Chains.
He knows it's not hate and not lust and not love, or so he tells himself. He knows this (or thinks he does) because even though he rules an entire fucking faerie court, he doesn't feel that control (or lack thereof) that he does when he's with her. Thousands weaker than him and none that he would trust with his life.
Maybe that's it. The trust. The fact that she knows his name and she holds that power over him. But power, power is control. Power dictates just how much the holder can control. And knowing that, knowing that if she so chose she could betray him, make her life so much simpler (or maybe not) and escape from it and him, she doesn't use it.
That's a true form of power - having it and not using it.
It seems he has no such control after all.
He knows it's not hate and not lust and not love, even as he knows that he is lying to himself, and that she has him snared in chains made of all three.
-x-x-x-
The hate. One of those things he won't ever admit, to himself or to anyone else.
It's not her that hates him. Rather, it's him that hates her (or not – it's probably just his own self-loathing that cripples their relationship no matter how much she doesn't notice).
He hates himself so, abhors himself with every fibre of his own being, that sometimes he wonders what it would like to be dead. Be free, as it were. Then he remembers that he's died, many times over. He didn't much like it that way.
This hate transfers itself onto her (but only when it gets too much in him alone). He acts like a beast then, snarling at her whenever she comes near, but she never backs away with a fearful look, never acts timid and cowardly and all those things that could actually make him hate her.
However, the chains are still there. Bonds of his own making, fettering him to her and making him feel useless (and used and unwanted and unneeded) and a burden all at the same time. Feelings that churn inside him, rarely surfacing except for when she turns to him with a searching look in her eyes.
-x-x-x-
The lust. Another of those things no one will ever know of.
It's that gaze that captures him, stokes those fires inside him to unimaginable furnaces of heat and pure raw power.
When she sighs a little bit and grabs his head, pulls him forward into a harsh, bruising kiss (it used to be him that would initiate such an act of heedless animalistic greed) and hungrily chew on his bottom lip until he would give in and beg wordlessly for more, that's when he realizes how hopelessly entangled with her he's become.
He's not even sure where her need ends and his begins (and it's fine that way, but he doesn't let himself think that).
But when he's fucking her roughly and she's lost in the moment, moaning with her eyes fluttering closed and she probably thinks it's beautiful, what they're doing, he knows again that he's being selfish.
-x-x-x-
The love. The last thing he'd (never) ever think of, because thinking of it brought him back to when they'd just met and how he'd been captivated from the very beginning.
He'd feel it sometimes when he laughed after one of her comments, when she would shove him into her tiny kitchen and make him help her cook up a storm with strange ingredients, when he would notice the guitar she'd strategically placed in the corner, just where she knew he'd see it, and he'd have no choice but to play it, strumming melodies that sounded just like her (although she never heard it).
He'd feel it when he was burned by his hate. When he was scorched by that blazing lust. Those were the worst times to feel it, because then he knew that it couldn't all be separate, and thus he couldn't blame what he did on one thing alone. As long as she knew that – and he knew she could tell – she'd never take the way out (easy or otherwise) like he wanted her to.
And even his mind refused to form those three simple, significant words. Either lot would do; "I hate you" or "I love you". They'd at least bring some kind of decision.
-x-x-x-
Sometimes, only sometimes, rarely some might say, did he think about Kaye's wings.
It wasn't because she was a pixie. Well, okay, so her having wings was because of that, of course. But that wasn't the reason he thought of them. Translucent, shimmering green, delicate and mostly hidden; beautiful and dangerous in the secrets they held both in the human and faerie worlds.
She was good at the glamour now. Only a moment and she'd have it back up, and seelie and unseelie alike would just see a lord toying with an unsuspecting victim, or a remarkably attractive young man seducing a girl (for humans, of course). It was necessary that she'd learned to harness that power running rampant through her small frame and turn it to some use, especially when she'd decided to go back to the human world.
The wings? He'd read somewhere, in one of her novels, that wings were a symbol for freedom, that when bound (like with chains) the one possessing those wings could go nowhere and felt smothered. That when free, the one possessing those wings would soar higher and higher.
He would be okay with her soaring higher (and he'd keep on telling himself that, too). He would definitely be okay with that, if his own fucking feelings would let him loose her from the restraints he'd created, even if she didn't know they were even there.
What he hated most, though, was how he sometimes thought about taking those wings for himself. Not just keeping her for himself, but her very wings too, stealing away that last thing that was hers. His unbridled possessiveness for even that aspect of her made him sick, but he still wondered.
If he could have that one part of her, would he finally let the rest of her go?
Holly Black fandom, how I've missed you. For and inspired by Zanisha; you're pure awesome and I don't know how you got my writing bug going, but you did and I'm damn happy for it. This thing just… expanded. From a tiny little drabble to a half-decent series of drabbles. Haha, pathetic. Still, it's hot. ;) Don't deny it. But duuude. If Roiben doesn't wangst over leadership issues, then I'm the pope and I (h)ate my hat.
Tally likes writing at ungodly hours of the night.