Chemistry.
Oh, baby; I'm a fool for you.
He knows that she has the power to end a man’s life, and leave no trace of evidence behind her. Whether or not she’d do such a thing, he doesn’t know.
He’s seen the flames caught in her seaweed greens, consuming the feverous glare that mirrors her anger and repulsion. Burgundy lips snarl and spit; a bloody chunk of black wit comes hurling from her pointed tongue. There’s a fierce loyalty she brands upon herself, and wherever you go you can always smell the smoke from the iron. It lingers in his nostrils, his brain, settling in his throat so that every word he says to her is an echo of her honesty. Oh, she can stand three rounds in the ring three times over for the ones she cares about, and he’s learnt not to underestimate her. But at the same time, he doesn’t think she’s capable of that same degree of hate it takes to suffocate a soul. Not when (kisses smudging dirty lipstick on pinched skin, the whirl of heat comes crashing around similarly flushed cheeks; the fire bites and moans at his insides, his brain inebriated with painted eyes and skin that’s been host to inky needles) the same mouth, the one that can illuminate her hiding place like a thousand ultraviolet scanners never could, is happily churning out the properties of arsenic trioxide to try and bring justice to somebody six feet under.
And he nods and he smiles and he thanks God that he was blessed with the ability to process information with minimal concentration, because all he can see is the creases of skin beside her eyes and all he hears is the melody her voice lulls him with, drugging him like the compound of which she sings.
He locks himself up like a prison, throwing away the key as soon as his fumbling lips threaten to spill his secret. He knows she’s a tornado, and she’s unwittingly ripped up his roots and buckled his rice-paper heart, making it throb pell-mell whenever his thoughts drift to her. There’s something about her scent, like opium to the frays of his nerves, that seeps into his lungs and coats his bronchi, and as he inhales (darkened corners play host to illicit intoxication, pheromones pull the trigger for wracking shudders and sickly-sweet gasps as eyes try to decode one another, electric signals firing everywhere) he finds himself unable to leave her space, willingly trapped in the Florence flask she tinkers with. Dragging up excuses from the dregs of the case, picking holes in the nylon sheet of their separation, awkward stares and snappy retorts are exchanged and damn, she knows, she knows – does she know? She always was a human fMRI scanner - why should this time be any different?
Her eyes seem to hide anything they ever showed him, and they’re suddenly so distant but he can tell the cogs of her mind are working overtime, on what he’s not quite sure. When there’s a bark in his ear, telling him to get out and go home, his legs suddenly remember how to walk again, making him stumble and jolt his patched-up frame over to the exit. And in the time it takes him to get his breathing under control, her hold the elevator for me blooms into can I get a lift home?, which then climbs up into come in for coffee, ‘cause you really look beat and your instant shit isn’t gonna do the job.
They come thick and fast now, the acidic thoughts that almost distract him from walking. One whiff pushes his senses overdrive, and he knows that she’s watching, something bubbling in her eyes like one of her triple-barrel-named compounds. When she opens the door (fingers meet deadly nightshade locks) her shoes are first to be discarded on the carpet (droplets of sweat shared between thighs) and he’s suffocated by the overenthusiastic thermostat (warmth, sucking him in, pushing him deeper into realms he’s only dreamed of), or is it just the fact that her eyes, her goddamn eyes are glistening and her shirt is God knows where and her whole body is ready to pounce?
Suddenly it’s real, maybe too real, but she holds the antidote for all his mild-mannered-stutter-rich-geek-speak with the simple invitation of her skin, her coal-smudge lips imprinting his own in a way that makes the possibilities in his head pale in comparison. Pulling and twisting, vertical against an unknown surface, so hard the plaster could crumble from the walls just like his inhibitions – he fights with his daydreams (and hell, his night dreams) over whether or not this is real, but makes up his mind when two bumps to the head and a broken vase later they’re entwined on her mattress and they don’t know whose limb is whose. Digits clawing anxiously at perfumed skin with two pairs of lips that could set the world alight (the flames, always the flames), who cares where his new watch went in the struggle for stripped-down passion, when all he ever wanted, really, is sticking his name to his eardrums with her own personal adhesive? Who needs imagination when a tongue so familiar with man-made technological babble is voyaging over gilded planes and sugary nooks and those elaborate portraits of her soul, laid on her skin by the finest artist? He tries to sculpt words to describe her like a calligrapher would, but all that leave his throat are babbles (the pressure’s too much, collapse is inevitable) and vowels (lips with rough, premature names just dangling off them, squirming and naked and incomplete) and the sound that comes when it all rushes past him, raw and unleashed and scorching (dancing bones tease each other in their game, harsh grinds contradict soft kisses as blood pools underneath trembling fingertips – neither will let go, neither can stop) – and fuck, no dose of any chemical in the world could make him feel like he does right now.
Flashes of ink and gasps and green, green eyes come blinding him like car headlights as he fights to keep his eyes open, muscles infected with exhaustion. Her husky burr throws some words together, he thinks it’s something like maybe we’ll be able to concentrate on our work now we’ve gotten past this? but he doesn’t really know, because he feels so goddamn alive that he could sleep forever in those painted arms.
Could she really kill a man?
Before his consciousness is stolen from him, he thinks, she’s already killed me.
He’s seen the flames caught in her seaweed greens, consuming the feverous glare that mirrors her anger and repulsion. Burgundy lips snarl and spit; a bloody chunk of black wit comes hurling from her pointed tongue. There’s a fierce loyalty she brands upon herself, and wherever you go you can always smell the smoke from the iron. It lingers in his nostrils, his brain, settling in his throat so that every word he says to her is an echo of her honesty. Oh, she can stand three rounds in the ring three times over for the ones she cares about, and he’s learnt not to underestimate her. But at the same time, he doesn’t think she’s capable of that same degree of hate it takes to suffocate a soul. Not when (kisses smudging dirty lipstick on pinched skin, the whirl of heat comes crashing around similarly flushed cheeks; the fire bites and moans at his insides, his brain inebriated with painted eyes and skin that’s been host to inky needles) the same mouth, the one that can illuminate her hiding place like a thousand ultraviolet scanners never could, is happily churning out the properties of arsenic trioxide to try and bring justice to somebody six feet under.
And he nods and he smiles and he thanks God that he was blessed with the ability to process information with minimal concentration, because all he can see is the creases of skin beside her eyes and all he hears is the melody her voice lulls him with, drugging him like the compound of which she sings.
He locks himself up like a prison, throwing away the key as soon as his fumbling lips threaten to spill his secret. He knows she’s a tornado, and she’s unwittingly ripped up his roots and buckled his rice-paper heart, making it throb pell-mell whenever his thoughts drift to her. There’s something about her scent, like opium to the frays of his nerves, that seeps into his lungs and coats his bronchi, and as he inhales (darkened corners play host to illicit intoxication, pheromones pull the trigger for wracking shudders and sickly-sweet gasps as eyes try to decode one another, electric signals firing everywhere) he finds himself unable to leave her space, willingly trapped in the Florence flask she tinkers with. Dragging up excuses from the dregs of the case, picking holes in the nylon sheet of their separation, awkward stares and snappy retorts are exchanged and damn, she knows, she knows – does she know? She always was a human fMRI scanner - why should this time be any different?
Her eyes seem to hide anything they ever showed him, and they’re suddenly so distant but he can tell the cogs of her mind are working overtime, on what he’s not quite sure. When there’s a bark in his ear, telling him to get out and go home, his legs suddenly remember how to walk again, making him stumble and jolt his patched-up frame over to the exit. And in the time it takes him to get his breathing under control, her hold the elevator for me blooms into can I get a lift home?, which then climbs up into come in for coffee, ‘cause you really look beat and your instant shit isn’t gonna do the job.
They come thick and fast now, the acidic thoughts that almost distract him from walking. One whiff pushes his senses overdrive, and he knows that she’s watching, something bubbling in her eyes like one of her triple-barrel-named compounds. When she opens the door (fingers meet deadly nightshade locks) her shoes are first to be discarded on the carpet (droplets of sweat shared between thighs) and he’s suffocated by the overenthusiastic thermostat (warmth, sucking him in, pushing him deeper into realms he’s only dreamed of), or is it just the fact that her eyes, her goddamn eyes are glistening and her shirt is God knows where and her whole body is ready to pounce?
Suddenly it’s real, maybe too real, but she holds the antidote for all his mild-mannered-stutter-rich-geek-speak with the simple invitation of her skin, her coal-smudge lips imprinting his own in a way that makes the possibilities in his head pale in comparison. Pulling and twisting, vertical against an unknown surface, so hard the plaster could crumble from the walls just like his inhibitions – he fights with his daydreams (and hell, his night dreams) over whether or not this is real, but makes up his mind when two bumps to the head and a broken vase later they’re entwined on her mattress and they don’t know whose limb is whose. Digits clawing anxiously at perfumed skin with two pairs of lips that could set the world alight (the flames, always the flames), who cares where his new watch went in the struggle for stripped-down passion, when all he ever wanted, really, is sticking his name to his eardrums with her own personal adhesive? Who needs imagination when a tongue so familiar with man-made technological babble is voyaging over gilded planes and sugary nooks and those elaborate portraits of her soul, laid on her skin by the finest artist? He tries to sculpt words to describe her like a calligrapher would, but all that leave his throat are babbles (the pressure’s too much, collapse is inevitable) and vowels (lips with rough, premature names just dangling off them, squirming and naked and incomplete) and the sound that comes when it all rushes past him, raw and unleashed and scorching (dancing bones tease each other in their game, harsh grinds contradict soft kisses as blood pools underneath trembling fingertips – neither will let go, neither can stop) – and fuck, no dose of any chemical in the world could make him feel like he does right now.
Flashes of ink and gasps and green, green eyes come blinding him like car headlights as he fights to keep his eyes open, muscles infected with exhaustion. Her husky burr throws some words together, he thinks it’s something like maybe we’ll be able to concentrate on our work now we’ve gotten past this? but he doesn’t really know, because he feels so goddamn alive that he could sleep forever in those painted arms.
Could she really kill a man?
Before his consciousness is stolen from him, he thinks, she’s already killed me.