#realizing you boutta win an argument be like:

[super-oddity]

me watching someone dig their own grave in an argument:

[hypnotiiize]

𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭

   𝘪𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 

𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫-𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐱 𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: i’m american, so i will be using a lot of american terminology, probably without even realizing fr. just a warning. on that same note, they’re gonna sound like new yorkers. im not talking like AHK LEMME GET A BACON EGG AND CHEESE but you gotta roll w it cause im boutta make it really fun for myself. also she’s Black. 

    There was the sweep of his fingers against the inside of her wrist before there was anything else, and for a moment she was sure that he could feel the nervous thrum of her pulse. 

In the next moment came the panic of what he would assume: that the sporadic beat of her heart was due to his effect on her, despite the less-than-friendly words she tossed at him offhandedly. Though there was something on his face that stopped her worries in their tracks, the parting of his full lips an indication of the words he either could not or would not say. The latter seemed most likely. 

There wasn’t anything he could not say to her, hating the feeling of being confined to social niceties. His words, sharp in nature yet flat in tone, were always said carelessly. She would just smile daringly at him. There would be a second where he wasn’t so confident with his insult (because, um, who smiles when they’re insulted?), and then would come her well-crafted retort. He would roll his eyes, take a moment to recoup, and then insult her once more. So went the cycle that they existed within.  

In the very beginning, when their work together was brand new and therefore fragile, he’d dreaded having to face her. She was excitable and loud, though for someone so ditzy she sure was quick on her feet. He had a sneaking suspicion that ditziness was a ploy used to lure in prey and strike just when they least expected it. There was always something else she would say, always a step she would take further, always a match she would propel into the fire. She never knew went to let an argument go— this being the very complaint he’d heard about himself many times in his life— and she could hold a grudge like she was paid to do it. She made him feel for the people he’d annihilated verbally in his past, as he, too, could feel his resolve breaking with each “Mhm, yeah, okay” she’d slipped in just as he’d tried to get the last word. 

The arguments won were split fifty-fifty between the two. He’d counted. 

Make it fifty-one, forty-nine, in his favor, ever since her little stint had almost gotten them caught. 

The tips of her ears went hot when his win was incontrovertible. She knew he’d been proven right just as they’d heard a gentle voice ask “Did you hear that?” from the window they were crouched underneath. 

He’d known it, too. He would boast later, he decided, just as he felt a cold hand press against his mouth. His brown eyes flashed in shock as they slid to the woman at his side, his hand flying around her wrist as a result of his own panic. 

“Trent.” She hissed his name and gripped the neck of his shirt, her lips curled in a way that reminded him of his grandmother as she spoke through her teeth, “I swear to God if they hear us you’re gonna get it.” 

He rolled his eyes at the threat, well aware of the substance they usually lacked. He could knock on one of her threats and hear an echo from just how hollow they were. For all the admittedly creative hypotheticals she would hurl his way, the most she’d actually done was chuck her shoe at him. 

“You’re not gonna do anything,” he called her bluff, the palm over his mouth making his words come out like whomp whomp whomp whomp whomp. 

“Oh yeah? I’m not gonna do anything?” she asked, deciphering his sentence lightning-fast. 

If she were anyone else, he would have been alarmed. He would’ve felt his stomach twist with the fright of wondering just who had him hemmed up against the side of his best friend’s family home. But she was herself. And she had the weirdest particular set of skills he had seen since the Taken movies. 

He nodded fearlessly. “Yeah.” Whomp.

She smirked something wicked. If she’d had a sister, a dusty old Kansas home would’ve fallen on her at that very moment, leaving her to be robbed for her shoes by some American girl and her dog. He could hear the music in his head– the fast-paced, creepy instrumental that accompanied her hopping onto the nearest broomstick to go torment some other footballer. 

“I will show up to one of your games with your kit on, in your section,” she said, a calculated punishment indeed. His blood ran cold as she leaned in closer, speaking slowly, “And I will tell everyone that I’m your Fiancée. Everyone, Trent. Ev-er-y-one.” 

He could hear it then: her maniacal, witchy laughter. He could even see the green shade of her skin, though when a car passed he’d found it’d just been from shoddy lighting reflecting across the leaves.

Whomp whomp whomp whomp. 

“Oh, they’ll believe me, alright. I mean, look at us.” She whipped her phone from her back pocket and pressed the power button, bringing her screen to life. His fingers tightened a bit around her wrist as his eyes bugged out. finding the two of them set as her lock screen. 

There, set on her phone and visible just underneath the time marker, was a picture of the two of them. He stared at himself through the camera, his arms wrapped comfortably around the woman’s waist as if he held her every day. His fingers were curled into a fist around the fabric of her tight-fitting shirt, gripping her like he could not bear living a life without feeling her skin against his own. His cheek rested against the crown of her head, peaceful and content. He seemed as if he were caught mid-wistful sigh, a relaxed smile on his face. Her own eyes pierced through his soul even through the phone screen as she smiled softly. Her left hand was placed over his heart and there, on her fourth finger, rested the largest diamond he had seen since that one Beyoncé music video. 

He had only ever seen love like that immortalized in old picture albums. He recalled thumbing through pages of his own grandfather wrapped around his grandmother in the same real, enamored way. 

For a second he questioned if he had proposed. 

Whomp whomp whomp whomp?

“Yeah, I photoshopped it. It’s pretty good, right?!” She wiggled her eyebrows at him tauntingly before tilting her phone to and fro. “Look! If I move this phone fast enough, you can’t even see where I cropped your mother out.” 

She was more devious than The Joker. 

He was, admittedly, a little awed. 

The gentle thrum of her pulse against his ring finger served as a reminder of her humanness. He would often forget that she, too, lived. To him, she was merely an entity. To him, she appeared here and then to annoy him for two hours, and then she ceased to exist. But the bone he held in his hands threw a wrench in his theory. Suddenly, she was real. Suddenly, she was breakable. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this. 

The sound of the backdoor sliding open drifted to them through the silent night, and in his panic, he pressed his own hand to her mouth. They huddled closer together (they would never address this, of course), her hand over his heart despite the phone she held. 

He could feel her breath against his hand, could feel the humidity of her exhales in his palm– yet another reminder of her mortality. Under his ring finger, her pulse sped. He tugged her closer to him, holding her tighter, securing her safety. Her anxiety would get them both caught and that simply couldn’t happen. 

“It was out here?” Trent’s best friend asked as he stepped onto his patio. 

At once, Trent pondered what would happen if Mason had happened to find them hidden in his backyard. He struggled, momentarily, to figure out what his excuse would be. The truth seemed so bizarre he was sure Mason would think he was lying, anyway. There was no sane way to say that he and this girl, who was by all accounts a random to him, had teamed up to conquer Mason’s love life. 

“Yes,” replied the girl’s own best friend. Alicia stepped out behind Mason, sounding a little stressed as Mason began to trot further into his backyard, “Aye. Aye, what are you doing? Come here. Stay. Mason, stay.”

Mason turned on his heel, laughing loudly. “What am I, a dog?” He walked further, only stopping when the darkness began to sheath him.

Alicia shook her head at Mason’s supposed bravery, sighing wearily under her breath, “I really needa stop messing with white men.”

The rush of air against the crest of Trent’s hand told him that the girl in his arms had giggled. He widened his eyes at her cautiously. All it would take was one laugh; they might as well have been what Vegemite went on. 

Mason extended his hand to the woman by the sliding doors. “Come here.” He grinned when Alicia rolled her eyes. “Alicia, there’s nothing out here. And if there is, I got you,” he promised her. 

Alicia almost looked shocked by the fact that she had begun walking after him. “Mason, just know I’m running if something jumps out at us,” she told him genuinely.

“I got you,” Mason repeated confidently. He pulled her form to his once their hands met, cupping her waist naturally. “I’ll protect you.”

Alicia turned her head from his, deep brown eyes twisting from the sky to the grass. She laughed breathlessly. “You’re such a flirt.”

Mason held her more firmly, his fingers happening to slip underneath her shirt. He could feel the smoothness of her skin against his palm. He could measure the breaths she sucked in, and those she lost due to his proximity. He smiled when she huffed as he passed a finger along her hip.

“Why do I have to be flirting?” He shook his head with an ill-disguised smirk. “I’m not flirting.” 

(He was flirting.)

Alicia nudged his body away from hers when the feeling of his fingers on her skin became too much to bear, jokingly muttering, “Unhand me.” She wrapped her arms around herself, the absence of Mason leaving her in the chilled night air. She cursed a little under her breath, watching as the wind blew through the leaves of the bushes. “It’s cold as hell, Mason. I’m going back inside. Fight off Michael Myers yourself.” 

“You’re so scary,” he teased.

“Hmm, would I rather be scary or alive?” Alicia raised both hands in the air, her palms toward the sky as she weighed her options. Eventually, her right hand won. “I’m thinking alive.”

“You’ll never get anywhere being scared of everything,” said Mason, though he’d found himself jogging to her side as she walked back to the house.

“Who said I’m scared of everything? I’m just not gonna make it so easy for whoever’s tryna take me out,” she said, sure of herself. She’d ran track in her teen years. She figured, as long as the killer didn’t have a gun or a car or even a really good scooter, she’d be able to make a solid run for it. 

Mason chuckled and shook his head at her. “Alicia, who is trying to take you out?!”

Alicia shrugged and waved her hands wildly, passionate about staying on ten toes at all times. “Tuh! I don’t know! People! Matter of fact– I can, like, feel eyes on me right now!”

“You’re so paranoid,” mused Mason, side-stepping into the warmth of her body. He slid his arm around her for the second time, beaming when she didn’t shove him off and call him a flirt. “And like I said, I got you. You’ll be fine.” 

“I don’t have faith in men,” said Alicia plainly. 

“Well, you gotta have faith in me,” Mason countered, gnawing on his bottom lip and praying she hadn’t heard the cheek in his tone. 

Alicia had heard full well, and she’d parted her lips to tell him to stop flirting for the umpteenth time when her foot slipped on something she had not seen, having been too caught up with staring at the man beside her. 

Alicia shrieked as she slipped backwards. She hurriedly grabbed Mason’s shoulders just as he wrapped his arms around her torso, twisting her mid-air and taking the brunt of the fall. A second later, when the grass pricked into his neck and ears, he was breathless from both the fall and Alicia’s amazed face an inch above his own. 

He laughed and reached up to brush her hair out of her face. He stared at her glossy lips for three full seconds before meeting her eyes with a smug look.

“See? I got you.”

She giggled. “Shut up.”

He flattened his hand along the side of her head, thumb resting where her baby hairs laid as he laughed once more. “My back hurts, but I got you.”

Alicia could not stop her grin. She placed her head on his chest to hide just how smitten she was, opting to listen to the rhythmic beat of his heart as it vibrated throughout her own body.

They laid on the grass under the watchful glare of the moon, under the luminous shine of the stars, and under the anxious gazes of their two best friends who were hiding in the bushes to their right. 

“Let’s get off this grass, Mason,” said Alicia after some time, helping him onto his feet and shepherding him into his home. “And who left that rope out there, anyway? Like, I think I almost lost my life just then…”

The backdoor clicked shut just as the score snapped back to fifty-fifty. 

Trent pressed his eyes together for a long moment. He wouldn’t hear the end of it, he knew, watching with newfound dread as she pried two of his fingers off of her soft lips while somehow managing to keep her phone stable with just her pinky (Trent made sure to add this to her particular set of skills). 

“I. Told. You!” she whispered, giddy from her win. “You didn’t wanna listen to me! You were all, oh, ‘blah blah blah knackered blah Liverpool blah,’ but I knew I was right! See?! Always listen to Black women!”

His eyes rolled again, and he was sure they almost got stuck in the back of his head from how hard he’d done it that time. Because– okay, he may have said that the trap she’d set for Mason and Alicia was knackered, but he definitely hadn’t said anything about his hometown, and he definitely hadn’t sprinkled in blahs like Maggi cubes. 

He was slammed with an epiphany just as he felt the urge to tell her to shut up. Hesitantly, as if he didn’t want the answer to have been so easy, Trent lifted her hand from his face by her wrist, remembering only then that she simply wasn’t as strong as him— despite the trickle of trepidation that her presence brought on. He looked at her newly limp wrist in shock, confused as to how he hadn’t done that a long time ago. 

He would investigate that some other time. He had ten minutes’ worth of jabs to get through.

“You got lucky. Don’t gas it,” he told her cynically, shaking his head. 

“It’s not gassing it if it’s true,” she sassed.

He scoffed. “Is so.”

She scoffed back. “Is so not.”

“Is so.”

“Is so not.”

“Is so.”

“Is so not.” 

“Is so to infinity.” He quirked a challenging brow at her. 

Her response was instantaneous, “Is so not to infinity, plus one.”

“You can’t do that,” he argued, incredulous, widened brown eyes following her every move as she reclaimed her hand from his and made to leave. He trailed after her, crouching past the window just as she did, all so she could hear his gripes. “Um! Hello! You can’t do that! I win! Your response sucked, so I win!”

“You suck,” she threw over her shoulder. 

“Stop taking what I say and saying it back to me, you lazy twat!”

“You’re a lazy twat.”

“Oh my God, I hate you.” 

It hadn’t been his first time telling her he despised her, and he doubted it would be the last. Though, no matter how much vexation he claimed to have against the girl, he refused to leave the job of getting Mason and Alicia together to just her. He wasn’t sure if she could take a break from whatever villainy she got up to in the daytime long enough to make things really happen, and he didn’t want to tempt fate. Not when Mason’s heart was on the line. Besides, and this thought was accompanied by a chill down his spine, it wasn’t as if she was the worst partner in the world. 

(The fact remained that she was carrying him big time.) 

Their goodbye came almost too quickly.

He had been watching the delicate twist of her wrists, unaware that his pulse had sped up the moment they’d found themselves on the corner three blocks from the Mount family residence, where they would eventually part. 

There, he’d felt the urge to brush his fingers against the inside of her wrist once more. He’d felt the urge to prove to himself that she was real, that he hadn’t hallucinated his begrudged partner-in-crime. He stayed quiet, unwilling to sit through minutes of whichever argument she would strike up once he told her his reasoning— because she would absolutely ask for his reasoning, being as she was thorough in her evilness. He could imagine her calling him a misogynist for not believing that women were real. He could imagine himself pointing out that he’d only implied that she wasn’t real. He could, also, imagine himself losing that argument on a technicality. And so, he stayed quiet. For his score’s sake and nothing more. 

She left without words, merely nodding and shooting him a finger gun— casually, as if it were something grown women typically did— before ducking into her Uber. 

He watched the silver Toyota veer off in stunned silence. 

Yeah. Definitely hallucinating.

[inexpressiblybeautiful]

New reaction gif

me watching someone dig their own grave in an argument: