Post by Zola Rhomdaen on Jun 23, 2024 10:58:21 GMT
Matches sits at the bar with a whisky in hand, slowly swirling the ice around the inside of the glass, only loosely focusing his eyesight on it. He’s wearing a short-sleeved, oversized black shirt with a grandad collar, with enough buttons undone to show the deep black scales with their tints of wine-red catching in the low light occasionally upon his broad chest. The scales on his arms are also on show, leading down to his clawed fingers which clink against the glass.
When the band on the stage starts playing, he lets his eyes close and the music washes over him. After enjoying the feeling quietly for a time, he lifts his head gently to catch the eye of the voice he is hearing.
The singer, seated on a stool surrounded by members of the Gilded Mirror band, is a young drow woman with a crown of purple crystals on her head, which glimmers in the dim light of the chandelier overhead. She is wearing a strapless carmine dress that hugs her athletic figure — though she seems to be a trained singer, she is built like a warrior. She has only one eye, Matches notices, as her left eye socket is stoppled with a moonstone gem, but he is successful in getting her attention. From across the tavern, her amber gaze meets his red eyes.
Her voice is beautiful, but he isn’t sure if the anguish that underlines it comes only from the sad song she is singing.
Matches sits quietly as he listens, sitting a little more upright. He cannot stop himself from studying her body, admiring such a powerful form that can create a sound so delicate and sorrowful. The only thing that draws his gaze from her body is the moonstone gem, keeping his attention as he watches the light dance within it.
When the song finishes, he sets aside his drink to give an appreciative applause, trying not to lose her gaze. The drow stands up to curtsy the cheering audience before her, smiling and muttering thank yous. She steps off the stage as the musicians prepare for the next number on the set list and glides towards the bar, greeting some faces she recognises in the crowd along the way.
Finally, she reaches the bar and leans forward on it with a tired huff, only two chairs away from Matches.
“Beautiful sound up there,” Matches calls across from his seat, resting his head on one hand. “Deserves a drink, I’d say. What’s your poison?”
She turns to look at him, smiling as she props her elbows up on the smooth mahogany countertop and plays idly with her fingers. Her gaze wanders down to the glistening dragon scales on the valley of his chest, admiring the beauty of the man next to her. “A whole lot of things, but tonight, a Cosmopolitan would do. Thank you.” Her speaking voice sounds hardly less melodic than when she was singing.
Her smile causes one to form slowly on his face, he nods, then calls the bartender over. “A Cosmopolitan, for my new friend…” He gestures with a clawed hand towards the lady for her answer.
“Zola.” She comes closer and seats herself on the stool to his left. Now he sees the reason for the moonstone eye: battle scars etched on the left half of her face, thickened lines of tissue divaricating out from the eye socket almost like tears. “And who might this kind gentleman be…?”
“You can call me Matches. Pleasure to meet you, Zola.” His eyes gaze over the moonstone again, never staring in a rude manner, simply looking with curiosity, and a smile still on his face.
“Nice to meet you too, Matches. I hope your parents didn’t name you that because they lit your head on fire?”
“Is that what they do to little fellas down in the Underdark? I’d heard it was a bit rough down under but I didn’t think it was that bad.” Despite a slightly tired demeanour, he does manage a cheeky grin.
“Oh no, don’t be ridiculous, we don’t do that to children. We only feed them to the giant spiders when they’re being too whiny.” Zola grins back at him, brushing the silver curls of her hair aside, revealing more of her cleavage.
Matches chuckles dryly. “Good thing I wasn’t born there then, they would’ve thrown me in first chance they got. Never could stay out of trouble, me.”
“Somehow I could tell that by just looking at you. It takes one to know one, I guess.” The bartender sets down a coupe glass of a reddish-pink cocktail in front of Zola, and she picks it up for a sip. “So what sort of trouble are you up to tonight, Matches?”
“Remarkably, none yet, but I’d like to get into some. I could do with the thrill.” He finishes off his whisky before ordering another. “And yourself?”
“Well, some people call me trouble.”
Zola brings the glass up to her lips just in time to conceal her smirk, though the playful twinkle in her eye tells Matches everything he needs to know.
The two of them lie side by side on Zola’s queen-sized bed, both panting for breath, skin flushed and sheening with sweat. Yet they hardly seem to be in the same room at all.
Zola is staring up at the ceiling with an unmistakable look of guilt on her face. Matches is doing the same, not with guilt, but with a lack of feeling at all. Simply numb, taking breaths for necessity, and otherwise expressionless.
He glances over at Zola, catching her expression before looking up again. “Did you get into some real trouble with this?”
She sits up, taking a moment to get her bearings before answering. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think he’d even care. It’s been three months, but… Fuck.” She sighs and buries her face in her hands.
Matches grimaces a little to himself before sitting up next to her. “But it still doesn’t feel good, does it?”
“I don’t even know why it feels like I’m cheating on him,” she moans, her voice coming out muffled. Then she lowers her hands and peers at Matches. “You…don’t look so fine yourself.”
Matches gives a half-hearted shrug. “Hard to stop the feeling sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, that was…brilliant. You’re fantastic. But, you know.” He gestured vaguely to his chest and stomach.
Zola looks down at where he’s pointing with confusion. “What’s the matter?” she asks him gently.
Matches looks her over, considers sinking down and away, but something in her demeanour disarms him enough. “You know. When you lose someone. And nothing around you lets you forget. The feeling.”
Zola purses her lips. The faraway look in her eye disappears, replaced by a look of pained empathy. “I know,” she murmurs. “I lost my mothers. My home. Not a day goes by without me thinking about them.”
She places her hand over his and redirects her gaze to the scales on his body again. “Who did you lose, if you don’t mind sharing?”
Matches feels himself return to the room with the touch of her hand. He traces his claws lightly over her skin, watching the marks that appear and then fade.
“My partner. My better half.” He clears his throat. “Don’t know if you were there for the dragon attacks on Port Ffirst, but…” He finishes the thought with a vague gesture.
“Shit. I’m so sorry, Matches.” Zola hesitates before asking her next question. “Your scales. Were you born with them, or…?”
“I was completely ordinary before the attack. But I survived the fires. Had these. Turned out to be latent from my ancestor… It’s a whole story. I’m sorry about your mothers. Was that recent?”
“It happened a year ago, around this time of the year, actually. Not long before my birthday.” She scoffs sadly at the irony of it. “I guess you found out your ancestor was a dragon? How…how do you feel about that?”
“It’s been…one of the better things for me. There are others like me, with dragon ancestors. Something like a family. But it also means we’re caught up in a whole lot of business that seems far too big for us. And enemies with interesting ways of…hurting us.” Matches’s gaze begins to go distant again, not noticing that his claws are starting to dig into Zola’s skin a little.
“How do they hurt you?” Zola does not flinch from the pain. Instead, she takes his hand in both of hers, as though warming it. “I learnt the truth about my blood family, too. But that was what took my mothers away from me, and it was a horrible truth — I always thought I was an orphan, but it turns out my birth parents sold me when I was a baby. So now I’m also caught up in some serious business and making a lot of enemies.”
Matches looks at Zola as she explains her story, emotion returning to his face as some rage rises across his features. “That’s horrific. I’ve been put into shit situations out of my control before, but…that early? I’m so sorry, Zola. No one deserves that.” He lessens his grip on her hand but leaves it to rest there and takes a deep breath. “Most recently, my enemies hurt me by resurrecting my partner and pitting her against me… And then…” He has to physically stop himself from choking up, tilting his head back. “Making me watch her die in my arms.”
Matches feels Zola’s hand on the nape of his neck and another slide across his back as she pulls him into a hug, guiding his face towards her shoulder. He wraps his arms around her powerful form and lets himself cry. Already physically spent, completely naked and vulnerable, he finds himself letting go of any shields he had up and letting all the tension flood out in his tears.
After some time, a muffled voice from her shoulder manages to speak. “Sorry, darling. I don’t think this is what you thought you were signing up for earlier this evening.”
Zola lets go of him, cups his cheeks with her hands and rests her forehead against his. There is a gentle smile on her lips, and the look in her eye is free of judgement and full of tenderness. “Don’t apologise for that, silly,” she chides him softly. “Look, Matches, I’m not qualified to give advice on this. Gods know I’m not. But I think you’re going to think about your beloved every day for a very long time, and you have to learn to be okay with that.”
His eyes, red both in iris and sclera from tears, pierces into hers. “I thought I had made peace with that. She’s been dead for some time. But this land, these beings, powerful beings beyond comprehension. They have ways of cruelty that a few years ago I could never even imagine. I didn’t ask for any of this, neither did she. I used to be a normal, shitty little human in a house I couldn’t afford and now I’m this. And it’s so hard to be this.”
“I know that feeling. I used to think of myself as just another sword dancer in Eilistraee’s congregation. And then I came here, got caught up in cosmic war after cosmic war. It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous. But we’re both here, we’re both alive — sort of — so I guess that means that we’re doing something right.”
Matches has a moment where he seems to realise and remember something. He takes a deep breath and studies Zola’s face once again. “Well, yeah. That is it. We’re here. No one else in the world knows what we go through more than the people in this godsforsaken city.” He manages a small chuckle then sniffles a little, before looking back into her eyes. “You’ve not got your parents, complicated situation with your fella. I promise I don’t mean to be rude when I ask this, do you have anyone?”
Zola sighs and shies away from his gaze. “I’ve got my friends, but…it’s been hard talking about this. It’s all so complicated and…” Her face scrunches up as she searches for the right word with a tiny shake of the head. “…political.”
This time, he takes hold of her face, cupping it gently to guide it back to him. “Look, I know I’ve known you for all of a few hours, Zola… But the good thing about that is, if you need to just talk about any of it, I can hear it. I’ve got no judgement, trust me.” He looks back at her with the same softness she treated him with, gifting it back to her.
Her lips quirk up into a smile and she leans into his touch. “Well, I don’t want to bore you with politics, so I’ll keep it short. My ex…if he can be called that…is a devil I made a deal with in order to get my mums back and take revenge on my parents. I promised myself to him, promised that I will take my mother’s place as matron of the house, if he helps me. We slept together. But he never really cared about me or about what I wanted.”
Matches lets out a low whistle and leans back on the bed, pulling Zola down with him so they can be a bit more comfortable for what feels like a lengthier discussion. “Devil? Bloody Hells. Messy business. Sorry to hear he took advantage of you like that, slippery bastards that will get you while you’re vulnerable. I haven’t dealt with devils myself, but I’ve met humans like them. And impossible to back out of a deal like that?”
“Not impossible, but it’s tough.” She cuddles up on Matches’s shoulder, nuzzling his neck and laying a hand on his chest. “He’s much smarter than me, and he’s threatened to hurt my mothers if I act against him.”
“Is that the only option? Destroying him? I assume they make their deals pretty airtight.” Matches traces the outline of her body lightly with his clawed hand and buries his nose in her hair.
“No… I’ve got a plan. I don’t know if it’ll work, but I’ve got a plan.” Zola glances up at Matches. “I know it’s pathetic, to still be hung up on that dickhead. I don’t know why I was feeling guilty about this. He’s made it clear he doesn’t deserve or want my grace.”
Matches looks down at her and shrugs a little. “It’s not wrong to feel it, though. He offered you a lot, and you invested a lot of emotion into what he offered. Even if the betrayal is enough to hate him, it doesn’t mean you completely detach from all those feelings you had at one point. It’s complicated.”
“Yup. That’s my current life in a nutshell: complicated. I just wish it were simpler, like…great sex with a hot stranger.”
He grins a little, and gives her a kiss on the forehead. “Well, if you need any more ‘simple’ moving forward, you know where to find me.”
Zola giggles. “Thanks, Matches. It’s the first time in a long while I haven’t felt…alone.”
The instant she enunciates that word, her tongue tapping twice against the roof of her mouth, it’s as if a heavy burden is lifted off her. Her shoulders relax, and the amber of her one good eye seems to shine brighter in the darkness.
Co-written with Harry