a game she enjoyed playing, but it could get boring pretty fast pretty soon, and— now who the hell was that?

Morgan jumped a little, the guitar balanced on her legs falling on the mattress with a low thump. It didn’t take her that long to realize who it was, even before he spoke — usually, he had an ability to appear out of nowhere and wreak havoc all around, kind of like a hurricane. It was the aftermath that left her with a whole lot of crap to deal with.

His face, when she abruptly opened the door, was not like she remembered it. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”, was the kind, pleasant way she greeted him with, leaning against the doorframe with a quirked brow. He looked like shit, and part of her could not help being happy about it — at least it showed that the good, righteous Graham could fuck up just as much as her.

Ablaze || Graham & Morgan

   He had crossed the unspoken line of what was an acceptable number of shots to take during a set about half an hour ago, and it was starting to show in the music. Graham hadn’t noticed the slow exodus of bar patrons, too busy trying to keep his hands from shaking to bring the blurry crowd into focus. It didn’t help that the anger was cracking his voice more than the whiskey ever could, that there was more than could be credited to showmanship.

   “This isn’t anything to me.”

   “You aren’t anything to me.”

   “Just get out.”

   Her voice echoed and rang through the numbness with a sharp burn and he hit the next string harshly enough to break the skin.

   “You aren’t anything to me.”

   There was a jeer that followed swiftly on the heels of the discordant note that finally broke his reverie. Glaring at the man responsible, Graham’s voice grew guttural, ripping the next words of his throat.

   “This isn’t anything to me.”

   He stood then, interrupting his own song and meeting the boos of the audience with a poetically rude gesture. There were no coherent thoughts in the minutes that followed. Later, he wouldn’t remember swearing at the owner of that bar, or of hailing a cab that took him to her shitty apartment. Shitty apartment for a shitty person, he thought, pushing the buzzer with greater force than was required.

  “Just get out.”

  No, not this time, not with this one, not her, not that fucking red hair, those fucking blue eyes, not those lips that cut and stung yet wrapped around him so warmly and— fuck.

  “Open the fucking door,” he screamed- no, whispered- no, sighed brokenly against the intercom.

"Morgan…."

I fell for you the way a train wrecks itself, the way a wave crashes into the shore. It looks like fear and it feels like recklessness. So maybe we’ll destroy each other, ruin and break each other but God, what a way to go.

Tina Tran, This is for you (via absentions)

Name: Morgan Adrianne Andersen [Stage name: Morgan]. Age: 25 Musical influences: Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Joan Jett, Stevie Nicks (and Fleetwood Mac), Cranberries, Hole, the Smiths, Queens of the Stone Age, Jefferson Airplane, Jeff Buckley, David Bowie, Queen, Janis Joplin. Voice Headcanon: Nina Persson. Personality: + ambitious, blunt, passionate, determinate, proud.  - distrustful, cold, often irrationally mean, quick-tempered, headstrong, impulsive. Background: A small town in New Jersey, a sad family history and a drunken father. There wouldn’t be much more to say about Morgan’s tale of woe, which is, in fact, just the boring chronicle of a life as fucked up as that of seven billions of other people. Truth is, to know Morgan’s story you’d have to know about all her failures, all the times she’s been let down and all the people she’s let down herself. It’s not a happy story, and it’s not funny, either. But it’s her story, and if you look carefully, you may even read it among the lines of her songs. The first half of her life isn’t really worth much talking: it could easily be translated in three simple words, hatred, cowardice and booze. Her father would show up every morning with a very distinct smell of filthy pub, and a new bullet point on his criminal record, and Morgan learned soon enough that there was no point in trying to get something more than muttered insults from him. He was incapable of loving anything that couldn’t be poured from a bottle, after having lost the only love he had ever felt in a car accident, and the example he set for his own daughter soon led her to become just as empty and broken as he was. Sure, she had something to help her get away — hundreds of records to play endlessly and give her a safe shelter, away from the hobos her father would rent his room to (yes, he really did that, and he wasn’t even capable of getting a decent income out of that). She would lock herself up in her room and get drunk on music, elevating Jimi Hendrix to the status of hero, the one her father never had the guts to take responsibility for. He was nothing more than a stranger to her, and it was no wonder she left without goodbye, as soon as she turned eighteen. New York City was a shock, an in-vein injection of dizziness that left her dazed and confused for years - it still does. But she loved it, loved every filthy second of it, loved the tidal waves of human beings overflowing from every corner. It was her element — that one ground where she believed all her dreams could come true. And they really seemed to be coming true when she met Tommy, the closest thing to a Prince Charming she had ever seen.  The chapter about Tommy is the one she never talks about. The one she’s buried deep within herself, although traces of its chronicles can be discovered among her lyrics, if you look closely. But if you ask her, she’ll never tell. That chapter is, to her, her own personal Dark Age. Morgan was still rather young when she met him – and naïve. She believed him when he said that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She believed in the songs he said he had written just for her — and even after he had beaten her bloody for the whole night, she still believed him. He abused her, that much is clear, and had her brainwashed with all his pretty words, and with the songs he sang. He turned her love for music against her, and it took a whole lot to come out of that slumber. But however dark and challenging that chapter was, it came to an end of sorts soon enough. It took him getting arrested for all that shit he had been selling – literally every kind of drug that could be found in the state of New York had gone through his hands – and, although she was still the usual coward, Morgan managed to get her mind out of that brainwash. Once again, it was music that saved her – in this particular case, a wanted singer ad hanging in an underground pub. She became lead singer of Dark Water Rising in a matter of days, and that, to everybody who was there to witness it, was the beginning of the end. Tommy had changed her, made her tougher, but also colder, less willing to show her true self and hiding behind a mask further and further from reality as days went by. She became, simply, a bitch. A cold-hearted queen of the underground life of New York, or so she enjoyed thinking of herself. A new victim in her bed every night, and a new gig as well: Dark Water Rising was like an army, devouring every other band with every song they played. Until, eventually, that chapter was over as well. The back vocals singer, that one member she had never tolerated in her band – she took over, in what Morgan likes to think of as a mutiny, and just as quickly as she had gotten in, she was out of Dark Water Rising. But she had no time to grieve for the band, because grief was waiting just around the corner. Christoph Andersen died of an overdose in September, and although some sort of redemption was expected from her, Morgan didn’t feel anything at all. She got back to her hometown, stood on the grass during the whole funeral, bid her farewell to a father who looked a lot like a stranger, and that was it. People who know her now think that death has redeemed her – they don’t know that, instead of finding some long lost, holy side of Christoph, all she found was way more filth she had ever imagined. Christoph had become so similar to that one man who had made her life hell just months before, that she couldn’t even get herself to feel sorry for his death. It was not redemption, but a promise she made to herself: she was never, ever going to be like him. Not as empty, not as fucked up, not as cruel. She took advantage of the unfinished business Christoph had left behind, and took the time to fix all that shit for almost an year. Secretly, she had been working on herself: waking up at dawn, taking never ending walks on the shore, spending much more time with herself than she had ever done before. And then it was New York all over again, and the shimmering lights, the intoxicating vapors and the deafening music. But this time she wasn’t as dazed as before – she knew its bright side, and the dark side as well. She started performing, again. Solo. Just her and her guitar, sometimes the occasional drummer supporting her.  She let go of everything, exorcising her demons and turning them into songs. And instead of being the cold heart of Dark Water Rising, now she was just Morgan. Probably for the first time in her life.