Work Text:
A slap echoing in empty space.
Hand on a wound.
Drop of blood.
- Are you satisfied now, Lucienne? - the Corinthian asked, but there was something other than his usual provocative tone, and as absurd as it sounded, she could tell that he seemed happy.
- It took forever but you finally did it -
Lucienne was puzzled, looking at him as if he were irredeemable crazy.
- Do what? - she hissed - hit you? -
- No, touch me –
The answer seemed so absurd, so out of place, and for a moment she really hated him. Lucienne looked away to hide her anger, her indignation at being treated like that by someone like him. And she wanted to hide something else too, something shapeless that had been hurt a long time ago, and which she had meticulously hidden in the dark places of her heart.
The Corinthian kept looking, a strange expression on his face.
- You know, I will never be able to understand the reason for all your devotion -
Lucienne slowly raised her head, ready this time not to be provoked.
- It's not just devotion, Corinthian -
- What, then? Love? -
- Are you worthy of love to be able to speak of it? - she asked, more cruelly than would have liked, and this time the Corinthian was almost caught off guard. He seemed tempted to answer, a real one. But then he shook his head, almost bitterly.
- I don't think it's in my nature to be worthy of it -
She suddenly felt tired, overcome by an incomprehensible melancholy. Her eyes returned to the open wound (useless form of exhibitionism, thin red crack on his skin as white as a rose). And she felt a completely irrational, inappropriate desire: to place her finger on those lips and cleanse that wound, erase it as if it had been a misspelled word.
He waited as if he felt the same desire. She placed her thumb on that still open cut, lingering, and then ran her finger along the line of his lips, taking that drop of blood with her, erasing that signature she had allowed herself to place on a work that was for someone else.
No trace was left of the cut.
- I think you may be -
- I may be what, Lucienne? -
But talking was so pointless (specially with a nightmare, who did what he wanted with words). For the first time, after all those years, she smiled at him, and in that suspended moment of all their unspoken words he seemed wanting to take her hand, the same hand that now held the vague memory of his blood.
Their fingers trembled slightly, longing for get closer. A moment too brief to survive.