starry eyes ✮ slashers.

chapter 020.

twenty. chrome hearted.

         Brahms is upset and who wouldn't be? He's facing the attic wall, curled into a ball on his bed. His breaths are shallow as he gives Lyra the least attention he can muster. And yet his body betrays him, tensing under her touch.

"Brahms, honey, I'm sorry." Lyra doesn't quite know what she's apologising for but that doesn't stop it from being heartfelt. Apologising for threatening him? For not going after him when he left upset? Or for having sex with the man he'd tried to protect her from?

"Lyra bad. Hurt Brahms." Lyra's heart bests that little bit faster at his low gravelly voice. It really alludes to just how upset she had made him, the thought putting a damper on her hope.

"He's still Tom, past the Harry. I didn't mean to upset you I-I—"

"You did what vampires do in my book. With him." He curses the word him like it's venom, Lyra looking away when she realises he's referring to sex. Had he heard or been watching? Both thoughts brought a pale tint to her cheeks.

"I'm sorry, Brahms, that's all I can say." Her hand gently squeezes his leg as she rises to her feet. It's awkward, being confronted for her mistakes. She's never been good at dealing with that, a flaw she hopes to not have to improve on.

"Not all you can say." His change in vocabulary makes her tilt her head. He'd been learning lots of words from the book she'd given him, perhaps it was managing to help him distinguish when to use peoples names and pronouns.

"No?" She inquires.

"Say goodnight to Brahms." He all but asks her, not facing her and she nods to herself, swallowing thickly. His bed is empty, the blanket stuffed into a ball by his feet and so she unwraps it, cocooning his stiff body inside it.

She exhaled shakily and leans over his body, hoping to cheer him up as she removes his mask and presses a sweet kiss to the corner of his lips. Brahm's smiles instinctively and Lyra pulls away, ruffling the dark curls atop his head.

He likes that and catches her wrist before she can leave.

"Since you hurt Brahms. Play with hair till I sleep." He demands rather than asking but she can hardly deny the request. Taking a seat beside him, her fingers weave into the soft, slightly greasy mess flowing over his forehead.

Her nails scratch gently at his scalp and she leans back against the pillow, finding that not long after Brahms falls asleep, she does too.

Tom couldn't care less she'd slept next to Brahms, after all she'd actually slept with him, so there was hardly competition. He wonders how each day he wakes up and must ask himself the question of if he's jealous of his Lyra's relationship with the killer man-child in the porcelain mask. But as the miner killer himself, he supposes he's not the most ordinary.

He wonders if she knows? That he'd only fucked her with half his being, afraid to the core he'd let out Harry and tear her apart. He wonders if she knows he was struggling so intently with every grunt and moan. He wants her again, an urge to let his full self free and ravage her, but he cannot for fear of harming her.

He smells the food before he sees her, but when Lyra opens the door it's like he's being graced by her presence for the first time again. She's beautiful, effortlessly beautiful. Begging to be adored.