burns_so_brightly | Second Stanza: [ACTION/WRITTEN/VOICE]

[Sitting in the tea shop, Julian Bell is looking restless, his tea untouched and growing cold. He chews the end of his pen as his journal lies open on the table before him. All at once, he starts writing furiously.]

Expose the world, anatomize,
Strip clothes from skin, strip skin, then flesh, from bone.
Himself no surgeon, true, can sterilize,
But yet the self-infection can be shown.
Corrode and doubt; anesthetize the heart;
Morphia or curiosity drown the reviving smart.

Clear as white water in the stream we see
Shadowed the species of eternity;
The working process, self a working part:
For not one necessary fiction's grace
Can quite make mask th' observer's outward face,
Or thought one extra atom's movement start.

The moving pointer tells, and having told
Not the immediacy of hot and cold,
Nor yet the pale abstraction of a mind
(For algebra and instruments record
No immanent emergence of the Word.)
Tells solid, painful foothold all we find.

Why turn, why seek, why question for an end?
Why hope? Time flows: shows useless to defend
A cosy corner in the rising flood.
The tide is coming in: the dykes are down:
War, Terror, Poverty, swing through the town,
And the cold wind claims to be understood.

[It feels like it's been too long since he wrote. He's trying to get the juices going again, but this lazy, mind-numbing monotony of Luceti life is making it hard, so he started with something he's already written. Heck, maybe someone will give him feedback and he can better it. Some ten or fifteen minutes later, he picks up the journal and speaks.]

I think we should have a philosophy club here, or some such thing. Nothing exclusive, just a few inquisitive minds wanting intellectual stimulation. Mondays at eight in the tea shop. Any biters?

[OOC: Feel free to run into him around town as well as at the tea shop. He'll be getting groceries and checking out the library, and tonight, he'll be at Cloud Nine.

Also: the above poem was written by the actual Julian Bell and not me. No profit made from it.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Now Julian is disgusted and, actually, kind of scared. He grapples with Isaac's wrist, trying to pry his hand off his tie, which is tightening around his neck.] Let go!

[The words fall on deaf ears, Isaac gazing hollowly into his eyes – and, without a moment’s thought, he leans in and presses a kiss to Julian’s mouth, striving to lose himself in the wild, heady rush he knew would fade all too soon.

He does it because he can. Because, for this brief instant, he feels some wonderful semblance of control; because he knows only to take what he desires, having no reason to expect generosity; and because, somewhere behind all the airs and pretenses is a pathetic creature still aching for non-hostile human contact as any other man. A longing that is warped and tainted by the curse, his lust, his innermost fears, and by a faint but nagging sense of self-loathing.

He is fiercely jealous of Julian without knowing much about him at all. Here is a man, Isaac thinks, who had been blessed with the good fortune not to have been born and regarded as an abomination in the eyes of others. Not to have accusing fingers thrust into his face and wooden stakes driven into him for the crime of existing.

Life was unfair. But he had decided one day that he would no longer sit and take it. He had taken action; he had allied himself with those who had similarly been judged. And so he would, for the rest of his days.

The forgemaster pulls back - and reluctantly opens his eyes, the hand viciously gripping Julian’s tie loosening very slightly. He blinks, looking lost as if having expecting to see someone else standing before him. But then suddenly, his features freeze over and he brings his lips to Julian’s ear, hissing savagely.]

Did you think I would forget a man with the audacity to ignore me? [He had to say something.]

[Julian struggled through the entire affair, but the more strain he put on the tie clutched in Isaac's hand, the more the thing tightened around his neck. Eventually, his hands had to go from their attempt at prying away Isaac's hands to loosen the tie, wedging his fingertips between it and the collar of his shirt. He's so concerned about breathing that the kiss is over before he knows it, and the momentary fear starts to fade. His heartbeat slows as he reminds himself that it's broad daylight, and there is only so much a man will try in the open during the day.]

Let go. [His voice rasps now, but it's as strong as ever.]

How dare you - - [Isaac growls menacingly, meaning to give the tie a punishing tug to assert his dominance. But he doesn't finish, nor does he manage so much as a twitch of a finger before an inexplicable agony surges through him like a powerful jolt of electricity.

If there was something he knew well, it was physical pain – not only inflicting it upon others, of course, but welcoming it himself, his most intense experience being when he had lain on a stone slab in the castle’s cellar and surrendered himself to the steady hand of the artist gouging patterns into his skin and rubbing the ink in, line by line, curve by curve. In a moment of lucid thought while his mind steadily spiraled into some feverish, half-crazed state, he remembered thinking that he felt relieved, lighter, even cleansed... like a man whom had paid all his debts.

But there is nothing about this he can appreciate in this instant. If this pain had a colour, it would have been white, a bright, blinding white flashing behind his eyes. Gasping, he releases Julian and buckles, shaking uncontrollably.]

[Not going to think for a second about what made the other man fall. Julian blindly rips the tie from his neck and leaves it on the cobblestones as he runs, looking back occasionally to see if he's being followed.

When he's assured he's at a safe distance, he pauses behind a building and gasps for breath for a while.

Should he tell someone?

No. Guy would flip out. Anthony would berate him for making Guy flip out.

He's not hurt. He rubs the choke marks around his neck with relief. He's okay.]

[He could have been down and struggling just to breathe for an hour or just a minute. The forgemaster only knows that at some point, the invisible vice-like grip around his skull releases and the angry throbbing everywhere else subsides, allowing him to think with some degree of clarity. Gradually, he reacquaints himself with his surroundings and remembers just how ungodly cold it is.

He plants a hand against the ground and shakily pushes himself up, shooting a baleful, narrowed-eyed glare across the street. Julian, of course, is long gone. But the tie remains.

Isaac reaches for it, turning his palm up and running his thumb along it thoughtfully, for a long moment. And then he bunches it hard in his fist.]

Second Stanza: [ACTION/WRITTEN/VOICE]

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Potential trigger warning: forced kiss

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Should be asleep, but damn my brain. :Ic Oh well!