Incarnate Lord was a place of polished marble, hushed prayers, and the suffocating scent of lilies that seemed to mask the rot of secrets tucked away in the dormitories. It was a suffocating cage for the wayward, a gilded prison for those whose parents possessed enough money to hide their troubled children behind high wrought-iron gates and stained-glass windows. Outside the arched doors, Christ bled silently on mahogany crucifixes; inside Room 269, the air was warm, thick, and lingering with the scent of lotion, sweat, and ozone. Delilah's dark, coiled hair was a tangled halo against the white pillowcases. Beside her, Blair lay pressed into the small curve of the bed, her breath hitching in the rhythmic, jagged cadence that signaled the tail-end of a nightmare. It had become a habitual sanctuary, a necessary intrusion. Blair didn't belong in this bed, and certainly not in the tight, possessive tangle of limbs they had formed, but the shadows felt less predatory when Delilah was there to anchor her. Delilah shifted, her eyes fluttering open - dark, heavy, and piercing even in the half-light of the pre-dawn. She didn't pull away. She never did; instead, she reached out, her thumb tracing the line of Blair's jaw, grounding her to the present, to the heat of the room, and to the illicit reality of them.
"You're shaking, buttercup." Delilah murmured, her voice a low, gravelly rasp
"I'm fine." Blair whispered, though her voice cracked on the second word
"Yeah. And I'm the Mother Superior. You always say you're fine when you're not. It's okay not be okay, Blair. You don't have to pretend with me." Delilah said, a faint, dry smattering of amusement touching her lips
"If I tell you something, you promise you won't laugh?" Blair's voice came out, barely above a whisper
"Scout's honor." Delilah replied, her smirk fading into a gaze that held Blair's like a promise
"When I'm with you, the noise in my head finally stops. I forget about the walls, the rules, the chapel bells, the whole damn world. It's just... quiet. And that scares me almost as much as the nightmares, Delilah. Because I know one day we're going to have to walk out those gates, and I don't know how to exist in a world where you're not keeping the dark away - where you're no longer the only reason my heart beats in time with something real.
Because out there, my family expects a ghost wrapped in silk, a polished doll to be handed off to the highest bidder, and I don't know how to be a person anymore. I spent my whole life being shaped, being trimmed, being told when to speak and how to bow, swallowing every part of myself that didn't fit into their pristine little boxes. And when I look at you, Delilah, I realize I'm not even whole. I'm just a collection of fractures held together by your name. And it terrifies me that the only part of my life that feels real is the girl who calls me 'buttercup' with a sneer and looks at me like she wants to burn the world down just to keep me safe." Blair let out a shaky breath, the confession hanging heavy in the charged air between them
"You think you're just a collection of fractures? Let them try to break you again. I dare them. Your family, this gilded cage, every single high-society parasite waiting to put a leash on you - they don't own a single inch of who you are. If they want to hand you off like a prize piece of china, they'll have to get through me first, and I promise you, I'll turn their precious world to ash before I let them touch what's mine." Delilah said, her voice dropping to a rough, velvet growl that vibrated straight through Blair's chest
"No one's ever treated me like my survival was worth more than my perfection. You didn't just pull me out of the dark, Delilah... you made me realize I was already dead before you got here. And if loving you is the sin that damns us, then hand me the matches, because I'd rather watch the whole world turn to cinders beside you than live another second as their pristine, unbroken doll." Blair whispered, her voice steady and ablaze
YOU ARE READING
Terror trio: back in action
Fanfictionone year after the movie theater massacre, Jake, Devon, and Lexy end up together again in a Catholic school ran by nuns and a strict priest. The three of them try and figure out how to fit into their new lifestyle, but it won't be as easy as they ho...
