pretty chapped lips : malum :

1.3

dedication: yo, laura, my tall friend who reads my updates and talks to me about them at break. yes, you. ily <3

It was beautiful in the kind of way that made my skin crawl and a fire light somewhere within of me that refused to burn out.

The way he said my name replayed in my mind like that song you can never stop singing and that tune you always find yourself humming.

It was always there.

Sitting in the back of my English class, with words tumbling past everyone's lips that wind around your mind like vines, and trip on your tongue like a cartwheel as they fall past parted lips. But my mind is else where.

My mind is beyond the world of thou and thee. Skirting around the edges of want and need. My body is in English but my mind is in music: listening to the flow of spoken word that chills me to the bone more efficiently than words from centuries ago repeated so often they've lost they're flavor; and music from the time of powered wigs with white dusted skin.

Id hear the sound of his voice, fit for melody and shiny things like music with a rhythm and beat. Id feel the brush of his lips and curse at how they didn't linger as I wished.

I wanted nothing more than that feeling again. Where my heart stopped mid beat, where my mind went blank and my skin felt hotandelectric because there was a need that cant be described.

A groan or a moan, a whimper and a plead.

Intense or soft, broken and breathy.

Those thoughts drove me closer.

But closer to what, the edge?

No, but closer to something.

Somewhere.

Closer to insanity.

And perhaps, on occasion, my eyes may have wandered had the time been right. Maybe green eyes that lost their light long ago like a light bulb that had blown managed to gaze out the sheets of glass wedged together that held me in, to what lay outside.

Really, it felt oddly like watching an animal at the zoo: horribly depressing, intensely curious and still oddly beautiful.

He'd stand there, leaning against the side of the building with a cigarette between his lips as his eyes followed whatever poor creature passed by before closing again. But in my mind, I saw him as that quiet lion that strays away from the action of the center of the pen. Stalking around the edge of its cage, dark eyes following the people as they pass though there is no care within him to follow.

Watching him, as a viewer would to those startlingly large big cats was something I will admit to being guilty of. But, that wasn't exactly a secret anymore.

But unlike the onlookers and the big cats trapped in their cages: There was one subtle difference.

Every time I looked.

He would would already be looking.

"Mr Clifford, pay attention!"

-

A/N so, this update is late. i'm really sorry about that, mostly because I don't have a good reason for it, I've just been really.. Out of it? That doesn't make much sense, I've just had a weird, hazy thing for the past while it normally doesn't effect updates but I'm sorry for future reference if it does again.

anyways, on a brighter topic my favourite paragraph/line/part of everything written so far is in the chapter and if you guess it or guess close enough I'll dedicate the next chapter to you <3

LAST THING !!

i put up my muke one shot! it's a coffee shop au where michael doesn't like to date and luke is oddly stubborn as well as awkward, so if you're a muke fan, read it maybe?

anyways that's this awkwardly long a/n over.

love you,

-rachel x