#I had him read the crystal because the whole party was smooth-brained and he had the highest intelligence

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

[nosferatvpussy]

distorted lullabies [chapter XIV]

Word count: 6,791

Warnings: vulgar language, angst (everyone saw it coming)

Pairing: Dracula x female reader

AO3 link

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“Y/N, are you awake?” Mallory asked.

I closed the book and peeked my head up from beneath the covers to look at her. Light attacked my eyes and I squinted for a brief moment, gathering the covers under my chin.

“Did you really need to switch on that light?” I sat up on the bed and blinked. “This one was doing its job just fine.” I pointed at the reading light next to me.

“You’ll grow wings and turn into a bat any day now.” She laughed, and I glowered. Turning into a bat could very well be a possibility. I hadn’t asked Dracula about that. There was a lot I hadn’t asked, and a lot that he probably wouldn’t tell me now. “A joke, Y/N. You still remember those?”

“Not sure I do,” I scoffed. “You look great. Are you going out with Sean?”

Mallory’s blonde locks laid in large curls around her shoulders – an hour of carefully applied curling iron, I’d say – and her makeup was soft in such a way that her eyes looked more almond shaped than round and innocent like they usually did. A beige trench coat covered her outfit but her legs were on display. Mallory favoured mini dresses so I presumed that was what she had on underneath.

“No, he’s being annoying, it’s just me and the girls. And don’t you change the subject. I don’t feel good about leaving you here.” She sighed. “You’re my guest and I’ll leave you here to go party? That’s not right, but if you come with… It’ll be fun, come on. I’ll wait for you if you go get ready. We’ll drink and dance, and maybe you’ll find someone else.”

Someone else to end up bitten by Count Dracula. Another lesson, like Mallory was, to remind me that I was his.

“No rebounds,” I muttered. “I’ll be fine. I don’t feel like dancing.” She frowned. “Mal, I’m incredibly thankful that you’re letting me stay here but you don’t have to feel like you need to cater to me. We lived together during uni. Don’t think of me as a guest, more like a flatmate, a very brief one. I’ll go back home in two days time”

Staying with Mallory was more her decision than mine. Days ago, she’d bought a last minute train ticket from Gloucester and returned with me to London when the Sun was still up in the sky. When the taxi dropped me off at my house, Mal asked the cabbie to wait and strolled up my stairs on weak knees and packed my bags for me, saying that I needed her. I simply watched as she threw my outfits and shoes inside a large suitcase. While I waited, listening to her go on about broken hearts and that’s what friends do, I’d noticed that my bedroom’s window was open; I didn’t remember leaving it like that. Maybe I was being paranoid but being paranoid was a better choice than being stupid and I’d afforded enough stupidity for a lifetime, so I let Mallory harbour me. Dracula had unlimited access to my house since I had invited him in and closed doors and windows were no hindrance to him, as he had proved. Mallory was my best bet of avoiding him and staying safe, for now, and I could keep an eye on her to make sure she would be truly okay.

Mallory acted like usual, her ramblings, her chipper attitude, her easy laughter at the silliest things. Mallory, as before. Mallory, my best friend from college. Mallory, who had a scar on the side of her neck just like mine and, therefore, wasn’t at all like before. All she’d asked me on the following day after the wedding was how we got all the way from Berkeley Castle to Gloucester and how much she had had to drink. As a test I’d asked how she’d gotten hurt and she looked at me, bewildered, and said “I got hurt?”. When Dracula told me she wouldn’t remember anything, I didn’t expect her to not remember a single thing. I’d prepared a lengthy explanation but threw it away in favour of Mal’s bite-induced amnesia. Even when I went to change the bandage on her neck, she barely acknowledged me and simply stared ahead with empty eyes. She didn’t seem to notice the bite when she looked in the mirror, but every day before leaving the house, without a fault, she wrapped a scarf around her neck as if covering it was instinctive. A useful little trick in Dracula’s sleeve, I presumed.

“Tomorrow marks ten days, right?” She asked and I nodded. She motioned for me to scoot over and flopped down on the bed. “Can I just say that it’s weird that he gave you an ultimatum?”

“I was the one who asked for time.”

“Still weird. I mean, it must have been a huge fight. You said he was massively pissed.” She trained her large eyes on me, like one of Diana’s cats did when it wanted food. “And I’ve never seen you like this, Y/N. I thought you’d open up if you stayed with me. You cried the whole trip back from Gloucester and now you won’t shed a tear. You won’t talk about him. You’re sulking, and you never sulk. For a day maybe, yeah, you’ll sulk and throw a pity party like you did when you broke up with Paul a few years back, but then you’ll make yourself busy.”

Back in Gloucester, during breakfast at my rented flat, Mal, with a wound on her throat and face as pale as her hair, insisted for me to tell her what had happened and why I couldn’t stop crying. I’d told her what I could: that I’d lied to him about something, he found out and did something terrible and wanted me to explain myself in 10 days.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Mal.”

“No, you never want to talk but that’s how you’ll heal. You’re on a rinse and repeat cycle of going to work, picking at your food, and then holing up in my guestroom with that poetry book. Where is it, by the way? Did you finally throw it away?”

I retrieved it from under the covers and set it on her lap. The book was warm to the touch. It slept with me, under the pillow or over my chest. Two days after the wedding, Mallory and I went to grab something to eat at a book cafe near our office. The cover, a large red rose overflowing from a jar as moths and butterflies decorated the edges, caught my eye and when I read the title announcing it to be a collection of Russian poetry, I instantly knew I had to have it. To find in those pages the tranquility I found inside Gloucester Cathedral; a moment in which I was wholly unreserved and Dracula had put his relentless pursuit of me on pause. A perfect memory in which I could have lived in forever.

“I thought you liked French poetry better,” Mallory said as she picked it up and opened it at random. “Why are you so obsessed with this book, anyway? Let’s see.” She took a deep breath and spit out the words on the page so fast that they barely sound like verses. “ I love you, I love you and as I rage at myself for this obsession, and as I make my shamed confession, despairing at your feet I lie, blah blah blah, my one reward for a day’s anguish comes when your, pale hand, love, I kiss. Okay, that part was nice.” She nodded in approval as her eyes skimmed down. “I dare not ask for love with all my many sins, both great and small, I am perhaps of love unworthy. God, that’s a bit depressing, isn’t it?”

“You found it!” The pages ruffled when I snatched the book from her hands.

“Found what?”

“But if feigned love, if you would pretend, you’d easily deceive me. For happily would I, believe me, deceive myself if but I could!” I completed as I read through the last lines. “You found it, Mal, you’re brilliant.”

“I just opened the book.” She shrugged. “Were you looking for this poem in particular?”

I nodded as I tried to read it from the start but my brain was foggy from sleep and the words weren’t making much sense.

“Oh my god,” Mal said and I looked up at her. “This has to do with Dracula, doesn’t it?”

“He recited it to me once. He told me it was Pushkin–”

“So you bought the book.” Mallory drew her eyebrows together.

“Well, I couldn’t remember the exact words to google them and I was curious– stop making that face.”

“What face?”

“The face you make when you watch Pride and Prejudice.”

She giggled.

“Your ten days are up tomorrow. What are you going to tell him?”

I closed the book and let it rest near my knee. “I don’t know what I’ll say,” I finally said in a shaky voice. “I really don’t.”

“Maybe if you tell me what happened, I can help.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

The bond wouldn’t let me utter a word about the true issue surrounding the Count to her; I suspected the loophole I’d found with Renfield and Zoe was because they already had previous knowledge of Dracula’s nature.

Mallory took my hand.

“I wish you’d cry, at least I would know what to do.”

I squeezed her hand as my eyes fell on her neck. A crystal choker covered the bite. She should be the one crying because she didn’t remember, because she had a gash at her throat that she didn’t recognise and because a monster of a man had attacked her. I should be the one taking care of her, not the way around. That’s why I’d bargained with Count Dracula in the first place.

“I do cry but only when I wake up,” I confessed. “The tears just come out of nowhere as soon as I open my eyes and then dry up when I realise I’m awake.” My voice wobbled at the last word and I slapped the pillow next to me. “Oh, now they come. Shit.”

Mallory laughed at my frustration and made me lay my head on her lap. Tears fell in soft thuds to the duvet, running over my nose and eyes as Mallory smoothed my hair.

“It’ll be okay, lovey. He’ll understand if he likes you, whatever you did he’ll forgive–”

“He won’t, Mal.”

“He will, he’s gotta. I saw the way he looked at you.”

“Doesn’t mean anything. He was horrible. I don’t know how to begin to forgive him or if I can forgive him. He was nice to me and now I know that’s what mattered, that he was nice to me and only to me–” But he wasn’t nice just to me, he was also nice to Lucy. My chest constricted. “I don’t know if any of it was real or that he actually cares that he hurt yo– me,” I corrected. “He wants me as one wants precious jewels but that’s all it is. He wants to possess me.” The words were strung together between sobs. I barely understood myself so I knew Mal didn’t either but she still rubbed my shoulder to soothe me. “Why am I crying now? I’m done with crying and I don’t want to.”

I slammed a hand on the bed again but instead of the soft duvet, I found the book’s hard surface, and it hit me why I was crying.

From the moment I bought the book, I held onto it as if my life depended on it, skimming through pages during work breaks, sneaking glances at it during lunch, reading it faithfully yet slowly so it wouldn’t end too fast in search of that Pushkin stanza. I’d buried myself in Russian poetry, those biting words that hung on the edge of everyone’s lips, unsaid but that rang true, so I wouldn’t have to dwell on what to say. Perhaps those words would become mine and I wouldn’t have to say anything, not now or ever, and by some magic Dracula would understand. Then Mallory found the verses and I realised I still didn’t have the words. What did I have left to hold onto now that I didn’t need to search for Pushkin’s poem? The sweetness I searched for amidst the sting of my bitterness was gone and that moment in the cathedral wasn’t worth anything if Dracula killed me tomorrow.

Ten days wasted on poetry and in a moment that I would never have again. I wasn’t even sure if my voice would work when I tried explaining it to him. All I had planned was that I would tell him somewhere public in the hope that he still had enough scruples left to not kill me in front of witnesses.

“Diana called your phone when you were sleeping,” Mallory informed me as my sobs subsided. “Taking naps all afternoon and sleeping early won’t help you come up with an answer, you know.”

“It’s the only time when I don’t have to think about him.”

“You don’t dream about him?” She stopped playing with my hair for a second when I nodded and I felt a tug on a lock of hair. The slight resistance told me she was braiding my hair.  

“Just once since the wedding. I dreamt that he was driving and we were holding hands but then–” my hand was nearly crushed in his grip as he raised it to his mouth and tore my wrist open. Blood trickled down to his lap and a scarlet jet stained the windows. I smiled the whole time as he consumed me. “It wasn’t a good dream. Did you get Diana’s call?”

“Yeah. She’s worried about you, told me you only answered one of her calls since you came to stay with me. You have over 10 calls from your cousin, too.”

“My cousin?”

“Yeah, don’t you have a cousin in Manchester named Zoe?”

“Oh, uh, yeah.” I hadn’t spoken with my cousin for over two years and her number was saved only as ‘Zee’. “Did Zoe call when I was asleep?” I asked in a neutral tone. I ignored every call from Dr. Van Helsing and if Mallory had answered the phone thinking she was talking to my cousin–

“No, but she must be worried about you. Give her a call back,” she said.

“I will,” I breathed, relieved. Eventually, I would talk to Zoe and tell her that I was done with her – that is, if I survived Count Dracula. With that, rose the question of why Zoe was still alive. Wouldn’t Dracula have killed her?

“Diana said she’s going up to Glasgow for work in a couple of days and that she wants to see you before that. I told her we could all grab lunch Thursday.”

“All right.” I sniffled and started getting up slowly so Mallory wouldn’t accidentally pull my hair. “I’m getting in the way of your night out, Mal.”

“Did you actually think I was going out?” She looked at me in disbelief. “It’s Monday, Y/N, we have work tomorrow. More importantly, I would never leave you here and go drinking.” I frowned as I gestured at her made up face. “I’m wearing PJ’s under my coat. I got ready in the hopes that you would suddenly change your mind when you saw me leaving the house and decide to actually move your arse out of bed,” she explained. I snorted. “A-ha, that was a near laugh!”

“That was a shit strategy. And you knew it wouldn’t work since you didn’t bother to change clothes.”

“Well, I tried everything else.” She jumped out of bed and peeled off the trench coat, revealing butterfly print pyjamas. “Come to the living room. We’ll order hamburgers and watch something.”

She was already leaving the room as I slipped out from under the covers.

“No rom-coms!”

“I wouldn’t torture you like that!” She yelled back from the living room. “Is Harry Potter good enough for you?”

“Great.”

It was familiar enough for me to repeat the lines in sync with the character and keep me distracted. Tomorrow I would figure out how to tell Count Dracula. As I made the bed, I grabbed the book from under the pillow and fingered through the pages. Pushkin’s words didn’t jump out at me and I hadn’t memorised the page number when Mallory found it. For the best, probably.

I set the book aside and went to the living room when Mal called my name.

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“L/N, can I see you before you go?”

Talbot’s voice made Mallory and I stop on the way to the lift; my mobile chimed inside my purse and my fingers tightened around the purse’s strap. Another chime reached my ears as I turned back to meet Talbot with Mal on my heels. Whether she had followed me because a partner was summoning me and it was a good opportunity for her to be noticed or because she was fairly acquainted with my phone’s chimes and particularly what they meant today, I didn’t know, but I was glad to have her at my side anyway.

Golden orange sunlight refracting through a window hit my face when I stopped before Talbot and I forced myself to breathe properly. I still had a couple more minutes, an hour if I was being optimistic, before the sun went down and I had to meet Dracula, who didn’t seem to pay much attention to it; he had been texting me since four in the afternoon.

“Yes?” The word was strangled.

Talbot’s severe face didn’t seem to notice my anxious tone and simply nodded at Mallory before settling his cataract ridden eyes on me.

“Do you have anything on your schedule tomorrow at 3pm?”

“No, I don’t think I do, sir. Why?”

“I need you in court.” He handed me a thick manila folder he had hidden behind his back.

“A new case?” I took the file automatically. “But sir, I’m already flooded with them. And court tomorrow? I won’t have the time to prepare–”

“Of course you’ll have time to prepare. You’ll have the rest of the day and night, and tomorrow until three. Pulling all-nighters is part of every good attorney’s job.”

I smothered an offended huff.

“I’m aware, sir.” I paused, and my phone chimed again. I could feel my pulse on my throat. “Unfortunately, I have a commitment tonight and I can’t take this case. Mallory will gladly take it in my pla–”

“I’m sure Miss Nowak would do a wonderful job,” he considered her briefly “but this case can only be taken care of by you. It was originally Miss Grisham’s, your colleague, but she had to go under an emergency surgery yesterday – wicked things, spleens, don’t you think? – and the Judge on this case refused to reschedule a court date.” He scoffed. “Apparently, Grisham had already been granted several reschedules and Judge Llewellyn won’t have it again, which is precisely why this case must be yours. As I understand you have a win inside Llewellyn’s courtroom, which might bode well for you– for us at the firm. Llewellyn is notoriously a difficult man and I hear he’s been mouthing good things about you. No one in this office has ever won before him, except for you and Renfield.”

My phone started ringing loudly and I gave my purse a thwack as if that would shut it up. Talbot eyed my purse.

“Sir, like I said, I have a personal engagement that I can’t dismiss. It’s best that I don’t take a new case. Give it to Mallory, she’ll do as good a job as I would and then this firm will have three lawyers with wins before Llewellyn.”

A new case meant I would have to prepare an opening statement, not to say I would have to spend countless hours studying every small detail to not be stomped to the ground by the prosecutor. The remaining sunlight only gave me a few more minutes to work out my own closing statement – the very last closing statement I would do in my life, perhaps, considering it was entirely dependent on Count Dracula’s verdict – if I took that case I would have to neglect it in favour of my own troubles.

“You’ll take it.”

“Sir, I can’t–”

“Don’t be ridiculous, L/N,” argued Talbot. “If your engagement has anything to do with your phone’s incessant noise–” as if by command, the tune stopped “–then turn it off. Whatever it is, it can be rescheduled. This case cannot.”

Rage built up my chest; I could swallow it down before it reached my throat but the lump there wouldn’t let it pass as easily as it would allow it to burst out. And I didn’t want to swallow it down so more rage could merge with heartache. I’d had enough with rage and I wouldn’t let Talbot bully me into something that I couldn’t do in the benefit of his own interests.

“Any lawyer here would be happy to do it. I can’t,” I said as I offered him the file back. He opened his mouth to protest and didn’t accept the manila folder. “You don’t understand, you absolute c–”

“She’ll take it,” Mallory intervened, squeezing my arm and interrupting whatever name I was about to call him. One of Talbot’s eyes twitched as he evaluated me and he rose his chin, nodding at Mal for the interruption.

“I see Nowak has managed to keep her sense. I hope she’ll teach you some.” He gestured towards the lift. “You may go. Do not disappoint me, L/N.” He turned on his heel and disappeared inside his office.

I started stalking after him, picturing his outraged face when I threw the file on his desk, but Mal jerked me back.

“Are you crazy?” She shook me. “You almost called a partner the c-word–”

“You can say he’s a cunt, it’s not like it’s a lie.”

“Y/N!” She exclaimed, looking around us as if to check if anyone had heard that. “Being angry won’t solve your crap, and you can’t just shrug off work because of a relationship. Focus. Dracula is just a guy but this is your job. If he’s right for you he’ll understand.  It’s not like he’ll die if he waits one more day so you two can talk.”

I stared out the window. My phone chimed, and then started ringing. The sun was still up and I wagered it would stay that way until I went home. As soon as it was dark, Dracula would be there. I could propose a meeting spot but I’d made enough demands – he had said so himself. He was done making concessions for me, and if I said one thing, one thing that didn’t please him, that sounded off to his ears, he would probably tear open my neck and leave me to die by myself on the quietness of my home. There were plenty of things in my speech that needed adjustments to prevent that, several things, actually, that I wasn’t sure I had worded properly. And I hadn’t rehearsed anything, either.

“You know you’re not mad at Talbot,” Mallory said, as though she knew I was pondering the situation. “Dracula will understand.”

My phone stopped ringing and then started shortly after.

“He won’t stop calling until I answer him,” I said. But I’d already made my decision. I’d made it the moment Mallory said I would take the case.

“Then turn off your phone. You’ll concentrate better. I’ll even help you,” she offered. I glanced at her. “I can see in your face that you’re dreading going home. You can stay at my house one more night, or how many more you want, and I’ll help you study your case. You’ll worry about Dracula tomorrow after the court session with Llewellyn , okay?”

Working this case was a perfectly reasonable excuse not to answer his calls and texts. It was good enough for me but I knew it wouldn’t be good enough for Dracula. It would give me more time to work on what to say, although I had the feeling that nothing I said would ever be good enough for him.

What did matter if he had to wait one more day? I was dead anyway.

“Okay,” I finally said. Mal smiled at me. I didn’t have the strength to retribute it.

“Text him and say you’ll see him tomorrow.”

I fished my phone out of my purse. The name ‘Count Dracula’ blinking on the screen made me frown. I pressed the button next to the screen until it went fully black.

“My phone battery is dead for all he cares.” I dumped the phone back in my purse. “Let’s go, Mal. Quickly. He’ll come here looking for me when he realises I’m not picking up.”

______________________________________________________________

Count Dracula tilted his head as he watched the man crawl between tables, shoulders clumsily bumping into a table leg as he tried to hide. Sobs escaped his mouth. Dracula pushed one of the bodies at his feet with the heel of his shoe as the man shrunk into the darkness beneath the table. The man’s ragged breathing made the Count’s bloodstained lips twitch. He made a show of looking around the blackened interior of the pub, putting weight into his strides so the floorboards would creak as he stepped over another body, pretending that he couldn’t see him in his hiding place.

This game of hide-and-seek never failed to amuse the Count but it wasn’t as fun in an enclosed space such as this. It made him miss his castle. If it was his castle, he would throw the man into one of the dungeon’s cells to play with him another moment. But here, in a London pub where he had already engorged himself until his cheeks were ruddy, he only had so much time before sunrise. He wasn’t thirsty anymore and he would have to go home soon to rest his head again, only to be assailed by dreams of Y/N.

“I won’t hurt you,” Dracula declared, throwing his head back. The low ceiling had beer stains. The cleaning staff, the one dead at his feet, must not do a very good job of cleaning the place. “You can come out.”

A whimper came from under the table but the man made no attempt to reveal himself. Dracula waited for a few seconds to give him a chance and then crossed the distance between them and lifted the table. Wide brown eyes filled with mindless fear stared up at Count Dracula in a skinny face.

“Get up,” the Count demanded and discarded the table to the side, leaving the man without his illusion of protection. “Come sit with me.” He took a seat at a table at the centre of the pub and snatched a napkin from it. Red gloves of blood left stains on every white napkin he touched. The man – boy, from the looks of him – just watched and Dracula flicked dark eyes toward him. “Now.”

Slowly, so very slowly, the boy stood up and took small steps toward the table. He threatened to snap in half like a twig from all his shaking. Count Dracula motioned for him to take a seat as he wiped his face and hands with napkins. The boy sat.

“I think…” Dracula began. “No. What would you do in my place?”

“W-what?”

“I gave her ten days. Today is Tuesday, the tenth day, and she wasn’t at her house. She won’t answer my calls and my texts. She was at her office today but left early according to–” what was the woman’s name? Caroline? Christine? Camille? Ah, Chelsea. She’d slipped him her number before he left the office at Canary Wharf. He would have considered keeping it, if only to feed from her, but Y/N wouldn’t like that. Ten days could stretch into twenty or a month if he fed from Chelsea. “She’s avoiding me. What would you do?”

The boy stared at him, mouth opening and closing several times as he tried to formulate an answer. He glanced at the parade of dead bodies around them and then back at Count Dracula.

“Um, who is– hm. W-why is she av-voiding you?”

Dracula nodded, smiling lightly. He was impressed that the boy had managed to restrain his fear for a while but he knew very well the boy was merely entertaining him until he started bargaining for his life. They always did.

“I did something,” said Dracula.

“This kind of something?” He gestured with his head toward the body closest to them and then his face turned red and shuddered.

“No.” He frowned. “Worse, I think. I don’t know, to be perfectly honest. What matters is that she’s avoiding me. I gave her ten days and she said we would talk. She said she knew not to flee. I can hunt for her but–” He threw the used napkins on the table, giving up on making himself presentable. There wasn’t any point to it with six bodies strewn metres away from him. “I don’t want to hunt what’s mine. She should come willingly.”

“Yeah,” the boy drew out. “But maybe she needs more time? I don’t know what you did, man, but if it was worse than this–”

“I bit her friend,” Dracula admitted.

The boy gaped.

“I– I’m sure you had a good reason to.”

“Are you?”

“I only mean–” he said, hunching his shoulders. “I mean, I… I don’t know?”

Count Dracula tipped in his chair and balanced himself so he could lever his feet on the table and cross them. Black leather shoes with small rounded dents at the tips shone at him. He hadn’t worn another pair since the wedding, when Y/N’s heels left those prints there. He didn’t know what that meant. He only knew that he couldn’t remember Y/N’s smile with the same clarity that he could remember her face stricken with black tears.

“Did she cheat on you?” The boy tried.

Dracula laughed mirthlessly.

“In a manner, but she assured me that she had stopped.”

“So, uh, why did you kill her friend?”

“I didn’t kill Mallory. I bit her, that’s all.” He’d bitten her without Y/N’s explanation, which he still didn’t have. “Do you think I exaggerated?”

“Um– uh, no?”

“I don’t like liars.”

“I’m sorry. Sorry.” The boy rubbed his nose. “My name is Trent.” Dracula’s eyebrows furrowed as he tried to understand the relevance of that. “I’m only 19. I live in Whitechapel with my parents and sisters. I’ve got three cats–”

“Why are you telling me this?” Dracula glared at him. And then chuckled. “Oh, are you attempting to sensitize me about who you are so I won’t kill you? I’ve seen that on TV. People have been using that trick for centuries, too. It’s never worked on me. In fact, I think it’s kind of fun. First name basis is important, isn’t it? Makes things more intimate when I kill you.” He bared his teeth at the boy in a grin. “I asked you a question, Trent.”

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

The words echoed. Y/N had said the same. Dracula massaged the bridge of his nose.

“I changed my mind. Maybe it’ll change again if you answer me.”

Trent shook violently again and started rocking back and forth in his seat.

“I forgot what you asked me.”

“Do you think I exaggerated?” Dracula repeated. The boy looked around them. “Not about this. I know you might believe this is a bit much but it helps me not to think. However, I’m in need of a good talk now. So amuse me, Trent. Do you think I shouldn’t have bitten Mallory?”

“Uh. This other girl you've been talking about… Do you fancy her?” Trent’s thin eyebrows arched, trying to summon a serious expression. Dracula merely bobbed his head. “And you said she’s, huh, yours.” He looked at Dracula and he nodded again. “From what you’re telling me, you want her back. If she’s avoiding you, maybe she’s scared?” His eyes widened as if he realised he’d said something wrong. “Or, or, or! Or maybe she’s waiting for an apology?” He shrugged. “Did you try talking to her, eh, before you bit this Mallory bird?”

The Count ignored the last question.

“She owes me an apology.”

“Yeah, sure she does,” the boy agreed. “But don’t you think you oughta apologise, too? I mean… uh. I don’t know. I’ve never been cheated on but I don’t think biting someone is the right way to go about it.”

Maybe not.

Maybe if he had asked Y/N about it, he wouldn’t have to wait ten days to speak to her. If he had, she wouldn’t have cried. It could have been a terribly simple explanation and she would have kissed him again. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone on a murder rampage for the last days to keep memories of Y/N from permeating his every dream and thought.

Or, and it was just as likely, it wasn’t simple at all. She had learnt how to lie to him. He was certain that she could have lied about everything. It could all have been an act to fool him – the sudden interest in the taste of blood, her questions about his life before a vampire and after, her rare ability to see through him sometimes, the gleam in her eyes at the cathedral… The kiss. But the utter betrayal in her face, the acrid smell of fear, how her voice trembled as she wept, those weren’t false. When she said yes to him, covered in her friend’s blood with her dress ruined and hair in shambles, he knew she had spoken the truth. She had no other reason to lie after what he had done. And now, he found himself doubting if everything else was not all lies.

It didn’t matter.

He had destroyed it. And he knew that if he could go back in time to fix it, he would have done it all the same. She confused him. She had made a fool out of him like no one else had in half a millennia, and she would make a fool out of him for the next millennia as well. Despite what she had done, she was his, whether she liked it or not. He was willing to wait a few more days for her to come to him.

Count Dracula massaged the bridge of his nose again.

“Thank you, Trent.”

The boy’s heart drummed, his blood streaming inside of him in rapid currents. Dracula could hear the noise it made, like a wind howl against a window.

“Are you gonna let me go?”  

“Yes, I will.” He flashed the boy a quick smile. “Although you haven’t been much help, I’m feeling merciful right now.” Trent exhaled a shaky breath and started getting up. “One last thing” – the boy looked up at that, watery brown eyes filled with alarm again – “you didn’t say… what would you do in my place?”

“Uhh–” he paused, panic flaring up and making the drumming in Dracula’s ears become louder. “Show that you care? Apologise if you want her back. She’ll apologise, too.” Dracula just stared. “Or do something nice for her. Especially nice.” Trent sniffled. “That’s what my dad does when my mum is mad at him, and it works.”

Trent waited as Dracula nodded, and then started shuffling across the pub in a slow pace as if he was doing his best not to draw attention.

He eyed the dents on his shoes and felt Y/N’s lips on his. He couldn’t wait five or ten years to feel them again and in order to have that, he would have to make amends. But then he thought of all the lies again and the taste of Mallory’s blood pouring down his throat and all the memories that came with it. A pungent reminder of how unreasonable he had become since meeting Y/N.

Trent was almost at the exit door.

“On second thought!” He called, planting both feet on the slippery red floor. The boy turned around to look at him and Count Dracula bared sharp teeth as he stood up from his seat. “I feel like having dessert.”

The boy ran.

His fingers brushed the doorknob but didn’t manage to grip it. Dracula blocked the way. Trent squealed and his entire body trembled in such force that the Count thought he could hear his bones rattling. He smiled at that and grabbed the boy’s shoulder to stop him from scuttling away.

Trent was as pale as a sheet, so much so that it was difficult to make out defining features on his face, but the shapeless, quivering thing on his face was most definitely a bottom lip moving as his teeth chattered.

“Ah, don’t be like that. I’ll make it quick, as a thanks.” Dracula stroked the boy’s cheek, pointed nails grazing the skin, and he shuddered. “Truly, you gave me quite the idea. But you see, it’s almost dawn, and I need a last bedtime snack to clear my head. You just so happen to be nearby.”

“Please, I–”

“No, no, no, no. Begging won’t get you anywhere and I’ve heard enough of ‘please’ tonight. I’ll make it quick and you won’t beg. Are we agreed?” He cocked an eyebrow. Trent shut his eyes and nodded. Dracula patted his face. “Good boy.”

Dracula turned Trent’s face to the side. He was met with no resistance as he lowered his head to tear through the soft flesh on the boy’s neck. Trent stopped trembling as Dracula’s teeth slashed deep and blood flowed inside his mouth. Memories started materialising but he ignored it and allowed himself to be swept away until nothing else invaded his mind except the taste of blood, its warmth cascading over his body and leaving him no choice but to be inundated with unrestrained elation.

He swallowed hurriedly and, in no time, the flow became sluggish and he began taking it less urgently. If he drank too fast, he would miss it. He waited for it to come as one waits for the first rain to pour, waits for it to wash remains, and to bring restoration. Ecstasy flitted across his deepest thoughts only to be replaced with perfect numbness. Sublime anesthesia and a brief glimpse into the true death he would never feel.

The emptiness he sought, the complete erasure of all thoughts, was the one thing that brought him relief and wiped the image of Y/N’s face. Her rancour and her grief that turned those eyes cruel to cut through him when she saw him with Mallory but, worst of all, the resignation that made her voice docile, almost cowed when she begged him for time. It touched something in him. Something that made him desperate to get rid of it, so abnormal was this sensation, that his only solution was to engorge himself with blood.

Only she had this effect on him. Usually he was picky with his food, choosing when should each dish be savoured and in which order. All it took for that to change was for Y/N to look him in the eye at the Victoria and Albert Museum and say that taking her there was the nicest thing someone had ever done for her. And he simply couldn’t understand that, couldn’t understand he had enjoyed knowing that, that he had enjoyed making her happy, and that he was possibly growing infatuated by her. Not in the way he had grown attached to Agatha or Johnny. It was entirely different; a foreign feeling. It had driven him to feast on a board of directors in an attempt to obliterate the memory. And it had worked for a little while but each time she managed to pull at his control until he wasn’t sure if he had any control whatsoever.

Dracula dropped Trent’s lifeless body.

The anesthesia had faded and here he was, thinking of Y/N again.

He groaned in frustration, wiped his chin and left the darkened pub with its new decor of blood carpets and artfully painted walls.

.

.

.

Taglist: @festering-queen​ @feralstare​ @rheabalaur​ @a-dorky-book-keeper​ @thorin-smokin-shield​ @dreamer2381​ @illbegoinhome​ @girlonfireice​ @deborahlazaroff​ @saint-hardy​ @mr-kisskiss-bangbang​ @iwasjustablur​ @princessayveke​ @vampirescurse​ @crossoverqueen89​ @blue-serendipity​ @sunscreenfeverdream​ @25ocurer​ @daydreaming136​ @hello-itsbarbie​

[whattodowithkpop]

When The Clock Strikes 12 (Minghao)

A HUGE thanks to @woozisnoots​ for making the banner!! She did an awesome job!

~~~~~

Pairing: Minghao X Reader

Genre: No Romance

Word Count: 2.8K Words

A/N- I used the title: When the Clock Strikes 12 and the AU Assassin + Masquerade. 

I quickly smooth out my black dress, feeling exposed due to its tightness and my unfamiliarity in these types of outfits. I adjust my black, sparkly mask that sat over my eyes, concealing my identity to a point as it shone in the moonlight. I finally reach the double doors that were adorned in gold, towering over any other building in the city. If I wasn’t so focused on my task at hand I would’ve gawked more at the fine details, but I had no such time.

The guards that stood firmly at the door greeted me with a bow to which I returned. One held out his hand, silently asking me for my entry pass. I retrieve the invite from my small clutch, seeing the gold detailing decorating the smooth, thick paper. The guards inspect my invite, nodding as they hand it back to me, stepping back to let me enter the palace.

I enter the palace, all of my senses immediately being bombarded from every angle. The smell of Lilacs flood into my nose, a sense of calm falling over me. The sound of loud chatter and laughter reach my ears, giving my brain some discomfort due to the shrill noises. The rush of cool air reaches my skin, goosebumps rising over my exposed skin that the dress seemed to show a lot of. I see the giant entryway, filled to the brim with marble statues and expensive paintings, each priced over the worth of the palace itself. Even in the dimly lit room I can see the marble floors stretch out across the whole room, even reaching out into the other rooms from what I could see of them. The gold detailing that furnished the door continued their way into the entryway and on the staircase that lead to the upper levels. I knew that the Xu family was rich, but seeing these things with my own eyes really puts their wealth into perspective. I take notes of all these things, filing them to memory as I make my towards the room where all the commotion was coming from. The lights continue to brighten as I make my way through the heavily decorated halls, scanning the areas for anything I needed to remember. I reach the ballroom, my senses being overloaded once again. The crystal chandlers light up the whole room, leaving no dark places in the giant room. Many people were on the ballroom floor, dancing to the soft music that could barley be heard of the laughter from the lords and ladies. Each person’s identity covered by their masks, making it impossible to distinguish who was of royalty and who was not. I suddenly became hyper aware of how much I didn’t fit in with these noble entities that occupied the room. I let out a shaky breath, refocusing on my job. I pull an envelope from my clutch, opening it gently across the seam. A small note was nested at the bottom. I open it gently, reading the cursive handwriting that flowed across the paper.

‘When the clock strikes 12…’

I raise my head, finding the massive clock the hung on the far wall. The diamond hands showing the time to be ‘10:30’. I nod tin acknowledgment, tucking the note back into the envelope and then back into my clutch. I adjust my back, feeling the cold steel press against my skin under my dress. I survey the area spotting a crow’s nest in the rafters, picking that as my spot.

I begin my descent down the staircase, using the railing as support as I walk down the steps carefully in my heels that I wasn't used to. They clicked against the floor, making my approach evident. I reach the floor, trying my best to walk gracefully against the expanse of the room, reaching the platform where the royal family did all of their speeches and announcements. It stood below the large clock, having it’s own diamond accents to match the hands.

As I was running my fingers along the diamond features, a soft voice catches my attention.

“It’s intricate.” The voice states calmly as I twist my body to face him.

A young man stood before me with his hands behind his back as he took in the details of my appearance. His black suit was blacker than any suit I had ever seen, his tie matching the dark suit. His white button down shirt was a crisp white, contrasting against the black nicely and making it enjoyable to look at. In his pocket sat a red and gold pocket square, giving his outfit a pop of color that it didn’t really need but just added to the whole concept. His mask matched his pocket square, the gold mask lay over his eyes being embellished by ruby jewels that were tastefully placed across the mask, disguising his identity effectively. His dark hair was styled nicely, seeming professional but still having fluff to it.

“Indeed it is.” I agree with the man as he steps forward, standing next to me.

“I feel so sorry for the prince.” He mentions suddenly as he looks at the podium.

The prince was being installed upon the throne tonight. His family had suffered tragedy and he is all that’s left of the royal bloodline. He is quite young to become king, having just turned 18 this year he would be the youngest king to rule this kingdom.

“I feel he may not have such a hard time.” I comment, being vague in my response, but having full confidence that my plan would destroy the royal bloodline tonight.

“Why do you say so?” The masked man asks, his body turned towards me.

“I think the prince will take a much needed rest.” I reply, watching the seconds tick away on the clock.

“You’re quite intriguing.” The man notes, facing forward again.

We stand in silence, both of us watching the clock in comfort.

“When will the prince appear?” I ask suddenly, curiosity getting the better of me.

“He is supposed to make an announcement at midnight.” The man tells me. “Are you perhaps looking to court the young royal?”

I laugh obnoxiously, my head falling back at the force of my laughter. “As tempting as that offer is I will pass this time.”

The man smiles at my response, nodding in acknowledgment before facing the clock once more.

The music’s demeanor takes a change, it’s fast paced rhythm slowing to a calm. Everyone begins to pair up, entering the dance floor for the slow dance.

The man looks over to me, his movement catching my attention. He smiles through his mask, out stretching his hand towards me.

“Would you like to dance?”

I stare at his hand for a moment, debating whether or not to accept his offer. After weighing the pros and cons, I decided it would be good to participate in some party activities so as not to draw attention to myself.

“I would.” I smile at him, reaching my hand out to touch his which he grabs mine gently as he leads me to the middle of the room.

He wraps his arm around my waist respectfully, not making me uncomfortable by his touch. His hand keeps a firm grip over mine as I reach my other hand to rest on his shoulder. He smiles down at me as he makes his first movements, moving us gracefully across the floor.

I smile brightly, basking in the feeling of being whisked around across the floor, genuinely enjoying the dance. It felt as if we were being watched by the guests of the party, but my curiosity over this matter was drowned out by the music that was playing softly through the room.

The song comes to an end, our swaying ending with it. The man and I detach ourselves from each other, giving a quick bow to each other.

“I must say, you’re an interesting woman.” He states with a half smile gracing his lips.

“Likewise.” I smile at him mischievously, rather enjoying his company.

I hear the toll of the clock alerting the guests of the part that it was now 11:00. My eyes widen, realizing I didnt have much time left.

“I must get going.” I tell them man quickly, bowing in farewell.

“Take care, my lady.” He bows back.

I past him quickly,  towards the stairs that lead back up towards the entryway. I reach the top just as a microphone’s feedback screeches through the room, alerting the room of the man that stood behind the podium that sat atop the large platform.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” The man greets, prompting everyone to rush to the platform to crowd around the man as close as they could. I blow out a breath of air, feeling relief that no eyes would be on me fore awhile. I quickly exit the room, hugging the wall as I travel through the halls towards the entryway. I could still hear the man’s voice travel through the rooms.

“Thank you all so much for coming tonight.” The man continues. “As you know, tonight is a special night for me as I know take over the title of King.” Cheer and claps erupt from the masses at The Prince’s words.

“The circumstances under which I am receiving this title so early are not pleasant as we all know.” He voice continues as I reach the entryway, saying in the shadows as I ascend up the staircase in the middle of the entryway. “But, as my father before me ran this kingdom with compassion, I vow to do the same.” More cheers erupt, some whistles carrying through the house as well.

I reach the top of the stairs, a long dark hallway greets me there, which at the end, holds my destination.

“At 12 the ceremony will begin, until then, please help yourself to more wine and enjoy the company of one another.” The crowds clap, cheering more at the mention of wine. I continue my path, walking straight to the end of the hall where a window sat. The moon was bright overhead, illuminating the small corner of the hallway I stood in. I walk up to the window, reaching my hands out to open the locks, pushing the window doors outward, letting the cool breeze reach inside the palace. I sigh at the feeling of the cold air against my skin, appreciating the fresh air after being in the suffocating presence of the royals just a floor below me.

I quickly take off my shoes, knowing they would hinder my performance because of their discomfort. I also grab my dress, ripping it at the slit to give me more mobility, the slit now reaching just below indecency. I leave my shoes behind the vase that sat on a table next to the door at the end of the hallway. I knew it wasn’t smart leaving evidence behind, but by the time they realize what has happened and find the shoes, I will be halfway across the world living out my days in hiding.

I kick my leg over the ledge of the window, reaching into my clutch to pull out my hand held grappling hook. It wasn’t the most ideal hook, but in this tight situation, it is going to have to do. I shoot the hook towards the window above, effectively grasping the ledge. I pull it a couple times to check it’s support before I completely push away from the window, my bare feet touching the cold stone that made up the outside of the palace. I gently slide down the side, approaching the window below feeling blinded by the chandeliers brights illumination. I peak through the window, seeing all the previous guests drinking and being merry. I look right below the window, seeing the crow’s nest I had seen from the floor, making me smile at my serendipitous. I wrap the rope around my hand tightly, supporting a majority of my weight on that arm, the rest of it on my leg that had a small grip on the tiny ledge that rested just outside the window. I pull the clip from my hair, twisting and bending it to use it as a pick to break into the lock. I hear the satisfying click, making me smile. I clip the wrecked pin back into my hair, keeping it just in case. I swing my body to the window, carefully balancing on the ledge as I open the window, jumping into the crow’s nest. I sigh out heavily, feeling relief I had made it. I look to the giant clock on the wall, reading the time to be 11:47, making me panic at how long it took me to get to my spot. I reach behind me, grasping the aluminum that was tucked into my dress as I unsheathe the sniper rifle I had, miraculously, hid in my tight dress. I breathe out as I hold the piece in my hands, feeling comfortable with my weapon in my hands after so many hours of discomfort. I take my masquerade mask off my face, the skin around my eyes feeling the cool air begin to dry the sweat that had accumulated over the hours I had worn it. I open my clutch, swapping my mask for the silencer that had waited all night to be revealed. I twist it onto the tip of the gun just before beginning to set up the aim.

I anxiously wait for the final minutes to tick away, for 12 to finally strike so I could take my shot. I watch the Prince emerge from the crowd, stepping up to the podium as the clock reads ’11:58’. The grip on my trigger tightens, my breathing controlled so I could line up the perfect shot.

’11:59’

My finger presses aging the trigger, only needing one small push to send the bullet through the barrel.

“You do stick out like a sore thumb.” A voice startles me just as the clock tolls, announcing 12:00.

I jerk my head towards the voice, seeing the man I had danced with towering over me. I growl in frustration, going back to my scope quickly, trying to get the bullet out of the chamber. The man kicks the gun away, forcing the scope to hit my eye, making me cry out in pain.

“I’m afraid you have the wrong target.” The man speaks again.

I stand quickly, getting defensive just in case.

The man reaches for his his gold mask, his fingers gripping the edges gently as he pulls it from his face, revealing his whole identity to me. My eyes widen as I look into his brown eyes that were barley seen through the light from the moon. I recognized his face immediately.

“You’re the Prince.” I whisper, watching as his lips turn into a smile.

“Please, call me Minghao.” He asks before gesturing to the man who was on stage at this very moment, giving a speech on how thrilled he was to become king. “He is not your target.”

“How?” I ask him, glaring at him, realizing my plan had been foiled before I entered the palace.

“It’s not on you at all.” Minghao tells me, watching my movements closely. “Your “employer” has some dishonest men amongst him.”

“Of course, leaving me to go to jail for it.” I roll my eyes, crossing my arms as I stare at the prince. “You knew when I entered the room.”

Minghao chuckles, his voice bringing comfort in this high stress situation. “I had suspicions.” He takes a step closer to me, his body heat radiating onto mine from his proximity. “Did you really think I wouldn’t feel the sniper under your dress?”

I glare at him, anger seething through me as I watched amusement dance in his eyes. “You think you’ve won, but I will kill you next time.”

“There won’t be a need.” He comments. “Your employer will be jailed for his hit request, there’s no money in it for you anymore.”

“But there’s redemption.” I snarl at him, pushing him with both of my hands as I sweep my leg, effectively causing him to stumble back from me. I jump from the window, grabbing the rope and sliding down it quickly, my hands being burned by friction. I reach the bottom, pulling the hook off the ledge as it falls into my hand. I see Prince Minghao lean over the edge of the window, watching me as I made my exit. I only stare for a moment before running towards the city, traveling through the darkness to hide from any eyes. This was not the last time Minghao and I would meet and I promised to myself that our next meeting, would end with his death.

SEVENTEEN MASTERLIST

[a-secondhand-sorrow]

one day we'll all get still

(ao3 link in the notes! title from a world alone by lorde)

The summer is quiet.

Impossibly quiet, really; it’s like the whole world decides to hold its breath and count to ten, like everyone is so used to the silence that the globe itself slows its rotations and stills, stretching out the days until everyone’s shadows are long on the sidewalks and the sky is painted in a million colors. The humidity in the air clings to everything and weighs it down until it rests on the burnt-out grass, watching, waiting.

Quiet is not quite a large enough word to encompass what the summer is.

Even in the hum of air conditioning units working overtime to provide some relief to those inside of their houses, there’s a peace that will never be felt in the autumn or the winter or the spring. That peace can’t be found unless you’re sitting with the sun hot on the back of your neck and the top of your head, full of worries, yes, but without any true care.

Zoe sits on one such day. Her converse stretches out into the street with her legs, and from where she perches on the curb, she can see only what is immediately in front of her: houses that look the same as the houses next to them, rows of minivans and gardenias and shrubbery. She hears the hum of the air conditioners and she wishes she were inside, benefiting from their overtime instead of sweating through her class t-shirt like the eggs everyone always jokes about cooking on the sidewalk, but she knows she won’t. Shouldn’t. Can’t. There is too much turmoil, too much dust settling, and she doesn’t want to choke and accidentally set off another mine.

Is this house her childhood home or a cleverly disguised game of Minesweeper? Probably both.

Someone sits next to her, and she knows it’s Evan before anything else. She’s always known when it’s him; she can sense the difference between him and everyone else with eerie clarity. Evan sits, as though there’s nowhere he’d rather be than sitting beside her on the dusty, rough curb. As though he were designed for this and nothing else. Zoe doesn’t quite look at him, but from the corner of her eye, she sees everything he does. She couldn’t stop seeing him if she tried.

He offers her his hand. In the grand scheme of things - of all the contact they’ve shared, hours they’ve clung to each other, years they’ve spent sharing beds and curling up on furniture and breathing in the same breaths - it’s nothing. But somehow it feels like something as she places her palm atop his, still not quite looking at him, and lets her fingers lock with his, trapping the heat between their sealed hands.

Because, in all the years before that, they were Zoe Murphy and Evan Hansen, all sharp elbows and gangly limbs and bare feet pounding on mid-July pavement and the faint smell of sugar that seemed to follow them everywhere. They were flickering street lamps illuminating nothing but some weeds poking through blacktop, hands covered in chalk and rainbows of drawings blooming across the crumbling sidewalks. They were the feeling of a playground ball rough under your uneven fingertips, and the sound of small hands tearing at the brittle, dried grass, and swinging so high up on a swing that the swingset groaned under the weight of it. They were handfuls of moments trickling from between their fingers like sand on a beach, a collection so bright and so mighty that it seemed inevitable it would explode.

But they were sixteen and seventeen, respectively, far from the days of running carefree without any adults to look after them. They would sometimes watch reruns of the Andy Griffiths’ Show at the Murphy’s with glasses of Cynthia’s town-famous lemonade (which was really just half a pack of Crystal Light mixed with lemon juice, though Cynthia admitted this in whispers so low and conspiratorial to both kids that they would think they were guarding a national treasure of a secret), and they joked that they were Opie - between Zoe’s huge, monument-like home with her parents and brother and Evan’s tiny, cluttered house where his mother was never home, always picking up another shift at the hospital an hour’s drive away in the city, they rarely had any adults checking their whereabouts or any home to post up in just like their 1960s idol. Their laughs are more restrained but no less bright as teenagers, their smiles just as wide but more difficult to coax out, the smatters of freckles dashed across their faces just as strong from hours spent in front of the sun.

Summer brings out the children in them, even though you have to squint to see it.

Summers also used to be spent loudly, all the kids in town creating a general hum of excitement and wonder at the warm days and short nights. But when the summer before Zoe’s junior year hits, there’s no laughter to be heard echoing down streets with the chimes of bike bells, no smacks or shattering sounds accompanying ball games on the elementary school’s playground, no fire hydrants busted open to give everyone an impromptu pool party. It’s like the town itself can sense that something bad is coming and has silenced itself preemptively, like by keeping everyone taciturn and silent nothing bad can befall them. It’s no peaceful silence, either. It’s a loud silence, one that takes up space in every crack in every road; and it leaves everything looking off-kilter. Heidi is gone almost constantly, and Larry and Cynthia’s blow-out fights have peaked at least three times a week, and Connor...well, Connor would always be a whole other story.

Despite the silence that weighs over the town like a blanket, Zoe is far from comforted by the town-wide hush. She’s filled with unbidden energy, leaving her restless and fidgety and ready to crawl out of her skin at almost every moment.

So she stands up, yanking Evan with her. He follows as though there is nothing else he’d rather do, as though she is the only force that can move him despite the fact that he stands a good 6 inches taller than her even slouched as he always is.

There’s a little cafe in the next town over. They rarely go there - there’s not exactly a reason to, since they can do just fine finding their own food, and it’s a ripoff anyway. But occasionally, when the oppressive heat (one only a small town and the height of the summer can create) forces them into their lightest clothes and has them practically tearing their hair out, they make the trek just for something to do.

That day, they take Zoe’s car - she’s technically not allowed to drive with just another teenager in the car, but no one’s enforced that for as long as Zoe can remember. So they drive in her shiny, brand-new black Audi with paint you could practically eat off of and blast Lorde with the windows firmly shut, singing along because they know every word. They’ve been living off of her two albums ever since they’ve come out, and she can’t help but smile as she thinks of all the hours spent stretched out on her back on Evan’s bedroom floor, giggling as he dramatically mimics her deep tone in Ribs or sitting on her back porch where he tries to sing Liability in a high falsetto, forcing her water come out her nose with the strength of her laughs. He’s quieter that day, but the whole summer has felt that way, not just him. Everyone seems to be pressed down but some invisible force, words poised on the tips of their tongues without ever breaking free.

Normally, she’d be clinging onto his arm or throwing some limb around him to drag him towards the café, but the temperature in her car reads a toasty 96 degrees before even factoring in the humidity. She settles for dramatically opening the door for him, hiding a wince when the smooth flesh of her palm grills against the sun-heated metal door.

At first sight, the café appears to be empty, but as they look for another moment they see patrons dotted at the tables; they’d blent so seamlessly in with the walls of the shop, as though they did nothing but sit there always, that their brains could not help but write them out of the initial picture. True to form, there is no one behind the counter, but Zoe and Evan wait in front of it all the same; there was a chime when the door opened, and they are far too used to the way businesses operate when there’s little demand to expect anything more than this.

A woman barely three years older than them emerges from the back some minutes later while looking as though she stepped out from a sepia photo. Like the customers, she blends in. When she greets them, her voice is full of false cheer even though she seems to be wilting at the edges just like the poppies in their planters on the sidewalk.

“Hi,” Zoe replies, tearing her eyes away from the small menu nailed to the wall. “Uh, could I have a small blackberry iced tea and-” she glances at Evan, who fiddles with his shirt and lets his eyes jump around the air beside the server and decides to order for him. “And a small English Breakfast tea with cream?”

When the color-void server returns with the drinks and they take them out to the car, he thanks her from the passenger seat, but she just shushes him and starts up the ignition.

Zoe glances at him a lot over their drive home. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, but she still can’t stop. She can’t help but think that he’s so wildly different and so completely the same as he’s always been, even uncharacteristically silent on a car ride. He reaches one hand to adjust the sound on “A World Alone” and Lorde’s voice swells with his fingers twisting the dial.

“Maybe people are jerks, but not you.”

He starts to hum, then. His hair starts to fall into one eye, but he doesn’t move it; he simply taps one hand against his thigh. Between sips of tea, he hums a harmony to Lorde’s main melody, and the sound soothes her heart more than anything else. His lashes flutter against his cheek as they get into the chorus.

“You’re my best friend and we’re dancing in this world alone...”

At once, Evan sputters out a “Zoe!” around a mouth of tea and she slams the break just in time to see the red light bright above them. A horn beeps one long, prolonged honking sound from the intersection immediately to their right.

Evan speaks, his voice pitching up to be high and breathless. “Could’ve been worse, I guess.”

She’s reminded, suddenly, of the time after Connor’s birthday party in middle school when they helped her parents take down the blue and white balloons taped up everywhere. Evan had untied one of the balloons, his fingers exceptionally nimble for someone so incapable of staying still, and inhaled the helium inside so he’d get a funny voice, and Zoe followed suit. His voice is almost the same in her car, albeit from fear rather than helium, but she gets a sudden urge to laugh anyway.

“I guess so,” she says at length, and before she knows it the two of them are looking at each other and laughing. “I’m - I’m sorry, I did not mean to do that-”

“Ah, really? I thought you were finally acting on your plans to get rid of me.”

She pulls a face. “For what motive?”

He grins quickly before it fades again. “Annoyance.” Evan points ahead of them towards the light, which is newly returned to green. “Speaking of which, if we don’t want to get honked at or rear-ended…”

“This town would,” she mutters darkly, resuming her driving.

Pulling into the Murphy’s driveway is achingly familiar. Her mom’s tiny silver sedan gleams in the sun, contrasting the freshly-trimmed grass nicely. The imposing white of their house seems to melt into the air around it, making all edges soft and fuzzy as though distorted through water. (“You could swim through this air,” she remarks lightly as she steps out of the car, and going by Evan’s small yuk of disgust, he agrees.) Her car slides to a stop across the uneven gravel of their driveway, and with that, their journey is over.

They practically glide past the perfectly-manicured shrubs and flowers, moving determinedly towards the door. Although Zoe’s key is warm in her hand, the condensation from her iced tea still cooling on her palm, the door is hot enough to burn and scar. It takes a moment for her to brave the temperature and open it.

The sunlight reflects harshly off of the freshly-painted white walls, nearly blinding them as they stumble in. Zoe blinks as she makes her way down the hallway, letting the sound of her sneakers against the hardwood ensure her that she moved in the right direction. Her vision starts to adjust just as she enters the kitchen, Evan just behind her.

Connor is in the kitchen, clearly intending to pass her and take the route out the front door, but when he catches sight of Zoe and Evan he stops short with his hands rested in the pockets of his black hoodie. The siblings freeze at the same time, memories of a thousand old fights in the kitchen surfacing at once.

The problem with their fights is that neither seeks them out. They don’t know a storm is coming until the wind knocks them down.

“Hey, Connor,” Evan says, his hands already jumping to his shirt hem, probably in an attempt to diffuse the sudden tension in the air.

Connor nods briefly in Evan’s direction. He might mutter a “hey” back, but if he does it’s barely audible. He watches her as though gauging her mood when she finally regains control of her limbs and crosses to the kitchen table. She’s watching him, too, even if she’s more subtle about it. The July heat still clings to her skin, and it’s all she can think of as she looks at Connor’s outfit.

“You’re going to broil to death in that, Con,” she says before she can think to do otherwise. She stiffens almost immediately, and suddenly she can look anywhere in the room except her brother. Mentally shaking her head, she forces her hand to move and drop her sunglasses to the table, an action that is too nonchalant for the sudden tense air in the room. She just lets her fingers curl around her tea and waits with unavoidable acceptance for the blow-up to happen.

But it never comes.

“You’re going to burn to a crisp in that outfit,” is all Connor mutters in reply. Zoe gets the sudden urge to grin, but she suppresses it, electing instead to glance down at her tank top and shorts combo.

“There’s, like, a 90 percent humidity rate.”

Zoe finally meets Connor’s eye, and she could swear his muscles twitch as if with the urge to smile. “You, like, burn to a crisp in two seconds of sunlight.”

“That’s true,” Evan says just as Zoe exclaims that she “doesn’t burn,” she “freckles.”

She just throws a faux glare in his direction, examining the dark, freckled skin of her forearm at the same time. Curse her brother and his ability to not burn in the sun; despite their skin being the same shade, she was infinitely more susceptible to the sun’s strength.

Connor clears his throat suddenly. “Well,” he says, with a brief nod. “I’ll just…” and, with that, he slips out the front door.

Zoe shakes her head in his wake, clutching her tea tighter. She looks at Evan. His mouth is shaped as though he’s about to say something, but she brushes past him to move towards the stairs, effectively cutting him off. Footsteps sound behind her on every stair, so she knows he follows.

He trails after her into her pastel-splashed room, shutting the door behind them. Cynthia or Larry being home is unlikely, but the illusion of privacy is nice all the same. She crosses the carpeted floor to crack a window open almost immediately, nearly spilling her drink in the process. Her room is stiflingly hot, leaving the air clinging damply to them. Evan pulls a face, falling into the desk chair while completely indifferent to the fact that it’s covered in hoodies.

“I forgot your room is actually a greenhouse,” he says, watching as she feels the slightly cooler air from outside settle on her cheeks.

“It’s like the air conditioning is actively avoiding it,” she agrees. She turns back around to face him, leaning against the window sill and readjusting her drink in hand.

The edges of Evan’s dark brows pull together, and she sees as his jaw clenches and unclenches in rapid succession. “So, with C-”

“No,” she cuts him off before he can even begin. “I don’t think I can…”

Although she’s used to how heavy her head feels in the summer, the weight of her curls feels heavier than normal, and she tugs at the ends near her shoulders uncomfortably. When she doesn’t move them, they cling to her shoulder blades and refuse to budge. Evan’s eyes, the infinite pools like aged whiskey that are almost as intoxicating that she knows so well, study her as she fidgets until he can’t take it anymore and looks away. “Of course,” is all he says in response.

She drains the last of her tea and tosses it into the trashcan in one fluid motion.

At some point she puts some music on, no longer trusting Evan’s music taste even with her continued influence on him. They shift from activity to activity as they always do, sometimes speaking and sometimes just enjoying being with another person. Dodie’s voice fades to Paramore fades to Jasmine Cephas Jones fades to Hozier and then Zoe grabs her guitar to play along while perched on the edge of her bed. Evan, with his voice of an angel, sings as best as he can, laughing at the low notes and his attempts at a falsetto.

She’s so used to this, the notes of her guitar and the timbre of his laugh and the duvet under her legs, but in a summer that has felt entirely shifted just left of what she feels it should be something feels off all the same. Evan joins her on the bed, crossing his legs under him like a little kid, and she’s so used to being close to him but like everything else it feels different. More charged. More conscious. Like if she’s not careful she’ll tilt and land directly where she knows she can never be, her hands settling at the base of his jaw and sliding over his skin and his hair until there’s even less space between them.

They fall asleep on top of the covers of her bed anyway, sometimes after they tire themselves of singing. Their bodies manage to curl just short of each other, just as they’ve been sleeping since they were little kids. Zoe drifts off without any blankets or even a pillow under her head since it’s far too hot for anything on her. Her fingertips lightly brush Evan’s and that’s the last sensation she is aware of. Similarly, she’s vaguely aware of the fact that he pulls away at some point, and she feels his absence like the weight of a necklace around her throat, but although she’s aware of it, she isn’t roused till the taps come from her window.

She mentioned, once, that she wanted to be awoken one night with someone throwing rocks at her window while she was still in high school. Zoe never thought Evan would do more than laugh it off, but she’s proven wrong that night. The clock is barely gone eleven when quick, insistent taps sound at her windowpane, and she rouses - she’s always been a light sleeper. Evan’s grinning face meets her gaze from about four feet below her, and she takes a minute-long detour to throw a flannel on and brush her teeth before coming back to the window with a bottle of red wine she knows her parents won’t notice is missing. She drops down the half-flight and lands like a cat on her feet.

Well, not quite. She feels her ankle buckle beneath her as her converse make contact with the ground, and her whole body follows it. Letting out an involuntary hiss, she reaches her free hand to Evan and he’s in front of her before she can fall at all, his hands finding her elbows and hoisting her upright. She and Evan are genuinely worried she’s hurt it for a moment, and she hops into a more-standing position while leaning on Evan and bouncing on her good foot. But the pain passes quickly, and Evan laughs once he’s sure she’s okay.

“Wow, such an adult,” he says as she brandishes the bottle for him. She lightly shoves at his shoulder and just tells him to lead the way to wherever they’re going.

Evan is in rare form; he’s never this confident, surging forward along cracked sidewalks only half-illuminated in the dim streetlights the town never decides to fix. One flickers out as they pass beneath it, and she almost stumbles before he reaches out and wraps an arm around her waist. She leans into the touch, letting out an involuntary shudder that she blames on the night chill, and they continue the walk in the same fashion.

When Zoe sees the familiar sign of Ellison Park, she just looks to him, her eyebrows furrowing, but he grabs her free hand and drags her through their normal haunts in the park - the huge oak towards the entrance, the lone statue of a kid reading a book, a bench Zoe once got stung by a bee on - and through a thick crop of trees.

“If I get triple E from a goddamn mosquito, I’m blaming you,” she grumbles, swatting at imaginary bugs.

He shrugs, still leading her to destinations unknown. “Go for it.”

She has another snarky reply posed on the top of her tongue, but it slides away as they break away onto what appears to be the side of a hill surrounded by trees. Above them, the stars shine down as though to smile at them, brighter than anywhere else in town. The whole place is bathed in a faint silver light like something out of a dream.

“Holy shit,” she breathes, but it comes out croaky and near-silent because her breath can’t find its way out around the lump that has grown in her throat. “What is this place?”

Evan shrugs as a small half-smile crops onto his face. “Found it the other day. I can’t believe we haven’t seen it before.”

Wordlessly, Zoe trails over to the slight incline, letting herself flop over until she lies sprawled on her back. “Holy shit,” she says again, beckoning him over. He’s over in an instant, lying at a slight angle to her so his head is right below hers and his feet trail away to her left. “I haven’t seen Orion since I was a kid…”

And that’s how time moves, for them. The bottle of wine passes between them like a game of hot potato and Zoe points out constellations she knows Evan can’t see, even when he tries his best. There is nothing to do but lay there with your best friend and see the universe stretched out in front of you, and Zoe is all at once breathlessly thankful for this little town and its glacial pace.

“It looks so peaceful out there,” he mumbles as the wine starts to take effect in her brain.

She turns her face away from the sky for the first time that night; she’d felt his gaze on the side of her face while she spoke, even when he pretended to be looking at the constellations, but now he really seems to just be looking at the stars. The silvery light gives his dark skin an almost pearlescent sheen, and Zoe thinks he’s never looked so beautiful as he does then, all the glow of the moon captured in his face and the shine of the stars reflected in his deep brown eyes like a long-lost galaxy.

For a moment, she wonders if she’s been wrong this whole time. Maybe she’d thought she was looking at the sky when the whole sky she’d ever need was inches from her face.

“Like everything is where it’s meant to be,” he continues, indifferent to the way her thoughts have derailed. “Balanced. Purposeful. On some...predestined track, just thousands of particles and stars and novas being drawn together so we have something to look at and know that something larger exists.”

He doesn’t turn to face her, but she wishes he would. Zoe longs to feel his breath hot against her cheek like an errant star falling from the sky, to feel the tingle of his lips so close to the skin of her face that entire galaxies bloom across her skin, to feel the star shine words he utters without any air between them. She wishes he would turn his face, let their noses brush in some pseudo kiss. She wishes he would kiss her, or she would kiss him, but they’re caught in limbo instead.

And, tipsy under the stars in Ellison Park, Zoe reckons with the fact that she might be a little in love with Evan Hansen.

[imperiusv]

V - Million pieces

Blinded by my own arrogance and stupidity. I just couldn’t believe this was happening, again , I knew it was coming and that it  was for the better we went our separate ways, but somehow i thought we were different, that there was a small chance that it might not turn out like that, that we are actually unique and we can do better and create a better future and world for ourselves.Oh boy, was i naive.You always let me down so tenderly ,you said that maybe this is where it ends and took a bow for the bad decisions that we made. It breaks my heart into A million pieces If it's gonna break me Won't you let me go Leave it till the morning I don't wanna know We're too far gone Nothing I say will mean anything Just drink, fuck, dance Right through disaster I entered our apartment ,but it wasn’t home for me anymore, as my home had left 30 minutes prior to my arrival. Words can not explain how i felt , anything i write or say won’t ever be enough to express what was going through my head - anger, rage, sadness, guilt and God knows what else . Probably that was the hardest day, seeing that you are not there and realizing you are not coming back, I knew from the get-go it was over and no amount of talking , convincing or begging would make you come back , due to the simple reason i allowed you to leave me instead of dumping your ass, but i still had to try, didn’t I? It was all a blur , i have no idea how, but my brother was there too, he came , again I don’t recall why or how , but he came to my place and was  there for me and i will forever be in his debt, he helped me survive  those dark days and sleepless nights, even though i hurt him too and didn’t show enough gratitude , he thought i wasn’t appreciating what he was doing for me , i realized even back then , that without him i would have been lost completely.  Unfortunately i was still sick , top all that emotion and sadness with a high fever and you will have a pretty messed up cocktail , no wonder i had hallucinations. I couldn’t sleep, eat , drink or even think rationally , all these conversations we had during that time were at the cost of such a huge effort on my side, it took me hours to recover from each one, seeing how you give less and less of a damn with each second spend apart from me , really messed me up, it was like i couldn’t recognize you anymore. Not something unexpected , of course, I just again thought you were different and it wouldn’t be the same with you, but it was, you weren’t different at all, the same thing, only bigger. The same brand of cockroach I've been squashing my whole life. An ugly, evil, belly-to-the-ground , lying piece of crap . At one time the lines were so blurry, between you and the other hoe , i thought i was losing my fucking mind. The vultures gathered and were waiting to feast , all thinking i would collapse and fail , my ex contacted me as soon as you started deleting photos, talk about a messed up stalker, it was disgusting , my friends advised me to screw her brains out, but yeah, just one short thing about that , i was accused by some folks who were there with me the last time, that it seemed,  at least to them ofc , I got over you so quick and smooth and that it was as almost i didn’t care that much , which is absolutely not  true at all. Last time this shit had happened , my whole fucking life was a complete and utter mess, i was a fat fuck, who had been living in a bubble of his own making for the last 2 years, force fed by lies and junk food, my mom had just ran away, grandpa died , i barely passed  the semester, on the final day and I had really toxic people around me, who did not want to see me do better, it was not that i loved that hoe more, i want to make that CRYSTAL CLEAR , she was just the anchor of stability i had attached myself to in that pile of shit  i called my life at the time. So yeah this time I took the rational way out and to be honest my life was starting to get better even as we were breaking up, not to mention since you left that everything with a few exceptions has been phenomenal and my life has really kicked off in the direction i want to see it go, but yeah enough about that. Other bitches started writing me , girls who apparently were waiting on this to happen, like that bitch from work you hated that much, but nothing compares to the disgusting shit you had in for yourself and the crap you had been feeding me the last weeks how everything was my fault and so on, but more of that later. I was there, alone, faced with the consequences of our actions, feeling lower than the sterling. Initially nobody was on my side,not even my own self, as you had painted this grotesque picture , which i believed in without question  as it was the Imperial truth. Blaming myself for everything , not receiving support from anyone, my dad initially told me i was a piece of shit or something similar, only my brother said he noticed your erratic behavior the last couple of months and knew you were up to something , i defended you, blind to the truth. The only reason i went to the sea was because i knew you were there too and it took a lot of convincing and fighting to stop me from coming to see you, how pathetic would that have been?As i was trying to make sense of it all, barely breathing and counting every second, you were having a party with your fucking parents, celebrating your freedom, as I was doing something to constrain you or damage you, I only wanted to push you to do better and be a better version of yourself, so we can grow and improve together, to overcome difficulties and conquer new peaks, not be mediocre. I guess we didn’t want the same things. I remember getting high with my brother, he was so worried i might do something to myself and i was really close to be honest to cutting or having an emotional suicide, i mean i would never kill myself for some dumb bitch, but i was close to shut down completely  my emotions, I remember almost breaking down at work i went to the bathroom to catch my breath and try to get through the day, i looked myself in the mirror and i could see in the eyes of the reflection that, he just went through war and said to him ,whatever it is that broke your heart, won’t fix it, so let go. Thank God i didn’t get  deeply depressed, as  the last time it took me two years to recover from that, i managed to stay strong and i grew so much through all this pain, it was my metamorphosis, i was reborn as a phoenix  for a second time , the good Lord had given me this opportunity to become a better man, to see the right way and find my own path in life, which i eventually started doing down the line,at the time i didn’t realize it of course, I was saying to myself why me, why does it have to be me , in all the fucking people in the world , this shit had to happen to me , i lost the woman i loved, i was thinking i might lose my job, i was actually thinking to quit , as the first weeks i was clearly unfit to do work or think at all rationally , good thing i had holidays. It was a struggle every day , just to get out of bed for weeks and months, felt like hardest thing , Fortunately for me , I am a fighter and i didn’t give up, my life has always been shaped through tragedies, funny thing is you never realize that the tragedies are shaping you,but they indeed are, making you a better man, step by step, only if choose not to be subdued by them and use them to grow  and in retrospect when you look back at them you understand something you didn’t when they were happening, that life is actually a struggle , nothing is actually without a cost , just given to you, you have to fight for it ,earn it , suffer and sacrifice and learn your lessons. You made my life so hard, that i am actually grateful for it, as now i can appreciate all the good things more and learned to recognize the bad ones and avoid them like hell. Slowly my senses starting coming back to me, i am really proud of myself that i didn’t turn to alcohol like last time, i did some drugs though, but  i’ve been smoking  cigarettes occasionally ever since, like one before bed or whatever. Strangely i find solace in work, those days i pushed so hard at work, that my colleagues started to hate me and people generally disliked me for being a workaholic and keeping to myself a lot, it was work, gym,headphones and insomnia 24/7. Solitude. I started running every morning as i was running for my life, when i put on some music and took in a gasp of cold morning air, running through the azure fields, full of blue flowers and sapphire butterflies , I felt so good and at peace with myself, just looking at the beauty of the world and marvel at nature’s wonder, realizing how insignificant or important I am , depending on how you perceive yourself , but just for a few seconds of course, before thoughts of you would come racing to my head, but with each day they were less and less intrusive and demanding.I was lifting every fucking day so i can keep my mind off things, worshiping the Gym deities in the Temple of Iron , I was improving really slowly and seeing you every time set me back days. As the initial haze lifted I saw the truth you were hiding from me, it really tore me apart to go into your personal messages, but i had to go through your dms, as you were lying to me you dumb fucking bitch, imagine my shock and surprise when i started reading all that shit , at first i was defending you, she is confused , doesn’t know what she is saying , but slowly it all started to make sense, i started connecting the dots,  older conversations, inconsistencies, logical explanations for your behavior , it all added up - Hodgetwins my girlfriend left me for a fat guy. It was disgusting when my mother tried to reach out to you, because she cared,wanting to see how we were doing - you laughed  at her with you fucking friends, she is not the best woman in the world, but she has a good naive heart and she really did like you, instead you talked shit and made fun of her, despicable , i couldn’t believe what you were writing to your mom and friends about me  and my family, like i was some kind of guy who was beating you and treating you like shit  that all my family was fucking nuts and harassing you, meanwhile i was ready to sell my own fucking soul just to get back with you. Praise the Emperor that you are so fucking stupid not to change your passwords, so i can take advantage of your own stupidity to find out the truth,as this was the only thing i ever wanted - the truth. When you came with your sister i intentionally let it it slip ,as i couldn’t handle reading that shit anymore i knew you had to do something as I was gonna go completely crazy, good thing you are not that stupid and caught on otherwise if that shit had gone for longer , i might be in jail.The revelations from reading your messages , really set me free, gave me the spark i needed to light up my rebirth and transformation  and i know what you are gonna say, that i am placing blame on other people and I’m a dumb motherfucker, blind to his own mistakes, but that’s not true, you can CLEARLY see that from the other chapters how much i cared and loved you, i know i screwed up and where exactly i failed our relationship ,but baby girl it takes two to tango , you should have fought for us , instead of giving up and taking the easy way out, as nothing worth it comes easily , a lesson i thought i had learned from trying to date you the first months of and prior our relationship, i remember these lessons now and wont repeat the same fucking mistakes , but you never experienced those things, never had to endure or suffer anything your whole fucking life, that’s why you couldn’t appreciate me or what we had, because you didn’t work for it, it was all me, love. This is what hurt me the most , that you just fucking left like I meant nothing to you, it almost shattered me and brought me to my demise, but i managed to go through the fire and the flames left from the rubble of our sin.  I wasn’t planning to talk about him, but , c’mon you know me better than that, literally WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, VERONICA. At first i thought it was some kind of sick stupid joke , but as reality started hitting me i realized that the joke was on me.Were you high or drunk or probably blind? I know the old tale what matters is on the inside, but he didn’t seem any special there as well, i believe in the ancient greek saying that the physical appearance is a manifestation of the soul, this guy must be a troglodyte from the underworld, then. Girls always move up the dating world when they leave their boyfriends , at least for the time being of course, i feel like you hit rock bottom, he looks homeless,skinny fat, disgusting ,unkempt and worst of all he is a complete beta,a stooge and a wimp for you to push around and make him your pet. I know you have a thing for disgusting guys - Romaine , Jan, this guy, lol, but I just imagine how bad i must have been for you to do such a thing or how stupid,gullible and insecure you must’ve been to make such a choice. I became the laughing stock of our entire community , even Pierre felt bad for me, all my girl friends think you went insane and most of them joke that you were probably a goddess in bed and that’s why i stayed with you for so long, it was so eye opening and refreshing when I started talking to other girls about how our relationship was, as they were telling me the things their boyfriend did and did not do and i could genuinely see the envy they felt when i was telling them how i treated you and how we lived together, going places and doing stuff and how you did me in the end,yes love, i remember you telling me the same thing how talking about us to your friends opened your eyes and what a revelation it was, oh spare me the sermon, but mine counts, as the girls i talked to, were not your disgusting friends like the one who is fucking cheater and a whore or the other one who is nasty , unfuckable  fat piece of shit, or your boss and the hobo that was sniffing around, I’m talking about decent, stand up girls, educated, intelligent and smart , with a lot more life and relationship experience, older than you and your gaggle of dumb ass bitches. Every time i saw you together, something died inside me, it was the part that still loved you , in the beginning i was aggressive, as i knew i would get fired, a few times i came really close to it, especially during the winter awards lottery, I had a couple wines and i saw you with him in the crowd, thank god i was with Skalamander and Jojo, they saw you and and my eyes spelled murder, they sensed what i was about to do, make a fool out of myself and thankfully stopped me, before i could acomplish that, Jojo distracted me and Skalamander  held me back, long enough for me to get distracted and you vanished into the crowds of people gathered to celebrate the holiday season, people were so happy and joys , all i could think was how fucking bad shit had gotten then, like how did this happen i was thinking the whole time, tracing back all my steps and mistakes, struggling to comprehend it all and basking in my own misery ,in such moments  my thoughts were directed at myself, feeling  so broken and damaged and nothing will fix me and it will only get worse and worse, but time fixes everything, that’s all i needed - time.  I avoided going out alone and being generally in situation where there is no one to stop me , especially after those really close  few times , I decided to put in huge effort no to do anything stupid, you never knew of course, as I am a really good hunter, i tracked you down and found what you were up to, it was rather easy , as i knew how you think and act, i studied your habits and knew exactly how you were hiding and fooling around, this  brought me only misery and sadness of course,but this revelation was what i needed to break the chains that bounded me and finally  stop believing that fairy tale image i had of you. It was like magic - every time i would feel weak and start to miss you, i would get a good tasty cup of reality tea or a slap in the face, talk about irony , but the rage and disgust i felt from seeing you two lowlifes together , helped me overcome my addiction to you more than all the self love in world, positive vibes, gym and bitches i fucked. To be honest I thought it wouldn’t last, like the first time you would fuck him , you would be so disgusted with yourself and see the difference, probably come begging to take you back, when that didn’t happen , by the way i knew when you fucked him, I saw you in the subway with him that morning, your messed up hair and how you were looking at one another, talk about mental breakdown, my heart fell, i nearly collapsed, it was so hard to control myself i lit a cigarette inside from being so angry, i was trembling and seeing red, thinking i might explode from the inside out.Those bits i would rather forget. Then of course i thought pride and its normal, it might take a while as  it was a rebound, i wasn’t exactly being nice to you after we split , all my friends were telling me that it wont last so long and eventually you will want to find a normal decent guy , an year in, it is still yet to happen, sometimes when i feel shitty or down , i open up your Instagram and i start laughing , always fixes my mood, by the way i still don’t know why you blocked me,as I didn’t write you or anything, it also baffles me how you didn’t even reach out once to me or to my friends, family or whoever just to see how I was doing, if i was still alive or whatever, it just ridiculous. I did ask people about you, just to clarify and i tried reaching out, but you already knew that, even thought you were the one that said you still wanted me in your life and to keep contact , be friends and all those cliches , you turned your back completely on me like I didn’t fucking exist or we never happened and you still do, which is fucking ridiculous , it is as i had left you for another girl or you caught me cheating or something , wtf? After these “ incidents” I would make an effort not to see you at all, I stopped going on walks when you would be there, I knew your habits, i started going to the gym exactly at the time you would go out and your dumb ass started hanging under the gym and around, so i can see you , i hope you didn’t do it on purpose and just didn’t realize it, I mean you are not the sharpest tool in the box, but i wouldn’t be surprised if you did it on purpose just to mess with me. A lot of PRs in the gym came out of this, seeing you and Quasimodo down in the yard laughing and fooling around, sometimes i would even feel like the moment i would start to miss you, the Gods would send me the both of you together, just to remind me , why i shouldn’t miss you or want to get back together. A lot of times i would see your disgusting friend , she hates me for no fucking reason and would give me the stink eye all the time, probably because she is fat,ugly and miserable , who knows, people like to blame me for their misfortunes all the time. So this went on for quite a while, going back and forth , feeling bad , then worse and in the end better , I started fucking other girls, that didn’t help at all, first time i felt so disgusted with myself, even though all the girls were better looking than you and hotter and performed a lot better than our first time, it just didn’t feel right, fucking with no feelings and still doesn’t, i mean its cool and all , one time i fucked this french girl and woke up in some neighborhood some where in the south side of the city, with zero battery and not a single clue where I was , which i realized when i was outside of her apartment, she had a cute cat and made me tea and some french pastries,I had to ask people where I was, all dressed up in my evening attire in the chilly morning , some old guy started laughing and said he used to be the same as me when he was young, as he knew exactly what i had been doing lately , screwing around. I managed to get to the city center, got one of those fat pizzas we used to love, ate it all, walking around , feeling like i was the king of the world, for a couple of  blissful minutes or probably seconds, i didn’t think about you, us or anything as a matter of fact. As the cold air entered my lungs, peace and happiness filled my mind, ham, mozzarella and tomatoes my belly, the sun was trying to warm me up on that winter morning and as quickly as it had started, everything was over,before it had really began i guess, thoughts of you started racing to my brain, oh we ate that pizza together, hahaha it tastes better than the one inside, oh we kissed in that park, yeah here we took those funny pictures,we used to walk around here, that’s the beer place we would go and try out new stuff, literally what the fuck, I knew i had to leave that shithole of a city and soon, before i had completely lost my mind. I lived in our old home or the den of misery as i liked to call it, just kidding, i called it the frozen basement or something of the sort , until December, then i went to studentski , there i finally found  a great place, i actually felt kinda sad when i left it, it had a great view of the mountain it was so warm and cozy and everything was absolutely brand new, full with young people and bad memories of course, what was i thinking , i went one time next to your old dormitory and almost died, i felt so  fucking bad , but i had to face my demons, challenge them and triumph , didn't work out so well initially   or when Melanie and Aga came and we went to fantastico and the shots i vanished after exactly 35 seconds, i didn’t even say anything to them as i felt like i was about to cry, but yeah back to our old place, it was cold, dark and really fucking sad, my brother stayed with me for some time in the autumn, but just a couple of weeks , I don’t blame him, i would stay in that fucking place either, but the other ones I was looking at weren’t prettier either, but it was convenient for work,gym and i really liked the area, which i explored even more after you left, you have no idea how many cool places i found , that were right under our noses, each and every one ruined of course by the thought at the back of my head - she would have loved this, welp, too bad she ain’t here , everything new became a constant reminder of how many things i wanted to do and go and how we didn’t take advantage of the time we had together to the fullest, but filled it will bullshit, fighting, excuses, toxic people and wasting our time,efforts and energy, when should’ve been having the time of our life , that’s what messed me up the most, even when i came here, to this place, unspoiled by you , Sofia was all defiled with memories of us , every corner,park, street , club, restaurant i go to , we’ve been there and it sickened me so much being in that place, i just couldn’t stay anymore there, as soon as they told me I was going to Dublin i didn’t hesitate for even a fucking second, i left a dancer girl who was sucking and fucking me every day and was at my beck and call , without even blinking or thinking for  a second, poor cunt got her heart broken, but she didn’t mean shit to me, just one more plaything, one more heart i broke trying to fix mine, sad but true, she thought i was getting back with you, hope she didn’t reach out to you or anything as she lost her mind when i told her we are done, talk about crazy and obsessive people , huh. I ditched all my friends and family too, just to come here and escape from you, i remember talking with Aurora and she never believed me how messed up things had gotten between us and always thought i was over exaggerating everything, but when i told her I was going here, she said she was sorry,having realized and told me that i must have really loved you so much , that i now that we weren’t no longer together i would run away and go into self imposed exile, just to get away from you and survive, because at that point it was a question of survival and sanity, not a whim , money or just changing stuff, i was going crazy,my mind is complex and efficient thing and has made me forget most of that crap , but now when i write and try to remember, listening to music from that period and reminiscing i get a glimpse of how bad things were and how fucked up everything had gotten to the point when it was just unbearable. Again this shit is getting way too long and i can go on forever writing about you , us or me, i feel like i can write a book about this, Women and other dumb stuff , i would call it . 

So yeah the last time i saw you was on accident by the way, i was just late for work, but i knew, it was just a feeling deep down inside as i woke up and showered, that i would see you that day, at first when we started talking i felt like my heart was gonna explode, but as soon as i realized you were more nervous than me i relaxed and started being an asshole and wanted to show off to you, how good i was doing without you, i wasn’t , but then again i was, it really depends on how you look at it. We should have went out or at least had another talk before i left, i felt like we didn’t finish things as we should have , we just let everything fall apart, which was not the right thing to do, but for you it was perfect, as you escaped responsibility and the consequences of your actions, I was thinking i should hurt you and take my revenge on you, not physically of course, i have no idea why you would think such a thing, but rather in some other way, but i decided not to, there is no use hurting you for something that I was the consequence of my own actions,  but i had to kill you , emotionally at least in my own head, as this was the only way to survive for me, i killed you, then the memories of you and after that i went after everything connected to us , butchered them too . As i had failed us , I allowed this to happen, it was all my fault ,through my fingers , out of sight, how could i have let you go , cutting corners, turning stones ,but i could only see your ghost. i started living a fast life, to forget my past time, I numb out to escape my feels. Yeah High on  Life by Martin Garrix, Hope by Winona Oak/Chainsmokers and Thunderclouds by LSD (Sia) were my anthem at that time. Also finishing game of thrones without you really sucked , i mean it was so fucking bad, but still that sucked major balls having to watch it alone. We were born to go out there, explore, try and taste new things, our relationship should have been a never ending adventure, as how it started, i don’t know why couldn’t keep that flame up and i don’t think this will ever happen again , not that you were that special or anything , i mean you were in your own way, we all are unique and so on.it just i’m older, i don’t get excited as much , i’m rather emotionally distant, more mature,cold and calculating, I’m not that naive boy full of fire,hope and believing in Hollywood love tales, don’t get me wrong of course, i have become  a lot more optimistic, happy and generally i love and enjoy myself a lot more, i have learned to respect my own well being and i take great care of me,as i can not afford to lose myself ever again, I am very excited about what the future will bring me and whatever it is , good or bad, I am ready to face it, on my own , battle hardened, wiser, been through the fire and the flames, I didn’t let that shit break me , as the pain and heartbreak were so hard, i took all that and grew through it and came out  with a new mindset ready to love and accept,compromise, improve, learn and do better, I will never be that bitter, resentful and spiteful creature or how I was before, never again will i walk that path or fall into that trap  .I lost track of time and i want  end this shit once and for all  - this is just my side of the story, of course, every coin has two sides, if you decided to write yours I would love to read it, there is nothing I enjoy more in this world than people telling me about me, because i have no fucking idea who I am , but yeah small chance of that happening , you prefer to pretend i never existed, but i still made you cum. I used to think that i was damaged so bad and this shit would even further fuck me up to the point ,it would render me irreparable, but it didn’t , i came out of it better than ever and now i feel ready to be with someone new now, as i am quite happy with just myself and  someone else would just enhance  and compliment my life, bringing further joy , rather than being the whole point of it. I think you know that , but I really did love you, never forget it  , probably won’t love anyone as i loved you, i mean all love is relative and different in its own way, but just the way i loved you, unconditionally and pure, knowing all your flaws and shortcomings and what you actually were, that was something , one day you will surely regret loosing or just not having me in your life, as we were not just lover, but best friends  . And this is in no way me trying to reach out to you or getting back together or whatever, I know myself better than that. 

How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we never became.  No man is beyond redemption, Lucius , not even you. Standing in line To see the show tonight And there's a light on Heavy glow By the way I tried to say I'd be there, waiting for Vicky the girl Is singing songs to me Ausculor

[gigiree]

Something about a jellyfish and raindrops

So based on a prompt I used a long time ago. For @mistakemessenger-imagines 5K challenge. Prompts used were 13, 12, 31 for this monstrosity. I apologize in advance.

You don’t know how you’ve managed to fumble your way into this clearly VIP event. You hardly fit in with the slightly wrinkled white blouse and dark  jeans you’d thrown on this morning.

You had just wanted to look at some of the pretty photographs displayed in the Arts’ building after your last lecture. Finals’ week had been approaching. You’d been living a life characterized by copious amounts of coffee, power naps and the occasional screaming match with your very old laptop. (Which had gotten you kicked out of the library just yesterday for sounding like a small airplane.)

But the Art’s building had always been a little reprieve from your hectic university life. A beautifully eclectic building with shaded glass and white hallways that allowed for the artwork to pop.

Incidentally, you might have been tired enough that you hadn’t taken the usual route through the winding halls to the picture gallery. Your steps sounded ridiculously loud and lonely, and after a bit of wandering, you had heard the hum of conversation and pleasant strings of jazz music emanating from a particularly non descript door.

At that point, you should have used the usually sensical part of your brain, but it seems that drowning your thoughts in lattes had short circuited everything that should have been logical.

It took all of five seconds for the glittering luxury of the room to pierce through your hazy thoughts. The hum of conversation solidified into a flurry of words. Dozens of very nicely dressed people milling about a room crested with crystal chandeliers and gilded walls.

The non-descript door closes behind you with a foreboding click, and no one seems to notice that you’ve suddenly become a guest to this very nice party.

“Oh crap.” You tell yourself, self consciously smoothing down the wrinkled edges of your shirt, and huddling against the very nicely engraved wall behind you.

And again, at this point…you should make your way to the backdoor you’d inadvertently entered through. But when you look back, there seems to be a frantic woman with short hair and a pencil skirt speaking with a silver haired man near it.

“Oh double crap.” You hiss under your breath, and decide that it might be less conspicuous to exit by the front door. The nearest bathrooms were located down the hallway, so you could just be mistaken for  a guest leaving to find them.

Your try your best  to tuck back any strands of hair that had fallen from your messy hairstyle, and let a false mask of confidence slip over your face so that you could fit in better. “I can do this.” You tell yourself, ready to prance right through the throng of elegant party goers. The heavy oak doors loom all the way across the hall, beckoning you with sweet siren calls of freedom.

You are exhausted. You are hungry. You are so riddled with anxiety, it’s boring holes through your confidence, but you have the will of a college student with Finals’ week in sight.

You’re just about to take your first step into the expensively dressed crowd, already feeling out of place when you hear someone behind you speak.

“You…who are you?”

The voice is soft. Quiet. And yet the subtle threat laced through it is so clear, it makes your legs stumble  and you suddenly feel as if you’d be a model specimen for a jellyfish tank.

(Alternatively read, you are a spineless cretin of the deepest darkest depravity.)

Your nervous smile is plastered onto your face, your eyes comically wide with nervousness as you turn around to address this person.

What strikes you first is the accusation in his strangely green eyes. The turn of his mouth is not quite a sneer, but it borders on the coolness of one and you feel shards of ice stabbing at your throat until you want to apologize over and over again.

The second thing that strikes you is the stark red of his hair, hanging lank and unkempt around his pale face.

He’s dressed nicely. Very simply adorned in a charcoal shirt and black slacks. He gives you a once over, full of undisguised judgement and you nervously scuff your very worn black flats against the fine marble.

“Who are you and how do you know Saeyoung?” He reiterates, this time suspicion making his eyes flinty.

“I…I’m…” You begin and pause weighing out your options. You can tell the truth and say you intruded willingly…if under the influence of Finals Week. Or you can lie your way into becoming a party guest and leave through those doors without shame.

Your coffee addled mind decides unwisely…again.

“I’m dating his brother.” You say stupidly.

And for some reason, your lie works. The man’s eyes widen and he begins to laugh, his entire frame seems to sag with relief and it’s…actually kind of a nice laugh. Gentle and hesitant, like raindrops falling softly against your umbrella.

He looks a bit embarrassed as his laughter peters out into soft chuckles.

“Saeyoung’s brother? I’ve heard he’s a very…strange sort of person. Never took him for the type of person who would ever date someone actually.” He says, and there’s something off putting about the sudden shift in mood.

But you’re so giddy with relief, that you lean into the lie a bit more. Take it whole heartedly and let your imagination run buck naked through fields of falsity.

“Oh god no! He’s actually so sweet and once you get to know him, he’s a good person. Great sense of humor too. Doesn’t hurt that he’s good-looking, but that’s not what I love best about him. ”

(You want to gag a little. Maybe ease up on the sweet talk.)

“Really? Always thought Saeyoung was the one that got the sense of humor.” He says a bit bitterly, but his faint smile still clings stubbornly to his face.

You want to say more, but your promptly cut off by a whispered warning from the man.

“Speak of the devil…” He mutters and you nearly jump out of your bargain brand shoes when you hear someone cackling behind you.

“Searan! I’m so proud of you! You’re actually making an effort to talk to people at my engagement pa…Oh!”

The voice is loud. If your companion’s voice had reminded you of quietly falling rain, then this voice reminded you of the sun on a summer’s day. A little bit too heated, despite it’s pleasantry.

And you nearly stumble again, your spine once again leaving you to fend for yourself.

Because the man who spoke like the sun looked identical to your companion. Red hair, lanky build, slightly condescending grin…all countered by the bright golden eyes winking behind ridiculously orange glasses.

He’s dressed somewhat garishly in a red vest and dress pants ensemble, and he’s paired off the look with a sloppily held glass of red wine.

“Go away, Saeyoung.” The-man-who-must-be-Saeran grumbles.

Saeyoung’s smile turns a bit confused as he looks between you and his identical twin brother.

You had lied and said you were dating Saeyoung’s brother to none other than Saeyoung’s brother.

Your anxiety has just eaten whatever’s left of your spine. The full realization of what you’ve just done burns keenly, your shame written all over your flushed cheeks and you want to positively disappear when Saeyoung asks-

“Who’s your friend?”

The glittering chandeliers looks a lot like stars now, behind your hazy sight. You just might faint…a little…maybe…hopefully…but that would a hundred times more awkward once you wake up. So you gather what little is left of your pride and turn to Saeran with one last pleading look.

He looks positively insulted when you do and you surrender yourself to your fate, ready to tell the truth when you feel a thinly muscled arm wrap around your raised shoulders.

“I’m dating her.”

The unfortunate thing here is that Saeyoung had just been taking a very long sip from his glass of wine. And you are right in his field of trajectory when he spits out his wine in surprise…all over your wrinkled white blouse.

There’s a long pause…before it all becomes too much for you. Your last thread of composure frays and you begin to sob a bit hysterically into your hands.

Saeyoung devolves into a big, reddish blur of stuttering apologies. Saeran, for some reason beyond the power of your tired brain to contemplate, is still holding onto you and has begun to lead you away.

You’re both trailed by a still worried Saeyoung and quickly joined by a lovely woman dressed in soft pinks. She’s offered you a handkerchief, which you gratefully accept as you wipe away your tears.

“Oh gosh…I’m so sorry. My fiance can be an idiot sometimes…please forgive him.” She says so kindly. But you’re never one to keep grudges, much less when you were in the wrong from the start and Saeyoung had asked a very normal question.

You don’t trust yourself to speak just yet, but you find enough courage and lack of shame in you to smile up into her warm ochre eyes and tell her that there’s nothing to forgive.

Still, your unexpected salvation comes yet again in the form of Saeran.

“It’s okay, MC…I’ll show her where the restroom is so she can get cleaned up.”

It comes off a little harsh. His soft voice practically dripping with annoyance, but you really do owe him one…you owe him several. You’re just not sure of what yet.

And with one last silent apology from Saeyoung, you get to make your escape out those blessed oak doors with a taciturn Saeran as your guide. —

The stain isn’t going to come out. You know when to count your losses, so you dry off what you can and despondently accept that you’re only nice white blouse is forever gone.

Saeran, to your surprise, is still waiting outside in the lonely hallway for you.

His arms are crossed, he’s leaning with ease against the large window that looked out into the sprawling night view of the city. Away from all the brightness of the lights, you can still catch sight of some early evening stars in the inky sky beyond it all.

You’re still so tired, but you’re too keyed up to feel it much anymore.

He looks at you as you approach, but doesn’t say anything. He’s so much more quiet now, and you wonder if his willingness to speak with you earlier had been a fluke.

Regardless, you still owe him.

“Hey…um…thanks. Y-you were my savior today.”  You say quietly, still looking out at the city.

From the corner of your eye, you catch the minutest flinch. Something you said didn’t sit well, but he seems to relax after a moment.

Finally, you turn to him and the green in his eyes is muted. Soft with amusement, and incredulity.

“Umm…want to see something amazing?” You blurt out. (Oh, your foot and mouth are having a tea party again. Then again, it’s so easy for a spineless person to contort themselves in such a way that this is a common occurrence.)

He doesn’t speak, merely nods.

You’re still not thinking when you tug on his sleeve and retrace your steps, until you recognize where you’re going.

(Turns out the gallery is just around the corner from the party hall.)

The lighting is still dim, and while it’s still open to the public, not many working people would appreciate the arts this late on a Thursday.

So save for one or two couples milling about, you’re free to ogle the masterful photographs all you want.

You become positively giddy, letting go of his sleeve and striding towards a large framed picture of a lush flower garden, drenched in the soft and subtle grays of a rainy day. The photographer had managed to capture the quiet calm, the entropy of the droplets as they glided down the petals and leap off the concrete.

“This one…isn’t it so relaxing?” You whisper to him as he walks up next to you.

He is quiet for a moment, vivid eyes darting around the picture and being the very opposite of relaxed.

For a moment, he seems to pause on the description card to the side. His expression turns contemplative, a little melancholy before drifting into something tinged with nostalgia.

“You lied to me.” Saeran simply answers.

“ oh…you don’t like the picture?”

He glances towards you with something like disdain…but not quite as cold as he had treated you earlier.

“Oh…about that…I’m really sorry…I just slipped into the room by mistake. I was actually looking for this place.” You explain hurriedly. “And sometimes…when I get really anxious, I say really dumb things just to avoid talking to more people…but I guess that didn’t work so well this time.”

You realize you are in danger of ranting, and shut your mouth with an audible click of your teeth. But your curiosity is peaked, and the stain on your shirt reminds you of his undeserved kindness.

“You lied for me.” You say.

“I didn’t do it just for you. It’s fun messing with Saeyoung, sometimes.”

“Oh…”

You trail off into silence, already making your way to the photograph of  vase filled with brilliant yellow flowers set against a sunny window with gauzy curtains.

Saeran follows you still, and at this point you’re wondering why he’s still here at all.

“Thank you so much for what you did today, but you’re not obligated to stay. You can go back to the party, if you need to.” You say politely, although something in your chest twinges at the thought of being alone again.

“It’s better…here. I don’t do well at parties. People tend to find me…strange.”

You mull over your words for a bit, before shaking your head in disagreement.

“You’re a nice person.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“A good person?”

“Yes,” You continue adamantly.

“A good-looking one?”

“Yes.” You say stubbornly and then quickly cover your face. Your curses and screams are muffled into your hands, and while the anxiety threatens to eat you up again, his soft laughter breaks you out of it.

“Oh GOD! You’re a jerk!” You hiss, and then stubbornly make your way to the next picture, training your gaze onto it, but not quite seeing anything past the muted colors.

“Not funny then?” He says blithely as he follows you still, hands politely behind his back.

You don’t answer again.

But it’s getting late, and soon you devolve into small talk. A stilted conversation that is punctuated by his occasional lapses into terse answers and then flowering into subtle quips. He is a strange person by all accounts, but he still reminds you of the rain. A bit erratic, a bit cold, but ultimately a calming experience.

Still you need to head back to your lonely apartment and resume studying. Your moment of reprieve is gone.

“It’s not a far walk and the area around the university is safe…I’ll be fine.” You explain beyond his offer to walk you home.

And his expression is something between frustration and rueful acceptance.

“Well then…I guess…” But Saeran doesn’t seem entirely sure of what he wants to say. You’re not entirely sure what you want him to say, but you’re already fidgeting with your phone in your pocket, wondering if this isn’t something entirely too strange to act on.

Then a familiar voice calls his name, and he stiffens. He turns nearly pale as Saeyoung’s searching voice begins to sound closer and closer.

“Kiss me.” Saeran says abruptly. Without preamble, it all seems a bit too surreal to your clouded mind. It’s like watching a scene out of one of the pictures. Something too overexposed and bright, the colors of his hair and eyes entirely too sharp underneath the lights.

But your hands stop fidgeting with your phone and you reach for his sleeve again, tilting your head towards him just as Saeyoung rounds the corner.

He’s a bit faster than you. His lips bump against yours awkwardly, too fast. Too inexperienced. But it’s warm and his chilled hands cradling your heated cheeks is a really nice way to anchor yourself to reality.

“Saera-…oh my God…I’M SO SORRY!” Saeyoung seems to be absolutely quivering with embarrassment and a barely concealed delight.

You break away to look at him from behind Saeran’s shoulder, and he looks appropriately ashamed as Saeran glares at him.

“I’ll just be going…now…but…Saeran…I think we need to talk once we get back home. Nice to meet you…umm…” He trails off, looking at you with a bone deep gratitude that you’re entirely confused by.

You barely choke out your name.

He gives a final wave and he cheerfully leaves.

You two are mercifully…or maybe not…alone in the gallery. Sometime in the past half an hour, the other couples had moved on to the next exhibit.

“Uh..l…Uh…what…oh…umm…” Is pretty much all you force out from your knotted up insides. You’re seeing stars, taking shallow breaths as you try and step away.

“I don’t like lying.” Saeran replies, but his expression is blank and oddly guarded.

“Oh,”

“So…I’m not used to this at all…would buying you ice cream count as a date?” He asks flatly, and you realize with a bit of clarity that he looks vulnerable. You’re utterly unable to comprehend the conversation.

You’re in one of V’s photographs that you love. Everything is filled with clarity and brightness. Emotions are poignant and visible in an array of colors.

“I…yes.”

“Can I give you my number?”

“Yes.”

His smile is still small, but you can’t help but let your grin unfurl underneath his raindrop presence as reality settles into something inexplicably calming and charming. Something built on a few lies, and the possibility of a truth blooming for the future.