• the sweetest surrender. (DUKE.)

[· Rebel La'Beau.]

Her hair had been bleached white over the break, a shade both stunning and manic and much like Rebel herself, but now, she had gone back to her familiar cosmic pink, the valentine ringlets covering her bare shoulders as she sat perched on Duke's bed, legs crossed and hidden under his blanket to scare away the cool January air as she bit her nails uneasily, feeling out of place despite the tall glass of Tequila she had sucked back earlier in place of dinner. He liked her hair pink, she remembered that, they way he would tug smoothly on her curls when he talked, watching the intense strands as they swayed across her back, and so she had dyed it back, as a small favor and part of her gift, her birthday present, to the boy. The other part had something to do with the layers of decadent lace and ribbon she wrapped up in, the austere fact that she was sitting in his bed at such an sinful hour, and a smile that was decidedly wicked, no matter how hard she tried to hide it behind her black tar nail polish as she chewed on her fingertips impatiently.

She had been taunting him for months, one step forward only to take two back, all tease and suggestion without any promise, using that impish grin to keep him from ever getting too close, afraid that he would abandon her after the fact. But she was starting to feel guilty, not to mention terribly frustrated because she’d been in this vile country for almost a month and her sex life had been something comparable to that of a nun’s during her entire stay. So maybe Duke’s surprise birthday present wasn’t all for him, but Rebel would have been lying to say that she ever did anything with selfless intent, and it wasn't as if it didn't still work out in his favor.

Looking down, the French exchange stretched out one long, long leg from underneath the cool sheet, loosening it’s curl around her waist as she wiggled her toes boredly before her, her appearance all casual indifference despite how she was naked - save for some shamefully expensive underthings - in an empty dorm room with nothing but immoral purposes on her mind. Gold eyes flickered toward the door once more, her dark eyebrows raising at nothing in particular as the girl did her best to silently will Duke into his room, to mentally pull him to her so that she could finally rid herself of the awful lingerie and the goosebumps building against her shoulder blades.

[Duke Bell.]

Today, Duke Bell turned nineteen.

He had stayed in London after the seasonal break, ignoring the requirement of his person back at the Academy. There was nothing remotely attaching him to his home, nothing sentimental and human at least. Judas hadn't disappointed him; announcing a divorce for the millionth time with his new girlfriend already moving in. While he loved his family, which included all his half brothers and sisters, he held a certain level of disgust for them. Duke couldn't exactly understand why, except for the fact that he was a severely messed up individual with a possible inferiority complex. The past two weeks had been spent slumming it in style in East-London; passing out after too much Jack and Jim and waking up with girls he didn't know, except for the fact that they didn't have pink hair or any shred of decency. At some point, Judas had decided to play the father role and be a stick in the mud; go back to school or check in. Touched, he had said some choice words and took the next plane out to the States.

He had spent the better part of the 20th watching the historical moment in D.C. and then that night, had went all about town, bringing in his birthday in atrocious style. Duke couldn't even remember the last time he had slept. It wasn't until The Cave had kicked him out with a ban warning that he actually began to consider coming back to his dorm. An hour later, he had nothing but a sunken expression and small headache to show for all his efforts. His birthday was something of a sore spot. His mother had been the only one to last more than two years with his father, their marriage coming to an end on his third birthday; some years down the track, he had watched his eldest brother's stomach get pumped on the same day. Climbing the stairs to his dorm, he thought that was it, that he was safe for the next several hundred days but while the 21st of January certainly wasn't his favorite day, seeing Rebel waiting on his bed for him, he thought it definitely couldn't get worse.

"This is unexpected," he commented dryly, one hand on the halfway open door and the other on the frame. His grip was tight, because he was buggered as all fuck, but his eyes were surprisingly clear and fixated. Duke ventured a small step into his room, his gaze flickering away from her in a poor attempt to appear nonchalant, a joint hanging from his mouth.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asked, faced appearing somewhere near disbelieving; he'd died, or was dreaming because he'd been working so long to get the girl into his bed, and this was all too easy and good to be true.

[· Rebel La'Beau.]

"Something like that," She replied, her nonchalance a little more convincing as she lowered her hand from her mouth, revealing her grin in full, that degenerate smile filled with all sorts of presumptions and overconfidence that was only to be overshadowed by her wild cherry curls. Rebel's eyes flashed with something amusing as she eyed the boy before her, his disheveled state bringing some mirth into her expression; he was an absolute mess, and it was hot. She knew that it was the similarities between them that caught her attention, even when it was all the differences that caused her to linger, the huge chasm of past and space and recollections between them; they were still just strangers and in that truth she felt safe.

Pushing herself forward, legs dangling off the edge of the mattress as the sheet slipped further down her hips, revealing a persuasive flash of lace and skin, Rebel pinned Duke down with those incandescent eyes and curled her fingers against her thigh, determined to keep from biting her nails any longer.

“Come here,” she was a clash of past and present, with that enchanting smile and honey-sweet voice dipped in French she was on old screen siren, exotic and missing nothing except perhaps the deviously long cigarette holder. And yet, the nose ring and flashing gold eyes, her hair, they were all nearly space age, interstellar. She was a mess of contradictions and complexes, total chaos.

The siren reached out her hand idly as she brushed the velveteen curls away from her naked shoulders, eyes still lingering on Duke and his rapt expression as she did her best to read him - though in truth he was as intricate and illegible as she herself.

[Duke Bell.]

Duke, honest to God, grunted; a deep huff of complaint as the burning white paper between his lips jumped. He pushed slightly and the door clicked shut behind him. She could've asked him to amputate his arm, and he would have done it. The fact was only slightly disconcerting, but he figured that damn, he was so hot for her, had been for a while because he figured that all the pink had to stand for something, that he would have gladly done anything she'd asked him to.

His steps were slow, and though he raged inside, to get to her, his movements were level and inhaled deeper to try and assuage his madness. He shrugged out of his gray wool Pringles blazer, a look of annoyance briefly flickering across his face after because he was dressed in a sweater underneath, a shirt beneath that, and those annoying man denim pants that manly clung to his manly figure in a manly way. He wished he had known she was waiting for him, because then he would have stripped off his clothes all the way from the Common Room, up the stars and from the hallway. The blazer rested hooked on a chaise lounge or a vanity or something, but he was finding that it took a lot of effort to care about things other than the girl at the edge of his sheets; she was like every bad thing he had given up, and more than all the sub par remedies he had picked up.

To his credit, he didn't glance anywhere below her neckline; except that he had exceptional eye coordination, and therefore was able to admire her whole image. Fingers took a hold of the cigarette joint and the end glowed brightly for the seconds that he sucked in, before he took it away to linger limply somewhere past his waist; oh yeah, the things he wanted to do now. Smoke trickled out of the side of his mouth as he stood before her, and his free hand came to trace the curve of lace and trail up her chest to her collar, and he tugged on a lock of pink hair.
"Today's my birthday," he told her in his chain-smoker voice. His dancing eyes were visible from the distance that separated them, and he stared at her intently, raising the cigarette to his lips again, a drag and they removed, and he exhaled.
"What are you going to do to me?"

[· Rebel La'Beau.]

Rebel wore her mask well, cool indifference and dark temptress with heated gold eyes and demure smirk as Duke slid across the dorm room toward her. She sat with her hands folded languidly in her lap, legs crossed like some space-age, all-knowing Hindu god with the sheet pulled around her legs like a skirt, as if to conserve some modesty; when in reality she was just cold. Her gaze followed his blazer as he shook out of it, and her pout deepened as her eyes fell back on the boy and all his ridiculous layers and clothes and sweaters; damn him, she thought rather suddenly, because she has made it all terribly easy on him.

She broke as he touched her, her mask fading, her charade forgotten as his hand skirted along her skin, and she did her best not to inhale too sharply. He tugged on her curl and her smile was almost genuine, but instead of giving the expression any time to bloom, the girl caught his hand at her shoulder, biting her lip in between words.

“I know,” ever arrogant, “Happy Birthday.”
And her voice had softened, afraid to shatter the small space between them if she spoke too loud, afraid to ruin this, to let anyone in on their secret. In truth, Rebel was terrified of all things, but the recklessness of this calmed her, and so she tugged on his hand, pulling him toward her with an expression caught between mirth and something much darker. She sat up straight, her spine a perfect column as she reached up and hooked her index finger in the collar of his sweater, pulling his smirk to hers as she chose to answer his question with a kiss instead.

[Duke Bell.]

In his smoke hazed mind, Duke felt like giggling. There wasn't any particular reason for it, none that he was certain of anyway, but that the thought that he was going to get lucky, maybe finally, was just damn hilarious for some reason.

He loved her voice, almost as much as he loved her hair; it was enigmatic, a smoker's voice, and the voice of someone who didn't give a fuck and lived life by the hinges. He liked that; it reminded him of himself, and sometimes, he hoped to dream that one day, he could infuse a little bit more than just apathy and lust in himself, like she had. His hand curled around the back of her neck, and he kissed her back, and odd smile curving his lips even as he did so. Rebel was so pretty, he had to be making this up. Duke pulled on her bottom lip, and then trailed wet kisses along her light rouge set, to her jaw and bit there; okay, she was real, and then he drifted away, self-depreciating humor in his eyes and soft, unspoken laughter escaping from his Rebel-tinged mouth.

Shifting a bit, and looking like he had trouble doing it anyway, he leaned over to rest his joint on the bedside table. This act struck him as being insanely funny, and he erupted into the giggles he had tried to repress before. There was a smile on his face when he looked at her, and it did seem that all his widest and most sincere smiles were reserved for her. He thought about skipping class with her, an arm over her shoulder or around her waist, his most charismatic smile for her, stolen kisses in the corridors and broom closets until she would leave him a little bit more unstable than he already had been. His expression faded, but the brightness of his eyes remained the same; and then he was kneeling before her, wondrous hands brushing aside the sheets, and then smoothing them up her thighs traitorously slow, until he was wrapped around her waist, head bowed.
"I'm dreaming," he said aloud, no trace of his previous amusement or nonchalance, "I'm passed out somewhere, someone slipped me acid and I'm dreaming."

But for all his disbelief, he pressed a kiss on the inside of her skin and then buried his face in her lap.
"Why are you here?"

[· Rebel La'Beau.]

Rebel kissed him with all sorts of intents and promises, needing this more than she was ready to let on. Her stomach was buzzing from the drink and something else much more profound, and as he trailed across her neck, she dared to let her eyes fall closed, heavy, charcoal lashes contrasted against ivory skin as he finally broke away from her. Her feline eyes followed his motions as he set the joint aside only to break into giggles, his sudden fit bringing a rather uncharacteristic smile to her rouge lips. He was ridiculous, and all sorts of absurd, backwards and missing pieces, but wonderful nonetheless, and as he tugged away the sheet and curled up against her, the smile stayed in place.

She skirted around his mention of drugs, vehemently ignoring the way her body pulled toward all things disorienting and illegal. She hadn’t seen acid in months, not even mushrooms, and even though the underworld and it’s wares were exactly the thing that got her sent away to this positively dreadful town in the first place, she still loved them, and it was hard to keep her mind from spinning off into distracting directions.

“You ask a lot of questions,” she finally answered, forcing herself back to reality, to this place where her feet were planted and there was a remarkable, gorgeous boy curled around her; and once she started to play with his hair idly, her eyes wandering lazily around his frame with little reserve, it was suddenly hard to think of anything else. “Why can‘t you just accept something for what it is?” Tucking away an errant curl, she leaned back on one arm, her other hand still tangled in his hair as she wore all the mischief in her smile.

"I'm here because I want to be," because Rebel choose the simplest terms, because that was exactly how she lived, with much impulse and little explanation.

[Duke Bell.]

He could never guess why he liked her so much, or the chase of her anyway, because he hurried then to remind himself that Duke Bell didn't like anybody. He supposed though, that if he had to list some of the things he did like about her, one of them would be that she was always so much saner than him. Not by much, certainly, but still always in touch with a sense that was greater than any he had ever possessed. He figured this to be because Rebel always held an air of deep wisdom; like she knew better than him. When she asked him, or told him off, it was hard to tell since he was half playing to his ultimate fantasies at the same time; when she asked him why he was being so insufferably talkative, but not in so many words, he had paused and had actually thought about it. He had an answer for her, of course, but was hard pressed to speak because she was right.

She was too good to be true; that was the first thought that came to mind. How many times had he tried to sleep with her, convince her to come to his bed and just, well, fuck, but she had smiled at him, all coquettish like and then left him with pink stains all over his lips and neck; a lot of times, he was definitely sure of. The other, was that nothing came without a price, and it sure as hell never lasted; he was counting the minutes till she left him again, that, or he was half expecting her to propose unbearable terms until he could finally see her naked. But he told her none of this, and took another long and silent moment to consider her last words.

"I can live with that," he told her, for once just conceding, and he leaned forward and pressed quite the chaste kiss against her stomach, and then, mischievous or just insane, he pushed against her, hands deep in the mattress and the rest of him moving until she fell back and he found himself above; oh, the convenience was killing him.

[· Rebel La'Beau.]

Rebel, who had been thinking about a torrent of things, suddenly found herself dropped into a secure, comfortable haze of absolutely nothing and white noise as he pushed her back against the mattress, leaving her tangled backwards in sheets and a wayward pillow and him, all Duke and his bemused smirk, his kisses and cologne and the mess they had created here between them. She found herself thinking then, how this was still such a dreadful place, but how much more terrible it would have been without Duke Bell. He was an idiot, but of the most clever kind, and even though she would never admit such a thing, certainly not to him, her days without him were always worse than they days with - the afternoons where they should have been in class, but ended up twisted in a forgotten broom closet or drinking stolen Rum out by the lake while he tried to convince her up to his room.

They made absolutely no sense at all, as with most things in her life, and while she was afraid that giving in, that surrendering the games would cause them to end altogether, she pressed forward despite, wanting this more than that, and now more that later.

Propping herself up on her elbows and bringing their grins close enough that she could feel the current burning between them, Rebel raised one of her long legs from the edge of the bed, bent at the knee and pressed against his side as she finally tipped her chin up to steal another smirking kiss.

[Duke Bell.]

While Duke was very curious to discover whether Rebel really was pink everywhere, he knew he couldn't, yet, because it was just too seedy and very distasteful for their first make-out-session-and-more on his bed. With a level of restraint he didn't know he possessed while under the influence of a little drink and a little smoke, his hand came to rest lightly on her hip and he kissed her back fiercely, positively devouring that annoying smirk she seemed to constantly wear.

Living forever didn't bother Duke. He would miss Judas terribly, of course, and he would be sad to see all his brothers and sisters die, but he highly doubted that he would ever have a family of his own; even then, it was likely that his children, at least, would develop the same gift that he had and those awful buggers would live just as long as him. No, he had in his mind an awesome picture; Duke Bell, Global. Upon Judas' death, and then the deaths of everybody else, he would inherit everything, and to top it off, he would stay this young looking for a very, very long time. His gift was perhaps the most ideal, for someone like him. He could smoke as much as he wanted and would never develop cancer, and he could even drink away his days and nights if he wanted to. But in that moment, for all its grandeur, he wished that he could have had something more practical up his sleeve, like losing any article of clothing at will. Rebel was so warm under him, her skin smooth as he slid his hand along her curves, to the crook of her knee and he pressed into her, ardent.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.
"Rebel," he managed to murmur, though it was more of a needy and guttural groan; he was dying. His lips found an indent on her neck, teeth trailing then sinking lightly; tiny, red love bites all along her skin until he was breathing heavily somewhere near her shoulder and chest.
"Fuck," he cursed, for no apparent reason other than the fact that he was still fully clothed and he hated it. He rolled over, eyes clenched shut and then staring unseeing up into the ceiling.

[· Rebel La'Beau.]

Duke was a great clash of things both wonderful and terrible, with a contagious or perhaps even addicting twist, but for all his sour, Rebel would have to admit that he had never tasted sweeter. Her back arched, curved against him in a vain attempt to dissipate any and all space left between them, to sear the two of them together, if only temporarily. His movements left her dizzy and she found that her name sounded much better when spoken from his mouth than of anyone elses - and yet that could of had something to do with the things he was saying, instead of his words.

Duke rolled over, causing a chill to wash over her bare skin as she sat up, tucking away another errant valentine curl before looking at the boy beside her with her chin set squarely on her shoulder. His curse words brought a sly smile to her lips, the joke unavoidable.

"Yes, well, that is the general idea." Rebel, who was feeling too bare for comfort and too clothed for her own taste, scooted over, straddling the frustrated boy now, her hands creeping somewhere along his waistline. "But you're wearing entirely too many clothes for that." Her fingers dipped below his pants line as she curled her hands around the waist of his jeans, wearing not much by comparison - just her deadly lingerie and that secretive smirk, and of course, all those waves of pink.

[Duke Bell.]

He would contest to anyone who ever said he didn't know how to appreciate the finer moments in life. There, in that instance, with Rebel sitting on him, her fingers nimble against fabric and denim and skin, he had a fleeting thought, maybe a realization, that it was all wonderful. The haze in his mind, the constant allure of smoke and drink, lifted and he was taken by something striking, inspiring; Duke wondered if he could admit that he wrote songs about her.

The erratic rhythm of his heart continued; he felt electrified, and the ability to swallow, to breathe and to function seemed to have left him. He suspected that it was only the thought of something much more profound, her, that made him continue. Steady, maybe harder than it should have been, hands on the handles of her hips helped him sit up and the sudden friction had his expression contract and him bite his lip to keep from making any noise. The innate sense to push, to remove the cause of discomfort warred with the desire to pull her closer, to crush her, to be crushed, and Duke was rigid for a breath, two breaths; staring into that gold gaze, mesmerized.

He leaned back, which wasn't anything but a fraction of space between them, hands moved to brush her, fingers coiling behind his neck and he tugged, the back of him riding up, and he was afraid for one short moment that everything was going to escape him. Predictably, his hair was on end and he got caught at the arms. Duke was impatient, or just didn't care really, and half of his sweater became inside out and he threw it into some dark refuge of his room.

"Okay," he breathed after, entranced, again. Hands found her hips again and he fought not to make her ride against him;
"your turn."

[· Rebel La'Beau.]

Rebel's eyes stayed trained on Duke's as he shifted, fearing that somehow something would break, shatter, if she glanced somewhere else, that she would lose something if she dared look away. They had evolved into a much more refined, and yet still wildly coarse version of themselves over time, and she was still searching his face for signs of the transformation.

It wasn't about words anymore. Though, truthfully it hadn't ever been about speaking save for how she suspected that he secretly found her accent to be terribly appealing. It had really been about subtle glances and unspoken needs, about push pull and press - a dance about all the things they could never be and how they had settled.

Her hands skirted along his ribs, tracing a path along his sides as her hips buzzed beneath his touch. Somewhere just past his lips, in the heated space between them she could smell his smoke, stale now, and the sting of Tequila lingered on her breath and in the hanging air, as well something much sweeter too.

"À votre aise," her smile was dangerous, as complaisant as her words, copacetic. Arms wrapped carefully around his neck, Rebel ducked her head to kiss him and shifted so one hand was resting somewhere near his throat and the other was curled impressively behind her, fingers snapping around the dark clasp that was stretched against her spine, digging into the delicate spot of skin between her shoulder blades.

After she had undone the blasted thing, Rebel dropped her hands, setting them over over Duke's and guiding them up her curves, leaving then curled around the top of her ribcage so that he could remove the 'ridiculously frilly itchy piece of shit' from her shoulders.