Specters on the Starlight Coast

[Trenchcoat Man]

Cloud 9000​

Cloud City, Bespin​

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They don’t follow me as they did – The Ghosts. Finally karked off to their Final Rest. Old mates, family. Lost lovers. Good for them, yeah. They earned it.​

​

But I’m still haunted. They’re a part of me, they are. I see them everywhere I go.​

​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFCZP1Nz3Ds​

​

Benedict gargoyled at the edge of a satellite table, its circumference so meager it could be mistaken for a raised stool, topped in glass and cluttered with vestigial ashtrays, empty bottles. He rested an arm upon what little empty space it provided, leaning on it for support. He looked cleaner than usual – Unconscious camouflage adapting his outfit to better resemble First Order tastes; to communicate in the language of the landscape. His eyebrow, once armored in safety-pins, was now simply a matte-black cyborg aug; his trenchcoat cut at trapezoidal angles, giving the tail a shape akin to a vampire cloak. Veddy, veddy fascist, don’tchaknow.

Painted in the pink light of shifting neon, he had raised his brow in mock curiosity, perhaps amusement, but his eyes betrayed him. Tonight, he had made the decision to be morose, and the beat of the music and radiance of lights added to the picture through their contrast to Guttermage.

There were better places to be alone, but not to truly feel it.

The failed romances of young, would-be lovers, stealing glances and aching for contact, but too tangled up in insecurity and modern sexual politics to take a leap of faith. He could see it, these thin indigo tethers, binding them all up together in an organism they were too drunk and too self-absorbed to see.

And Benedict, planted firmly outside of it all.

In a nearby booth, a guy with funny hair made jokes at the expense of his taller, nerdier counterpart, while the woman who was quite obviously his girlfriend laughed. And as the colors changed, he could swear it was Claire, and Urinal, and the Geek, but it couldn’t be. Not so far out here.

Benedict soaked in the miserability of his bottled domestic, wrinkling his mouth at a flavor like river water passed through handled change.

Out on the dance floor, a girl wearing far too make-up twerked against the crotch of a guy she had yet to even look at; her dance moves a borrowed approximation of more inner circle tastes, her youth besmirching with a near-perfect ignorance to the dance moves that resonated with this retro aesthetic.

Her friend, however, made an island of herself. Shambling in a trance in the dark, each clomp of her loose combat boot harkening to something ancient and wicked and proud. And so familiar. Lights of neon blue, though horizontal, came down like shower streams and guillotines, vivisecting her into cubes, leaving her awash pigment.

I’d met Janey when I was sixteen, through a bird in her coven I’d been shagging named Sasha. Sasha was a bit of a poser, yeah, but, she was hot, so some flaws weren’t so glaring, right? She’d leave the Nightsisterhood as the fad wore off, naturally; and that left me and Janey and Janey’s fishnets and Janey’s attitude. Used to leave thick, purple bruises around me entire upper body – mix of dark magick and sadomasochism. Always looked like I’d just survived a suicide by hanging, I did. She’d talk for hours on restoring the matriarchy and the phallocentric nature of lightsabers and harnessing the power of nature and the sisterhood, et-sodding-cetera. She karking broke an adolescent’s notions of sex and gender and its role in relationships learned from Porn and smuggled away in me dark little boy box despite all the bloody pretense about Spunk Rawk enlightenment. Even amongst us progressives, like, there’s always a bigger karking fish.​

​

And this pond was just too small for her, wunnit? Janey’d go on to lead covens, community outreach, bring people together in a united front for the fings that mattered. And me and all my poodoo would’ve only held her back, in the end.​

​

Had “Left of the Dial” on repeat that whole bleedin’ summer.​

​

She was the only lover who ever met me family, and she bore witness to the horror that came wiff all that. Held me hand through it, like – Girl Friday, and probably me only actual girlfriend in me life. Yeah? Yeah. Bollocks.​

“Hey there.”

Janey Hexam would have her eyes choked from her skull by a particularly c-wordy Anesia Jy Vun in a bout shadow-fetish magic.​

“I said, ‘Hey,’ Mr. Mysterio! Look at that face --”

Benedict shifted his gaze the mere millimeter to grant her his attention.

She was doing me a favor.​

​

Karking tragic.​

“You’re breaking my heart over here, handsome," the patron said, making an exaggerated mockery of his thousand yard stare. "C’mon, come daaaannnce with me. We’ll have a good time!”

She was cute enough, sure. Clearly had had a few. Probably drinking on some sort of medication, too.

“Forget it, petal – You wouldn’t find me fun,” Benedict smiled, bittersweet. “Him, on the other hand…”

Benedict finger-gunned The Geek without having to look up. Meanwhile, her vision followed. The Geek had been watching awkwardly, trying and failing to escape their attention only to knock over his own pint to the amusement of his company – an act that appeared all the more calamitous under the flip-book pacing of the strobe light. “Bloke’s worth it, like, if you’re willing to put in the work.”

Benedict raised a glass to all his friends, turned, and departed – weaving gracefully through the dance floor as if the dancers were trying to move around him, and not the inverse.

The Trenchcoat Man lingered in the shadows hallway to the VIP area, his arms outstretched, bottle still in hand, fingers able to be spared tracing the texture of the walls as the pink gave way to white fluorescence, an image of Queen Amidala bright and clear at the end of the tunnel. He raised an arm suddenly, allowing a scruffy little Squib to pass under, turning his head to see if she had recognized him as he had her.

But the Squib was already gone.

The White Light made silhouettes of those in the art gallery’s attendance, featureless and black all the way up until he already unknowingly made eye contact with the blonde, drawing her attention by fortune or presence. His eyes looked fake – Cracked indigo bottleglass, fractured in the iris. It was a plunge into the Uncanny Valley, but somehow in reverse, their ambience somehow too human to be human. An Uncanny Peak.

Benedict smiled at her like the Christ as he passed, wounded and full of holes. Quietly, he took up residence before one of Padme’s images, clearly disturbed by it.

It had been so long since he had seen Theed.

Perhaps he should.

[member="Ophelia DuSang"]​

 

[Ophelia DuSang]

Theodosia D’Orazio was popularly known as the Baroness of the Brush. Native-born to Bespin, she settled on Naboo sometime in her early twenties where she was seduced by the Bohemian movement of Theed’s trendsetters and socialites. It was there that her work evolved, shifting from the traditional to the pioneering. As an artist she was emotional. Audacious. Raw. Ophelia worshiped her, having long ago erected an immaculate shine to D’Orazio’s genius in her heart.

A secret shrine. The masters at her conservatory rolled their eyes at the mere mention of D’Orazio's name. There was no place for “pedestrian poster art” in their lectures or studio spaces. Students were even chided for hanging the Baroness’ prints on their dorm room walls. Phie had challenged their gripes on more than one occasion, insisting that just because something was popular didn’t mean it was poor quality. There was a reason why millions adored her, and that reason wasn’t necessarily that people, in general, are dim.

They were wrong and she had been so sure that she was right. Once, she remembered standing with her fellow with students in a perfect circle, painting identical landscapes, while the instructor in the center prattled endlessly on.

“And furthermore…” Spoke the stout professor. His volume had a tendency to fluctuate wildly, wee mumbles to vulgar barks. Only the most devoted suck-ups paid him any attention and he was so obtuse that his own students’ lack of interest barely registered, “…Redolent memories of the Alderaanian countryside drift lasciviously through my mind while we painters strive to imitate her pastoral splendor. We are not the graffiti rogues of this new era, making mockeries of light and line and form. No. NO! We are not, nor shall we ever be, aroused by those perversions.”

Phie, in her memory, laughed. Her little giggle bounced off the rafters and around the room. A butterfly made of sound.

“Do you have something to contribute, Lady Ophelia?” Full stop. Where there was once a scratching and scraping of paint being applied to canvases, there was only yawning silence.

Oh Gods, help me. She remembered thinking. Just swallow your pride and apologize. It was a good idea, one which would undoubtedly not result in her discharge from the class. But he’s such a ridiculous ass…

“Mm, yes, actually…” She began, stammering clumsily before biting her lip, “… What I mean to say is, you see…” Spit it out, you coward, or regret it until your dying day, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Looking back, it was worth the ejection.

​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsiiSG_KR80

Cloud 9000’s D’Orazio exhibit was entitled Madonna; Regina, an exploration of some of the galaxy’s most conspicuously recognizable female icons. It was bold of D’Orazio to premier her showcase on Bespin. Being a planet in the First Order’s dominion, the exaltation of the feminine typically took a backseat to the reverence of all things male.

Phie’s present apparel was passably “with-it”. White lace party dress and waist-length leather jacket; her hair styled purposely to look a mess. She blended well with the club crowd. The incognito countess smiled to herself and kissed the edge of her glass, holding her lips there thoughtfully before sipping and appraising the top shelf-ness of her gimlet. She doubted that the D’Orazio was intimidated by the shrill objections of her critics. If anything, she welcomed them. They were good for her brand.

The piece before her was titled Secura Shining. A portrait of the Twi’lek general, famous for her valor at the Battle of Geonosis. She perished at the hands of those she commanded, betrayed by the government she served. Ophelia could see a whole history told in the general’s eyes. Shaking, wet mirrors reflecting The Man Who Would Be God’s liquid shape. Hope in Secura’s brow, but acceptance in her mouth. Painted into her posture, an epiphany; any action she had taken or would take next would be an exercise in futility.

She tasted her drink again as the song changed. Eyes closed, Ophelia’s head bent back to listen. It reminded her of a cosmic shoreline, waves lapping at silvery sands. Full of starlight. She let her mind relax and her presence drift, like a kite caught in a breeze.

Hello there… Her spirit reacted automatically to a pressing shadow. Phie’s unconscious self could be so naively friendly sometimes. Startled, she swallowed her fascination and reeled back the reflex to poke and pry. To her left, the shadow passed. A man. Tall and dark and very handsome. Rebellion in his gait and gaze and fashion. He was young grunge all grown-up; a collage of clichés pulled from the pages of angsty girl fiction… but Gods, did he ever made it work.

“Hello there.” This time, she breathed to words aloud. Too low, though, for anyone but herself to hear. He was standing off to her right now, admiring a portrait of a long-dead queen. In her mind, she leafed through her catalog of excuses for a reason to look the other way… you coward. That voice again. Her inner bully. The one that drove her to do imprudent things. Do it or regret it until your dying day.

She wandered in his direction, pulled by his current, and stood at his side, “Hello…” Glancing his way, her reality stopped. The charade of a smile she usually wore during introductions crumbled in her heart before it had a chance to affix itself on her face. Seeing him now, not just his shade, he was recognizable. Almost. Ophelia felt it, though, deep down in her most primordial places. A click. Do I… do I know you from the netherworld?

Her eyes probably betrayed her shock, so she looked back to the glowing canvas. In a small panic, the blonde gestured with her drink. She could run away or plainly ask what his address was beyond the veil, but both of those ideas were objectively mad. There was a third option, though, and that was to focus on the D’Orazio, “… do you like it?”

[member="Trenchcoat Man"]

 

[Trenchcoat Man]

Outside the old Theed playhouse, there’s a show that goes on every night. A lone Gungan, trousers soaked in piss from fear and collapsed kidneys, asserts through battered lips that he, indeed, is sentient, with feelings, and loved ones, and all the fixings that typically make one reckon life is somefing precious and valuable and worth keeping at all costs. To this, his Human assailants scoff, “The ability to speak does not make you intelligent” – a quote, no longer attributable, its original racist lost to time, but still a popular cliché for granting its user the entitlement to deem another ‘subhuman;’ all the more reason they need to stomp him into paste. It’s an imprint, mind. A stain, like, on the mall t-shirt of the Force​

​

And it echoes. Ad -karking- nauseum.​

​

They’ll do it tonight, and tomorrow, just as they have every bloody evening since the day Queen Amidala put her unqualified mate in the Senate, setting the Gungan people up to fail in her stead.​

It wasn’t just the pages of angsty girl fiction. Here he was, clad in a well-worn costume of his Spunk Rawk Hero –Emperor Plague-Us a.k.a. Gandge Tarker, with his Tarisian Undercity accent and snarling, self-sufficient, take-nothing-from-nobody, give-poodoo-to-everyone attitude. A father for boys without them, and a lamplight for anyone wandering off the beaten path.

So, no, children – I don’t reckon dear Padme is a saint, or a martyr, or a Holy Mother, at all.​

Outgoing temperament and Zeltron empathy, his body responded to her nearness, her interest, before he really registered [member="Ophelia DuSang"] even being there. His posture turned to her slightly, opening for her, welcoming her deeper into his personal space, pheromones emitted so as to make it feel only natural to do so. He was an object to be used by people; a piece of furniture.

And I feel it. That old familiar warmth as me veins flush with petrol and ignite in that righteous fire that’ve more than given me the incentive, and the means, to burn a whole bloody institution to the bloody ground. But somefing new happens, right yeah? The Hate smolders and rises, reaching to become somefing higher.​

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Until, bugger me, it doesn’t feel much like Hate at all.​

She greeted him, and he blinked, clearing the slickshine of profundity from his eyes. Pulled from the mire of his own personal bullpoodoo, he began to absorb the emotional interplay between them, coming alive before her very eyes. Microexpressions twitched subliminally across his face, the whisper of a grin; a hint of amusement in his eyes as he let her stew in the pheromones and his lack of clear response, watching from his peripherals.

New year, new bloody me. Reckon I might even take up scuba-diving.​

Had he known her in Netherworld? Doubtful. Benedict had never made it to the good parts.

The Trenchcoat Man was uniquely confident in his skin, at home in the shadowed light. Like some sort of animal, free, or pretending to be, of the scrutiny of others. She asked her distracting question, and he took his time with it, chewing it over as his hands fished a carton of Boom Slims from his coat pocket. With a sigh, sincere in its emotional weight, that jagged little pill of reluctant forgiveness, he rewarded her patience, “…I always forget how young she was,” and proceeded to pack his cigarettes against the leathered palm of his hands.

He could never exalt her as a goddess, but perhaps she could be forgiven as a teenager. After all, he had done much worse at 17.

Casually, seamlessly, he broke free from her orbit, floating off in clear trajectory to the Smoker’s Exit. He revolved around to rope Ophelia back in. “You comin’?”

 

[Ophelia DuSang]

He was quiet, and that was okay. All the better to meditate on Padme; to do what all analytic eyes do when meeting a new piece of art. Contemplate the composition, scrutinize the symmetry and appraise whether or not there are appealing proportions in the presentation. Did this femme fill out her frame?

Her thumb strummed at the rim of her gimlet glass. She wanted to be aware of her bias, parsing out what was real from what was sentiment. She wanted to bar deep adoration from polluting her critical gaze. Maybe if D’Orazio would occasionally produce something Ophelia didn’t care for, their artist-aficionado bond would feel more like a relationship and less like a tale of a sorceress and a slave.

The Padme was fine, though. It was better than fine. It was feeling in the form of a girl. Ophelia could go out, collect the four elements and mold them into the shape of a person. But regardless of how painstaking her efforts and how convincing her results, the person would just be a lump of mud. D’Orazio, through some magic, was able to stitch together components and breathe life into them. Her works were the sum of all parts plus the miracle of soul.

She hummed, brief and thoughtful as she considered it. The man at her shoulder was still silent. And that was still okay.

I never actually believed she loved him. The business of growing with and into someone is a long and messy process. It probably made sense to teen-heartthrob Vader to take a short cut. Bypass the work and the heart-shattering suffering. Just reach into her and fiddle until she’s exactly the person you want her to be.

Stranger things had happened at a Sith’s capable hands.

He commented on the dead queen’s youth and Ophelia’s spirit tilted, tasting his intension. His shade was drenched in empathy as he detached. She sensed it without looking, his ‘exit stage right’. It was then that she noticed herself grasping. Invisible hands clawing at the air for one last pull of pure opium. She closed her eyes, rocking back on her heels. Aspirer. Expirer. Breathe in. Breathe out.

“You comin’?”

Her eyes shot open as she realized it. Recognized it.

“Yes.”



She had barely been nineteen when she first encountered it. On Coruscant, it was fashionable for the men, women, and intersex who worked as dancers or escorts or even waiters to modify themselves with implants that increased their appeal. The inserts made them more approachable, somehow. More available. More accessible to being teased and touched and…well, obviously tipped.

Ophelia had always found it distracting when some pretty modified nymph delivered her cordial or a hyper-attractive Adonis opened her door, but not intoxicating. Either her friend from the netherworld was sporting some new ‘wonder of technology’ implant, or he was the genuine article. Born to live better through chemistry.

Or was it less of a blessing and more of a curse? The Adonises and nymphs on Coruscant had decided to be desirable, after all. Perhaps he would decide otherwise if given the chance.

Ophelia took a spot to his right and ogled the whipped-pink wonder of Bespin at twilight. Having ditched what was left of her drink in the gallery room, she let her wrist rest atop the chest-high wall that protected tipsy guests from teetering off at the terrace’s perimeter. Shoulders relaxing, her weight shifted as she turned slightly toward him. She padded her jacket pocket with her left hand, indicating that she had thoughtlessly come without her cigarette case.

Glancing to the pack he had previously been thumping against his palm, “May I?” She asked, silvery and polite, as she dared to stare into his indigo-glass gaze. Yes, I know. IOU one smoke. But I’m good for it.

[member="Trenchcoat Man"]

 

[Trenchcoat Man]

The Trenchcoat Man settled comfortably into corner edge, sanding harshness off right angles in barrier walls. It was a lean, of course, taking up more space than he probably deserved, completely at ease with treating somebody else’s property as his living room. It drew her in to his personal sphere; it had to. To stay outside it was too far away, too awkward; especially when he acquiesced to her request. He tongued his broken fang tooth, evidently amused that she would need to borrow a cigarette, the unpaid reciprocity inherent in doing so. It was a trap, but whether or not this was conscious on his part anymore was up for discussion; social tactics, long reinforced, until they had just become habit.

With a flick of his wrist, he extended a cigarette from the hole in the carton of Booma Slims. They were longer cigarettes; thinner. Typically associated with female consumers, or so it was spun…That nonsense. They were named as such for their association with the Gungan algae-tobacco farmers, and the amphibious nature of the plant, which gave the smokes an almost slimy quality in its passing.

Benedict leaned out, making a partial effort to meet Phie halfway in the lighting of her cigarette. His pheromones incensing her olfactory as per its biological design, potency growing with proximity. He lit her cigarette, and then his own. In the moments to follow his exhale, the chemical manipulation would all but vanish, not quite returning [member="Ophelia DuSang"] her sobriety, but instead, leaving it on a table where she could reach it, should she desire.

The guttermage looked out over the pink all-around, the light speckle of stars just barely perceptible beyond the evening atmosphere, but would ultimately return to her eyes, watching almost in anticipation. His lips wrinkled, pursed sorta, conspiratorially, as if they were two children trying not to laugh at a joke.

But said nothing.

 

[Ophelia DuSang]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_1obKl8COs

Appraising the cigarette nestled between her fingers, she turned her hand over, unable to discern the brand. After a moment more of quiet puzzling, Ophelia brought it to her lips as her eyes flashed to him. His figure was dark against the rosy horizon; shadows blanketing the details of his face. She noticed him move, though. Killing the space between them with his advance. She followed a heartbeat after. Pressing in. Accepting it.

Now, the superego’s task is always to correct and perfect. It is a stern overseer, tirelessly directing, but it is not unloving. Grasp your potential. It implores, tethering its wards and coaxing them back from the precipice of recklessness. Become your best. The id, though, is a very old and formidable energy. Being the power that propels life, it is not easily dissuaded.

All the more reason for etiquette classes to exist, of course. And protocol training. And all those endless essays on self-denial. With practice, the superego can become successful at soothing a wayward id. But, if something should come along to snap the tether…

So bet it. Every bad idea was a good idea. Nothing is eternal.

He sparked her smoke. He lit his own. And then came the slow motion decent. Back to baseline.

Gradually, she felt naked and cold. Along her arms and legs, the caps of her nerves were spitting angry sparks. Ophelia retreated, her back finding the balcony wall. The cigarette between her fingers unraveled and became curing wafts of silver ribbons, unsmoked. Her friend from the netherworld was still there, swathed in silence. She noticed his smile, secret and small, and unconsciously mimicked… though she did not get the joke.


Yards away, the door to the gallery opened as a couple stepped out, chatting in their bubble that kept them engrossed in one another and separated from the rest of the world. Atmospheric florescent lights, purple-pink, bled out onto the terrace. And there was the sound of electric music escaping into the Bespin air.

She took a drag of her cigarette at last, hoping a minor nicotine jolt would help her feel a little less low and lonely. Tasting the smoke, though, she frowned. Now she was certain she had never sampled the brand. Turning it over in her hand again, Ophelia peered close at the design of the paper... but then stopped, noticing the minuscule streaks of pastel pigment embedded in her fingertips.

That failed masterpiece had sailed right off the balcony of her rented flat, she reflected. Gone but not forgotten.

Taking another drag, she turned to him. Her gaze rolled over his image, drinking in the data. Assessing. Perhaps.

“Are… you an artist?”

[member="Trenchcoat Man"]

 

[Trenchcoat Man]

Benedict maintained his childish expression; sorrowful somehow, as the joke revealed itself in his watching of her irises contracting, reacting, in that way which we have no vocabulary. [member="Ophelia DuSang"] was disappearing into herself, he knew, retreating from him emotionally, as well as physically. That isolation as their eyes rolled back, closed, when they met their personal ecstasy; the way they never sought him at all when his charm wore off and they could no longer find it at all. Connections to feed that monkey on one’s back. He noticed his hands felt a little cold; fingers wiggling against the barrier ledge absently.

Only once the drugs are done, I feel like dying.

The door fell open with all its sound and lights and “This Is What You Came For” seduction, spitting onto the roof their mirror, made of glass without the self-awareness in its reflection. They were tangled in strings of Indigo – hydrogen bonds, dissolving in rainfall, but good for a smash. It drew his gaze, smoking pensively as he watched.

The guy was running a game on her, Benedict could see from here…Could identify lines, once written for another girl, received a positive response, then recycled until it was as empty as the calories she was dumping into her body, bottle by bottle. She wasn’t falling for it, though. Well, not on a meta level. Here, in her inexpensive dress and designer imposter shoes, still old, out of season. It wasn’t that Benedict had a keen eye for fashion, so much as he had keen for poverty, for hands desperately reaching out of cracks in the streets, clawing at stars and a life under the pink and blue lights. She wanted to feel sexy for the night, so she smiled, and nodded along to each little lie, even stopping to sing when she knew the words.

Benedict smiled, too.

​

Dawn was a waitress I lived with shortly after me mates stopped taking me calls. Met her at a pharmacy; she was buying soda, I was nicking painkillers. She always looked at me, glass-eyed, when I’d talk, like she didn’t have a karking clue what I was on about, but loved me unconditionally like me mum should’ve, or a goldfish. Most days, she’d use me as a pillow and we’d stream whatever holofilm had been disseminated for mass-consumption that week, but I was never much a homebody – Had to get out periodically, shake fings up good and proper. She always had this look on her face when I’d come in late from me criminal mischief. I fink she reckoned I were cheating on her, like she had no idea, or just couldn’t bloody see, how karking terrible a person I really was. As if Cheating was the absolute worst fing I could get up to, that I were capable of. That always made me feel good about meself.​

The Guttermage returned his attention to his company, only to find her visibly frown; his face cracking in half in a grin as he very almost laughed.

She were a holiday, like, away from all stark fething filth and misery I’d surrounded meself in. I could feel Normal, catch me breaf. Until the day the Cartel rolled in, and put a machete to her throat, demanding I return an artifact I stole from the Hutts. I called his bluff, I did.​

Endorphins sucked him away from his pity party, and it let him see how lovely she was in her strategically counter-cultural attire; the sculpted crest of her hair. “You’re the artist, luv,” he remarked shrewdly, punctuating with a drag off his cigarette.

But, he weren’t arsing about.​

Exhaling through the cracks in his teeth, he voice labored from emptying lungs, “Me? I’m a magickian.”

You were always good for me, Dawn – But I was kark-all but bad for you.​

 

[Ophelia DuSang]

He was the epitome of beautiful melancholy. A rose braving a tempest and blooming in the rain. Ophelia’s gaze fell, eyes staring through the deck on which they stood, as her spirit expanded. Without moving she nestled up beside his gloom. Perhaps it was wrong to revel unwelcomed, but empaths were instinctively curious creatures and boundaries were never high on the list of things at which they excelled.

His blues and violets bled into the dry canvas of her consciousness and they painted her reality a shade of poignant plum. She could detect an unnamed subject in the negative spaces of his oeuvre and, in several places, she saw inconstancies in his design. Regrets brushed over, they had dried differently and scarred. Hither and tither, hidden stains.

It was honest and expressive. As she felt, her interest piqued. Ophelia wanted to tear through his portfolio but she paused and withdrew like a child caught reaching for the candy dish when she heard him speak.

Her friend from the netherworld called her an artist. Ophelia's cheeks warmed and, in her chest, a light flickered and came alive. It wasn’t the product of alchemy or chemistry or whatever the hell it was that had possessed her earlier. It was the way he said it. She believed it. She could have kissed his lips to thank them; to draw the words from them again.

She smiled sincerely. One arm reached across her torso and she pressed her cheek against the round of her raised shoulder, hugging herself to bury a little laugh, “Artist. Magician. Same thing.”

Ophelia could have tacked silly on to the end of her comment, her tone was so familiar. Teasing the way old friends would tease. The pair had spontaneously formed an impromptu Recently Resurrected Anonymous meeting on the club’s terrace, after all, and there was an implied acceptance associated with that. The initial shock of being found out had faded and she was beginning to warm up to the idea of being recognized. Known less for who she was than what she was. Aberration. Cosmic quirk…

The intimacy born from their assumed shared experience may have been a delusion. Wishful thinking or, more seriously, the means by which her wounded psyche was covertly getting its needs met; pulling fantasies out of her subconscious the way one might yank old clothes out of an attic chest, tossing them here and there, costuming the space.

Perhaps this was the beginning, she mused and immediately wondered why the twisted thought tickled her so. The dolly finally went mad, she imagined they would say as they pitched her old shell into an incinerator and tinkered with the more ideal version 2.1. A copy of a copy and further removed from her source, her future self will be a full 70% less likely to expire by way of existential crisis. It was only a matter of time.

Her posture relaxed. Bringing her cigarette to her lips, she inhaled fully. Holding it. Ophelia closed her eyes and let the nicotine dance in her blood stream. Dead girl. She thought as she exhaled, handing the slur-to-her over to the universe. If only for a moment, letting it go.

[member="Trenchcoat Man"]

 

[Trenchcoat Man]

He could feel her, them, in the City; in the bittersweet romance of synth music, singing like sirens luring to the lonely island of lights. Out here in the terrace, written in clouds for the dreamers with their heads so far from the earth. [member="Ophelia DuSang"] responded to something unconscious in him…something he could never see in himself, but he could maybe drape around her.

That faded aura of a ghost, of personal pasts that somehow…belonged to someone else. Benedict knew he was caught in her feedback loop, and he let himself go limp in her undertow.

Artist. Magickian. Same thing. That was a revelation for higher degree Freemasons; an Illuminati secret. And here she was, pairing it with giggles and cheap Gungan cigarettes. Mischief bent Luciferian brows, and took a moment to admire Ophelia falling into herself. He liked her.

So much, he'd even perform.

Reluctantly, he removed her from his vision, casting it out over the early evening sky and the glitter coat of stars in the purple-pink all-around.

“They don’t do it much now, but…the Dathomirian witches – when they were still witches, right – used to sing to cast their spells. Mind, they weren’t really spells, right yeah – They were songs. Straight-up, stark, actual karking songs.”

“They didn’t have lyrics. No words, like, but…there were still meaning. It harmonized with natural sonics of Dathomir…and it would crest and fall wiff the terrain; vibrato in the resonance of rocks...,” he took another smoke and exhaled, speaking the remaining thought with little air in his lungs, “…reaching down to the core.”

“Academics and other offbeat sods used to reckon they used the stars like maps. That the witches, when traveling their kark-off long-distances between tribes and that, would look for one to guide North…anovver for South…blah blah karking blah,” Benedict twirled his hand as if to gesture “get on with it,” images appearing in his cigarette trail like visions in the fire. He was no longer staring at the horizon, but instead watching his audience.

“But there weren’t bloody directions. Karkin’…they didn’t ruddy well define their world by their position wiffin it. The people were the planet and the planet were the stars and the universe were the universe and all of everyfing, hunky dory, in the Force. They were mnemonic device, the celestial bodies…” There was a force to the way he spoke, a fire underneath. It triggered a rhythmic cadence, practiced like a conman, but passionate like the leader of a social movement. “They reminded the lost how the song went.”

And maybe he was mansplaining. Maybe the highlights of an ancient matriarchy turned to hot garbage when a man spoke it to a woman. Or maybe he just sounded insane.

Again.

“The distance weren’t measured in meters, but in metres, right? That’s why the word’s the bloody same. The story -is- the map. Harmony, ennit? That’s the whole karking point.”

Again, he punctuated hard with a final drag, flicking the spent cigarette off into the clouds. He joined her on her side of the barrier, leaning down to rest his elbows upon it, watching for where the cigarette may’ve fallen, but not really. The fire was dying now, resembling something more akin to regret.

“These days, the Witches don’t sing much anymore -- Just…Girl Mandalorians with lightsabers, yeah? Bloody Power Rangers, who karking cares? Entropic -sodding- decay,” pushing up from the barrier, he stood beside at a right-angle, back within her personal bubble. “Anovver casualty to the bloody monoculture. Rubbbbish…,” he drew out the word with a Billy Idol lip curl and fist gesture.

He smiled self-consciously, his face flushing with the light pink of a very mild sunburn. A hallmark of a partial Zeltron heritage.

…And the pheromones that came with it.

 

[Ophelia DuSang]

She was silent and still. Awash in wordless wonder. Transfixed. Yes, that was the word. She watched as smoke changed form; shapeless streams coalescing until they came to be half a canopy sky. Faceless figures walked beneath, indistinct but vaguely feminine. Traveling together. Confident of their direction.

Ophelia, much to her own amusement, realized that she was of two minds. Her reverent self commanded that she observe and study the tiny ghosts and their procession. Another impulse, however, impishly suggested that she touch. Let the smoke dissolve through her fingers. Like dipping one’s hand into a reflecting pool, shattering the mirror image into a hundred rippling waves. Why is that always so satisfying?

Feeling his gaze, she looked to him. She was smiling without trying. He had yet to say much so his pontifications were particularly arousing, all wrapped up in his anarchic accent. She had observed the girls at her conservatory swoon at sway to similar sounds; lawless pop lords provoking rebellion in indie tracks from the long-demolished Atomic Punk. As they died their little deaths, she feigned disinterest. Ophelia had been far too shy to reveal such things.

Her head tilted as his sermon ended, suddenly aware of his proximity. She didn’t move so she didn’t mind it. Quite the contrary. His cigarette sailed and her friend from the netherworld blushed. Oh… She hadn’t seen it before. It must have been cloaked by the club light. Gods. All the images in her mind of songs and stars and forgotten heritages bowed to a singular awareness. On a sensitivity scale that ranged from 1 to 10, Ophelia placed at about a 16 …I’m in trouble.

She closed her eyes and kindly told her heart to compose itself. Blinking, she beseeched the placid vision of Bespin’s twilight for a measure of restraint. As a last resort, she fell back into memory; lessons learned and the discipline derived therein. Too late, she knew. But it was comforting somehow to pretend.

“The sages of Korriban were students of the Dathomirian witches.” She lifted her cigarette to her eyeline. It wasn’t quite spent, “Though, they surely would deny it if one were to… draw attention to that truth.”

“They cursed them as heathens, you know. Blasphemers of the sacred faith, yet they nicked pages from their songbooks.” She glanced his way and whispered, “As if we couldn’t tell.”

“One word to make a saber sing while another…” Her eyes were open but her gaze was inward. Her free hand swayed minutely, conducting her words, “… unlocked a creature’s mind. And there were simpler spells in the sage’s prayer books, of course. Spark a fire from thin air, for example, and make the… smoky smolder dance.”

Ophelia stopped as one might before a dive, asking herself if she was truly willing to take the risk, but she rolled her eyes at herself eventually, shaking her head through a nervous laugh, “Really, though. Here. Allow me to demonstrate.” She brought what remained of her cigarette to her lips and blew at the bright ruby ember. Like a birthday candle. Make a wish. When a thick tunnel of smoke poured into the atmosphere, she drew back and uttered, “Kastru'ak.”

The ancient declaration was blended with intention. Imaginings. Cathedral doves launching from their roosts; white wings whipping the air. And the smoke stopped its ascent. Its airy pillar crumbled into distinct divisions… and finally tumbling feathers.

“You see?” Wearing a world-weary smile, she watched the feathers fall and fade and vanish, “Hypocrites.” Like her companion before her, she flicked her dying smoke into the clouds.

“I’m… going back inside.” Stepping back from the terrace wall, she tucked her hands into her jacket pockets and held him in a hopeful gaze. A lengthy pause. Sweet suspense.

“Are you coming?”

[member="Trenchcoat Man"]

 

[Trenchcoat Man]

Though he concealed it well, there was a moment where Benedict was legitimately shocked by her perspective; when he reconsidered, of course, it all made perfect sense, as he was on a First Order world, but it still often came as jarring when lovely people revealed themselves as Sith, the revelation as incongruent as finding out the nice old man that ran the video store also conducted ritual sacrifices on the weekends.

This happened in a flash, his awkward chuckleface becoming something more to genuine intrigue. She wouldn’t let him lose his grin; her private wicked “As if we couldn’t tell” just did it for him.

“As if we couldn’t tell.” Clever woman. Mean as a box of snakes

[member="Ophelia DuSang"]’s hand would sway, but it would not keep his attention. The way she spoke, its abundance of syllables, what they did to her lips. He raised his eyebrows, as he’d caught himself transfixed, culminating with her birthday wish. With a slow exhale, he purged himself of the mind’s impurities.

It wasn’t the feathers that dazzled him. Truth was, he already knew that trick – the conjuring of little, ashen moths for the radioactive abortions of LeCirque, born without opening eyelids and brains in sacks behind their skulls. He would’ve even happily performed for her, had he not already discarded his Booma Slim. It was fortunate he was stuck for a line. It allowed him the opportunity to bask in her radiance; to follow her light and let it lead him.

“Are you coming?”

Of course he was.

~*^*~​

When he would remember it later, he would recall being led by the hand, so secure and certain their paths the same. Though, this simply was not the case. Electricity arced between them, atoms spinning in bondage…but they had yet to touch. He was free to go whenever he wanted…but why would he want to?

She had brought him to the balcony, a pink skyline replaced with a crowd of dancers, drinkers, merriment-seekers, and despair-maskers, cast in purple from the Cloud 9000’s shifting synthwave ambiance. It was a logical date for such fans of people. It was a safe distraction from each other and the affect she had on his pulse. Even as he stared beyond, he could feel her nearness, every particle passed between them, counting seconds as though he could make the premise of the affair less tawdry…as if value came from Time invested and not the personalities involved. He exhaled, almost a gasp, as her gravity and his intentions nearly ripped him in half.

Still, Benedict Eden was nothing if not graceful under fire.

He gripped the rail like an acrophobic, leaning over to gain better vantage.

The dancers were their own thing – White Noise for eyeballs…window dressing without deviance. They were to set scenes, not make them.

What drew Benedict’s eye was a young man by the bar, awkwardly shifting his leaning posture as he tried to put out a vibe, but failed – not quite of the disposition to come to a place like this alone and do anything but disappear.

It were through his sister, Mikayla, that I’d met Danlen. An unassuming bloke spending tireless hours at Smashball practice in an effort to be assuming. Didn’t reckon himself into fellahs, really, or rather…didn’t want you to know he was. Usual shtick, yeah? “Gay Chicken” that always reached that bollocks-grab too far into “desperate need for male attention.”​

​

So, sod it, I gave it to ‘em – Little bastard got me tongue his gullet. Left ‘em there, right gobsmacked, wiff a triggered gag reflex and a major -karking- life decision or two…about karking, ha. Naturally, he were back at it again the very next day.​

​

He was visibly upset, emotionally vulnerable – like the end of a cigarette, all scalding, crumbling ash. Benedict adored boys like this.

Ended badly, Kayla and me. I was a young, and petty, so…revenge were in order. I’m not too proud of it, but it weren’t like Danlen weren’t me type, anyway, right yeah?​

We had a few beers, he started his chit again, and when I showed ‘em the business, he didn’t pull away. We wound up back at me place, me mattress still soaked in black mold and the drippings from the window unit. Still, bugger me, he was still into…Or, ravver, bugger him, right?​

​

Hahaha.​

​

He played like a champ, but he was still pretty new to the game, and as the final inning came to a close, me mattress gained a new toxin in the form of human excrement.​

Danlen was mortified, naturally. Trembling, thousand-yard stare and that. I made light of it, as is me way, but I don’t fink he proper karking appreciated it, like. As if I’d just shat on his bed.​

​

I’d call him from time to time, try to hook up again, and he’d always be sweet – Make plans for later days, but never really commit to anyfing. Two weeks later, I get a call from Kayla telling me Danlen, with tears in his eyes, confessed to their mum that he *might be* gay.​

​

The following morning, they found 'em in the bath, wrists slashed up like he were an Alderaan Places fan.​

​

But he weren’t, like…He always loved Metal.​

The Guttermage trailed from his thoughts, admiring Ophelia’s manicured fingertips…His eyes apparently having unconsciously sought her out in his haze. They wandered over the swell of her shoulders, the shading the lights gave her neck, her jawline. Suddenly, he was aware his jam was playing.


Suddenly, he was aware he was clenching his teeth.

They were different times…and we’re only human.​

He replaced his grip, laying his back three fingers across her nearer hand.

I just really don’t fink I can be blamed for that one.​

 

[Ophelia DuSang]

Where she went he followed. Ophelia puzzled at the peculiar sensation. Guiding a shadow. She could feel his footfalls and she wanted to project confidence, but the polish with which she walked was little more a pantomime; aspiring to a posture that suggested “swan” but, inside, she was merely a mess of crossed circuits and cortisol.

Thank the gods for club lights. Her nervous features could be smothered in neon. The crowd too provided a comfortable camouflage. It was possibly the only location on Bespin wherein her phobias could be concealed. As she advanced, she allowed her borders to gradually dissipate. Blending. Becoming indistinct in the multitude. Upon reaching the boundary of the balcony wall, she stopped, inhaled and fully let her presence swim with the souls.

Waves of waves of effervescent energy. A sparkling sea of emotion. So much life. She could have swooned. She didn’t… but she wanted to. That would have her look completely daft, she knew. Instead, Ophelia clasped the rails and secretly pretended to bend in the auroric breeze. As her shadow settled beside her she passively wondered if he could feel it too.

Her attention was pulled to her hand closest to him when she felt her fingers tic. The tiniest of muscle twitches; her pinky and ring digits straightening out of their delicate shape. Reaching. It was a curious impulse and not in the least bit intentional. Her heart was a fluttering fire, after all, and the last thing she wanted was to deliberately pour fuel on the flames. Wanted? No. Needed? She looked down to her fingers as if to scold them. As if she could reason with her compulsion. As if her subconscious would just pull up a chair for chit-chat.

Madness.

It all would have been funny if she wasn’t so terrified.

She breathed and her shoulders swelled. Ophelia dared to glance his way. He was lovely and growing every lovelier as each moment passed. Sensibly, she reminded herself that she was drunk on his chemicals. She wanted to believe in the objectiveness of his beauty, though, especially as she watched emotion bloom across his expression and subtly shape his face. He was a sculpture that was, before her very eyes, creating itself. He stole her breath. Heedlessly, she felt her spirit lean…

She stopped, though, looked out again and went back to absorbing the crowd.

Don’t even think about it.

Once upon a time, Ophelia had been a little more forward with her Force gift. She extended her presence as one might extend a hand. Pleased to meet you. Shake? It never occurred to her that her that it was possible for her curious mind to have an effect on people. They influenced her, of course, but, the other way around?

How many hours had she spent sketching on that particular window bench which just happened to be in the same studio where Julian Aubert would paint? As if she actually cared about capturing the particular purple cloudiness of the tops of the cassius trees which dotted her conservatory’s campus. His technique was faultless and his style, otherworldly. How she loved to clandestinely drift beside him, feeling and following his muse.

Julian adored depicting the night, and she adored him for it. He had been born to brush moody darkness and burning stars. She had haunted him too long, though. Little by little, his scenery changed and it made her heart sink when she saw it. There, in the corners of his canvases, the rosy fingers of creeping dawns.

She had ruined it. She had ruined him. Utterly polluted. And for nothing. But when he found her one day, beneath her dormitory’s colonnade and nervously leaned in for a kiss she thought perhaps something good would come of it. If she could alter him the way he altered her then maybe he would be able to touch her in the way that mattered most.

No.

He was trapped in his own head. A prisoner of his own experience. He simply lacked the ability to navigate dimensions as she did and reach out. She may as well have been kissing him through a pane of window glass. As she withdrew, she faked politeness, but she was sure that he could see it; the disappointment in her eyes. I’m so, so sorry. Shattering. Ophelia had been too much of a coward to ever speak to him again.

Music brought her back. The sound of new optimism and rediscovery. A tonic for the troubled heart. She had lost herself in listening when they touched. The smallest of gestures, really. It might have been an accident. Still as a statue, she closed her eyes and allowed the exhilaration to ebb…

… and flow.

Mesmerized, she studied it; the way his energy breathed into hers and how easily her own breathed back. Such a strange thing, she thought. Ophelia glanced over her shoulder and realized, as if for the first time, that she wasn’t alone. She watched him for a while, feverish with questions. At last, in a tentative whisper, she spoke.

“Dance with me?”

[member="Trenchcoat Man"]

 

[Trenchcoat Man]

They’re gone now, but I’m still here.​

Not from lack of bloody trying, but I’m…still here. And I’m sorry it ain’t you lot instead.​

But I couldn’t’ve done it wiffout you.​

​

That mere spark caught, then exploded; a light touch of her hand turned a full-on intertwining, their personal bubbles merging, turning singular.

So, then, we dump the forties out all over the ground, and one last waltz for old lovers, old mates.​

It began as innocent as it could, hands on her hips, hers strung over his shoulders. At long last, that excuse they had pleaded for to make contact, to share breath. Metaphysical lightning arced between them, and in every passing step, they drew deeper, hugging tightly, nuzzling faces and necks like nurturing animals, devoid of pretense or concrete meaning. Just pulses. Their own support group -- victims, healing and accepting damage, embracing like refugees of tragedy. Promising to build a new world on top of the one they had lost.

This is your ceremony, it is. Cheers for everyfing.​

A better Eden.

To life.​

​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi33-cITS0s​

​

~*^*~​

Every obstacle would be insurmountable, Benedict would see to it, sweeping her up in a tangle of lip, and tongue, and arm, and fingers; an onslaught of kisses here at the very door to her flat, the final hurdle to their ultimate destination. Though, like a ghoul, he had tried to steal her away into every alcove they had passed, every alleyway, every public bathroom, every phone booth, streetlight, fire escape…etcetera, [member="Ophelia DuSang"] had managed to rebuff his advances, not to be a tramp like he and get caught snogging in public.

Her little doorkey rattled against the hallway floor when his hands sought to replace the contents of hers, entwining fingers as he pressed her back against the entrance, attacking her neck again with his uneven bite. His stubble rough, perhaps even unpleasantly so, despite being clear evidence he had no intention when he set out to be doing anything like this. She had put a stop to his pity party, damming up all his incentive to mope.

The residual emotion – the alcoholic buzz-- it had to go somewhere.

 

[Ophelia DuSang]

It hadn’t been easy, Ophelia reflected, but it had been fun. Evading his advances as they took the longcut back. Demurely slipping away at every last moment. Each time, daring herself to remain in his trajectory just a heartbeat longer. It was mad to toy with such a beautiful boy, she knew. In her defense, though, she was utterly intoxicated and unsupervised.

She was paying for it now, though. Aren’t I?

The debt of her playful provocations had come due and in a flash she found herself tangled up in the glorious mess of him. Unable to defend, she washed away in his current, combined with his tide and, as if from outside herself, she saw her body rise and crest and surge. They were not unlike an image from a magazine, she thought in that shivering moment when she still could think; using a snap shot of passion to sell perfume or watches or off-the-rack fashion. Aglow off-center in the narrow light of her door.

Modeling a timeless tableau.

The sound she made when his mouth found her neck was desperate and unrecognizable, but she didn’t pause to be surprised. Wordlessly, with hands and primal angles, she coaxed his lips back and sampled though his kiss how the night had flavored her skin. J'ai envie de toi. She was miles away from caring, disconnected from the how or why. She only wanted to burn with him.

“M-miss?” Floor security, right on time for his hourly sweep, “Do… you …”

Oh my gods, “…No.” The word was fragile but emphatic. At some point in the shock, she and her friend from the netherworld had uncoupled and she came to realize that she was just staring blankly at his collar. Without looking, Ophelia felt the guard looming, unsure of what to say. He was obligated to mention the condo association’s policy on public canoodling, of course. However, he was nearly as red-faced embarrassed as she.

Eager for an escape, she took control of the situation, knelt and found her keys, “Mr…”

“Dedrick, miss.” He hesitated before asking, “And you are?”

“Mr. Dedrick.” She enunciated every syllable as the lock clicked and the door swung open, “Have a good evening.”

Finding his hand, she ushered them both inside and, in a fluid motion, shut the door behind them. Ophelia exhaled deeply with her brow against the door’s comfortingly cool surface as emotions clashed in her mind; shame gnashing with the remnants of arousal. I’ll be getting a letter tomorrow. She thought, chewing on her lower lip to stop from laughing as she imagined what it might say.

Turning, she rested her shoulders against the door and hid her blush in her hand, behind the curve of her fingers. The realization dawned on her that she hadn’t even invited him in. She had just drawn him across her threshold as if he had been her shadow. How had she allowed her eternal temple of absolute etiquette to crumble so quickly?

Her eyes found him and remained on him a good deal longer than necessary. The lean, chiseled facets of his frame and the way the gods had sought fit to so elegantly shape his face. How his style complimented all of it; each article of clothing and accoutrement accentuating his innate impiousness. Ophelia felt her cheeks warm again. If she was an altar girl from the orthodoxy, he was a priest of the wild, natural divine. Seductively pagan. So no, she couldn’t account for her errant etiquette. She couldn’t understand it or change it. She could, however, behold his gorgeousness. And for a moment that was more than enough.

Her fingers, still curved in a modest gesture against her mouth, brushed her lips. Stoking a memory. Ophelia pushed off from the door and traveled passed him, slipping her jacket off as she advanced, “I, um…” She nervously began, “I don’t really know the protocol for this.” Spinning slowly around, she walked backward toward the sofa in the middle of the room, “I don’t really do… this.”

She placed her half folded coat on the couch’s back and perched herself on its short ledge, “Can I offer you a drink, perhaps? Or a coffee?” She laughed softly through a shy smile, thoughtlessly tugging at the tip of her ring finger, “I think I might owe you a cigarette.”

“Oh! Or music.” Ophelia glanced about the room, attempting to remember how to access the stereo system. She had maybe been there two days and couldn’t for the life of her recall the realtor’s extensive directions of how to run the place. She could figure it out, though, if needed. Her gaze moved back to him, watching him as she felt not unlike like a kitten who caught a canary; utterly unsure as to how to make a kill.

“Would you like to hear a song?”

[member="Trenchcoat Man"]

 

[Trenchcoat Man]

“Miss….Do…you…?”

What? Do you…what?”

“Do you need help?”

Why, Mr. Dedrick, did your wife not make sounds like this before she stopped touching you, tolerating your presence in the same room?

Their marketing iconography offered a promise, a reward for Pepsi points, the life you were going to have before you put on that weight, and started losing your hair, and didn’t take that impromptu trip to Hapes. Before you started working as a security guard for an apartment complex to a SES so far out of reach.

Did YOU need help, sir? Were you hoping to join in?

The Trenchcoat Man had felt the presence, Bespin alerting him to shift rotations and guard patterns, whispering caution before the man had even hit their floor, but he ignored the warnings. At ease before an audience, he would have continued to, too, if it were not for [member="Ophelia DuSang"] and her resistance to the prospect. He rolled to the side, taking up a Fonzie lean along the framing wall, slipping his gloved hands into his jacket pockets as he considered the security guard darkly, as he suffered the man’s fatherly disapproval. He glanced down at Ophelia when she went for her key.

As she rose, she shooed the man off – Not even scraps for this servant. Benedict laughed soundlessly at Phie’s humiliation in the moment, at Mr. Dedrick’s humiliation in general life; yellowed-teeth bared and imperfect, but quite alright with that fact.

He raised a hand and waved farewell to the nosy neighbor just before she crooked him backstage like a bad act at the Apollo.

Benedict would resume his lean on the other side of the door, watching her through the blue-coloured dark, seeking out where her eyes should be -- though she veiled her blushing face with her hand -- and continuing all the way up until the point that she would seek to look upon him again. Her fingers would brush her lips, and he, in turn, would bite his – A memory shared; a nearby reality where they were still against the door of her flat, rounding second base. He moved for her, only to find her slip away from him, backing toward the sofa.

So, again, he would become her shadow – stepping after her slowly; slipping from his coat as she did hers, tossing it where she had -- the heavy trenchcoat dragging the garment from its placement and sending both tumbling to the floor. It was only natural – He wrought disorder in all things.

Ophelia’s nervousness was palpable, and it kept him from hearing her words as anything other than love-drunk babble… “Coffee” offered up as euphemism, so tired by episode 8 of Luke Cage. Her thoughts had derailed; talk of beverages subverting her “doing…this.”

“This?” What was “this?” What was it they were doing, exactly? What exactly was she pushing from her mind?

Would he like to hear a song?

“Are you going to sing it to me?,” Benedict teased, intruding upon her perch. He caressed her face, under her jaw, guiding her up and back to his mouth. Slow, lingering, hardly any tongue. It ended all too soon, his nose nuzzling against hers, muttering only for her, “Y’know, petal – I don’t really do…this…,either.”

And he said it with such earnest, she might even want to believe it were true, even as his hand slipped up her skirt, soft fingertips baring stark contrast to the worn pads of glove.

“This,”again. Let’s go back to that.

If this kitten couldn’t make the kill...well, he would be more than happy to do it for her.

Looking into her eyes, Benedict grinned wolfishly.

 

[Ophelia DuSang]

“Don’t.” Her breath and body hitched, the nervousness falling off her like airy garments. Ophelia’s perception of a situation must have lapsed because she came to realize that her hand was clasping his hand, hindering its advance. It was an instinctual response to his forwardness, she reasoned. His stimuli. She swallowed, studying the impulse as her free fingers felt their way up the white cotton of his shirt to the pulse point on his neck.

Just an instinct?

Or a simple shock, perhaps. She was accustomed to posh and polished boys asking for permission. May I walk with you? May I hold your hand? So needful and afraid. Their spirits, queasy yellow lights. May I kiss you? Clinging.

No. It isn’t entirely that.

It was the clashing colors in his composition. Words incompatible with truth. His jester’s smile. He was feeding her a line. Why? Ophelia experienced a pang of genuine sadness when she realized it. She had spent the entire evening meandering through his color pallet. Soaking in the full range of him. She had thought he felt her. She had thought he knew.

“Don’t… tell me what you think I want to hear.”

Her thumb slipped into his palm and she pulled his hand up to her cheek. She kissed his inner wrist, allowing his energy to bleed into her lips. She wanted to taste it. Neon haze and industrial night. His presence a portal to a lost and lonely multitude. Swarming and suffering. Lurching violently or… just… surrendering to decay. Huddled figures in corners, forsaking the lamplight. Injured and existing honestly.

Eyes closing, she may have sighed. Not every experience worthy of an artist's attention was a pasture on Alderaan.

“You don’t need to.” How absurd she was. How naïve. What could he possibly know? She reflected on the pet name petal and nearly laughed. He didn’t even know her name.

“My name is Ophelia.” She guided his hand to the small of her back as the fingers at his neck traveled to his cheek, “Phie, if you prefer.” Her words muffled as she drew him in again. The name was informal, but appropriate, considering…

Considering she was indulging in the deliciousness of his kiss. Like wine or bitter chocolate. Darkly sweet.

“Mmm…” Drawing back, she found his eyes in her apartment’s indigo shade, “What’s yours?”

[member="Trenchcoat Man"]

 

[Trenchcoat Man]

It’s wasn’t a line, but the bait. Benedict had deliberately offered her an absurdity, trying to hook her disbelief. In his head, the whole encounter was to go as such:

“Really?”

Of course not, treasure – I am exactly the sort, he’d say with bravado; with all the experience and associated confidence that came with having a longstanding career of keeping the weekends something to live for, to work for. To paint, and sing, and steal, and kill for.

But [member="Ophelia DuSang"] was no girl, and would not be party to his manipulation. There was flavor she had ordered, and he appeared not to deliver…at least, in the portion sampled.

His hand caressed her face as she brought it there; her full, bottom lip with his thumb. She was a picture to be admired as her eyes drifted closed, swept up in the personal satisfaction she had taken from his wrist, his aura, in his initial failure to give it willingly. Benedict chuckled lightly at the premise, somewhere in his mind really enjoying the assertiveness regarding how much she did not care for the fib…amused by the notion that he would even need to sell her rubbish.

“You don’t need to,” she said, in unison with his mind. His chuckle spiked into an outright laugh, and he adored her for it. She, apparently, subdued a laugh of her own. They were in-synch, again. Chemical fireworks between them, and he could hear his own thoughts start to become clouded by lust for action and dirty words.

A kiss on which to build his dreams. A name to scribble in his diary.

Unfortunately, with the name, he couldn’t reciprocate, though she’d asked.

“You don’t know? Bad, bad…”

He kissed her again at the edge of her mouth, her jawline – each additional peck to mark the syllables for the words whispered, drifting down, roaming over her neck. “Oh, PhiePhie…,” he purred, the warmth of his breath igniting the light moisture of former kisses haunting her skin. “How will you be able to explain for the people at work, then?,” he teased her, his hand drifting down from the small of her back, finding itself back at her thigh, albeit over her skirt, this time. Fingers tensed in clear favoritism, causing her skirt to ride-up. “How could you let a stranger…”

His sentence died as his breath sucked in, biting upon the nape of her neck. His lips latched hungrily, a deliberate effort to leave her branded with his marks come morning. Benedict having found better things to do with his mouth, the remaining message would just have to be left to imagination.

Hypnotism. Positive reinforcement. "Bad, bad, bad..."

Mantra.

 

[Ophelia DuSang]

His mouth found her neck again and sensation climbed as her reality tilted. Drowning, she closed her eyes and retreated; falling inward through a looking glass. His words whispered behind her, though. Following. They were so completely incongruent with her perception of self that she allowed them to drift on. Barely noticing. Like catching a conversation fragment of a passerby, a phrase clearly meant for someone else.

Bad, bad, bad...

But he was a stranger. He was deliberately maintaining his mystery. This was something she had heard her girls on Coruscant titter about. She could see Simone, rosy-cheeked and giggling about some princeling she had eloped with at a society event. Even Renée, for all her sensibilities, had been known to wax poetic about the sheer ecstatic wickedness of “not even knowing their name”.

Ophelia had attempted all manner of intervention with them, from scolding to concern, but they merely shook their heads and laughed. N’importe quoi, Phie. Really! It’s just harmless fun. But it wasn’t, she had asserted. It shouldn’t be. What about love and romance and self-respect? That comment had inspired more laughter. Oh, the sound of it. As sweet as naughty mirthfulness could be. What was she to do with them?

Oh Gods. She reflected, becoming fully aware of her situation. What’s to be done with me?

Bad, bad, bad...

Ophelia contemplated resurfacing. Realigning with her body and the riot of feelings that awaited her. But she wouldn’t weather long in his tempest, she knew. Even imagining it, Phie recognized her frailty and her fondness for that liquefying heat. The trance-inducing turmoil of searing touch and synergistic ache. Force help her, she was pining pitifully when she, body and mind, found him again.

It was remarkable how quickly her thoughts dulled, conceding to craving. As if donning a crown of a conqueror, she claimed his kiss again. Aggressively. Hands in his hair, grasping. Guiding. Roaming freely down down down the savagely sculpted features of his form.

Bad, bad, bad...

“Mm, but I’m not.” She heard herself say, a breathless contradiction to the way she was behaving. She fought for a moment to pull away but his spirit was assaulting her with cool velvet shadows that transformed in her blood into hot-honeyed gold, “I’m not.” Phie gasped again. Consuming. Groping. Advancing. Until she felt a thud of resistance. She could push him no further. His back was flush against her bedroom door.

Time stopped.

The shaking sheerness of her breath restarted it.

They were close, alarmingly so. Palms tingled at the coarseness of his jaw. The tautness of his torso. Ophelia had no idea her back could arc like that. She marinated in the moment, waiting for her heart to stop its deafening drum before leaning in to kiss his collarbone, his neck.

Bad, bad, bad...

“I’m not.” She repeated. Sighing against his skin. So honest, “But you make me want to be.” Her lower lip caught in her teeth as she came to terms with the fact that she wouldn’t survive the night, “You’re beautiful.” She said, “And I can’t turn you away. But I can’t…” Phie faltered, searching for the words. After the fruitless effort, she cursed under her breath, shifted against him and reached for the panel in the wall that unlocked the door.

“It’s late.” Easing back, she gave him room to move as she opened the door, “You’re welcome to stay the night just…”

Crossing the threshold, she turned. Her mind swarmed as she constructed the simple phrase, “Show mercy.”


[member="Trenchcoat Man"]

 

[Trenchcoat Man]

Benedict ached for her crumbling resolve, a want pronounced into addiction by partial Zeltron heritage, by pheromone exchange. Her brief distance only drew him after her, pursuing her into the dark, but not before abandoning his shirt – shrewd to the requests of [member="Ophelia DuSang"] ’s touches upon his torso, her desperate grips at his abstractly-fashionable rags.

Closing the gap, he sought to tuck her in and kiss her goodnight…confounding the process with hours of other steps.

It was his secret word: “Mercy.” Like “orphan,” or “forgiveness,” or “compassion.” They evoked something in him, forcing him to redress who he was being in comparison to who he wished to. No more crooked smiles and predatory gazes. Ever the Doomsayer, the atmosphere fostered was one of cosmic inevitability. Perhaps, in the face of the end, she could feel the comfort to relent.

Ophelia was smart. Funny. Artistic. Mannered. Rich. Sharp as dagger and pretty as a penny, and never at all the type of bird I reckoned I’d meet, or get to spend any amount of time with, right. But here we were.​

I was a junkie who wanted to reach a little higher, like, and she -- a Jedi who had started to dig.​

By fate or dumb luck, we met in the middle…and I as we looked about, we reckoned that where we were going could not possibly be better if the other weren’t there, too.​

In the meantime, Benedict would be for her whatever it was she needed. If she were cold, he’d keep her warm. To kiss her when she craved affection, and hold her close when she felt alone. A push for every pull, fingers with which to thread, and every rhythm, a counter-one…but never too much. He would starve her into the night on the mercy she had requested, until, finally…she came for him.

So, then…we decided we’d kark off to someplace else.​

​

​

fin.​