NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, BAR AFTER CLUB.

[★SPACED]

R    H    A    S    K    O    S


“I got blood shot eyes, and there's blood in my teeth
I got a ripped up jacket and a friend who's a thief”

He waited at the border of Jade Valley with a nervousness he could not explain - it trembled in his guts, turning his blood cold and sending his heart into a mad frenzy. Cicero had not shown for their brawl, and so as the law of the land went, Isadore was now free to return home with him. Rhaskos knew, unabashedly, that he'd have preferred to beat the son of Castro fairly. Cicero was, after all, older and (surely) more experienced than he was at this kind of thing. Yet if Rhaskos knew anything, it was brawling - and he'd had no fear of losing, even when the nerves had set his skin on fire and his coal lashes had fluttered with agitation. 

He was born for fighting - not in the sense that he was an excellent fighter (although it couldn't be said that he wasn't skilled), but because he didn't know how to give up or stay down. He wasn't an overly smart boy, although not completely lacking in brains, but he sure did know how to take a hit, and above that, he was kind, loyal, passionate. He licked his dry lips with an even drier tongue as he waited for her arrival, the girl that he thought he might actually quite like. Like… like, like. A frayed grin slipped onto his lips and he shifted his feet anxiously. 

Come on Is, let me see that pretty face again.

RED&BLACK !

[RED&BLACK !]

         

ISADORE

BABY YOU'RE LIKE LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE
I CAN'T LET YOU GO NOW THAT I GOT YOU

I have nothing for you.

There is something old and beautiful about the fact that Isadore knows this, recognizes the lonely flicker deep in her stomach, and looks Rhaskos in the eyes. The valley has held her for weeks on end and the golden girl has retreated farther than she thought possible; her skeleton is no longer a temple but a hiding place and she is burying years of insecurity in the grind of pearly teeth. She has nothing for him. Isadore is worthless. 

Perhaps if she had developed a talent, a coping mechanism, something to distract her from the sheer loneliness of the Valley - perhaps something different would have happened, but of course, it didn't. Instead, she has become acutely aware of her place in the world. It is a place in the dark corners, in the drafty spots of a broken-down house, a place where here only claim to glory is the drop of Halloween's ichor that runs in her blood. As she looks at Rhaskos, those feline eyes gleaming, Isa wrestles with the urge to say something more. 

He will understand. He always does. She is slowly falling in love with the dark skin, the sharp tongue, the fact that he reads her better than she can read herself. But still the words that bubble in her chest cannot, will not, make it to his ears. She quakes in her boots, feeling sick and beautiful under the weight of his stare when the seconds stretch longer and longer between them. Is it winter now? Isadore's pale silvery eyes have dropped to the ground in shame and love and she is marking the lines of frost with shock. The air around them is cold, she recounts to herself, and the trees are growing bent-backed with icicles. 

She's missed a lot. Rhaskos, her life, her family, her homes. And he is here to bring her back to the den that she has made herself in, but Isadore has nothing for him and now - now he knows.

SHIN OF GS + ADOX

★SPACED GOODNESS i am so sorry for how weird this is and how long it took!