Curate, connect, and discover
kissing your client enemy while holding them at knife point / a kiss to end sexual tension. @ lx ( -and then xf goes missing…. jk )
wired-shut jaw, the distant throb of his arm. the blade’s kiss around his throat is cold and unyielding, much like the blue fire behind xia fei’s pupils. he feels more than he notices the anger: it leaks through the pores, dark and thick like tar, painting everything the color of the night. liu xiao can only affirm the imprisonment by offering a smile, willful, calm as the breeze: “it isn’t me who you’re looking for. i know you’ve heard about powers, but mine aren’t something so significant that you ought to consider me a prime suspect in vein’s death.”
as if on cue, the very mention of vein’s name garners him a hiss through sharp teeth, knife pressed deeper and more cruelly into tender skin. any more than this and the fibers will give in under the sharpness of it.
liu xiao often thought about fear.
when he was young, and naive, and his brother was still alive, liu min asked him why he wasn’t scared of the dark as he was. they shared the same blood, the same upbringing, so why was it?
is it because you’re younger?
that’s foolish, shouldn’t the older brother be more brave? he’d asked.
it’s instinct, he supposes. he’d come to the conclusion that some people are meant to fear, to feel it as something strictly human. others lay awake in the dark and trembled - not like the first people did but for something else entirely. it’s a simple fact, knowing you have something to lose, something that awaits dormant in a corner that makes it all so terrifying.
loss, pain, regret.
liu xiao doesn’t know what he’s afraid of, but it might have been something less substantial. something that can’t be controlled.
he also knows that he should’ve drawn his own knife.
their figures blend with their surroundings, the alley growing darker and narrower as the sun is engulfed in an array of blue and purple shades, both of them perched in the shadows just out of sight of the main streets and unwitting eyes. if xia fei’s come this far, he could have easily slipped past vein’s monitoring, their defenses and out of the cover of anonymity, given his missing status. but instead he’d come here, looking for answers, body drawn flush and steady against liu xiao’s own that it was almost comical that he hadn’t noticed it before. xia fei is as dangerous a piece on the board as the rest, especially when gaining partial awareness.
“why is that you’ve come, besides asking — well, demanding, information. ” his gaze darts from the knife to xia fei’s expression, wary, so close that he could feel the damp touch of hot breath as it crept along his mouth. his answer comes and he’s not surprised by it: soft lips and a hungry bite, tasting like copper and pounding adrenalin. red blossoms from his wounded lip, making his heart catch in his throat.
what was he afraid of?
not death. not the dark.
the leap that his stomach brings him closer to fear than he’s ever been. so there are other ways - some other way that humans could be hurt that they feared more than dying. dark eyes stare back at xia fei, stained with the usual hues of apathy and quiet amusement - black, unmarred, like gunpowder. the sting of steel against flesh. it’s his own special agony. “why was that? to kill me? you should be more ruthless, i might grow fond of this new you.”
@limel1ghts