She supposed, in retrospect, it wasn't her finest hour. Gravel crunching underfoot and digging into her bony kneecaps, ponytail yanked tight from behind. To anyone watching, it might've appeared desperate. Pathetic. No more pathetic than the absurd groans she was coaxing from the man's lips as she sucked him dry, but out of place.
In retrospect, there were endless better places for Blanca to be but kept at crotch height, dark hair twined painfully between foreign fingers. She'd remember it later when she counted her bruises.
Between the dark of the shadows and the dark of the night, there was very little light to see by in the Libertine's Loop.
There was always the ghost of sound slipping between the cracks in the wood and bricks, between shattered mortar teeth. The spectre of a moan, a groan, a yelp, a squeal, audio nightshade crawling up the sides of rafter arches and broken pillars.
Every alley was a gallow, and every gallow had a noose.
More foreign fingers tangled in that dark hair and yanked her back, hard enough to threaten the integrity of her scalp. If her jaw snapped shut on the end of that cock in her mouth, it didn't matter to the intruder— even as he yanked her to her feet, deepthroat saliva with the slightest tinge of blood drooling a bridge separating client and professional.
"Bitch, the fuck time is it."
Jhator pulled his lover up to his face, fist curled in her hair as those hard eyes drilled into her, calm rage meeting the torrential spitting hurricane of anger that was inevitably about to take possession of the smaller woman.
And she might've allowed him, had her teeth not scraped soft flesh, head and body two steps behind the movement as she attempted to reorient herself between the unfamiliar, the much more achingly familiar, and being back on her feet, knees buckling with the new distribution of weight.
White hot anger seared in her eyes for none but Jhator to see, every inch of her body language indicating that the man whose now bleeding cock had been in her mouth was the least important party of the altercation. She lapped at her lips, ran her tongue over her teeth, irritation dwindling (though not disappearing, rarely disappearing).
"Bitch," she echoed, all attention focused, "you have eyes, look at a fucking watch." Speech bubbled from the man, angry and offended; Blanca slapped a careless hand over his mouth to silence him and muffle all protests.
"Be nicer to my hair or I'll give you a taste." This, directed at the lover currently holding her ponytail hostage. "Salt and copper. Interested?"
"BITCH WHAT THE FU—"
The howling john was trying to push the whore's hand away as he flailed. Releasing the woman, Jhator's anger was circumvented, redirected as he took the man by the throat and drug him out, pantsless, and kicked him out of the alley, throwing him clear to the other curb of the makeshift road.
With the distraction gone, the warlord rounded like a predator, head low as he prowled back to the woman he occasionally called his, but mostly just called—
"Bitch," he reiterated, calmer, lower, deadpan. "You're late."
He'd been so considerate. He'd even gotten takeout.
Oddly enough, the displacement of he who had only moments ago been brushing against the back of Blanca's throat was calming. Little lost, nothing gained— she didn't do it for the pleasure. Despite any heat pooling inside, her true intentions lay elsewhere, somewhere beyond dark irises.
She kicked at a stray pebble, taking care to spit before he returned to her adjusting her hairpiece. A Sorry formed at her lips, and never came to fruition. "Give or take," she settled for instead. "Don't have a conniption, it's unsightly."
The warlord came to the whore, came close— so close— and kissed her shoulder, before he started walking toward the other end of the alleyway, toward a home that was his but was also occasionally hers.
Apparently, it had all been for the sake of a reminder.
No lingering anger. No violence recumbent in that frame, at least not for her. As he meandered down to the far exit, he lit up a hand rolled cigarette, a habit that'd lingered for over fifty years now.
Blew the smoke to the sky.
"Yep," he threw back over his shoulder. "Got it."
Not one to be left behind (not that he'd let her, surely, the expectation clear), the smaller woman sidled up next to him, delivering a more than half-hearted kick to the back of his boot in the fashion of a petulant child to communicate her fading irritation. Fuck.
She'd follow. She'd always follow.
No questions asked.
"Fucker." Mumbled and kept to herself, for the most part, lost in the motions of her sliding under one arm, pressing (fitting) into his side. It was as close to an apology as he'd get; the words that followed reflected no such desire to voice a true one.
"If you grab my hair like that again, I'll squeeze the feeling out of your balls." Spoken casually, when it was all promised (and potentially literal) bite.
And he allowed her to slide, simple and enduring, under his arm, blade sharpened tongue curled in between his ribs. She was razor wire, barbs for bones and always slick with oil and honey.
He'd grab her hair like that again and she wouldn't notice. She never really did— not in the moment and very rarely after.
He pulled another drag on that cigarette before he held it to the woman's lips, reflex divine and comforting in its familiarity. Soon, they were swallowed by the traffic of the main drag of the loop, anonymous again amongst so many desperate faces.
Everything was neon here, everything was obscured.
But Jhator could see her clearly, even in the red light.
"It's not like its your real hair anyways."
Smoke fell past her lips on the exhale, the heat of her fingertips grazing and then leaving his wrist. "Not an excuse," she spoke, strained, shifting when said hair tugged, trapped beneath one arm. "It's still attached to my scalp." The complaints were pointless, serving only to fill in the space, but it made sense to speak all that came to mind. Blanca only really knew true trust and openness with few; she could count those on one hand.
Her cheek settled close. "Didn't even let him pull his pants up." And she grinned.
Reclaiming his cigarette, the warlord let out a breathy smoke laugh, grinning a little before he leaned his head back.
"You're so considerate. Putting the client first."
There were years and years and years between them. Forty-five years. Maybe more. On and off, disappeared and resurged as things always were in this new civilization that was clawing and clinging for a foothold.
Humanity was inclined to do one thing and one thing alone: survive. How it achieved that goal was another matter entirely.
Twining his fingers with hers, he squinted up to the fading neons as they came to the lifts.
"What were you after anyways."
Blanca thought on it, flipping the words over in her mind while she savoured the warmth of his hand. Somewhere, there existed an answer. She wouldn't find it in the calloused patterns twisting in his fingertips, fingers she'd long wondered if she could forget, just for a day, to memorize them all over.
An exhale left her, stored from deep within. "Would telling you that I didn't know sound like a lie?" In a sense, it was. Once there had been justification, a reason, and now it was simply ingrained in her, like every scar that littered her body. They were reminders of her mistakes, of a life lived. More importantly, something to remember a past long gone.
But never to fill a chasm.
It was good enough.
They were so old. So fucking old, the both of them. Their minds outpaced the progress of their bodies and left them in a place where growing old together was a desperate memory,
a dream on a VR loop.
They were smooth skinned, tautly muscled, with youthful joints and young bones even after all these years. But when he held her next to him, ran his cheek against the inside of her knee, the inside of her thigh, and kissed her belly, he wondered how it could've been if this body had faltered, if their programming had failed.
His reverie often left him silent, contemplative in these times and they stopped before the lift down to the Undercamp.
"Just wondering if you were working or if you were working. That's all."
A gaze was turned toward him, scanning the side of his face in all its familiarity. The urge to touch him further arose; she settled for leaning into him, ragged seams to ragged seams. They were so old.
"Does it matter?" Her lips grazed his shoulder. "I came back. I can hear every cog working in your brain thinking that I might not, and I always do. You're not disposable, they are." And I can't throw you away.
He knew.
Jhator was safety, he was power. He was the most stable thing in this petri dish of civilization they were cultivating. All the violence of Descoria past the Outlook, all the wilds of the ever burning Vulklar forests, he could protect her from all of it— and he would.
Always, he would.
He was a Warlord, and what a fucking idiot he was.
There would be a confession soon and the sinner would be him. He propped his chin on the top of her head, probably still tender from the violence of his discovery, and he kissed her crown as he walked her onto the lift, to take her home.
They were so old.
"I know," he said, quiet, gentle, taking another drag of his cigarette. "I know."