#I just remembered how the first poem of Crush has the title Scheherazade and it gave me thoughts

[yujeong]

Pete being sick with fever laying on Vegas' bed at the safehouse, Pete being delirious from it, Pete being asked to say more about himself by a curious Vegas who wants to find something to compare his worthless life to, to see if it could be any worse (to deflect, to escape), Pete resisting it until he can't, Pete telling Vegas stories of his past, of his younger self, of a scared boy thrown into the ring to fight, to win something he couldn't, Pete telling Vegas about his mother, the one he barely knew before she was taken from him, Pete telling Vegas about his father, about how he hit him when he lost and how he hit him when he won (those are the most difficult stories to tell), how different it felt, how unfair it was until it wasn't, until it was just something that happened, Pete telling Vegas how he got used to it, until he remembers he should twist the story somehow to make Vegas understand it's not his fault, because it's not Pete who sucks, it's his father who sucks, but he's sick with fever and he's tired, so the words are difficult to leave his mouth, Pete feeling shame and regret in sharing those hidden parts of himself, Vegas feeling shame and regret in pulling them out of Pete as if he's digging up a grave, but Pete gets worse before he gets better, and every night the cycle repeats.