The world was spinning and his head was pounding but at least he could feel something, right? At least for a while there, the high had been fucking great -- the flare of faux happiness, the ease of laughter, the way he grinned and meant it and didn't feel like fucking dying -- and he'd been able to hold onto it, nearly. It wasn't until he started to come down that things went awry; he didn't just come down, he crashed, slamming straight into a sense of spiraling hell within the matter of minutes. Maybe he should have anticipated that -- some of Rad's best uppers had the worst downfalls to them -- but he miraculously hadn't. He'd been happy to ignore the potential fall and enjoy the buzz while it lasted.

Now, he stood in the stables, one hand holding him up against the post of Octavia's stall as he inhaled sharply, waiting to see if he threw up again. He was shaking too hard to stand on his own, barely managing to keep himself half-upright as he bent over, everything unsteady and hazy. His head hurt and spun every time he tried to stand too straight, and that vague sense of joy was slipping through the cracks, leaving behind a morose sense of... something. He wasn't sure what, and could barely focus on that when he was doubling over to empty his stomach again.

"Fuck," he muttered, swiping absently at his mouth with the back of his free hand, jittering so hard that he hit himself in the nose. He leaned sideways against the post slightly, rested his shoulder on it, and inhaled slowly as he struggled to get back under control. Octavia had left him awhile ago, not interested in sticking around for the patheticness of his crash, and he closed his eyes as he breathed out again, "Fuck, Rad, Jesus." Why did it feel like she was possibly punishing him for asking for uppers every time? Fuck.

[ [member=500]★ HAZEL[/member] ]

Hazel was all too aware of the fact that she’d been neglecting Arion recently.

In realizing that her friends were hurting, Hazel had been attempting to disappear without actually disappearing. She still made her rounds along the border when a joiner popped up and she still talked to others, she just didn’t go looking for it. She had stopped actively seeking conversation. And...it wasn’t really that hard, either. She’d been locked in her room for days and days back home; this was nothing.

The only key difference between the Ascendants and home was the lock on her door. Here, she had freedom. Here, she had choices. That in it of itself was exciting enough, to be honest. She could pick different places to go and avoid people if she really wanted to. Her favorite places to go were the pebble shoreline (though she stayed far away from the water), the flower fields, and just around the side of the observatory that faced west - she could catch the sunset sometimes if she was lucky. In those quiet, isolated placed, Hazel would untie the bandana from her forearm and run her fingers over the ugly pink scar, thinking about how she needed to tell someone someday and how she was ever going to do that if the people she wanted to tell could hardly look at each other.

But Arion was a different case.

One might think that the young horse would follow her everywhere. They seemed fairly inseparable at the start, anyway. But now? Now Arion followed Octavia - Bastille’s coal-black Arabian. And Hazel had to give it to Arion: she was cute. A real heart-stopper. What she found funny, though, was that Arion would hang around with just about anyone that showed him attention. Octavia hardly gave him a second glance before turning her muzzle in the other direction. Still, Arion trailed after her like a love-struck yearling. It was...downright unnatural, if you caught mii’s reference. The other oddity was that he’d taken to Bastille surprisingly well. Hazel had sort of chalked it up to the boy simply talking in the Thoroughbred’s direction.

Hazel was undoubtedly a bit bitter about it all, and it wasn’t solely because her horse was hanging around someone else when she could really use a shoulder to lean on. It was also because the guy her horse was hanging around happened to show up at the border without a pulse, and then pop up a minute and a half later, heartbeat and all, but also because he constantly drank himself into a stupor and was always on some sort of drugs but never mind that he was their leader, or anything.

Whatever. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t looking for him right now. No, Hazel was on her way to find the egotistical bastard that was supposed to live at the outer post. She had even painted him a mural on the inside of his stall when she’d needed to test her paints.

She was rounding the corner of the small stables, pulling the door open and foregoing the fact that if Arion was in here, the door would be open quite a bit more. “Arion,” She cooed softly. “Malum habeo - ”

Having pulled the door open enough to slip inside, Hazel’s bribe fell short at the sight of who was already here: Bastille. Immediately, she wanted to run; but in which direction? Toward him, or away from him? He looked like shit, with pale, clammy skin and shaking bones visible from where she stood. It didn’t take a professional to know that something was up. Concern swamped any sort of growing anger in her stomach. Her hesitation lasted all of a few seconds before the girl made up her mind, swallowing against some of the nerves. She had talked to him a few days ago - she could do this. She could do this.

“Hey,” She said, voice soft and non threatening as she hovered a foot or two away from him. “Deus, Bast, what’d you take? What’d they give you?” It wasn’t a demand - she had a feeling she wouldn’t get an answer out of him. Still, she inched ever closer, undaunted because he needed help. “Hey, let’s get you some water, yeah? Then we’ll have Rin or Rad look you over.” She really didn’t know what she was doing, alright? She didn’t know if water would make it worse, or better. She just knew that blowing up at him right now would be an outright horrible thing to do, even if it was horrendously disappointing and frustrating to find him like this. She gritted her teeth against the thoughts threatening that bubble of anger. “Can you walk?”

★ — hazel — "speech" — eight months — the ascendants — tags — ★

Time to play a fun game: fever dream or reality? It was always thrilling, trying to determine if he was fucking imagining shit when the come down was awful and he could barely concentrate on his surroundings. It was so easy to slip into the day dreams, or to jerk awake and discover that he’d been dreaming the entire time, albeit lucidly. Some of these damn pills felt like a fucking fever had taken root, his skin flushed hot with heat despite the cold sweats that erupted, and the delusions were just as bad. God, they should come with a warning label, but half the time he suspected that Rad didn’t warn him because she wanted a genuine response. Or something.

The flutter of Hazel’s voice, warm and soft, lilting over the Latin — there was a split second where he couldn’t be certain she was really there. And then her aura shone brightly at the edges of his vision, and he shut his eyes, the light aching — it was too much, too bright, and he turned his head slightly as his temple throbbed in response to the glaring radiance. Fuck. The heat she radiated was both overwhelming, too warm for his over-heated skin, and yet so damn alluring he felt like something in him was dying the long without reaching out for her.

”Don’t—“ he mumbled, shying away slightly as she came closer, feeling dizzy as he forced himself of straighter, to stop leaning so heavily on the post. When he looked up at her, stare half-lidded, he felt vaguely claustrophobic: his curls were matted and sticking to his skin, the flames in his blood rising too high, his skin tight and shaky, her presence... her presence was so much, making his throat tighting, making the room feel smaller as he swaying slightly.

But she shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be near him. He knew damned well how badly substances spooked her, remembered the sharpness of her tone as she yanked her hands away, cowered behind Suite — as if he actually posed a damn threat to her. It made him nauseous just thinking about it, and he looked away from her again, away from that blinding light, and kept going, ”Don’t... come near me. I’m fine. I’m fine. You don’t want to—“

His voice still carried that slight rasp, his throat still healing internally even if the lines on his neck had faded slightly, and when he swallowed it burned. Shaking his head slightly in an effort to clear it, he tried to push himself up once more, away from the post. ”See?” he mumbled, fever bright gaze in her once more as tremors set down his body. He ignored them and said, ”’m fine—“

It was taking another step away from the stall, as if trying to convince himself and her, that was his fucking error. Bastille ate his goddamn words, because he stumbled immediately, losing his balance and finding himself suddenly crashing into her — she was closer than she seemed and she was so warm and his fingers slipped and caught on her arms reflexively, an effort to catch himself before he took her down with his weight, his processing so slow and her skin so soft to touch and her hair smelled good this close... And oh.

Oh, fuck.

As Hazel watched him, concern bubbling higher and higher in her chest, she finally realized how much she cared about his safety and well-being. How much she really cared for this boy and his idiotic, self-destructive habits. How much she cared about being able to see his blue eyes the next day, even if they hardly looked at her anymore. How important it was that she knew he got out of bed and into the sunlight at least once that day. It had been tucked away under the newness of their knowing each other and Hazel's own fear of practicalities.

She didn't know where she found it. Maybe it was in who he was, or maybe it was from Hazel's own morbid curiosity. Maybe it was his eyes, and maybe it was how she felt when she stood next to him. Whatever the case, it felt out of the blue and like a hit to the chest, knocking the wind out of her. She was almost certain they had been in this stupid feud longer than they had known each other - so why the revelation?

Not that Hazel actually had time to sit down and mull over her crisis, because Bastille was already on the move. Or...trying to move. The closer Hazel got, the more he seemed to shrink on himself, like something was pressing down on him. Confused and worried, it took her a moment to consider that the thing was most likely her, and...oh. She backed away immediately, not realizing how close she had gotten - how much his warmth had started to suck her in. The electric charge between them dissolved, and Hazel found that she could breathe a little more.

Christ. Now she knew what it was like to be on the receiving end; what it was like to feel what he must have felt every time she shied away from him. The creep of confusion and sudden panic, wondering if she had done anything wrong; the flip of her stomach when she realized he was actively trying to get away from her. It stung like a bad scrape, knowing there was something about her that made him not want to be near her. It was...degrading. It dragged on her self-confidence.

She shook her head at his stumbling words, keeping her arms and hands to herself. "Don't want to what?" She echoed, feeling utterly helpless. She couldn't touch him, couldn't keep him on his feet, couldn't even be in his presence while he was stoned off his ass without him wanting to get away from her.

Then he was trying to stand, and everything came crashing down. Everything fell apart.

One moment, he was standing and trying to convince Hazel that he was fine, which she seriously doubted. The next, he was tottering, and Hazel could feel the moment of panic rise in her chest as his knees gave out. Automatically, she lunged to catch him, yelping out his name as he caught himself on her arms and she took the brunt of his weight. Immediately, the shock of contact hit her full force - the heat, the pressure, the proximity hit her like a bullet to the chest. Fuck, fuck, this was too much; she was already shaking, already shivering from it.

"Bast, I c-can't -" She could barely get the words out, could barely focus on anything because he was slipping, his arms and hands sliding down and - fuck - her bandana snagged, sliding down her arm as he did and as she sunk to the floor. In less than ten seconds it hung loose on her wrist, slipping off over her hand. A strangled noise crawled out of her throat, panicking as she set Bastille down as quickly as she could before shoving herself away from him and his suffocating heat.

There was a split moment of time where a strip of skin - lighter than the rest - was exposed, and an ugly, bumpy pink scar nearly ran all the way around the circumference of her arm. She stared at it, old horrors of the kitchen knives and finger nails that used to re-open the old wound again and again bubbling to the surface.

Close to hyperventilating, Hazel backed herself into the nearest corner, grasping her wrist. "G-give that - give it back, you weren't supposed to see - " Fuck, it felt like her world was compressing, cracking under the pressure and strain, fracturing like glass under her feet. And the worst thing was she was still tempted to keep it all in, to not let him find out, because Bastille literally looked like hell, and he didn't need Hazel's problems on his shoulders.

★ — hazel — "speech" — eight months — the ascendants — tags — ★

He should have been more careful. Story of his life, though, wasn’t it? Fuck, he should have known he couldn’t hold himself up, should have realized that she was closer than she looked, should have been paying attention to the proximity even when she wasn’t. He couldn’t handle seeing her flinch away from him again — it made him feel cold and sick and like the ground was unstable, made him remember with sudden clarity that his souls were rotten things that could never revel in her presence, made him lose a little bit of faith in himself every single time it happened. Because he knew that she had her issues with contact, but it wasn’t just that. It was also him. No one’s touch spooked her as terribly as his own, and a part of him died with that knowledge but accepted that it made sense. Why shouldn’t such radiant light shy away from his darker edges?

How badly he wanted to touch her, wanted to soak in that warmth; he’d already been feverish, heat flushed with over-heat, but the second his fingers hit her skin his body was on fire. And it was a fire that warmed the freezing cold in his gut, that stalled the chills and the shudders, that felt right and addictive and the answer to a need he didn’t realize he’d had until he had that fire in his bones. And perhaps what really killed him was how badly he ached for it, even in the face of her flinch.

”Fuck—“ he swore, jerking backwards, away from her. In the flurry of movement, him trying to get away as he lost his balance, her trying to push him and yet not drop him entirely, his great weight tipping them over — in those few moments of chaos he could swear he could feel something, the flicker of panic, the dread, the fucking hell, as his back hit the wall of Octavia’s wall, finally, finally putting distance between them. He sat staring back at her at a loss, the sudden loss of her warmth making him sick — or perhaps that was the come-down, the pills he’d taken punishing him for his hubris.

He held her bandana in one hand, he realized — had curled his fingers around it instinctively and taken it with him, and for a beat he just stared. Stared as her aura flickered and flared with panic. Stared as his head spun and the tremors started up again, weakening his resolve. Stared as his ice blue gaze finally fell on the raised pink lines that skated up her arm, as she yelled at him.

Stared as his vague hunches were realized, more clearly and completely than he could have imagined. Of course he’d assumed that, on some level, someone had hurt her once. That she shied away from touch because she didn’t know the good it could bring. That she had her demons like everyone else. But seeing the reality of it, her darkest secret — it broke something in him that he didn’t know was there to break. It was the damning evidence that she had suffered and still suffered and that he couldn’t do anything to help her. No, the only thing he seemed capable of was hurting her more.

”Sorry,” was the first thing of his tongue, the word dull and coarse with the rasp in his throat. Fuck. He couldn’t tell if he was feeling regret or simply feeling the warning signs of more vomit, but he pushed the bandana away from him, towards her, as if it’d burned him — pushed it and then jerked his hand back, away from where she might brush against his skin if she reached out. He pressed a little firmer into the stall door, swallowing the bile in his throat, and breathed, slightly unfocused, ”Sorry, I’m sorry, it’s— I’m fine, you can go, I know you don’t want to be near me.”

Particularly not now. He knew she was too nice to ignore his requests that she go before, but perhaps now she would listen, would trust her instincts about him and get the fuck away from him. He tilted his head back against the door and tore his gaze away from her, closing his eyes as if that might expel the image of that scar.

This was the point in time where Hazel found herself on the edge of something very, very dangerous: another panic attack, or completely shutting down. Heart rate climbing, memories surging, breathing erratic; she was stuck staring at this band of skin on her arm, marred by a fault line of ugly pink. It was raised more than the scars that covered her hands and freckled the insides of her thighs. More uneven, too, like a kindergartener that couldn’t cut on the dotted line.

Hazel remembered staring at the wounds that used to stain that spot, over and over; thinking it would never close, that she would bleed out on the floor of her room. She remembered thinking about how ugly it was, and how she never wanted to see it or let anybody else see it. So she’d tied a bandana around it and acted like it wasn’t there, even if her fingers automatically flew to fiddle with the fabric in the face of something distressing.

Now it was uncovered; out in the open. Hazel felt naked.

It took her too long to register that Bastille was forcing the bandana back in her direction. She flinched when he thrust it at her, swiping it away from him as quickly as she could. She could practically taste his disgust, her brain convinced that it was the only logical - the only sensical - reaction to the cursed mark. Could see the disgruntled disdain in his icy blue eyes as he realized she was flawed — that she was broken, cracked like an ancient vase. She almost couldn’t handle the fact that he would forever look at her differently, that her chances at a clean slate were ruined. That she would never be able to start a new life here.

She folded the fabric over her arm with some difficulty — her shaking hand and lack of three arms making the process frustrating. But after it was done, Hazel closed her eyes, letting her head fall back against Arion’s stall door with a small thud that rattled the hinges. She sucked in a breath, cradling her arm against her chest. You’re okay, She reminded herself, dragging her bottom lip harshly underneath her teeth. You’re fine, you’re alright — it’s okay. Calm down, calm down, calm down. Breathe.

Cracking her eyes open, Hazel looked across to where Bastille had pressed himself against Octavia’s stall door. He looked miserable; Hazel could practically feel it rolling off of him. It was different from the shock she had witnessed in his expression a few moments ago. She dragged thin fingers over her face, tracing her jawline and tilting her head to rest her lips against twined fingers, watching him. She couldn’t connect his misery to what transpired moments ago; couldn’t draw the line to what she had been expecting him to say or do. Because yes, he was coming down from a bad trip, that much was evident. She wasn’t expecting an eloquent speech, but she was expecting...something. She didn’t know what. Blatant disgust, maybe. Refusal to talk. It seemed she was getting both of those things, but not in the way she expected. It seemed more internalized, more self-inflicted, and...Hazel was at a loss.

Part of her wanted to help and comfort him, despite he had just broken her number one rule — again. He looked awful and in pain, and it was distressing to watch. But at the same time, Hazel could remember that another part of her was still upset with him. Still furious that he had yelled at Margaery so harshly, so venomously. His words had essentially rendered Margy lifeless — a walking corpse. She wanted to yell at him so badly, make him feel her frustration and disappointment and upset. Now she was confusing concern for anger, and it was itching, crawling up her arms and under her skin. She couldn’t pick between the two, couldn’t separate them like she should be able to. So she bit her lip, scraping teeth against it and pressing the pads of her fingers as hard as she could against her arms.

Hazel can hear him apologizing, and it was irritating, because she knew he was apologizing for accidentally taking her bandana, but she wanted it to be for everything else. She wanted him to apologize for avoiding her and Margy and Suite and for yelling at Margy and she wanted him to be sorry for the alcohol and the pills. She wanted — needed — him to realize what he was doing; she wanted him to realize that he was starting to scare her, and she wanted him to know why because maybe then he’d stop. Maybe he’d stop and everything would go back to the way it was.

Then he says something else, and it had Hazel frowning. I know you don’t want to be near me, he said. Hazel pressed the palms of her hands up her shoulders, reaching for her hair as her forehead hit her knees. That was...so, so wrong. She wanted more than anything to be near him again: to see his smile and listen to him read. She hated watching the conflict in his eyes every time he looked at her, and she hated knowing that he was actively avoiding her. She felt the anger at it bubble, frothing in her chest, sparked by something unknown but it glows, red hot.

“That’s stupid,” Hazel ground out, exhaling, “I do want to be near you.” Because fuck everything else, Hazel really liked the boy she met in her first couple days in the Ascendants. “I want to be near the boy I met in my first few days here. I want to be near the boy that wanted to teach me to read English and speak Latin with me and — and I think it’s you,” She swallowed, “but I don’t know.”

Because she didn’t know. She truly didn’t, and it was objectively enraging. “But you’re making it really, really difficult, now that...now that you smell like alcohol more often than not.” Hazel let her head fall back against the stall door again, knowing her voice was borderline irritated. “I don’t know where it came from, okay?” She finally admitted, chewing on her bottom lip. “I don’t understand when this even happened. One day everything is fine and you’re okay — we’re okay — and the next, your eyes are changing colors and you’re avoiding me and yelling at Margaery.”

Hazel finally blinked at him, the gold in her eyes hardening. “You told her such awful things, Bastille. And yeah, I know. She told me. She looks like she’s dead, you know? I can feel how cold she is.” Hazel sighed harshly, lowering her legs to cross them. She dropped her hands in her lap, tracing over the scars engrained so permanently in her skin. “I don’t — I don’t know what I did for this to happen, alright? I don’t know if it was me, Margy, or Suite and I don’t know how to fix it, but Deus, Bastille, I want to help fix it. You’re so different, taking these pills and drinking like your life depends on it and not caring and — “ Hazel abruptly cut herself off, gaze falling away from him. “You’re starting to remind of someone I knew, and...I don’t want that for you. How they ended up, I mean. I never want that to happen to you.”

Maybe she was being too soft; maybe she was telling him too much. But she didn’t care. There was a better person in him somewhere; a person capable of feeling and caring and Hazel wanted to talk to that person again.

★ — hazel — "speech" — eight months — the ascendants — tags — ★

There was something there in her eyes that made his stomach turn, though he couldn't place it. She looked at him like she was waiting for something, but he couldn't meet her gaze for too long. Instead, he watched dully as she fumbled with the bandana, hid away the truth of the past, and told himself that he didn't care. He wanted to sweep her up and hug her with a vicious burning, to make sure no one came close to touching her like that again, but he didn't care about the marks, the scars. He looked at them and only felt an anger in his throat, a silent threat to kill who ever had done this. But it wasn't his place, and besides -- he was also in the wrong for always touching her all the damn time, for taking her bandana off in the first place. He looked away, finally, head back against the stable door, and breathed out shallowly.

He can hear her breathing, calming herself down, and there's silence for a moment as he waits for her to leave. She doesn't. Her words take him by surprise, and he glanced down at her, taken back. He opened his mouth to say that she didn't, not really, because every time he was near her she kept her distance or got angry with him. But she kept going, and he shut his mouth, staring at her in silence. He didn't know what to say to that, didn't know how to tell her he wasn't sure if he was that boy, either.
 
Instead, he opted for silence, swallowing against the burn in his throat and the way his head was pounding. Her presence, lingering here, didn't seem to help him at all -- he couldn't feel the calming effect of her aura when she just kept talking and none of it was anything he wanted to hear and he didn't know what to say to her. Hell, there was nothing he could say. 

He looked at her when she said Margaery's name, and he knew instantly that she knew. Of course she did. He might have assumed that she would find out eventually, that either Margaery or Suiteheart would tell her, but that didn't make it any less horrible to hear it from her. To be reminded that he was out of line and know that Hazel was going to judge him for it. He might have felt the regret set in and eat him alive if he could feel it, but just then the come-down had him drained and it wasn't the right mix of pills to let him feel anything anyway.

He leaned his head back once more when she seemed finished, half-lidded and over-bright stare locked on her across the cooridor. He breathed out slowly, not sure what to do with the knowledge that she might care, and instead tried to focus on what he could answer to: what the fuck had happened. That much he knew how to put into words, more or less, and he owed it to her, anyway. Owed it to her to explain himself at least, to let her understand, even if it didn't make it any better.

"I'm sorry," he said after a moment, low and raspy, his throat burning with the abuse he'd put it through so soon after Beck's rope dug in. "You didn't do anything. I just..." A pause. "My souls are so unstable. Have been since Starry." Nothing. His throat tightened slightly, but there was no flicker of pain, his apathy coming up like a shield. He breathed out and continued, "I haven't really... struggle with them like this, not since I was young, and--" A pause. He looked across at her, still for a moment. "I've never had a friend before. I didn't know how one-- I didn't know how he was going to react. I wasn't ready to stop it."

He glanced away, then, not wanting to look her in the eye and not wanting to be there just then, his head still spinning slightly with the whiplash of his come-down. But he kept going, voice lowering a little bit, quieter, like he was trying to hide it from himself, maybe. "I... I don't know, Haze. I guess I figured you would be able to talk to Margy in Latin and learn from her and you wouldn't be forced to hang out with me any more." He hadn't entirely convinced himself that they would be friends if not for his ability to speak Latin. She had no other reason to continue to put up with him. He looked back to her for am oment and sighed.

"It's... confusing, because he makes it hard not to focus on that, and I can't tell what I'm feel or what he's making me feel and he's just so angry that sometimes it's all I can feel when I think about losing you." The words felt wrong, too honest, too much like a confession, and he exhaled once more, defeated. "His name is Pollie." Bastille had never actually cared to introduce himself in anything but nicknames, and that seemed to apply to his souls as well.

"It wasn't your fault, I know," he concluded, closing his eyes briefly because his head hurt and his throat hurt and things were spinning very, very slowly once more the longer he sat there. "I can't feel anything any more anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter now."

ooc using same fancy bc this is the one piece of consistency i can keep in my life

Hazel rubbed her thumb against the pad of her forefinger, knowing it was a method of self-comfort and tossing the useless fact out of the window as she rested her temple against her wrist. She could see the rise and fall of his chest, the ache of it, the struggle. She could feel the wrinkle of his brow under her thumb, knowing that it was put there because he was in pain. Knowing that her rambling probably wasn’t helping him, even though that was the only thing she wanted to do: help.

Deus, he must feel awful. She’d never been through a come-down, but it looked horrific. “Sorry,” she murmured, voice soft. “Sorry. I...you must be in a lot of pain. I can go get Rin — she’ll have — “ Hazel bit down on her tongue as he spoke, her ears scarcely catching the words that rattled out of his throat.

She blinked, refocusing, light locking on him and holding him there. Information was handed to her in jagged, incomplete pieces that sketched a picture; most of these pieces were things that Hazel could spend days dwelling on, mulling over and asking questions about. But here? She got raspy bits of things that would just stick in her mind like cotton candy.

Her brain snagged on souls, but didn’t linger too long; she could piece together what he was saying, having realized that his multiple souls were probably half the reason for the turmoil in his aura. His souls must’ve been the pop and fizzle against the frothing smoke of his aura, confined and caged within him. It was strange to think about, she supposed, because Hazel was never big in philosophy or the idea of souls. She generally lumped every part of a person into one, because you couldn’t be three different people at once. It was physically impossible.

Nevertheless, Hazel dragged her focus back, listening to him talk about Latin and Margy. Something in Hazel boiled at the idea of him thinking she was being forced to hang out with him just because he spoke Latin. Shouldn’t she be allowed to hang out with him because she wanted to? Because she found him fascinating and interesting and she wanted to learn more?

“Well that’s stupid, too.” Hazel mumbled. “I wasn’t being forced to hang out with you because you speak Latin. That was one of the reasons I enjoyed it, sure, but it wasn’t the only one. Deus, Bastille, there’s so much more than that.” A small huff was accompanied by the soft shake of her head, curls of hair falling against her eyelashes. 

The words he gave her next felt raw; completely, totally honest. Hazel felt like she was reading something out of his diary: private, straightforward. The words when I think about losing you felt wrong to hear, like a confession coming too soon. Liquid gold studied him closely, and curiously, slowly, she bridged the gap that separated them, kneeling next to him.

She could feel the heat that radiated from his skin, the feverish sauna crackling between them. “You never lost me,” and you never will. Hazel’s voice was quiet, her mind persistent but soft. She wanted this. She didn’t want to be afraid of him; she didn’t want to live her life trying to chase after him. She needed him to know that she was his friend for who he was, not because of a single attribute.

Swallowing, she nervously rubbed her fingers against her knee. “Hold up your hand,” She told him.

★ — hazel — "speech" — eight months — the ascendants — tags — ★