I can't format on mobile, but here're a little something I wrote without my laptop. "Rhythm of Your Heart" belongs to Marianas Trench, all of these emotions belong to me.
longfic updates coming soon!
- Inky
—
She doesn't belong here, but screw belonging. Damn the idea of her perfect spot on the shelf with the other porcelain dolls. If she shatters on this dance floor in the red light district to some indistinct pop song, then let her shatter, let her make that choice to come apart on her own terms.
Kirsty can't dance, not like this, but her hands are up and she turns and if anyone notices then she couldn't care less. It's her night, for no other reason than that she wants it for herself. She's nineteen and the age of a thousand young heroines who go looking for love and find adventure. She seeks freedom from herself and her head and her worried doctor and finds it here, in some underground hole that's too dark but oh, the red and blue light from beneath frames everything so beautifully. She's danced with three guys and one girl who was too beautiful to lead on, one who now is chatting up another girl at the bar. Good, Kirsty thinks, let her get away and find love. I'm just here for the music.
She closes her eyes and throws her head back and doesn't hear the disturbed shouts from the bathroom.
A man on the speaker sings. Back to ones, from the top, ready or not, here it comes…
This isn't his usual domain. Give him old buildings, slums, condemned monuments to man's misconceived immortality. He feels out of place in this flashing hole with young and bright-eyed dancers who are almost all too young to truly know anything. He enters to the muffled sounds of some song behind a closed bathroom door, beeps and pounds and what sounds humans use to create music.
Here it comes for you and me, but that was easier said than done
The Cenobite Prince doesn't dance, but something calls him past the door beyond the two souls swept away - lover boys with too-large eyes who didn't know what they were doing or how their love would soon be re-forged - and into the dingy altar dedicated to the goddesses of inhibitions lost.
In the light of day things can change from slim to none
He lets the portal close behind him and glides through, unnoticed by the dancers in their black and silver regalia. He is as they are in their liquor-trances, another soul seeking respite.
He finds it in her dancing as if the world could not contain her in its core.
I succumb
But loving you's a loaded gun
Kirsty doesn't open her eyes immediately but feels the weight in front of her, a cool shadow parting the hot air. She moves with the buzzy beeping notes and the singer's bubbling voice and her shadow follows her direction.
I, I, I don't wanna be this
No, nobody needs to see this
Another spin and a large hand catches hers over his, cold.
I, I, try to resist
He pulls her close and she winds right into his chest,
But the light's getting low
Kirsty opens her eyes and looks up at last,
To a glow,
She realizes.
Till you're touching my lips.
The music falls and for a second her pulse goes with it. He's a shadow like the rest, blue and red tinting his pins and flooding the lines of his grid-ridden face. The prince looks at her with an intensity that makes her reconsider risk-taking, because she really might just shatter.
The music returns, and the singer's voice is hushed for them.
Wanna go but I wouldn't
His hand closes around hers
Wanna stay but I shouldn't
And now hers is too
Wanna say no but I couldn't
And the fire that seized her earlier and brought her here takes hold again, tonight is hers, and if he wants to be part of it then it will be on her terms. She steps back and he lets her, and Kirsty starts to dance.
So meet me in the dark
Kiss me in the shadows of every spark
He can't let go of her hand. Something irrational in him says if he lets go he'll never catch her again, so he lets her dance around him, turning and facing wherever she went like the ocean grasping the pull of the Moon. His cassock dusts the ground and catches shreds of light, and he looks like liquid. She spins close again and their eyes lock and she's away again in an instant.
I know we shouldn't start
But baby I'm a slave to the rhythm
Slave to the rhythm of your heart!
The last line echoes as they move, or she moves, because he hasn't changed places besides turning. He's actually listening to the words now, or how they move, trying and failing to line them up with Kirsty.
Slave to the rhythm, slave to the rhythm of your-
Meant to be
Maybe just a dangerous fantasy
He doesn't care about human music but for a split second what's left of Elliot Spencer grabs onto the words, recognizes himself in them. This isn't the music he knows, but he still, in his core, knows music. He knows this.
But before the fall you were always real to me
He can't know that Kirsty is listening too, finding him in the words, finding the man in the black and white picture, now changed beyond recognition but not wholly gone, not really.
And after me comes to you so easily
So easy
But loving you just sticks to me
I, I, I don't want to be this,
No, nobody needs to see this
They both remember the first moment, and they don't need to look at each other to know what to do. He pulls just enough
I, I try to resist
She steps in
But the light's getting low to a glow
They're facing each other and Kirsty feels his icy breath on her cheek
Till you're touching my lips
It takes the Prince a moment to find her voice lacing with the music, but when he does it's his turn for the world to stop. She's barely whispering, and he holds onto her words.
"Wanna go but I wouldn't," she murmured, "wanna stay but I shouldn't, wanna stay but I shouldn't…"
"Kirsty…"
So meet me in the dark!
She pulls away again and now he does step with her. Any other dancers have faded from his mind because the only thing that matters is he'd, those words she chose for him. Go with me, he says, stay, say yes. But they're lost in the dark.
Kiss me in the shadows of every spark!
I know we shouldn't start, baby
But baby I'm a slave to the rhythm,
Slave to the rhythm of your heart!
As the repetition picks up again Kirsty lets go of his hand, but does not lose orbit around him. They step in circles around each other, his cassock following her skirt, leather chasing Cotton.
Slave to the rhythm, I know
Oh, but you don't leave me so…!
She can hear the music picking up, urging her on, and she finally steps back into his grasp. He catches her.
He's so close.
Meet me in the dark!
He leans down just enough for her to reach him and
Kiss me in the shadows of every spark!
And they do look like sparks on his face, those pins scraping her cheeks
I know we shouldn't start, baby
She pulls away and for a second he looks at her as if she is everything, and then something catches his attention
But baby I'm a slave to the rhythm
And he's walking away, back to the bathroom
Slave to the rhythm
She follows him
Of your heart!
He's gone.
Kirsty steps out of the club a half-hour later. The air is stale and cold. She hugs her jacket a little tighter around her as she tries to figure out if that actually happened.
It's too dark to walk, so she grabs her phone and starts texting friends, looking for one to get her home. The phone screen lights her face red and blue.