you're too young & eager to love

Working my way through the warm-up prompts! 2 out of 3.

There is a 2012 (wow!) piece that references Ita approaching Chason with her plan. I like to think this happens before that, so it could be "canon" as their first official meeting/exchange of words.

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“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.” – Pablo Neruda




She is cold cream, her lithe and elegant form a pale slice of delicacy amongst the stink and riot of the holding cells. She could not look more out of place in her flaxen silks and gossamer skirts—as insubstantial as air, the way the fabric seems to float around her, like spider-silk. Even in the sparse light between the cells, he can see the tight rope of pearls around her neck, their iridescent shine the luster of the affluent. He thinks there are tiny ones in her ears, too, and even some strung throughout her long hair—hair as pale as her skin, so blonde that it’s nearly white. A prized possession, Chason understands. One of the companion types, undoubtedly. The kind he’d heard of while running from the Vries’ men, the kind even drifter towns had rumors about.

The woman is barefoot. It’s a stupid choice. The floors here stink of antiseptic and harsh cleaning chemicals, but the gore is unavoidable all the same. The cell beside him holds a coyote so mangled that the poor creature can’t retain its human form; it’s panting, whining, with sickly froth at its mouth and the stink of death on its bloodied fur. The one behind him holds a woman with dull, medicated eyes and limp, greasy hair—she’s shuffling slowly, back and forth, over the 6 by 8 space, dragging her feet all the while, and she’s so dirty with a mix of her own feces and the grit of the fighting pit that he can hardly see the color of her skin beneath the filth. He’s been here almost three weeks himself. They haven’t hosed him down since his initial intake processing, so he knows he’s only adding to the grime of the place.

She makes her way slowly towards him, minding the shadows, and pausing to watch the rotation of the security cameras. He thinks she might be counting under her breath.

Chason sits on the metal bench in his cell, his elbows on his knees, waiting, curious. He can feel the sweat on the back of his neck and the grease in his hair when he pushes a hand through it. His jaw is thick with stubble, and for some reason he thinks of how it might scratch the woman’s skin if she’d only circle those clean arms around his neck.

She takes such small steps, such careful steps, walking mostly on the tips of her toes. It’s her feet he’s looking at when she comes to stop in front of his cell. He’s surprised her toes aren’t polished, but then neither are her fingernails, which he notices when her hands grasp the cell bars. No dirt there, not under those nails. Not like his own. No callouses either, from what he can guess. She must yield as softly as butter. Her bones must be thin.

When he lifts his eyes to her face, she’s watching him with frank nervousness. He laughs at her then, a harsh, rocks-in-a-tin-can sound, and he might as well have slapped her across one of her high cheekbones.

“What do you have to look nervous about, pet? You’re on the other side of the bars,” Chason says, the humor thick in his voice.

A flush of color hits her cheeks. It’s a pretty blush, not blotchy like some women’s, and he’s aware of the way it spreads down her long neck. “Why is that funny?” she asks, her pale brows drawing together, her fingers tightening on the cold bars.

“It isn’t,” he says, the laughter still there, threatening to spill between his teeth. “What’s a prize like you doing down here? What do you want?”

She has very blue eyes, and he thinks there must be some grit in her after all when she keeps his gaze, but he can smell the anxiety on her as easily as he can smell the perfume and oils. Somebody took care of this one. Somebody washed her hair and scented her baths and pampered her skin. He wouldn’t be surprised if that scent was between her thighs too, dabbed there by an attendant’s careful hand, and between her high breasts and across her sharp collarbones. Again, Chason realizes that she is so absurdly out of place that the laughter tears out of him, but it’s low and throaty and much like the sounds his animal could make.

“I’m Ita,” she says.

He pushes his hair out of his face again and leans forward more, his elbows sharp against his thighs. His hands dangle between his knees. He’s unimpressed by her admission.

When he doesn’t speak, she hurries onward, her words knocking into each other like stones. “I am … I belong to … Harrow Vries is my … I’m trying to say that-”

“Is this what he does then? Sends his pet down here to find another addition for the night’s enjoyments? I’ll bite. What’s that arrangement get us curs? A steak dinner? A hot shower? A night with the pet in a clean bed while the master watches? Go on, sing your tune.”

“It-it isn’t like that,” she says, her voice so soft that he has to strain to hear over the din of sounds around them. “You wouldn’t want a night with him even if it was.”

“Oh no?” Chason sneers, his face split by the sharpness of the expression. “It must be awful up there with your golden pillows.”

Again, she looks hurt, but he doesn’t know what this stranger expected. Something about her expression annoys him. He doesn’t have it in him to care about her feelings, not now, not when he’s still aching. He’s hurt—he’s been hurting, he can feel it on his insides, a sharp pain along his ribs that’s taking too long to stitch back together and heal. He’d fought once as part of the intaking process, a brutal and bloodthirsty and confusing initiation that had ended with his teeth tearing a shaggy wolf’s jugular. The savagery of it and the victorious, cackling whoops of his beast afterwards had earned him a red-tagged identification in his folder and on his cell. He sees it as a badge of courage, but that bravery has worn off now and he feels raw. Raw from the loss of his pack, from the containment within these iron bars, from the pain that permeates the air around him, from the cruelty of man. He can’t carry her pain alongside his, not when she’s so far removed from his brutal reality. So Chason lunges. It’s a sudden quick movement, the kind feral mongrels make, and Ita stumbles back even though he turns the lunge into an angry pace before he hits the bars. He’s sucked the air from her lungs all the same, and the fear only makes her body flush more. That gives him some satisfaction.

“You’re angry,” she says after she’s caught her breath, “and you’re strong. There’s a storm coming, and I need–” A sound to her right down the hall makes her stop, makes her turn her head. She’s as still as a statue then before flicking her eyes to the security camera. When she speaks again, her voice is even lower, a shiver of silk across stone. “I have to go. The patrol will be back soon.”

“Wait.”

She’s stepped back some, away from the cell, but she hesitates.

“A storm?”

“I can’t explain now. Tomorrow. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

It’s his turn to grab the bars now. He presses his face to them, peering at her.

“Wait,” he says again, and again she hesitates. “Why are you barefoot?”

The question makes her smile. It’s a shy and small turn of her lips, like her mouth is unfamiliar with forming the expression. “I am only permitted heels or nothing, and the heels make noise.”

When she turns to leave, he grabs her. His rough hand catches her wrist, and he pulls her back a step. He can feel her pulse jump, and he loosens his grip on instinct. “Chason. My name is Chason.”

“I know.” She smiles again, the same soft smile, and when she pulls free from his grasp it is not unkindly.

He watches her turn into a ghost then, her pale form disappearing amongst the darkness, silent except for the sounds of her dress. When he lifts his palm to his nose, he smells her there against his fingers—a woodsy, clean water scent that makes the animal inside of him keen.