She tried very hard not to look at him

She tried very hard not to look at him. A tendril of curiosity lifted its ugly spike up at him and Threxin, following it, reached a finger up to catch its sharp tip beneath her chin. He held her there, threatening the fragile skin so that she could not move. Then gently, gently, he pressed until she could do nothing but lift her face beneath the spike of his fingertip.

Her eyes remained down even as her chin lifted, thick lashes splayed over fleshy cheek-mounds, but eventually with a confused and—amusingly—angry look she flicked them up to his and that’s when he tried his experiment, capturing her attention before she could escape again.

It was pure instinct, really, how he went about it. It didn’t work on his own kind, of course. He'd only heard legends. He'd never tried, considering there had been no one to try on. But something inside Threxin's ribs guided him. His attention first unfocused, fuzzing at the edges as he fell into the brown-green of the female’s confused gaze, and then oscillated back, making the circle of his vision precise as a laser-guided needle honing in on its mark.

He almost startled out of it when he saw the black of her pupils expand so suddenly. All at once, in nothing but a blink, the green-brown iris was no longer there and all that was left were two black voids, inviting him to claw inside them and see what was to be found.

Something warm slid down his finger and he registered vaguely that it had to be blood. It took Threxin a few confused ticks to validate that he had indeed not moved to pierce her. Instead it was her leaning forward, dragging the underside of her own chin along the sharp peak of his finger until blood slid to his knuckle. Forward, forward, those black pupils came closer as the human was the one that fell after all.

White heat flashed in Threxin's eye sockets, clattering against his skull and tearing him away in a blinding flash. He jerked back, then jerked again as the sharp movement drew more pain from his chest wound.

"Shoq," he swore, slamming the heel of his palm to his forehead.

"Shit," she mirrored.