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[powerhungry]

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SILCO

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[powerhungry]

[ The pitch of her amusement sounds like puzzle pieces clicking into place, the raised crags of abutting tectonic plates suddenly smoothing out, inhospitable land made green again. Green in the way his eyebrows slant up rather than down when he looks at her, his eyes wide as though it might help him see more of her at once. He only recovers, a little of that haplessness coiled back, as she pinches his collar, huffing a laugh — a faint breath, the slight twitch of his features that he knows she's inherited as a habit. Pretty, on her features, but not as pretty as the way she smiles, laughs, plays. Utterly unique in his life, in this world, and if this place is any indication, every world beyond.

Of course he'll remember. There's no world in which he'd forget, just as he's never forgotten the first time she'd made something just for him (cups and ashtrays, decorated with neon markers and paint), or the first time she'd accepted a gift from his hands.

It's a peck, at first, then more — the fizz of bubbly on her tongue, the smudging stickiness of her lip gloss, more intoxicating than any champagne, enough to set his heart racing as if it were one of her toys, wound up and let loose. His breath catches when he pulls away, just far enough to press his forehead to hers, to whisper, ]

Congratulations, my dear.

[ Between them, he raises his glass, the sound of the toast as clear as a bell. One clarion tone to mark good fortune.

Careful, tentative: ] —Kiss me again.

[smudgy]

[ She must have kissed him a hundred times now, but it still feels novel. To meet him somewhere as an equal, at eye level, where his wanting matches and interacts with her own like chemicals, like explosives, a boom that causes a chain reaction. Jinx throws an arm around his neck, swept up in the act. Her nose brushes his, another laugh in her mouth.

Congratulations, he says, as though it’s as much hers as it is his, and — it isn’t, really, in the sense that she remains an observer, hands-off, but she appreciates the sentiment. The inclusion. An improved position from that of the wayward daughter and wily lieutenant. The partner. She’d wonder what the staff thought of it all, except Jinx has never cared how she was perceived before, and she won’t be starting now. ]

Only ‘cause you’ve been so good to me.

[ With a smeared kiss at the corner of his mouth. Like she could deny him this, all dolled up for him and him alone. Glass set aside in the blink of eye so she can walk her fingers up his chest and catch her nails on the buttons of his shirt. ]

—To us.

[ Because that’s what they are now, a union sealed in kisses and claims and stolen champagne. She crashes into him more forcefully, then, loosing a button in the process, unable to be anything but what she is. A tornado of a girl, leaving only destruction in her path. It isn’t so much that Silco weathered the storm, but that he came back and forgave the damage. ]

[powerhungry]

[ And then there's this: the fact that she treats him like something precious, as much father as the last cog needed to make an engine purr, a toy as beloved in adulthood as it had been when she was still a child. Something— someone worth treating affectionately and holding close. Granted, he's always known that to be the miracle of her love. It doesn't sand her sharper edges down so much as it provides a lens into the bright colors of her existence, those soaring highs and lows the only possible explanation for the depth of her feeling and the wild spread of its according blast radius. Not destruction but new life, even if she doesn't see it that way.

For a moment, she's all there is. The warm weight of her in his arms, her fingers spidering over the front of his shirt. His own wander — through her hair, over her cheek, through the gaps in her dress, like he's mapping her out. ]

To us, [ whispered against the bridge of her nose. A necessary echo. Then again, like he hadn't registered it the first time, ] To us.

I'll be—

[ He pauses — to drink her in, to adjust the shape of his mouth to words he's not used to saying, the same way he's learned to adjust the way he moves around her. More open, more tender; clearer, to give her what she deserves, to leave less room for miscommunication. His hand finds hers, holding it still over his chest. When he steps back, their fingers are still intertwined, tugging her gently toward the couch.

He thinks, I love you. He says, ] I'll always be good to you.