[ Takes places in May. Continued from here. ]

And they drifted—

He floated in and out of dreams, in and out of consciousness, lost in the marbled, foggy halls of his mind (—her mind), in some kind of distant-reality that was wayyy too close for comfort. It hit so close to home, a certain kind of fear spurring him drunkenly on, fumbling past barriers and exhaustion and confidence issues and the simple, basic physics of life: past the foundation of his existence, his being, into a dream that was pleasant because it was simply a dream. He was detached, and in his detachment he desired, and without his inhibitions he reached for that. Found it, too, looping and coiling around him like a cloak, like fog, like thin, ethereal tendrils come down from the stars—rising from the mirror-surface of the lake.

He could not comprehend her. He could not look into the razor-like stars in her violet eyes and know if she desired because she was detached, too, or if something else powered her—he could simply look into her eyes and wonder how she came to be what she was; what shaped her at the birth of the world and made her into what she was.

He was floating—drifting—in that place which made no sense, in that place in which the line between thought and action was blurred to the point where all that remained was the most simple, mindless fact he had probably ever come across: it was pleasant. It was warm, satisfying in some way, like getting lost in her eyes and slipping away in a sunlit river, spinning in the center of her eye—

(But had he been sober, would he still have done it? Had he been sober, would he still have desired this—acted upon a thought which was good and fine as a thought, but meant little more than that? A floating, fleeting thought . . .)

Questions without answers, as he drifted away with her in the current, falling into darkness.

---

Dark eyelashes fluttered haphazardly, muscles struggling against memory and a lingering sluggishness, and each time his eyelids cracked open far enough to admit daylight he shut them fast. The light was bright, it stung his eyes, and with a faint sigh he collapsed back into the darkness.

A few moments later he tried again, struggling, struggling with something in his mind, and when his eyes flew open he groaned; closed them again. A morning breeze shifted through the stone structure, and the drapes shifted with a whispering, hushed sound; a smooth floor crushed against his folded body, but it was warm from his skin. Mauja furrowed his 'brows. He couldn't remember going to the Rotunda, but stranger things had probably happened, and—

Holy shit.

His eyes flew open again, and this time, they stayed open even as he cried out, lightly, when the light bit him deep. A warm flank was lodged against his side, his legs miraculously not beneath her folded bulk, and his neck had been draped over her back, head resting against her shoulder. And—

And—

The memories were a blur, of starlight (she drank starlight, fucking idiot), of razor-sharp edges in a violet gaze, of words and a sort of wobbling haze, of a slow, sluggish warmth seeping through his veins, of—of her pale muzzle so close to his, breaths mingling, sharing, and of.. well. Unspeakable things. Only the fucked-up fact that he was way too damn exhausted to move kept him from scrambling away from her in panic, because what else could he call the terrorized heartbeat pounding in his throat?

Shitshitshitshit—and his gaze roved everywhere, to every shadow, every corner, every crack and fine line in the marble floor, but it just kept creeping back to her, the neat way she'd tucked her limbs, the wine red stripes, the warm red hue of her back in its full glory now that the moon didn't steal the color from her—

The curve of her barrel, the smell of sweat and sex, the—

Fuck, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up—

Feeling like he had been rolled on by a mountain, Mauja groaned again and let his neck fall back into place over her back, muzzle buried in the long, silken strands of her mane. He hoped he could go back to sleep, or unconsciousness, or whatever the fuck state of mind he'd been in since sometime during the night—but with his heartbeat all riled up and his mind in confused shambles, he doubted it would happen, so with tears clogging up his eyes and throat he waited for her to wake.

Waited, for his silly, dumb-ass ways to catch up with him, and bite him—hard.

[ @Maren ... ]

lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .

There was a low thunder in his chest—a particular blend of terror and panic, like a stampede going through his veins, his mind, his lungs. Regret warred with disbelief. Memory warred with thought. What had he done—?

His pulse was light; fast, going at superspeed as it pounded against his chest (—her back). He hadn't wanted this.

He had never wanted this.

(Well, okay, maybe once. Once, in eleven years.)

And he had regretted that, too, in a way. It made his skin crawl. It made him feel alienated from himself—like he had caved in to some dark, depraved part of himself, chased dreams that were tasteless and bitter when caught. He had done things he had not genuinely wanted, things .. he had been floating in a blue dream, a blue stream, starlight and violets and tiger-stripes and the warmth of her back... What had she fed him? Gods, Irma had said it was safe—

Yet it felt like Lotus all over again. Affected. Twisted. Broken down past his own sanity, and thrust into a bestial darkness in which the emptiness sought to be filled with something tangible. As if .. being close .. taking her offer .. could've revealed the secrets of her knife-sharp eyes, and given him something he needed—lacked. Companionship in its most basic form, free of responsibility and consequence (hah), something so many seemed to enjoy, so readily—something so many seemed to crave, seek for, hunt for.

And Mauja simply stood in that storm, an ice titan, desiring not a single thing others desired. Time and again he had, stupidly, grasped for it, thinking perhaps something would've changed, that it would be good, or natural, or expected of him—thinking that, maybe this time, it would .. be something else than this blind panic, this disgust at himself for what he had done.

But no. He felt just as filthy, just as false, just as—he hesitated, not wanting to take the word in his mind, not wanting to touch it and apply it so (carelessly?) upon himself. It was a word worthy of true loathing, a word of suffering, and the last thing he wanted was to somehow .. make light of, or diminish, the worth of the word. Was his suffering worthy of it? Was it truly this despicable thing, if you had agreed to it—walked into it—and on the most base level of the physical, your body had, in some way, enjoyed it? And the last thing he wanted to do was to implicate that this tiger-mare had done something terrible and wrong, for if he had never said no, how could she ever have known of the despair niggling at the edges of his consciousness, the black dread growing inside his belly? Lotus—Lotus had.. she had done something wrong, hadn't she? She had known what her presence did, and used that, ruthlessly. But she, this warm body curled up next to his, had she known what those berries would do? What her touch would do—?

He didn't want her to know. Didn't think of what it meant if she had known. It would be easier if it was all his fault—

He felt filthy. Dirty. He wanted to rush into the pond nearby, roll in the muck on its floor, scour every last memory of last night from his body. Get rid of the filth. Of the scent. Of the memory. Of the way his mind reeled in panic, of—someone might ask him, 'but what was so bad about this?'.

And the bad thing is this: having done something, something so intimate, you did not truly want.

Mauja could dance around it in his mind all he wanted, but he could never truly escape the fact it was a particular kind of self-rape where the other party was oddly absent of guilt—for you coerced yourself, and they did not, not truly.

Not that that makes it better, or easier. It's just the way it is.

But she woke then, head lifting off the ground, and the petals stirred and shifted around them like something from a dream. And maybe it had been better if it had been a dream, a shared fantasy, instead of something physical that left traces like scents. Their eyes met, and he wondered what she saw—could she see his thoughts? If she saw his ..regret, at having done something he had not wanted, disgust at the very same thing—would she believe she the cause? Because the last thing he wanted was to blame her for his own ..stupidity, and so he schooled his face into silence, his eyes into a sort of blank amiability. She did not deserve his burdens and his guilt. She did not deserve to wake up with his problems, for they were his, and the blame was also his. He knew how these things ended up—so why was he never strong enough to prevent them?

She said she liked this place, and he hummed a wordless agreement, watching the petals fall in a storylike stillness that felt very much in tune with the dream-like state of the previous night—like something of the blue had lingered, distorting reality even when the morning light was bright. And maybe it would've been better if it had been like that, distorted, a dream, and he would've woken up in the safety of the Edge and its mist, away from the clash in his head—except it wasn't a clash because.. there was no resistance? Aside from the desire not to throw any blame on her it was a unified scream going through his existence.

You did it again, you fucked up again, you fucked yourself up again—

His head was pounding and his heart was bleeding and the light was beginning to be too bright, too harsh, judging, demanding, telling him how stupid he was, how miserable—

She said she was going to sleep some more, and with the weight of grief and guilt hanging on his head, he thought it sounded like a good idea. They were still lodged closed together, sharing warmth, but it was different now (right?). It wouldn't lead to anything. This didn't mean anything. She wouldn't come back and look for more because it meant nothing and he'd given no promises .. right? It would just have been this once, soon to be forgotten, eradicated, gone.

He hadn't owed her anything last night either—he had simply fallen into the depths of that dream, and while his mind had still struggled with the idea of it, his body had gone ahead (—because she had wanted it and after his unfortunate slip of tongue, he had felt obliged).

Like fixing her could fix him.

"Me too," he murmured, because he did not want to be awake with his problems right now. But some time later on, he would rise, gently, trying not to disturb her too much, and touch his muzzle to her poll as a way of saying farewell, before disappearing back into the world, hunched under the weight of his reckless self-abuse.

[ The woes of an asexual. #welcometomylife || @Maren || The end? <3 ]

lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .