#when francis called will ugly like | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ray935sworld · 20 days ago

Text

A kiss in the darkness

Beznaia

22.12 winter writing

content warning: masturbation

Everything on their trip seemed to be cursed. First Vale and Luca bailed out the academy winter trip. In their defense, Franci was pregnant and Luca definitely would not enjoy the trip when his 2 month old daughter was at home.

Franky had already booked a stay in Brazil to catch up with his family and his boyfriend had finally found the guts to join him. So Migno was out too.

And Cele had gone down with the flue only a few days prior, leaving Pecco and Bez to go alone.

And at first this had seem like a dream come true for Pecco. He would be able to spent a few days all alone with the man who he had a crush on since they were stupid teenager. No one to interrupt them. No one to call him out if he was staring to much. And most importantly - no one to distract Bez from spending time with him.

Then it dawned on him.

He would spent days ALONE with the man who he had a crush on since they were stupid teenager with no real other distraction.

He had been driving when the realization hit him fully. Marco was next to him, singing along to the mamma mia soundtrack. It was completly out if tone and objectively speaking, terrible. But when the older Italian turned to him and saw how his thick curls nodded along with the rhythm and how happy and relaxed he looked, he knew it was the most wonderful thing he ever heard.

He took a deep breath, knowing this could either be the worst or the best holiday ever. He was promising himself that he wouldn't be awkward and he wouldn't embaress himself.

Then he did excatly that.

With no one to interrupted them and no one else to focus on, he suddenly notice Bez behavior more. He noticed that he regularly looked at him. Like he was staring. But why would he?

Of course Pecco was staring too but only in a way that the other didn't notice. Or at least he thought so.

"Youre staring" Bez had said over dinner. He had looked up from his food, a playful smile on his cheeks. "You're always staring. Do I have something on my face?" he asked.

His hand was moving over his face. Over his beard, the side of his face and at the end even over his neck. For a second Pecco froze, he watched the tattooed hand touch Bez own skin and his brain went into shortcut.

"Am i that ugly that you always stare at me?" he asked and Pecco felt his cheeks heat up. For a moment he didn't realize that there was not just a playful tone. There was a little bit of hesitation bordering on insecurity.

"No!" he replied, maybe by the way the other raised his eyebrows a little bit too fast and too intense. But he couldn't stand the thought that he didn't saw himself as anything but beautiful.

"I... I mean, come on... You're pretty. Pretty ugly." he said and despite it being an absolute bad joke, for which he felt incredible bad, Bez laughed along. It was his rich, honest laugh, where there was no holding back. No hesitation.

"Yeah? Well maybe I just need some of yours to make me a pretty boy?"

And that was the moment Pecco was sure he had died.

For a moment he couldn't help but imagine Bez naked infront of him. Sweaty. Moaning. Marked by him. Taken apart by him. Covered in his cum. Some of yours? He had no idea what taht actually meant but his brain had already made up it's mind.

With that thought he felt his pants getting significantly tighter. He was getting hard but just in that one second he didn't care that he sat opposite his best friend with a hard cock.

"Some of my - what?" he asked, swallowing drily. He didn't know if he was pushing or what he was even trying to push for. Marco looked him up and down for a few seconds that felt like hours. He bit his lips. Then grinned.

"Some if your hair products of course. I bet you have the really fancy stuff!" Of course. Pecco wanted to knock his head against a wall. What had he been thinking?

"Yeah. Of course. I can give them to you. Everything you want, princess"

The last word just slipped out but for a moment he thought he had seen a faint blush on his cheeks. He wanted to dive in the feeling that a simple nickname had gotten a reaction like this, but he knew it was just delusional thinking, so he didn't entertain the thought much more

The next days went almost the same. Bez made stupid jokes that made Pecco think wrong things. Pecco felt like he was stumbling around Marco like an idiot.

His newest high was when Bez fell asleep on the couch, with his head against Pecco's shoulder while watching a movie. He had sat there calmly, without moving, even watching part of the next movie, until Marco wake up.

But instead of just going along with it, and acting friendly, maybe teasing him a bit, he had just started at him.

But now it came to a head when Bez suddenly burst into his room with nothing but a towel around his waist after they had spent the day skiing.

His hair was still wet. His curls still not yet flat and instead more waivy but already detangled. Small drops were falling down his strands. They dropped to the floor or - as Pecco spotted while following one of them - ran over Bez gorgeous body.

He couldn't help but look him up and down. His chest was defined. His muscles were ever present even during the winter holiday. And his arms - He wanted to do nothing more but to stand up, take Bez biceps and press him down on it.

Feel the muscles, knowing Bez could fight him off and probably win but in this particular moment he wouldn't. He would give in, letting Pecco win. He would let him press him down against the bed on which the older man was currently sitting. He would allow him to do whatever he wanted to his body.

And fuck -

That was when he spotted the silver bars that pierced through his nipples. Whatever thought he had was gone.

He wanted to lean down, put them in his mouth and suck. He wondered if they would actually taste metallic if he'd take them in his mouth.

"Pecco?" With that he was back into reality "Sorry-" he hurried to say. "Sorry, I - What did you say?" "I said my curl cream is empty. You got some?" "I... Curl cream? Yes. Wait-"

He stood up, refusing to turn around while he was rummaging through his bag, looking for needed tube. He blushed when his finger brushes the tube of lube that happened to be excatly next to it.

A part of him told him to just grab that one, give it to Bez and told him to get ready. Just to see how he would react. He wanted him to blush or to smile greedily. He wanted him to sit down and do excatly taht.

But either he would get laughed at - which he wouldn't be able to handle - or he would get it smashed against his face.

And he really didn't want to risk their friendship. After all that was all he seemed to get. And he was grateful for that. He was willing to take anything he got, hoarding it like a dragon and never letting it go.

Plus he would have to explain why the hell he had taken lube with him. On a ski trip. With his best friend. And he really had no interest to do so.

So he grabbed the curl cream and turned around. Only to find Bez, sitting on his bed.

He was sure that was the moment he had died. Again. Because his definetly naked crush was currently sitting on his bed. He was leaning back, arms stabilizing him, his head leaning against the wall.

Pecco stared and blushed when he saw Marcos eyes opening and winking at him. He was about to open his eyes. Maybe to say something inappropriate or stupid. Something that would ruin the moment gotr Pecco so he decided to end it on his own.

"Here" The former champion said as he handed Bez the hair product. "Thank you very much, my savior" he replied and left Pecco who definitely didn't got a small high out of being called a savior. Or Bez savior in particular.

Pecco was still standing there, slightly shell shocked. It was only when he heard the hair dryer that he was able to move again. He wasn't proud of the fact that this was his feist reaction after that but he had hold back to much. He couldn't deny it himself any longer.

And he felt safe enough, so he grabbed the other tube out his luggage and sat down on the bed. Exactly where Bez had sat a few minutes before.

His hands went down to his pants to open them quickly and pull his already hardening cock out his underwear. There was a flicker of guilt for what he was about to do but the vision of Bez, with his hot, naked ass right infront of had been too good.

He poured some of the liquid on his hand and closes his eyes. He started pumping a few times. It wasn't really for his own satisfaction or enjoyment. It felt more like an internal need he just had to obey and please.

And that was squeezing his own hard, leaking cock. Wrapping his hand around himself and imagining his own body heat was the heat that was surely radiating in Marcos mouth. He imagined the lube being Marcos saliva and he moaned at that thought.

He quickly bit his lips and pulled a face. He had to be silence even if the sensation of his hard cock, the heat that was pulling inside of him and the desperation in his body was too much for him.

He took a deep breath and run back his memories. Not just Bez a few minutes ago, but over the course of years. How beautiful he had looked on the top step of the podium. How gorgeous he had looked when they went to the beach together, sunbathing and playing volleyball. His smile when he ran to him to tell him he had signed a motogp contract.

He remembered him shirtless, sweet, sweaty, moaning after a race. He remembered him covered in champaign and wine and whatever else his team had poured over him which he had greedily taken.

Everything. He felt like he remembered everything. Every little smile and every little moment.

Then he came, right across his own hand. The hot liquid burning against his skin, a small reminder that his fantasy was nothing more than a vision his brain had come up to create satisfaction.

He refused to lose the afterglow so soon. So he just closed his eyes, trying to regain a normal breathing pattern. Soon he heard the sound of the hair dryer die down so he quickly got up to wash his hands in the kitchen.

He sighed. "What the hell were you thinking, Bagnaia?" he asked himself. Because if he thought he had already been awkward now was even worst.

It was one think to jerk off thinking about Bez when he was in his own home, where no one was around to judge him. But jerking off to his best friend while said best friend was just down the corridor was totally different.

He couldn't manage to look at Bez when he came back - this time dressed - to return the cream. He was grinning happily, his hands puffing up his hair.

"Looks good, doesn't it? You really got the good stuff" "Yeah, thanks" he said, while grinning awkwardly. He felt a mixture of shame at his own thoughts and actions. But he couldn't deny that he was happy that he could provide something good for Bez.

He felt Marcos gaze against him. He heard the fabric ruffles as he crossed his arms infront his chest, still looking at him. He didn't dare to return the glance. Not when he had just come for those eyes.

"You okay?" Bez asked, his voice daring and strong. Like he was saying 'I know you're not so don't lie to me'. Pecco swallowed and nodded. "Yeah. Totally." he even forced a smile "Everything fine. Why wouldn't it be?" "I don't know... You've been acting weird. Anyway..."

He turned around, shrugging and left.

Pecco used that moment to burry his head in his hands. He was fucked. He wasn't getting fucked. He was just fucked.

But at least he assumed that there was no way this whole situation could get anymore weird and awkward. That was until the evening came around.

He was already getting ready for bed when suddenly the lights went out and he was left in the dark. The whole room just went dark without any warning.

He blinked in confusion, trying to get used to the darkness.

He grabbed his phone - no signal - but the flashlight was still working. He illuminate the room with a reliefed smile. Just when he was about to look for a solution, he heard a loud scream.

"PECCO!" He knew the voice and he knew he hated the fact that he was screaming. "PECCO! FUUUCK! Shit. Shit. Shit. AH-!"

The combination of curses spiked his panic. He quickly ran to the door and pushed it open. He ran through the corridor where he heard Bez moving and still silently cursing.

"Marco? I'm here!" he yelled back, worried that he had fallen or hurt himself in the dark. Because as he saw, the whole house was dark.

He found him easily and quickly lowered the flashlight after accidentally holding it right in Bez face. He blinked and closed his eyes but the shiver of his whole body was evident that something wasn't right. And looking at the thick hoodie and socks he was wearing, it couldn't be the cold.

"Marco, is everything okay?" "I... The... The light has gone out." he replied, his voice slightly less confident than usual. There was a faint sound to it, he couldn't fully identify. His words were shacky.

"Yeah... I don't know. I guess the power went out." he took a look at the electric watch that was connected to the oven but it was dark. "Yep. We just have to wait till it returns. I'm sure it's normal." "Can't we call someone?"

Pecco saw how Bez started to move his hands. They were grabbing into his own hoodie, while his gaze was fixed on Pecco. He moved slightly closer. "I mean - There has to be a way, right?"

And now Pecco could identify the underlying sound. It was fear. He looked at his friend for a moment in confusion. He watches him shiver and move from one feet to the other.

"We're not getting a signal. And there's too much snow to drive. But it's just one night. We-" "But it's cold and... Forget it." this time it was him avoiding his gaze. It worried the older man.

"Hey, it's okay. What's going on? Marco, I'm your friend, you can trust me." he tried, hoping his voice was calm enough to actually have an effect.

He watched Marco seemingly contamplaiting, thinking it over, maybe considering his words. Then he replied with a quiet and stubborn sounding. "I don't like the darkness. Okay? I'm afraid of the dark. There. That's it. You can make fun of me if you want to"

He had this stubborn, defensive sound that he couldn't help but want to get rid of.

"What? No." he quickly said and couldn't help but pull him in a hug. "No I'm not gonna make fun of you for that. Everyone has a stupid fear over something. We... We'll figure it out, okay? Just... I think it's best if we just go to bed, alright? And in the morning everything will be easier."

Bez was still cuddle against him, nodding slightly. "But... I... I had my window open." he confessed. "And?" "My room is as cold as outside. I was... I turned the heating back on but without the power that won't work either."

And now he knew what he meant. Bez couldn't stay in a room that had -9° or something like that.

"Okay. Fuck it." Pecco decided. He didn't really think about his words. Instead he just spoke because he knew he wouldn't come up with another idea.

"We're gonna have a sleepover. Like when we were kids, okay? You're sleeping in my bed." "I... Are you sure?" "Ye-Yeah" he said, trying to push the horny thoughts away that Marco would actually be spending the night in his bed. At his side.

He managed to somehow keep his thoughts clean until it was actually time to climb in bed with his best friend. 'just like when we were kids' he thought to himself.

But back then he didn't even know that gay sex was even an option. He didn't know he could feel like this for Bez. He just pushed his ideas away, covering them as a stupid idea.

But now -

And back then Cele, Luca, Migno, Bulega, Franky - they had all been there. They had been a cuddle pile. There hadn't been anything even remotely sexually about it, even if you'd tried.

But now -

"If you don't want to, I can-" Bez started and was about to sit up again when Pecco quickly laid down next to him. He just slid under the covers because worst than being worried about how to act was just Marco leaving.

The first few seconds were awkward. He felt tense and unsure. Until he felt Bez move more towards him. He felt his hands against his frame, slightly pulling him more towards him.

"You know what?" he whispered. "This is actually pretty nice"

Pecco felt Bez head against his side and he couldn't help but extend his arm to give him some more physical contact. He tried to tell himself that this was just to give Bez more comfort.

He knew very well that Bez love language was touch and it would call him. Not to mention that it was a way to keep each other warm. But in reality he just wanted to use every chance he got to touch Marco and feel him close.

He scooped him up in his arms, holding him close. He knew they only did this to calm down, for this one night but he wished it was more. He wanted to feel him pressed against his body again and again.

He didn't want to lose to feeling of having him on top of him and sleeping, like this. He felt his regular breathing. He was sure he was asleep by now. All while he refused to fall asleep now. He didn't want to waste a second of feeling Bez close to him with sleep.

"I wish this wasn't a one time thing" he whispered into the darkness. "I wish we could spent every night and every day like this. I would hodk you close, protect you and treat you right. I promise you, I would do anything for you." "Mm... A kiss would be enough for now" he heard and froze in shock.

Bez moved and opened his eyes. He smiled at him.

"Bez, you're... You're awake?" he asked. "Yeah... So? Am I getting that kiss or not? I'm asking very nicely for it, Pecco.... Please" "You - you want -" "Yes I want a kiss. From you. Now. Preferably."

He blinked a few times. He wanted to make sure this wasn't a dream. But even if it was, he decided not to care. Instead he just used his chance to lean down and kissed him.

It was soft kiss. They kissed just for the sake of kissing. They kissed because they wanted to kiss. And they didn't want to stop.

They were locked away, locked inside this little house, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Locked in the darkness and locked inside each other.

Both knew they were too tired and exhausted to actually do anything else so when they separated again to take a breath, Bez used the chance to kiss him again.

Just a quick peak on the lips and he grinned.

"Thank you... Hopefully I can stop teasing you now. I love you by the way." he whispered before he closed his eyes again, his head now laying completly on Pecco.

"I love you too" Pecco replied and planted another kiss on Marcos forehead. For a moment he was wondering if the other would remember their moment. But when he woke up from Marco softly nipping and kissing the skin at his throat, he was sure he did remember.

#you know what I give up #I would have had to write like 10k to actually write this in a way I like so have this #cause I dont have the time or the motication #Turtle anon I hope you like it anyway #pecco bagnaia #motogp #ray's writing #motogp rpf #marco bezzecchi #beznaia

32 notes · View notes

babybluewiki · 6 months ago

Text

francis forever. (ellie x reader)

living in a never ending memory.

fear not, I haven’t dropped this fic (yet🌚); booty cheeks ending again 🙏, mentions of suicide so fair warning, longer chapter this time ☠️

Winter time being your favorite season didn't come with the joy of snow getting everywhere in your clothes—specifically your shoes or sometimes when it would fall into the gap your hoodie and get all up in your bra. Your skin felt as if it would freeze and chip right off. Making a stop to make snow angels in the middle of your patrol on this hell of a snowy day was seemingly a terrible idea; clumps of snow found its way into your beanie and even into your pants. Gloves couldn't save your hands from shivering; the precipitation got into the crevices of those, as well, leaving your entire body shivering and trembling all over. You could and couldn't blame yourself; making snow angels is a must for you every time it snows out in Jackson.

Ellie offered to switch gloves with you, insisting on it, in fact. You had to decline since you and her had different glove sizes, as well as the fact you didn't want her hands to be cold. You'd put up with your own near frost bitten fingers but god forbid Ellie willfully get it herself.

By the time you and Ellie actually got to creek trails, you'd stopped to take off your gloves and see how bad your fingers were. The impact of the snow rubbing against your skin left an angry discoloration on your knuckles and your fingertips, making you let out a sharp sigh as you tried to swat the snow out of your gloves. You brought your hands up to your face and blew hot air onto them, then rubbed them together to keep the heat going against your skin.

"Don't you always keep an extra pair of mittens in your pack?" Ellie questioned as she rode up next to you, watching you examine your hands. You spared her a glance and bit your tongue in irritation that you did not in fact have an extra pair of mittens in your bag. You sighed as you swatted your gloves again, watching remnants of snow flying out of them.

"Not today," you reluctantly stick your hands back into your gloves. Fortunately all the snow was gone, but they were still unbelievably cold and wet, making you hiss quietly. "I'll have to check for a spare when we get to the lookout."

"Where even is the lookout?" Ellie questioned. Her face scrunched up as the temperature dropped a few degrees, her shoulders squaring. She watched you weakly grip Orion's reigns, the small fog exhaling from your lips, the constipated look coming back on your face. A cheeky grin made its way onto her own face, a quiet chuckle waving over to your ears, earning a side eye from you.

"Hey- my suffering from my damn near frost bitten fingers isn't funny, you know."

"It's not that," Ellie rasped out another drawn out chuckle. You rolled your eyes halfheartedly and gently swatted the reigns, sending Orion trotting down the small river leading to another snow forest. Ellie and her own horse, Shimmer, followed after you, cracking the ice collecting over the stream of water and crunching the snow. "You're looking constipated again. That's like your default look."

"It's not!" You turn your head and look at Ellie with a frown. A pout shows on your face unintentionally, making Ellie snort out a laugh, thus earning another eye roll from you. You turn your head back around to face forward, guiding Orion to turn up towards a hill, gripping the reigns tighter.

"Do you think Dina and Jesse are done for real this time?" You call out. The fact that Jesse and Dina were on and off all the time gave you the impression that they weren't really done yet. Jesse acts all nonchalant, but something in you tells you that he cares about it more than he dares to show. You weren't sure about Dina. You were sure she had her eyes on Ellie last night while you and her were dancing. The ugly taste of jealousy on your tongue made you scowl; thank god Ellie couldn't see it, you didn't need another thing for her to tease you about.

"Jesse says they're done for real. I give them a week and some change until they're back together." Ellie was never one for gossip. It wasn't her thing—talking about other people behind their backs like that. But when you were around, and when she got the impression you were in the mood for gossip...well, she just might dye her hair black for the occasion to go along with her gossiping.

"I think Dina's got her eye on somebody," you nibble on your lip after you let that little piece of information slide. The thought appeared in your mind's eye like counting sheep that you gave away the fact you were a little bit jealous that Dina most likely had the hots for Ellie. You weren't even sure why; you and Ellie weren't...dating...so you felt embarrassed that you were feeling jealous for essentially no reason.

"Oh yeah? You think she's into someone already?" Ellie quips, a smirk making its way onto her face. You practically feel her lopsided smile radiating from behind you, and you roll your eyes. You click your tongue at the humor you feel that she finds in your quiet jealousy that watches from outside the glass. You're quick to change the subject in fear that this would lead to you confessing your jealousy and further giving Ellie something to tease you for.

"You ever think about Cat?" Your sudden change of subject has Ellie's smirk falling. Her eyebrows furrow slightly, a sigh escaping her that makes your own frown turn into a small smile. You internally laugh at her—just to get back at the underlying humor that she previously found at your declaration about Dina.

"Not really...I mean, there's not a lot to think about," Ellie answers with a shrug. She frowns slightly. "Why are you just now bringing up Cat?"

"I dunno. You never really talked to me or Jesse about her," you nibble on your lip as you try and picture Ellie with Cat again. Your right eyebrow curls as your lips lift into a look of disgust, the ugly taste of jealousy on your tongue again like expired coffee. You try and swallow it down in hopes your stomach acid will dissolve the excess hateful saliva previously collecting in your mouth. It doesn't leave.

"Okay...then what do you think about Cat?" An accusatory tone took over Ellie's voice as she lifted an eyebrow. You sighed, your shoulders slumping. The weight of the question weighed a lot heavier on your shoulders than it did when rolling off of Ellie's tongue. For a half second you wondered if there was a wrong answer, then for the other half second you thought you were overthinking it. It's just Ellie, nothing she says really requires much overthinking. But it's Ellie.

"I never really cared for her," you stiffen up, squaring your shoulders and straightening your posture. You swallowed a lump in your throat almost painfully. You adjust your beanie over your head. A cold sweat was gathering on your eyebrows, which you wiped away with your glove. "I mean, she was nice. She was a very good artist...that tattoo of yours looks...okay. But I just don't care for her."

"You're so mature," Ellie rolls her eyes. A blank look rests on her face as she brings a hand up to scratch her bottom eyelid with her finger; an idea crossed her mind like a lightbulb turning on over her head. "And what about you and your past relationships, Y/n? Why is this all about me?"

"I've never had one," your cheeks heat up. You thought you looked and sounded like a total loser—never having a relationship in your entire life before—in front of Ellie after already having a girlfriend once. Soon your entire head feels hot—your neck practically boils and your scalp could steam if it wasn't freezing out here. The truth was you were "busy" with doing your job and tending to about thirty people a day and being eaten up inside by your social anxiety and the constant sadness hanging over your head because of that—it was just an endless cycle.

"You've never had a relationship before?" Ellie asking it like it made you an outlier made your heart clench. You heard the disbelief in her voice which to you was a bit strange. Ellie would've thought you'd at least had one or two, but none? Never? Zilch? Bupkis? Outrageous! She thought everyone in Jackson would be fawning over you at one point or another; thinking back to last night at the Winter Dance, she thought wrong when she remembered you approaching her alone. That nervous smile on your face and the confused shuffling of your hands around her neck the whole dance.

"Nope!" You let out a fake chirp to hide that you were nearly dying inside from embarrassment. The thought immediately came to your head that Ellie now saw you as a hermit homebody weirdo who had absolutely no game. Which was a fact. "I never really thought about having one."

Ellie had a gut feeling that you were lying right through your teeth about that. That chirpy voice didn't fool her.

"Then...what in the world was that kiss last night?"

You groan as Ellie brings up the kiss. You hoped with every bone in your body that this ass-freezing weather that she would forget about it and focus on getting her teeth to stop chattering. You mentally cursed for putting yourself in that situation starting with that damn kiss. You should've thought ahead before going in completely blind and kissing her; now she's talking to you about it, alone, with no Jesse to save you or Seth to call you slurs again.

"...curiosity," you finally manage to squeak out. A raspy chuckle makes its way to your ears, which were fuming from the tips from embarrassment.

"Yeah, right. Curiosity," Ellie giggles. "Man, you're funny."

"I'm serious," you counter. You pull the reigns gently to turn Orion in to a small town, trotting towards a building with an open garage. You pause for a moment as Orion gets into his place and let out a deep sigh, closing your eyes. Your breath comes out as a small fog from the condensation of the cool air. This was probably the most you've ever talked casually with someone in over a month; the exceeding capacity of your social time was overwhelming.

You heard Ellie say something to Shimmer along the lines of don't get into any trouble, listening to her hop off and land on the asphalted floor. You opened your eyes and let out a shaky breath before lifting your leg over Orion's head and hopped off. You turned to the satchel on his side and flipped it open, pulling out a small jar of pills, needles and a thing of thread; you turned your backpack and let it rest on your chest, zipping it open and stuffing them all in the front pocket with the bigot sandwiches you stuffed in there and a walkman you always kept in there for when you had the time to listen to music.

"I wanna show you something, Ellie," you called out after closing your backpack and throwing it back over your shoulders. Ellie whipped her head around and looked at you, watching you walk over to a room. "It's a really nice view. It also helps with my anxiety."

The building was almost falling apart. The wall was torn open on the side, the metal bars sticking out of it and all. Another view was seen from the hole in the wall, which showcased the forestry covering a chunk of Jackson. Snow covered the ground all over, piling up towards the gap where the majority of it gathered and let to the top of a hill outside. The room you were strolling over to was seemingly a storage room; a shelf stood against the wall congruent to where the door would've been (after evidently getting blown off its hinges). A small, vertical gap in the wall adjacent to the entrance allowed you and Ellie both to what you were talking about, a veranda with a view of another side of the forest that you and her previously trekked through.

"This really is nice," Ellie says it like she didn't initially believe you. She watches you lean against the ledge of the veranda on your forearms.

"Would I ever lie to you?" You turned your head and looked at Ellie with a soft grin. Your eyes were noticeably smaller looking, your eyelids were hooded, the smile on your face looked lazy. In her own eyes, you looked a little...high.

"Indeed you would," Ellie lets out a chuckle as she waltzes over to a spot next to you, leaning against the ledge. Your heart suddenly raced in your chest; it wasn't like how it normally would be. Most cases it'd be racing so fast it'd make you lightheaded or your chest would start to ache. Unlike most of the near heart attacks you've had, the racing this time was pleasant. It wasn't a nuisance or a hindrance to whatever you were doing; maybe because you weren't really doing anything at all. But it felt nice to experience a drumming heart that didn't work the tissue of your heart until you were weak.

"Jerk," you laugh softly, your elbow gently nudging Ellie's arm playfully. "I don't lie. Lying is a sin."

"I didn't know you had beliefs," Ellie teased.

"I don't," you shrug. "A man who judges your every move and sentences you to eternal suffering for simply not believing in him is not a man worth my worship."

"That's deep," Ellie looks down at the view of the trees and their snow covered leaves. An ice-caked pond could be seen in the distance, a mountain, some birds flying. She could definitely see how this was calming.

"There are certain philosophies I think, though," you add, huffing softly as you link your hand with your other, your leg bouncing lightly. "This world is so messed up and cruel that only a man could've created it."

"Preach," Ellie chuckled at the irony in her dumb joke. "I mean— yeah, I agree."

"I know what you meant, Ellie," you shake your head playfully as another smile graces your face after falling previously. "I prefer facts over belief."

"I wouldn't really expect anything else from a doctor," Ellie comments. And then her face falls when she gets the idea that she said something wrong, immediately turning her head to look at you. You don't mirror her in enough time for her to process that she's perfectly fine.

"I mean— not like that, obviously. Some doctors can be Christian or religious, too— it's just, you're not like them. I mean—! Fuck..."

"It's okay," you rest a hand on Ellie's shoulder. Her entire face heats up and turns a shade of red from embarrassment; now she has a glimpse of what it must be like for you every single day. She sighed deeply and looked away at the scenery again, her shoulders slumping slightly. "I don't care."

"I just didn't want you to think that I was implying something different, you know?" Ellie let out another breath, one that she didn't know she was holding.

"I already said it's alright," your hand reassuringly pats Ellie's shoulder. A warmth creeps up in her body from hearing your tender voice and feeling your gentle hand. She looks at you and a soft blush dusts her cheeks a pretty shade of pink.

"Where do we sign in?" Ellie changes the subject. You figure it's because of embarrassment; a wider grin breaks out as you chuckle quietly. You push yourself off the veranda and walk backwards towards the gap in the wall, tilting your head towards it.

"C'mon," you turn to face the wall and squeeze into it, sliding past the gap and into the storage room again. Ellie followed after you a moment later; the tips of her ears were bright red, and a pout was molded onto her face. She shuffled through the room and back out towards the bigger hole in the wall, looking down and watching you push a pallet out of the way.

"Didn't you used to do this route with someone?" Ellie inquired as she reached down and helped you with the pallet.

"Dina and Eugene when I was still in group patrols," you let out a huff as you crouch down. The cold of the snow, even with boots on, made your toes curl as you and Ellie crawled through the small crawl space that led to some tiny hallway. The wall next to you had a rope hanging off the edge of it which was tied to a pole against the wall over it.

"Eugene, right! Aw, he was funny."

"Yeah, he was," you chuckled as you stood up straight after getting out of the crawl space. You dusted off your pants after getting some snow on them from crawling, then walked over to the rope and gripped it tightly. "You know that radio I built and left in the Tipsy Bison?"

"What about it?" Ellie lifted a brow, grimacing slightly at the mention of the Tipsy Bison.

"Eugene helped me build that. Dina, too."

"Oh, man! I should've known it was you who left it there. That music from last night was kinda bittersweet," Ellie chuckled heartily. She watched you hop up and climb the wall with the rope, eventually pushing yourself up and over the edge.

"Quick question," you narrow your eyes as you stand off to the side and look down, watching Ellie start climbing up the rope.

"Yeah?"

"Are you wearing the same clothes from last night?" You narrow your eyes playfully and smile. You knew very well that Ellie was, in fact, wearing the same clothes from last night. You didn't bother to say anything until now; you thought she looked cute.

"Hey! It's not like we're at a fashion show or some shit," Ellie grunts as she pushes herself over the edge and climbs onto the floor with you. She looks at you with a halfhearted frown. "We're here to kill infected, not to look snazzy."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm not complaining, Ellie. Sign us in," you laugh softly as you push open the door, walking in and strolling around the room. You waltz over towards the window near the sign in book and squint your eyes look out at the town in the distance.

"What even is this place?" Ellie questions as she looks around and finds another room; she lifts another eyebrow in curiosity and opens that door, finding what she thinks is a lounge room. Two small couches and coffee table, a nightstand, a desk, and a tiny bookshelf.

"It used to be a radio tower, I think," you call out. You turn your backpack around so it rests on your front again, zipping it open and pulling out your binoculars. You hold them up to your eyes and look out the window again.

Ellie walks over to the nightstand in the lounge room and picks up the bong sitting on it, chuckling. She shakes her head as she looks around it. "I'm gonna assume this bong was Eugene's."

"I don't know, actually," You pull away from the binoculars and turn your head to look at the wall that Ellie's standing behind. Your gaze switches to her as she walks out from the corner and over to the sign in book.

"Do you have any on you? Y'know, weed? I heard it can be…medicinal.”

"Literally all of Wyoming is covered in snow," you turn around to look at Ellie as she signs you both in. You let the arm holding your binoculars fall to your side as you give her an incredulous look. "You really think I have weed on me?"

"There's Community Greenhouses in Jackson, you know," Ellie retorts as she sets the pencil down and closes the book.

"I'm not using those," you shake your head softly as you turn back around to face the window. "Last time I used them to grow Marijuana, someone stole it. It was only seeds!"

"Like, actually pulled them out of the soil? Who would steal hemp seeds?" Ellie narrowed her eyes as she strolled over and stood next to you and looked out the window. You held the binoculars to your eyes again for a moment before passing them to her.

"People will steal literally anything for any reason. Either way, the only stuff I have are painkillers and antidepressants. But those are mine."

"Antidepressants?" Ellie turns to look at you as she takes your binoculars. She holds them to her face and looks out the window. "What for?"

"Ellie," you nudge her shoulder gently with your elbow.

"Right, sorry," Ellie grins. After a moment of silence (and Ellie looking around aimlessly with your binoculars, which were freakishly good), she cleared her throat. The quietness between you two was making her mouth go dry. Her feet started shuffling and her leg started bouncing slightly.

"What's wrong?" Ellie asks as she pulls the binoculars down. She looks at you, watching you stare out the window and looking at the scenery. You turn your head and glance at her, your expression lifting after previously falling and looking like you were constipated again.

"What?" You lift a confused eyebrow.

"The antidepressants. Something's obviously wrong," Ellie straightens her posture and squares her shoulders again immediately afterwards. "I don't mean to pry...but I won't be able to stop thinking about it if I don't at least ask."

"It's fine," you huff. Your heart suddenly sank in your chest as you bit your tongue. Talking about your anxiety and depression was never really your thing. Every time someone would ask you if you were okay, you'd practically shut down. You just couldn't find it in yourself to say what the other person probably wanted to hear. You wondered if it was because talking about mental health was an awkward thing for literally everyone, or because the words you would put it in would result in you being put in the Talk Circle. (a small group in Jackson where a handful of people sit in a circle and talk about their feelings; you thought it would just make your embarrassment rise to an all time high)

"It's...for social anxiety...and depression, obviously," you mutter. The words you're supposed to say are clogged up in your throat as your breath hitches and comes out as a small fog. "I've been getting them from Maria since I first came to Jackson a few years ago."

Ellie started to feel bad for asking. She nibbled on her bottom lip as she listened to you. Knowing you had social anxiety was one thing, but actually hearing about it and the depression that comes with it makes her feel weird on the inside. Like the feeling you were talking about found its way into Ellie like a virus.

"I'm not gonna ask why," she mumbled, scratching her nose with her finger nervously. "I don't wanna intrude, y'know?"

"It's just you, Ellie," you glance at her. "It's not like I'm shouting it out to the whole world."

"Yeah, but still," Ellie shrugged in an attempt to make herself look as normal as possible and to not look worried.

"But still, I know you're curious," you nudge Ellie's shoulder with your elbow, giving her a small smile. "I won't tell you until you ask."

"Why not?"

"It's kinda rude to just dump all that onto someone without knowing it's okay."

"Well— I mean, you know I don't care. About you trauma dumping or whatever. It's not gonna scare me off."

"Oh, I don't care if it scares you off," you shake your head playfully. You turn around and lean the side of your body against the window and cross your arms, nibbling on the bottom of your lip. "It's just what you'll see me as when I'm done."

"Wouldn't scaring me off be worse?" Ellie questions. She watches you nibble on the flesh of your lip, taking note of the way your leg bounces slightly. When you part your lips to let out an exhale she sees the slight carnage made on your flesh; her heart sinks in her chest. She shakes her head and ignores her own question. "Whatever. It can't be that bad. If you killed someone, then I hate to break it to you but I think everyone who goes on patrol has killed at least a few people."

"It's actually not that," you sigh as you bring your hand up to adjust your beanie over your head and scratch your hairline. "It's related to that, though."

"Did you watch someone die?" Ellie guesses. You glare at her for a second, giving her the impression to just shut up and let you finish.

"I did. But...I've never killed anyone before."

Ellie furrows her eyebrows, her nose scrunching up as she gives you an incredulous frown. You've never killed anyone? Not one person? Not even in self defense? Everyone she knows has killed at least one person. You've made it this far...travelled all around the country to get to Jackson...and you never got into a situation where you were required to kill? Confusion was an understatement, though she guesses that with so much land you crossed you might've just gotten lucky and made it to Wyoming in peace. Were you a pacifist? You couldn't be; you're as trigger happy to kill infected as the next person in Jackson.

"Never? Like, not one person?"

"Nope. I save lives, I don't take them," you inhale sharply. Your hand clutches the medical badge on your right sleeve, your head turns to look out the window and at the town in the distance. You could feel Ellie's confusion and practically hear the questions swarming in her head. You looked back at her with a knowing expression. "Ask away."

Ellie let out a dramatic huff as she fixed her gloves over her hands to make the atmosphere between you two less awkward; to no avail.

"I know not everyone is accustomed to just...killing people. But how?"

"I traveled with my dad the whole journey here," you tilted your head toward whatever direction you thought Jackson would be in. "He did all the fighting and the killing. Wouldn't let me hold a gun until I was sixteen."

"Same with Joel," Ellie snickered quietly. Her eyes drifted back up to you just in time to catch the warm look on your face; a rare sighting considering you're always looking so anxious or nervous or some sort of negative emotion. "What's your dad like?"

"He was...awesome," you smiled fondly for a moment. "He taught me everything I know about being a medic. And some other things, like mathematics and science and reading. He basically home schooled me while traveling."

"He sounds like a nerd," Ellie quips as she chuckles under her breath. She looks out the window for one moment, admiring how pretty the view looks outside before looking back and watching a small tear roll down your cheek. She frowns instantly. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," you blatantly lie, your hand rubbing your eye and drying it up as you sniffle quietly. You glance at Ellie and give her a shaky smile as if to tell her that you're alright. She didn't believe you.

"It's obviously not nothing if you're crying," a thought occurs to Ellie. She narrows her eyes and pushes herself off the window, standing a little closer to you. The thought keeps circling in her head that your crying involves your dad. She knows her train of thought is intruding yours, but the curiosity and the guilt are eating away at her heart as she watches your eyes begin to gloss over. The red tint taking over the corners of your eyes irritates her; the tears she wishes she could wipe away never dare to roll from your eyelids, as if to taunt her and keep her on her toes.

You look away and let out a shaky exhale, your hands trembling as you reinforce your arms and stick your hands under them to warm them up. "He...he died. To infected."

Ellie felt her heart squeeze in her chest. Infected or hunters or other violent forms of humans were the most common causes of death. Along with disease and famine and dehydration and insanity. She felt the need to at least pat your shoulder to let you know that she's there if you need her to be; the urge dies as quickly as it sprouted when you add on.

"He killed himself by walking into a hoard of infected," you move your hand to clutch the medical badge, clenching your jaw and fighting back tears.

Your heart began racing in your chest similarly to last night; another cold sweat was gathering on your forehead and eyebrows that you didn't bother to wipe off. Your breath was coming shorter and shorter. Your body felt dizzy like you were stuck in a tornado. Panic took over you. Your lungs were weak and begging for air that the oxygen in the atmosphere wouldn't let you have. You were sure you had to get out, to get a breath of fresh air or you'd pass out right in front of Ellie. The image of passing out in front of her and making you look stupid made your heart race even faster. The panic was practically blocking your eardrums, you couldn't hear Ellie's voice trying to calm you down. The touch on your shoulder felt numb. The image of your father walking himself into that hoard, the infected feasting on his flesh and ripping apart his limbs and tearing his intestines out of his body played in your head like a movie your amygdala wouldn't let you forget. You could still hear the screams in your head and bouncing off the walls of your skull, ringing in your ears. The blood. The infected. The guts. The screams. The blood. The infected. The guts. The screams. The blood. The infected. The guts. The screams. The blood—

"—Hey! Hey, it's alright," Ellie caught you just as you were about to collapse. The slightest change in altitude made you feel lightheaded. You caught your breath, panting sharply. Your hands rested on Ellie's arms as she held you upright, your body against the wall for support. Your eyes focused on her face; your breath was still shaky. Your lips were quivering as tears glazed over your eyes again. You felt as if you got punched in the gut and your stomach acid was about to come up.

Your eyes widened as you pushed Ellie out of the way and darted for the trash can in the corner of the room, vomiting and crying into the trash bag. Your salty tears were dropping onto the pile of throw up on the bottom. The smell filled your nose and made you cough up another small wad of vomit before you turned your head away. Ellie's grip on your hair loosened; you didn't even realize she was holding it back until you felt a tug on your scalp from whipping your head around to look for her.

"You alright?" Ellie asked awkwardly, squaring her shoulders. She crouched down next to you and let your hair go, her hand resting comfortingly on your back and rubbing it gently.

You huffed softly as your eyes trained on her again. A calmness washed over you; your eyelids were heavy, your body felt exhausted. Your brain felt like oatmeal. The part of your brain that was still intelligible was telling you that you were too much, that you were a burden for Ellie and taking her with you to creek trails was a mistake. The glint in her eyes brought a sense of relief to you, making your body feel limp as you leaned your head against her shoulder and letting out a tired sigh.

"Peachy," you huff, making Ellie chuckle softly as her hand softly pats your hair for a moment, letting you rest on her and rely on her for comfort.

"You wanna rest for a little bit or do you think you can keep going?" She murmurs quietly into your ear. Ellie's hoarse voice was something your heart never got tired of; the low tone and the goldilocks-raspiness of it always made your chest feel warm and fuzzy.

"I'll be fine."

"Bullshit. I mean, we can go back to Jackson if you need to. You can trade with someone else and you can rest up."

"I said I'll be fine, Ellie," you pull yourself up from Ellie's shoulder. You scratch your neck nervously. You somehow find it in your spine to stand up, fixing your backpack over your shoulders and reaching into the side pocket. You pulled out a small thing of gum, opening it and popping a piece in your mouth. Occasionally you’d find little accessories on patrols around Jackson that weren’t expired like that gum you pulled out and you’d keep it for later use.

“Let’s keep going on patrol.”

“At least rinse your mouth out…that ain’t gonna do shit when there’s still barf caked around your mouth.”

Your cheeks heated up immediately as you looked down in embarrassment. You brought your glove up to wipe the vomit off your face with a cringe as you let your embarrassment take over you for a moment. You mentally noted to yourself not to touch your face again with that glove.

#the last of us #tlou #tlou2 #ellie williams x reader #ellie x reader #ellie williams #ellie tlou #ellie x fem reader #ellie x you #tlou fanfiction #tlou fluff #theellieumbrella

38 notes · View notes

firstservepercentage · 5 months ago

Text

USO kit tier list based on my bias

(just the players I normally watch)

WTA:

Tier A+

coco - NB's design and colour choice always makes so much sense. the back side design and the width of the skirt's folds are supre cute 🥺 they actually use their brain when designing kits!

naomi - without the jacket its maybe just so so, but an absolute banger with the jacket on. should be remembered as a historically significant kit for tennis fashion. and the headphones ohmygawd 🥺🥺🥺 who ever think this kit is not cute can fight me

Tier A

maria - whenever she gets a tank top kit she serves hard. nice colour choice and skirt design by addidas (cant believe im saying that) so sad it only existed for 1 set 😭

marta - wilson just going with the 1 dress design that worked well in every slam and its still working well. the skirt's texure looked so nice in the wind

Tier B

dasha & karo - a bit boring but suits their vibes well

qinwen - same. would like some brighter colours but was fine

katie & bibi - the actual best nike WTA kit. lilac looks cute especially under sunlight, but the design is a bit too boring for me

Tier C

elena - colour is cute, she looks like a barbie in pink, but 0 design and 0 sense in the patterning choice. looks like some swim suit my mom would buy me when I was 10

aryna (nigh match version)- how dare they call that a custom kit i can do the same design in 10 mins

Iga - bisexual flag colour but a low saturation version. also points taken off for their kits starting to look like wet tissue 20 mins into a match

Tier D

Mirra & Paula - hate the colour hate the design. nike how dare you put that ugly ass kit on them die and rot in hell

jasmine - (a) its the same north american hard court swing kit asics making 0 effort as usual (b) i do not understand that colour choice like why dull reddish purple with bright orange. what made you think of that

ATP:

Tier A+

daniil- nice colours, nice jacket, nice little design around the chest part, nice shoes. wth lacoste you can actually design???????

Tier A

Adidas people - contrary to their RG series the purple-ish blue the used this time works very well with black & white and minimalist design

Carlos - black sleeveless will never not look nice on him but its still a bit boring. would love to have a bit more special texture, with that it will def be A+

Francis - the only person that got the good nike kit (i.e. the lilac kit) in ATP if im not mistaken

Tier B

lorenzo (musetti) i like guys who wear barbie pink and look proud wearing it

matteo - not super interesting design but colour is cute. also he looks nice in polo shirts

Grigor - standard lacoste design with reasonable colour choice

Tier B-

Jannik- the kit was okay and looked a bit better than i expected. im just still a angry about his 1st set

casper - its actually okay but he kind of looked exactly the same as his opponent so i really had a hard time watching 😭

Tier C

novak - i dont understand the design why so many squares and rectangles sir can you explain. it just makes him look more like a tennis robot with implanted AI

holger (the purple kit) - should have just taken the barbie pink one

ben - same with iga. seriously i would like to know how much ON has paid them to wear those wet tissue kits

Taylor - it looks fine but 0 design, just went for the safest choice

Tier D

Jack - (a) i do not understand the back side design (b) nike how did you make the T shirt look oversized for a 193cm tall and rather muscular athlete wtf

Alex - is that pattern choice meant to make his opponent dizzy by looking at him or something

#tennis #jannik sinner #carlos alcaraz #elena rybakina #iga swiatek #holger rune #naomi osaka #coco gauff #qinwen zheng #jasmine paolini #aryna sabalenka #taylor fritz #matteo berrettini #daniil medvedev #jack draper #and a lot of other people

34 notes · View notes

murfpersonalblog · 7 months ago

Text

IWTV S2 Ep8 Musings - Pyromaniac Du Lac 🔥 (Spoilers)

NGL, as much as I love this finale, I'm disappointed. I wanted to see way more violence.

That's the thing about necromancy--be careful who/what you wake up!

"FATHER! THE SLEEPER HAS AWAKENED!"

There he goes.

Was that NECESSARY, smashing that old man into the window like that!?

You better ACT, JACOB, with your Arya Stark hit list!

I'm so sorry I laughed at his mental illness, but MEOW!? Omg he's cracked. XD

So they gave him a baby scythe/machete--I wanted Sam's scythe. :( But it's cool how Louis broke his sickle screaming at Armand, and HAD to switch to the machete.

Not Louis talking to his victims, who help him plot the murders, LOL. He can't concentrate with all that French jibber-jabber! He's got a mass murder to plot! Yeah, he'll bring your truck back in mint condition! LOLOLOL.

Yeah, STFU corpse!

IKR, STFU Armand! Ain't nobody thinking about YOU! (But actually, Louis WAS thinking about him, and warned him to stay away, sooo.... :\)

The whole Sam reveal later was SO good, I love this show!

(Not Louis shading Hans' ugly costume. XD) And Tuan WANTS to die? Whaaaat?

LFG

This jazzy film noir crime boss heist music is an interesting choice.

HIS EYES DILATING.

Louis went full-blown Carrie. 😈

I CANNOT BELIEVE Y'ALL OFF-SCREENED THE SLAUGHTER, AMC. 😩

You showed Lestat dragging Louis by his effing JAWBONE, and punching a HOLE thru a PRIEST, but can't show us Louis cutting a red streak thru that stupid theatre!? Wtf!?

My Humanities arse sucks at math, but my bff's in STEM and immediately caught that the math wasn't mathin here.

Yeah, eff that flute guy!

(Estelle had me dying.) Interesting tea though--I wonder who's in the London coven?....

Louis' EYES this episode were the best yet. 👌

(RIP Estelle; I liked you the most.) I just wanna know if Louis ignited that rag from all the way at the Theatre, or if something in the exhaust or whatever triggered the fire on its own. (And now we know what that weird reaction from Santiago was about.)

Not Louis calling Santiago by his government name, LOL. 😭

AND Lou called you a colonizer too, you "'bleached-blonde, bad-built, butch body" British hack! XD

Using Francis at the end of every bar(b) was right out the "Crodie" Kendrick vs Drake playbook, I LOVE IT--THIS IS SURLOIN BEEF.

DANG, emasculation and evisceration in equal measure! No one cares about the eraser when the pencil's shaved down to a nub!

And not Louis using "Come to Me" as a death threat!

That MIMIC Gift must've STUNG, Francis! 😜

His death was WAY TOO FAST. These are the kinds of mofos you need to SAVOR.

That shot of the machete was sooo vintage Hollywood noir, it's really clever, especially to be used for Gothic Horror.

Rot In Pieces, FRANCIS! 💩🔪

#interview with the vampire #pyromaniac du lac #louis de pointe du lac #justice for claudia #louis de pointe du black #iwtv spoilers #iwtv season 2 spoilers #the hype is real #must see tv #iwtv tvc metas

25 notes · View notes

daily-crowley · 1 year ago

Note

What character from GO is your favorite, and which one do you relate to the most? For me I relate to aziraphale the most but crowleys my favorite

BROTHER FRANCIS IS MY FAVOURITE HANDS DOWN!!! I would do anything for him, I would die for him and just him. I consider myself the #1 Brother Francis stan and defender. I’ve made long threads about Brother Francis and defending him because I really dislike seeing how much fun he gets made of and seen people hate on him because of his looks. I absolutely hate when people remove all of his features in fanfiction or fanart and just make him look like regular Aziraphale only still with his gardner clothes. Of course, depending on tone I can tell when someone is joking when they called him ugly and don’t mean anything bad by it but then there’s some people who post about how much they hate this era/look and it sounds so genuine that I absolutely just like lose respect for that person a little. Yeah this look is for comedic reasons but at the same time there’s people with the same features as him in the real world and sometimes when you’re making so much fun of a fictional character a person who might also have buck teeth can see it and their insecurity will grow. When it comes to Brother Francis it’s one of the very very rare instances where I will fight someone and I’ll probably look like I’m overreacting and taking it way too seriously but yeah… I adore him and he needs more love. It’s time people stop shitting on this look because it’s absolutely precious. Also, remember that looking like this he managed to get the nanny and she’s not embarrassed to be seen with him. If anything, Nanny thinks he’s the hot one in the relationship.

And I guess I relate the most to Nanny Ashtoreth because she loves Brother Francis the way he is like I do. I know Nanny is Crowley and Brother Francis is Aziraphale and Crowley loves Aziraphale. But if they were their own separate characters Nanny Ashtoreth would still love Brother Francis for who he is and not just his looks. The whole Dowling’s staff would think they’re the oddest couple and have no clue why they’re together, but the answer is simple. And that’s because he treats her with respect and doesn’t see her as an object and he goes out of his way to make her feel good and special. Actually he wouldn’t even go out of his way to do this, it would just come naturally to him since he thinks that’s how it should be.

I really wish there was more fanart and fanfiction on these two. Whether they’re disguised or Nanny and Francis are actual people in an AU. There’s a few of those, and I absolutely LOVE THEM. I just need more content of them.

#THIS TURNED INTO A RANT IM SORRY IT WASNT SUPPOSE TO BE THIS LONG OF AN ANSWER

83 notes · View notes

fideidefenswhore · 6 months ago

Note

wolf hall (book and/or miniseries)

the characterization of francis weston...i actually feel like his characterization would've fit henry percy better (described as "light and hasty"-- that diverts to another thing i'd change, it was disappointing that mantel got so much of him correct, like his debts, and yet left no room to mention percy was often the source of some of the more vicious rumors about anne...instead it's always someone close to her, her family, like anne shelton and jane boleyn, that have such low opinions of her); i won't quibble with him being spirited and perhaps even shallow and extravagantly spendthrift (he was extremely privileged and only 25 when he died, after all); but having him be just so unequivocally nasty as to call cromwell's literal deceased daughters (to his and his son's face...?) ugly as sin just seemed way too easy a justification. she'd already written him into the wolsey farce to explain why cromwell picked from the cast to condemn those men in 1536, that just felt like laying it on too thick.

the device of cromwell promising parents on the edge of death to look out for their children to explain his actions ran thin by the time it was used for mary in tmatl (at that time, the second time it was used, already for wyatt). mantel should have chosen one or the other. even more realistically, i think cromwell's protection of wyatt should have been explained in the same way his protection of the future exeter players was used: he wanted him in his debt, he wanted to call on favors in the future.

the portrayal and arc of mary boleyn...as another reviewer put it:

"In Wolf Hall as in The Other Boleyn Girl Mary is the only uncalculating Boleyn, the only artless person at the Tudor court. [...] Although Mantel’s prose has been justly praised, this indignant speech could have been lifted right out of The Other Boleyn Girl or any other Tudor bodice-ripper that would not have made the Booker Prize shortlist. It’s as if, when we get to the Boleyn women [...] we’re always on the same terrain. [...] The best historical fiction, embellishes, invents, and excludes so that we see the past, and our relation to it, in a new way. Mantel’s novel may change how we look at Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. But her depiction of Mary Boleyn is the same old story."

there were a lot of things in the book that didn't really translate into the adaptation of the tv series, that were either abridged or altered or completely absent. i would've liked to see the scene from bring up the bodies after catherine of aragon's death, where anne discusses her stepdaughter, or the one earlier, where she says she understands catherine, because she would fight for everything she has for her daughter, as well. neither of those were in the tv series. in my estimation, cromwell is more blorbofied in the tv series than the books...it's not given enough space, but there are lines that attest to his ruthlessness, the executions of the 'right' men in ireland, for example, that i don't recall being given any space at all in the tv series. we get a sense of his personal life more than his political life, almost, in the tv series.

#boleynism #is that five? probably #i didn't care for the characterization of norris either

13 notes · View notes

until-another-one-comes · 6 months ago

Note

More serial killer Francis headcanons part 8:

Tw for murder, past abuse, trauma, SH, death and suicide

Regarding generational trauma, Francis’s abusive dad (I’ll call him Richard) also had an abusive bringing. To top it all off, he was a war veteran that was discharged from the army with undiagnosed mental illnesses such as PTSD and IED. I’ll just say he was already a horrible human being who treats people like crap and isn’t mentally sound either (like his son). Meanwhile Francis’s mom is a naive country woman who Richard knocked up one night and married her out of convenience. He doesn’t give a crap about his family at all. He treats them like a nuisance and is physically abusive towards his wife and Francis, thus the cycle continues.

As you already know, Francis mom was kind to him but turned psychologically abusive after she had gone insane from her husband’s abuse (it seems that mental illness and insanity runs in the Mosses family). One part I wanted to add to Francis’s story is that while he was treating his mother’s pneumonia, his mother threw the hot water at Francis in her crazed state. She saw her abusive husband in Francis, yells at him to go away and says that she could never love a monster like him. As you can imagine, it traumatised with Francis his entire life.

Francis was a lonely wallflower type of kid at school. While the kids bully him for being an extension of his father, Francis wanted to fit in and be appreciated for once. So he tried his best to help his peers or the teachers anyway they can but they usually turn him down and sneer at him because they saw him as weak and a trashy human being. So Francis gave up on his hopes on being liked by his peers.

Francis hates the thought of serving in the military because a) that would mean he’s following in his father’s footsteps b) drafting himself in the war would make his mental state much worse than it already is.

He found a milkman job through a newspaper ad. Even after he had gone insane after killing his father, Francis wanted to start a new peaceful life for himself (at first). He thought by delivering milk to people would give him some purpose in life since he’s helping the community but after he started his killing spree and his mental health declined, he never saw the point in anything anymore and keeps on working as a milkman as a means to survive.

Francis’s second victim was the first of many housewives he would later on kill. She was also unfortunately a catalyst for the start of Francis’s murder sprees. Francis got a compliment by her a couple of times when he delivered the milk to her. At first, Francis was extremely confused and flustered why she kept flattering him until one day she suggested they have an affair. Francis accepted believing that the housewife might’ve loved him and he thought he can finally be cared for. He was afraid of showing his body to her but he let go of his fears for once just to sleep with her. However once they were about to do it, the housewife was disgusted when she saw Francis’s scar ridden body and backs out. She couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. This deeply hurts Francis because he was only seen as an object for the housewife to escape her mundane marriage. In his eyes, all his value was to her was nothing but a sex object that she can throw away. Francis’s body image decreased significantly and he only saw himself as ugly. In a fit of rage and sadness, Francis tortured and killed the housewife for using him before dumping her body where no one can find her.

From that day on, Francis swore revenge on the housewives who wanted to use him to escape their marriage because he wanted to take his anger out on them for seeing him as a tool they can discard and by extension his father for his infidelity.

Other than that, his co workers and neighbours never bothered to get to know him as a person. Whenever anyone would strike a conversation with him, Francis doesn’t know what to say to continue their conversation. All he does is reply with a short sentence or the usual “mmm…” because he’s never made a friend before so he doesn’t know how he can reply. So everyone ends up ignoring him because they perceive him as a boring man with nothing to offer. Soon, Francis began believing it himself. He has no interests or passions other than killing so there’s nothing he has he can bond with people. He saw himself as an invaluable person with an empty life so why should anyone care for him.

Francis unsurprisingly has self destructive tendencies such as not eating or sleeping when he’s supposed to as well as smoking and drinking on his own. He tried self harming but it only made his scars worse so he stopped.

With his abusive upbringing couple with mental illnesses, his homicidal nature, his misanthropy along with his deep self hatred and negative body image, it’s no wonder Francis is so fucked up. At his core, Francis is an unloved crying child who was never saved. He craved to live a normal life where he can be loved and appreciates but with the lifestyle he led, he knew it was an impossible dream. He was doomed to live a life of misery, violence and loneliness.

Depending on how Francis dies, he’ll live his afterlife as a ghost. If he dies peacefully or kills himself in his own room, his ghost will haunt his own apartment and will cause disturbances and nightmares for the next tenants

If Francis dies via electric chair, his ghost will take on the form of blue light energy shaped into his figure with hollow black eyes and a wide smile like the Hoon Man.

Or if he dies via natural causes, suicide or gets killed, Francis’s ghost will take on a darker, more disheveled form such as having longer shaggier hair, hollow black eyes that cry black blood and with the biggest frown and a loose ruffled white dress shirt drenched in the blood of his victims.

Either way, Francis’s ghost will be transported to the nightmare realm where his ghost haunts the astral circle and its residents. Many of them question why his ghost look like their fellow neighbour Yog Sothoth.

Like the masked ghost, the doorman has to let Francis’s ghost in. Calling the DDD can result in a jump scare and immediate death for the doorman.

Even after death, Francis can never find peace.

So that’s it for now. By the way, I’m writing two fanfics based on this SK Francis now, one detailing Francis’s backstory and the other one featuring milk bread featuring yandere Francis. I’ll send it to you once I’m done.

More backstory time! Off topic but backstories are one of my fave types of headcanons

I really like the backstory you give Francis's parents, especially his dad. It explains his actions but doesn't excuse them

Gah damn not even death can free him thats so fucked up 😭

Oooh looking forward to your fic anon!

#that's not my neighbor #thats not my neighbor #tnmn #anon ask #serial killer!francis au

11 notes · View notes

axieta · 2 years ago

Text

Hungry eyes

Chapter 8

Henry Winter x reader

|An eye for an eye|

I never got to know what real love feels like. Not in the empiric, soul-bonding way some of us do. I never fell in love, never threw myself into the emotion with hunger and abandon Shakespeare would want to describe, nor did I find my other half, and my appreciation of physical beauty had never developed into the admiration of a soul, not really. But I got to know what it looks like.

I watched it simmer like a small coal in the slowly dying fire, blazing like the wild fires of Mount Olympus, engulfing but at the same time strangely warming. Heating smiles and cheeks, glimmering in the throwaway glances. Or blooming slowly, spreading its soft, petals, blushing delightfully in the warm array of feelings that fertilised it.

I saw it in the pale hands conjoined, twisted, one inside of the other, when their proprietaries thought no one was looking. I saw it in the soft, quick pecks on lips, on cheeks, on foreheads, and in the rushed adjustment of crooked glasses by a hand too small and too slim to be their owner.

I heard it in the hushed giggles, soft and melodic like the thawing creaks of Parnassus, and the murmurous baritone going lazily through the passages of Argonautica Orphica.

I knew it was love, despite never experiencing it myself. How could I not? One look at those tangled hands, flushed cheeks, relaxed figures… one note of those soft laughs… one glance at the creatures of my interest, children of Helios, dreadful idols with lovely hair and human voices, and there was no denying it. No matter how deep down they pushed it, how well they thought they were covering their tracks. I was the hound thirsty for all that, feral for just the slightest morsel of that warmth, seeking them and constantly on the look-out.

And what I had discovered is that L-O-V-E is not an emotion in itself, rather it is a state one might find themselves in. A complicated arras of emotions, behaviours and interactions woven larger and tighter by those tangled in its threads. It is happiness, elation, impatient expectancy, worry, idyllic calm. And that is the good part of love. After all, all good cannot exist in its purest form alone. To every good notion, there is its bad counterpart. Even in love. Dialectical monism, some may call it. I call it life. So, soon enough, the other emotions – wrath, anger, despair, hurt – they all followed suit. After those, I discovered that love, this crystal pure tapestry I admired so, can get ugly, and that to love truly, and most ardently is to endure this engulfing darkness and stop your loved ones from crossing one too many lines. It is the worry for them that keeps the flame of love alive, that gives it the gas-stained, blue tint. To let the fire completely consume you and be wholly miserable afterwards. My two friends unfortunately taught me that. Their love soured, rotted, bitten and diminished by the things Henry had done to keep it alive. It was not my pain to hold, and yet the hurt that comes with the thought of that sorrowful affair, drabs me with tiresome regularity. It died, that love, the second Henry decided what to do with Bunny. But for some time, for those few blessed weeks I was content to watch and soak in the exuberant light of purest, most delicate kind of love.

In the weeks following our excursion to the beach I witnessed some secretive behaviour from both Henry and her. Suddenly, the two of them were too busy to do anything. Sunday dinners at Charles and Camilla’s? No can do. Studying together at the library? Sorry. Quick visit at Francis’? We’re preoccupied. And always that damned ‘We’. Never singular ‘I’ from those two, always plural and unified.

It had become so excessive that we, as the whole class, saw them only during the lessons with Julian. And even then, they seemed quizzically distant. They kept to themselves, going as far as to cunningly changing places, Forcing Francis out to the back of the class, and only working with each other. Inseparable, the two of them seemed even more unachievable, unapproachable for us than ever before. There was this unexplainable glow about them, as if their hair became lighter, their eyes brighter, minds clearer. As if for hundred generations they had been walking the world, drowsy and dull, idle and at their ease, until they stumbled upon that beach and suddenly, like in Symposium, they came to be one, humans before they became humans. Four arms, four legs, and no faces for us to see, for they always stayed turned towards the other.

One time, when I was walking to the class, I saw them. Two dark blurs against the backdrop of white. Rare, in those weeks, the sight of them. Like a pair of white ravens glimmering amongst trunks of a forest. So, I had to stop, take a look at them. Safe in the cover of arches of loggia I was strolling through, I hid myself amongst the shadows, an undetectable spectator.

The weather was harsh. The biting cold ready to freeze off any uncovered parts of human body. In my case, it was the nose that suffered the most. Red, furiously maroon, only after a couple of minutes on free air. Not even the sharp, white light of the winter sun offered any respite from all that cold. It seemed to be mocking all the people beneath it, it shined, brighter and stronger that in any other day. And the sky was clear, a sharp blue of a polished sapphire, not a cloud staining its Persian tile. In the parabolic curves of the outside corridor’s arches, it might’ve looked like a silky fabric spread flat between the darkened stones. The ground beneath it seemed to be moving, as the sun flexed in the white, waved surface, bejewelling the snow with a trembling spark of diamonds. The beauty of that landscape, the wonderful colours of regal jewels and the absolute, charming waviness of it all should indicate a temperature fitting for such a charming view, closer in its degrees to the feeling it evoked in the chest of an observer. But no. the cold bit with a ferociousness comparable to the ninth circle of hell.

But Henry and she, they did not seem to be bothered at all by all that. Neither the cold nor the ascetic landscape reigning over them could ever scare them away, discourage from doing whatever they were doing. Not when heat came off their bodies in heaps of white vapour, swirling around their bodies, their breaths mingling as one in the still air. The fume coming off her lit cigarette almost indistinguishable amongst the white haze of their delighted whispers.

They were hopping over ice ridges, swift and agile, cutting through the white plain of the field, kicking up the powdery snow. She led the two-man procession, dragging Henry behind her, black, thick scarf hanging from her extended hand. I could not see Henry’s face, but judging by his swooping, resilient walk, every fibre of his body was hell-bent on catching up to her. He shouted, out of breath in his pursuit after her. Oddly enough, I could not hear any trace of contempt or irritation that would usually accompany him. More than anything, the words that came out of his mouth flew in a clear tone of amusement.

‘Oh, you little minx! How stubborn can you be? Come, put it on this instant!’

‘Like hell you’ll force me to do that!’

Volatile as ever, she jumped out of his grasp and right into a frozen cap of snow. White powder flew up and glimmered in the noon sun like thousands of tiny diamonds, though I could swear on my life, that her feet had never touched the ground. It must’ve amused her, because she carried on through the knee-high, white barrier, kicking her feet high, high to her chest, giggling deliriously while doing so. Soon enough, the floating snow settled onto her, clung to her loose hair and the dark wool of her coat, and if anyone cared to look her way in that moment, they would probably think that a small yeti somehow got onto the perimeters of Hampden and the tall, limping fellow chasing after it was some kind of crazed scientist, persistent to drag the creature to his laboratory.

And far from crazed Henry wasn’t. Covered in a thin sheet of snow as well, he tore through the infinite white after her with a mad grin on his lips. His teeth shined dangerously as he screamed after her in Spanish, profanities, even I do not feel comfortable sharing. Finally, he caught up to her, after all it was not as if she really tried her hardest to get away from him, and with a ferocious, triumphal yelp he threw himself at her, tackling her to the plush hills of snow. The tackle was in every bit of it, professional. Not like I would see on the small field stretched before my old high school, no. It carried impact, stile, technique. The way he tensed before the jump, and then loosened when hitting her body with his, not to hurt her too much. Or the way his arm wrapped skilfully around her waist, and then the other, just around her neck, the palm of his hand cautiously protecting her cranium, as if he had done that move a hundred times before. Oh, and the fall! How he landed not on her, but rather chose to lighten the fall with his knees, ending the whole sequence hovering over her. It all screamed effortless beauty. Well, it would, if moments after, she wouldn’t manage to tilt him over, and onto his back. Now she howled in victory, saddling his chest like an experienced jockey. Henry huffed and leaned back into the snow, resigned, as she waved the scarf, still in her hand, before him, its fringes teasing his nose.

‘Never gonna win with me! Never gonna win! Never, ever!’ She laughed in a sing-song voice. Henry only rolled his eyes, like one might roll their eyes at a petulant child, and with no effort he sprung up, sending her once again to the ground. ‘Oh, come on, you brute!’

And then, with a terribly delighted shriek, she disappeared underneath the dark folds of Henry’s coat. He covered her with his whole body, engulfing her shrill form into himself as if to introduce her into his system. Henry made sure that she didn’t lay in snow for too long, wrapping the flaps of his coat around her, cocooning her further. Laughter shook this newfound dual species of man, as her legs kicked the tail of his coat up in a miserably unspectacular show of defiance. Only her hand managed to slip out of that smothering mass of Henry and like the last wave that a man drowning throws into the air, she swung the wool scarf far away from them. It swayed in the air and then plopped on the snow, not even disturbing its white, parabolic surface. But that only made him laugh even harder. Sliding down the twisted spiral of giggles, his arms snaked around her torso and with one hard push he sent them both sliding up, and forward. His nimble hand swiped it right out of the reach of her outstretched fingers. Quick and precise like the hand that deals with cards he wrapped one end around his wrist and then proceeded to swirl it around her neck. She never left the safe confines of the cocoon, nor did a singular snowflake fall on her, that’s how he was careful with her.

‘Listen here to me! I’ve just heard that someone died in the city! A student! Frozen to death during the night! If you’re not careful you might end up just like him!’

One, two, three loops around her neck he spun, until the scarf covered completely and tightly all off her neck and a part of her mouth, so her screams of protest came out inaudible and muffled.

‘No! No! It scratches!’

She tossed and turned as if possessed, and to be honest, they made a brilliant match in that department, because he as well, giggled like a madman.

‘Better to be scratched a bit than to freeze to death, now don’t be stupid and keep it on! Or do you want Khione to bite your ears off?’

She struggled then some more but with no certain conviction.

‘No, no. Stop, ahhh, you scooped in snow with it.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

His nose, mindlessly circling her cheek and temple, drafting small arches over her brow seemed to make her docile, good. Frost kissed their faces and glossed them, over with shimmering, rosy colours.

‘I, personally, like you better alive.’ His boyish, thin lips lingered for a while on her brow. ‘And warm.’ Then on her nose. The motion of that mouth was languid, decelerated, sure of possessing all the time in the world, not even bothered to purse and grace her skin with a full-fledged kiss, just with slow feline nudges. ‘And healthy.’ His arms travelled up to her head. They encased her from above and successfully shielded her face as he, and I was sure of it, dipped down to capture her mouth with his. ‘With ears.’ She giggled slightly into the kiss, as did he, their lips smoothing over each other, gazes bore into the depth of the other.

I stared at them from my agreeable distance. My mind completely numb, soaking in that dreamy imaginary. I studied their bodies, their hands, the subtle play of light and shadows breaking over Henry’s coat. The giggle that his fingers elicited from her when he rubbed her earlobes between index and the thumb was like the purest symphony to me. Carmen of all laughs.

But I was too scared, or maybe too timid to come even an inch closer. That was an intimate, although a public moment, and watching it like that, from deep within the shadows gave me a strange, unnerving feeling. It settled on my nape like dew and dripped from my pits, down my arms in cold streaks of sweat. I backed away, one step after the other, very slowly, not to make any noise. I found out, more than a week before, that stealth was my biggest asset and greatest friend. I managed to escape without a hitch, blended back into my solitary, murky reality, to my arches and cold stone. But as soon as I averted my gaze I instantly longed for their light. For the warmth they shared between each other, and the smiles dedicated only to the other, impossible to see for an outsider. So even though I felt ashamed of snooping on them like that, spying even, for nothing more than my own pleasure, there was this pathological need, burrowed deep inside of me to continue my, as she called it many times before, Tom-peeping, or peep-tomming, I forget. I just needed to… I don’t know… see them, I guess.

From that moment on the thoughts of them plagued me day and night like an infection, inflamed, festering wounds in my soul they kept me up, sweaty, with my brows furrowed as I laid tangled in my bedding. It physically hurt to long for them so, even when they did not long for me at all.

There was no remedy for my strange illness. No antidote, but them.

Them, them, them. That plural, inseparable pronoun rattled about my skull all the time. And I couldn’t help myself. I started following them.

Once I had spent close to forty minutes lurking outside of her lecture halls, hunched over, tucked into myself on one of the benches like a hen perched in her coop, anxious with the anticipation of my foxy executor. Not once in the span of those forty minutes did I question my actions, not once had the thought occurred to me that what I was doing bordered on insane or stalkish. In all truth, I hadn’t thought at all. Without them, without their proximity, their stark image together, I was non-existent, vacuous in my whole demeanour. Suspension overtook me in detail and overview. And only when she emerged from the building, a gemstone in the grey, muddy mass of other, rather dim-looking students, and he, right behind her, a shadow, I let out a breath I had no apparent idea I was holding in. I sunk into the darkness of the eve, as they passed me by and then followed their careful steps with a longing stare. Sunken into the shadows I was invisible to them.

Contrary to that snowy morning, on which I spotted them in the commons, the evening was gloomy and dark, covered with an ashen layer of drizzle. The day before was quite warm, at least in the general perception of winter, and some of the snow happened to melt. In the night the temperatures dropped drastically, and the thaw froze over the cobble-stoned paths of Hampden. The thick, misty shell of ice held on strong throughout the day and when the drizzle came, the already slippery surface turned murderous. I had already seen a few people trip and fall on the section of the pavement. I had heard many shrieks of pain and unflattering nosegays of curses already, but it never occurred to me that one of them could ever succumb to the fate similar to our peers. After all, in my mind, the both of them, at all times glided at least half an inch over the surface of the earth. All that conviction crumbled to the ground with a singular slip of her feet. Suddenly, the air broke with a miserable squint of her soles on the ice. With face frozen in utter surprise and a scream half-dead on her tongue she swung back, her body bending as if boneless. Horror befell me, but before I could do anything, anything at all, Henry stepped in. The unmovable force that he was, he caught her elbow half-swing and yanked her up, into a standing position. He didn’t even look in her direction, as if what he did just then was but a non-emphatic activity, a slip of a mind. A natural, almost tired gesture. She slid towards him with the forced of his pull and stopped just at his side. His hand fell from her elbow to tether into hers.

‘Videte,’ I heard him huffing a small laugh. She just shook her head at that, but I could see the relief slowly blooming on her features. The whole affair, short and in that shortness, terrifyingly dangerous, seemed to have no effect on them whatsoever, as if the act – of her slipping, falling to the ground, and him catching her without a hitch – was a simple regularity in their lives. That made me think, her limpness when she fell stood as a testament of her sure helplessness in that situation, or rather pure sureness that no matter what happened, he was there to catch her. Maybe it was not something practiced between them, but a natural reaction in the closeness they shared. The trust that they build and felt allowed her to fall like that, unpreoccupied and carefree, as well as it forced him to react. I was sure, if he was the one to slip, she would sure as hell try and uphold his towering figure.

‘It’s those new shoes. God damn it, I need to finally break them in.’

Henry did not let go of her hand as they went on, clearly unsure of his footing as well now, he opted on anchoring himself on her, as she did on him, and supporting one another like that they carried on forward with tiny, penguin steps. Their hands joined together pulsed slowly one in the other, swayed to the rhythm of their steps like a little, pale heart.

There is this painting – Nighthawks – if I remember correctly. Edward Hopper was the painter’s name, I think. I don’t remember much from the modern art class I took in high school. Truth be told, I only attended that particular lecture, simply for the fact that, as I had heard from someone, the professor handed out credits as if they were fresh buns. And that was true. All you had to do, was attend the class, and bam! – a credit. I never paid much attention to the classes having no deeper interest in contemporary art as presented, I usually took the extra hour as an opportunity to do my overdue homework, or study for upcoming quizzes. But during one of those dull lectures, the professor showed us that painting. Nighthawks. I remember raising my head then, disoriented and compelled to do so by some foreign, unknown force, and zeroing in on the old, yellow wall, on which he was projecting his presentation. Dark mass of bottle green and copper red stared back at me, illuminated with a strange, fluorescent beam of light coming from the presented diner. The light in that painting was sharp, man-made, but did nothing to swallow the overwhelming darkness swarming in the corners of the canvas. The diner stood out from that obscure scenery like the last stand of hope amongst the waves of anguish. Four people sat inside: two men, a woman in red and a waiter. I think one of the men, the one sat beside the woman was barely stroking her hand. The woman might’ve been smoking or talking to the bent-over waiter. the latter man sat alone, surrounded by empty bottles and glasses. The painting was so utterly gloomy and strangely lonesome, yet I could not bring myself to tear my eyes off it. Beaconed to it, like a seafarer seduced by a siren, I stared and stared completely disconnected from whatever facts and history was the professor gracing the class with. All I could focus on were those four figures. How together, and yet, strangely lonesome they seemed. The maybe’s and perhaps’s that my brain created while looking at them – ‘they might be holding hands’, ‘maybe they know each other, maybe not’, ‘they might leave the diner together, and never speak to each other again’. The series of near misses and suppositions got me so hypnotised, that it was only after a good chunk of the lectured passed by, and I noticed that the oil diner had no way of entry… and I thought how strange it was how we, the viewer, were left alone, in the dark, wholly cut off from the saving grace of the diner, with no way to enter. How we could only observe, never interact. I remember walking out of that class numb and disoriented, a foreign craving forming somewhere deep inside of me, right next to the pancreas. I had forgotten about that lonesome, swallowing feeling, right up to that point. But when I saw the two of them – tall and lithe, surprisingly standing out against the background of the grey mass of our peers, them, the only two figures reached by the warm light of campus lanterns I felt that craving nudging at me anew.

I waited a bit before getting up. I figured it would be best not to bump into them on my way to the dorm. I much preferred the solitary designation of an observer, to a distasteful intruder. But the air was getting colder, and my nose more and more red. Finally, I had no other choice but to get up and go, especially because a few other students started to throw concerned looks my way. I thought I had perfected the art of invisibility, but no. I think there must’ve been something in my face, in my eyes that alerted them so of my existence, a certain wetness. But it felt uncomfortable to be like that, seen, judged, so I scrammed.

On my way down to the dorms I walked past by a particularly pretty blonde. She walked with a furious verve, a warrior’s glint in her eyes. I think it was Camilla, but I couldn’t say for sure. It was dark out, and the girl’s face was so scrunched up with anger, it could’ve been anyone. In the distance swayed two figures, hand still together, despite the fact they reached the more frequently used, iceless path.

I tried dabbling into sketching. Something I had never done before, seeing as I possessed no artistic spark, nor presented any inclinations of a hidden talent in that department. But I found it hard to force words out of myself and onto the paper, as I did many a time before, and I had to find some kind of an outlet, otherwise I felt I would combust. The then ever-present memory of the Nighthawks sparked an idea in me, one I could not forget or ignore. The subject of the dreaded ‘them’ pushed at my guts terribly now with every breath that I took. Where before words flooded my notebooks, now an array of hasty, shaky scratches appeared. Black little blurbs, primitive depictions of trees and little silhouettes pacing underneath them and blank surfaces imitating snow appeared, as did crooked walls of library and miniature books with random titles squeezed into their outlines. And as a centrepiece of every sketch – two people. A woman, sometimes with curly, other times with straight or frizzy hair, and a man, never changing, constantly clad in a dark, long coat. Drawing Henry was quite simple, elementary even. But with her I always struggled. It was improper in my mind to capture her likeness, so no matter how many times I tried, and what I intended to draw, she always appeared as a faceless woman, back turned to the frame of the sketch. I found my drawings cathartic.

Still, I sometimes gave them titles, or scribbled something on the margin, there was no method to it. But I had never sketched alone. Never, ever. Only when I could see them, under no other circumstances. Otherwise, the drawings would come out soulless, boring and ugly.

One day I followed them into the campus library. As they sat in the window niche and pulled out their books and notes, I situated myself strategically almost opposite to them, slightly to the right. Crammed between the bookshelves I stalked them through the gaps left by rented books and with the greatest abandon I scratched with a rough image of them. First, the window, large, arched and a bit yellowed with age. Its shape on my paper was simple, angular, and so was the concrete frame of it. Then the shelves on both sides of it. Dark oak appeared as nervous jagged strokes of black, and the books were just a bunch of vertical rectangles, although their edges appeared so wobbly, I doubt anyone would have the courage of calling them that. The checked floor and a few lamps witch glossy-green domes, the light coming from them accentuated as, again, mostly straight rays, like the ones presented in imagines of sun oh so often seen in kids’ drawings. And then, enter them. Sat on the windowsill, books in their hands, ancient scripts threatening to fall apart and turn into dust at any given moment. Henry sat with his back against the wall of the niche, one leg outstretched on the windowsill, the other hanging freely from it, slightly bent at the knee. His pant leg hitched a bit and I could see the impeccably white sock peaking slightly above his Oxfords. His chin resting idly on her head as he gazed to the side, where he held his book with one hand. Dark ring shimmered on his middle finger. His face, sharp, and stern as always lost its marble hardness, when her silky hair framed it in a gilded halo. Lost in thought, then, even more than in any other situation, he looked strangely alive. That was easy to draw. One straight line here, the other there. The perspective might’ve been a little bit off, but it didn’t bother me much, as I knew I was no skilled artesian. Problems came about when I moved on to her. Lodged between his legs, I could not tell where she began, and he ended. Her dress bunched somewhere around her raised knees and fell over his thighs. His hand resting on her stomach brought to my mind a faint memory of a smell – a delicate, sweet fragrance that spun around my skull, something like home, or even more domestic. And yet there was something so inherently lewd, so breathtaking in her pose that I found my breath coming short and all the blood in my body flowing to my head with a constant, roaring contentment.

Lightheaded I studied the curve of her nose, the dome of her forehead and the attentive glare she tasked the book resting on her knees. She held the pages with her thumbs, while the rest of her palms supported the cover from the back and her head angled slightly downwards to gaze into the contents of the book. Her slender hands so white against the crimson cover. Every fold of her dress was like discovering a new world to me. Subtle greys and blues, the tones hidden in its delicate white seemed like folds, pocket dimensions to the blurry outline of her legs when the sun shined through them. In my picture it appeared much cruder. While drafting those long, doe legs I pressed my pen a bit lighter to the paper, keen on giving them that ghostly pseudo-presence. But nothing could compare to the original. It was then, when my gaze fell onto her face, soft, thoughtful, and cloudy between her pulled brows, that I realised I could never be an artist. Breath escaped me as I tasked the slight curve of her nose, the round edge of her rose cheek, and even though she was not looking my way, even though I was the one who first had cast my gaze, I was struck dumb, like deer in headlights I fell victim of those swirling irises. Like the first time she looked my way, I found myself unable to tear myself from them, skimming quickly from left to right along the text. Seeping, indirect light hypnotised me and I fell deaf to my surroundings. Next few seconds, or minutes, or even a century passed me unnoticed, because what little sunlight peaked into the niche seemed to cross her eye directly, encasing it in pure, liquid silver.

I was so completely immersed into her, that I did not even hear the swooping, murmurous steps progressing behind me. A new, sharp, manly smell replaced that sweet fragrance I had been smelling, and I haven’t noticed that either. She turned to henry, intentionally tracing her nose against his neck. A pale smile graced his lips when she whispered something into his ear. He shook his head, as if disappointed, but reluctantly pushed off the precipice of the windowsill and jumped to the floor with her still in his arms. Red with withheld laughter they stumbled forward and then broke apart. She reached into one of his pockets, Henry did not protest, despite his slightly gloomy expression. There must’ve been something saddening in the way she dug up some tabaco from a white-green bag with her nimble fingers and sprinkled it onto a rectangular piece of paper. Or in how quickly had she rolled it – three steps and the ciggy was rolled and done. What saddened me most, was the loose of my subjects, for my drawing had not yet come into completion. I intended on following them outside, and maybe finishing my sketch based on what I saw there, or starting a new one, but then, a slim hand surrounded with that masculine, strong smell caught my shoulder and held me in place with an unexpected force. That newfound, seemingly immovable force made me quiver in my steps, filled my throat with a blood-chilling scream, that died out once the copper main swung over my field of vision. Soft lips pressed onto mine swallowing what was left of my panic. Stunned I froze. That was a kiss. Filled with a smell of a man, grace with soft frills of white cuffs on my cheeks. ‘Francis,’ I mustered. The redhead laughed with his whole chest, unconcerned with the general rules of the library. I cringed towards the bookcase, to check if that fit of laughter attracted the attention of my subjects, but to my relief, the were already gone. The only evidence of their presence – the abandoned bags and books abandoned on the windowsill. relief washed over me, immediately chased with venomous irritation. ‘Francis! What are you… You can’t just go around kissing people!’ Francis, still holding onto me with a desperate grip, lunged into another fit. Through his giggles he managed to cough up a simple ‘You’re not supposed to go around stalking people…’ another giggle and then a final stab ‘And yet you do.’ I shrugged his hand off, infuriated with that accurate observation, as I had nothing to say in my defence. I just stared at him, offensively happy in his fits, with my hand pressed protectively to my lips, as if scared that he might try and kiss me again. And he did, that crazy ginger bastard leaned in again, clutching onto my shoulders and pulled me closer, terrible grin still gracing his pales lips. I wretched myself out of his confines and jumped away as quickly and as far as possible, which gained me another salve of laughter from him.

‘Oh, come one Richard,’ he’d said once he managed to push through the unimaginable barrier of amusement. ‘Richard, darling, come on, don’t walk away! You’re packing already? I thought you had a sketch to finish! They’re going to be back any minute, you don’t want to pass that opportunity!’

I pushed my notebook close to my chest, suddenly very anxious and protective of its contents. I did not bother to wonder how did he know what I was doing, just scared he might pull it out of my grasp and start going through each and every pathetic excuse for a drawing, studying them and finally, arriving at the terrifying conclusion of the scope of my mania. Red-faced, with my gaze pinned onto the creaking floor I pushed right through him, bumping my shoulder into his. Francis, however, did not seem to be bothered by my ostentatious show of disrespect in the least bit. Eagerly he followed my footsteps, meandering through an endless labyrinth of bookshelves and racks. Never had I imagined the library to be so endless and hard to get out of.

‘Why are you following me, Francis?’

Finally, I had reached the point of irritation that was too much to bear for my jittering body. A crease of annoyance scared my forehead as I spat at him over my shoulder.

‘I’m not following you at all, Richard Papen, dearest.’

That made me stop right in my tracks. Francis, as agile and graceful as ever, didn’t even stutter in his steps, lightly passing me by and spinning around so that he could face me, a foxy grin plastered onto his pinkish lips. His arms swayed around his waist as if weightless and completely independent from the rest of his body when he spun.

The sight of my raised brown, as high up as possible, mixed with the grimace of discomfort must’ve amused him to no end, because he gave up the rest of the information without his usual mockings and jests.

‘I was actually looking for them, you know. Henry and that devil-woman. But then I saw you, creeping around the corner, and I could not help myself! You know? Had to scare you a little!’

I scoffed, irritated more than ever.

‘And? You had already found them. Go, get them. And leave me alone.’

‘So you could creep some more one innocent bystanders?’

‘Exactly. Go, now.’

There was something so utterly amused in his foxy face, that even in my state of highest vexation, I could not help but crack a little smile. My voice came out squished and bubbly, not sharp and authoritative, as I meant it.

‘Don’t you at least want to know, why I was looking for them?’

I rolled my eyes at his relaxed stance, the easy flex of is arms, when he bound them behind his back, surely bending his palm backwards in the other hand.

‘Come on. Shoot,’ I mused.

‘I was to ask them for an outing. A small gathering of all of us, you know. In that bar, what’s it called, Cherry, or something like that. The winter break is coming in and I thought it would be fun to just let loose for a bit. You should come as well. Actually, you should definitely come. Be there at nine. Sharp.’

And then, with another swirl and a short giggle, he was off, running, skipping, along the bookcases, his pale, long fingers skimming along those backs of the books. I was once again left alone, just as I wished, and suddenly, the grave trench opened in me at the sight of the Nighthawks so many years ago felt so, so much deeper than ever before.

I went to that bar. Cherry flavour was the name, but I found it, no problem. It was not the murky directions that Francis had given me a few hours before that had led me to be there half an hour late, but my desperate need not to seem… well, desperate. In all truth, I shouldn’t have even bothered, because as is crossed the threshold, the sorry imagine of only Francis and Bunny staring silently at their pints greeted me in full swing of sadness. I walked towards their table, every step ringing in my head loud and clear like a church bell. The air there was muffled, silvery with smoke, just like in her apartment, although the space felt solemnly impassive, even with the music booming from the jukebox, and the chatter of the many patrons. Without her, there was no point in squinting my eyes and flaring my nostrils at the unpleasant smell, fore there was no one in my surrounding who would even notice my ministrations. No one to point them out and poke fun at me for them.

Through the thick veil of it I could see how Bunny nursed, with utmost carefulness and greed, the piss-coloured pint, and the orange-red curve of Francis’ cigarette, as he explained something to the other boy, swinging his arms around with a gusto. They did not notice me however in all that awful racket, and I was lucky enough to her a snippet from their conversation, or rather, Francis’ monologue. His voice soared over the idle chatter of crowd mixed with music and the clang of glass hitting glass, somewhere in the background, as a group of rather young fellows raised a toast to something one of their friends just did.

‘You see, it is not the matter of whether you’re prepared for it, or not my friend, it’s just that the things of this kind of nature always come biting you in the arse. It’s just the way it is. You bet on a wrong horse, now it’s time to choose another. Like that Shelly girl from my French poetry class, you know the one…’

His cigarette soared up to his temple, very carelessly, and some of his short coppery hair sizzled away from the butt.

The floor boards squeaked beneath my feet, and I bit my lip, anxious not to make too much noise. My ears twitched eagerly, to hear the rest of the conversation uninterrupted. While strutting through the bar I tasked it with a more detailed glance now that I was closer to it’s centre than in the first minutes of my entry. My eyes slid over the faces of the patrons, some of which I knew from Hampden, some completely new. There were old and young people alike, all of them swarming around the bar squeezed into the back of the locum, old and kind of dirty looking with a single bar tender flexing and running behind the counter, swaying back and forth, confused as to what he was supposed to put his hands into first. Copper handles and crystal glasses shimmered in the dim light of the bar. The many bottles filled my vision with an array of colours and blur before my eyes into a kaleidoscopic mirage. They turned and swirled in the unsteady grip of the bartender, sweating profusely when the hot air breathed from the many a gorge of the patrons settled on their cool surface. Carlsberg, Heineken, Budweiser, and a few other, oval icons sat perched on the edge of the counter beaconing me to them with their moist and cool glint. I sensed that my mouth was going dry but the sight of the swirling perpetually forming and curving queue successfully deterred me from the bar.

‘I’ve already introduced the two of you, I’m sure of that. She’s the sappy one, she likes Sapho.’ Francis laughed at his own words, gaining no response from his partner.

Bunny stared at him blankly, no thought behind his glossy eyes. His hands wandered up and down the glass filled with, what I could only assume, was beer, his mouth agape, mind clearly someplace else, as if it was not a glass, his hands had been exploring, but completely something else. It was clear, that nothing more was going to come out of that one-sided exchange, as Francis dipped his head down, into his glass and rested his cheeks on the rim, exhaling a pathetic sigh, as if it was not the first time he has been ignored by Bunny like that. I cleared my throat, just to be polite and warn them of my presence and put on a slight smile.

‘I see how it is gentlemen. But correct me of I’m wrong, Bunny already has his dark horse, doesn’t he? Marion is the name?’

The boys jumped as if poked with white-hot rake.

‘Jesus Christ, you scared the crap outta me!’ Were the first words that Bunny has spoken to me, and judging by the offended look Francis threw him, first words of the evening. His voice was raspy, slurred with the kind of drunken tune you hear at dodgy gas stations in the middle of the night, when you should be safe and sound asleep in your bead, but instead you’re desperately trying to convince the acne-riddled clerk that yes, you are indeed twenty-one, and yes, those two six packs of beer are indeed, just for you and no one else.

‘Not Jesus, just Richard,’ I pulled my lips into a thin, awkward line, as Francis’ laugh roared over the vocals of some sorry fellow whining from the jukebox. A few patrons of the bar turned to us, that’s how loud he laughed, but quickly they averted their gaze, maybe because of Bunny, who stared daggers back at them. That night, he seemed more in a mood for brawl than any other, his usual sunny disposition gone completely and replaced with something more spiky, unpleasant. Strangely gloomy and dark, with his back hunched and a grimace plastered on his face he looked almost serious, almost adult, and almost dangerous. Almost. And I recognized that frown on his face. Deformed, softer and lacking, but if expressed by someone else, let’s say a bit taller, more stoic and with a frame of hair and eyes a few tones darker than his, the look would be deadly. And then a realisation came through my mind, the scope of which made my hair stand on end and blood to run cold. Bunny was mimicking Henry.

‘Oh, you see Richard Papen, the thing with our dear Edmund is that he always seems to want whatever he cannot have.’

The blonde’s head snapped back to him, face twisted in a parody of what Henry sometimes threw his way, when he thought that Bunny deserved a reprimand.

‘Will you ever shut up; you ginger cu- ‘

But before he could finish, Francis interrupted his in a very timely fashion. With a holler he jumped out of the booth the boys had been sitting in and waved his arms like a madman. I could hear a sharp exhale coming from my right, where the frustrated blonde sat. I could not be bothered to check, what kind of expression did he make this time, because, as I heard a small, honeydew voice resounding right behind my back, I was completely torn from reality. It was the voice of Charles that came to me first, but something in the back of my mind, something very slimy and cunning told me that right where that melodic, soft voice appeared, another, a bit more nasal and deeper, but still a twin to it would follow. I spined around just to see Charles draft a deep bow.

‘The scum of the earth, I believe?’

And Francis responded with the same curtsy, his fox-like face widened and elongated by a sly smirk.

‘The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?’

Somewhere behind Charles a melodic snort announced the arrival of my soft-lipped goddess. Her hair was like always combed thoroughly and kept from her high, white forehead with a black bow. Her eyes squinted most magnificently in the dim light of the bar, and I could see something like crow’s feet forming right at the line of her cheekbones, something like the thin veins running on the surface of otherwise impeccably milky marble. Her clothes were neat, although a bit too big for her, the shirt she was wearing clearly had seen better days and I thought that it was an item she either snugged from her brother or was gifted it by him. But no matter what she was wearing, she looked heavenly to me. Her cheeks bore a slight tint of pink, as if she was walking for a while in the snow, and automatically, like a chameleon, my own cheeks tried replicating that shade on my skin, only slightly more furious, and burning.

‘You two are so unserious…’ she said it like it was a reprimand, but the crack of her lips betrayed her amusement. Her lashes fluttered gracefully, like the wings of a butterfly, when she rolled her eyes deep into her skull.

‘I’m here to serve, my queen.’

Francis huffed a laugh at her and leaned in to give her a quick peck on the lips.

‘Hi Richard,’ she greeted me, although with slightly less enthusiasm she had with the redhead. Her brother just nodded my way and then squeezed right past me to sit down in the booth with the boys. I followed him and Camilla, too embarrassed to excuse myself, and to enticed by the small lady’s beauty to even speak.

‘By the way…’ Francis lit another cigarette, I didn’t even see when he rolled it, I guess on that, that is chain smoking, he agreed with my Diogenes wholeheartedly. ‘Have you seen the two hell spawns on your way here?’

Charles snorted, clearly entertained by that nickname, Camilla just scrunched her nose and let her head fall a bit forward. Her smile was now strained, as if she was trying to swallow something, a bone stuck in her throat, as she was speaking.

‘Yeah, we saw them. Right outside the bar. They run into a bit of a scuffle, but they should be here any second.’

It was as if with those words Bunny suddenly came back to life.

‘Scuffle? What scuffle?’ Charles waved his hand dismissively.

‘Nothing really, just a bit of a shoe problem.’

The white, almost translucent brows soared high on Bunny’s forehead. The ex-jock opened his mouth, likely to question the poor twins further on the matter that interested him the most, but right then, as if on que, the door opened, and Henry stepped through. His dark hair flopped around his face, partially covering his wet, fogged-up spectacles. Snow fell from it, as well as his shoulders with every crooked, wobbly step he took. His cheeks were red with effort, and his pale slender hands kept and unnatural shade of almost cold mauve. But there would not be anything different or weird in that dishevelled look. In all honesty, sometimes I would encounter him in the campus library, hunched over some old book looking a thousand times worse than that. What made his entry stand out was the girl he was carrying in his arms. Small, in comparison to him, red-faced as well, with her feet, clad only in white socks, dangling right from the crook of his arm – her. She was grinning wildly, sparks coming from her eyes like little flexes of stars, and a pair of dark leathery boots had been dangling from her stretched out hand leaking onto the floor before them generously with residues of snow, marking, where Henry’s next step was going to fall. It seemed as if he was whispering something to her, something soothing, or humorous judging, by the slow movement of his index hinger on her arm. Like he was calming her down or indulging her slightly. I had never though Henry to be a person with an exceptional sense of humour, but in her case, it seemed to be working. Her eyes, big like saucers kept digging into his jaw, the only thig in her field of vision, as he squeezed her hard into his chest, sparkled and glimmered with a feeling I could not read properly. All I knew is that the way she looked at him, in that moment, when he crossed the squeaky floor in his swooping steps, clogged my airways and crushed my chest with a force of thousand suns.

‘What are they doing, what’s happened?’ Bunny’s face turned equally red at the sight of the two of them, locked in an embrace. For the first time this evening he had risen his head fully, right to the point of strain in his neck, and suddenly I saw that his eyes were sunken, circled with dark shadows and rimmed with a wet, red frame. He must’ve fought with Maron over some stupid little thing again, so no wonder that the sight of Henry and her, snarking amiably at each other, aggravated him to no end.

‘Beats me.’ Camilla scoffed, rather impassive that impressive entry. It seemed to me, like the temperature in the bar had dropped drastically, while the two of them exchanged those little remarks. Goosebumps climbed up my spine and my stomach swirled in an uneasy feeling, that forebode that nothing positive could come out of that evening.

But they came up to the table unbothered and giddy, as if there was nothing strange or enigmatic in their arrival, and the knot that has tied itself in the pit of my stomach suddenly loosened by the magic glint of her sharp teeth. Their presence, their proximity hit me like the fanfares in the 94. Symphonia G-dur. Soft steps crept up on me like the slight tugs of strings at the beginning of the piece. Isolated and slow, deep with their lightness, beautiful on their own, even if those were just steps, just the rhythm, just the beginning of a symphony. But then the clarinettist came, high-pitched, joyous in how she dangled her feet in the air, how she tilted her head up to gaze into his eyes. Him – steady and slow, careful with the type of tune he carried, and her – rather sprinkled across his melodic line, but oh so needed to bring the stave out of a standstill. My whole body buzzed in anticipation, not yet sure for what and why but my feet, hidden under the table, tapped unconsciously to the melody of pure steps and the hum of clothing. The composition overtook me. I didn’t even notice the key changing and getting slightly louder. Only when they came closer, when I could smell the warm, domestic scent that filled my heart with longing and pain, when I felt the tail of a dark coat brushing against my knee, I felt the music explode in me, slash me across the face with an abrupt bang! of every instrument suddenly coming into a synchronized crescendo.

‘What on the sweet feet of baby Jesus happened to you? Have you lost the feeling in your legs?’

As soon as they reached the table, the shoes she was holding dropped to the floor with a miserable smack, and, as if to complete their misery, got kicked away, under the table, by the exceptionally vigorous feet clad in black Oxfords. The air absolutely knocked out of my lungs, I stared at them in what I could only assume, was the most wide-eyed, incredulous expression of awe.

She poked her tongue at Francis, as Henry carefully set her on the edge of the couch. His pulled brows, the true, unfabricated grimace, so, so different from which Bunny tried to pull, bared an alarming dose of worry, despite the slight curve of his lips, as if he was trying to mask a heavy, foggy block of anxiousness resting on his shoulders with a bit of humour. He kneeled, not without a struggle to inspect the, what I now could see clearly were, blood spots on her socks. They climbed up her heals and came blossoming down on the side of her feet where the big toe started, giving the socks an artistic, flattering look of a freshly sprouted carnation. While he was hunched over, ducking under the table she tried to lighten the atmosphere with a lough and a cheeky response to Francis.

‘You wish, red. Nothing of the sort, it’s just those damn shoes! I can’t seem to break them in, and now they had chaffed me to the bone it seems.’

Charles ducked under the table with an interested whine but could see nothing beyond Henry’s hands. He covered the object of Charles’ interest as soon as the twin announced his fascination to us with a delighted squeal. The blonde boy hissed in disappointment, but Henry ignored him, his eyes steady on her legs, studying the red rim of blood. His slim fingers run carefully over the fabric, pealed it off, just to throw a glance, at the skin beneath it, and then exhaled a breath through his teeth. What he saw must not have been as bad as he let on in the first place, because his only response was a grim huff of laugh.

‘Don’t be so dramatic. It’s just a minor graze nothing more. If you had listened to me and bought a bigger size, nothing like that would have happened.’

Her eyes skipped around landing on each and every of our faces, seeking refuge in any of us from the stern, disappointed tone of Henry, but no one was brave enough to stand up to the stormy cloud of a human that he had turned into. Finally, after some strained small talk, Henry emerged from beneath the table, his face slightly looser.

Somehow I felt the pair of pale blue eyes staring at me, no at them, from across the table. I looked around to seek the source of the discomfort poking at my neck. I did not have to deal long, for it was obvious, who the proprietary of the biting stare was. Bunny wasn’t discreet, I don’t think he minded if anyone saw how he clean he’d his teeth so hard that a small vein popped out on the side of his jaw, or how he could not tear his eyes, his hateful, red rimmed eyes, from the ethereal mirage that was the two people hanging on the edge of couch right beside me.

‘It should be fine, the blood stopped running. It should be fine now, okay?’ He smoothed her hair with a quick swipe of his hand and then scooted over on the edge of couch. Everyone moved to the side in a synchronised clockwise move, not even thinking about mentioning all the space that had been left vacant on the opposite side of the table. Francis chose to ignore all the swooning over her that henry seemed to be revelling in and came smoothly to recommending what types of beer we should pick for the night.

‘I think that we should start with beer. Me and Bunny are already ahead of you, so, we’re going to skip the first round. But after that I think we should go more into tonics. Oh, and don’t order any sorts of fancy cocktails here!’ He threw accusatory look towards Camilla. ‘They’re awfully pricy and don’t taste half as good as you’d expect them to.’

What seemed like useful information to me, was obviously something redundant and boring to Henry. We all knew, what he was going to order, whiskey, most certainly not whisky, on the rocks, and there was no coaxing him out of that decision, so it hasn’t surprised me much to see him lean over to her and start whispering in her ear. I was the closest one to them, her sitting on my right, and him squeezed into her, the length of her body being our only border, so I did not have to struggle much to hear what he was mumbling into her ear. I focused my eyes on whatever seemed most natural and listened in, thirsty for information like never before. I watched Bunny’s fingers running up and down his pint, smearing the swat of the glass all over his palms. His fingers run taunt, almost mechanic, as if pulled by great pain or fury. In the corner of my eye swayed the real object of my interest.

‘Are you cold? Are your feet cold?’ His voice returned to the stoic preoccupation I had heard some time ago, when they were leaving the lecture hall. He swayed forward, as if to embrace her, or better yet, scoop her into his arms and run out of the bar as soon, as he manages to hoist her up, but he stopped himself midway and just stared at her with deep thoughtfulness.

‘No, Henry it’s really all right. Thank you though.’

Henry, despite her clearly cutting the subject short, simply shook his head and continued with his hushed monologue.

‘Your feet are cold. We sit here long enough, and you’re going to catch something.’ And then, before she could react in any sort of way, he kicked his boots off.

‘Henry what are you doing?’

My eyes jumped, just for a second, beneath the table, to be greeted with the sight of his slightly less deft fingers, now rose with the heat of the bar, tying neat little bows with the shoelaces of his own shoes, now on her feet. The dark leathery Oxfords were fat too big for her, and so he had to tie them really hard, so they would not fall onto the floor the second he pulled out his knee from beneath her heal, that now served her as some kind of purchase.

‘They might be too big for you, but at least, your feet won’t freeze off. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Now, straighten that face.’

‘What is it with you and frostbites?’

She scoffed and folded her arms on her chest, but did not oppose further, when He once again ducked beneath the table and slipped his shoes onto her feet. His voice came from down below, a splash of humour resounding in it, filling her cheeks with the brightest shade of pink.

‘It’s not just frostbites. I’m simply worried about you, in general. I should not have let you walk around in those ill-fitting shoes in the first place, I feel responsible.’

I could swear, that at the sound of those words, she melted into the back of the cough and kicked her feet, making the all-too-big shoes flap around her ankles. And in turn, I can swear I saw him cracking a smile at that, when he took back his seat right next to her.

Personally, squished between Camilla and her I felt like I was going to suffocate. Disoriented and scared to the bone I stared into my palms placed neatly on my thighs, not knowing whose warmth to absorb, who’s smell to inhale and who’s heartbeat to sync to. I was dazed, speechless, overstimulated.

‘And how is your leg, Henry? Does it hurt?’ I think he shrugged, but I couldn’t tell, because at that point I tore my eyes from the wet drops sliding down Bunny’s glass and onto Camilla’s side profile. She was chatting with Charles, I could see her mouth move, but all I could think of were those few strands of hair that slipped from beneath her ribbon and curled neatly on her forehead. All I wanted to do was to push them back, tuck them behind her ear.

‘Nothing that I can’t handle, so don’t preoccupy yourself with that, little dove.’

Every move they made, every little shrug, or laugh they huffed soared through me with the untamed power of lightning. I jumped every time one of them breathed. And I must’ve been so consumed by that dual anguish of my position, that I had tuned out the conversation that had barely started, even the little, intimate conversation playing on my right. A nudge of an elbow to my ribs woke me up from my stupor.

‘Richard Papen! Hello! Earth to Richard!’

‘Wha- I… what?’

‘What will you be drinking?’ Her bright eyes stared at me, so, so close, that I could feel her breath fanning my cheeks. With that proximity, an image flashed before my eyes, a sketch that I drew a few days before, the only one in which I did not use her as a live model, rather drafted her from my memory. A quick sketch of her bent over backwards over the table, eyes shut, mouth agape with a silent scream of pleasure frozen on her mouth. Blood rushed to my head with a steady but abrupt pump. Acutely aware of the still purple with cold hand resting on her shoulder I did not find the words right away, so they came out in a disarranged stutter. I blabbered some incoherent phrases, before finding my voice.

‘I’m not drinking tonight… I don’t have any money.’ She let out a pearly laugh.

‘Don’t be ridiculous Richard. It’s on Francis! He dragged us all out here, so he’s buying!’

‘That’s the first time I hear about it.’

She threw him one of her deadliest looks, as if saying – come one, don’t be a twat – and I heard no further protests from him. Encouraged and coaxed by all the people around the table, I finally decided on Guinness, the same as her. Francis got up with a resigned sigh, repeated everyone’s orders and then he disappeared for almost forty minutes. And when he came back, carrying two trays stocked with pints and meandering amongst the drunken crown with no problem, he was greeted with round of applause and whistles of approval. He distributed the beers equally and then sat with the look of absolute agony on his face.

‘Oh, I’m never going back out there, sorry but there is no way I can stand in that queue alone and pushed around by those twats for one more second.’

She giggled when he passed her the designated Guinness.

‘How much was it? I’m not planning on paying you back, just curious.’

Francis shrugged, rather not bothered by her blatant declaration.

‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not really good with money, so long I have it.’ He took a long pause to gulp down some of his old beer, truthful to his previous words, he had not bought himself a new one. ‘Matter of fact, I don’t get money at all.’

Charles cleared his throat, uneasy, as if that topic was one of a constant concern in their circle, Francis continued, nonetheless.

‘I simply cannot understand, what is so special about it. It’s just paper! It’s imaginary! If I wanted to, or if I needed, I could just get myself a machine and print out some more! Better yet, we all could. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.’

My eyes darted to the side to meet the same perplexed look in her eyes. Her jaw tilted to the side, but she kept silent, and so did I, taking it for a sign, that if we let Francis talk, soon he’d be out of his brilliant ideas, and we would be free from that topic. Well, Bunny clearly didn’t get the memo.

‘We can’t print more money, idiot, how many times do I have to tell you?’

Francis threw him a wounded look and pressed a fisted palm to his chest. But the sly smile on his lips betrayed that in all truth, he enjoyed that someone, especially Bunny, had indulged him.

‘Why not?’

Bunny’s so far hooded and glossy eyes, now popped out dangerously, coming to resemble in their shape and size a pair of saucers. His lips pulled downwards in an ugly, angry grimace.

‘That would cause and inflation, a hyperinflation, if you’d be really lucky, and soon you, mister Bretton Woods, would be able to buy matches, for the same price you would buy a home a few days earlier.’

‘Yeah, sure, inflation but why though?’

The twins did not bother to pay attention to that ridiculous exchange of words, surely because they had heard it already, in a myriad of variations, many a times before, nor did Henry, but she was surprisingly enticed by how exasperated Bunny got. She stared at him with utmost fascination, a thing, that did not escape him, and in turn seemed to spur him on further.

‘There is a certain amount of gold- ‘

‘Gold? Where from? What?’

‘It is stored in the treasury of every country… Don’t change the subject you ginger minx! We have the gold which value must cover the amount of money we distribute. If we don’t have the gold, and we start printing more money the total value of the gold would have to be divided amongst the amount of the money distributed equally, hence devaluating it.’

‘Okayy…’ Francis’ hand soared up to his lips pushing another roll-up into it, as he stared into the ceiling, as if he was processing Bunny’s words. Mindlessly, he passed another one to her, and she nodded her head in a quiet show of thanks. ‘Why gold?’

Bunny growled, a real-life growl, and smoothed his hand over his face. I noticed, that on my right, she had pushed her hand against her lips and now she was shaking uncontrollably at the performance taking place right before her. I cracked a smile as well.

‘Because it is a r a r e material.’

He’d said, the drunken, slurry undertone more prominent in his voice, now more than ever.

‘Uranium’s r a r e r.’

How beautiful did Francis pronounce that ‘rarer’. Every ‘r’ resounded sharply and rattly over his tongue. But his interlocutor did not seem to be impressed by his logopedic skills.

Bunny jumped suddenly onto his feet, slamming his palm into the table with a deafening bang, that made Camilla squeak in her seat. Bunny, making nothing of it pointed and accusatory finger at Francis.

‘I’ve got half a mind to beat you into a pulp right now.’

Bunny’s face turned bright red, and for the first time ever I could see his brows clearly drafted, like two clear, solid white arches, on his forehead. And for the first time, his fury bore water. I had never seen him so aggravated, so serious and straightforward with his announcements. Sure, he tackled me once or twice to the ground, and his threats were nothing new to us, especially after he had something to drink, but those were just harmless jests, stupid jokes we tied to weight to. However, in that bar, a new sheet of peril mixed with anger had wrapped himself around him, giving him, and his irrational outburst depth and dimension. His feverishly jumpy eyes added to the whole picture a deranged readiness to harm, and that scared me to no end. I looked to my right, past her and at Henry, the only person, concluding from the stories I heard about him, capable of restraining the ex-jock if the push came to shove. I expected Henry to come out as a hero, as always. Instead, I was greeted with the sharp glint of her malicious smile and his indifferent, passive frown.

‘Well, you’ve got half a mind, that would be about right.’

She snarled at him, empty glass tipping dangerously in her hand, ready for any sort of action. A deep chill run up my spine at the sight of the strained muscles of her neck, of the pulsing vein running in parallel to her larynx. What scared me more, was the calmly placed hand of Henry, her supposed protector, hanging on the backrest of the couch, not even bothered to assume a defensive stance. Maybe he knew that Bunny wasn’t half the man he portrayed himself to be. Or in that moment, he already knew that he would never harm her. In the conventional way, at least, Henry seemed so sure that no harm would be done to her, either by her own resourcefulness and skill, or Bunny’s incapability and unwillingness to damage her in any sort of way. Why he had believed that I couldn’t tell. In retrospect, that was the moment we all should have banded together against Bunny. Berate his pathetic attitude, his utterly senseless reasoning, rage against him, his nature, fall into a trans and reap him to shreds, limb by limb, no mercy, and when all would settle down, bash his head in, so it could not mutter another word. Maybe that would stop him from drafting the line that would soon cross out the 94. Symphony out of existence.

My eyes soared back to the emotional bundle of fury and helplessness that was Bunny in that moment. His eyes squinted in an expression of utter betrayal at her words. That was the look that should have uncovered it all to me, help me connect the dots scattered amongst the quiet conversations I listened in on, and finally see the bigger picture. But at that point, I was halfway down my pint, and my brain had already lost most of it’s sharpness.

‘Et tu Brute? You are defending… You are defending that deft son of a bitch? How can you? Does it not bother you how oblivious to the world he is? You out of all people should understand my frustration with him! He wouldn’t know the rational state of current things even if they hit him in the face!’

She shrugged, not seeming to be bothered at all, although she had not let go of the glass yet. The white ash at the end of her ciggy became longer than the factual cigarette.

‘So what? He doesn’t understand money. Big deal.’ Her hand drafted a neat circle in the air with the glass. ‘It’s not like you know everything Bunny. Bah, I don’t think I know everything. Nor does Henry. For gods’ sake, you heard him the other day, interrogating Richard about the moon landing and whatnot.’ Charles giggled at the reminder of our first dinner together, but quickly slotted his hand over his mouth, chastised by the scorning glare of his sister. ‘Matter of fact, you could not conjugate a simple verb two classes ago. Please, don’t frown like that. Audiverim instead of audivissem? I beg you pardon?’

The tips of Bunny’s ears turned a few shades darker, but he no longer looked furious. Under her never-missing, dry delivery of criticism, he shrunk slightly, hung his head down and tucked his chin, as if trying to hide his head between his shoulders.

‘Frankly, it wasn’t your best performance and yet I did not beat you into a pulp. What’s more, I’ve never threatened you, never, especially over something so small and insignificant.’

No one dared to interrupt the steady flow of her words. Not even Camilla had attempted to roll her eyes, simply mesmerised, just like the rest of us, with how unbothered, almost lazy and unwilling she seemed while delivering her soul-crushing, humbling truths to Bunny.

‘It is beneath us, to treat and speak to another person, a friend, like you just did. Now stop frowning and marding, just sit, have a drink, cool down.’

‘Yes, Bun, sit down. We’re not without a flaw, after all. It’s not a big deal.’

Camilla sent a warm smile across the table, not towards Bunny but his assailant. She responded with the same kind of grin, a warm, sunny stretch of mouth that would melt the strongest and coldest man.

‘Remember when Charles said that the French Revolution wasn’t that big a deal and she nearly lost her mind?’

Then she snorted, and my accomplice gasped in exasperated shock. A quick, playful smack on the hand of the blonde, little lady was dealt as she exclaimed ‘Cami! Now’s not the time to bring up past mistakes!’ The girl giggled, although her pearly laugh was overwhelmed by Francis’ snort.

‘Oh god! I remember that! I really though she was going to kill him! Jesus, I really believed that on that day we were going to say grace over the cold corpse of Charles Macnally.’ As the ginger boy wrapped his arms around his midriff, to somehow ease the sudden throws of unadulterated joy that shook his body, Bunny slid quietly into his previous seat, relief, that he was no longer the subject of the discussion painted on his face.

‘Come on guys! It was so long ago! I would never do anything like that now…’

She stirred in her place beside me, pouting like a displease child, which roused Francis even more. Camilla too, wasn’t immune to the giddy atmosphere.

‘Oh honey, I know you never wished any real harm onto Charlie. It’s just so funny to recall you screaming bloody murder at him…’ Camilla did not finish her thought, instead, overtaken by laughter, splayed herself across the table trying to catch the quickly regressing fingers of the other girl. Her arm brushed right past mine, but she didn’t notice that, totally absorbed with the vigorous battle at grabbing and tugging away of hands, she was conducting, and clearly loosing, due to the constant spasm of laughter that shook her body, tossing her unregularly across the wooden surface. Her opponent wasn’t much better, trying to disguise her laugh as furious puffs of hot air and scrunching her whole face up, not to let a single pressing smile pass. That frown she made, with much effort and a raised chin that help her in keeping the giggles deep in her stomach, gave her an uncanny likeness to non-other that Mussolini.

‘I don’t know… it felt real to me, when you chased me around the kitchen, swinging a knife around and screaming’ Charles began his sentence and paused dramatically, tilting his head up and spreading his arms over his head like a preacher in a cathedral, only to be joined by everyone at the table, spare for me and Bunny, in an unison, theatrical chant ‘How about I take away you privileges and basic human rights, let’s see, how unimportant the French Revolution was then!’

The whole table fell into laughter, a shimmering cascade of giggles and snorts, surprisingly, dominated by the baritone hum of Henry. My friend turned beetroot-red and, just like Bunny before her, strained her shoulders up to hopefully hide herself between them. First to break off was the violine-led light motif in the person of Henry.

‘Cut her some slack! It’s not like she almost killed a professor, whose name I shall not evoke, with her car and then proceeded to try and charm him out of suspending her with the, what was it, ah, yes! The hypnotic sway of her luscious hips.’

A unison protest of Charles and Camilla overtook whatever Henry intended on saying next, as they recoiled in mock horror. Camilla shielded herself with the coat of her brother as he latched onto her head, trying to close her ears to that slander.

‘Why must you all recall all of my most painful memories.’ Charles screamed over the roaring crowd of the bar. ‘It’s not like I did anything to you! You’re all monsters, monsters, I say, not people!’

Then Francis, dangerously maroon on his face chimed in, bringing forth another story, one of botched boeuf de Bourgogne and Julian, politely munching on it’s charred remains. Since that moment, it came down like and avalanche. Stories, insults, and ashamed protests along with some foreign profanities thrown in together begun swishing over our heads like heavy ammunition, all in a delightful halo of barked laughter and whistles. In the meanwhile, the poor bartender must’ve called in for help, because the crowd of patrons started to loosen around the bar area, and a new, visibly taunt and tired looking waiter became roaming the floor and picking up the orders from table to table. Strangely enough, he came around our space more than the others and soon enough pints and glasses, the martini, vine, red and white, gin and whiskey even the dreaded cocktail glasses piled over our table. Slowly but steady, once again the floor swooped from beneath my feet and my head turned heavy, sprouting with a thick sheet of wool. I did not realize I had been dangerously tilting to the right, arching my whole body to bend it into an almost horseshoe shape until I felt her arm slipping from underneath mine, and slowly smoothing over the wrinkles of my shirt. My world tilted alongside me and then straightened right after when hot breath fanned my ear, a tint of sun and hop carried with it.

‘You made my hand fall asleep.’

I jumped, because the voice tore through the featherbed of alcohol induced confusion, like hot knife cuts through butter.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, making a bubbly laughter erupt from her lips.

‘It’s no problem at all dummy, none at all. But you need to let go off my wrist right now.’ I followed her gaze down to our laps, where I saw my hand wrapped just around her pulse, my fingers so, so unremarkable against her silky-smooth skin. Jumping once again I let go, a huge block of ice mixed with something utterly pathetic dropped into my stomach. A terrible stutter befell me and I struggled through a handful of rushed apologies, but she only swatted her asleep hand at me. ‘Told you already, it’s no problem! I just need to go.’ And then she leaned in and added, in a hushed conspiratorial tone, ‘To the ladies room.’

A dumb smile sprouted on my face as I watched her drunkenly unwrap herself from Henrys half-limp embrace and then clumsily step off the booth couch and onto the packed middle ground of the bar. Stunning, it was, to watch her manoeuvre between a bunch of people so much drunker and less coordinated than her. Her steps, although wobbly and off her usual light rhythm, coveted a lightness of a ballerina, as she ducked and avoided all the swishing hands and swirling bodies.

Henry watched her go as well, his eyes deep and dark like two black holes, hungrily swallowing the small sway of her steps. They slid down, right to the base of the column of her spine, her thighs, calves, and then a tiny, almost satisfied smile cracked his rigid lips, the eyes, mine and his, took in the stupidly cute way she raised her feet a little too high, placed them on the ground a bit too far apart, like a little duck to accommodate the comically big Oxfords. And Henry seemed almost proud of that. I wanted to open my mouth, speak to him, comment somehow on the sparks circling his irises, but my train of thought was interrupted by Bunny’s ostentatious grunt.

The blonde boy looked absolutely horrible, with red spots and blemishes blooming on his cheeks from the excess of alcohol and his eyes, puffy, even more swollen than when we started drinking. He still bore that ridiculous frown, which by that point gave into more damage, got watered down with every gulp of beer he had forced into himself, only to become a reduced cadaver of gloom floating in his murky, blue eyes.

‘Excuse me ladies, imma get me some beer,’ He slurred.

Camilla pouted, extending her arms towards him simultaneously closing and opening her palms, as if to rope him into hugging her and then anchoring him to stay at the table. Something in the way he stood up, I don’t know, maybe a stray button of his shirt that reflected the light in the wrong way, or the horizontal blue-and-white straps on his blazer, now waving hypnotically around his bulky form, made my gut churn and all that I drank and ate during the day came up my throat in waves of nausea. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back and inhaled deeply. Once, twice, three times.

‘Come on Bun, the waiter is going to be here any minute, why go to the bar, all the way there. Sit, come, just sit.’

Another grunt and then a series of clumsily misguided moves echoed my brain. On the camera obscura of my eyelids my imagination showed a pretty hilarious picture of Bunny struggling to get out of the booth over the wasted, folded body of Francis.

‘No can do. I feel like I have the Sahara Desert in my mouth. I ain’t waiting for no waiter.’

However humorous the remark, his voice resounded strangely gloomy and hollow, but I could not care for that much at that point. Too busy counting from hundred to zero, I used all the mindpower I had left not to bend over and puke right onto the table. On my right Henry swayed softly and hummed alongside the tune somehow still getting through him all the way from de jukebox.

I must’ve gotten around to negative seven hundred fifty, when it finally dawned on me that something was wrong. Our area of the table suddenly got quiet, too quiet and I couldn’t shake the unpleasant, fuzzy feeling creeping up my spine. With no small fit of effort, I managed to glue open one of my eyes, then the other.

Hellish landscape of decadence greeted me with a sharp toothy smile. Francis laid passed out face first on the table, Camilla leaned over him with the full weight of her body, swishing a glass of gin in her hand, the liquid swirling in it like a miniature whirlwind, and Charles, always the one to get utterly pissed, perched himself on the couch, and with an absent stare, followed the infinity signs drafted in the air by his sister’s glass. Every now and the he’d add a small ‘swoooosh’, when she took a particularly sharp turn in the trajectory of the drink. I tore myself from that image, my head rolled over to the right, guided by the wooden, polished headrest. Henry was there. Slightly decomposed, but holding up better than the rest of us, nursing a small, steaming cup – tea? No, coffee. Black and sugarless.

‘Hey, Henry?’ My mouth burned as I opened it, chapped, dried up skin tore at that unusual activity and if I were any bit more sober, I would wince at the pain it had brought me to speak. He turned halfway towards me and raised one brow in a silent question. I stayed silent for a second, trying to accumulate all the ideas swirling around my disoriented head, arrange and put them into words, to somehow explain my sudden uneasiness to him. ‘Where do you think they went? They’d been gone for quite a while, don’t you think?’ A slight frown, then a look across the table, and finally a bright spark of understanding sparked across his face. ‘Bunny and…’ However anxious I felt, I think it was nothing, compared to the chill expression of pure horror that slid over his taunt features. Henry lunged himself up before I could even finish my slowly processed concern, and sprung forth, towards the bar, towards the toilets cramped right next to it, as he was, barefoot, limping and thoroughly terrified. I raced right after him, all of a sudden, sober as if not a drop of alcohol had entered my blood stream during that night. His fright climbing and latching onto me like a parasite, sucking all the air from my lungs, urging my blood to flow faster, stronger in order to keep my brain alive. I did not know, I could not comprehend what made him so… stressed, so pressed, but the look on his face, the half of it I saw while struggling to equal oust pastes, forebode nothing pleasant. And that image, of Henry totally panicked, mixed with my previous remark on her…

Getting through the crowd of the drunken, screaming people was no easy fit and I wonder how she had made it look so effortless. And Henry, he as well got through the thicket with no problem, although not thanks for his natural grace, but rather the utter disrespect and disregard of anyone that stepped in his way. He pushed through people, stepped on their feet, swatted away their arms, not even looking back when they screamed after him, and I followed his trail to that warzone, squeezing through the narrow he had cut up for himself. Henry kept himself composed through all of that, not a single scream, not even a word or a twitch. He was cold, a stalker, a wolf bound on the hunt for his prey. The scared frown on his face reforged into something more sharp and determined. And I was hot, fuming, the heatwave of alcohol mixed with anxiety rushed to my head heating me up like a furnace. I felt my pulse quickening, heart straining in a hopeless effort to keep me up. Yet, I put all of my effort into keeping up with him, as he seemed to have had connected the dots I did not have the skill, or correct disposition to connect, and he did not seem to notice me. Not even at all. It looked like, in that moment there was only one thought going through his mind, preoccupying him, mandating him his actions and goals. Only one thought that willed his heart into a steady beat – finding her. Finally, we got out of the worst cluster of now whining and crying out in pain students, when the door to the woman’s bathroom burst open and Bunny emerged from the forbidden depths. He was slightly crouching, as he paced with small, careful, but overall, quite rushed steps onward, pressing a hand to his face. But nothing, not even his big hand of a seasoned quarterback, could cover the red imprint cutting across his face, likely a result of something, or someone, hitting him in the face with full force. His eyes darted across the room, scattered and skittish. When they came to task us with their gaze, Bunny squealed and rushed right past us, drafting a big, round arch, only to push against the exit with the full force of his body and run into the cold night outside. He did not even take his coat with him. He just run away.

I stopped, partially to the shock I just had experienced due to that bizarre occurrence, but mostly because of Henry’s sudden indecision. If it were up to me, I would carry on straight forward, where my legs desired to bring me, until I’d have had reached the unpassable barrier of the door dividing the room and the women’s restroom. But he was not as drunk, or as disoriented as I was, because for a second, he halted, leaned to the direction of the exit, as if eager to chase down the runaway bunny, then swayed back, as if torn apart by some inner dilemma I was not privy to. Thankfully, he had not have to choose, for from the bathroom emerged another person. She was similarly to Bunny red on her face, although when his red seemed to root itself in a valiant assault, hers was a deep shade of effort and distress. Now, the direction was clear to Henry, he rushed towards her, opening his arms as if to gather her into them, but no, to my biggest surprised she jumped to the side and slid right past him, only to mix into the crowd. She threw him a rather strained ‘I’m leaving.’ And then dove into the swarm of bodies. Henry wasted no time and lunged back into the already irritated with him people. Only this time, he seemed to care about them even less, and seeing that they stopped screaming at him, and just opened themselves before him, like the red sea. But he was screaming, beaconing, calling her name, only for it to hit and bounce off her turned back. She was fast, even in those too-big shoes, Henry had trouble keeping up with her, least to say I, who out of us three, was probably the drunkest and the least athletic. After that quick cavalcade through the terrified flock, we arrived at our starting point, the table. In the far looser space, Henry caught up to her and yanked her small body towards him. She was feisty and full of fire, but in an open struggle, not in a play-pretend, she had no chance against him. The sheer force of his arms pulled her forward, as if she was but a rag doll. Her whole body shook, but not with the impact of his body engulfing hers, or shock that came with the sudden contact, but something far more pressing, something she tried to, with all her might, to push down and keep inside of herself. But her lower lip wobbled. A sorrowful display of utter helplessness, that little wobble, paired with the tears evoked the memory of the ‘Nighthawks’ in me. I balled my fists by my sides, now not only overtaken by sadness and the feel of disunity, but also fear. Gut-wrenching, blood-chilling, hair-standing fear. Because, when Henry pulled her in and caged her between his arm, when he brought her to him despite the slight resistance of her trembling arms against his chest, I saw her neck, craning upwards. And the four furious smudges running horizontally on her throat, pinkish imprint of fingers coming together into a palm just about where here larynx should start. That’s going to become a bruise, give it a few hours, I thought. Her jaw unclenched and, as Henry submerged her into himself, I saw her stutter something out. Her voice too small for me to hear over the booming of the bar, but I did not have to, least to say, the murderous tilt of Henry’s head confirmed to me what I already had suspected. He did not move, but I saw his reflection in the window placed right above out booth. The lines around his mouth deep like scars, appeared to deform his face, elongate like sabre teeth when he spoke to me, commanded.

‘Richard, go outside, find Edmund.’

Without thinking or sparing a single more glance I rushed to the exit, spurred on by the sharpness of his tone. All of my, my being, my soul, by body, they screamed in furious agony, in rage and in guilt. I let him go, I heard, I felt that something was off when Bunny stepped away from the booth and yet I let him go, too intoxicated to do anything. But what tore at me the worst was the fact, that when I run out, the last image that flashed before me were her eyes, those usually bright, intelligent orbs, now dusted with silver moist, dimmed, and lifeless.

The night air hit me in the face the second I stepped out of the bar, sudden realisation of how stuffy and hot the interior was coming onto me in a sobering wave. Everything before me, the neon signboards of other dodgy bars, the lanterns, the cars parked in the driveway, blurred before me and I had to cross my eyes to focus. My feet stumbled across the uneven pavement as I searched the perimeter like a starved coyote, teeth bared looking for the slightest hint of blonde hair swishing in the dark. But I saw nothing, no one. The street was quiet and desolate, blinking at me in utter bewilderment with her yellow lanterns. The spins came back to me with a doubled force, I had to support myself against one of the cars. The air was filled with a strange kind of glow, a tension that I could not explain, and when I looked up, I saw a full moon, hanging directly above the curve of the street.

Behind me, the door to the bar opened, swung, and then opened again, only to shut behind the exiting people with a thundering smack. Two pairs of feet crunched on the virgin snow, one pasted light and quick, like the crescendo of flutes, the other, long and deep, similar to the drag of a bow against the string of a violin.

‘Come on, baby, come back inside, I’ll take care of this, please, it’s so cold out, you’ll catch a cold.’

Henry begged as he desperately tried to hold onto her hand. Once again I observed how they mixed together, two dark spots against the backdrop of the luminescent snow, from the side-lines. But she broke off, shook her head, as if unable to muster any words. Her face shined in the natural light of the night, but not as I was used to, not with the internal, sweet, warm, internal glow, but the reflected light of the surroundings. Her face was wet, pulled and cold.

‘Don’t. Just don’t. Stop it Henry, I need to go. I need to go alone.’ Her voice was shaky, packed with emotions I could not untangle and determine. ‘Stop it, don’t touch me right now.’

She pulled her arm from his embrace, pushed at him to stay in place and strode off. His fingers floated in the space she had occupied just seconds before, mindlessly grabbing at the phantom threads of material. The coat she had on, flapped as she strode away, quicker, and quicker, swooshing in the cold air with no particular rhythm like the broken wings of a bird, so desperate to take into the skies. He stopped, obedient to her wishes, but I could see the worry painted in his face.

‘At least change back into my shoes, those will hurt you!’

She waved at him, her back steadily turned towards him, head hung low, but she gave no response.

As she walked away, up the street, her silhouette came against the gargantuan moon and suddenly I had this feeling of solemn loneliness gripping at my heart, convincing me that she was not walking, but floating up, alone far away and straight up the silver strands of moonlight into the unknown Space. Henry stood there, leaning forward as if fighting with his thoughts, his urges, until she was too small and too far away for him to see.

We styed there for a second longer, in silence, until he pulled out a red pack of cigarettes out of his coat and lit one. His eyes bore mindlessly into the ground and the lighter he held illuminated his ghostly, foreign face with an orange glow.

‘Don’t worry Richard. He’s going to show up sooner or later.’ Hoarse screech was all that came out of his mouth, vicious, venomous, sure. ‘And then, we’re going to deal with that swine accordingly.’

His eyes darted to me, and a shiver run down my spine, for I hand never seen such cold and biting rage frozen into a steady, calm face like that. Fear crossed me, when he inhaled the smoke from his cigarette and not a single muscle on his face moved.

‘Oculum pro oculo.’

#bunny corcoran #camilla macaulay #charles macaulay #francis abernathy #henry winter #henry winter x reader #richard papen #the secret history #afab reader

139 notes · View notes