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Gamzee had that skinny gangly-ness where his skin didn’t quite fit his frame, delicate veins and sinews presented to the harshness of the elements’ wrath, clothes awkwardly hanging at the wrong angles. He was tall and long-limbed, and had this strangely graceful walk for someone of his build. He was lean, though, muscles bunching under skin, and he was dangerous.
The heavy-lidded way his gaze pierced through things sometimes, as if they didn’t exist—he was lethal. His smile spread slow across his face, like he knew something she didn’t. He was in on the joke she was always one frustrating step behind on, and it made Terezi mad. It made the backs of her dead eyes ache with a desire to smell his indigo blood.
Terezi was skin and bones too; all sharpness and angles and he couldn’t find the blur of her in the way everything else moved, edges blending into the background. She was defined, a permanent fixture of variability stuck in his brain. He could count the ribs pushing against her skin, a jutting cage to protect her heart, and this fragility--it sickened him. She was light, she was agile, and she was constantly moving, slicing in and out like a shadow incessantly investigating where the body it was attached to was going. He wanted to tear into her, toughen up her outsides to match her insides, always had this burning want to incite her anger.
Terezi walked through the halls, only the occasional scratch of her cane against the ground indicating her presence. A Cheshire grin slunk across her face, sharp little teeth glinting when the scent of cerulean and oranges swirled past her, something more sinister than just pixie dust sprinkling past to catch in her lashes, under her skin. Her nostrils flared and she followed the trail, unsheathing the blade from her dragon-molded cane with a snick, light glowing red against her glasses, smoothing adrenaline in pale teal across her cheeks.
Her steps were light as she crept up the winding staircase, mind filled with blue and metal and 8’s, victims and murderer(s) and justice driving her forward and fast. The closer she got to the plateau the blue started turning darker in color, more purple. It was more ominous, pervading in the kaleidoscope of scents that splattered across the floor and filled her nose. Mustard brown and fuchsia, deep azure and olive green, the surging relief when the sting of these scents didn’t include a certain shade of blue with their pungent odor of death imbued in the aromas of her comrades’ blood.
“Hello?” her voice may have echoed had there been something for it to echo off of, but all that surrounded her was darkness. She stopped walking and breathed in deep, straining her ears.
“Honk,” the sound rang across the floor before being absorbed into the darkness, filling her mouth with bitter grape.
“G-Gamzee?” Terezi’s voice caught on the harsh consonants in his name, and she hated, she hated the way that her words seemed to falter, how her voice seemed so small. The way he’d looked at her right then, like she wasn’t there, like she didn’t exist, she could feel it, and it made her shiver. It made her sad, and she thought of red and blue and cherries and blueberries but they melted on her tongue and blended together. They turned purple, swirling and dark, and her eyelids shuttered over lifeless orbs, frown bunching between her eyebrows.
“Aw, sugar,” he cooed, words grating against his tongue, anything but. It stung and scraped and made the nerve-endings nestled on his horns stand on end, watching her cautious but purposeful approach. The red in her dragon hood matched eerily the crimson shade of her eyes, tucked behind her glasses like secrets.
This feeling, it burned through his veins more than the withdrawal from sopor. It scorched and it made him reckless, and he had a feeling it was contagious, contagious like wildfire, like a miracle. He hated her. He wanted the blaze to singe her too, and he wanted to smother her and kiss her mouth until it burned, until he drew blood, pulling the bruise blooming on her lower lip to the surface.
Gamzee saw when understanding gripped her, saw the pause, the tick in her otherwise meticulously calculated and cunning movements, and shrugged.
“Can up and motherfucking SMELL the confusion you’re all feeling from here, Terezi,” her name curled black and sharp against his tongue. It unfurled like a fire in her stomach, spreading out and she tightened her grip on her blade, ground her teeth and the hate in her veins rerouted some of the traffic from herself to Gamzee. The blatant dig propelled her forward and she growled low in her throat, smirk lifting the left corner of her mouth as her blade nicked his skin, dark purple blood beading and gurgling under the swell of his Adam’s apple.
“It was you,” she stated simply, metal edge of her justice coin pressing against the side of her skinny thigh when she shifted her weight backwards onto her right foot. His fangs caught on his lip as his cheeks dragged his mouth into a sluggish leer, and he said,
“Ain’t MY motherfucking THING, TZ.” The vowels in her nickname sluiced through his vocal chords, sticking and drawling from his tongue. His silly polka-dot pants ripped more down the inseam when he shifted forward to meet her withdrawal, and his long horns towered over her, adding to his already tall stature. Terezi glanced up, twitched her nose in his direction, and inhaled deeply.
“Call me when you get better at your game, Makara,” she said, and he hated the way her hair fell in the dim light, hated the way his hand moved to the back of her skull, tugging on her black locks before he stopped. She blinked crimson eyes and when he leaned down to kiss her, the scent of overripe plums invaded her senses. His teeth snared her lip, and the mingling of their blood and saliva almost tasted like blueberries. All she could think was Vriska Serket.