ᴛʀᴇᴍᴏʀ

[Toska]

The blackened night sank into Salvatore's senses. Writhed beneath flesh, crawling in a tredecillion of vessicles. Bustling, bursting from the seams, awash with light and the oily thick of haze; translucent smoke, neon pouring in gaudy streams. Quavering where crowds disrupted its passage. Refracted, bent, slipping off Salvatore and into the mess of skyliners and passing yachts in frenetic movements peppered in blue holographic spray. Movements that stole stillness from the world, shattered glass hearts and ticked time forward without a care. Ceaseless. Guided by naught but a lick of hope. Desire for continuance, to continue onward, pressed into the mass of bodies and sweat and perfume that slicked back the odor and bathed the unperturbed.

Despite it all, the crowd felt stagnant. Pebbles lodged in a stream, snatches of conversation trickling by in a fiat of progress. Stale, breeding distrust as insects, buzzing about on drunken wings. Fluttering from word to word, catching speech and faltering against pollen that swelled in tonsils, on tongues too loose. Too sure. They spoke, they catered, so sonorous, so mesmerizing. Conversations held rapt, attentive. Nursed at bosoms blotched with silver crests. Galactic embroidery. Wings for the veterans, crimson streaks for their citizenry. Bow, their presence dictated, but moved solely tangent to the flow.

From its core, where dichotomy wrought chaos in vagrant wakes, Salvatore's perch gave him an idle view. Free from lucid smiles, from lazy currency that obfuscated the eye. Struck blind by avarice, stripped of vision as only the most strenuous refusal towards moderation could manage. He procured a taste for sight. Affixed his gaze on these crowds. Conversations. Stale, dribbling off lips as wont of repetition. Enraptured. His attention was latched to the movement. Swayed to their beat, to the steady rhythm on tin drums. Hung in their orbits, distinct, aloft.

The tatters of civilization that remembered tragedy but wished to forget. No sweeter ambrosia. It was intoxicating. Lifted his lips in curls that echoed hollowly around corners. Walked the length of bazaars and plastasteel storefronts. Tents of fabric sewn together, opened as exotic fare. Salvatore, he followed the crowd on their journey to the metropolis's core. The epicenter of stagnation, under the belly of politics and sirens. Where glowsticks and credit chits reigned sovereign. Where light manifested, existed only for the privileged.

Tonight, inhaling the same air, the same haze that wracked a planet's worth of proclivities, Salvatore erected himself on a higher plane. Dressed himself in cloth buttoned to the hollow of his throat. Rolled at the wrists to expose a slender filament of silver. Pressed wax into hair to run it sleek, slick back from forehead, absconding itself from view, from brow. Decadence drew heavy on his breath, and the chaos surrounding him was his own. It suited him, and he matched it. Devolving to its bowels, clutching thumb between forefinger behind the grip of his back.

Spiring towers and chrome plated sky beckoned him. From bazaar to square, a rolling plain of laborers and aficionados. Charlatans making mimicry of playwrights, of artists. Paintings passed hands. Smoke curled from sticks, from pipes, cigarettes both synthetic and natural. Scents wafted on the air, the neurotic, mellow cant of tourists brimming with excited worry. He walked among them. Distinct, aloft.

 

[Echo]

Few people were ever truly prepared to die.

Then again, most of the galaxy's denizens seemed oblivious to the reality that their time was finite, that they were all victims of casualty, that their lives would undoubtedly become forfeit sooner or later. For one, that time was now: even if he was loath to accept it, Bem Tosk was a corpse waiting to happen. A body that had outlived its usefulness. A mind that had chosen deception over honesty, who now existed on the very definition of borrowed time. It was unfortunate, maybe - except in the fact that to her, it wasn't.

Echo had reviewed his file, and taken the bounty without complaint. He was a thief. The punishment was set.

All she had to do was pull the trigger.

Perhaps he saw it in her eyes, first. In the way she sized him up from head to toe, gaze sweeping over his form as if their roles had been reversed somehow - as if he had become the prey, pretty and soft, waiting for someone to snatch him up, buy him a drink, drive him home. Maybe it was her smile. Wolfish, sharp, confident. Knowing. His life meant the continuation of her own, of food to eat, of fuel to fly with, of indulgences to be relished, even if only for a moment's time.

Maybe she was the monster, after all.

There were few who offered their necks willingly to the axe. It was instinct to run, just as it was instinct to chase, to humor her quarry with the notion he might find freedom with spirited feet. But Echo knew what it meant to be chased, to be hopelessly pursued. She lived her life on the fine line between victim and victor, balance swaying under the current of fate.

As if split by shark's fin, the sea of life parted in anticipation of her. There was determination in her eyes, a deadly focus honed on the seemingly innocuous figure that attempted to elude her. His tactic was cunning - to blend in with the masses, to find safety in shadows - but flawed. She had the scent of him, had committed his gait and fearful stare to memory, and followed him with the desperation of a starving hunter, all too aware of her place on the food chain.

 

[Toska]

Under the chrome plated ceiling, the sky began to weep. Synthetic tears, drizzling in acrid pleats. Drumming against unfurling domes, an umbrella erected to quell the acid sizzling beyond. A dazzling rain. Glistering in the bright effervescence of the skyline. Countless lights shot through those infinitesimally small droplets. Scattered in the lattice stretching the length of the city's depths. Rumbled in the distant din of thunderous claps, hydro lifts chewing away at liquid, commanding cessation. Forcing it to stall, to hover and quaver midair, incapable of falling, of touching the ground, the passersby bustling in their vivid crowds.

The sounds, caught as a hum imperceptible in the gentle vacuum above the constant croon of conversation, blended. Molded to form, to the shape of a world so far gone, lost in a self-aching depravity that averted from tragedy. That knew nothing of oblivion. It became tautology. A prayer muted but spoken in a collective hive, a pool of consciousness that poured from the sky. Incandescent waste. Moved shy of surveillance, denying the touch of observation; for knowing, acknowledging what was so meticulously avoided denounced itself cardinally.

These sins coalesced, crystals flaking and drizzling from the sky. Rain that could not exist. Unseen by the hellions and hare seekers. Those whose chins stayed down, whose lips curved and jutted out, speaking to forget, to stay the hold of recollection. Trapped in rampant stagnancy, the illusion of progress transmogrified men to caricatures. Idle reverie, escape from the pressure of decay. War, a construct reviled, left to waste away on other shores. Carried off by fairer tides, by other people. These crowds, they were untouched.

In a way reminiscent of jaded lust, they wasted without seeing. Sightless but for the eyes of a man whose vision absconded from individual sensibility. Salvatore, whose creeping walk landed him in the path of flight. He broke from the parting crowd. From bodies elbowed and shouldered aside. Nudged past, opening a clearing that few were willing to obstruct. The hunger for escaped echoed in them. Electric, a pulse which shot, fired without delay. Community bundled in the skin of cowardice. Acknowledging the flight brought reality to theirs; but Salvatore, distinct, aloft, brought pause to the shoulder that collided with his.

Shoulder to shoulder, gasp of breath shaking lungs and cascading into cold sweat sliding off the slope of a brow. The man before him was possessed of murky eyes. Cloudy, rheumy to sclera dripping past the veilof oblivion. Recognition, a weight that cracked its yolk over the dawn of his being. Shuddered into existence. Finite. Fear existed there, of the ravenous hunger nipping at his heels. Futility. It rooted in his bones. Anchored the man to Salvatore's fingers, that slender grip staying hope, clutching flight without recourse.

Looking into those eyes, examining the petrified contours of a visage wrenched to the bowels, an inkling tickled the back of his neck. Moved Salvatore to continuance, to a promise of evaporating sedation. He tightened the noose so clearly wound around the man's nape, offered it up. A sacrifice to the crimson string twanging at his breast.

 

[Echo]

Hers was a body made for movement, designed to hunt, honed to chase. Long legs that covered ample ground carried forth a slim torso and graceful arms, dressed in black, reflecting none of the night's ambiance. Boots crushed concrete underfoot while copper ribboned in her wake, curls gathered in a messy plait, leaving vision clear and visage gently framed in a halo of loose strands. In pursuit, she was sublime; a creature from another world, let loose on those deserving of punishment.

Without restraint, lips split in a wide smile. Joyful. Appreciative of the challenge, in enjoyment of pursuit. Echo vaulted effortlessly over that which stood in her way, graceful through her haste, breath drawn in panting gasps behind bright, sharp teeth that yearned to find purchase on something soft. If she was a monster, then she sought to embrace it; it only made sense to become the villain, to invite the beast close to her heart. To become what men feared, as if her silhouette didn't imply some inherent malice to start with.

Deadlier than the male. A universal truth, acknowledged rarely, if ever at all.

Felt it before she saw him, the pinprick of light against a darkened sky, the drop of ink in a milky basin, spreading in languid tendrils, coloring consciousness, tainting the cold quiet that she worked so hard to refine. The mass was silent, save for the hum of recognition, the ache of familiarity - the incessant pull towards damnation, or was it something more?

Beneath her skin, fire without ashes. The persistence of memory.

Half a block between them, and she could recall his taste. The sound of his voice. The color of his eyes. The shape of his frame was familiar to her now, intimately so, and the breath that caught in her throat spoke of hesitation, of a moment's doubt.

Her lips formed his name in slight, silent movements, brow pinched, confusion clear. If there was a significance to his presence, she surely didn't know it. Didn't care to dwell on why he had appeared so suddenly, clutching quarry in arms that had once been home. All too aware of the eyes that followed them, of the burning stares that lingered in the empty spaces between them, Echo raised her right arm.

Aimed for center mass, took a breath, fired her gun.

 

[Toska]

Eyes skirted off crowd. Slipped from mass to mass, between bodies and breaths. Found heart beats twanging in time; an echo of lust that trilled at his wrists, that jumped at opportunity, seized and trembled. It held him taut, igniting a spark that shot as the current through the sky. Those dazzling beams, arcs of electricity and plasma that shook sky scrapers to their very foundations. Thus did it shake him. From the arch of his back to the nape of his neck. Ran the course of his body, jolting fingertips that elated in clandestine acts. Elated in depriving the man before him of freedom, of life.

Bestial, ravenous, he searched for the source of phantom pleasure that rose to his belly in giddy waves. That crashed to the center of an aching chest, filling the hollows of his rib cage. He followed that thread. A quiet trickle, woven on spider silk cast to vibrate at the lightest of touches. One that saw his gaze returned in meticulous desperation. Catching the thread, unraveling it to its nearby attache.

Among the clamor of crowds, the sound of bolt leaving muzzle was deafened. Fell upon ears that yet refused to hear. All sans his, whose bore the dull ring of aftermath. Speckles of light, of purple cut through vision that waxed towards a glimpse of red; of blood, to hair that swept off in copper halos, that carried him to remembrance so thick that its taste lingered on his lips.

An echo traveled on the bolt's maddening dash.

That name, his own, etched onto lips and shot back in the absence of hesitation. The man besides him, possessing of a pleading glimmer, crumpled and gasped. Aloft in Salvatore's grip, in the fingers that wound tight about a scarce breathing throat. Words bubbled up from the pits of oblivion housed thus. Rose to the surface, gurgling in antipathic whorls. Clawed for a final inch of escape. Granted. Salvatore released the man.

The thing now grasping at straws. Floundering for breath and tearing open cloth to expose a blackened gouge; darker than the night, crisp, dribbling with blood that could not be his own. Someone else's, surely, eyes that sought the source of tragedy. Nudged away from passersby that gaped and stared, but said nothing, but moved on, along with their lives. Ones which would not be ended so quickly.

They shook their heads. Each of the crowd, lingering glances slipping away, far from the man offering to trade. To bargain fleeting life for mercy. No, there was no mercy for him. None in their faces, at their throats. None to be found but in the muzzle of a loaded gun.

 

[Echo]

One bolt; a rush of neon, of thunder, streaking through a dismal evening. Finding purchase in flesh, but traveling no further.

Light shifted overhead, brought clarity, allowed her to see the handsome visage that had haunted her in dreams, in inebriated fragments of memory. There was no doubt, no room to mistake what she saw, what she felt. As if tied on opposite ends of a rapidly shortening string, Echo found herself drawn nearer by spirit, though her body refused to move. The odds were astronomical, and yet, suspicion was absent from her mind. Lips parted to exhale, breathing relief into the smog.

Condemned, he struggled. Fought for wide gulps of air, pleaded for mercy through wild, smoke saturated eyes. The crowd judged him with their silence, found him wanting, unworthy of a second glance. There was no savior hidden within their ranks, no one to hold him tightly to chest, to abscond through the city with naught but salvation in mind.

It was for the best.

Prey crawled, bloodied on hands and knees. Predator strolled, her gait long and carefully controlled. A perfect economy of movement, confidence oozing from synthetic second skin. Chin raised, eyes leveled on the horizon - seeing through him, pushing past the phosphorous riot in her bloodstream, as if something so visceral could truly be denied - Echo made her approach. Pure professionalism, from the boot that pinned her quarry to the second shot that ended his suffering, to the datapad that recorded his demise, transmitting details for the sake of confirmation. For payment.

She existed in his orbit, now. Caught in his pull, Echo lingered. Turned to face the stranger that stood within arm's reach, to take in his manicured appearance, to suppress the knowledge of what existed beneath the polished facade. Lips ticked upwards in a lopsided smile, rapacious in the wake of a job well done. Words formed in the depths of her throat, struggled to find purchase in the night air, collided against teeth that pressed gently into an unpainted grin.

Near-silent, amusement portrayed through a soft snort of air, her attention lingered on Salvatore. She had no choice in the matter.

"Always in the thick of things, aren't you?"

 

[Toska]

Corpse met duracrete, slicked the ground with a wet stain. Crimson from the belly, from the neck. Faceless, disfigured, a cruel, jagged smile permanently fixed on sanguine lips. Trapped in an orbit it could never escape. Demoted to an object, a thing left on the floor, trash for the cleaning droids to sweep away into the gutter. Lost, as Salvatore was in that voice, in those eyes. Gurgling screams faded, dulled to the kiss of death. Parsed a circle around hearts beating and stilled.

There was silence in those spaces. The breadth of ignorance averting its gaze from the mess at their feet. Curl of lips, longing felt rather than seen. Heard in a tone clipped short in measured breaths. Longing so far detached from the goings on of the cityscape that unfolded beyond. It settled in Salvatore's chest. The hollows there, just beneath his throat where words formed, took shape, and scattered before he managed to evoke a single phrase. The name came first. Saturated him, his breath. Heavy, ragged as the reminiscence it brought.

"Echo," he said, and truly did it reverberate from the pits of his stomach. A churning, queasy lisp. One that held him up, propped his spine the way his hands once held durasteel, once braced against a wall that stole from him any further sensibility. That spectre of bygone days. Ghoulish in her pale which stoked the cinders left in the backs of his eyes.

He lorded over the sensation. Rolled back behind lids, savored the taste of air she carried. The sweet fragrance diluted in smog, permeating the skintight fabric that laced her. Roaming gaze sought recourse, and he was loathe to give it up. This silence. The catch of reunion on parting breaths.

Jeering drew him outward. Away from the reverie that contemplated each smothered plane of her face. From jaw to cheek, riding bones to deep set gaze, to brow that lifted in his company; abscond, he was beckoned, and resistance slid from him with a shrug. Hapless in how it erected his facade.

"Typically, and you, no longer running."

 

[Echo]

Blaster homed at the hip, safety latched. Rendered inert against thigh, metal warm to grazing touch. Fingers sheathed, palms gloved, she left no trace. A ghost in the machine. The cadence of her name against his tongue inspired wanting, elicited a smile - knowing what came next, in a perfect galaxy; in a space made for two. For Echo, their audience was immaterial: she saw only him, naught but the light of his eyes, the softness of a familiar mouth, one her attention lingered upon as if anticipating salvation from stilled lips. Without sound, she whispered invitation. Hoped, beyond reason, that it would be taken.

From below, wind guttered, picking up speed. Chased refuse down sidewalks, ruffled skirts, drew jackets closer to chest. Stirred up the metallic scent of blood, of sweat and skin, of filth and grime. Pocketed, the datapad buzzed. Another satisfied customer, another sanctioned mess awaiting unceremonious cleanup.

The concept of coincidence felt hollow, insincere. But fate was such a nebulous term, so heavy with implication that it seemed poised to knock the air from wanting lungs. Lungs beneath ribs that still pulled in deep, needing breaths, that tried in vain to still a racing heart, thundering behind bones that seemed all at once too tight, too small. Against cheekbones, the slightest sheen of sweat reflected fading light, glowing silver in the holographic haze.

She gazed at him for what felt like an eternity. Long enough that internal icebergs shifted, grinding foundations into valleys and lakes in their wake, crumbling beneath the weight of eons.

"No," she offered, voice cool, distant. Forcing the longing downward, letting it settle in her bones, at her feet. "It wasn't a very good look for me."

Aware of the crowd, of the way the masses lurched ever forward, she angled herself closer. Offered a slender limb, an elegantly crooked arm, for the taking.

 

[Toska]

The crowd, that immaterial thing. As much a spectre as her. Wafting around barrier islands in lazy whorls. Flowing past, drizzling down and around, ignorance touching hollowed out eyes. Gazes that slipped off, saw nothing but causality; deigned the scene of two more pebbles lodged in the road as inconsequential. It was a choice to remain sightless. Blissfully aloft. Separate from the creatures and people so formless, so faceless in their path. Stepping by took little effort, and smaller still struck the expenditure in which they ignored the pair. Hidden in plain sight. Privacy gleaned by watchful eyes. Acutely aware, but overwhelmingly aloof.

There was no sweeter recourse. For all the privacy gained in enclosed spaces, where holocams recorded voice and digitized pixels onto screens, immortal, these clamorous spaces carried it on simpler wings. Moments lavished on the promise of thievery. Stolen glances, stolen words. Conversation that pewtered out into the ether of foreign reserve. Such bliss in exhibitionism. Made curious the longing that yet beat within their chests.

Salvatore, easing his lips to a smile. Curling them up, touching the eyes that found only an Echo of his own want, he took her in stride. Hooked arm around hers, pulling close to the eaves of his body. From shoulder to the press of hips, a cloister that kept them close. Closer yet where the familiar cant of breathing danced readily from lip to ear.

He leaned into her, dipped his chin to lobe to bit off a quiet riposte, "I would never call you less than dazzling," he said. Murmured. Breathed as he was wont, into her, slipping breath into ear, riddling gooseflesh. Clutching the skintight suit so close to heart, a palpable excitement in his wrist. Excited to be near, afraid to let go. Moving, walking with her, evaporating into the crowd where their very individuality vanished, he could not help the giddy humor that tugged at his brow.

 

[Echo]

For all the world, she noticed only him. No longer was the corpse a lingering concern. No more did the crowd threaten her serenity, vacant stares mingling with the burning weight of scrutiny, threatening to throw her world into quiet chaos. The masses inspired terror, on a good day: forced her to draw inward, to become cold. A statue of a woman, one who felt nothing, who could be unperturbed by a vague, pervasive anxiety that only an outlier might understand.

She was alone in the galaxy. A strange thing - but he was strange, too. She felt it, a tickle of light, a pinprick of warmth in the fiber of her being. A whisper that drew her near, wrapped her in the strands of crimson thread and tugged her, stumbling over doubt, ever nearer.

Spoken so plainly, words disturbed the rhythm of her pulse, prompted an overworked heart to skip, to leap and bound against the fetters of her chest. Echo smiled, wide and bright, head turning as though to steal a kiss from familiar lips, though she stilled the impulse. Fought against instinct, against desire, against the need to take that which had once been so thoroughly hers.

"That's flattery," she said, voice alight with accusation, with mischief. It was indeed flattery, and she enjoyed it thoroughly - such was never in doubt, not for a moment, not when the words emanated from him. Delight manifested through laughter, through the dipping of a chin as though to disguise mirth, legs moving in time to slip seamlessly into the crowd.

Reunion was sweet. And the way arms loosened, allowing palms to graze, fingers to intertwine, was certainly all the more delightful for the wanting.

 

[Toska]

Salvatore shook his head. Flattery was unbecoming of him; crude from lips, a flurry of words that tumbled past lips that wished to remain sealed, to bask in the warmth and dash himself fully upon her orbit. Each pore, each writhing vesicle clamored within him. Struggled for perch, skittering under skin and clawing out to a pin prick on the nape of his neck. Those fingers woven in his, that gaze cast sideways as to catch him unawares. Peeking out from copper halo, sneaking a sip of what promises cinched the back of their throats. Mutual felicity. Unspoken, acted on regardless.

Despite himself, it cocked a smile on his placid visage. Weathered off the guarded exterior, the aloof planes and upcast nose that lent itself to grandeur. The airs of a man so far above his own station. One walking the masses as a king with his subjects; aloft, distinct. It fashioned him a wearied man. Wrought with displeasure, harsh beyond his years. Age that showed in the cant of his walk, how his heels pleated duracrete, willing the ground to part before his step. To brush away dirt and passersby, safe passage for him. A liege, but only now, only in the company of his vener.

In her presence, he indeed wore airs beyond his call, and he chided himself ever more for it. That precocious smile, how he held his back stiff, erect to guide her. He drew them forth in meandering circuits, supplanting a lack of purpose for surety. Confidence that riddled his brow, made mockery of any attempt to dissuade him.

He gave pause, a slight shift in the turn of his heel.

"Come," he said, dipping away from the crowd. Sullying their falsetto privacy as he made for a stoop. Three steep steps leading down to a red lacquered door that forced him to duck in order to pass its threshold. Old fashioned, disserviced, but well-used enough to creak on hinges blackened by oil's stale touch. Into a grotto, lit by a single lamp, a hallway offering little in the way of space. They stood abreast, stopped only at a bouncer whose girth forced them to file. To fritter away into the quiet din of a carpeted abode.

Tapestries hung at the corners, drowning what ambiance the gaudy room had managed. Several tables partitioned off, some with paper, others mere banisters cordoned with rope. It resembled a bazaar, alight with a whispering mass of few and billowing out incense from censers hanging at the ceiling.

"A lounge, apparently. Join me." Trailing her by the fingers, he approached a booth. A space reserved for them. No others, far from the eyes of wandering voices. Theirs.

 

[Echo]

Without a moment's pause she fell into step along side him, eager to be guided, to be removed of the choice of where to go or what to do. For her, independence was exhausting: decisions to be made, employers to be catered to, marks to be caught - or killed. They all formed a cacophony of need, one that brought with it a vague, pervasive anxiety, inhibiting anything close to relaxation. But at his side, she could simply exist, no longer allowing the concerns of a less-than-ethical life drag her back to reality.

It was a short-lived indulgence - as most luxuries were - but Echo intended to enjoy it to the fullest.

A single word elicited the hint of a grin, curiosity wrapped in coy flirtation. Wordlessly, she followed his lead. Squeezed at the palm nestled in her own, hers warm from the residual heat of a blaster pistol, disguising icy flesh. A mirror to the man left to litter the walkway, life cooling the longer he laid inert. Landscapes whirred past her: a crowd, a stoop, a whimsically-painted door.

Inside, she drew in a deep breath, eager to sample the exotic perfume that coiled around piqued senses. Familiar, but only vaguely. Distant, like a memory long misplaced.

Fingertips left wanting, she followed. Eased into the cushioned bench opposite her companion, shifting in pursuit of comfort. Under the glowing haze, dim and golden, shadows accented sharp features, drew her eye to the angles of cheekbones. Brought back memories of ships, of thumbs against teeth, of taste.

Arms folded neatly across the table, posture relaxed, chin angled slightly upward. Another deep breath, eyes fluttering closed, appreciating the change from grimy, blood-touched streets.

Time passed. Gaze leveled on his, voice low. Pleasant. "Didn't think I'd see you again." Less accusation, more guarded surprise.

 

[Toska]

Misplaced threads woven together on a tapestry painted the scenes of scarlet amor, of battles and righteousness that beat to the furious tremor of hearts that clipped in time. Passing over a gaze, gilded, webs of gold to obfuscate and mire the stories. Tradition retold under the guise of art. History repeated at the fingertips of weavers. Wrought forth in great beauty, gaudy, jarring. Assured to catch the eye, to force the gaze that it may linger on every scene; further still, until it came to read the inlaid plaques beneath. Names. The tellers who brokered history over smacking lips.

The one hanging at the wall of their booth foretold archaic madness. Harsh gold figurines, blockish and bulky, waged war upon the tapestry. A color washed memory where blood's exaggeration led to critical admiration. Spears, tussled lettering that spoke of Ithorian tongues, and faded scrawls worked in scripts long forgotten. These were pieces of astonishment, creations that should not exist in a galaxy so drained of its reminiscence, so caught up in stagnation.

It caught on Salvatore's lips with a smile. Crooked, less than a grin, lopsided even as he nodded along to Echo's speech. The quiet lisp, the brevity that worked him to her gaze. Yes, his absent mind longed for the scenes magnificently woven into thread, but those vacant spaces... no matter how they desired, regardless of the touched craved, promised satisfaction in a solitary existence. The one staring up at him from a sidelong glance.

Despite the booth curving over in a wide semi-circle, sparing enough room for a conglomerate to seat themselves, he strayed nearer still to Echo's form. Shoulders touching, breath falling in a steady rhythm from lungs cut from the same vein. An act of singularity, affect linking them surely as cement. Glued without hope of separation, for it aligned beautifully with his own desires.

He shifted his smile to her. Faded, wan, but there. On his lips, spared only for her eyes, for the conspiracy cloistered within. "These tapestries," he said, an offhand gesture rising to stroke the silk, "are replicas." Significance held him, serious from the glitter of amusement stealing over his gaze. Curling it in an uplifted brow. Mischief that accused as was wont of him, familiar.

"They are beautiful, nonetheless. Moreso, perhaps, that we chanced upon them, just as I chanced upon you."

 

[Echo]

Delicate steps on slippered feet slipped knowingly along carpeted floors, rounded corners with tray in hand, eyes glassy and smile wide. It was a route well-traveled, one capable of repetition with vision obscured, the threat of darkness an immaterial deterrent to the task at hand. There was no such thing as a free booth - visitors paid, or beat feet. Preferably, though, they stayed.

Amidst Salvatore's scrutiny of plagiarized finery, a lacquered tray appeared. Its distributor paused, barely half a breath, before turning on a heel, sashaying back into the incensed gloom. For her part, Echo hardly noticed. The woman was a flicker on the periphery of her attention, green eyes turned toward her companion's, lips split in a comely smile. Shoulders brushed, knees grazed as she shifted, crossing one over the next, hands absently gathering the copper mess of curls over a shoulder, fingers sorting through tangles as she considered his words.

The rumble of his voice spoke of thunder, of storms. Of rain that loomed on the horizon, a tempest that would scramble marrow and leave her blank and breathless. It was an easy memory to recall, one that tormented her in idle moments, missing him. Or missing the feel of him, the implicit command of his touch, the sureness of his lips, what it felt like to be whole.

"It's starting to feel like less and less of an accident," she mused, body turned to bask in his warmth. Inhaled, breathing in the scent of burning spice, casting a sidelong glance to the tray. Full of it.

Less a lounge, more a den.

 

[Toska]

Warmth streamed between light fixtures, gauzy burners, and perpetuated in the air between them... what little air remained. Space became a distant notion, immaterial when plied to the strength of their contact. Shoulders meshing, knees a rasp of cloth, and hearts beating in twain. Mirror images playing out a scene caught from a gossamer strand of dreamstuff. That eclectic boundary standing on the precipice of longing, where no one else existed. Where their eyes were all that held worth.

Those weighty stares, heady in the cant of memory, recalling to the cinders etched on rheumy sclera a night shared in sweat, tasted in reminiscent smacks of tongues and lips bitten on the cusp of relapse. Bittersweet euphoria, welling to the frond of lashes and ethereal touches. Chrysalises woven wan, threadbare and glistering under the glow of remorse.

Salvatore was leaning against the table, elbow propped up, free hand sidled and laced between her fingers. He sat still, idly in his breathing, short of breath but obscuring these failings behind the taut grace of a smile; it held him straight, stiff. Spine erect, torsion ministered against the strings pleating from each tendon. Rippling to flesh, musculature in the safe veil of cloth.

He brushed fingers over the flat of her palm. Felt the intricacies, the damning writhe of labor marring her lifelines. Wrought in rivulets, streaming along the valleys and forks, he traced them. Savored her between sealed lips that opened only to say, "Fate," the curl of a word that once had her eyes rolling.

Salvatore's irreverence knew no bounds. A smile stole him, as he deigned to steal her.

"Almost," he said, "as if you were made to be mine."

 

[Echo]

Phantoms followed the brush of fingertips, drew soft against the nape of her neck, raised downy hairs and elicited a jolt of goosebumps beneath the snug embrace of synthetic skin. Echo knew the weight of his touch, remembered it fondly; like the memory of summer in the deepest doldrums of winter, he was sunlight and warmth and the promise of spring. One that would never return, all the sweeter for its ephemery.

Palm unfurled to allow curious fingers ample access to the soft, subtly weathered plane of skin within, her back flat against the cushioned curve that separated their oasis from those unworthy of invitation. Breathing in deeply brought relaxation, allowed needy lungs to fill with the muted haze burning throughout the den. Cognizant of it, but only vaguely, her attention remained on the man by her side. Transfixed, caught in his orbit, unable to turn away.

Fingers twitched, sought the spaces between his. An easy fit, gliding along skin, seeking some small measure of completion. Echo communicated relaxation with her easy posture, gentle breathing, but beneath, her body rioted. Screamed and shook the bone bars of her ribcage, begged for more. Forced breath to hitch at the fleeting glimmer of eye contact, to press teeth into lower lip as he spoke, eyes fluttering downward.

As if on the receiving end of a compliment they both knew to be true.

A breathy chuckle followed, green eyes flickering upward to meet the gray tempest that awaited. Pulse racing, she offered a slight shake of her head, hesitating.

"Almost?" Lips tipped upwards, nearly ruining the effect. Making efforts to appear coy as ineffectual as ever. "That's a shame."

 

[Toska]

Locked within the quiet din of conversation, sinuous as it wove the boundaries that no longer existed between them, Salvatore caught her gaze, eyes trembling between lips and lashes. Silent fluttering drew him. The trace of his fingers over wrist rising to collar, brushing back stray strands of hair obscuring her from the encompassing girth of his sight. Hanging by wires, tangled up, enmeshed to a solitary point; an existence whose merit derived itself from some mutual conglomerate of space. An orbit that traipsed between planets, tangent but lost at contact. Acting on inertia, refusing to release. Sheer magnetism drove stakes between the throng of his touch. Gentle on chin, cheek.

Pale redressed by copper halo, the molding warmth that settled between them sparked on the tail of a wanting grasp. Nails hovered over flesh, lips, thumb following the length of bitten bottom to its swollen end. Hitch of breath, turning within the cast that cemented them. Wrapped limbs like ribbons, a mess of bands stuck together at the tasseled remains of her hair, where his fingers found their continual path. Resonance that clung in stoic waves, bracing him against her.

Amidst the walks of passersby and saunter of waitresses come to deliver, to serve, interruption came cardinally. Sinful as it cascaded over their bulwark, a bubble of isolation easily forgetting the presence of others who strayed between their gazes. Inseparable, mesmerizing, and Salvatore longed for its constancy. It heated him beyond the scathing warmth of her cheek. Roiled from the smile that lucidly sullied his lips. Arched his back to further envelop her, until they sat in the complete absence of space. Until each press of cloth and flesh knew nothing but the other's. Until he found solace nowhere other than along the contour of her waist.

"No." His voice welled nearest to her ear. Breathy in the way a whisper was when spoken aloud. "If I'm to have you, it will never be a shame," he said from his chest. From the idle thrum of heartbeat that sung in time to each carelessly tossed word; careless, despite the slow, meticulous delivery. Drew a long breath of credence as his lips curled about the flush of her warmth.

 

[Echo]

In his wake, time crawled. Slowed to a halt, stumbling to its knees, dragged through leagues of viscous want. Caught in the syrupy slurry of need, Echo struggled to breathe, breath hitched in scant moments of freedom allowed from lip to lip. Hips that brought her closer, arms over shoulders to loop hands through darkened hair, crawled into the lap of one whose presence filled a void previously unheard of. Starlight beneath skin stirred, hummed in time with the gaseous nebula that molded to fit her form, phosphor on the edge of lips, promised on the tip of tongue.

Wordless, her mouth sought his. Pressed firmly, displayed some measure of restraint - a dog on a chain that knew the length of its lead, but longed for freedom just the same. Tugged at the moorings of decency, of what was allowed in shared spaces, want leaking through in the pressure, in the scrape of gemstone teeth. Nails that dragged against scalp, that forced their closeness. Offered him no chance to escape, no mercy from the storm that surged beneath the coyness of her grin, a torrent of unspoken desires that had no place among an impassive audience.

Desperate, Echo gasped for air. Reveled in the flush of cheeks beneath a mess of copper, in the pricked feeling of lips, in the ceaseless thrumming of her heartbeat as it pounded against her chest. As it throbbed in her ears, deafening her to all but their mirrored breathlessness. Eyes seeking his, brighter than glass bottles that glimmered in the darkened lounge, she allowed herself the indulgence of a thumb drawn slowly across his lower lip, reverent in its slowness.

"I don't want to be here," she admitted, barely above a whisper. "Let's find someplace else."