Post #2662397 in Dirt & Opulence, a roleplay on RPG

⟝BEL⟞

-[fluff post until next scene]-

Calming thunder was a practice uncharted. Less than a rain dance. Because no amount of tripping light with the ebb and flow of hips under the sun would bring heaven’s woe when a drought was in place. Like all great things and disasters, it was what it was. Would be what it would be. And ain’t no sun shower gonna’ come between the temper of makers when clouds are shaking like the seven archangels are having a bowling match. Innate fury could only be deterred. Never stopped.

The angry dog in him barked about his loss while the civic prince told him his time would come. To be patient. In his back pocket were a forgotten log of texts and missed calls, magnum grating bone and denim, not far off, a sister left in the lurch, but none of this mattered. Because in front of him was ambition. Low-pitched and looking fragile. Cleaner than him. She didn’t look his kind of sick or starved, and he prayed she never would. He had to make her understand the things that everyone in aftershocks already knew. The ones that mattered. But how could he? Without scaring her to pieces or being too militant. If she were maimed or upset by anything he pulled then - he had a lot more than just apologizing to do.

“You could have been killed.”

‘Bout as well as any other man in there. There was risk in just crossing the street, and having embodied a bolder fraction in peril and possibility, Bel knew what she said to be true but shook his head. A loose wave of hair fell into his face from its pomade mold as he did so, “Yeah, but that loss is significantly less distressful than yours. If you got hurt, fuck... Killed, I couldn’t live with myself. Hani, don’t feel like you gotta’ keep me from doing dumb shit, okay? It’ll only drag you down with me and much as I don’t want to catch a dozen bodies, I would if something happened to you. Don’t think that I think you can’t handle your own. I know you can. But this...” His hands went wide as an explanation for the holy mess caused inside. “This isn’t your problem. It isn’t Sen’s, either, but she knows how to deal with all this. She’s my sister. She’s got to. I don’t have to chase her down and apologize, ‘cause tomorrow when she’s less pissed off we’ll figure it out like we always do. I just don’t want you turning away and... Shit, I don’t know. Being upset with me.” The confession set him back in the ways of feeling as though he was in control. If she spotted the weakness, he’d feel it like a shot but all she did was linger fleetingly with itty bitty grasp on his bloodied fist, wrapped in a token of her divinity. “You I gotta’ apologize to, here and now. You don’t have any familial obligation to not be pissed off in the morning.”

Only encouragement to settle rancor was given. Though Bel was sure Senna didn’t storm off in a fit like Jubes might, with wildfire welling between her ribs and greed telling her to make the world pay. Baby felt things at a slower pace, but more rooted, which made her a formidable enemy and even better consort. Bel was lost in the leaning when Hani wandered a few steps backward, galvanizing as she departed from him. The honey slicked road to heaven, edging further off with one hymn, refusing to take no as an answer, “Go on.”

He would. Just not where she intended. “Si, si bonita,” he called out to her, “Let me get you dinner tomorrow, alright?” A kittenish smirk was all that was left of her and his proposition, “Okay - the next day?” His baritone followed her into the venue but he hung back. It even allowed him to laugh quietly in the dark. “Shit,” he said to himself, heel milling pebbles underfoot, flexing five semi-mangled stalks too often garnished in an array of burnished rings that had broken too many teeth. Not tonight. That Kim girl was a consecration in a bounding main of sharks and other serpents. She’d saved him, he wasn’t sure that she knew that though. Suddenly apprehensive of the type of man he was for this small moment of privacy, he grunted, “Don’t know what the fuck I did in a past life but I must have gotten something right.” If there were more than two trees on the street, they would have thrashed in October afterglow as a means to reply to his ascetic monologue. Like, “God damn, lucky son of a bitch. Up to your eyeballs in women, bread, success and the amity of good girls who don’t know no better.” None of it came without an albatross around the neck. That’s what he’d tell ‘em if they dared speak in his presence.

But they didn’t sway hard toward him with branches curved to break on the mission to knock some sense into him. November would do that for them. All curves. No brakes [or breaks]. She was a coating of tar, perennial to the bidding of lace and lavender that belonged to Hani or any other woman. More shadowy than Alaskan gloom, all thirty days of it. The bed of roses sitting on top of thin ice. She was something of a nightmare wrapped in a radiant mirage, plain and simple.

Henna plaits overpassed her image in the faint lambency, all too familiar against her rapturous yet taunting expression. Bel rocked on his heels at her unanticipated company among tranquility. Her current came slow, and then all at once. Wasn't that why she felt so much like home? Why he found himself on her doorstep habitually, looking sicker than the starved mongrel without her looped around him. To the fucking hilt. Because in spite of knowing increments, she dug her blade deep, smooth talking it in. But she made damn sure you’d remember how the final inches felt as they punctured an artery. Proof she’d been there and that nothing would be the same after she split. Another gnawing sensation of no longer being in command, strikes that would be counted against him if not for their dividends sowed within the confines of a firearm fellatio. Delusions of November’s nails raking down his stiffened soma almost pulled him from sheer reality until she nabbed his injury, her initial greeting coming to light.

“What happen to mail order?”

If she really wanted to drive her point home, she would have ashed her cigarette in his palm. But she had a feeling Bel was getting it without the amplification, his plasma dying her predilection blush. “There’s the November I know.” He echoed close to her, “Don’t bang on about Hani too long, you might start to sound jealous. You know,” his breath was hot counter to the precinct of her collar, “Threatened.” Unwritten like an omen to the blind eye, a carnal call to the cunning. The clawing need to smear his blood across her mouth and mark her as his dominion. But November? She was free. No holds barred, and nobody’s property. He’d coerced himself into recognition long ago. That her backbone wasn’t the firefly captured in jars, but nature herself. Someone who made the rules when the rest of the world failed to realize their fates had already been decided. Her spirit of inquiry came from honest wondering, but...

Bel gathered her hair, retained it in a hook that didn’t tug or yank. “But don’t you worry ‘bout rising to the occasion, ‘cause I know you got your hands full of arrangements with somebody who’s still sittin’ inside. And that’s alright, baby.” He stared into her face, indulgent of her vulnerable position in his grip, “I ain’t stupid. And you ain’t mine. That much is clear.” With her neck arched that way, him respiring more her tobacco than she, he daubed his thumb across her lower lip to emphasize, “But I’m aware of what I’m doing, as you are of your shit.”

Forsaken. Giving her ground. As she deserved, as a partner, as a grown woman. Not with a shove, but a slackened hold. The confidence he had in her allowed her to operate in plain sight behind enemy lines as a playmate. Not a spy. Not a narc. Not anything but genuine November. He drew up his muzzle enough to develop lockjaw where her romps with Dom were concerned, and he could live with it much as it gave his patience its best shot. He’d survived worse things and real betrayal. This was not one of them. After he let her go, he snipped the cigarette from her mouth and threw it aside, “Does this mean I get to ask you what you think is gonna’ come of you dropping neck between me and Dominic Bates? ‘Cause if so, I would love to hear your theory. We all gonna’ be one happy dick sucking family?”

The drag through his nose sounded something of a bull in the lead of a red target. Did he mean to scare her - taunt her? Nah. Just put things into perspective. Remnants of November’s smoke were squashed under one of his soles and he laughed, and laughed. And laughed. Perturbed nail beds by scraping his scalp in the post-lightbulb-interrogation, “Anyway, that there wasn’t about Dominic. ‘Cause ‘least I know he loved Baby enough to never disrespect her in the way that one of them did tonight. You know I know that? If I didn’t, I wouldn’t grapple with this fuckin’ mess of you doing what you do in your free time. You expect me to sit around and smooth my fuckin’ hackles when someone comes for Senna? I know you don’t. So why we discussing this?” The granted window was only about five seconds long, and if that wasn’t enough, the bell was ringing. She didn’t have anything in words. Lord knew she had it in physical assault but, it wasn’t the time. Just the way it was. “You got me, I got you. Loud and clear as always. You know when you go do whatever you wanna’ do, I don’t bark around your tree for answers. Don’t come for mine when your first objective was him.” A stern index pointed to the doors of the Little Lady.

“Not me. We can play games all night long, baby, and I wouldn’t rather play with nobody but you. You wanna’ crack a joke about somebody less tainted and vicious than you? Alright. You go ahead and bear your teeth. Nobody’s gonna’ handle it like you do. That’s a fact. But you question ‘why’ when you know why? You come out here after you got your hands on Dominic Bates and run a smear campaign on Hani? That girl ain’t done shit to you and never will. Priorities usually fall in line with tangible threats, November. You’re definitely smart enough to know that. Difference ‘tween me and you is I’m not gonna’ slight the shit out of someone who isn’t here to defend themselves. Certainly not Dom. Like I’m fuckin’ dumb enough to start a war on your body.”

He moved beyond her, pausing with a foot or so separating them, “You look beautiful tonight. You wear it and you know it. Talking about these other girls. That’s just a war that can’t be won.” His fingerprints went flush to his temple at every syllable in motion to his diction, “Come on. Common fuckin’ sense, who needs cheap shots when you look like that and have the best of both worlds? I’ll see you around, kid. You got a hangover tomorrow, I’ll have the coffee. Sorry I wasn’t in the mood to play reindeer games tonight. Just remember it was you who told me 'no' when I said I loved you next time you get some itch to play ‘piss on the fire hydrant’.”

A wave through the glass to his token redhead and he was wrapping up business in this part of town. Better things awaited back at the condo, less eyes. Less noise. More business. More pleasure.

Snippet #2662397

located in Brooklyn, New York, a part of Dirt & Opulence, one of the many universes on RPG.

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