#HOLLERING CRYING WAILING

[canonically47]

how do people hate calepriya it's literally "she falls first he falls harder" "sunshine x sunshine" "guy who looks scary but would never hurt you x girl who looks like she would never hurt you but would" GUYS WAKE UP!!!!!!!

[saltpepperbeard]

Y'ALL

FUCK

IT IS LUCIUS

IT IS IT IS IT IS

LOOK AT THE FINGER

[azurexsnake]

whenever you're away for too long vash sprays your favourite perfume on the inside of his wrist, and smells it while his heart throbs. missing you so much, your scent comforting him🫶🏻

THE WAY YOU JUST MADE MY HEART STOP!!!

[toastybugguy]

i know i’ve done a hard day’s work when i put up some new art and all the tags sound like a horde of rabid squirrels hopped up on amphetamines, a venti iced coffee and a dream

[the-kinning-hour]

Ok now where are the ao3 authors that will rewrite the entire last arc of the my hero manga 😋 I know you’re lurking somewhere

[welcometothejianghu]

We! Rate! Eunuchs!

Sure, we all love eunuchs. But have you ever found yourself with an emptiness in your heart because you were unable to objectively measure your eunuchs? Well, now you can! Thanks to our handy Eunuch Measuring Scale, you can visualize your eunuchs and even see how they stack up against other eunuchs. Enjoy this handy demonstration of how it works!

The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty

Sleuth's eunuchs are absolutely unmatched in the complexity and fuckability departments, and also get full schemesy marks. Their style is sharp but not particularly varied, and while they do call on their beloved emperor, they don't particularly get a good solid holler going about it. Still, Sleuth's little meow meow eunuchs are high-quality, top-of-the-line eunuchs, practically the industry standard.

The Blood of Youth

Imagine -- eunuchs that not only have stunning outfits of their own, but that coordinate with their coworkers! Hats with architecture that defies logic! It's the style score that makes the Blood of Youth's eunuchs truly stand out. While they are admittedly less fully realized than their Sleuth counterparts, one must chalk this slight deficiency up to how difficult it is to get any screen time in a show with eight billion other characters. They're still full of schemesy goodness, though, leaving you always wanting more.

Nirvana in Fire

Nirvana in Fire presents a special eunuch challenge, as there's only really one eunuch to speak of: Gao Zhan, the emperor's loyal attendant. While his primary function in the show is to feign ignorance so he doesn't get into trouble, he can fretfully wail for his head of state like none other. It's tough to singlehandedly bear the responsibility of all eunuch represenation in a property, but Gao Zhan performs admirably in all areas an emperor could desire.

Story of Yanxi Palace

In contrast to Nirvana in Fire, Yanxi Palace has a substantial number of eunuchs, and every one of them is absolutely plotting something at all times. While the sex appeal of these identically dressed eunuchs is on average low, Yuan Chunwang brings the fuckable score up single-handedly by being the rare canonically fuckable eunuch. Note that the Yanxi Palace eunuchs lose a few points on a technicality: By the time they're around, the emperor is a huángshàng, not a bìxià, and it's much more difficult to get a good mournful cry going when you can't exploit the natural trajectory of two falling tones in a row.

Sleep better at night knowing you can now objectively measure your eunuchs along these six important axes! I know I will!

Eunuch Measuring Scale: because dudes gotta measure something

[twizzie-lairs]

My Darling, My Honey

Alastor X Fem!Reader (Part 10)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 |

Part 9 | Part 10

Part 10:

Your head felt like it was splitting, you could feel your brain pounding against the outside of your skull.

"Ah shit... everything fucking hurts...." you can barely whisper out loud due to your dried-up throat.

You clear your throat and open your eyes, to your surprise, you weren't left for dead on the street.

Instead, you see two girls hovering over you. One held your hand clasped in theirs, and the other had a spear pointed at your throat.

"Oh my gosh, you're awake! Finally!" The girl holding your hand said, leaning closer to your face. The girl with the spear and an 'X' over one of her eyes squinted at you and nudged the blonde girl back with her spear, "Who are you, and why shouldn't I kill you?"

You try to sit up, but the spear gets shoved closer to your throat before you can move. You sigh, "My name is (y/n). I don't want to hurt anyone. I just... I need help..."

Your answer earns a glare from the girl with the spear, but the blonde girl just nudges her with her elbow, "See, Vaggie? I told you!"

The blonde takes both of your hands in hers, "Hi (y/n), I'm Charlie! Charlie Morningstar and you're at the Hazbin Hotel! We aim to help rehabilitate sinners and offer them a chance at redemption to go to Heaven!"

The girl you now know whose name is Vaggie glares at you, "Are you even interested in redemption?"

You look at both of the girls, "I... I don't know. I'm not so sure but... I don't have anywhere to go and I need help finding someone.." You trail off as you start getting teary-eyed thinking about your love, Alastor.

Seeing you near tears clearly startled Chalie and Vaggie, it wasn't a response they were used to when asking sinners to stay at the hotel.

Vaggie set down the spear, deciding that you clearly weren't a threat. She could see the look in your eyes, one she knew very well- love. Meanwhile, Charlie is sniffling and getting teary-eyed right along with you, "Oh my gosh, we will do everything we can to help you find that person! Who are they, how can we help?"

You look up at the ceiling and then look at Charlie with a weak smile, "The love of my life... I miss him so dearly... I know he has to be here in Hell too." You chuckle lovingly, knowing he'd forgive you if he ever found out you said that out loud.

The floodgates were blown wide open and Charlie started sobbing and wailing, "Vaggieeeee, VAAAGGIEEEEEEE, th-they! They're looking for their LOOOOVEEEEEEEE. IT'S SO BEAUTIFULLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!"

Vaggie walked over to Charlie and scooped her up, giving you a gentle smile, "Hey... (y/n), sorry about threatening you earlier... I gotta take Miss Princess and calm her down, and then inform the other residents of a new arrival. But if you need anything, just give us a holler, okay? You're still healing so... take it easy."

You nod as a smile tugs at the corners of your lips, "It's okay... No offense taken... Thank you Vaggie, and thank you Charlie, for agreeing to help me.."

All you hear as Charlie is carried away is the sounds of wailing and crying muffled sounds over the words, "SHE'S HERE FOR LOVE... WAAAHHHHHH, IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL VAGGIEEE!!!!"

You try to sit up again, this time, no spear to bar you from trying to move this time. Your body groans in protest, though it doesn't hurt nearly as much as before, but as you assess the condition of your body, you notice you have bandages all over you. They must have been treating you while you were unconscious.

"Such sweet girls... they didn't even know me, yet they saved my life.... I need to remember to thank them again later.."

Very slowly, you swing your legs over the side of the bed and with a bit of effort, bring yourself to your feet. Hands holding yourself against the wall, you make your way over to what you assumed would become your bathroom during your stay here.

Your hands grip the sink as you look in the mirror when a small doubt enters your brain. You didn't look completely the same as you did when you were alive, which meant you had no idea if Alastor was even going to recognize you. Perhaps he even forgot about you... since it's been so many decades since you've been in Hell. Hell, you weren't sure you were even going to be able to recognize him...

"Enough of this... I'm sure he'll remember me.. he has to..." you whisper to yourself in the mirror as a crooked but tear-stained smile graces your hell-altered face.

After washing up your reddened face from all the tears, you made your way back to your bed. A deep sigh left your body as you plopped down gently on the bed.

Though you can't help but feel restless, as you sit there, just thoughts consuming your head.

In as bad of a shape as you might be, walking around even just a little bit helped you regain a little bit of strength, so you decided to make yourself decent after you had discovered that there was a change of clean clothes for you in dresser in the corner of the room.

Looking at yourself in the full body mirror on the back of the bathroom door, you smiled because it felt good to not look like a hot garbage fire- even though you could still see most of the bandages, at least you weren't all tattered and visibly bloody anymore!

Another deep sigh left your lips yet again, though this one was filled with determination. You turn the handle on the door and exit your room.

In your head, you thanked whoever built this hotel because you were so thankful that there were railings or some type of furnishing to hold onto whenever you felt yourself getting wobbly.

You didn't know where Charlie or Vaggie, or where any of the staff or other residents could be, hell, you didn't even know where the lobby was!

But on that last note, as you wandered around and regained some strength in your legs, you started to have an idea of where the lobby was located because you started to see more light and heard some voices talking.

Might as well go introduce yourself, right? No time better than the present to start making introductions, even if you still felt a little bit like shit still. You felt even shittier just laying around, you felt like if you weren't on the go constantly- you'd never make any headway on finding Alastor.

So there you were, slowly descending the stairs to the lobby when you heard Charlie call out your name, " (y/n)! Oh my gosh, you shouldn't even be up right now! Are you feeling okay??"

A weak smile creeps up on your face as you start to feel embarrassed that Charlie is fawning all over you in front of what seems to be her friends.

You chuckle, "Yeah, haha, just feeling kinda restless and thought i'd introduce myself is all!"

Charlie gently takes your hand and pulls you over to the rest of the group that had been chatting while seated on various sofas and armchairs that were centered around a coffee table- no TV's in sight, just a single radio perched on top of the mantle in this living room/lobby hybrid space.

"Guys! I am honored to introduce you to the newest guest to the Hazbin Hotel, this is (y/n)!!"

"Nice to meet cha, the name's Husk, the bartender."

"Hey there toots, bet ya look mighty fine underneath those bandages. Better not give me a run for my money as most gorgeous resident! Oh yeah, the name's Angel Dust, by the way."

"Hi, i'm Nifty! Nice to- BLEGH, you're a woman! Ew!" Nifty said before cackling as she scuttled away to stab some bugs nearby.

"Well, you already know me and Charlie," Vaggie said as she patted you on the shoulder gently.

"It looks like the only one who isn't here is Alastor. Shouldn't he be back soon?" Charlie said as she pulled out her phone to check the time.

To her, that seemed like such a mundane and normal sentence. But to you, it felt like time stopped and you froze upon hearing his name.

Alastor.

Alastor... here?

-> Part 11

[accioscarheadthings]

Oooo Kenji Sato x a curvy girlfriend please? I wanna see how emi and kenji are upset and “arguing” who’s turn to cuddle the reader while she and professor Sato are eating snacks

heree youu go, hon. sorry abt the wait. enjoyy<33

She's mine

kenji sato x curvy!fem!reader

this contains: fluff, cuddling, silly banters.

summary: kenji amd emi quarrel for your attention.

masterlist !

"you think they'd stop this nonsense anytime soon?" professor sato asked you, pushing the box of donuts towards you.

you picked one with the strawberry filling, "highly unlikely," you bit into it, watching the drama unfold in front of you with professor sato.

kenji and emi arguing by the workplace, voices raised and hands moving around exaggeratedly.

kenji's finger was pointed directly at emi as she adamantly flailed her arms in response. her face was drawn down in distress, clearly feeling frustrated and unheeded by his stern demeanor.

"you had her last week!" kenji argued, "now, it's my turn,"

emi squealed in protest, flopping down on the ground with a cry.

"oh really? you think you can have her by throwing a fit?! not gonna happen, princess,"

you rolled your eyes at the scene, lips tugging upwards in amusement.

"no can do, missy!" kenji hollered at the kaiju baby, "she's mine. i got her first! you came around like what, a few weeks ago?" he pretended to think, "get in line, young woman!" he jabbed a thumb behind his back.

growling in frustration, emi sent a ray of sound waves his way. kenji barely dodged it at the nick of time, gaping up at emi. at the nerve to do so.

"this is so stupid," you face-palmed, sliding off the chair from professor sato's side and headed towards the children's quarrel.

"okay kids," you got in between them, speaking sternly, "mommy's here. behave yourself-" you yelped when you were pulled into kenji's arms, made to stand in front of him.

emi pouted, making grabby hands at you, cooing in need.

kenji pulled you into him in such a way your back was flush with his chest, "i don't even need to argue or explain myself to you whatsoever, emi," his palms splayed on your love handles, holding you possessively, "she's mine," he kissed your neck possessively, making your squirm in place, his fingers curling on your soft skin of your stomach.

emi's cheeks wobbled her and shoulders sagged in defeat, assuming you had picked him over her.

her cheeks wobbled and emi wailed loudly, kicking her legs on front of her.

he scoffed at her, "you think she's gonna coddle you- honey, don't coddle her," kenji uttered to you when you slipped out of his arms and headed towards emi.

you strode towards her, climbing the high-rise stool and sat cross-legged on it, "my poor baby, c'mere," you cooed at her, stretching your arms put in front of you, "s'okay, my love,"

"i thought i was your love," kenji mumbled lowly, ducking his head. but you heard it.

you shot him a stern glare that spoke 'not now, kenji,"

your boyfriend groaned loudly, stomping over to his father's side and sat on your seat. he grabbed a donut, stuffing his face to cope up with the annoyance that was bubbling in him.

"shh, shh, i'm right here," you hands spread on her cheeks when she leaned towards you. you pressed a loud smooch to her orange beak, making her sobs stop instantly.

kenji rolled his eyes, "cheap trick-ow!"

professor sato hit his son at the back of his son with his cane, "get it together!"

you had cuddled emi to sleep, her arm slung over your lap. you brushed your palms on her round cheeks to ease her into sleep.

you carefully slipped out, heading towards the corner of the basement where kenji was making his daily coffee.

he heard you approach and looked at you over his shoulder, letting out a sigh of relief, "can i have you to myself now?"

you gave him a nose-scrunched smile, arms held wide for him.

kenji rushed into your awaiting arms, pulling you into him. his face burying into the crook of your neck, "finally, all mine,"

you slipped your hands into the hair at the back of his neck, "you need to grow up,"

you stilled when you felt him kiss your jaw, muttering desperately, "missed you so much, baby. you have no idea," he huffed into your chest like a needy child, clinging onto you.

he sat on the couch behind, pulling you on his lap. his hands were at the back of your thighs, making you straddle him.

his fingers squeezed your thighs, as though to make sure you were actually with him

"kenji...?" you rested your hands on his shoulders, your tone questioning.

"shush, sweetheart," kenji silenced you with a kiss to your lips. your chest against his, both hearts beating in sync, "you're not going anywhere. and m'not gonna lose you to a kaiju baby, for god sakes,"

[miiroki]

𝘿𝙖𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙣 𝙏𝙖𝙧𝙜𝙖𝙧𝙮𝙚𝙣 & 𝙣𝙞𝙚𝙘𝙚! 𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧/𝙤𝙘

𝘐𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦, 𝘢 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺. 𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘦𝘭𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥'𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘴𝘩 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘦, 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥��� 𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯?

Warning: targcest, (niece and uncle) 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

one: ✶ two: ✶

It was in the wee mornings on a warm day that Prince Daemon Targaryen, Prince of the City, had been forced to partake in breaking fast with his family.

Consisting of his father Prince Baelon the Brave, his mother Alyssa Targaryen, his elder brother Prince Viserys, and his lady-wife, Aemma Arryn.

For a young prince of merely 16 name days old, Daemons world was small, and only consisted of his family, sword fighting, and Caraxes. His thoughts of marriage and husbandly duties were of no importance to him, and held no precedence in his mind.

Daemon walked the bustling halls of the Red Keep, his head held high as the servants, guards, and common men alike showed respect by bowing slightly to the young boy.

Reaching the dining room, he was welcomed with the smell of warm food, his mother calling out to him and patting the seat next to her.

Daemon quickly situated himself, readying his stomach for the food and quickly pounced on the meat pies across the table, slightly splashing Viserys’ beige tunic.

—

The day seemed to drag on for far to long. It was late into the afternoon that Daemon was made aware that he was now an uncle to two Targaryen babes.

The news had him running to the birthing chambers, where his brother and his wife sat, cooing at the whining twin girls.

Feeling awkward, Daemon stood rigid near the entrance of the large room.

“Brother, come. Would you like to see them” Viserys had hollered. If Daemon didn’t know any better he would have guessed that Viserys himself birthed the babes, he looked even more elated than Aemma did, which was hard to achieve.

Daemon shuffled quietly near the couple, and peered down at the babes. He couldn’t help but poke the cheek of the one in Viserys’ arms.

“Be gentle Daemon” Viserys somewhat scolded him.

Before Daemon could retreat his finger, the babe had grasped it with both her tiny hands, babbling quietly.

When Daemon broke free from her grasp, she started to wail, and wail she did. So he quickly extended his finger to satiate the crying newborn.

Viserys and Aemma let out a shared chuckle, before offering the babe for Daemon to hold.

“What if I drop it” He whispered.

“It is not an ‘it’ brother, her name will be Rhaella” Viserys stated while softly stroking the girls head, “and the youngest will be Rhaenyra”

Daemon reluctantly held the babe awkwardly in his arms, adjusting to fit to the curve of the squirming girl.

Once settled Rhaella quickly found comfort in her uncles arms, and fell asleep, chest slowly falling up and down. Daemon kept his eyes on her, and his gaze never faltered. He wasn’t much for babies and children, but he knew he’d adore his new niece.

Aemma giggled from her position of the bed, “Rhaella seems to be quite fond of her uncle already” she rocked the sleeping Rhaenyra calmly. “Let’s hope young Rhaenyra will feel the same way”

—

“Rhaella, come out!” A man’s voice had echoed in the gardens of the Red Keep, situated behind the throne room.

Daemon was now 1 and 20, while his darling niece was only a mere 5 name days old. She was currently playing with him by hiding in the palace bushes, that littered the gardens of the Red Keep.

“I’m coming to get you…” Daemon said tauntingly, knowing that Rhaella can hear him well thanks to her frenzied giggles, that bounced off the stone walls.

Daemon slowly stalked deeper into the garden, while his eyes followed a girl shaped shadow that darted from bush to bush.

He sighed and stopped in the middle of the grassy area, hands on his hips. “Where is that little girl? When I find her I'm going to gobble her up” he dramatically stated to himself, making sure he’s heard.

Rhaella had wanted to move to the bush to his far right but before she could leave her spot she was caught and lifted into the air.

“I got you now!” Daemon declared, lifting her by her arms and bringing her closer to his chest while he pretend to eat her dramatically like a dragon.

Rhaella’s giggles and laughter could be heard all throughout the halls of the Keep, as she flailed her arms and legs out, trying to escape the dragons grasp. “Not fair uncle” she whined, when Daemon finally settled her on his arms.

He grinned and laughed slightly, brushing parts of Rhaella’s hair away from her face. “Don’t you think your uncle is mighty and clever enough to find you wherever you are?”

Rhaella huffed and flopped into Daemons chest admitting defeat.

Daemon laughed louder as he held onto her tightly, bundling her up in his arms even as she giggled and squirmed.

[pparacxosm]

dearly beloved

(tashi duncan x fem!childhood best friend!reader x patrick zweig; artashi wedding; nonlinear narrative; tw infidelity but then wrong fandom; tw obsessive dysfunctional relationships but then wrong fandom; tw patheticism but then wrong blog; oakland!tashi truthers i’m sorry; florida!tashi truthers ((if there be any)) you’re welcome ! ; uno mentioned twice for some reason; unromantic romance; callow sapphic pining; tw nascent menstruation; y2k teenage girlhood; it’s always patrick zweig at the scene of the crime; ((the crime is unrequited devotion)); tw a little bit of body shaming kind of; but then general tw for excessively derogatory banter; sorrow shared is sorrow doubled; cake shared is just good cake; tw atlanta™)

‘Love is awful. It’s awful. It’s painful. It’s frightening. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. It makes you selfish. It makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do. It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there.

So no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own.

I was taught if we’re born with love then life is about choosing the right place to put it. People talk about that a lot, feeling right, when it feels right it’s easy. But I’m not sure that’s true. It takes strength to know what’s right. And love isn’t something that weak people do. Being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of hope. I think what they mean is, when you find somebody that you love, it feels like hope.’

The Priest, ‘Fleabag’ (2016—2019) Episode 2.6

It strikes you that Tashi Duncan has always had a strange way of talking about her own wedding, as if the whole event is a starstrewn chrysalis. Something transformative, that will make of her an airborne creature, carried off by the lightness of her being.

She looks fucking beautiful, of course.

Sleek and exacting, draped in silk crêpe de Chine, like a white bullet. Tashi Duncan, the bride. Heavenborne starshine, all wrapped in tender clouds, just as she should be.

But then you’ve always thought so.

When she rehearses her aisle walk, golden gazelle legs glissading her across the hotel room carpet, she speaks of herself as if she were a rare and fragile insect.

She says, “I feel my bones changing,” her hands on either arm of the makeup chair you’re in.

You sniff, eyes flicking over every part of her. She is so close, bent over you, but she’s blurred at her edges on account of your gushing tears. You’re weeping. “Your bones?” you all but wail, face twisting in sorrow as the tears sluice harder.

Your left eyelash dangles wetly halfway off your eyelid.

You’re melting like a fucking witch, because her dress reveal came before the setting spray, and now your palms are soused in foundation. You keep wiping your face to keep from bemiring the butteryellow satin of your bridesmaids gown.

You weep more than Pam, as Tashi floats around the room.

She is radiant as sunlight on water.

Tre and Tevin holler, spirited, scattering around the room in all directions, like a great empire has collapsed. Okay, Tashi! they whistle, We see you!

And you weep and weep.

And now, her amber knee, faint scar, peeks from the slit in her silken, sweeping skirt and knocks against yours.

Her arms are lithe and lustrous and they bracket you within the amalgamated cloud of her meticulously curated Big Day fragrance. She floods your body.

She’s nodding softly. She is haloed by bloodwarm morninglight. You feel too pathetic to even be looking at her. You feel worse, even, when her delicate fingers coast poetic down your arms, and she takes your hands into hers.

“Hey,” she says softly. Squeezes your fingers. The flesh of her soft and fragrant as rosepetals. Her smile unfurls like a star going nova. “You’re crying so much,” she laughs.

“Of course, I’m crying,” you choke out, a watery gasp wafting her gorgeous face. “Pauline hates me.”

Tashi spares a glance over your shoulder, where her makeup artist is leaning against an ornate dresser, chewing the edge of her thumb and seeming generally engrossed with her phone.

“Oh, honey,” Tashi’s manicured thumbs caress tender circles over your knuckles. Then clicking her teeth softly, “You are making her do her job twice.”

“Oh God,” you sob, your head dropping heavily onto the crushed velvet cushion of the chairback. “Don’t get married.”

Tashi's smile turns soft and commiserating.

“Babe.”

“T.”

Tashi places your hands gently in your lap. She swivels your chair so you’re facing the vanity mirror.

The sight of yourself festers your misery like rotting flesh. You look like a smeared oil painting. Your lashes clump like eldritch spiders. Your face is smeared and swollen and gleaming wet. Your lower lip trembles.

Tashi glows behind you in a tragic pastiche of a solar eclipse.

“I can’t do this,” you blather past the clot in your throat. Mucus bubbles from your nostrils and trickles to your mouth. You swipe at it. You sniff again. “I’m gonna mess up your wedding.”

Tashi’s warm, slender fingers trace your collarbones. In college, you used to give each other lymphatic drainage massages.

“You’re gonna make my wedding.”

This makes you tear up again, in earnest.

The tissue of your nose is raw and sore. You moan a broken lament. Her thumbs drift in gentle ellipses along the slope of your shoulders. Her warmth seeps into you.

“Do you remember what you said to me,” Tashi asks, “When I got engaged?”

You swallow, coughing around a flower of phlegm. She leans down, resting her cheek against the top of your head. Her hair spills over your shoulders in velvet sunbeams.

You blink at her reflection. Her eyes wash you in tender flame.

“‘Dear God, please, no’?”

It is staggering, at thirteen, to stand over a limp, bloodstrewn body.

You are traipsing through the halls, summoned by weeping, and, when you peek into the loo, the dense miasma of sweat and antiseptic is pervaded with something stannic and fetid.

Tashi Duncan, splayed across the tile of the corner stall, clutches her tummy with death’s desperation. The athletic uniform of Blue Vista High garbs these young girls in floaty skirts of daisy white, which Tashi now thinks is fascinatingly deplorable.

Unfamiliar and unprepared, her eyes gleam with tears. Her heart pummels in her chest to the same faraway thunk, thunk rhythm of the tennis balls striking the clay courts outside.

The world seems to have turned against her. Her clothes are drenched red, and her body is betraying her. Tashi, twentyone months your senior, is a late bloomer. Here is her inaugural encounter with the inevitability of womanhood.

So, you encounter this horror film tableau. Tashi Duncan, bloodstrewn and splayed. You don’t feel nausea or concern or anything. You’re thirteen. You’re mildly reproachful, if anything.

“Um,” you say, a bit too loudly, “I have a tampon. If you want?”

“I want to play tennis.” She writhes. “My match is in twenty minutes.”

You swing your backpack off your shoulder, clutching it in front of you and digging clumsily into the front pocket. “Well, you need a tampon.”

“I’ve never…” She seems halfcoherent. You don’t have great faith in her ability to sweep across a court. But she catches the tampon with an easy agility when you toss it over.

There’s an odd, blithe immediacy to girlhood. You drop to your knees and play gynae. You introduce yourselves somewhere there. Your hair’s pretty; Where did you get those pins on your bag?; Do you think Mr Cleven’s kind of cute? Yeah, no, me neither; Is it in yet?

“Aw, what?” you whine at her insistence you disrobe and give her your clothes, “For how long?”

“Like,” she gestures frenetically with her hand, “Twenty minutes.”

You hum, ambivalent, but doff your skirt. And they get anal about you guys jumbling formal uniforms with athletic uniforms, so she takes your shirt, too, and you wear hers, the navy nylon collared tee with the Blue Vista crest stitched to the breast.

You sit pantless on the toilet seat, reading her Princess Diaries paperback.

She wins her game, apparently.

Her mom drives you home. She brings a fleecy pair of Tashi’s Powerpuff Girls pyjama bottoms, which fall past your ankles. Says, call me Pam, honey, when you say, thank you, Mrs Duncan.

You keep her shirt, and her pants, and you still smell her womb.

She hits you up on AIM that night.

Mr Cleven is cute, she sends. He looks like Dawson Leery.

Then, But he’s THE WORST !!!!!!

And then, TLC or Destiny’s Child?

And things go from there.

When Christine McVie starts crooning for mercy, you think you’ve officially had your fill.

You have taken bridesmaid, like you took best friend before that, like you will one day take doting aunty to their gilded brood.

At times, it feels like there is no limit to what you can take.

But the very concept of a First Dance feels like a vaudeville satire portending a dire omen. You refuse to dance into hell—you just can’t do it. And you can’t watch them squeeze your heart to bloodpulp between their flush, swaying bodies.

Though you suppose that may be symbolic. Beginning as the end.

Hot red spilled upon her white regalia. Will she still let you splay and clothe her? Or does such proprietary now fall within the purview of his husbandly duties? All set to ‘Say You Love Me’.

You take it all. On the chin, lying down. You take it. You take four consecutive champagne flutes to the gut. You take deep breaths. You take yourself out of the girdling throng of devoted onlookers as the music starts. You take no prisoners. You take your leave.

You are weeping again.

You try to catch your tears as they fall. You think you owe Pauline that much.

The veranda is lit by scattered amber lanterns and the weeping moon. Each stone pillar stands sentinel to the maelstrom of revelry within. Things are hushed, here, but so much colder. You miss her warm fingertips against your skin. You miss everything. Shadows stretch across the tiled floor in languorous arcs.

You smell the sea.

You find a dark corner and sink into it, bracing yourself on the balustrade as you crouch to your haunches. Your body aches with the force of your suppressed sobs. Your shoulders tremble and your heart mewls with anguish.

You miss the sound of footsteps, so the voice does surprise you.

“One wedding that’s a funeral.”

You laugh, sort of. Damp and congested. You try to daub the tears away. “Ha,” you sniff, “Yeah, no, I—“

You stop.

It doesn’t seem the least bit real.

Let’s leave aside the fact that he’s The Ex Boyfriend. He shouldn’t even exist in this fucking stratosphere anymore. And that’s why he seems elusive, ghostly, even now. Emerging from the shadows like a demonic apparition.

You know Art and Tashi don’t really talk about it. They have a peace to protect. You cannot say the same of yourself.

Because in the unbroken silence of your dreams, there is a whistle. A sharp, clear necklace of sound, tightening around your throat, tugging forward. And even earlier, at the ceremony. A malevolent spirit in the room seemed to say, I won’t be ignored. And here he fucking is.

A horrid little laugh builds up in your throat, until you can’t keep it down any longer.

You laugh. It comes out like a savage chortle. Patrick stills, five feet away from you. His eyes are sad, a little surprised, and, yes, repelled.

Repelled by you and your laugh.

Suddenly, all you feel is helpless anger. You’re angrier than you’ve ever been, angrier than when they were together, angrier than when Art swooped in to take his stillwarm seat, angrier than all those times you had to be quiet and eat humble pie. You’re furious that the woman you love has jettisoned her last name, like a shorn chrysalis. And you’re livid that you have to deal with this asshole, this piece of shit pretty boy you’d thought you’d seen the last of, who is standing in front of you, on this moonlit veranda, trying to share in your mourning. He’s fucking insane.

So you say it, out loud, but not too loud, because you don’t want to make a scene. You certainly don’t want Tashi to see him.

“You’re insane,” you scoff, gaze vast and glossy with shock, “You’re fuckin’ insane, I knew it! I knew you were fuckin’ insane! I told her you were fuckin’ insane.”

You’re surprised at the viciousness in your voice. The blue in his eyes has become washedout, almost white. You can see tiny red capillaries blooming around the iris in the dark.

To his credit, Patrick has never left you hanging in your ferocity.

His brows are hoisted in defense. He gestures wildly into the reception hall, “I’m fuckin’ insane? He’s fuckin’ insane! And he’s marrying her!”

He’s all big words and movements like this is fucking Seinfeld.

You upheave yourself to a tremulous stand. “You’re both fucking insane,” you say darkly, though, at the moment, you feel a bit deranged.

Your vehemence startles him a little. Something imperceptible changes in his mien. Like he’s standing straighter. His eyes shine like glass. You’re bizarrely reminded of those National Geographic documentaries where lions size each other up before a fight.

But then his shoulders slump, and he nods, and you are almost incredulous at his patheticism. “Okay,” he breathes. He seems tiny. “You look nice.”

You blink, shifting.

You clear your throat. “Thank you. You don’t.”

And he doesn’t. He’s wearing a T-shirt and athletic shorts. And he looks vaguely showered for once, but there’s still something faintly noxious in the air he emanates.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs, “I wasn’t gonna dress up for a wedding I wasn’t invited to.” A pause. “That’d be weird.”

For a moment, you are sure you tripped on a rock out here, and cracked your skull open on a pillar, and all of this is a stage play happening in the most masochistic corner of your mind. You have never been so disbelieving of his inanity.

“Oh, yeah, that’d be weird!” you say, eyes still wide and marginally manic. “That’d be crazy, for sure. If you dressed up for the wedding you weren’t invited to.”

He fills in the blank there—always could, for his part—that he’s shown up to the wedding. He gives a feeble chuckle. He looks awkward, really, which is… fucking something.

“When are they gonna cut the cake?” His voice is small and tentative like a child’s.

“You’re not getting any, you cow.”

He looks sincerely wounded at that, his eyes casting downward, and it borders on pitiful. But the sympathy stirred feels like a small lashing, like punishment for your lack of decorum. There is something contemptuous in that pitifulness.

You know an athlete’s body is his wound.

But you can’t bring yourself to say sorry.

You just lower your hackles with a visible exhale, which he seems to recognise as safe treadspace.

“Why are you crying?” he asks.

You snort. “Why are you here?”

He connects those dots, too, the perceptive bastard.

He clears his throat, hands in his pockets, rolls back and forth on his feet.

He stares at the ground. “You gotta say a speech?”

“Yeah, but I probably won’t.”

The ocean rushes. Luther Vandross thumps faintly from beyond. First dance is over, apparently.

Patrick peers up at you, like he’s debating saying what he’ll say next.

“Wanna go get a drink?”

Tashi jumps on the balls of her feet. Her waifishness is often a screen hiding an impressive amount of energy. PE is competition in its purest form. Every time she manages to wrest the ball from the opposing team she feels invincible. She is invincible. She dribbles the ball quickly, ponytail swishing in the air as she runs towards the goalpost.

From the corner of her eye she registers movement. She’s always hyperaware of her surroundings. That’s why she notices you sitting down in the stands, two other little girls (in the way that a year—which is all the time sundering you two—can feel like a decade when you’re fourteen) on either side of you.

One of your friends doles out UNO cards, and it is clear it is the other who had suggested this place of loitering, because she has her gaze trained conspicuously on a boy in Tashi’s class.

Tashi pivots. Makes a pointed throw. The ball goes past the goalkeeper into the net. Her team cheers. She checks to see if you have borne witness, but you are too busy stewing over your dealt cards.

She runs over to you. You look up when you hear her barrelling up the steps of the bleachers with a haste that makes them shudder.

She slides in between you and Vidya, who is unperturbed on account of her intently watching Anshu Morya pretend two basketballs are his tits and siring great gales of laughter from his audience of other fourteen year old boys.

Tashi slips a lanky arm around your shoulder.

“Hey, you,” she says, “Why didn’t you come say hi?”

You feel weird and diminutive and caught in a weird way, because Essence is looking upon her from your other side as though she is a seraph who has descended and deigned to grace you with her presence.

(Essence is in under13’s tennis, where it is wildly regarded that the girls who do under14’s tennis are the coolest people ever).

“Uh,” you drawl dumbly.

“You’re my friend now,” she squeezes your arm, pulling you closer to her side, “You have to say hi.”

Tashi seems to preen beneath the attention of these little girls, with a poise remarkably incongruous for fourteen. It feels a stark juxtaposition to the girl you’d seen, wailing, wet, and splayed in her own nascent womanhood.

You’ll come to think this a lot. Tashi Duncan, the impenetrable infanta. She tries not to show any inkling of vulnerability, if she can help it.

That’s why you always remember. You’re always recalling that blood.

And so part of you that is purely little girl thinks, I saw her first.

Even though Adidas singled her out as showing great promise. Even if Patrick Zweig won her number, and Art Donaldson, in some primevally spurning way, will have her as his bride. It was you who saw her, truly saw her, for the first time. Weeping in her own carmine deluge in a girl’s bathroom stall at Blue Vista High.

And, if you saw her first, shouldn’t you get to keep her?

You cannot bear to see her be wed.

What you’d really said, when she told you she was engaged, was a frayed and hollowed: Congratulations.

Dear God, please, no came later. It came clawing rotten from your throat like the undead, while you curled in on yourself yourself like a woman wounded, in the dark, beneath your covers.

“Dear God, please, no,” you’d whispered, lachrymose.

Your first dream, as it were, takes place on the shore of Virginia Key Beach, twenty minutes south of your neighbourhood in Allapattah.

It doesn’t look real, though.

It’s more like a film set.

That could be due to the fact that you haven’t been home in a year or due to the fact that Tashi is there, and she hasn’t been home in longer.

But you know it’s Florida because the air’s so thin and friable in California. Like the sun hasn’t fully seeped through. You know it’s summer because there’s crickets chirping in the trees behind you.

It’s dark, but the moon is bright, and, without looking, you know Tashi is just behind you, sitting on a rock halfsubmerged in the water. You’re sitting in the water right by her. You can feel her presence on your arm as you lean back. You guys are stripped to your bras and panties, like you always were. Her hair is curly.

There might have been more happening; you have a vague impression that there was talking at some point in this dream, but the details fade in the minutes after waking up. What you do retain is distressing. 

You are saying something when you are suddenly supine, and you see that Tashi is atop you, straddling you, though you cannot necessarily feel any weight of her. She doesn’t even feel warm. Her skin against you isn’t a temperature, it’s a sensation. Buzzing, like the vague shock of an electric socket.

“Hi,” she says, her voice low. 

And you’re about to say something, and then you are silenced. You wake up soon after your lips meet.

The dream haunts you for a week, until you go to a party and find a boy and kiss him instead.

The dream is not a revelation, not by a long shot, but you had thought they were a thing of girlhood. And, too, you thought Tashi was impenetrable to such things as your little desires. You’d thought, for a wretched moment, that you could be normal about a beautiful girl.

And you’re usually better at controlling yourself.

You usually can go about your day without suddenly remembering the image of Tashi leaning in.

When you do find a boy that Saturday—a short, slight, facetious glasseswearer named Noel, who prides himself on being a silent, occasionally witty observer the same way you do—you talk with him and laugh with him and kiss him and feel the world right itself. Nothing has changed, and nothing will change, if you can just get a fucking grip.

You go another few weeks without incident, until there’s another dream.

A few others.

Tashi chalks up your odd behavior to anything from exam season to homesickness. You let her.

No one knows about these dreams, with one exception.

Patrick Zweig figures you out embarrassingly quick.

All it takes is one night on the town, the three of you. A couple hours watching you replenish and rotate her moscow mules and vodka sodas and ace pineapples with a surgeon’s precision. Like forecasting weather. And he feels sure enough in his conclusions to corner you as you’re emerging from the putrid bathroom of the dive bar and say, “You got it bad for Tashi, don’t you, kid?”

You are on the drunk side of tipsy, at this point, and you blink a few times before you remember to zip your fly and respond.

All you come up with, for your part, is a weak, “Sorry?”

Patrick smiles. It doesn’t seem particularly mean, but you don’t presume to know him well enough to bet on it.

“I’m just saying,” Patrick says slowly. “Seems like you like her an awful lot. Kid.”

Your gaze goes bonehard. You don’t like him. You don’t like that you can smell his nausea-siring wintry cologne. You cannot conceptualise the scent, but it can’t be natural. He is so pretentious, he probably has it shipped from Marseille or somewhere.

He’s cracked open your ribs and plucked a raw nerve, just to watch you writhe. And there’s that obnoxious little smile, only half his mouth. Though not outright hostile, it’s not friendly.

You open your mouth. But you are so furious, you’re unable to speak. What’s more infuriating, Patrick patiently waits for you to find your words.

“Well,” you say, steadying your feet like you’re prepared to brawl this guy, “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Not a goddamn thing.”

And you must look surprised, because Patrick laughs.

“May these be the worst of our days.”

The pub is a dive, just a short stumble from the wedding venue. The air is dense with the acerbic musk of piss and spirits, danker than the worst of times. It’s a visceral contrast to the beauty of the union, and it’s one of which you both feel deserving.

You sit on a slightly cracked stool at the mucky wooden bar. You nurse a beer, and a broken heart, and Pat is on his third scotch in as many minutes. The bartender keeps giving him these nervous glances.

He gurgles out a pfft as he tips his glass to you, “Yeah, and the best of theirs.”

You regard the middle distance with a sort of weary disgust. A miserable guilt. You know what he’s portending. It’s all downhill from here. But you cannot deny that these are not unkind heights from which to fall. Garlanded by intricate golden sconces casting pristine white marble awash with warmth and love. You two cannot wish them ill in a way that even means anything.

“Fuck, they’re so happy,” you moan, “We suck.”

You feel your lungs grow achy. You are drowning in selfpity and selfpity’s lesser endearing cousin, envy. Patrick seems to bear it better. He releases a noise. A laugh maybe; a bitter, bloodaddled thing.

“Hey, I think the one of us wearing the bridesmaids dress places significantly lower on the Ultimately Fucked Over scale.”

He spins his glass around on the sticky tabletop. The scraping sound makes you envision ground bonematter.

“This colour wouldn’t suit you,” you mumble, swinging your beer idly by its neck.

Patrick’s brows seem to knit at this.

“Yes it would,” he grumbles.

“I always hated you.”

He quirks a brow, looking at you askance.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

You make a face. “It is.” Your eyes close for a moment, as though envisaging which set of words would spurn him best. “And he’s better for her than you.”

Patrick’s mouth parts into a slackened smirk. He laughs again. “And you think you’re better for her than both of us.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Always the bridesmaid…” he singsongs.

You feel your skin heat with something sore and cloying.

“Oh fuck you.” Your eyes roll as well as they are able without you getting vertigo. “I fucked her last.”

His smile grows like a burgeoning parasite. His head is still hung between his shoulders, but he peers up at you through the dark veil of his lashes.

He tongues the inside of his cheek like he’s suppressing laughter, like he now thinks it wouldn’t be kind. “No kidding.”

You frown at this, at his amusement.

“What, you don’t think I fucked her?”

Patrick shrugs. Hums vaguely.

“Wow.”

“Not in, like, a homophobic way, or—“

“Wow.”

He snorts.

“I’m sorry.”

You shake your head. “You’re not.” You swig a mouthful of beer, relishing faintly in the acrid aftertaste. “And I’m not either. Fucked her after you broke up, licked you clean out her pussy, you’re nothing.” You stand up and close the distance between you, stumbling into him, your forehead thunking against his as you draw the word out childishly. Nothingggg-uh.

He chuckles noiselessly. “Oh yeah?”

You straighten clumsily, leaning back, but you’re still stood between his open legs, and you brace your hand against his thigh. “Yeah,” you say.

Patrick narrows his eyes at you. He inhales a breath with an air of the long since victorious.

He gives it a moment before he says it. You’re lifting your bottle to the seam of your lips.

“I fucked her two months ago.”

You slam the green glass against the bartop, eyes wide as canyons as you turn to look at him, your forgone sip dribbling down your chin. “What?” you enunciate sharply.

He leans back in his chair, raising his hands as if shirking blame. But something wicked gleams in his eyes.

You scoff. “Bull. Shit.”

He tilts his head to the side, resting an elbow against the bar, his gaze flickering between your face and the beer trickling down your neck.

He shrugs. Hums.

Your eyes search his face frenetically. Your fingers claw into the flesh of his thigh. “He doesn’t know?”

Now, something like guilt manages to sniff him out. He glances off obliquely, his throat working around a swallow. His expression is hard to discern. Swimming between guilt and a strange sort of defiance.

“Wow,” you drawl protractedly. You’re almost impressed. “You’re an ass. You said that because you wanted to make me feel bad, you wanted to one up me, like you get points for fucking her—“

“A game that you started, by the way.”

“Hey.” You lean into his space again, finding his eyes with a sniper’s determination. “Hey. You’re a piece of shit.”

His jaw works against his skin.

“Uh-huh.”

“No, you are. You are, and you know it.” Your nails embed themselves in his thigh, your other hand coming to place a finger in the hollow of his chest. “Because no matter what,” your voice is low and gravelly now, “You’re done. You’re out. I’m in.”

You lean back to look him over, as though admiring your work, but he only wears a plaintive, resigned sort of smile.

“You think that’s better?”

His voice is so soft as to seep like smoke down your spine. Your nails unearth themselves from his skin. You have not drawn blood, but morning bruises would not startle him.

A long few moments pass.

“This is what you do now, you’re all profound?” you murmur.

He shrugs, a rueful simper on his mouth. “Eh,” he hums dismissively.

You sigh. Remove your hands from him and stumble back onto your stool.

“You’d look like shit in this dress,” you say, at length.

“Maybe.”

You tip your beer into your mouth, even though it has run dry.

There’s a bit of a moue on your face. You trace the sticky outlines on the tabletop, focusing intently on the grooves. “I look amazing in this dress.”

“You’d look amazing out of it.”

Your brows furrow. You look up at him. “Dude, what?”

Patrick blinks. He seems genuinely surprised.

“Aren’t we gonna…?”

“No, what? Why would you—?”

“Oh, I just—“

“What?” Your face is skewed confusedly.

“Because we—“

Your phone trembles against the bar.

“Hold on,” you say, and then, grin growing, “Darling Ms Duncan,” you croon melodically as you hoist the device to your cheek.

Her verdant meadow laughter on the other end. “Donaldson,” she chuckles. You can hear the vague commotion of the festivities ensconcing her.

You frown.

“Don’t hurt me, Starshine.”

“You missed your speech.”

You gasp, your voice going all light and airy the way it does when you’re feigning guilt. “What?” you drawl, “No…”

Tashi cottons on, and you can hear her teasing smile as she indulges you, “Oh,” she hums in fauxsympathy, “Oh, yeah, uh-huh.”

“No way,” you grouse softly, “I’m so sorry.”

“Come back before we cut the cake,” says Tashi, “Where are you, by the way?”

“Oh, I’m in a bar, you won’t believe who I ran into.”

“Who?”

Patrick steels to alertness in front of you, shaking his head in abject alarm.

You smile.

“Patrick Zweig. I think we’re gonna have sex tonight probably. Compound our sadness. It’ll be really pathetic.”

Patrick looks at you like you’ve walloped his puppy.

Tashi is silent on the other end. You know well the firm, seraphic way her face has set in anger.

“That’s not funny,” she says, and it occurs to you that, if what Patrick’s told you is true, then it really isn’t funny.

You bite your lip. “Oh.”

“That’s—“ she takes a breath; you can picture the heat wash off of her. She can be very purposeful with her emotions. “Hey, listen,” her voice has softened, “Please come back.”

“Okay, Ms Duncan.”

“Come back and eat the cake, you chose the cake.”

A simper slithers over your lips. “We chose the cake.” Your husband was somewhere sticking his prick in a green juice, you don’t add. “It’s kind of our cake, in a way.”

“Well,” Tashi hums, unconvinced, but you can hear her smile.

“Yeah, I’m coming, worry not, my dear. Save me a dance.”

You drop the phone.

Patrick is still looking at you like the apocalypse has been announced.

You roll your eyes.

“Put your dick down, she didn’t believe me,” you say. “Because you showing up to her wedding would be crazy.”

He chuckles dryly, but you do not miss the relief in his bones.

He cocks his head wryly, “Not really, considering…”

You stand up again, elbow leaning on the bar, your temple against your knuckles as you gape at him, sort of mystified. “You’re not bullshitting me,” you say, the corner of your open mouth quirking up incredulously, “Like actually.”

Patrick shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Atlanta.”

“Fuck!” You smack your hand down on the table, looking around as though to share in your disbelief with a makebelieve audience. “And since then, have you…? With anyone?”

“Dude, that was two months ago,” he says, like you’re a bit slow, or perhaps like he’s offended by the notion, “Yes.”

You click your tongue. “Ah, shit. You should’ve said no. Would’ve sucked you off, seen if I could taste her.”

Your hip ghosts absently against his spread open knee.

“You can still try,” he offers.

You shake your head, stifling a smile. “Nah.”

“God, we’re the worst.”

“You’re the worst.” You let your smile divulge itself.

“We should get married.”

“Fuck no.”

Patrick lets himself look putout by this, eyes going downcast. You’ve always thought his smile—really his whole face—looks vulnerable, like soft bread. He looks like the perfect sad boy, the victim rather than the perpetrator.  

“Oh,” says Patrick.

You hit him in the arm. “Don’t do that. You know it’d suck.”

“I don’t think so, actually,” he muses.

“What do we have in common? Like, sincerely. Besides her. You can’t build a marriage around a person who isn’t in the marriage.”

He makes a face as though to say this is an evidently incorrect statement. He gestures vaguely in the direction of Art and Tashi’s wedding venue.

That gets a laugh out of you.

“Oh, you pathetic asshole.” You steady yourself on his thigh again, this time with your fist. “No one has mentioned your name once today.”

You know it’s a low blow.

He returns your smile, though his is sad and weird again. They’ve all forgotten about me, it seems to say, Maybe you’ve forgotten about me, too.

Ugh, you think. Fucking Patrick who can’t stop being fucking neglected by everyone.

You clear your throat softly. “See? You don’t wanna marry me.”

Patrick lets out a depleted sigh, like he, too, is not so thrilled with the notion. And you’ve heard better proposal stories. He looks like a Labrador who’s figured out he has to go to the vet. He kicks the edge of the barstool with his sneaker.

“I do. I still do. That was fucked, but I still would.” He looks angry and lonely and resigned, and a little happy too, weirdly. “We should have one of those, ‘by the time we’re thirty—’”

“Thirty?”

“Fifty.”

You like how quickly he bends, in that moment. It has you picturing flower arrangements. But you narrow your eyes, a wry gleam to your smile.

“I think I’ll still have a shot, at fifty.”

“I won’t,” he says, with the smile of the recently condemned.

“I think you will, actually.” You regard him sort of pensively. And maybe it’s a bit clinical. “I think age is gonna humble you. And then you’ll be fifty and grey and, like, penitent. Plus fifty’s still virile, generally. And I’ve heard good things about your situation down there. Just—“

You push off the bar, your fist leaning down more heavily on his thigh as your other hand comes up to his forehead, as though checking his temperature, before sweeping upwards and pushing his hair back. You’re on your toes—further on your toes, considering the heels—assessing his hairline closely, your nose grazing his forehead and your hips certainly slotted between his.

Patrick makes an insincere attempt to push you off. “Hey, what—“

“Did your maternal grandfather have hair?”

He hesitates, “What, my mom’s dad?”

“Mhm.”

He feels that breath against his brow.

“To this day,” he shrugs, “But he’s an asshole.”

“That’s good news.” You lean back.

“That my gramps is an asshole?”

“No, the—“ You gesture to his hair again, “That’s how you know, I think. If you’ll bald. Is your maternal grandfather.”

“You think? Didn’t you do health science?”

“Didn’t you do fuck all and doesn’t everyone hate you?”

He seems unharmed, if enchanted, by this persistent claim.

He points again in the general direction of the wedding beyond the brick wall of the bar.

“They may hate me. You don’t hate me.”

You follow his finger like everything between you and that marble dance floor will collapse, and you will be given a clear view of that proprietary, knowing way Art Donaldson holds her as they dance.

You look back at him. “You really seem to believe that. It makes me concerned.”

“For me?”

“No, for myself. I don’t like that I’m putting out such false vibes.”

He is charmed by this verbiage.

He laughs, like he’s still unconvinced. “Okay.”

He holds it against you, of course.

He doesn’t do a goddamn thing, as promised, but he holds it against you.

Patrick doesn’t like the college parties, but he manages. He doesn’t like feeling like an interloper, really. Doesn’t like that Art and Tashi have this fully functional ecosphere in which he cannot take root—like he’s some sort of invasive strain of alien vegetation.

As soon as he can, Patrick excuses himself from the purgatory of social interaction with whichever set of strangers Tashi calls her friends. He extricates his arm from around her waist and catches your eye as he goes to stand, mimes taking a drink, and watches with relief as you narrow your eyes but push out of your chair and head toward the bar. You order four shots of something.

“You’re lasting longer than I thought,” he says as soon as he’s close enough to you. He takes one shot—vodka, he thinks as it slides down his throat—then another from the bar top. “You were making that face, though.”

You scowl up at him. You know exactly what he’s talking about. “I was not.”

Patrick snorts. “If that helps you sleep at night. I know I won’t be sleeping.”

He bites his lip and does a crude mimicry of delivering backshots with his pelvis, his hands holding an imaginary set of hips, and you suddenly feel beset with a strange nausea. You defeatedly slide toward him another one of those shots.

“What’s the point of her having you as a friend if you aren’t going to support us?”

“I bought you three fucking shots,” you say. You quickly throw the last one back before he can get at it, because, by now, you at least know Patrick well enough to know he’s nearly about to make a grab for it. 

He grins. “Kid, if Art had won that game, I’d make my pass at you ten times over.”

That’s enough to turn the nausea into chunder, and you quickly push past him and book it to the bathroom as it blooms up your throat.

You see your tendons as racketstrings, as you crouch over the toilet.

Taut and crossed over one another inextricably.

He’ll always have that over you, the tennis. You never had the tenacity for it. But it means he has a whole other way to upset her, too.

You take comfort in the fact that Tashi is quick to stand and take you into her arms when you reappear, halftorn, wrung out. She’s happy to take you back to your room, and nurse you for the night.

Patrick doesn’t begrudge. He’s fine to let you have your little pleasures. She’s still his, is the thing.

You’re confused about the Art Donaldson of it all.

He has a warmth in his eyes. And a mischief and a validation. He’s like Patrick, in that he watches—he watches very closely. But where Patrick has always seemed content, in this strange, visceral way, to take what he can get, Art feels like he’s waiting for… something. He’s sort of always fighting with Patrick, but they’re taking care of one another, strangely. He has this weird, symbiotic desire to know more about Tashi and Patrick’s relationship, which—well—you’d be canting to pass judgement.

Grey, grey skies out the windows of Tashi’s dorm room. It’s the most neutral space for you all. Bundled in jackets and hats on beer runs. Fingers freezing as you sit on the floor and play UNO, bumming and trading all of Patrick’s cigarettes because it’s all you can think to do. It rains all day. Patrick tucks his fingers under Tashi’s thigh, kisses the corner of her mouth.

Art has a cold, passes it on to Patrick, and now you’re all incubating it in this cloistered space that soon becomes littered with used tissues and cough drops and tornopen packets of TheraFlu.

Patrick is glad to help no one feel left out. He announces as much—I don’t want you guys to feel left out—with this quizzical simper, as Tashi places down a wild drawfour and declares blue. And maybe she’s doing something foul and saccharine like looking right into Pat’s eyes when she says that.

“I don’t think you have any blues,” says Art, sliding four cards from the deck, wearing his own quizzical simper. “I think you just want us to think you have blues, I think you’re playing smart.”

You can tell by the way Patrick grips his beer bottle that he thinks Art is flirting with her.

There seems to be an odd, prophetic thought you two share.

If the two of them—Tashi and Art—were to get married, they would have golden brown babies like Renaissance cherubs while you and he sat in the dark with the rest of the godless degenerate art.

So, in some way, perhaps, you’d seen it all coming.

When Patrick picks up the phone, shoves it between shoulder and ear, and takes the sorelyneeded, sweetyolkdripping, heavily hotsauced bagel sandwich out of his mouth so he can mumble, “Yeah?” he does not expect the first words across the receiver to be,

“Hey, you fuck. I have your shit.”

Patrick rolls his eyes and takes a large bite, craning over his open palm to keep egg and cheese off his Puma shirt. This is a time when brands like Puma still want Patrick Zweig wearing their shirts.

“Uh-huh,” he says.

“You know, this feels like Christmas. Do you know that? This feels like Christmas day for me. You think you’re this special boy who can have whatever he wants. You’re bullshit. The bell tolls for thee. Your ex, I should note, has bent over and spread her cheeks for me.”

And you feel a way, about the coarseness of your words, the fissures in your mouth. But this isn’t about demeaning Tashi. It’s about flaying him.

“Dude.”

“Her beautiful, soft, floralscented cheeks.”

Patrick hangs up on you, which feels like how you imagine the President feels after election day.

You wait for him to call back.

It’s less than a minute before your phone shudders. He puts you on speaker.

“Are you done?” he says.

“Dude,” you say, “Never ever. Never ever ever.”

“How much for shipping?”

“Fuck you, coward, you’re still in town.”

There’s a revolting, wet sort of noise as he chews. And it is between these chews that he says, “You want to see me, then? Make sure I’m miserable?”

“I don’t need to see you to make sure you’re miserable, your whole life is miserable,” you say.

Patrick chuckles, the sound garbled by his food. It’s not the noise that makes you recoil from the receiver. You are more disgusted at the prospect of him being fed. Okay, sure—you, in your sadism, have been picturing him gaunt and desolate on the floor. And perhaps you are unmoored by how coherent and gutful he sounds now.

It’s harder to hide sorrow in your eyes. Maybe you do just want to see his eyes, and make sure.

“You’re real classy, kid, I think I’ll miss you most of all,” he swallows. “Where d’you want to meet?”

When you return to the reception hall, the cake is still unsevered and the music has gone slow. Otis Redding, ‘These Arms of Mine’.

Tevin keeps a clammy hand on your midback, the other slackly holding your fingers up.

You’re blinking brine from your eyes and sniffing shallowly. Tev’s giving you a chary sort of look, slightly frowning. He clears his throat.

“If things don’t work out with Lainey, I could marry you.”

But he doesn’t sound too keen on the idea. Which you think is a bit comical, because you've smelled his room, and you've seen him in braces, so, ostensible case for grooming aside, even you're not so desperate.

Still, you squeeze his shoulder lightly through his blazer. You clear your throat, roll your eyes. You let this child sway you side to side, and think of yourself at seventeen, varnishing Tashi’s toenails and daubing them clean with mephitic acetone. Over and over. Trying every colour. One time, you forgot to open a window, and the fumes had you two flaked out on the carpet.

“That’s nice, Tevvy, how’s that promposal coming along?”

In the bar a dozen minutes off campus, you slide the sloppily taped Amazon box across the table.

A microcosm of his pathos condensed into 18 x 12 inches. Each item in isolation meaningless, but altogether painting an intimate lithograph of a man discarded. All tender and immiscible.

Jacket. Toothbrush. Edgefrayed leather wristband. An old iPod with cracked plastic. A pack of cigarettes, crushed and reformed. A small bottle of aftershave. A few crumpled receipts. Unbranded notebook. Expensive fountain pen he probably stole from the bank. A plastic cardholder and a wallet, both empty. A pack of gum.

It feels a bit stupid that Patrick should come all this way for a couple knickknacks. You could have just let him Venmo you for the shipping, and it may have hurt his pride all the same. But you take pleasure in knowing that he was hoping you wouldn’t be the one to meet him here.

“How’s Tashi?” he asks.

You give a small, malicious laugh.

The predictability dissolves none of the abject carnal rapture there.

Of course it’s why he came. He wants to know all about your (singular) dear Ms Duncan. He still has a glimmer of faith that she will change her mind. Even though you both know the girl well enough to know that’s not a thing she does too often.

If you hated him, you would tell him that Tashi is thriving. Healing like a child of God. She’s a new woman, never better, can’t wipe the smile off her face.

But maybe you don’t hate him that much after all.

“She’s a fucking wreck. Moping, crying in the lecture halls, shouting your name in the rain. It’s pathetic.”

A twinge of a smile crosses Patrick’s face, the petty bitch.

“You know I meant her knee,” he says, then takes a sip of his beer.

You cross your arms on the table, then retract them with a wince once you feel how sticky the wood is.

“I don’t know,” you say while rubbing some gunk off your elbow. “I don’t know that, Patrick. You know I think you’re a raging assface.”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. “Have you guys ever fucked?”

His faith, glimmer as it may, is not without its fractures. He has a needling, bonechewing suspicion that this may be the last time you two ever see one another, that you occupy the same orbit. So he thinks he’s allowed to ask.

You just glare at him in cold annoyance. Probably fantasising about smashing his beer bottle over his head. Patrick is familiar with the expression.

“Patrick, please don’t talk to me that way.” There’s violence in your voice that’s probably not just aggrieved feminism.

He knows you’re a woman mutilated about Tashi. He considers saying something even shittier, but what’s the point? You’re not a threat to him anymore. He’s out of the running.

“Fine. Have you guys ever made love?”

Before you can bite his head off, he raises his hands in defense.

“Not trying to be disrespectful, or suggest you have casual pussy and not committed long term lesbian relationship pussy. It’s just… if I figured it out.”

There’s a moment of quiet.

“And, y’know, if she’s single and clearly in a bad place, maybe it’s worth… taking advantage.”

You are at once shocked and maybe even appreciative of his forthright shittiness. It gives you slight confidence, despite yourself.

Call him oldfashioned—or, well, remarkably progressive—but he’s rooting for you kids.

You’re both the perfect combination of hot and insufferable. Stupid and insane.

He knows you weren’t lying; Tashi probably is a wreck. It sometimes makes his tongue go metallic, the thought of her rendered so still and helpless. Maybe it’s better he only got a glimpse of that anguish.

So he’s been ousted, that’s fine. That doesn’t mean you need to dump the baby out with the bathwater. He knows she needs someone.

You sigh. “I’m getting a drink.”

You stand and walk toward the bar. You return with the same beer he’s drinking. He wonders if you got it just because it’s the cheapest, or if you actually like it.

“We never did anything,” you say, picking at the moist label with your thumbnail. “Well. We did everything. But not that.”

Patrick nods. “There’s time.”

“She’s hurt.”

“She’d be lying down.”

She is lying down.

The sky goes gold in Allapattah.

You’re by her desk, looking over her colourcoded portfolios and notebooks and Stanford paraphernalia and assorted photos and inspirational posters. You smile amusedly as you trace your finger over a WINNER cheer banner and a Never Give up, Give 100% Instead! placard.

“Mom says stay over for dinner,” Tashi mumbles, rifling through a Teen People. “Should I ask for ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ or ‘Fanmail’ for my birthday?”

“Mmm...”

You pick up her Girl Scout badges, look them over.

“Put them back in the same order!” Tashi warns, unable to help herself. But she’s spent a lot of time sorting them.

You look up. You give her a blithe, nervous smile.

You shuffle to the bed and knee onto the mattress, collapsing into her. The two of you an interwreathed coalescence of tepid girlskin.

“I have ‘Fanmail’,” you mumble into the skin of her neck.

You hear Tev and Tre roughhousing like dogs in the living room.

She gets you alone in a small, ornate sidehall before the ceremony.

She slides her arms around your shoulders and hugs you tightly. Her skin is soft, balmy and fragrant as summertime honey. The flowery milk aroma of her hair imbues you.

“You remember Ozymandias?” she says, withdrawing and placing her palms upon your shoulders. There is a conspiratorial twinkle of glee in her eye.

“… The poem?” Your brows draw in with a vague scepticism.

Your throat is still fleshtender with the sobbing. Your eyes moist and caustic. But your makeup, for Pauline’s part, looks great. You’re determined to maintain your ramshackle semblance of civility for as long as possible.

Tashi kneads your skin. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

She clasps your shoulders and spins you around so your back is against her, and you stumble shakily to keep your strappy gold stilettos off her satiny white train. Her arms slink back around you, her thumb caressing the faint protrusion of your collarbone. You feel the sly grin on her lips as she creeps her fingers beneath your hair, sweeping it away and pressing her mouth softly against the gossamertender skin beneath your ear.

“That’s what I’m going for,” she whispers, making a flourishing sort of gesture with her hands in front of you, as if mapping the splay of a billboard. “A grand, glorious, eternal, and yet ultimately doomed endeavour. Something that stands tall and proud, resplendent and beautiful, but, in time, all turns to dust and fades into nothing but a vague memory.”

You shudder with laughter, the bare skin of her chest heated against that of your shoulderblade.

“What?” Tashi giggles softly against the shell of your ear.

“Nothing,” you grin, shaking your head.

You like, in fact, the tender morbidity of her words. That there is a melancholy in her hope. This union, like any, may well be ephemeral. Tashi Duncan, your romantic realist. You hope those are her vows. Wouldn't that throw the kid for a loop.

At the altar, you set your gaze heavenward, determined not to weep once more. This way, the sorrow has nowhere to fall but back within you. And so you do not even see her, as she flows down the aisle and embarks upon her ethereal odyssey.

You don’t think you’d have even been able to take it, anyway.

To bear witness to her metamorphosis under hallowed eaves.

But you feel it. The transience of power. Nothing beside remains.

Pam drives you two to Virginia Key Beach every Sunday after service at the COGIC. You are dithering, at first, about shucking off your clothing. The sea is such a vast, living thing. Nothing like a poky stall in the school bathroom. But, by week three, your Sunday best is sandstrewn, and you and Tashi are giggling things of cotton panties and training bras and seawater.

The waves feel giant and warm.

It fills your mouth and nostrils. The ocean envelops you. The water lifts you up. She mounts your back and drags you under. You laugh so hard you choke a bit, coughing up salt. She laughs even harder as she slaps your back unhelpfully. Her head is bent over yours, ducking to check that you’re okay, but she’s still simpering impishly. The next wave pulls you under and your lips brush against her lips, almost by accident.

You hear her small, hiccupy gasp.

You can feel the way her fingers scrabble against your shoulders. She sinks her little nails in. That Thursday, you had painted them blue.

You lie in a nest of towels afterwards, exhausted and depleted, like children after a bath.

You reach out with your hand and take a few of her wet curls between your fingers.

“When I’m tennis famous, I’m gonna marry Justin Timberlake,” she murmurs, resting her head on her arm, still panting.

“Can I be your flower girl?” you say, running your fingers through her hair.

You were a flower girl at your aunt’s wedding last Summer. You found the job so enchanting. All the doting gazes, the petals between your fingers. It doesn’t occur to you to want for more, at this time.

“You can be…” she mumbles, peeking at you over her arm. “Everything.”

It’s a strange, untenable idea, a thing not named. There are things you cannot be.

But you understand completely. “You too.”

“I wanna be a butterfly,” she hums to herself. “And fly away.”

Your lips twitch. “With Justin?”

Tashi’s face glows a little. “With you.”

Like all Floridian nights, the one of the wedding is humid. You can picture the way the feathery curls along Tashi’s hairline will start to rouse. You can picture, too, the way Art Donaldson’s stupid nose will caress that soft hair, how he will breathe her in. You don’t much want to picture anything beyond that.

There is so much moonlight to see by. It spills across Patrick’s skin in soft luminous beams.

The sand is damp between your bare toes, the satin of your dress growing wet beneath your bum. You are ensconced by a warm, saline squall.

The sea laves the shore like a hungry tongue.

The cake is a pistachio sponge, bedaubed with rosesuffused cream, the layers laden with a tart raspberry treacle, and the frangible ivory of white chocolate. You filch two slices, wrap them in monogrammed serviettes. A&T. Awful and tragic, he had joked bleakly as you clumsily took off your shoes on the foreshore. Agonising and traumatic, you’d offered. You went back and forth like this for a bit.

Patrick’s cigarette gilds his face in a copper glow. His eyes are trained pensively on swathes of sea foam.

Your phone garbles between your feet. Hums—bleary, melancholic—with Amy Winehouse.

And now, the final frame. Love is a losing game.

The cake is good. The cake is fucking amazing. You’d said that, at the tasting. Fuck, this is amazing, had been your honeyed moan. It was enough for Tashi to make the decision. You feel bad, now, lapping frosting off your fingers in her absence, your sugarcoated teeth.

Patrick blows the smoke away from you, disperses the acrid cloud with a fan of his hand. The wind will waft, though; sweep some of that fetor back to you. And all you do is breathe.

Selfprofessed, profound…

Patrick spares you a glance. Then does gawping a doubletake.

“Fuck, you’re not crying.” He sniffs deeply, his hand swiping roughly the wet skin of his cheek.

Your eyes widen.

“Oh, shit, did we start?”

He breathes a dilapidated, spitladen laugh, scrubbing harsh his cheeks with his fingers.

The heavy rivulets keep cascading. Washing his skin.

“Yeah!” he scoffs wetly, sweeping his wrist beneath his nose, sniffing again.

You stifle a rueful simper, wiping your fingers off on the napkin. “Ah, fuck, sorry.”

He gives another watery laugh.

“You’re a dick,” he grins.

And then you’re grinning too, though your brows quaver with concern, “No, oh my God, sorry! I cried a lot earlier.”

He’s shaking his head, freshets of tears still trickling down. “You’re an ass, I can’t believe—“

“I’ve never seen you cry,” you smile, something like wonder misting your eyes.

He chuckles, his cig singeing down, the smoke pirouetting upwards.

“No one has.”

You beam, but your shoulders tense with guilt. “Fuck!” you giggle, rumpling the serviette and resting it in the sand, shifting where you sit, and straightening as if centring yourself. “I’m sorry, I’ll do it now.”

“No, you won’t. You’re laughing.”

You laugh loudly, dropping your forehead to your hoisted knees.

“That’s closer than you think!” you say.

Patrick takes a deep, terminal drag of his cigarette—the ember coruscating violently—before extinguishing it in the sand beside him.

“Fuck,” he whispers, dipping his face into his shirt collar and using the fabric to swipe at his nostrils, snivelling more.

Then his shoulders fall. Elbows resting on his knees, hands falling slack between them.

The song starts up again.

For you I was aflame…

The ocean whispers soft susurrations against the beachfront.

You are struck, suddenly, by his silverveiled visage. Your gaze strokes the slope of his nose, the arch of his cheekbone. You are so enthralled by this wet gleam of his milky skin. There’s something about that; about his unencumbered tearflood and the faraway joy of the party.

Before you can stop yourself, you move in.

Your noses bump. There’s a moment where your teeth clack together and Patrick makes an annoyed noise, but it’s quickly replaced by something that sounds more like pleasure as he turns to fit his mouth against yours more easily.

You taste his tears and mouth and tongue. His hand comes to cradle the back of your neck. Your blotchy eyes flutter closed. You dig your fingers into the sand and close your fists around it. You taste the smoke and the cake and the oceanfront. It’s all a bit warm and desperate.

You think of the seaspray, the burgeoning goosebumps on your arms. You think of your mouth, mollified against his own, his hot spit on your gums, his tongue, hotter still, stroking yours. How he tips your head back so your jaw can fall further, so there is more of you available. You think of mouths. Of course, you think of Tashi’s mouth. Her smile in the mirror.

There’s a poignant tremor to Amy’s voice, as she sings,

Memories mar my mind.

And you are struck by this phrasing. And this is, perhaps, why and when the tears find you. And the sobs come soon after.

Patrick pulls away with a damp little noise.

“Oh my God.”

You’re weeping. Your shoulders start to tremble with spasmodic sobs, and you are bawling. Your face swims hot with a mire of tears and snot. He is not overtly repulsed. Well, you would not know for sure, because you cannot see him. But you feel him shift a little closer, and put a hand on your bare shoulder, his palm flushed and calloused. He gives you a few resigned pats.

“This is not what I wanted, for the record,” he says, unbothered by your head falling against his chest. “Because now I’m gonna feel like shit. Thinking, wow, was the kiss so shit that it made her cry like a baby?”

You lift your hands and cover your face, sobbing harder.

“Which,” Patrick continues, thumb caressing idly the sweat-tacky skin of your shoulder now, “I know that’s not it.”

A beat.

“Do you wanna tell me that’s not it?”

“That’s not it,” you blubber, smearing mucus off your lips.

You pull away from him dragging your hands down your face. When you look at him, you’re sure you look a sorry sight. Tender with despair, all messy, smeared, and febrile. You sniff shallowly.

“You were right,” you say weakly, “It’s not better.”

“What’s not better?” His voice, you note somewhere in the miasma of your sorrow, is uncharacteristically kind.

Your lip quivers, “I’ll have to be there when he puts a baby in her.” Your face has twisted in anguish and you are wailing once more, sobbing loud and earnest.

Patrick blinks at you, “Jesus.”

But he pulls you closer again. Turns your body, in fact, so you are leaning back into his raised lap and he is halfway cradling you like a baby. You weep into his shirt, painting it wet and viscid, and the scent of his awful cologne only makes you sadder.

“Oh my God,” Patrick says again, rubbing up and down your arm, and he sounds a bit amused, which is a little fair. “He might not,” he offers.

You snivel loudly and pull back, swallowing your sobs and casting him a disappointed glower.

“Yeah, ok. He probably will.”

You fall hard against his soaked front again, whimpering feebly. Patrick looks down at you.

“Hey, we can do that, too,” he offers now, in a pick-yourself-up sort of tone that juxtaposes so fiercely with the proposition he’s actually making, you nearly laugh. “We time it right, they can be the same age. Then we’ll put ours in the same school as theirs, and teach ours to just fuckin’ decimate the shit.”

And now you are laughing. You’re still teary and frail so it hurts all the same as a sob, but he can see you’re smiling, so he continues,

“Just everything. Fuckin’ grades, boom. Sports, boom. Instruments, boom. Our one’s gonna play two cellos, a piano, a guitar, and an oboe, all at the same time. He’ll use his fingers, toes, and dick,” says Patrick, and he sounds utterly sincere and emphatic, even as he’s sort of smirking now, because you’re laughing even harder. “And we’ll tell him to bully theirs, too. Every day just ‘oh you’re a piece of shit, you’re ugly, your parents’ marriage was doomed from the beginning’, and their fucker’ll be like ‘no I’m not’ and ‘fuck you’—”

You’re tickled, too, by the voice he puts on to imitate these fictitious children. How he talks all low and churlish like he’s instead caricaturing a worldweary pensioner.

“—and ‘I wish you weren’t so much cooler and better than me, and didn’t fuck my girlfriend, and my mom’.”

You make a face.

“Don’t make it weird.”

“Alright, fine. He won’t fuck her,” Patrick concedes, “That’d be fucking legendary if he did, though. But he won’t.”

You are, again, charmed by this, by how easily he yields. It makes you think of a nursery and fresh, boneless toes.

You rest your face on the wet of your weeping on his chest, and you feel a bit humiliated. But this isn’t so bad, as far as humiliations go.

“What if it’s a girl?” you croak, your words halfway muffled by where your cheek is squashed against him.

���Even better.”

“Where would we live? I don’t wanna go to New York, I don’t have the fortitude.”

The worst of your sobbing has waned to stillness, but he’s still rubbing your arm.

“We can shack up in the Midwest. Somewhere chill.” His leg starts shifting beneath you, and you think he wants another cigarette, but he doesn’t move. Instead, “Omaha?”

You shrug. You hated not being in Florida, but still. You shrug. “Sure. And what’ll you do? Coach? Or become like a blue collar fuckin’…” you trail off vaguely. “I can’t even picture it.”

“I always wanted to be a fireman.”

“That’s sexy.”

His laugh, when it sounds, echoes through his chest like there’s a cavern where his heart should be. Which you don’t think is such an unthinkable idea.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nod. You clear your throat. “Especially because you could die at any moment. So if we end up hating each other, I can just wait for you to die in a fire, and, that way, I don’t have to murder you. Then our kid doesn’t lose both parents at once.”

He pauses as if considering this. His leg shifts again. “Fuck,” he murmurs after a while.

“Sorry.”

“No, don’t ruin it.”

You clear your throat again. “And a dog,” you say.

“Fuck, yeah, a dog,” he says in his most New Yorkian fashion. Like a traveling salesman who needs you to look at this vacuum and do it quickly. It’s pretty funny. “It can eat theirs.”

You make a reproachful sort of noise. “Not everything has to be—“

“Okay, fine, yeah, just a dog,” he cedes again. The nursery, in your mind, is astralthemed. “Just a dog for the two of us. And our Nobel Prize winning child. I’ve always wanted one named Bagel.”

You think he can somehow hear your mildly scathing New York musings.

“A kid or a dog?”

“A dog.”

“We can name the dog Bagel,” you shrug, as though agreeing to dinner plans, and the tender pulse of a postweep migraine begins to encroach upon you, like the waxing sea. “Can we name the kid Bagel?”

“No.”

The song is still on loop.

Five story fire as you came…

You think of Patrick in sootscuffed bunker gear and a fireman’s helmet.

“Bagel Zweig,” you mumble wryly, your skull beginning to thump with the ache of your patheticism.

Patrick laughs. Lifts you off his knees, unceremoniously but not unkindly, and begins to rifle in his pockets for his Camel pack.

A sudden bout of cheering sounds from the reception, flashing taunting beams in purple hues. You wonder what the fuck they have to be so happy about. You sigh. Perhaps, too, did people cheer, at the mortal fall of Ozymandias. You think about that. That loss of power. That loss.

[shotmrmiller]

okay so !!!! so what if you’re a jealous and possessive pet? like your boy tells you it’s okay to play with the other boys and the other pets and even encourages you like sucking their cock or riding them or eating out one of the other pets but the image of him doing that with someone else’s pet just shatters you. if they’re in a different room that’s bad but being able to see it happen is even worse. you can see the smile they give and the sounds they make and you thought you were special to them but it doesn’t feel like that — how would the boys reconcile something like that?

like knowing the other boys and pets are sharing and playing and you feel bad, especially when they’re all together and everyone is playing but your boy is the only one who’s not and it tears you up because you want him to enjoy and have fun but the thought of him kissing someone else or fucking them, finishing inside them… you could cry.

(bonus angst where one of the boys goes and visits another pet and comes back smelling like them, maybe marked and obviously fucked, and you hadn’t necessarily talked about that yet and it just crushes you and you refuse to sleep in the same bed as them for…. well, for awhile.)

UGH. YOU. I LOVE ANGST.

im a whore for hurt/no comfort so ill try to help write something here cuz if it was me, they can kick rocks. but its not. So.

for the first part, oh man. It's a bottle-it-in situation, imo, because i feel this in my soul. The low grunts you worked so hard to wrestle out of them are easily tumbling out of their mouth now, because of your hard work. It's something so gut-wrenching because that face of ecstasy should only be for you? Then the insecurities kick in. What if they're prettier, what if they're tighter, what if they're simply in another league altogether? (this is me as a hit dog that is hollering)

he's never treated your playdates as a chance to essentially cheat without cheating, he honestly only wanted you to make friends—wanted to expand on the kink you live and breathe by. But regardless, that's how it feels. And this is where the shutdown begins. The silence, the lack of enthusiasm for wanting to put on your collar, the distancing, and when he says, "Does my pet want to play with me today?" you burst into tears. Ugly sobbing, loud wails.

He freezes, for a second, because never in the time you've been together has he ever heard you cry like this. It's agonizing and when he immediately throws himself at your feet, he tries to cup your face with his large hands when you jerk yourself away from his touch.

You've never rejected his touch.

His heart cracks with hairline fractures because this is his love, his future that's falling into pieces in front of him and you don't even want his comfort. He lowers his hands and fists at the fabric of his trousers to hold back from reaching out to you.

For the first time in a long time, his eyes well with tears, and he swallows thickly, trying to open up his throat a bit to be able to say something, anything.

His voice warbles as he says, "Baby, talk to me." He gives you plenty of time to respond, but you don't. Once the tears are exhausted and your body is worn out, you simply turn your head to the side, eyes away from him. The tears that had distorted his vision now fall, dripping onto the cold floor he's still kneeling on. You don't even want to look at him.

"Talk to me, baby, please." His forehead touches your knee. "Please." His tone is desperate as he begs. The sight of a man who's killed people with his bare hands, sniveling by your feet pulls at your own heartstrings. Sigh.

"Would you like to know where you erred?" He whips his head up to look at you, nodding like an idiot.

"Your mistake, was assuming I wanted to share and be shared." He opens his mouth to say something, but you're not here to listen to him. He's here to listen to you.

"No. You presumed I wanted to the same as the other pets, just because we share the same kink? I had to sit there and watch— listen to you fuck someone else, and I couldn't say anything because then I would've been the buzzkill."

You clench your jaw and look directly into his eyes. "Do you know what it's like? No. You don't. You forget that the boys are your friends, your brothers in arms. Not mine. I sat with acquaintances, at best, and had to stomach whatever the fuck that was."

"I no longer wish to—" but he panics here, adapts a crazy-eyed look and cuts you off.

"No, no, no. Please, god no. You're my everything, you, I—" he hiccups, and his shoulders start to shake once he wraps his arms around your waist, and lowers his head onto your knees again, and chokes out, "I am nothing without you. Please."

Having cried all your tears, your sadness fades into sharp, biting anger. "It didn't seem like it though. You were quick to pass me around like some harlot. You're just gonna give me to anyone you see? Hm? What about the neighbor that has been hitting on m—" and he jerks his head back up, eyes deadly, dark with hostility.

"I'd fucking kill him for even having the audacity to ask if he could touch you the way I do."

Scoffing, you say, "And that's how I felt. Fucking strangers touching what should be only mine, kissing what is only mine," your tone turns hushed, "what I thought was mine, anyway."

Holding his gaze, you purse your lips. "I need time to think. You broke my trust. I'm not sure how to move forward from here."

--

this is too long im sorry uh, so he gives you all the time in the world, all the space you need, for which you're grateful. He's not overbearing, never crowds you. never says anything out of line. He seems fully repentant, dotes on you like his only reason for existing is to keep you as happy as you can feel. He tells you he loves you every bloody day, even if you don't repeat it back. He says it firm, unwavering.

And that's the balm that allays the pain in your heart. But you love him, still, so so much. With a deep breath, you tell him that you're not going to leave him, that you love him still and that's why it hurt the way that it did. But he'll have a ton of groveling to do.

The shaky smile he gives is full of relief. He pulls you to him, in an embrace so tight that you can barely even breathe. And after, he holds your face so tenderly, as if you're made of porcelain, and asks for a kiss, one you agree to. It conveys everything he's been sayings all this time, that he loves you.

and months pass, intimacy slowly turns back to what it was, but with reverent kisses and worship spilling from his lips. Words so sweet, that you break down in tears mid-act because you feel something finally shift back into place. Ofc, he freaks because "Darling, oh god, what's happened" but you pull him in for a kiss, and just tell him that you love him so much. His smile is soft as he says it back.

Then you pull out the collar again, and he panics but you calm him. That you feel ready. You want to play with your owner, and your heart is in his hands, to please take care of it.

A couple of tears fall from his eyes as he clicks your collar back around your neck and swears to never hurt you this way again.

Playdates turn into him being the only one to touch you and vice versa. And he answers to no one when they ask why.

i had a good time im sorry its so long I JUST LOVE ANGST PLEASE.

I hope i gave you what you were looking for ❤

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Second Best 5

Warnings: non/dubcon, and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

Characters: Lee Bodecker

Summary: The newly-single sheriff sets his eye on an unexpected match.

Part of the Backwoods AU

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging.

The sheriff drives down the dusty backroad behind the Percy farm. You lean against the door, trying to keep as much space between you and him as you can. You're only thankful he hadn't made you ride in the back like a real criminal.

You know he's up to something. He's trying to teach you a lesson, but why? He could go bother Greta or any of the other girls down at The Horn. You give yourself a look in the side mirror and huff through your nose.

"Whatcha bein' so puffy about?" He reaches over and slaps your thigh, kneading it roughly.

You pull your leg away from him, crossing it over the other as you clutch the seatbelt, "is that illegal too?"

He chuckles and lets off the gas, slowly rolling through the gravel.

"You're sure mouthy, huh?"

"It's just a question--"

"You actin' so innocent but you can't control that tongue of yours," he tuts.

You sniff, "aren't we going to the station?"

"You're many things, darlin', but you're not dumb, are ya?" He asks as he brushes his fingertips down your arm. "I don't mind dropping charges... you just gotta loosen up."

You stiffen and clamp your lips tight. You knew he was a creep but does he have to be so obtuse? There's lots of girls dying to ride with the sheriff. You're just not one of them.

"Why don't you call Greta--"

"This ain't about her," he grabs your arm, trying to pull you towards him as the wheel veers.

"Sheriff," you cry out and he slams on the brakes.

"See the trouble you're causin'," he chides, "you're gonna get us both hurt."

"I'm not doing anything. I didn't do anything," you bluster, heat radiating across your cheeks, "please, just... why are you doing this?"

"I don't know why you're actin' coy," he sneers as he shifts into park and unclicks his seat belt, "I just want a taste. I saw the way you were eyein' me up. You don't gotta worry about that ditz, Greta, it's me and you, girl."

"Ew, stop--" You bat at his hand as he grips your arm tighter.

"Ew?!" He echoes, "now, you ain't gotta be nasty."

"I'm not... I just... don't know why you're doing this," you try to wriggle free, "sheriff, I really am not into you--"

"Ah, you don't know what you missin' out on, is the problem. She told me you never been with a man,"

"I did it, okay? I stole the gummy bears. Just take me to the station," you plead as he yanks on your arm, "I'll confess--"

"I don't care about the damn candy bears," he snarls and pushes you back against the seat, "just a little fun, huh?"

Before you can react, he bends over and dives head-first into your lap. You cry out as you grab at his head, trying to push him off as your other hand claws at the door. You catch the handle and the door swings out but you're trapped by the seat belt.

"Christ!" You holler as you bring your elbow down on the back of his head.

He grunts and you feel around, jamming your thumb down on the button, releasing the belt.You fall sideways out of the car and throw your hands up to catch yourself. You drag yourself onto the ground, kicking behind you in a panic as you feel Bodecker reaching for you. You don't have time to think about the siren wailing in your head; what the hell is wrong with him?

You roll onto your stomach and get your knees under you. You scrabble across the dirt as you fight to get your feet set. Before you can stand, you're bowled over. You cry out as the heavy metal cracks off the back of your head.

You fall into the ditch next to the road, tumbling down as the flashlight bounces beside you. You look up as the panting sheriff stands above you at the crest of the earth. You reach to hold your skull as he puffs out his stomach.

"That's assault on an officer, girly," he growls, "lot worse than a slap on the wrist for that."

He steps forward and stops as gravel crunches. You blink dizzily and babble. Tires cruise forward and stop on the other side of the road. You can't see anything as you struggle to push yourself up.

"Everything okay, Sheriff?" A voice calls out.

"All good," Bodecker turns, resting his hand on his gun. You freeze. "Just stretching my legs."

"Alright, well then, have a good one," the man calls out. You think it might be Cole from down the way but you can't know for sure.

The sheriff waits until the driver leaves before he turns back. You gulp and jump up, spinning to climb out the other side of the ditch. He hops across as you haul yourself up. He kicks you back down and you yelp as his foot knocks the air out of you.

"Now, we ain't gonna be doin' all that," he tramps down the incline and grabs you by the hair. "I see how you like it. Rough."

You groan and grab his wrist, whining as he tears on your roots, "please--"

"Oh, don't you worry, you'll be begging real good," he turns you over to your stomach and straddles you, dropping your head as you writhe. He bends your arms back and cuffs them tight, the metal pinching your skin. "Ya know, you can just ask ya friend, I can be nice..." he grits, "just too bad you can't.”

[asimpwithfreetime]

Hi, I really like your work and if you didn't mind, could I ask of yandere Neteyam x Na'vi reader, you can choose the promt and setting.

Obliviously if you don't mind!

Idea: Yandere Neteyam forcing the bond because he is jealous

You belong with me (Yandere! Neteyam x Na’vi reader)

Content warnings: English isn’t my first language, this hasn’t been proofread yet, Neteyam is aged up

General warnings: yandere Neteyam, yandere behavior, obsessive behavior, manipulative yandere! Neteyam, violent! Neteyam, bonding without consent (even though they had planned it just for a few days later), animalistic growling, Neteyam crying just like yandere Jake

[ 3rd Person POV ]

Y/n and Neteyam had promised each other they would mate before Eywa once they turned into adulthood. They promised that since the beginning of their relationship.

The time was near and Y/n seemed quite nervous. Mating with the future Olo’eyktan isn’t the easiest thing to do. Knowing the judging glares some female omatikaya gave her.

With that, she tried to keep herself distracted during the day (when she didn’t have chores or errands). Neteyam didn’t mind at all, he was nervous himself too. And there was an obsessive thought that was taking over his mind, the closeness of having Y/n all for himself had him excited with the idea.

He felt anger any time a male talked to her, even if it was his own father. She shouldn’t be beaming at any other Na’vi. Her sweet smile and kind words should be all his.

And when there were just a few days away from the mating, he snapped. All the omatikaya knew that Y/n was with Neteyam and Neteyam was with Y/n. Quite literally, everyone knew it.

But there he was, a young Na’vi warrior trying to court Neteyam’s soon to be mate. She seemed shy but she was telling him (nicely) that she didn’t want anything to do with him.

He seemed like he had desisted. But it wasn’t like that. Y/n felt bad for the boy, but she knew she wanted Neteyam. She had chosen long ago.

That evening, Y/n went to the tree of souls, asking Eywa to help her ease the tension and nervousness that she had been feeling cooling up in her stomach.

She didn’t hear the Na’vi approaching her. The same boy from that morning. He started talking, going on and on, saying that he was a way better potential mate than Neteyam. The boy wasn’t aggressive or tried to impose, he was just a little bit of annoying. Y/n, once again, declined nicely.

The boy seemed to not get it. Probably one of the young warriors who had just finished one big hunt and thought they owned the place.

From between the bioluminescent plants, Neteyam emerged. “She is mine! Back off” the tone was harsh, she didn’t remember the dark look over Neteyam’s eyes.

“You guys haven’t bonded yet” the boy said, trying to sound confident, the figure of Neteyam making his voice crack, “She isn’t from anyone yet”.

Neteyam growled low in his throat. He then hissed, showing of his fangs and the Max look in his eyes. He jumped over the other boy and started punching him. Y/n suppressed a scream. “Neteyam! Stop!” She found her voice back once the other boy started bleeding.

Neteyam didn’t stop, the low growls coming from deep inside of him. Y/n started crying the moment she saw the bloody state the other Na’vi was in. Neteyam stopped the moment he heard her sobs.

He got up and got close to her kneeling down. “I’m so sorry baby, didn’t mean to scare you” he said, hugging her, some of the blood painting her body as well. “Please, please, don’t cry” he said, his own eyes watering and his lip quivering.

“Please, baby, look at me” his pleadings weren’t heard, Y/n was not only mad, but scared. She looked at his as if she was seeing a demon. “Get away from me!” She hollered, her own hisses scarring Neteyam. “But I was protecting you” he cried, lowering more onto the floor. She got away from him, trying to pry him away. He cried, he whimpered and tried in all ways possible to get a hold of her. He was uncontrollable, like a baby crying and wailing for his mother. He reached for her and used all his force to get to her.

She couldn’t resist it. Seeing him crying so hard made her feel bad, until she saw the other boy almost unconscious. But he had already reached her. She couldn’t react fast enough to stop him form connecting both braids together. “There” he said crying. “Now that we are mated before Eywa in the tree of our ancestors, you are mine and I am yours” he cuddled her, even when she tried to get away form his grasp.

“You belong with me now” Neteyam’s voice softened little by little, his body jerking while he was catching his breath. Y/n looked around dumbfounded. What had just happened?

[eldritch-spouse]

What if Catalina had a human coworker that genuinely wanted to be her friend? And put themselves between her and demons when they felt it necessary?

You're what she needs.

It doesn't really matter how you ended up working there, you just needed one look at Catalina to know that something was very, very wrong.

It's not even that she's having a hard time as a waitress. Not at all. In fact, she seems plenty capable of defending herself when others holler and attempt to touch the small, voluptuous bat woman. You'd even say she's gleefully violent at times. It's that she never smiles.

Never a true smile, never a genuine look of amusement. You ask about her plans at the end of the day and she always has some variation of "nothing much" prepared. No one calls her, the regulars don't get too close to her, she didn't even seek you out at first, only bothering to teach you the basics of your new job before promptly detaching and doing her own tasks.

Fair, you suppose not everyone is at work to get chummy. After all, she was perfectly polite to you, until it was near closing hours and you could smell the alcohol on her, Catalina would mumble some replies that almost sounded rude, but whatever. You didn't mind, it wasn't your business. Maybe you even let her get away with some things because of how pretty you thought she was.

Your dynamic was dry and strained by the obligatory nature of work.

Until a certain day.

A band of infernal clients walked in. Nothing new to you, but the way Cat immediately tensed and avoided them like the plague was jarring. For the first time ever, she didn't look drained or exhausted or irritated- She looked terrified. You'd notice the scornful glances the woman would sometimes spare halflings or demonic people, but the difference between those moments and this one, was that there were at least five of them together now. Large men with loud voices to match. They seemed perfectly normal, in good moods actually, but she was giving them a deer in the headlights look, frozen, as if they had come to tear her apart.

You realized then that your coworker wasn't just mildly racist, there was history behind her attitude.

In the moment, you merely stepped in front of Catalina and waited the clients yourself, gently calling out her name and suggesting she go eat something inside because she seemed "pale".

She stayed in the back throughout the entire time those demons were hanging around, huddled in a corner, tail between her legs. The woman felt distant, eyes staring off beyond the walls, though her massive ears twitched at every little noise. You'd warn Catalina every time you were coming in and out of the back area, and waited every client until they were gone, letting the bat woman recover.

As soon as they're gone, your coworker rises as if nothing had happened, and easily returns to the prior work rhythm. She doesn't mention a thing, neither do you. At the end of your shift, Catalina looks even drunker than usual, but she manages to waddle her way to you and grab onto the edge of your shirt as she thanks you, gaze averted. She probably wouldn't have made it out of that corner if it wasn't for you.

Curiosity struck you then.

You had to ask. You had to know what was going on.

It didn't take much prodding for her to toss a glass bottle away and start blubbering everything out. She told you who she was before, who she had met in Hell, who bewitched her into a life of immeasurable luxury and who betrayed her as soon as things got serious, as soon as her own child was conceived. Catalina all but soaks your clothes in miserable tears as she chokes past the part of what she had to do, how she had to abandon her own only son and live hidden like a cockroach. How everything is killing her.

The emotional stress, paired with her heavy inebriation, has the woman crying out for her son while you rock her. She sniffles and wails and sobs until there's nothing left, and you realize, Catalina is asleep in your arms.

There was no way you could leave her alone in this state. Which led to a very awkward night where you let her crash on your couch, hear d her get up to vomit in the middle of the night and offered her some meds.

She was gone by the time you were finally able to catch some sleep. You found Catalina back at work, and her demeanor towards you had shifted from night to day.

Nowadays, the woman actually smiles at you with real joy. She chats you up when there are less clients around, helps you with heavier trays, even protects you from some less respectful cat-callers and pervs. In turn, you offer her the company she now desperately seems to crave, and serve all infernal clients on your own.

It's kind of silly how she's started to baby you recently, insisting on fixing your outfit and bringing you stuff she cooks, insisting you need to try it. Catalina even asks why so many people are constantly calling you at work, gets in the middle of conversations with clients as if to gently shoo them. Sometimes it's nice, other times a bit unnecessary.

She asked if you wanted to go watch a movie today. From the franchise on that shirt you sometimes wear before changing into the work uniform. It's very thoughtful of her to remember such a small detail. Of course you're going with her.

[queer-geordie-nerd]

“I woke up one day and there was blood on my sheet. I screamed in horror. My mother came into my room and told me that I was now a “big girl” and that this was a great thing of which I should be proud. “What do you mean, Mommy? Is this awful thing going to happen to me all my life, every single month?” I asked in total shock. I hollered and wailed. “I don’t want to be a girl. This is so unfair. Why is there no justice in nature? Why don’t men have to go through this?”

My mother tried to calm me down, explaining how the big reward for women is the fact that they can bear children. That fact, she tried to console me, constituted some kind of balance, some kind of fairness. “What are you talking about? That’s even more unfair. This whole messy thing with babies is disgusting. I don’t want that in my life. I want to be free. I don’t want to be a woman. It’s awful. I hate it.” I couldn’t stop crying. “How come men are so lucky?” I asked. My mother was desperately trying to come up with an example of gender equality and justice, just to calm me down. “Poor men have to shave every day, can you imagine? Isn’t that hard? Maybe even harder than this?” “Mommy, how can you say something like this? They don’t HAVE to shave. It’s their choice. This is certainly not my choice.”

I felt deeply offended by this act of nature. I took it personally. I took it hard. The worst thing was that you had no way to fight this injustice. You would have to endure it. The prospect of passively surrendering to this crime of nature seemed almost unbearable. At 11, I looked like a 16-year-old. My friends were still little girls. I wasn’t. Supposedly. Suddenly, almost overnight, I noticed men looking at me in a different way. I hated it. I wanted to be a boy. Or, if I couldn’t do that, then at least be thin and flat as a boy. The new body that was emerging scared me. It was off-putting and repulsive. There was suddenly too much of it. Too much and too sudden. I was unprepared. I was a child. A baby really. And my body apparently wanted to make new babies.

What was happening to me? When I was a little girl of three or four, I desperately wanted to be “a woman.” At four, according to Mom’s journal, I would steal a pad from her, put it between my legs, then take my mother’s purse, and pretend to be a grown up woman. So, how was it possible that, when the real change came about, I was so afraid and so unwilling to become that mysterious something called “a woman?”

- Mira Furlan, Love Me More Than Anything In the World

[musamora]

hi muse! could you possibly write a dazai oneshot where he takes care of the reader after a hard day? lots of angst please. thank you! (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

𝖕𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖘𝖊, 𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖆𝖙 𝖒𝖊 「𝔬𝔰𝔞𝔪𝔲 𝔡𝔞𝔷𝔞𝔦」 ༉‧₊˚

content. gn!reader. hurt no comfort, death of a child (not your child), ambiguous unhappy ending, mourning. not proofread.

author's note. i highly suggest reading this with laufey in the background. i accidentally made myself cry a bit.

would you like to see more? fill out the taglist or comment under this post.

The buzz of infectious energy that normally surrounded the agency had abandoned the hearts of each individual, leaving in its wake a trail of mindless typing and mournful sighs. An unrelenting clock ticked onward. It had started as an average morning, with some agents assigned to a simplistic mission regarding another dangerous ability user. The same old routine. However, something was different — something had gone awry.

In the events of the morning, a child had been killed in the crossfire.

You couldn't help but remember the expression of the parents, watching sorrowfully from the windows above as Kunikida broke the news. Your trembling fingers closed the window and pushed the others away as the mother's hollered cries echoed across the street, wailing for a life that had been lost too soon. 

The rest of the hours had been a complete blur, your numb mind forcing you to follow the routine as it hazed in synchrony with the pouring rain above. You wanted to embrace that rain, to feel the water slick the hair against your neck as it chilled your skin. To feel your brain blank as lightning scattered in the sky, to lay in the puddles as you succumbed to the storm. But there was no time to grieve a life that had barely intertwined with yours, one that had crossed paths with your own by sheer coincidence. 

Still, you couldn't help the occasional quiver of your lips, biting back the urge to scream into that same storm but not having the strength to even try. And so you carried on, your body working mechanically as your mind strayed far away. It needed to be a normal day — if you just pretended it was, then it would be. The hours ticked by, blurred footsteps blending together until you found yourself inside the kitchen you shared with Dazai — the young detective stood and watched carefully from the entrance of your apartment.

"I'm gonna start dinner. Do you want crab or-"

"Stop."

You paused as you were rustling through the ingredients, his stern tone rattling your already cracking foundation.

"(Name), look at me."

An invisible hand squeezed at your throat, any words that you tried to muster failing to leave your lips as your eyes scrambled to find something to save you from looking at him. You wouldn't look at him; you couldn't. It would break you.

"I don't - I don't think we have enough radishes left. I'll have to - have to go to the store." You pivoted on your heel, the door feeling too far as your footsteps pounded heavily against the floor. You refused to look at him. "I'll be back home in a bit."

"(Name)." A bandaged hand caught your own.

"Stop pretending you're okay."

You struggled to swallow down your shattered heart, the jagged edges painfully scraping against your throat as it clung to the air. Hands gathered your own — warm hands that kneaded and pressed circles into your cold, shaking ones. You trembled at his gentle touch, your heart yearning to succumb to his comfort as your mind prayed that he would slap you out of your emotional stupor. But he would never do that. Not now. Not to you.

"Baby," his voice shook ever-so-slightly. "Look at me."

A soft touch brushed against your chin, slowly tilting your head so that your matching pairs of somber eyes could meet. Your lashes fluttered stubbornly, but you were unable to hold back anymore as your heart leaked from inside your chest. You leaned into him, hiding your face from the rain.

"It's not fair," you croaked.

He brought you in further by the waist, nestling his nose against the crook of your neck as he held you tight. He kissed your shoulder with firm protectiveness, but even you could feel the way his lips trembled against your skin. The dreary weather worsened out the window, enveloping you both in a reality neither of you wanted to accept. And in that sorrow, you stayed, knowing that there was nothing you could do.

"I know."

© MUSAMORA 2023 — do not repost or modify my works for any reason. do not steal graphics w/o explicit permission. reblogs are appreciated.