Arte’s Reading List

These words are yours. 

Even if you never see him again. Even if you lose him before having had the time to map the freckles on his skin. To sleep in his arms. To hear him repeat them. They’re yours to keep. 

He mouthed them against your skin, sunk them into your bloodstream in bright mahogany before coming undone, wrapped around your body. 

They’re yours, right? 

Even if you don’t get to see him ever again. 

—

It starts with the cramps. That’s how it usually goes. A myriad of microscopic pliers nipping at your intercostal muscles. 

Your eyes shoot open at the familiar ache. The early morning hues redefine the room in blue shadows. You blink your sleep-heavy eyelids a few times, confused, before your vision adjusts and you recognize the room around you. It’s your bedroom. Your nightstand, your lamp, your books. Your pills. Your tube of scented hand cream. The chair in the corner, that ugly, Louis XV style, transparent polycarbonate monstrosity by that French designer. The large windows. Those damn floor-to-ceiling windows that let in too much light, too much heat, too much open view. Nowhere to hide, in here. 

It has to be sometime between 4 and 5 am, you assume, before another cramp seizes you. You curl up into a tight ball on the edge of the bed, pulling the comforter to your chin.

Not today. Please. Not today.

Friday. 

Inside your abdomen, nausea streams densely, like liquid lead, from your ribs to your stomach, as cold shivers run up your spine. Sweat breaks on your forehead. You know only too well what’s happening, but it can’t be, there’s been no warning signs. No headache, no stabbing sensation in your lower belly, no spinning head. 

Today is Friday. 

You reject the obvious.

Were you so engrossed in the memory of him to pay attention? His hand wrapped around your nape, his forearm molded along your spine, pressing you into his chest, making you two as one. Closer.

Nausea is already lapping at your esophagus. The pliers bite harder at your ribcage and you know you have to move now if you want to make it to the bathroom before it happens. Shuddering, you push away the comforter, then get up and run.

Kneeled on all fours on the cool bathroom tiles, you dive headfirst into the toilet’s porcelain bowl as everything inside you collapses on itself, emptying the content of your stomach, mostly liquid. You should have eaten something last night. 

You know you’re not pregnant. For an infinity of reasons. 

Because you haven’t let Adrian fuck you in weeks. Because, when he does, he always wears protection. That’s your mutual, very tacit agreement. A silent understanding that you’re never the only woman, at any given moment. An unspoken confession on his behalf, implicit permission on yours. 

Because your contraceptive pill is the only one you’ll never stop popping. 

Because you’ve suffered through more stomach bugs than you care to count.

And of course, because Frankie won’t come inside you. 

You stand up on fawn-like legs and flush the toilet. 

You splash water on your face and grab your toothbrush with a trembling hand, shaking from head to toe. You know this is only the beginning, but it’s coming in strong. This one is most likely going to be a bad one. At least for now the pain is gone.

Above the sink, the woman in the mirror stares at you with unsettling, disproportionate glassy eyes. Her skin looks waxy, she scares you, and you have to lower your eyes. You brush your teeth as quickly as you can. 

You haven’t made it back to the bedroom when the second wave of cramps squeezes your abdomen. The pain folds you in half, and you let out a low whine. 

It echoes like distant thunder along the glass walls of the empty corridor. 

—

On Fridays, you count. You break down hours and minutes and steps and heartbeats into small, bearable quantities, so that you can live through them without going crazy. Today, however, you’re counting trips to the bathroom, and the time between two attacks from the cramps, like you’re readying yourself to give birth to a terrible monster, feeding off you from the inside of your quivering body. 

You’ve managed to spend most of the day hiding in your office, with the window cracked open, and the AC cranked up to the max. The clothes you wear are the same as yesterday. Your expensive formal blouse sticks to your sweaty skin in clammy patches. You’re cold, cold and hot all at once. In fact, you’re burning up, and a chill sweat has you shivering in the non-existent breeze. 

You haven’t gotten any work done, to state the obvious. You’re just dozing in and out of consciousness between two crises, head like a rock sinking onto your arms on top of your shiny glass desk. Its surface fogs with every one of your short breaths. You’re running out of toothpaste. 

Being the boss’ daughter has never granted you any particular privilege over your coworkers, except on days like this. At the first signs of sickness, you go home, or call in sick. Stay in bed for a couple of days, sleep it off, sip water tentatively every time you throw up until you can finally keep it down. No one has ever thought to comment on the frequency or duration of your sick leaves. Not even your father.

Kaytee has probably noticed something’s wrong with you. Her office is right by the bathroom, and you've run there seven times since you’ve arrived this morning, an hour late, which is uncommon, to boot. You look like a walking corpse, your eyes eating up half of your face and your lips pinched in a tight line. And surely, she will find a way to use this against you in the near or distant future. She’s been dying to take your place ever since she was recruited nearly two years ago, champing at the bit, waiting for you to slip so she can bury you. 

If she only knew. How you are dying to let her have it all. That you are convinced she’d be so much better at the job than you’ll ever try to be. 

With your last shred of energy, you push down the thought, like you push down the nausea and the shivers. On Fridays, everything that’s not him is irrelevant. At 6pm sharp, you’ll count your steps down to the parking garage and hop in your car. You’ll sit in traffic until you reach the 589 and you can finally cruise towards the motel in the protective semi-darkness of the Tampa suburbia. 

You haven’t yet considered what will happen beyond this point. When he steps into the room and finds you sitting there, looking like an undead version of yourself, reeking of stale bile, rancid sweat and toothpaste. 

All you have to do is make it there. You won’t give up, simple as that. You’ll suck it down. 

Demonstrating resolve you never knew you possessed, you make it to sundown. You hold out through the pain, through the cramps, through the soreness on your knees and the abrasion in your throat and the stabbing sensation behind your eyes and the pulling of your gums. 

At 6pm, you turn off the alarm of your phone and put it away in your purse. The room swirls around you the first time you try to get up. You wince, falling heavy on the simile leather chair you sweated on all day. You wipe your damp forehead and neck with a tissue, and you stand up again. 

All the blood in your body rushes to your feet. There’s not a drop of it left in your brain. You swallow hard against the bitter taste clinging to your tongue and palate and start counting your steps toward the elevator, only to lose track somewhere after 18.

Dark, green circles flash in rapid succession across your pupils, narrowing your vision. You grip the strap of your purse harder, and register you can’t feel your fingers. Something is wrong with your balance, your whole body slants to the left. You try to correct its trajectory but you can’t feel anything below your calves either. What you can feel is your forehead and your nape, defined by pain, burning hot and somehow also freezing where beads of sweat run down your skin.

You’ve made it to the lobby when everything fades to black. 

—

In your early 20s, you had genuinely tried to shake off the melancholia. An honest, hopeful attempt. You were away at college, and even though you didn’t get to choose your major, different and various paths seemed possible, within reach. A couple of years after graduation, when you had met Adrian, you had tried again, with renewed vigor and motivation. 

You did want to get better. 

You cut back considerably on hard liquor. You smiled broadly, at everyone. You said “please,” and “sorry.” Applied lipstick daily, polished your nails weekly. You went out to dinners and parties, wore high heels and interacted with strangers, drank wine in stem glasses and in reasonable quantities. 

On your mother’s advice, you went to “see someone.” As your father prescribed, you read the news and followed sports results. 

But the sadness kept settling down inside you, like the white particles inside a snowball. The vomiting spells became more frequent. Despite your willingness and earnest efforts, you kept falling short, and each fall hit you with increased brutality. 

For your mother, you were too much. For your father, never enough. For Adrian, you would soon come to realize, you were a commodity.

Trying to please them in turn, learning your cues, anticipating their needs and wills and whims, torn up between their contradicting desires and expectations, smiling pretty and meek, you completely lost track of what you liked and who you were. 

Anxious, confused, perpetually dissatisfied and unsatisfying, you withdrew within yourself. Hid away between the folds, detached and ready to flee, wishing for nothing more than to disappear. 

As Ava grew up, her loud and unapologetic personality compelling everyone’s attention, she provided you with a reprieve and, most importantly, a purpose. But a diffuse sense of guilt soon arose, as your little sister’s struggles could hardly be instrumental to your self-fulfillment.

Inside of you, isolation and loneliness grew solid, like a second skeleton, keeping you upright.  

Apathy soon took over. You resorted to medication to control it all. 

And when it was no longer enough, you found your way to the Hole in the Wall.

—

The smell of rubbing alcohol floats around you in the chilled darkness, its rough acetone accents abrading your nostrils. There’s an undertone to it. Rotting perfume and decaying bodies. A faint beeping sound tugs at your consciousness, and as you begin to come to, pain strikes you in multiple places. 

Something sharp stings the thin skin on the back of your right hand. Each one of your intercostal muscles is sore. Your throat is parched, rougher than sandpaper; your tongue too big for your mouth, stuck to your palate. Every single joint in your body is sensitive, but the worst, by far, is the piercing ache in your forehead. It glues your eyes closed. 

Panic floods your brain with static when you stir, wincing against the shooting pain, and you don’t recognize the motel’s mattress. The one you’re lying on is too hard, the linen covering you too starchy, the darkness is closing in on you, you need to open your eyes, fence off the pain, find Frankie…

Frankie. 

You never made it to the motel. Where the hell are you? When the hell are you?

“Ah. At long last, she wakes. How are you feeling, babe?”

Adrian’s honeyed voice hauls you through the darkness. Your eyelids flutter against the light until you open your eyes to a square room with a single, large window, blazing sun darting through. 

Adrian is sitting in the corner by the foot of the bed. A hospital bed, apparently. A narrow, dark blue mattress, unusually high, encased with rails on each side and at your feet. You’ve never been hospitalized before. 

He’s looking at you with a Cheshire cat grin stretching his thin lips, like he was just let in on a juicy secret. He’s dressed in his golf apparel. 

The violent luminosity intensifies the splitting sensation in your forehead, it vibrates to the back of your skull, from within, from the sides.  

Squinting, you turn your head to the side to take in your surroundings. On top of a beige, melamine nightstand are a black phone with a long twisted cord, an oval device with a red and a white buttons and another cord, and a metal kidney dish. 

There’s a tray table over your legs, with a jug standing next to a hard glass already filled with water, and some paper napkins. There’s a needle in your hand. A drip. With a cord. You flinch a little at the sight. A white rectangle eats up the tip of your index, a red light flashing from inside it. Another cord. It’s linked to the source of the beeping sound, a square monitor to your right, displaying wobbly lines of green. Another two cords are plugged in, you follow their sinuous lines to your bed, where they disappear under the sheet, and you take in the two round patches taped to your chest.

So many cords. Too many sensors. 

“Where’s my phone?” you mumble. 

Your tongue feels like a piece of carpet. You’re not sure whether it’s even your voice anymore. 

“You scared us this time,” Adrian says. His tone is cold, practiced, policed. 

You reach for the plastic glass and bring it to your chapped lips. The liquid flows down your throat like a waterfall; you wince again.

“Can you pull down the blinds, please? The light hurts.”

He lets a moment pass before he gets up, then circles the bed, unhurried, pacing toward the window, but instead of shutting the Venetian blinds, he sits by your side. The mattress dips under his weight. You hold your breath, anticipating a new jolt of pain. Behind him, the daylight forms a halo, blurring the outline of his silhouette. Your eyes water against the brightness. 

“What day is it?” you try again. 

“One thing we don’t understand is why you didn’t go home. You got us all worried, you know?”

The beeping picks up pace, imperceptibly. You wipe your eyes with the back of your hand. The one with no cords linked to it. You know this dance, he won’t cooperate until you ask the right questions, the ones he wants you to listen to him answer. Better to give him what he wants, for now.

“What happened?” 

“We don’t know exactly, that’s the thing. Well, you were sick, this you know,” he punctuates his words with a knowing grin and a wink, “but instead of coming home, you stayed at work, for some reason. We think you lost consciousness on your way out, and you hit your head on the elevator’s frame in your fall. We couldn’t help you right away because most employees had already left the floor. Jerry found you. He called your dad.”

You close your eyes, blocking the image of Jerry, of all people, finding you sprawled out and unconscious on the floor. And why would he call your father? Why not 911? You resent that collective we. Who the hell is we? Right about now, you could swear it’s the entire world versus you. 

Besides, you’re fairly certain Kaytee was still in her office at the time. She never leaves before 8pm at the earliest and makes sure everyone knows about it. 

“You split your forehead open. Apparently, you were running a pretty high fever, too. Oh, and you were critically dehydrated, according to the doctor I saw this morning,” he frames the words critically dehydrated in air quotes. “He also said something about a light concussion, I think.” 

You lift a heavy hand to your forehead, the tip of your fingers gingerly testing what they find there, a gauze dressing, held in place by medical tape. 

Having the clinical explanation behind the multiple aches throbbing inside your body somehow eases some of the pain.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” you say, unable to look him in the eyes with the harsh light behind him. “I need my phone. Can you give me my phone, please?”

“What do you need your phone for?” he asks casually, seemingly absorbed by something on his pants.

It’s a dare. You know that tone all too well. Today, however, you find that you don’t feel like playing. You want your goddamn phone.

Frankie cannot possibly have tried to reach you as you never exchanged numbers, but you want to call the motel. Find out if he came. What happened then. You want to know what time it is, what day, how much of him you’ve missed. You’re craving his touch, his skin between your parted lips, your heart pumping on empty, racing madly from the need for him, and of all the sensations making your body known to you, this one by far hurts the most. 

The beeping sound accelerates, drawing Adrian’s attention to the monitor, then to you. His cold blue gaze narrows on your face. You try to slow down your breathing, hoping it translates to your heart rate. 

“I need to call Ava. She must be worried.”

“Ah yes, your sister, of course,” he exclaims, feigning a bright mood, as if you’d just reminded him you’re traveling to Hawaii together next week. 

Getting up, he walks nonchalantly to the foot of the bed, leaning against the wall underneath the TV set, hands in his pockets. The black screen dwarfs his lean proportions. His red polo enhances his pallid complexion. You avert your gaze, lest the monitor picks up your disgust like it does your nervousness.  

“Yes, it’s true, she probably got very distressed, when you didn’t show up at all last night,” he agrees with affected concern.

There’s a foul taste in your mouth. Acid, rubbing alcohol, and something else. The glass is empty, but you don’t think you can lift that jug. Each one of your muscles is vibrating, waiting for the axe to fall. If only that fucking monitor could stop beeping. 

“Remember back in October, when Kenneth went to New York over the weekend for the symposium at NYU? Well you’ll never guess. He saw your sister there, in some uptown restaurant, making out with her…” his upper lip curls, “with this older woman, her girlfriend.”

So this is it. He knows. All this time, he’s known. Since October, practically since the beginning. And he let you believe you had him fooled, that you had the upper hand on the situation, that this part of your life was yours. He lured you into a false sense of safety, a deluded feeling of freedom. And all the while, he’s known. 

It’s really your fault, for forgetting that’s how things are with him. That nothing truly is what it seems. That he likes you scared, anxious. Perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

There’s no point in trying to control the beeping, now. In fact, given its cadence, you expect a nurse to barge in any minute. 

“Polly’s not old,” is your answer. 

“Yeah, whatever, they’re degenerates, both of them.”

“Where’s my goddamn phone, Adrian?”

“What do you want your phone for?” he barks.

The words are spat in your direction, and the sheer volume of his nasal voice startles you. Red blotches erupt on his cheeks and neck, his eyes are blazing with contempt. 

“You need to call your fucking dealer? Is that it? You think I haven’t noticed that you’re high half of the time?”

You remain perfectly still, holding your breath.You can feel your skin pulling at the medical tape in your hairline. 

He doesn’t know shit. In fact, he’s scared. He’s so, so small. 

“Listen, I don’t care what the fuck you do every Friday night, ok? But can you at least be fucking discreet about it?”

The poison in his tone and his words corrodes your confidence. 

“They will announce the senior partners in January, I cannot fucking lose your father’s business until it’s done, do you understand me? So whatever you do,” he points his index finger at you and stabs it through the air to accentuate each of his following words, “you be fucking discreet. More fucking discreet than that shitshow you pulled, do you get it? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Should you nod? Is he waiting for you to manifest your understanding of the situation? 

You hate yourself for thinking, ever so briefly, that he might have been jealous, that he might have cared. Held down on this bed with all these cords, you feel like a butterfly pinned in a glass case, on display in a cabinet of curiosities, a mere object amidst a multitude of other trophies covered in dust and mold. You’ve always hated butterflies. They gross you out. 

You allow yourself to breathe again when his posture relaxes. Looking down at his feet, with his hands on his waist, he shakes his head and huffs. The stance reminds you of Frankie, the difference in their proportions almost comical, like a circus monkey aping the brawny horseman, the one who gets top billing in the show. 

Frankie had you pinned on a bed repeatedly, without ever making you feel like a study in entomology. 

“Your dad is waiting for me, I’m already late,” Adrian says, coming toward you, “I’d love to stay a little longer, but you know how he is about golfing. Don’t want to keep him waiting!” 

He pecks a kiss on the crown of your head. The pain darts through your skull in all directions, all the way down to your spine. 

“Where’s my phone, Adrian?” you call one last time as he strides toward the door.

“You don’t need your phone, babe. What you need is to rest. Get those magical hospital electrolytes. Doctor’s orders,” he adds with a wink. 

And he’s gone.

Furious tears hang from your lashes. You focus on the plastic box on the tip of your index, and you begin to inhale and exhale, as deeply and slowly as you can. It’s shaky at first, but you’re encouraged by the decreasing cadence of the beeping. 

Adrian and your father go golfing at 2pm on Saturday afternoons. Meaning you’ve been out for over fifteen hours. Without your phone, you have no means to assert the time. Your watch is nowhere in sight, neither are your clothes, shoes, jewelry, purse. 

The room has a phone, but you have no idea if it’s connected. You don’t know the number to the motel. Hell, you don’t even know its name, only its location. 

Frankie’s silhouette invades your thoughts, the size of him, the shape of him. His broad back, his strong shoulders, the line of his neck. The sensation of his hands grasping your waist. Their precision, their roughness. Their intent.

Is this how it ends?

Fresh tears swell under your eyelids. You quickly clench them close. 

You did everything wrong. What an appalling idiot. You should have acknowledged you’d never make it there, not in the state you were in. You should have called the motel to leave a message, explain your absence, and promise you’d be there again the following Friday. 

Now you have no means to reach him. You probably have lost him forever. The warm touch of his skin. His unique scent. His taste.

The beeping grows frantic. Heavy wet sobs heap up inside your chest. Your hand flies to cover your eyes. You anchor yourself to the throbbing pain in your skull and the prickling needle in your hand. To the faint clasp of the pulse oximeter on your index finger. Pursing your lips, you exhale.

Whether the phone is connected or not is just a detail. You can always signal someone with that little remote on the nightstand and have the option charged to the room. Ava’s phone number is the one you have memorized, she can come and get you, and when you manage to get out of here and get your phone back, you’ll replace Adrian’s contact info with hers as your ICE. 

The point is: you’re not trapped. You’re not a dead butterfly in a glass case. 

Your heart rate slows down. 

Between the cords and the hospital sheets, you look up at the white ceiling, and do what you do best: you check out, slip back between the cracks, disconnect.

—

The pain from your head injury is overwhelming. You’d ask for painkillers, but that collective we still haunts you. 

You expect Adrian to come back on Sunday. He doesn’t. Throughout the day, you fall in and out of sleep, a restless, feverish slumber crowded with violent dreams of flesh-eating monsters licking your bones clean.

On Monday morning, the doctor comes in to see you. A man in his early 60s with a thick mane of gray hair and a carefully trimmed beard, he calls you “sweetheart,” and when he raises his eyes from his tablet, he flashes you a perfunctory smile with blinding white veneers. He introduces himself as the head of the gastroenterology department. And a friend of Richard. He makes sure that you understand that his name on your chart is a favor to your father. His demeanor commands your respect, preferably by way of intimidation. 

Whatever he tells you, you’ve already learned from the nurses who waltzed in and out of your room in a brisk and constant ballet throughout the weekend, to check with skilled, professional movements the multiple cords and tubes pinning you to your bed. 

You suffered bacterial gastroenteritis, with severe dehydration, necessitating an antibiotic treatment, and, from your fainting spell, a minor concussion and a head injury. A thin split, on the right side of your forehead, perpendicular to your hairline.

You got sick. You fainted. You hurt your head.

After the doctor’s gone, you’re finally allowed to get up. Under the fluorescent ceiling light of the adjacent bathroom, you spend several minutes observing the seven stitches adorning your forehead. The thick black thread tied in neat little knots that look like dollhouse barbed wire. The visible indentation in your flesh underneath them. The kaleidoscopic and psychedelic coloration of your skin, spreading from your brow to your scalp.  

One of the nurses assures you the scar will quickly fade and disappear. Just like you. 

You find your belongings inside the narrow closet by the bathroom door. The slit of your pencil skirt is torn nearly up to the waist, and the blouse is bloodied. Your jewels are tucked inside your purse. You stand in front of the shelves, staring blankly at the black leather rectangle with the two gold C’s entwined on the front. One of the very first gifts you received from Adrian. You can’t remember if it was for Christmas, or your 30th birthday. Every Friday evening for the past three months, you’ve shoved it unceremoniously under your car seat. You hate that thing. It’s soulless, tacky, it begs for attention, it screams money.    

Later in the afternoon, your mother comes to visit. She brings you magazines, In Style, Elle, Southern Homes, Vogue … At first, she doesn’t look at your face, and when she does, she crumbles into tears. You comfort her. You watch her pad the corner of her fake lashes with a tissue she pulls out of her Birkin purse, and reapply lipstick.

Adrian comes back on Tuesday, with a large bouquet of roses, a box of imported Belgian chocolates you’re not allowed to eat, and your phone. He doesn’t stay long. Before he leaves, he presses an open-mouth kiss to your lips. You wait until he’s passed the door to spit into the kidney dish.

Your father calls within minutes of his departure, with an apology for not visiting. Work, he says, the magic word that justifies everything, from the clothes on your back to his shitty behavior. You tell him the doctor has advised to rest for the remainder of the week. 

In the evening, you finally text Ava. She calls you back immediately, which, beyond her audible concern, puts a lump in your throat. When she asks you how you’re feeling, it’s a minute before you can even speak. 

You’re discharged on Wednesday, with a tube of antibiotics, a short list of food to favor and a much longer one to avoid. 

Ava comes to pick you up. She brings you a change of clothes, a pair of baggy, distressed jeans and a white t-shirt that spells PRIDE in rainbow letters. You smile at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, and when you come out, she laughs like a child at her own joke. You laugh with her. It hurts a little, but the pain is worth it.

You’re still smiling when you ask her if you can keep the t-shirt, and her face drops. She hugs you, a bone-crushing hug with closed fists compressing your back, her face slotted into the crook of your neck. Her voice quivers when she answers that everything that is hers, is also yours. 

You stuff the pockets of your jeans full of your things and leave your purse in the closet. With a little bit of luck, the person who will find it can get a good price for it. 

On Friday morning, you drive back to the hospital to honor a 10:30 am appointment to remove your stitches. You’re led through a sprawling maze of corridors into a windowless room with baby blue walls, and instructed to undress to your underwear, which you don’t. Sitting on the examination couch, legs dangling in the air, palms rubbing on your jeans, you wait for the nurse to come in. 

She doesn’t remark on your defiance. In fact, she makes a point of soothing your nervousness, introducing herself as Diane, complimenting the color of your sneakers. She promises that you won’t feel a thing, and you believe her. When she smiles, her irises nearly entirely disappear, and a wide-spanning arch of wrinkles appears at the corner of her eyes, like sunbeams drawn by a happy child. 

While she prepares her utensils, she engages you in small talk, skillfully stirring the conversation toward the matter of your mental health and physical well-being. You’re well-trained too. You divert without shame or remorse. 

True to her word, she makes quick work of it, and when she’s done, she hands you a mirror framed in a blue, rubbery material. 

At first, you refuse to look, but she kindly insists. Her voice is gentle, angelical, her hands are warm when she lays them on your shoulders. She never once pronounces the word “scar.” She calls you “a beautiful and brave young woman.”

So you let her guide your hand upward until you’re faced with your image. 

“See? Barely visible. Once the ecchymosis has faded, you won’t even be able to notice it. Just something that happened.”

As she stands behind you, her warmth radiates through your cold bones, and she smiles broadly at your reflection. You blink back your tears. You want to commit her words to memory, uncorrupted by emotions. Just something that happened.

Out in the street, a strong wind blows in gusts from the east, in an overcast sky. The damp smell scrunches up your nose. Even without the sun, the air is too warm for the season. When you get into your car, the first thing you do is crank up the AC. 

That rotten hospital smell is still clinging to your skin and hair, you keep having these drops in blood sugar that leave you trembling like a willow tree and drenched in cold sweat. The whiplash from this morning’s anxiety does nothing to level your mood. 

You glance at your watch. 11:30. You let your head roll back on the headrest. You can’t remember a time in your life when you were not exhausted. 

You consider heading straight to the motel. Originally, you intended to go home first, change your clothes and apply some makeup. Cover up the giant bruise on your forehead, and do your best to look alive. It would be smart to put some food in you, too, and of course, to hydrate.

“Fuck it.”

You start the ignition, and merge into the midday traffic. 

The drive is excruciatingly long. A week from Christmas, the traffic is terrible. Getting out of Tampa takes over an hour. 

It’s the afternoon when you pull into the motel’s parking lot. Your eyesight’s unfocused, your nerves are raw, your shoulders pulled taut. 

Of the three other cars parked in the lot, none look like the one you’ve always assumed to be Raul’s, an ancient white Jeep Wagoneer with a rusty back bumper. 

As you try to ponder what to do next, the prickling of your healing tissues riles you up, convoking intrusive thoughts of your scarred reflection. The antibiotics drill a hole into your stomach, the discomfort creases your brow into a constant frown. Your right leg bounces continuously on the car floor. 

You’re running on empty. Pure, solid stress is what’s holding you up.

Once again trapped, this time inside the carbon fiber box of your car, while the outside world is defined in movements. The course of the overcast sun across the pearly gray sky, and the ever-changing shades of the clouds chased by the eastern winds. The occasional vehicle driving past the motel on the secondary road. The trembling of tree leaves, birds flying over, lonesome or in flocks. 

That decaying smell is everywhere in you, around you, but it might be your festering thoughts.

You’re too much, not enough, a disposable commodity. 

Is this how it ends?

Sometimes before 7pm, the white Wagoneer pulls into the parking lot, followed a few minutes later by a red sedan. Raul’s short, bespectacled figure is recognizable through the windshield of his Jeep. Then, it’s the familiar sight of his blue overall as he climbs the flight of stairs to the reception. You slide down on your seat, you don’t need him to see you already stationed here. 

Shortly after, a curvy young woman with a straight, blonde ponytail that goes down to her waist comes out and jogs to the red sedan. She gets in on the passenger side, and you wait until the car disappears on the horizon to exit yours. 

The short walk from your car to the office should be muscle memory. Only today, the gravel feels steady under the flat soles of your Van’s, and your jeans allow you to take actual, proper strides. Carried by the momentum, you march into the room, opening the door so wide it bangs on the door stopper with an ominous sound of shaking glass panes. 

Behind the desk, Raul lifts his head. It’s easy to tell by his puzzled expression that he doesn’t place you. And why would he? You look nothing like you usually do on every other Friday evening. Your clothes are casual, your face is bare, your features pulled taut by mental and physical exhaustion and an array of soreness and pains, your forehead shines in Technicolor, set off by a fresh, inch-long scar. 

“Good evening,” you start with a tight smile. “I—“

A whole week. Seven days, and you haven’t thought this through. The liability that is your impractical brain appalls you, exasperation heating your temples. In the silence that ensues, the droning of the AC unit seems to grow louder. You smile again. 

“I come in every week?” 

Jesus. 

“Oh yes,” he nods, his boot-button eyes boring into yours, “Friday nights, room number 2.”

“Yes,” you answer with a strained, cringy little chuckle, “room number 2. Is it–”

You wipe your sweaty palms on the sides of your jeans.  

“I was wondering if the room was booked last week?”

“Yes, last week room 2 was booked. But you didn’t come, last week.”

“Yes, no, I was held back,” you hear yourself say. You wince before you add, “And, the— the tall man— the tall man who joins me, did he come, last week?”

“Yes. He came. He waited, two, maybe three hours. You didn’t come, so he left. No refund.  Reservations paid in advance are not refundable unless canceled at least 48h—“

“Oh no, that’s fine,” you cut in, relieved he might have thought this embarrassing interaction was about money. “And is the room booked for tonight?”

Raul’s boot-button eyes linger on you for a beat before he lowers them to the computer screen on his left. The mouse clicks a few times, loud and suspenseful, as he operates the thing. You try to catch the reflection of something, anything in his round glasses. There are seven rooms, two cars beside his and yours in that parking, what can possibly take him so long? 

If the bacteria hasn't killed you, the wait surely will. 

“No,” he eventually declares, looking up at you, “it’s not booked for tonight.”

The answer falls on you like a guillotine. It rings out in your ears and you sway on your feet from the violence of the blow. You don’t know how to breathe. 

“Do you want to book it?”

You shake your head slowly.

“No. Thank you.”

Back outside, in the muggy semi-darkness, your wobbling legs find the way to your car on autopilot. 

He made no plans to come back. This time, he didn’t leave any note. This is how it ends. Between your lungs, the wild creature is bleeding. 

You should turn around, ask if they have his full name, bribe Raul into giving you his contact info. You never thought of memorizing his plates, but you could always drive back to the Hole in the Wall, see if he’s been there, if he came looking for you. 

You don’t. You won’t. You’re not entitled to any of it. He was never yours. Never yours to want, to long for, to miss, to hold.

All that’s left now is the abyss and the fear. You’re terrified. Of what lies ahead, the choices you’ll have to make, the answers you’ll have to give. The hollowness in your chest. The gap in your existence. The fracture in your years. 

The before and the after him. 

He has changed you. You changed yourself. You’ll never know if you changed him. 

Stunned, you stand still by your car, cloaked in the velvety night, frozen in space and time. Your hand petrified on the door handle. Unable and unwilling to leave. Eyes riveted to the brass number on the door, glinting with a blurry glow in the soft yellow hues of the porch lights. Moths flutter fuzzy and silent into the light beam, oblivious to the drama of your story. 

The rectangular window stands guard over your secret life. Behind the yellow curtains, your lonely silhouette awaits to come to life, poised and silent, seated on the edge of the bed. 

That woman, young and brave . Want has made her bold and determined. In just a few moments, her trained ears will pick up the sound of an old truck engine drawing near on the empty road. Her existence will come into focus with thrilled anticipation. She will bloom out of her restraints at the sound of tires on the gravel. 

“Oh god,” you whisper, whipping your head around, your grip on the handle white-knuckled as the red truck parks behind your sedan. 

His massive silhouette comes out, and you clasp your hand to your mouth to muffle a dry sob. 

It’s a trick of your overwrought brain. He’s wearing a pair of worn-out jeans and a suede jacket over a dark t-shirt. The brim of his hat casts a long shadow over his face, but he’s moving fast, and in a couple of strides, he’s standing before you, hands on his hips. He’s smiling, a broad and bright smile. You catch a glimpse of a dimple you’ve never seen. A trick of the mind. 

Oh but he’s here, in the flesh, your body knows before your brain comprehends his presence. The instant pull, the humming purr of the creature inside you, the blood level instinct.  

“Hey!” he calls. He sounds out of breath. Like he’s been running. Running to you. 

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out through your clenched fingers. 

“What?”

His smile drops when you take a step back. 

“I’m so sorry, I couldn’t make it, I thought I could, but I couldn’t make it, and then I couldn’t—“ 

Your throat closes around the memory and you swallow hard, eyelids weighed by stubborn tears that refuse to fall. 

He takes a step forward, tilting down his head. That scowl. That scowl, you know. You’re only too familiar with it.

“Then it was too late and I couldn’t reach you,” you finish.

“What happened to you?”

The low timbre of his voice reverberates inside your chest. His eyes flicker up to your forehead. Before you can think of anything to say, he cups your face with both hands and turns it to the side, towards the light. The whole sequence happens so fast that you trip on your feet and catch yourself on his forearms. 

“Who the fuck did that to you?” he grits, leaning so close his breath fans your forehead.

“I’m sorry,” you repeat in a whisper. 

“Did he do that to you?”

“What?”

“Your husband. Did he do that to you?” he asks again, louder, this time. Separating each syllable.

“Oh no! No, I fell.” You bring the tip of your fingers to the sensitive mark. “The nurse said it will fade.”

“How did you fall?” he presses. 

He doesn’t believe you. Like you could lie to him if you wanted to. 

The tension from his frame resonates through yours, where a week’s worth of suppressed emotions and tears are piled up, waiting for a detonator that will bring down the dam. You push away his hands, your frown mirroring his own. 

“I fell, ok? I’m here now, so let’s go inside.”

“I’m not– no,” he huffs, hands back on his hips, shaking his head. His boots scuff over the gravel, the grating sound loud in the empty lot, in the stifling night, and despite the dimness you can make out that scowl, ever present, splitting his gaze. 

“You can barely stand.”

However relevant, his rejection burns your cheeks. You raise your chin, leaning against the hood of the car for countenance. For balance.

“I’m fine. The room is free. Let’s go.” 

“I said no. I’m not fucking you. Look, I don’t know what happened to you, but you’re clearly not well enough–”

“You don’t fucking tell me what I’m well enough to do,” you snarl with your heartbeat in your throat, pushing away from the car, sustained by your last shred of strength. “Don’t assume you know what I’m capable of.”

He stands in front of you, seemingly unmoved, impossibly tall, infuriatingly silent. Stoic, and you’re thrumming with frustration, standing stubborn and brittle in front of him. He gives you none of the myriad of micro-expressions that usually play across his face, that you read instinctually. You feel ugly, exposed, but you withhold his gaze, jaw clenched, breathing heavy through your nose. You might faint again.

The silence drags on. It’s a minute before he moves again, crossing his arms over his chest. His voice is calm, when he speaks next, low and quiet, almost soothing. You don’t want it to be soothing. You don’t want to be soothed, you’re not done with your anger. He didn’t book the room, and now he doesn’t want to go in. You are a swappable vessel, after all. 

“I don’t. I don’t assume anything,” he says, “I don’t want to hurt you, that’s all.”

“I told you already, you cannot hurt me,” you snap, impatient.

“Wanna bet?”

You don’t need to. You know he could. Just not in the way he thinks he would. He’s already marked you permanently, deeper than any injury, any wound ever could. 

“Listen,” he begins with a sigh. 

“No, I get it, I look like shit and you don’t want to fuck me—“

“Alright, that’s enough!” he silences you with his index finger pointed at you. His voice booms in the dim parking lot, and you avert your eyes. Weariness washes over you, you fall back against the hood of your car.

His shoulders sink just a bit, the slightest drop in the tension pulling them taut. He steps closer to you, leans down, seeking your gaze, searching your face in the semi-darkness. 

“Hey, why don’t we go for a drive?” he offers. “We can talk. Or not. We can listen to the radio. Or just drive in silence, if you want. Clear our minds. What do you think?”

Our minds. 

He’s so close you can smell the clean scent of his t-shirt and the musk of him underneath it; you can feel your skin reaching out for him in feverish little tendrils you cannot control. 

“Ok.”

“Ok?”

“Yes, ok.”

He smiles, a cautious, appraising smile. The light catches at the mahogany depth of his eyes. He reaches for you, placing a large hand in the small of your back, and whispers, “Alright, let’s go.”

— 

The cab of the truck feels almost sacred. For months, it’s been your favorite daydream. Picturing him alone in the only private space of his you’ve ever seen, driving to you. 

What are his thoughts, then? Are they of you? Are they happy? Are they hopeful?

On any other occasion, you’d relish the opportunity to be in here with him. You’d catalog and store up every tiny detail for future use in your fantasies of him. Instead, you’re sitting tight and rigid on the wide bench seat, pressed against the door, face turned toward the window, seeing absolutely nothing. 

You hate yourself for that, too. 

After a while, you risk a glance at the dashboard. 

Judging by the analog dials, the truck has some mileage, but it’s visibly been well maintained. There’s no visible spots, no dust, no dents, only the patina of time. The vinyl bench seat is upholstered with a soft fabric whose colors have fainted after too many years under the Florida sun. There’s a cassette player and a cigarette lighter. The windows are manual. 

The one on Frankie’s side is cracked open. The night air carries his scent over to your side of the cab. Leather, laundry, musk. You can’t escape it. 

“Hey. You ok there?”

In the moonless night, you can only make out the sharp lines of his profile against the outside darkness of the country road. 

“I’m sorry,” you mumble. 

He looks at you, brow pinched, but his expression is soft. Compassionate. 

“C’mere.”

The truck slows down to a snail pace, and he unbuckles your seatbelt. You scoot over near him. Without taking his eyes off the road, he reaches to your right and rolls out the middle seat belt across your lap, fastening it between your hip and his. 

The truck accelerates to a cruising speed, and he wraps his arm over your shoulders, drawing you closer. 

You let him, allow your body to slump against his, embrace his warmth, your cheek pressed against his chest. It’s solid and strong, a match for your skeleton of loneliness. The suede fabric of his jacket is smooth, worn in. You inhale him there. You rest a hand on his thigh, and slide the other under his jacket, to rest on his chest. It rises and falls with his breathing. If you lie real still, you can feel the steady thumping of his heart. 

“I’m not married.”

“Ok.”

The word is felt through your cheek as much as you hear it. 

“The man I live with. He’s not my husband.”

“Ok.”

The nodding motion of his head nudges you a bit. 

“And I really fell.”

He remains silent, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. The leather lining creaks inside his fist. 

“I got sick, last Friday. I get these stomach bugs all the time, but this was a mean one. I tried to make it through the workday, but eventually I passed out. Like a corporate rendition of a Victorian damsel, or something.”

You chuckle, diverting the humiliating memory. Just something that happened. 

He tightens his embrace. 

“That when you hurt your head?”

“Yes. On the edge of the elevator’s frame. At work”

“Fuck. Did it hurt a lot?”

“Actually it didn’t? I was out. It hurt when I woke up later, in the hospital, though. I had this terrible headache. I didn’t know where I was, or when I was.”

You feel him shake his head as he asks, “Were you scared?”

How to put into words, that the only fear you’ve ever had, is to never see him again? 

“I survived,” you answer with a shrug and a little, empty laugh.

If you were brave enough, if you had some strength left, you’d ask. How did he feel, when he got to the motel and found the door to the room closed. Why he didn’t book the room again. Why he still came tonight. 

“Does it still hurt?” he asks. 

“No,” you lie. 

“Mmh. And for real?”

You rub your cheek against the smooth suede, imprinting your soft smile into it. And maybe some of your scent for him to keep. In case, just in case he does care.

“A little. I’ll be fine.”

The truck cruises over the black asphalt, between the straight, stretching yellow lines. 

Your next words come in quiet, but not hesitant.

“He wouldn’t hit me.”

“Ok.”

“That’s not what he does.”

He exhales slowly through his nose. 

“What does he do?”

You bite your cheeks, already regretting this moment of weakness. The treason. 

“He makes me doubt.”

“Him?”

“Myself. And him too.”

Your eyes clench shut. His chest flexes under your cheek as he hardens his grip on the wheel. 

The truck drives past a gas station, through a small town. Neatly delimited square lawns, white houses with flags hanging on their porches, Christmas lights blinking through square windows, and you tilt up your head to look at him in the streetlights. 

His outlined profile, his steady expression, everything about him feels safe and grounding. The beauty that radiates from him, from within him, sinks to your heart. It races madly, awakening the soreness in your bruised ribcage, and perhaps he can feel it, with the way you’re curled up into his side. Leaning down, he brushes a kiss to your forehead. You bunch up his T-shirt in your fist. 

Soon, the yellow lines unwinding endlessly in the truck’s headlights weigh down your eyelids. In the safety of Frankie’s hold, your mind and body slowly drift into a peaceful slumber. 

“You ok? Want me to close the window?”

His voice is a distant whisper skirting the edges of your consciousness. 

“No, ’m good,” you mumble. “Wanna stay like this forever.”

Under your palm, Frankie's heart thumps loud and heavy. 

—

When you wake up, the truck is still and silent. Engine cooled off, windows rolled up. The night is pitch dark. Frankie’s scent, heady, familiar, everywhere around you. Your cheek is resting on his lap, and his hand lies heavy on your waist. His breathing comes in even and slow. Both your seatbelts are unbuckled. Your feet are bare. 

Aside from your legs, sore from being crammed into the length of the seat bench, you feel better than you have in a week, with your headache finally gone. 

You sit up, take in your surroundings and his sleeping form, seated behind the wheel. He stirs, lifting an eyelid and glancing in your direction, the corner of his mouth tugged up into something that resembles a drowsy grin. 

At some point while you were asleep, he drove back to the motel. Parked the truck so that the cabin faces away from the only source of light. 

You stretch side by side, sleep-heavy limbs, comfortable silence. You watch him lift his hat and comb his fingers through his hair, a tender smile lifting the corner of your lips. You know the curls he hides there. 

Of course, it cannot last forever. Nothing ever does. In a couple of hours, it’ll be daybreak. He’s always gone, by then. 

You won’t make this uncomfortable or difficult for him. You slip your socks and shoes back on. You’re reaching for the handle when he stops you with a hand on your thigh. 

“Wait. I need to talk to you.”

His voice is low and husky from sleep. You realize you have never woken up next to him. Never slept with him through the night. Probably never will. 

You hum quietly, pivoting on the seat bench to face him. 

“I can’t come, next week,” he says, searching your eyes. 

Emotionless. That’s how you have to be. You know how to do this. Not when it comes to him, but you can try. You try your best, your very hardest. 

“I understand.”

“I imagine you can’t be here either.”

No, you can’t. Thanksgiving at your parents’, Christmas with Adrian’s family. Always. 

“No, I can’t.”

The following week, either. But you don’t share that.

This is when the two of you should discuss a practical means of communication. The awareness hangs between you, loud and unspoken. The consequences it would have on whatever it is that the two of you share. The shockwave, the shift in nature and intention. The names that exist to describe your situation, crass, overused, sordid. Tainted with lies and deception, secret texting, hushed phone calls, disgusting, undeniable guilt.

Frankie moves first, getting out of the truck and going round the hood to open the door for you. You slide out of the high cab into his arms, and when your feet touch the gravel, you wonder if this could be the last time he will ever hold you.

In the feeble porch lights, his face is a landscape of diffuse shadows. The dip in his collarbone draws you in, a beacon in a dark ocean. You nuzzle into it, inhaling his scent, taking in his fragrant warmth. You tuck your face in the crook of his neck, graze your cheek along his pebbled skin. What if you stayed there? Tucked away forever. Disappeared to the rest of the world. Would it matter? Would he let you? 

Your fists bunch the sides of his jacket. 

“Kiss me, Frankie, please.” 

“Yes.”

His first kiss is tentative, the plush cushion of his lips a soft press over yours, but they return immediately, hungry for a taste, for more, the tip of his tongue brushing against your parted lips. 

All that you crave, all that you need is here, in his embrace, between his arms and his hands tugging at your waist, beckoning your body closer to his. 

Your arms circle his neck, the tips of your fingers seeking his curls. His hand spans your back, finds your nape. He molds you into his chest, and with the way he’s pressing you against him, firm and commanding, you know this will be one of these moments that feed into your hopes. The delusion you’ve been nurturing since the first time you’ve faced him. The dream that he wants you to be his above anyone else. 

His third kiss opens you up, tongue swirling around yours, and you keen, rising to your tiptoes, angling your head to take more, more, more and he gives. Hands gripping, tongue licking, crushed lips and guttural moans, he gives you all that you need like he needs it too. 

You’re floating above the gravel, there’s no time, there’s no space, his body has no end and there’s no beginning to yours as he kisses away your fears, your doubts, your darkness. 

Together, you stand entwined between night and morning, linked by chance, need and hurt, bonded by will and desire. 

There’s no urgent hunger in the spanning of his splayed hands across your body, no rage in his kneading of the soft of your hips, or the swell of your breast. His grip is strong, but studious and thorough. He takes you in, your curves, your dips, the slopes and slants of your figure. Like he’s storing up the feelings and memories of you for when there will be no more, when you’re far and gone, away with your husband who is not your husband. There’s despair in his touch, but most of all, there’s foresight, and intent. 

He’s untucked your t-shirt, calloused hand skimming up to cup your breast, thumbing the hardening peak of your nipple.

Once again, you find yourself pressed against the hard, cool metal of the truck, and like the first time, you’re frantic in his hold, but he’s in control. His thick thigh parts your legs, offering friction to the coiling need between your hips, that fire pooling liquid down your core. You squirm against the firm muscles. 

“Want me to make you come, baby?”

He’s breathing into your mouth, and you whine in frustration. 

“No, I want you inside me.” 

“Shit, you sure?”

“I’m not made of glass, you’re not going to break me.” 

You push away to look at him, a demonstration of strength. All talk, but you’re that desperate. He pulls you back into him for another kiss, chuckling into your mouth. 

“You think I don’t know that?”

So many simple things you had never done with him before tonight, after months of lying bare and naked, to his gaze and his touch, inside and out. Driving, falling asleep, walking, his steadying hand nestled in the small of your back. 

Behind the reception desk, Raul seems unfazed by this new development. The drawing pad blackened in charcoal is back.

“Room number 2,” Frankie asks, “for the night.” 

It’s so wild to consider that the two men have never interacted, when Raul plays such an important part of your Friday ritual. You’d try to get Frankie’s full name, real name, perhaps, but Raul doesn’t ask. This is not that kind of place. 

“I can pay,” you whisper into Frankie’s shoulder, tucking your t-shirt back into your jeans. 

“I know you can.”

When he flips open his wallet, a small color picture pops out, next to his driver's license. The photo booth format is easily identifiable. In the snapshot, a bare-headed Frankie is holding a very young child. The picture is that of a moment, seized through movement, the kid holding the Standard Heating Oil hat in her chubby hands, likely mere seconds after having snatched it from Frankie’s head, who’s looking down at her, with a bemused grin, tousled hair. 

It’s him, his distinctive, sharp features unmistakable, only he hardly looks like the man you know. There’s no trace of the grief he carries like a cloak when he meets with you. No crease splitting his brow like when he looks at you. Instead, his eyes glint with pride, creasing with a smile that dimples his cheeks, large and genuine. And the child’s round, plump face is brightened by the same irresistible dimpled grin, the same head full of wild curls, the same mahogany eyes.   

You quickly avert your gaze, but you’ve seen enough. The guilt is physical, visceral, it squeezes your ribcage harder than the pliers. The pain has you wincing and you grip the reception desk for balance, but Frankie’s arm is already wrapped around your waist and he’s leading you outside. 

In a trance, you walk beside him to room number 2. Your room. That picture-perfect image of fatherly love dancing before your eyes. 

He’ll never be yours. The wild creature shivers between your lungs. The certitude shatters your heart. 

Stepping inside, you’re rooted to the floor. Limbs too heavy to lift. Your blood has turned into lead. The fire in your core is a pile of ashes. You can taste it on the back of your tongue. 

Frankie flicks up the toggle switch, and the room lights up in amber hues. It feels too big, the satin quilt, the brown carpet, the yellow curtains, everything is foreign and distant.

Behind you, he sets his hat on the desk, drapes his jacket on the back of the chair.

“You ok?”

His voice jolts you up. You turn around to face him, unshed tears hanging round and heavy from your lashes. After a beat, he takes a step towards you, and you feel that absolute pull tugging from behind your midriff. 

His gaze drifts up to your fresh scar, where your flesh is tender, swollen and bruised. Yours travel down along the pebbled skin of neck, to the dip between his collarbone. A firework of freckles springs from the V-shaped collar of his faded blue t-shirt.  

Carefully, he slides your t-shirt out of your jeans again. You lift your arms like a docile child, let him undress you. He places a hand, warm and calloused, beneath your sternum. His palm heats your skin, warmth seeping into you. It untangles something, there. Something you didn’t know was still bruised. You lean into it. 

He stays like that for a while. 

Then his hand skates up to the base of your throat. His cold hard stare finds your soft sad eyes. 

“Do you get wet, thinking I could hurt you?”  

“I trust you,” you answer, a nod contradicting your words. His gaze hardens.

“Why did you think I wouldn’t come tonight, then?”

You shake your head, blinking fast. You never mentioned that. How would he know your thoughts? 

“Don’t you know I would fuck you on my deathbed?” he grits.

But you don’t know. Of course you don’t know, and how could you? Nothing in your life has ever prepared you for him, for this, for the strength of that pull, inescapable, for this obsession that has uprooted your life, your body, your instincts. Nothing has prepared you for the magnetism of his skin, the things you’d do to be in his presence, to breathe the same air, what you’d risk for his touch, what you’d give up for his attention, what you’d destroy for his affection . Your comfort, your safety, your future, your health. Your family and his, nothing fucking matters compared to the insatiable hunger of this wild thing inside your chest and its incessant chant of him, him, him. 

Your chest heaves, but his grip is firm. He leans down, lowering his lips to your ear, where he whispers, “What’s your name?”

You close your eyes, the wild creature is gnawing at your chest, eating you raw from within. 

“I want you.”

His hand lingers, travelling higher, fingers splayed across the width of your throat in a loose grip. You hope he tightens it. Like he does sometimes when he’s inside you. Tune out your mind, toss you into white-hot pleasure. Into oblivion. 

He doesn’t. 

He’s never truly been gentle with you before. Tonight, his kisses are languid, his touch soft and slow along your ribs. Delicate, when he reaches the swell of your breasts and slides down the cup of your bra, replacing the fabric with the palms of his hands. When he leans down into you, wrapping his plush lips around your nipple, sucking in the peaked bud ever so lightly, flicking the flat of his hot wet tongue around it, lips pursed, suckling. 

Against your belly, you feel him harden. You shiver with arousal and anticipation, with exhaustion. With the weight of this week and the burden of your life. With pain, ache and soreness. With your empty body, and your empty cunt. With that creature in your chest that can’t be tamed or satisfied. Can’t even be named. 

You shiver in his hold, for fear that this’ll be the last time. For fear that he’ll never be yours, that he’ll never want you the way you want him, with determination, with madness, without a choice. 

“I want you inside me, Frankie please," you breathe out, and he backs you into the bed to lay you down on the quilt. 

The fabric is cold under your burning skin, you shudder at the contact. He takes off your shoes, rolls off your socks. He slides your jeans down and off your legs, then your panties. 

You sit up to watch him undress, his eyes of mahogany brown never once leaving your face. 

He stands before you, naked, erect, filling your vision with this breadth, and you want to rip your beating heart out of your aching chest. 

The bed dips and he’s crawling over you. Leaning down, he drags the crown of his head up along your belly, along the valley of your breasts, his hair a soft caress on your quivering skin. Your fingers twine in his curls, you get lost in the sensation. For weeks he has barely let you touch it, kept it out of your reach. Now the abundance feels decadent, your head sinks back into the mattress with a faint exhale. 

Cautiously, he parts your folds with two knuckles. You bite down a gasp, tensing up. You can’t shake off that chilling dread, the one that trickles inside you, cold and piercing, when you think you’re losing him. But your body knows better, that sticky wet slick pooled between your hips, the coiling heat at the center of you. 

“Stop me,” he breathes into the crook of your neck, “don’t let me hurt you.”

He inches the tip of his length inside you with a strained groan, hooking your legs around his waist. He tries to work you open with a few shallow thrusts, panting against your temple.

“Fuck you’re tight.”

“Please, Frankie–”

His frame tenses up under your palms.

“I’m trying, you’re too— fuck, you’re too tight. Let me eat you open.”

“No!”

That’s not what you want, not tonight when you have no strength to spare, no time to lose, no patience left out. 

“I can—“ You trip over your words. 

“What?”

“I can sit on it.”

Heat creeps up your neck, setting your cheeks ablaze. He gives you a quiet chuckles. 

“Yea. Yea you can.”

He grabs your wrists and lifts you with easy strength. A few swift movements and he’s lying on the bed underneath you, your folded knees a straddle across his lap. You feel dizzy, like your blood can’t course along your veins fast enough, like it’s no match for his strength, for your arousal. 

“Spit on it,” he says. 

You circle his cock, smooth, heavy. It throbs into your hand. You take it all in, with a trance-like gaze, the coarse curls at his base brushing your skin, the round head, an angry shade of red, the ridges and pumped up veins along the length, the tip of your fingers that don’t meet around it.  

“Come on, don’t be shy, spit on it.”

Bending down, you lick a broad stripe along the thick ridge of his underside, from his balls to the fat round tip, where the skin is smooth and his taste heady, and he hisses something you can’t make out. It shoots through you, his sound, his burning skin, his taste. The curled tip of your tongue slides inside the small leaking slit, collecting the pearly drops he gives you. Your eyes flutter shut. His hands grip your thighs above the knees as you take him into your mouth, his fingers digging, a bruising furrow, something desperate. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Your lips slide along him, up and down, tongue wrapped around his girth. With hollowed cheeks, you take him deeper with each stroke until your head is spinning and you slip him out, rueful, glassy-eyed. 

His breathing comes in almost as heavy as yours. 

“Sit on it, now.”

His voice sounds wrecked, like you must look. 

“Yes,” you pant. 

Hands braced on Frankie’s chest, you’re not that flimsy, empty shell. You’re that fierce creature inside your chest, the one that claws and purrs and spits and demands. You tap into the bottomless pit of its life force, tap into the rumbling of Frankie’s ragged breathing under your palms, and you take.  

Eyes strained on the solid breadth of his chest, on the expanse of his amber skin and the darker circles of his nipples, on the constellation of soft brown freckles that turn your insides into a sticky leaking mess, you slide up his lap, part your folds with his hard cock, rub your clit over it.

“Fuck, you feel good,” he murmurs, not for you, not really. To himself. Like the memory comes back crushing. 

The bobbing of his throat, the low rasp of his voice, the wet sound of your slick smearing over his cock, it all builds up hot and prickly right under your navel. 

Sweat breaks on your forehead, along your spine, down in the bow shape of your arched back. 

You push away from the cradle of his hips, knees sinking into the creaking mattress. Raise yourself from his heat just enough to line him up, with his hands curled around your thighs, a steadying help. 

You’re tight, but wanton-wet. He’s a gliding stretch along your walls as you sink down on him with all your weight, your cunt ready to collapse, fluttering frantically. 

His thrashes back into the mattress, corded neck, strained muscles. Thick fingers bruising the tender flesh of your legs. 

“Fuck wait, don’t move, don’t move. Stop moving, shit!”

You still, not like you can move anyway, the pleasure-pain has you numbed out, limp, blinded. Your head lolls back, your eyes roll shut. Your lower lip twitches with the tension and the stretch. He’s so big you forget how to breathe but this is what you wanted, for him to annihilate all the other pains.

A sound comes out of your parted lips. A grating against your vocal cords, a primitive vibration of the air that’s punched out of your lungs. It’s not you, it’s the creature mewling.  

You can feel his cock pulsating hard and angry inside your belly. It’s a tidal ripple that travels up your chest. Your heart skips several beats. 

His hands cup roughly around your breasts. You lean forward into his hold, hips swaying, slack mouthed. You keep him inside you, a deep roll, hipbones to hipbones. The coarse black hair at his base a harsh scrape against your swollen clit. 

And suddenly, he fucks up into you. A hard shove, filling, merciless, into your cervix. You cry, nearly toppling backward and he sits up with a cinch, arms wrapping around your waist, catching you before you can fall. 

“Too much?”

“Oh god yes.”

You’re crying, at last. Big, hot beady tears of salt rolling down your cheeks. Full, fucked out, filled to the brim. Everything that’s not him obliterated. Thoughts, emotions, sensations.

“That’s what you wanted, right? You want too much, baby?”

His voice is quiet and soft like silk, teeth raking along your throat. It’s almost a bite but not quite, tongue tasting your sweat, lips wrapping around your pulse point, barely sucking in. You can’t speak, your nails dig into his arms, forming little pink crescents you’re not allowed to leave behind. 

You nod, you breathe out, “Yes, I want too much.” 

He straightens up, your breasts are pressed to his chest, sweats mingling. His scent is overwhelming. That musk he exudes, a leathery spice, whenever you’re fucking. The scent of his desire. 

His hand tangles in your hair. He makes sure you’re looking at him.

“Take it. Take what you want. Fuck, you’re beautiful, so fucking beautiful, you believe it, right?” 

You try to tilt your face down, hide your tears, hide your scar. He doesn’t let you. So you give in. Because, what if you are? 

“Say it again, please.” 

“Look what you do to me, baby. Can you feel what you do to me?”

His fingers dig into the soft flesh of your ass, and he grinds you onto his cock, a slow, thorough grind, splitting you deeper onto him. It’s coiling fast, hot and heavy, right at the center of you. 

“I’m gonna come, Frankie.”

“Do it. Come. Use me, make yourself come on my cock. Make yourself feel good. Take everything you need.” 

He talks you through your orgasm as you tremble and crumble in his hold. It’s a high that feels like a free-fall, like you’re unraveling, like you’re never landing. Like your skin’s burning and your mind is the horizon. 

You’re sobbing quietly when he carefully eases out of you, still hard. He carries you in his arms and you think you’re floating. You’re drained, boneless, falling asleep already. 

He lies you down under the covers, tucks you in. Places a glass of water on the nightstand. Folds your clothes on the desk. 

You don’t hear him dress up. You don’t hear him leave. 

And in a few hours, when room service wakes you up, barging into the room, you won’t remember his forehead kiss. 

Glossary:

Cycle - a year (four seasons)

Phase - a day. 7 total, each a different color marked by the daily shifting of chamaeleons' skin. An 8th color, black, signifies the end of a phase.

Yesterphase - yesterday

Constellations Referenced:

Chamaeleon - Chamaeleon

Bird of Paradise - Apus

Compass - Circinus

Lynx - Lynx

Ramus Pomifer - Apple Branch (obsolete)

You return to consciousness with a full-bodied jolt. Blinking to clear the daze of slumber clinging to your eyes, you’re unsure when you’d fallen asleep. The pointed stones of Perobury Circle stand tall around you, guardians of your slumber, offering a small shield of protection from the wilds beyond. Yawning, you sit up and stretch your arms over your head, spine popping with the movement, forgetting for one brief tranquil moment you’re not alone.

But recollection of a certain scruffy-haired, bite-happy soul eater comes mid-breath like lightning striking your brain, body freezing in place with your arms still held aloft, eyes darting about in search of shapes in the shadows and finding nothing. There’s the frantic thought he’s right behind you, that wide-stretched animalistic grin on full display, but the only thing you get for twisting around for a glimpse is a sore neck and the whip of your yellow Chamaeleon tail pendant thumping against your chest. 

Pero’s absence does little to quash your unease, if anything it amplifies the feeling, skin stretched taut against the frame of your bones. For someone who was so keen yesterphase to fight a superpowered entity and the stars themselves on your behalf, it doesn’t seem right for him to have suddenly disappeared on you. Did something happen while you were asleep?

Part of you remains stunned you woke up still breathing at all, let alone with your lantern light still as vibrant as ever at your side. Not a single crack or scratch on it. Once again Pero has challenged what you believe to be true about the uncontrollable nature of soul eaters, and once again you’re unprepared to be wrong in your judgments.

You look around again as you stand up, but if Pero is in the near proximity of the standing stones then he’s concealed himself entirely from your detection. Brushing off bits of grass and dirt from your clothes, you’re reminded of the holes in your shirt, feeling the feather-light tickling of air on your stomach. If you’re lucky enough to find a trader with a needle and thread you could make repairs, though it’d be less of a hassle just to make a trade for a brand new shirt. There’s a meeting place for merchants roughly a three phase-trek from here you could just–

Well, no, you guess you can’t just start making plans. Not after Pero decided to insert himself into the narrative of your life and bring chaos with him. For all you know he’s hunting down another soul eater right this moment, defending you as he promised.

But if that was the case, wouldn’t it have made sense to warn you of a potential danger? At the very least he could’ve woken you up so you had some fucking clue what was going on and didn’t resemble a total idiot turning in circles looking for him.

Like you do right this very moment.

You purse your lips, exhaling a sigh through your nose as the cold weight of realization presses down between your shoulders. 

He’s gone. 

You knew better. You fucking knew better than to allow a soul eater of all creatures to get close to you, and still, that’s exactly what happened because you couldn’t restrain your own curiosity. The sound of your name fucked with your head, guard dropping just enough for Pero to sink his claws in deep.

And you wonder then, how much of what Pero shared was a lie and what, if anything, was genuine? Because you…

You’d believed him. 

Like a massive, fucking idiot.

“Hope you like the taste of iron, mutt,” you mutter peevishly, tugging the strap of your bag higher on your shoulder, “‘cause I’m gonna cut out your stardamned tongue.”

There’s a moment after stepping outside of the stone circle where your scar twinges, pressing right up against your pulse. Like it’s a direct response to your furious vow from wherever the fuck Pero’s run away to. The sensation only lasts a couple seconds, doesn’t even hurt like it has sometimes in the past, but it leaves a sour taste in the back of your mouth all the same. Any lingering squirming doubts in your gut that yesterphase had been an elaborate hallucination are firmly and permanently squashed. It had all been terribly real—Pero, the bond, all of it.

Your boots strike the ground firmer with each step, silently fuming.

Knowing now of the bond tying your existence to Pero’s, it sinks in all those times the bite mark had pulled and tugged, forcing you to stop or even completely turn around sometimes, were the result of Pero using the link like a leash around your neck. Why, though? Was it a form of entertainment for him? Having been controlled by a puppet master himself, you’d like to think he wouldn’t so soon become one. Did he not trust your judgement in deciding where to go?

Traversing the realm on your own for several cycles has instilled in you a level of confidence that might come across as brainless ignorance to some. You used to suffer from paralyzing indecision in the phases following the Marrow’s end, convinced one wrong move would be your doom, but you found strength in a valuable lesson from your seasons of sword training: hitting a moving target is a fuck of a lot harder than hitting a motionless one.

So you forced your feet to keep moving and you’ve never stopped since. It’s dangerous, anyways, contemplating staying somewhere longer than a phase or two. Contemplating leads to imagining and imagining leads to wishful thinking of a life that’ll never be yours. A terrible cycle to avoid falling prey to at all cost.

You’ve navigated just about every biome the realm contains, from snowy mountains as tall as the sky to sandy beaches with inky oceans and humid swamps swarming with legions of bugs. Sometimes you’re more purposeful in choosing your destination, such as seeking out familiar trading routes when your supplies are dwindling. Weather plays a factor, too, driving you up higher north or further down south if the temperatures become too severe to ignore.

The realm isn’t a kind one, finicky and grim, but beauty persists beneath the shroud—you’ve seen it.

You see it now. The grasslands in this area are relatively flat, covered in clover patches and sprigs of wildflowers colored periwinkle and violet, attracting butterflies of similar hues. A family of cottontail rabbits forage off to your right, red eyeshine triggered by your lantern light, and the largest of the group thumps the ground with its foot. The others freeze, motionless as the distant standing stones, gauging if you’re dangerous, before another thump assures them you’re not going to bother them. The mass nibbling resumes for all except the lone, big guard who maintains a careful watch, boring steady holes into your backside. 

You’d be lying if you said you weren’t envious. Must be nice having someone keeping a lookout, implicitly committed to their duty. Your parents used to take shifts, and there had been sentries along the Marrow’s perimeter, but none of them were without human weaknesses. They’d take smoke or bathroom breaks, drift off to sleep accidentally, dismiss a noise as nothing to worry about—and in the end, they all paid the fatal price.

Threats come in all shapes and sizes. Soul eaters are at the top of the long list with humans in second place so narrowly close the line can be practically nonexistent some phases; then come the multitude of equally ferocious and duplicitous predators that would love to feast on your intestines. It’s become second nature now to stay vigilant, listening for the slightest rustle or skitter, but you’re not without weaknesses either. 

Bouts of tinnitus in your left ear, pounding worse than a drumbeat whenever your exhaustion reaches its peak, keeping you up with gritty eyes and jumbled thoughts. Joints that ache so fiercely in the cold you half-commit to the idea of cutting off limbs. Long distance vision not quite as sharp as it was last cycle. The list goes on, the point is made. You’re no spring chicken.

It's the deliberately loud scraping of pebbles shifting in the dirt beneath heavy footfalls that tips off your awareness you’re being followed. A stirring of movement encroaching from behind, a line of heat at your back, looming large and broad as a mountain when you abruptly come to a halt. You know who it is without sneaking a glimpse. You know he’s making himself known to you on purpose, like an attention-seeking mutt pressing its nose against the back of its owner’s leg.

A pause ensues, neither side advancing or retreating. 

You feel the delicate shift in the air the instant a tendril of smoke creeps nearer into your personal space, hovering mere centimeters over your shoulders, slowly drifting up, up, up. Your bite mark pulses, faint discomfort beneath the skin at first, then tightening up in a nasty cramp as wispy smoke becomes tangible fingers tracing the ridged edges of teeth indents. 

Whirling around, your sword’s unsheathed in a blur, ichor blooming from a cut sliced through the palm of Pero’s outreached hand. “¡No me toques!” (Don’t touch me!)

Pero’s jaw slackens, just slightly, eyebrows climbing up. You see how the offending hand flexes once, twice, wound smoothing back into whole flesh with a blur of smoke much to your displeasure. There are dirt stains beneath the nails of his thick fingers like he’s been digging. And then his fangs glint in blue lantern light, not quite smirking as he murmurs, “Sensible.” (Sensitive.)

You lift your sword. “See how sensitive you are feeling with this up your—”

“Here. Eat.” 

A ramus pomifer is pulled from his jacket pocket and held in front of your face. 

You stare, jaw working against the sizzling anger burning a hole in your throat, flummoxed by the sudden appearance of a fruit you haven’t tasted, let alone seen, since your childhood. Solid red and bell shaped, an incredible source of hydration with each crunchy bite gushing water. Ramus pomifers grow deep underground, much farther down than most edible plants, requiring an abundance of patience and time (and more than a little luck) to find and dig them up for harvest. One had been included in a box of supplies your father once traded with another man, whether the fruit had fallen inside by accident or was tossed in out of ignorance you’ll never know for sure, but you remember nothing in the realm had ever tasted sweeter than that first bite. And nothing has come close since.

Your stomach growls, pointedly reminding you you’ve yet to eat anything since waking up. Pero gives you a knowing look, waggling the ramus pomifer tauntingly.

You’re not proud of the manic way you put away your sword in order to snatch the fruit from him with both hands, clutching it tightly to your chest, but food is power, Pero had rightly said before, and you can’t let something so valuable slip away. You hold it to your nose, deeply inhaling, mouth immediately salivating at the sweetness swirling deep in your lungs. Stars above that’s good. 

Maybe it’s the lingering embers of anger from Pero’s attempt at touching you, maybe it’s something else you don’t have a name for but—your teeth hesitate to break the fruit’s skin, slowly pulling back, lowering it just enough to meet the soul eater’s gaze. 

“Is this a ploy?” you ask. “Trying to sway my negative opinion about you? Do you really think a ramus pomifer will fix everything?”

For a long moment, there’s only the sound of your breathing. The edges of Pero’s figure have the appearance of smudged ink, inexact and fuzzy, utterly impervious to the proximal glow of your lantern light. Only his eyes remain definitively sharp, glittering like fixed stars, pinpointed on you with staggering intensity.

“Stop.” You shove down the nascent fear beginning to stir. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Stop staring. Stop touching.” He pitches his gravelly voice higher, mocking you, followed by a derisive scoff. “You make a lot of demands.”

“Either answer my question,” you retort coolly, “or smoke off for another five cycles.”

His upper lip twitches. Maybe a snarl, maybe not. His physical shape isn’t holding together as firmly as before, giving him a dreamlike quality, like he could morph into something else at any second.

“It's just food, Moss,” he says curtly. “Not a ploy or a magic charm or a bandage. Just food.”

You glance down at the fruit again, feeling the smooth red under your fingertips. Just food, huh? It’s an answer without any real weight or significance, granting no satisfaction in hearing it. The muscles that had been bracing for a fight, an argument at least, begrudgingly ease up.

“Tú piensas demasiado.” (You think too much.) His tone lacks judgement or heat. Just an underlying thread of dry humor you don’t know how to process.

Ignoring the remark, you devour a large chunk of the ramus pomifer instead, water messily dribbling down your chin. Oh fuck, you barely stifle a whimper as you chew, fighting against the primal urge to cram the whole thing in your mouth. Most of your meals are quick ones, eaten on the go, but this is a luxury your brain hisses at you to savor, to lick up every last delicious drop.

Pero watches you eat, looking at you like a puzzle half solved. You don’t know if it’s a predator thing, or if he doesn’t remember humans aren’t fond of being stared at, or he does remember and just doesn’t care—but he seems strangely enthralled as you suck out the water from the center of the fruit with a loud slurp.

“You woke up sooner than I predicted,” he says suddenly.

You pause, blinking, then shrug a shoulder. “Being predictable gets you killed.”

“Not when I’m watching your back.”

“But you weren’t watching my back. You were gone,” you say, tone firmer now as you remember waking up alone and paranoid. “What, guilty-conscience wouldn’t let you stick the escape attempt?”

The skin of your bite mark gives a harsh tug, a claw slicing through layers straight to bone, and you choke on your last mouthful of fruit, forcing your throat to swallow with a painful gulp, tears beading in your eyes.

And you feel that same whisper of movement again, a presence closing in, tension mounting in the air. Your heartbeat quickens, looking up into Pero’s burning eyes, searing your lungs with their fervency. 

“Molesto, ¿sí? (Annoying, yes?) But it’s also temporary. I am not so fortunate. There is no escape for me. From the moment I bit you, you’ve lingered in my every thought. You’ve filled the vacant cavity Tao Tei carved in my head.” A wisp of black mass presses against the center of your forehead, fleeting yet solid, drawing a gasp from your lips. “I know when you’re hungry or anxious. I know when you’re hurt, what your pain feels like when you bleed. Sometimes—” In a blink he’s changed himself, nebulousness solidifying into sculpted muscle and flesh, from hazy to high-definition in less than a second, a startling transition that must mean something but what? “Sometimes I even know what you need before you realize it yourself.”

The words hit you like hailstones, rapid and all at once, majorly disorienting. They shatter upon impact into a thousand fragments, icy splinters buried deep in your skin, numbing you to your core.

Serves you right, you think bitterly. Cause and effect, mutt. Every choice has a consequence.

Is that all I am? A lonely ghost and an invasive parasite, you think, bleak and weary. Is this the grand purpose the stars have crafted?

“That so?” you manage, internally wincing at the thin tremble in your voice. “Tell me then, what do I need right now?”

Pero tilts his head, angles of his face sharp in the lantern light.

“Someone who gives a damn about you,” he replies simply, direct as a punch to the head.

Your jaw falls open before you can catch it.

“That’s—” Your tongue trips over itself, slamming into the backs of your teeth. Indignation swells, a mighty wave of defensiveness, but you just—you can’t deny a truth so large, so brutally real, even though admitting it feels like you’re exposing your vulnerable underbelly to a massive beast. 

Unbiddenly, you think of a rabbit stomping its foot. Watchful, on guard, ever protective of what it treasures most. 

Pero is everything you’ve been desiring—someone who knows you (not completely, no, but enough to count, enough to rattle your bones each time he says your name), who’s strong and observant, who can make up for your weaknesses—and everything you’ve been warned to avoid. For every example of trustworthiness he exhibits, there’s a sharp, critical voice in the back of your head refusing to surrender. Not out of stubbornness or spite, but out of fear. Fear of the potential repercussions of letting him get too close. 

Betrayal never comes from an enemy after all.

Swallowing hard, your voice is quiet as you ask, “Why does it have to be you?”

“Because there’s no one in line behind me,” he answers. Not a statement of pity or sympathy, just a stone cold fact. The stars are selfish, blood is red, and he’s the only ally you’ve got in the realm.

You look at Pero—really, fully staring as he’s done to you several times over, noticing details previously missed. Faint lines crease his forehead and the corners of his eyes, hinting at many cycles of stress and toilsome thoughts. The scar on his face splits at the bottom of his eye, giving the skin a cracked appearance like pottery shards roughly glued back together. Knives don’t naturally cut like that in the heat of battle, which means his scar is the creation of someone deliberately taking their time with him. 

Pero must mistake your prolonged silence for obstinacy because his eyes narrow, a growl building in his throat, “Si te hubiera querido muerta, nunca te habrías despertado.” (If I wanted you dead, you would’ve never woken up.) 

“You think I don’t know that? ¡No soy una idiota!” (I am not an idiot!) you snap back, because he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t—

“Then you also know I could use the bond to coerce you into going with me.” 

Your mouth shuts, teeth clacking. Tension thickens in the air. Your thoughts are loud in your head, colliding with one another in deafening crashes. One stands out above the rest, blaring: Stab him. Now.

“But I won’t.” Your hand pauses mid-reach for your weapon, his vehemence taking you by surprise. “I haven’t lied to you yet, Moss. I’m not your enemy.”

“I do,” you begin haltingly, reluctant to admit it because admitting it makes it real, “actually believe you’re telling the truth. About Tao Tei and her army, and needing me alive to defeat her. But I can’t ignore my instincts. And that’s what makes this whole thing so damn hard.” 

“What are your instincts telling you?”

You force steel into your spine, pushing yourself to withstand the weight of his searching gaze. “That it doesn’t matter how many ramus pomifers you bring me or how many threats you kill. It doesn’t even matter that you’re a soul eater or that your dogteeth gave me permanent scars. You could be completely toothless or human or a fallen star straight out of the damn sky—it doesn’t fucking change anything. The worst wounds are caused by the closest people. I don’t know if I’ll be able to trust anybody ever again.”

“Moss…” 

“But Tao Tei is bigger than my issues. And if she’s as selfish as you claim, we both know she’ll drown the realm in blood if she isn’t stopped,” you tell Pero, squeamish at the vile visual of gushing scarlet flashing through your thoughts. “I made up my mind at yesterphase’s end. I can’t run away. Not this time. I have to fight back, however I can. And if that means a partnership with you is my best shot then I’ll do it. I’ll go with you. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

You’re breathing hard, unused to speaking so much. Unused to sharing so much. Nervous energy floods your system, fizzing and popping, making you hyper aware of the holes in your clothing, the curling of your toes in your shoes. Feels like Pero himself is lingering under your skin like an itch you can’t scratch.

The ensuing silence gets to you, gaze dropping to your lantern light hanging from your bag. Not for the first time you desire a method to shut off the glow, granting you a moment or two to fully cloak yourself in the darkness. Invisible to all your problems. Comments like that earned you concerned looks in the past, occasionally someone would be brave enough to ask if you had a death wish. You didn’t know how to articulate you wanted an escape from reality without sounding like you were confirming their fears, so you’d merely blamed it on tiredness, forcing a rueful laugh to really sell it. Worked every time.

Without uttering a single comment, Pero steps around you on silent feet, yet the movement sends a startled jolt down your spine like he’d electrocuted you.

You turn slowly, watching him, split between thinking this is it, he’s leaving permanently this time, and marveling at how it shouldn’t be possible for someone built like a brick house to move with such grace. A lot about Pero shouldn’t be possible. Yet he just…does it all regardless. The stars must hate him, you’re certain of this, for being an entity they cannot so easily bind with limitations. 

Pero stops at the very edge of your lantern light’s influence, perched upon the wavering boundary between what your eyes can perceive and what lies in total darkness beyond. Only then and there does he tilt his head to peer back at you over his shoulder, one eyebrow cocked.

“¿Vienes o no?” (Are you coming or not?)

“Sí.” The answer flows naturally off your tongue, easy and instant. There’s a brief ensuing moment where you close your eyes, preparing for regret to creep in, a sharp tingle of apprehension burrowing between your shoulder blades. But the seconds continue to tick by and nothing comes. 

Understanding emerges from the depths of your churning thoughts. If you’re going to trust anyone in this realm ever again, you’ve got to start by trusting your own damn self.

Opening your eyes, looking at the soul eater ahead, a smirk tugs at your mouth. “Pero,” you say with as much seriousness as you can muster, waiting for his acknowledging grunt to continue. “You know there’s a special code of conduct for travel companions. I expect nothing less than the utmost respect-”

“Moss,” he interrupts dryly, bringing out your wide smile. “Get the fuck up here where I can see you.”

Pero doesn’t move until you’re walking past him, laughing under your breath. Your arm brushes against his, the faintest touch of contact shooting a quiver of warmth straight up to the bite. It’s…surprisingly not a horrible sensation, for once. The soul eater follows soundlessly at your heels, close enough your senses prickle with awareness he’s there, yet also somehow keeping enough distance you don’t feel smothered by the immensity of his presence.

A creature of impossibilities.

The terrain gradually loses its flatness, becoming uneven with raised mounds and low dips, like someone took a shovel to the dirt and dug for buried treasure a long time ago. And with the change of terrain comes a change of fauna and flora too. A sharp tug on the strap of your bag narrowly prevents you from stepping in a small hole hidden in the wispy tall grass, some kind of animal burrow that would’ve murdered your ankle. 

“Cuidado,” Pero says. (Careful.) The grass rustles and shifts as he appears at your side. “I’ll take the lead for now.”

He unhooks his fingers, a ghost of a touch brushing your bare arm. You clasp your hand over the spot, implicitly drawn to the lagging flutter of heat. If Pero notices, he doesn’t deem it worth commenting on, trudging up to the top of a hill.

You hurry to catch up, careful to step exactly where the soul eater had, heedful of any more hidden holes, breathing hard when you finally reach him. Leaning back on your heels, you suck in deep breaths, head craning up and immediately spotting the shiny wings of the Bird-of-Paradise, easily identified for their reddish hue. Blood spatter discoloring the beautiful feathers after losing her feet in a manmade trap. The other constellations took pity on her according to ancient lore, sweeping up the little bird into the cosmos to spare her from death, but the red tinge remains. A permanently open wound.

The Bird-of-Paradise didn’t ask for the stars to intervene. They made a selfish choice, thinking they knew best, but in the end all they did was perpetually prolong her pain.

You don’t understand how people can keep praying to the stars, phase after phase, tragedy after tragedy, when proof of their inconsiderateness is right there every summer season, bleeding in the sky. 

You blow out a breath, letting go of the anger starting to simmer in your chest. It’s a waste of time thinking about such things.

“Something’s wrong?” Pero’s voice comes from deep within his chest, much like whitewater rapids scraping against rock as it churns and whirls. The question would sound like one of concern from anyone else, but from him it just sounds calmly perceptive, already aware of your turbulent emotions and just waiting for you to admit what’s caused them. 

The bond…you wonder if you’ll ever become used to it. 

“M’fine,” you answer, head still tilted up, glimpsing the soul eater in your peripheral watching you pretending not to watch him. “Just wondering where we’ll find Tao Tei.”

Pero doesn’t answer right away. You have the vaguest sense you’ve disappointed him somehow, even though his face is as impassive as ever.

“Where? No tengo ni idea.” (I have no idea.)

“You don’t–you don’t know?” you echo, eyebrows climbing up your forehead incredulously. “Are you serious?”

“I’m no longer linked to her, so I can’t pinpoint her exact location. But there will be signs.” His eyes flick towards the darkness stretched out for miles beyond the hill you stand on. “Withering plants, a complete dome of silence, packs of soul eaters prowling around. The air will become hard to breathe, a toxic miasma clogging up your lungs. That’s how we’ll know she’s near.”

You turn over the description in your head, trying to imagine it. But you have the nagging feeling it’s pointless. Whatever horrors you conjure up, they’ll pale when faced with reality. 

“Have you seen Tao Tei since you bit me?” you ask, finally turning to him, breath hitching at the immediate snap of his eyes onto your face. There’s something there in the vast whiteness, something brittle and hard to define.

“No. Wasn’t strong enough.”

“To see her? Is she really ugly or something?”

“To survive the encounter, idiota. She’s got every soul eater in the realm under her thumb. One command from her and they’ll come swarming.” Pero rakes a hand through his hair, pulling at the curls. You can hear how he’s forcing the words out, each one cut on his fangs. There’s thinly restrained frustration there. Frustration at the circumstances and his own limitations. You recognize it because you know it personally, how it sounds, how it burns on the inside. 

“And what about now?” you ask tentatively, aware you’re toeing a sensitive line. The same one you crossed before when you asked for Pero’s name, when you couldn’t get your stupid feet to just walk away. Your curiosity had gotten the better of you then. You won’t make the same mistake twice. You won’t. But times like this, when the topic’s Tao Tei and there’s clearly a struggle playing out behind Pero’s eyes, you think a little prodding is necessary. “Do you feel strong enough?”

Pero’s lips press together, seeming to consider the question for a moment, before he looks forward once more. The blue of your lantern light paints the side of his face, the cut of his stubbled jaw and sharp nose. “Stay close,” he says firmly, and it’s not the answer desired, but an answer all the same. “We’ll find somewhere to rest further up ahead.”

You follow without complaint, saving your oxygen for the numerous hills yet to conquer. Still, the question seems to slither through the grass alongside you, nipping at your boots, impossible to dismiss.

Do you feel strong enough? 

A grove of white-striped trees welcomes you past the rolling hills, tall enough you have to lean your head way back to peer up at the starlight twinkling through the canopy gaps. Leaping off a low branch a flying squirrel takes flight, gliding away in search of more food. There’s a dewy smell floating in the air, like fresh moss and stagnant water. No one’s disturbed this area in quite some time. 

It’s quiet between you and Pero. Has been for awhile now. It’s not uncomfortable, probably because you’re used to lengthy silences, but it’s not entirely pleasant either. There’s a plethora of subjects to talk about, except whenever you open your mouth nothing comes out, words failing you. If Pero’s as attuned to your emotions through the bond as he claims, then he must sense your shilly-shallying yet he holds his tongue, not even one teasing remark at your expense. 

You wonder if that means something.

The grove teems with evidence of a thriving animal and insect population. Abrasions on the striped bark from deer antlers. Intricate spider webs spun along the exposed roots. A buzzing bee hive you keep a wide berth from, even though honeycomb sounds delicious right now. Somewhere in the canopy of intersecting branches, a bird chirps a sweet melody, the notes reminding you bittersweetly of songs sung in the Marrow.

“Almost feels too nice here. Like we’ve entered another realm or something,” you say, a little too loudly, but it does the trick of crashing your nostalgic train of thought before it stirred up emotions better left undisturbed. 

Pero huffs a sound that could be a laugh, or perhaps a scoff, it’s hard to tell without looking at his expression. “There is no escaping the celestial sphere. We’re all bound here, stardust to stardust.”

“Not everyone gets such a shiny ending. I saw your hoard of lantern lights, remember? Poor bastards…”

“Hardly,” Pero grunts, and this time there’s no mistaking the derision. “I mostly hunt my own kind. Their meals become my meals.”

“Mostly?”

“Algunos personas nacen estúpidos. (Some people are born stupid.) If they desire a fight, I fight back.” Another quiet huff, low and breathy. Definitely a laugh, you’re certain of it. “Not my fault human organs can be crushed like grapes.”

You turn around at that, a twig snapping under your boot, finally looking at him. And you just happen to catch the precise moment he sheds his camouflaged appearance of umbrage and dappled starlight as he stalks out of the trees, entering your ring of lantern light seeming like an ordinary man pulling a leaf from his curls. Minus the white eyes flashing with irritation, of course.

Still. His effortless ability to blend into the background of his surroundings is unnerving as fuck.

“Wow,” you drawl, leaning back against a tree, arms crossed to conceal the tremor in your hands. “That was fucking grim, even for a soul eater.”

Pero grumbles unintelligibly under his breath while scanning the distance. You don’t bother looking yourself. Soul eaters have a keener eyesight than humans, easily navigating the pitch black without being forced to rely on a lantern light. One of the scarce few positive side effects that comes from consuming their own soul. 

You scratch at the back of your neck, grimacing at the dried mud flaking off, leftover from your meet-ugly with Pero. Gross. Adjusting the strap of your bag across your chest, you sniff the air, the cloyingly sweet aquatic scent of water lilies tipping you off there’s gotta be a pond close by.

“If I told you to go to the pond,” Pero says suddenly, catching you off guard by giving voice to your internal dialogue, “what would you do?”

You level him with a pointed look. “I’d say I don’t like taking orders from an overgrown mutt. And if you don’t like how I smell, then tough–”

“I never said I didn’t like it,” is the curt reply. Then: “Now go wait for me at the pond.”

A protest is on your tongue—but he’s disappearing in the next blink, absorbed by black. 

Pero likes…your scent? You don’t know what to do with that, if it’s meant as some kind of weird compliment or if you’re turning it into something bigger than it is. 

But you do know you hate being left to stew in ignorance as to what pulled him away or how long he’ll be gone. This is the second time he’s left you without a thorough explanation. Third, if you count leaving you bleeding and unconscious in the Marrow. A bad habit you’ll need to uproot before the damage to the fragile foundation of this partnership is too severe to rectify. 

Tree branches shift overhead, bouncing lightly with every gentle curling of wind. You kick at the dirt with the toe of your boot, lingering there, half-out of stubbornness to submit to the mutt’s order, half-out of foolish wishful thinking Pero will come stomping back in the next few seconds and berate your rebellious nature. 

But there is no return or admonishment. 

The grime on your skin crawls, icky and nagging, until your resolve can’t help but crack. 

“Fine, Pero,” you mutter with a quiet exhale. “You win this round.”

The pond’s easy enough to find, following your nose and the signs of foliage growing greener the closer they sprout to the water source. Lily pads cluster together in the center with pale pink petals on full display in mesmerizing spiral arrangements. They beckon you to the soggy edge where dragonflies dart amongst the tall blades of grass and spongy moss patches.

Of all the choices of flora in the realm, your mother had settled on such an insignificant plant to name you after. No better than a weed, in your opinion. It’s tough, she’d argue in the face of your criticism, much tougher than its soft appearance implied. It has the potential to grow anywhere in the realm, capable of thriving in the deepest of shadows where even starlight can’t reach.

You shake your head, pushing thoughts of the past aside. No point wasting time ruminating when you can be doing something productive instead.

You set down your bag, lantern light, and scabbard, still within close reach as you roll up your trousers and wade barefoot into the tepid pond. You’re careful to avoid the lily pads, glimpsing under the surface just how deep their stalks delve into the pond’s center depths, and stick to the shallow side reaching up to mid-calf. If the circumstances were different, this pond would probably be a great place for a bath, but for now you settle for a quick scrubbing of your arms and legs, the back of your neck.

Your splashes and ripples disturb the water’s stillness. The fish who call this pond home don’t seem to mind too much, swimming in and out of sight from beneath the lily pads, darting close enough to circle your ankles curiously before moving on. You wonder if they’ve never encountered a human before, oblivious of their spot on the food chain, or if they simply lack the capacity to feel afraid. A life without fear, wouldn’t that be something. 

Son solo peces, Pero would probably roll his eyes if he knew of your musings. (They’re just fish.) No les des demasiado crédito. (Don’t give them too much credit.)

The multiple finned constellations who swim in the vast ink of the celestial sphere might take offense to that.

Thinking of the soul eater, you lift your gaze, searching the outlines of endless trees tinted blue by your lantern light, looking for white glowing eyes staring back. Did Pero find whatever it was he was searching for? Or…did it find him instead?

Wariness curls unpleasantly in your stomach. If something bad happened to him, you’d know it, wouldn’t you? Surely you’d feel something—some kind of sting or snap from the bite—something to tell you the bond was severed. That Pero was gone, dissolved into stardust or consumed by another set of dogteeth.

He’s fine, you tell yourself, reaching for one of your boots to clean. He’s fine.

The caked on mud encrusted in the lines of the tread takes more rigorous scrubbing and picking at with your nails than expected, grumbling under your breath as the water gradually turns brown and cloudy. And to your dismay, you discover the second boot is an even worse mess than the first, making no damn sense but it’s hard to argue with an inanimate object.

When the boot’s finally decent-looking enough and your fingers have started to prune, you rise up from your squatted position back to full height, stretching to relieve the soreness in your lower back. 

A rock zips by you almost too quickly to register. It punctures the pond’s surface with a small yet piercing splash. The grove is uncannily still after the ripples settle, every species of wildlife holding their collective breaths, reacting to the disturbance in unison. 

And then: “Next one goes through your skull if you disobey.”

The voice is male, but not the low, husky growl you’re hoping to hear. It’s reedier, a paper thin quality contrasting the dark promise of violence. 

“Turn around. Show me your eyes.”

Your brow furrows, turning over the request. Your eyes? Why in the realm…? 

The stranger interrupts your thoughts, snippy now, “Do it. Do it right now.” 

Your shoulders twitch, a stifled flinch. Stars, he’s the sensitive type, isn’t he? The kind that burns hot and quick before lashing out. He’s got a weapon—he must, no way he threw that rock that fast—and he’s not afraid to use it. If you’re going to get out of this mess, you’ve got to handle him with careful precision. No room for errors.

You begin to rotate at a snail’s rate, bare feet shifting in the muck, torso following, then ever so painstakingly your head turns until your peripheral vision fills in some of the stranger’s blanks. 

A red lantern light held aloft on a hooked pole sticking out of a backpack casts a glow upon his lanky build. He’s got long, pencil-thin legs reminding you of a crane’s, like one misstep could snap the fibula in half. A beard covers his jawline, patchy along his chin like he has the habit of pulling out the hairs until the skin is too damaged to grow more. Skin and bones, that’s all he is. A walking skeleton. You suspect most people would take one look at the man and write him off as an underwhelming presence. But if they paid closer attention they’d note his steadiness, the absolute lack of jittery trembling at the prospect of causing fatal harm with his weapon. A fucking slingshot of all defenses, pouch armed with another rock and drawn back taut.

Your throat bobs with a nervous swallow, considering your options. Not that there’s many to think about.

He’s standing beside your gear, one hard kick with those long legs could send your lantern light sinking into the pod, and you can’t reach your sword faster than the release of his slingshot. 

Stars, what a pathetic way to die…

Except, something strange happens then.

“Your eyes,” Crane Legs murmurs, a note in his voice that suspiciously sounds a lot like awe. “Those are human eyes. Absolutely stunning.”

He drops his slingshot at once, as if it’d burned his hand. His pack is shrugged off next, never looking away from you, not even a glance at the thump of his lantern light landing hard.

You blink, unsure what to make of this sudden twist. The way he’d stressed the word human doesn’t bode well. Even worse is how he looks at you, like he’s looking through you.

“It’s been some time,” Crane Legs says next, soothing as if speaking to a skittish child, deepening your distress, “but I can be gentle. Just a few quick cuts.”

Your throat tightens, fear licking a prickling path along your nerves, circling the bite mark almost tauntingly. 

Pero must know you’re in trouble. The bond has to have been screaming it since the rock first hit the water. 

But the grove is silent, and you’re all alone. What should be familiar after five lonely cycles instead feels like uneven terrain. Like you’re missing a valuable piece—which is ridiculous because the only thing truly missing is Pero. 

Pero, who’s either ignoring your situation or has encountered something stopping him from getting to you.

And not many things can stop a soul eater.

One prominent notion comes to mind.

History likes to repeat itself when given the opportunity to do so. Every person who’s ever watched your back has died. All of them, ripped from your hands. There and gone. Pero’s different from the rest, in more ways than the obvious one, but for all his toughness he’s not immune to death. 

You don’t want to think Pero could be dead. 

You don’t want to think it, because then you’ll be forced to reconcile with the cold, sobering reality that you've repeated your worst dreadful mistake. 

You subtly glance at your sword, cursing yourself for removing it from your person, for letting yourself believe the grove was secure enough.

The realm had not suddenly decreased in danger just because you gained a soul eater companion, so why did you act as if it had? Is it possible, without even consciously realizing it, you’d gone soft, placing reliance upon Pero to handle things? What had you been thinking?

You hadn’t been, that’s the pathetic truth. Not one iota of self-preservation at all.

Stars, you’re a massive fucking idiot.

The stranger’s hand reaches for the knife attached to his belt, a glint of steel exposed by his red lantern light.

There’s no hesitation when you throw your boot directly at his face, body and mind surrendering to instincts sharpened and determined to make up for your mistakes. The distraction grants you the precious seconds needed to launch yourself out of the pond and knock him down onto the grass. The punched out gasp of all the air evacuating his lungs is a promising start, but as long as his lantern light burns the fight’s not over.

You straddle Crane Legs’ narrow waist, prying the knife away with a twist of his wrist in an unnatural direction. The sickening pop is nearly drowned out by his pained shout. You clutch the handle, securing your grip, but his other hand claws and grabs at your face, aiming for your eye. Impulsively, you sink your teeth into the skin between his thumb and index finger. Hard.

Crane Legs wrenches his hand free, tearing skin and rattling your molars, malice burning in his pale blue eyes. “You star-damned bitch—”

You spit a disgusting glob of blood-tainted saliva into his open mouth, grinning at the instant spluttering noise of rage. 

An opening appears to bury the knife into his torso. You lean back, teeth bared, prepared to end his story, but he rears up with unexpected velocity, seizing hold of your wrist with his bitten hand and pressing his other, sprained one harshly against your collarbone. 

Time freezes, crackling with the strain of such fervid violence, and there’s a second where your eyes meet his, scrunched in hatred. Two humans surrendering to their primal natures, fighting tooth and nail, each intent on breaking the other first.

Then, suddenly, a vicious roar rips through the grove, ringing in your ears. 

Pero.

“No,” Crane Legs murmurs, a hoarse rasp of disbelief, eyes widening. “I killed him.”

The snapping fangs of your soul eater companion flash through your thoughts, setting your scarred neck ablaze, and you feel something work its way up your throat, mouth opening on impulse to release an answering scream of your own. It’s unnatural, such a jarring, guttural outcry. Not the wail of an ordinary human’s vocal cords.

Crane Legs recoils with a flinch so harsh you swear his skull cracks against the ground, a spasm of panic rippling across his face. 

It’s his fatal mistake letting his grip loosen, another opening to take advantage of, and you’re quick to tear yourself free. Even quicker to stab his knife into the center of his gaunt chest. Your knuckles strain with the effort of burying the blade up to the bolster. 

His whole body jolts beneath you, hands clasping ineffectively at your clothes, gasping out one final gurgling breath. He falls still on the grassy floor as warm crimson seeps outward from the wound, blossoming in the same mesmerizing manner as the water lilies. 

You stare at your handiwork, panting softly, numbness creeping into the cavities where your ruthless instincts flared. It’s been cycles since your first kill, yet the rubber band around your lungs remains just as tight as if time were meaningless and you’re stuck reliving that grim and bloody phase all over again. It’s a discomforting sensation to grapple with, sure to linger like a deeply buried thorn in the phases to follow, but a part of you relishes it, knowing that sooner or later there will come a time when the rubber band breaks, when there is no reaction to be felt in the moments after taking a life. You dread thinking about the person you’ll have become by then.

The dead man’s pale blue eyes reflect the shrinking red flame of his lantern light, weakly flickering within its glass chamber, lost without its connection to its host. 

“Vaya, vaya,” a familiar voice breaks the quiet, gargled rocks and rust. “Tú puedes manejarte a ti misma.” (Well, well. You can handle yourself.)

Your head snaps up, hand spasming where it’s still tightly gripping the knife. Stars above, you think with a shuddered breath, pins and needles stinging your skin just as a vaguely humanoid figure stalks from the shadows of the trees. Pero’s half-cloaked in a cinereal nebula, swirling and blinking especially around his torso. Diaphanous where he’s meant to be solid. Yet the ugly scowl on his face is unmistakable.

“Pero,” you say, a hoarse uttering, voice tender from your outburst. “What the fuck happened to you?”

Amber ichor leaks out of his eyes and down his cheeks like tear stains. You search him for more injuries, but the gray brume’s too thick, a protective cocoon concealing skin and clothes. 

“I got hung up.” The shattering of glass beneath the heel of Pero’s boot punctuates his reply. The last faint red embers of the unknown man’s soul bind together into an orb of light, preparing its return to the stelliferous sky from where it once fell cycles ago. Stardust to stardust.

A different fate intercepts. Hungry smoke gulping down the orb whole. No indecision. No guilt. Just total consumption of one life to strengthen another’s.

And there’s something deeply wrong with how avidly you watch, never once blinking as the wispy vapors of Pero’s essence stiffen and constrict, piece by piece settling into the recognizable curves and lines and ridges of human anatomy. Your own lantern light is right there, an easy target, and his bleeding eyes hadn’t once strayed towards it. Not even a sneaky flicker of temptation. He’d claimed soul eaters avoided blue lantern lights unless they were starving, but you didn’t know whether to believe him until right now, seeing his resistance directly.

Shaking your head at yourself, you pull free the knife with a quiet squelching sound from its lodged position in Crane Legs’ chest and stand up, beads of blood dripping onto the cooling corpse. Your legs are still damp from the pond water, bare feet sinking a little into the sodden bank. You grimace, wishing again for a proper bath, but the grove no longer feels as idyllic as it did mere moments ago. Tainted by the bleakness of death, even though Crane Legs got his just deserts.

“Well, that answers my earlier question. Just my kind get the sword treatment,” Pero mutters under his breath, scrutinizing the knife in your grip while he tilts his neck this way and that, eliciting a series of clicks and crackles. He sounds begrudgingly impressed as he more loudly adds, “Decent kill. Kept all your blood inside you this time.”

“Looks like I’m the only one who did,” you counter.

“I would have aimed for the eyes,” he prattles on, unfazed. “Taste of his own fucked up medicine.”

You grunt, returning to the pond’s edge to clean the stained blade. It has a close resemblance to a common butcher knife with a wooden handle. But much like its former owner, there’s a subtle dangerous quality requiring closer inspection to spot. The man had used a whetstone to thin the steel near the tip, optimizing its effectiveness while stabbing. And, you cringe at the thought, increasing its accuracy when delicately cutting out eyeballs.

Across the pond, a frog croaks a stuttering warble. It echoes far and wide, letting the other grove inhabitants know the tension’s passed. Within a minute the melodious sounds of nature gradually rise to a crescendo. A living, breathing ecosystem once more. 

Hard to ignore the smell of blood in the air though. Even harder to ignore the coppery taste of it in your mouth. Fucking gross. 

You spit in the water. “We should get moving.”

Turning around, you’re surprised to find Pero holding your thrown boot. The amber streaks are gone from his face. Wiped away or dissolved or stars know what. There and gone, like most things related to soul eaters.

You reach to grab your boot, only for Pero to lean back.

“Tú estás molesta,” he observes, head cocking to the side not unlike a dog. It remains odd to you, how closely soul eaters resemble and exhibit traits of a species wholly made of flesh and blood and bone, so vastly different from their smoky physiques. (You are upset.)

“Sería más feliz con mis zapatos puestos.” (I’d be happier with my shoes on.)

You try again to reclaim what’s yours, but Pero’s reflexes are quicker. 

He tsks at you, eyebrows pinched with disapproval. “No, no es eso.” (No, it’s not that.) White eyes narrow, seeming to roam over you. When he speaks it’s stilted, as if finding his conclusions hard to wrap his head around, “You were worried…about…me.”

“You were just half made of swirling fog and bleeding from your fucking eyes,” you point out. “I think feeling a little worry isn’t insane.”

“Oh, that?” He grunts, almost a scoffing sound. “Happens when I break a soul. Bleeds worse than it hurts.”

“You…you broke a soul?” It’s your brain’s turn to suffer a breakdown, thinking of the lantern lights you’d glimpsed hoarded within Pero’s body. What threat in the grove could’ve possibly forced him to sacrifice one? “Why would you do that?”

“I had to get back to you,” Pero responds without pause, eyebrows drawing together and leveling you with a firm look as though you should’ve already known the answer. He shrugs then, boot still stubbornly held, a rolling of his shoulders so unbearably human you’re tangled up in thinking it must be a leftover trait of his previous life, nearly missing him say, “It all balanced out in the end. I got back what I lost.” His foot nudges at the shattered lantern light shards, a crackling of crunched glass that gets under your skin and cuts a nerve.

“And if it hadn’t balanced out?” you retort, upper lip curling up challengingly. “What then? You would’ve lost a soul for nothing.”

“You’re not nothing, Moss,” he says, too candid, too adamant for your liking.

“That’s hilarious, ‘cause you say that but then you leave me behind without a fucking clue. We’re supposed to be partners, Pero, or did you fucking forget already? We’re supposed to watch each other’s backs so that creeps like him don’t stab us in our blind spots.”

Pero’s expression darkens, jaw ticking. His empty hand clenches at his side, perhaps out of restraint from throttling you, perhaps it’s something else generating a wisp of swirling smoke up the tendons of his arms. You can’t fill in the blanks, not for an enigma like him.

“I was fine,” he growls, irritation flashing in his eyes. “You’re overreacting.”

“And you’re underreacting! You just gave up a soul over a fight with a damn human,” you shout, shoving your palms flat against Pero’s chest. The bastard doesn’t budge so much as an inch. “What the fuck are you going to do when it’s Tao Tei you’re up against, huh? You think she’s going to let you pause the fight and heal your wounds? She’ll tear you to shreds.”

The smoke ripples and thickens, leaking from Pero’s clothes, his hands. An angry, roiling abyss blotting out the outline of his frame, white eyes burning feverishly bright.

Still, you don’t flinch. Your pulse doesn’t leap. Not even when he reaches towards you, murky fingers more fumes than flesh squeezing your cheeks together, his breath ghosting over your pursed lips.

“You’re an idiot,” he whispers, a gentle voice that doesn’t align with his monstrous shape, floating out from an unseen mouth. The hold on your face eases up, fluttery warmth trailing down over your jaw, then the sensitive edges of the bite, right where your heartbeat flutters like a trapped bird with a broken wing. “The future’s unwritten, Moss. Stop trying to predict what you cannot see.”

It’s another impossibility. Pero is so close, touching you, looking at you. And yet he’s so distant he might as well be a whole other realm away at the same time. Like the remnants of a scattered dream lost upon waking up. There and gone. There and gone.

You just want to scoop up his smoky essence in your palms, then tuck the tendrils in between the spaces of your ribs, proof of existence ensnared in a cage of bone. 

Instead, you exhale a slow, trembling breath. “Fine,” you declare, quiet yet unyielding. “I’ve got a solution for both our problems. Communication, asshole. That means I’ll stop questioning your poor judgment and you’ll stop leaving me completely oblivious. ¿Tenemos un trato?” (Do we have a deal?)

Pero has no immediate reaction, so dauntingly still you’re reluctant to maintain eye contact, the urge to squirm damn near unbearable. Then he’s blinking, gaze losing some of its heaviness, the billowing smoke dispelling into the grove in a silent sweep as he takes a step back and resembles the grumpy dark-haired human-facade you’ve become used to seeing. 

“Este acuerdo favorece a su creador,” he murmurs with cool amusement. (This agreement favors its creator.) Still, the hand holding your boot finally offers it out for you to grab. A deal struck. “I caught the bastard’s scent earlier. I thought it’d be less…messy if I dealt with him alone.”

“You judged him based on his looks, didn’t you?” you ask wryly while gathering your things, stuffing the knife inside your bag for the time being. 

The bad-tempered toss of Crane Legs’ slingshot into the pond’s center is answer enough.

“What was it you said before, you got hung up?” You glance at him as you tighten the laces on your boots. “What does that mean?”

“It means what it means,” Pero answers sourly, damn near close to pouting. “He set a snare, I didn’t see it, then—” He makes a whooshing sound, air blown through pursed lips. “Nearly tore my foot off.”

Crane Legs was clever, you could tell that much within seconds of your interaction, but clever enough to rig a snare capable of catching a soul eater? With what materials? 

“You couldn’t just…I don’t know, smoke out of the trap?”

“Thought you said you’d stop with the questions,” Pero grumbles, staring up at the slivers of starlight perforating the leaves and branches for a long moment, seemingly intent on connecting the dots and forming his own constellations in lieu of elaborating. 

Alright, I’ll back off this time, you think, letting the topic drop as you rise to your feet. Divulging a weakness is like putting a weapon in someone else’s hand then hoping in spite of the uneven odds they don’t use it against you. 

It all comes down to trust. And for you—and Pero, too, you’d bet—trust is not a trinket to be bartered for. A I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine exchange over a handshake. Trust is earned and nurtured through trials of fire and blood. It’s dirt under fingernails, a suicide pill under the tongue, the tightening of a noose around each other’s throats. It’s a sworn I know the very worst flaws you hide, and still I will stay reassured until death bites or selfishness takes root, numbing the precious vow of its meaning.

Making a deal with each other does not equate to trust. But maybe it’s a seed at least. Could be something, could be nothing. It’s much, much too soon to know for certain when—or even if—it will flourish and bear fruit.

“He has a house of sorts,” Pero says, at last looking back at you. He gestures towards the direction he’d limped from. “It’s up in the trees. I caught a glimpse before his trap sprung. We should rest there for the end of the phase, make use of whatever resources he’s got.”

“It’d be a shame for them to go to waste,” you agree, glancing down at the body then back up at Pero. “Not like he can stop us, anyways.”

“No.” Pero smirks, a flash of teeth. “Ciertamente no puede.” (He certainly can’t.)

You peer up the white-striped trunks of a tightly knit cluster of trees, finding in the glimpses of starlight Crane Legs’ hidden structure tucked away like a bird’s nest within the branches at the top. A vertical pole notched with footholds, painted to camouflage with the unique bark, is your only means of accessibility, attached to the house in a way you cannot tell from the ground. Crane Legs was the paranoid type, figures he’d make his base of operations a challenge for intruders to reach. 

“Don’t worry,” Pero says with an impish curl of his lips. “I won’t laugh if you fall. Much.”

You roll your eyes, steadying your boot in the lowest notch. “You’re a real gentleman.”

It’s a hefty climb to reach the house’s base platform made of branches cut and tied together, each step sending shakes through the notched pole that rattle louder the closer you are to the top. A crafty warning system for intruders. Leaves and tree bark bracket you on either side, scratching at your skin and clothes, and you don’t realize just how high up you are until you’re pulling yourself onto the platform, the expansive canvas of glittering stars seemingly close enough you could reach out and spin the silvery needle of the Compass.

Crane Legs’ abode is larger than you expected—though you’re not sure exactly what you were anticipating from a man who wanted to cut out your eyeballs. The walls are crooked in places due to being built around the interweaving branches, but overall a sturdy place to live assembled by a blend of wood, rock, and flexible vines. Natural materials painstakingly gathered one by one, reminding you of the houses built in the Marrow. 

There’s not a door or curtain of vines concealing the interior from the outer elements. There’s just an open entryway, unremarkable in its design, but that doesn’t stop you from approaching it with a hand on your sword hilt. As far as you know Crane Legs lived alone in the grove, which means his home should be yours for the scavenging, but something about the slight creaking beneath your footsteps has tension flaring up your spine. Feels like you’re entertaining the gaping maw of a beast.

The blue embers of your lantern light brighten the inside room, an impression forming in your mind at once: simplistic, tidy, and precise. Clay pots and bowls line a shelf, containing various fruits and herbs gathered throughout the grove. A bundle of animal pelts are rumpled in the corner to sleep on. Pieces of wooden handmade furniture catch your eye—a single chair pulled up to a table covered in carvings and trinkets. 

You step closer, trying to make sense of the miscellaneous items. The movement swings your lantern light, shining upon the far wall.

Eyeballs stare back at you. 

Startled nearly out of your skin, you jerk backwards, bumping into a solid body. Steadying hands graze your waist, tensing up reflexively despite the light touch. Stars, Pero really can be silent as a shadow when it suits him. Not one rattle from the beam in forewarning.

“Ah,” you hear—and feel—him mutter from behind you, apparently noticing the cause of your fright. “Well, that explains his obsession.”

“It—what?” 

Pero slips around you, his warmth and distinctive sharp scent brush against your senses, leaving you unexpectedly bereft once he’s across the room, meeting the multitude of blank stares with a critical tilt of his head.

There are at least a dozen eyeballs nailed to the wall; some straight through their pupils, others held up by their optic nerves like fleshy tails. They dot the wall in a bumpy line with a single red-colored string linking them together. 

Wait.

Recognition creeps in as you step nearer. That’s not just a random design. 

“It’s Lynx.”

Pero plucks at the red string carelessly. “Sí.”

The celestial cat is the most elusive constellation amongst the stars. When the spring season arrives and the starry figures settle into their lots to gaze upon the realm, the Lynx prefers lurking in the deepest, darkest sector of the sky, the faintest of glimmers compared to his blazing cohabitants. Whether acting out of shyness or callous indifference to humanity is a debate with no clear answer so long as the Lynx continues keeping his distance.

You hold up your lantern light, observing the subtle differences in the eyeballs’ colors and sizes. A couple are clearly those of animals, probably belonging to the same creatures that Crane Legs’ skinned for their pelts. But the rest…the rest are unmistakably human. 

He must’ve used some kind of strong preservative to ward off the effects of decay. The foul stench of decomposition would’ve made living here absolutely revolting. Each eyeball looks as fresh as the moment it was harvested. A shudder rolls down your spine, imagining your own amongst the collection.

You still don’t understand the purpose of creating something so disturbing. Something must have driven Crane Legs’ motivation, and given the exact precision in which he replicated the Lynx’s design makes you doubt it was a random bout of madness. 

You look closer at Pero, curious at his reaction of unsurprise. A question rests on the tip of your tongue, but your lips are reluctant to form it. A part of you hopes he’ll provide answers without needing it voiced.

And maybe the bond tells him your secret desire or maybe it’s something else but–

“Followers of Hidden Truths,” Pero murmurs with his characteristic bluntness. “A cult of radicals who believe if they worship the Lynx he’ll grant them clairvoyance.”

Your brow furrows, perplexed, slowly repeating, “Clairvoyance? You mean, like seeing the future?”

“Or past.”

“Hmm.” The notion floats in your mind a beat longer as your gaze shifts, locking onto a hazel eyeball with a thinly slit pupil. A cat’s eye, how fitting. It’s pretty, you suppose, in its own twister manner, but you also think it’d be prettier back inside the socket of the feline it was stolen from.

“Any truth to their belief?” you ask.

“If there was, I doubt your prey would be pond scum right now.” Pero tips his head with a crooked, impish smirk. “Or maybe you’re just that unpredictable, Moss. Not even the Lynx can keep up with you.”

Your prey. It’s disturbing how little those words actually disturb you. Almost like deep down, something inside you is…satisfied with that description. 

You’re still not sure what came over you when you killed Crane Legs. That roar…

“Which would you want?” you ask, an escape from the confines of your head before you spiraled deeper.

Pero raises a brow. “Huh?”

“If you could have the power,” you say, nodding to the display with your chin. “Which would you want to see, the past or future?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, white eyes wandering away from you, lingering on the entryway long enough your heartbeat performs a funny flip. But he doesn’t make a move to leave, doesn’t even seem to breathe. 

Then, still without looking at you, voice low enough your ears strain: “El pasado está durmiendo. Deberías saber, Moss, que es mejor no despertarlo.” (The past is sleeping. You should know, Moss, it’s better not to wake it up.)

The words hang in the air like icicles above your heads. Fragile yet striking, sharpened just enough to cut to the heart. 

The past is a sleeping dog best left unprovoked. Poking at old memories only serves to reopen the scabs of old anguishes. Doesn’t stop you though from carrying the battered rucksack from your youth, or from hearing your mother’s voice clear as a bell whenever you look at your Chamaeleon tail at the beginning of each new phase. 

Some pains refused to be numbed by the passage of time.

“Yeah,” you say in quiet agreement. “Seems kind of pointless looking backwards. Can’t change anything about it.”

“If you want something to change, start with changing into something with fewer holes.” Pero gives your shirt a disgruntled look like it’s personally offended him.

“And whose fault is it they’re there?” You scoff but do as he suggests, rifling through the small stack of clothes folded up near the pelts. 

The shirts aren’t consistent in their sizes or materials. Probably pilfered off the backs of the unfortunate victims who crossed paths with Crane Legs in the grove. You settle on a plain black long-sleeved shirt. It’s loose enough to move your arms comfortably, fabric breathable in the warm summer air.

Pero faces away without needing to be told as you strip yourself. So he actually can be a gentleman, you smirk to yourself, pulling the new shirt over your head. You roll your shoulders, getting accustomed to the change. Then you look at the table again, your first attempt of a closer look having been interrupted by the frightening reveal of eyeballs. 

At first your gaze doesn’t know where to settle, taking in the little details one after another. Buttons scattered about, the jawbone of a small animal with a couple missing teeth, colorful bird feathers and wooden carvings of the celestial figures, some beautifully finished while others lie on their sides forever to remain in their early stages. This table seems to serve as a catch-all, cluttered almost comically in comparison to the surrounding neatness. Makes Crane Legs seem human.

But what finally catches your eye and holds it fast is a wand-resembling device with an insulated handle on one end and a small crystal securely gripped by metal prongs at the other. Picking it up, you’re surprised by its weight, solid in the grip of your hand. There’s a button on the handle within reach of your thumb. You press down, metal prongs tightening their hold–

An electric surge sparks from the crystal with an audible crackling buzz. 

You don’t quite gasp, but it’s a near thing, releasing the button at once. 

The crystal must somehow generate electricity in response to the increase in pressure of the prongs, turning the device into a dangerous weapon with just a press of a button. You’ve seen the aftermath of trees struck by lightning, the explosion of bark and splintering of the trunk all the way to the ground. You imagine how it might feel if this wand were to press against flesh. Every cell alight with pain, tender and spasming as the current floods your body in search of an outlet, skin seared at the point of contact. 

This isn’t just a dangerous weapon. It’s an instrument of torture.

“Packs quite the punch for such a little toy.” You startle at Pero’s sudden nearness, looking over your shoulder to find him standing right behind you. His voice is rough with irritation, eyes narrowly trained on the device. 

“You’ve seen one of these before?” you ask, not missing how he carefully watches every subtle movement of your hand, like he’s a half-second away from snatching the thing away. 

“Bastard had one on him when we met. Wasn’t quite so brave once I broke it in half.” 

You remember then, how Pero had grumbled noncommittally when questioned about being caught. You blink, frozen somewhere between alarm and disbelief. Is this why Pero couldn’t smoke out of the trap? Because he was being electrocuted? You drop the device back on the table with a noisy clatter, not wanting anything more to do with it.

“Is that concern I sense from you again?” He gives you a provocative smile. The bond tweaks, almost like he’s pinching it teasingly between his nails, earning him a glower. “Come on now, give me a little more credit. It’ll take something stronger than a measly human and his invention to kill me.”

Like Tao Tei, you think, a bit critically. What chance does he stand in a fight against an entity mind-controlling an entire army of his kind? 

What chance do I have? you think bleakly, pressing a hand to your chest, suddenly chilled. You’re as strong an enemy against Tao Tei as an ant facing off against a boot. 

“Estás pensando demasiado otra vez,” Pero interrupts, losing his teasing humor, studying you with a knowing look. (You’re thinking too much again.) 

Damn him.

“Lo que sea. (Whatever.) There’s more than enough food for a meal and leftovers,” you say, pointing at the shelves and forcing a steadiness into your voice you inwardly lack. Pero’s eyes study your face a beat longer, assessing in a way that feels deeper than skin, then flick in the direction of your finger.

“Pack whatever you can carry. Make sure to rest, too. A shelter like this is a luxury.”

-- Part 1

-- Part 2

-- Part 3

It had almost been a year, but he would always be known as the man who nearly choked a stranger to death in the cereal aisle of the local grocery store.

Will - as you overheard him be called by the man he usually came to the gym with who looked just like him and assumed was his younger brother - often cleared anyone away from any machine out of fear; the other patrons sacrificing their workouts in favour of not wanting to provoke someone who may snap if he didn't get his way.

He was solo today, grunting and groaning to the left of you as he worked through his second set of bench presses; your eyes often drifting over to him in the mirror in the event he needed a spot.

You blinked as he slammed the heavy barbell back on its rack, shifting your gaze back to yourself performing deadlifts as he sat up and rubbed a towel over his face to catch the drips of sweat running down his tanned cheeks and into his blond beard.

Distracted, you lost count of your reps, cursing to yourself internally as you suffered through two more than was necessary, your hamstrings on fire and barely able to complete the last one with proper form before dropping the weights to the floor with a huff.

You glanced in Will's direction, catching him staring at you where he nodded before you quickly averted your gaze. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him lay back on the bench and continue another set, his noises of effort making your heart rate increase possibly more than your workout was.

Passing him to go to the squat rack, you couldn't help but notice the way his muscles flexed as he worked, the way his cheeks flinched as he clenched his teeth together tightly, similarly to the way he did even when he was 'relaxed' and not straining through an exercise.

Happy to be facing away from him, you started through your first set, thinking you were keeping track of your reps, only to find your mind wandering back to thoughts of him.

You sympathized for him, hearing his fiancee had left him after the event at the supermarket, knowing he had likely seen and done so many things people could never fathom experiencing in his many years in the Special Forces, and on top of all of it, not even being able to go to the gym without every person giving him a wide berth and downcast stares when they passed by.

"Damnit," you breathed, realizing you yet again lost track, only to be startled when a deep voice sounded behind you.

"You're at 8," Will spoke, making you glance over your shoulder to see him as much as you could as you squatted through another repetition.

"Thanks," you puffed, trying to sound as genuine as you could, thankful for his attentiveness while you did your best to look effortless in completing four more squats at the heaviest weight you had ever done so far.

"No problem," he smiled, assisting the bar back onto the rack when you were done. "I notice you lose count a lot."

He stated it so matter-of-factly, making you knit your eyebrows together quizzically as you turned to face him.

"Sorry!" he raised his hands in defense, "I'm a numbers guy, I tend to notice shit like that, I'm not trying to be an ass."

"No, it's fine," you returned with your own smile, "I guess I just never thought anyone would pay close enough attention to something like that, especially to someone they don't know."

Will tilted his head to the side and shrugged, like he wasn't quite sure what else to say to explain his behaviour.

"I appreciate it, though," you added, seeing a sort of discomfort crease in his features. "Saved me from doing an extra one. I thought I was only at 7."

Your laugh seemed to relax him, bringing out a light in his blue eyes and his smile that you instantly knew you could become addicted to seeing.

"Well, I'm happy to have helped, then. I'm Will, by the way."

He held his hand out, and taking note of the size of it as well as the length of his fingers, you swallowed and extended your own, meeting his eyes as he shook it with a firm grip.

"I know," you answered, seeing your response immediately wash a shameful look over his face.

He quickly withdrew his hand and moved it up to scratch his head, coming to terms that everyone knew who he was and the reputation he had.

"I've heard your brother," you accentuated as a question, "say your name a few times here."

"Oh, uh, yeah, that's Benny, my younger brother," he confirmed, placing his hands on his hips with a sigh of relief that your recognition of him wasn't only due to his infamous incident.

"Was he in the Service, too?"

"Yeah," he nodded, biting his lower lip.

"Your family must be proud of you both," you stated, positioning yourself under the bar to begin another set.

"Some days more than others," he said quietly, watching without shame as you lowered yourself into a squat and powered back up again with an enticing thrust.

Will cleared his throat, "You've got great form."

The tone in his voice made you steel yourself before continuing with another rep, feeling adrenaline rush through you that wasn't on account of the weight-lifting.

"That's it, breathe through it," he purred, that voice of his making you lose focus.

You closed your eyes and exhaled deeply, trying to match your breaths properly with your execution but failing, your mind going to a place you couldn't deny it hadn't been before in all the times you worked out at the same time as him.

It was good to work until failure, you reminded yourself, but as Will counted you to your twelfth and final rep, you struggled to reach the top of your squat let alone get the bar back on the rack.

Will effortlessly took the weight of it in one hand, lifting it easily for you to set it back in place.

"You okay?" he asked, assessing you with concern as you wiped moisture from your brow while his other hand rested along the small of your back.

"Yeah, thanks."

He stood close to you, enough for you to smell the intoxicating scent of his sweat mixed with lingering shower gel or cologne, and when you turned, his hand fell away from you just as yours felt the intense need to touch the dampened cotton shirt that clung to his warm body.

Suddenly feeling dizzy, you shifted on your feet and reached out to grip his forearm for support, shaking your head and apologizing.

"Sorry, that's the heaviest I've lifted and I guess I didn't eat enough for breakfast before I came," you stammered, looking up at him to see his face screwed up with worry.

"Hey, it's fine," he soothed, his hands holding your shoulders in a strong, reassuring grip. "Just breathe."

You did as he suggested, closing your eyes and inhaling deeply and slowly, your hand loosening on his forearm only slightly while he remained unmoving.

"Good, that's good," he whispered, his face leaning closer to yours, and you didn't dare open your eyes again in fear you really would pass out.

"Keep breathing," he repeated, prompting you to continue what he was quickly causing you to forget.

Another slow, calming breath filled your lungs, and when you blew it out gradually through your parted lips, Will spoke again, his fingers pressing into your shoulders.

"Good girl."

Your eyes flashed open, his words making you feel like you were in a haze, his crooked smile and glint in his alluring blue irises creating the opposite effect this whole exchange was meant to have.

"It always helps me," he admitted, his eyes not shifting from yours. "Whenever I'm stressed or angry…to breathe through it."

"Does that happen often?" you asked, your curiosity getting the better of you.

"Hmm, sometimes," he began, not seeming offended at your question. "Less than it used to."

"You must have been through a lot," you spoke, letting your thoughts come out freely, your hand giving a reassuring squeeze over one of the tattoos covering his forearm.

Will licked his lips, leaning slightly closer to you, holding in a breath despite knowing he shouldn't in a moment like this.

"Hey, are you done with this?" a man asked, pointing to the squat rack that was left abandoned beside you, his unexpected voice startling you both.

"Yeah, man, go ahead," Will answered, nodding at the man once and giving him a curt smile.

You watched Will size him up as the man switched out the plates on the bar, like he was waiting to see if anything impolite would come from his mouth next or turn into a threat somehow. The veins in his neck bulged as he increased his breaths, his cheeks flexing again due to his teeth clamping down on each other forcefully. When the other man continued about his business, Will seemed to blink back to reality, his chest still heaving sharply as he struggled to find calm.

Not thinking twice, you reached up and placed your open palm on his chest, directly over his furiously beating heart, bringing his attention over to you along with a sense of surprise.

He blinked quickly and sighed, his eyes searching yours for something to help him until you spoke.

"Breathe, Will," you coaxed, reminding him of what he needed to do, seeing him close his eyes and begin to slow it down until his breaths eventually matched yours.

"Thank you," he muttered, reaching his hand up to cover yours that remained on his warm chest, giving it a gentle squeeze as he flashed you a weak smile.

"Hey, I was gonna grab a protein shake from that smoothie bar down the road after, why don't you join me?"

"I'd love to," you beamed, feeling more than okay with ditching what was left of your workout to go with him, the look on his face making it even more worth it as he grinned brightly and took your hand to lead you toward the change rooms.

"Grab your things and I'll meet you outside," he ordered gently, revealing his effortless ability to delegate, and your willingness to want to comply.

Will leaned against the side of his truck as he waited, sighing to himself while he attempted to sort out everything he was feeling; the mix of wanting to lean in and trust you overpowering his usual go-to of staying distant and playing it safe, all of which was confirmed when you walked out the doors and instantly brought an easy smile to his face.

---

Part 2

Getting the load of clean towels folded and set out for tomorrow morning when the gym reopened was the last thing you needed to accomplish for the evening. You’d already closed and locked up Fogwell’s about forty minutes ago, around the same time the sun had begun to set on Hell’s Kitchen and the city lights all began to cast their glow along the street. The bustle of cars and foot traffic had picked up outside of the gym, the noise making its way inside through the gym’s thick walls as the city came alive once more. Everyone outside was either making their way home from work or headed out for the night.

But you were still here late because Thursday nights were generally late nights at Fogwell’s. You always hung back well after your last training session had ended for the evening, even long after the last person had finished their workout. Since you weren’t the one to open the gym on Thursday mornings, you usually found time to fit in your own workout once the doors were locked, enjoying the lack of interruption from other gym members before you finished some tasks around the gym for your uncle. 

Your uncle had long since grown incapable of keeping up with the usual maintenance of the place. Now, in his late age, he’d handed almost everything over to you to run for the past year. Personally, you couldn’t have been happier. You loved every part of Fogwell’s–including the stench of sweat and leather that permeated the air and clung to almost every surface of the gym.

Fogwell’s was your happy place. You’d grown up watching the boxers train here ever since you were young, particularly admiring the women you’d sometimes seen make their way through the gym’s doors. When you were little, you’d often spend your weekend mornings with your uncle here, forming a respect for those women that weren’t afraid to lift weights or hold their own in the boxing ring which sat in the very center of the gym–the same one that used to intimidate you as a kid. Those women had been entirely unaware of how they’d inspired you over the years. 

And now here you were, close to finally purchasing the gym from your uncle in the near future with the intention of making it your own. You wanted to keep the place up and running yourself–something that had always been your dream. And as a fitness instructor and a fairly respected boxer at Fogwell’s, the opportunity of taking over the gym felt like a dream turned reality.

Pulling out another towel as you continued to focus on the monotonous task before yourself, you began to contemplate what you wanted for dinner. Usually, you grabbed food on your way back home once you finished at the gym because you were far too tired to cook and clean up afterwards. Plus, after the intense cardio you’d just put your body through, you were honestly craving something quick and greasy from one of the restaurants you passed on your walk home.

At the thought of food, your stomach gave a loud rumble as you leaned over, stacking yet another neatly folded towel among the growing pile. Just as you were reaching your hand back into the laundry basket to grab the very last one, you heard the door to Fogwell’s swing open behind you. The sound of the city traffic outside briefly grew louder and less muted, blaring over the sound of the music still playing on your phone. With the way you’d been standing and folding towels, your back had been turned towards the front door and you hadn’t seen who'd entered. But you weren’t remotely concerned about who’d just walked into the closed gym. 

There was only one other person who had a key to Fogwell’s and sometimes showed up in the evenings past open hours. Glancing casually over your shoulder, you spotted exactly the man you’d expected to see making his way through the gym’s door, his cane in one hand and his gym bag in the other. A faint smile crossed your lips at the familiar sight as you finished folding the towel in your hand, bending forward to set it down before turning off the music you’d had playing on your phone. Secretly you always hoped to see him on your late nights here.

You knew the man as Matthew Murdock. He was a blind lawyer in Hell’s Kitchen who didn’t make much money, but yet paid extra to your uncle just so he could work out at Fogwell’s after hours without the other gym members staring and asking questions. Your uncle had told you about him awhile back when you’d first started to take over running the gym for him. Apparently he was the son of Battlin’ Jack Murdock, a man who’d boxed here years ago–and whose face and name still decorated a few of the old fight posters plastered along the walls.

And he was a man that often made your evenings working late at Fogwell’s vastly more enjoyable, something you figured he already knew because of how flirtatious and cocky he often was with you. Though for months now you'd known who he really was–the infamous Daredevil. He kept denying that he was the one lurking along the rooftops of Hell’s Kitchen and helping those in need, much like the way he spent his days helping the poor people of Hell’s Kitchen with legal matters as a lawyer, often getting paid in baked goods–because of course you’d gone and looked into him after the very first time you’d seen the way he attacked a punching bag. 

With the level of skill and precision he was landing his punches and kicks every time he was here, along with the way he often showed up with the occasional injury or limp, you’d known something strange had been going on with the man who wanted to workout in private. You weren’t stupid, especially after comparing grainy footage of Daredevil fighting to the way Matt trained. Of course you’d outright asked him multiple times, but all he’d ever respond with was a laugh, a cheeky smirk, and a comment about being blind. And while you didn't remotely question the fact that he was indeed blind, you’d known there was more to him. His simple explanation as to why he couldn’t be the masked vigilante was absolute bullshit. 

There wasn’t a doubt in your mind about the truth–the man was Daredevil.

“Good evening, Matt,” you called out, slipping your phone into the side pocket of your leggings. “I was wondering if you’d be making it in while I was here tonight. Been a bit since I've seen you.”

Picking up one of the multiple stacks of neatly folded towels from along the bench, you glanced back over your shoulder at Matt, expecting some cocky quip from him. But you immediately paused what you were doing, coming to a stop with the stack of towels in your hands. You’d first caught sight of the smile on Matt’s mouth just beneath his red lenses as he navigated his way through the gym, but your eyes had been soon drawn to a man following behind him. 

The man had dark hair that was cropped on the sides and longer on the top, and his handsome face held a rather intimidating quality with his strong jaw and the firm set of his mouth. It was obvious that he was well built beneath the gray tee-shirt he was wearing, just like you knew Matt to be from all of the previous times you’d been graced with the sight of him shirtless and sweaty during a workout. But this man was a bit taller and broader than Matt and he moved with a particular gait that held your eye with each step he took. Despite your months-long infatuation with the possible vigilante lawyer, you couldn’t help but perk up at the way this other man's eyes were currently curiously scanning over you as he carried a gym bag in one of his hands. You also couldn’t help but note that this man looked familiar, too.

“Have you missed me that much already, angel?” Matt called back.

Matthew’s cocky comment drew your eyes back towards him, watching as he tossed his own bag down onto a bench across the gym in the section near a handful of hanging bags. Removing his glasses with one hand, you noticed the odd way he hesitated only a second later, his head turning back over his shoulder a fraction towards the man following after him. Matt’s friend was still eyeing you up and down as he walked, though this time you’d caught a faint smile ghosting across his friend’s lips. You felt a bit of heat flash through you under his openly admiring gaze, though you hadn’t missed the slight shift in Matt’s posture when he focused back on you when you answered. For some reason Matt’s body had gone rigid and tense, his usually cheeky grin fading.

“You know you’re my favorite member at Fogwell’s,” you replied, trying to focus on Matt and not the other man still staring at you. “But in all my time running Fogwell’s, I've never seen you bring anyone along with you to workout.”

The man you didn’t know came to a stop a few feet behind Matt, chuckling softly before he hung his head, almost like he was trying to hide the growing smile on his face. But you'd caught it. And somehow, judging by the tension growing in Matt's shoulders, it seemed as if he'd been aware of it, too.

“This is Frank,” Matt introduced.

He gestured a hand behind himself at the man known as Frank. You watched as Frank’s face tilted back upwards a bit, his dark eyes meeting yours from across the gym. For a moment you couldn’t help but stare, just as you’d done the first time you’d encountered Matt casually strolling into Fogwell’s one night after you’d already locked the gym. Generally you didn’t make a habit of checking out the members of Fogwell’s, trying to keep things professional, but with these two, it was almost impossible to avoid it. They were vastly more attractive than the men you usually saw here during the day. And it didn’t help that they both also possessed a strange aura of something more about them as well.

Matt sharply gestured his hand across the gym towards you next, the movement snapping you out of your thoughts. He spoke over his shoulder to Frank behind him as he gave him your name. Blinking hard, you tried to regain that professional demeanor you were supposed to have.

“Nice to meet you, Frank,” you greeted him. “First time at this gym?”

“Pleasure's all mine, honey,” he replied with a faint nod in return. “And yeah, it is.”

You felt a ridiculous smile slip onto your lips at the deep, sultry timbre of his voice. How were you supposed to keep your head and not flirt with the two insanely attractive men working out at the gym tonight? Especially because Matt had never refrained from throwing flirtatious comments your way in the past. Now you’d certainly found yourself a reason to linger even longer after hours tonight, more interested in seeing the pair of them covered in sweat and hopefully half-clothed than you were at the prospect of grabbing dinner at a reasonable hour tonight.

“I was hoping you wouldn't mind that I brought him along,” Matt continued, a terseness to his tone as he focused back on you, his eyes fixed around your chest as he spoke–something you noticed he often did. “He's been looking for a good place to workout and practice sparring. Figured I'd show him Fogwell’s. Not many gyms have enough space for that. Or a boxing ring.”

Shaking your head, your eyes briefly darted to Frank before returning to Matt. “I don't mind at all,” you answered. “We could always use more members.”

“You own this place?” Frank asked, his head curiously tilting to the side. 

“Oh, no,” you said with a laugh, finally turning back around and placing the stack of towels you’d been holding into the laundry basket. “My uncle does. But he's had a rough time now that he's in his late sixties. It’s hard for him to get around and maintain the place,” you explained, putting the rest of the stacks of clean towels into the basket. “I offered to step up and help him. Though someday I plan to buy this place from him and do more than just fitness instruction here.”

Picking up the basket full of freshly laundered and folded towels, you turned around and noticed how Frank's dark brows had quirked up onto his forehead in interest. His gaze had lowered while you’d been turned, lingering along your legs and probably your ass until you’d turned back around towards him. The heat building beneath your skin felt like it was increasing under his gaze, your eyes watching as his own slowly made their way back up to meet yours. There was definitely something unmistakably hungry in his expression.

“Fitness instructor, huh?” he mused, his eyes narrowing curiously at you. “You fight at all then, too?” 

Frank’s head gestured towards the boxing ring in the middle of the gym as his question lingered in the air. Unable to stop the proud grin from slipping onto your lips, you nodded.

“Yeah, I do,” you answered. “Sometimes I train a few members for fights. Though it’s been awhile since I’ve participated in any fights myself. Mostly I just spar on occasion.”

“Maybe I should come back and get a gym membership, then,” Frank said, his tone almost playful as he finally sauntered over towards the bench next to where Matt was currently folding up his cane in what appeared to be barely hidden annoyance. “Sure wouldn't mind taking you on.”

Surprise washed over you at his comment, your bottom lip slipping between your teeth as you watched Frank set his gym bag haphazardly down onto the bench. Briefly Frank’s attention returned over his shoulder to you, casually flashing you a playful grin that had your breath catching at the sight. Almost as fast as it had appeared, the grin vanished as he focused back down onto his bag, beginning to unzip it. That grin on his face had left you no room to question the double meaning in his words, though. And judging by the faint shake of Matt’s head, he hadn’t missed that either.

“Are you done, Frank?” Matt snapped in irritation. “I thought we came here to train, not to flirt.”

Biting your bottom lip even harder to keep yourself from laughing at what appeared to be Matt’s surprising and possible jealousy, you made your way across the gym and over to the cart where the clean towels were stored. As you walked, you couldn’t help but catch the amused, deep chuckle that came from Frank at Matt’s chastising. But once you reached the cart, you couldn’t resist taking your time loading the stacks of towels onto it while you listened to the pair of them behind you, your focus on the large window overlooking the street outside.

“Didn’t seem to stop you from flirting with her a minute ago, Red,” Frank pointed out.

“Yeah, well,” Matt continued in annoyance, “you just met her. It’s highly inappropriate, Frank.”

“I’m sorry,” Frank shot, sounding anything but sorry, “but is there somethin’ going on between you two? Is that why you’ve suddenly got a billy club up your ass?”

Eyes growing wide at Frank’s blunt boldness, your hand paused mid-way through setting a stack of towels onto the cart and instead hovered in the air as you grew entirely still. You were also curious to hear Matt’s response, considering the man was always flirting with you when you were here with him. Sometimes quite inappropriately, too, even if nothing more had ever happened besides that. Though, you certainly wouldn’t have minded bringing him over to your place after his workouts if it ever seemed like he’d say yes to the offer.

“That isn’t the point, Frank,” Matt shot back. “Besides, do you really think she wants to spar with someone like you?”

Slowly, you lowered the stack of towels you’d been holding in your hands down onto the cart before you. As you reached your hand back into the laundry basket and grabbed another stack of towels, you curiously wondered what Matt had meant by that comment. It had certainly sounded loaded with meaning.

“Real cute, altar boy,” Frank quipped back. “Thing is, I didn’t realize the attendant you said that’s sometimes here was gonna be a beautiful woman who looks like she could shut your goddamn mouth herself. Maybe I kinda wanna see that now.”

An amused snicker left you before you abruptly pursed your lips, struggling to fight back the bout of laughter threatening to burst out of you. Whoever Frank was to Matt, he appeared to have a very unique friendship with him–if it even was a friendship you were witnessing right now. Nevertheless, you were glad you hadn’t disappeared before the pair of them had shown up tonight because you found yourself quite entertained.

“Funny, Frank,” Matt glowered. “But you’re here to train with me, not her. Leave her out of this.”

“Why?” Frank goaded. “You afraid your girl might be interested in sparring with me? Or are you just that excited to lose to me in front of her? That it?”

Matt let out an exasperated noise just as you turned around holding a now empty laundry basket in your hands. You were trying hard to hide the amusement at their bickering from your face as you spotted both men currently finishing wrapping their hands. They’d apparently made their way over towards the ring during their argument, which you assumed meant they were in fact about to spar. 

“We’re just training, Frank,” Matt pointed out, his tone sharp. “There’s no winning or losing. And she’s not my girl.”

“Good to know,” Frank teased, a grin on his face. “And maybe there should be more than just training tonight. Make things more interesting. ‘Cause I bet I’ll kick your ass in that ring and embarrass you in front of the lady. Just like I always kick your ass.”

Matt pulled a face, irritation spread plain as day along his features. Shaking his head, he continued in a frustrated tone. “I’ve kicked your ass plenty of times, Frank. That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“Prove it then, Red,” Frank pushed. “Bet I’ll knock you down twice before you knock me down once.”

Slowly making your way around the ring and back towards your uncle’s office, your eyes were glued to the confrontation occurring in Fogwell’s. Frank seemed quite confident in his abilities, but you’d also caught the way Matt was slightly favoring his right side ever since he’d shown up tonight. Which you assumed meant he was recovering from an injury he’d gotten while running around as Daredevil. No doubt that would most likely affect his ability to hold his own in a fight, something you were sure Frank had already noticed himself but could care less about.

“If you somehow win,” Frank began, “I’ll find another gym to join. But if I win–” Frank paused, his head turning over his shoulder until his eyes found you, causing heat to flood your body under the weight of his stare once more as he continued, “–I’ll be coming back tomorrow and signing up to join this gym.”

“Fine,” Matt growled the word out. “Whatever gets you to shut up already.”

A satisfied smile twisted Frank’s lips before his wrapped hands grabbed the hem of his shirt. Without warning, he tugged it up and over his head, revealing a set of toned muscles that had your brain momentarily short-circuiting as you stood there unable to do anything but stare at the definition along his torso. Beside him, Matt said something to Frank that was too low for you to hear, but whatever it was had caused him to laugh and shake his head before he climbed up and into the ring. 

Feeling your heart pounding a little harder in your chest, you watched as Matt stripped off his own shirt and tossed it aside. The sight of his defined muscles once more on display had you swallowing hard, your eyes raking over every inch of his exposed torso. Though as he fluidly slipped into the ring after Frank, one of his usual smirks lingering along his lips, you caught sight of a bandage along his left side. 

This guy was just full of injuries, apparently.

Reluctantly you forced yourself to tear your gaze away from both men, turning and continuing over to your uncle’s office. You pushed the partially ajar door open even further with an arm and stepped inside, setting the empty laundry basket down into a corner of the room and out of the way. With your back to the office window that overlooked the entirety of the gym, you paused with your head ducked down, fanning yourself with a hand. It suddenly felt far hotter than normal in the gym tonight. 

Behind you, you could hear the sound of two sets of feet shuffling around the ring along with the occasional grunt mixed in between the distinct sound of a fist making impact with its target. If you weren’t going crazy, it appeared that both men seemed to be fighting over you right now. Normally, the thought of two men acting like a pair of cavemen would make you cringe and want to punch both of them in the face yourself, but somehow having these two men fighting over you truthfully felt a little exhilarating. Especially since a situation like this had never actually arisen before–guys didn’t fight over you. 

The sound of Frank’s loud, booming laugh interrupted your thoughts, causing you to curiously spin around in the office. Your eyes immediately landed on the sight of Frank smiling triumphantly above Matt in the ring through the office window. Matt was currently on his knees and clutching at his left side, the sight causing you to wince. Clearly, Frank wasn't going to fight fair.

“C’mon, Red,” Frank provoked. “Get back up.”

You watched as Matt grit his teeth, though your attention was quickly drawn to the way his back muscles flexed as he steadily rose back up to his full height in the ring. A slight sheen of sweat was already glistening along his torso underneath the overhead lights of the gym, causing his skin to glisten in a way that shouldn’t have been so tantalizing. As both men began shuffling around the ring once more, circling each other like two dangerous predators, you had a hard time not letting your eyes roam over their sweaty and bare upper bodies.

There was something mesmerizing about the way they both moved. You’d always noticed that Matt had fought with a graceful fluidity that wasn’t often seen from fighters whenever he was here. The movements his body made were beautiful and hard to tear your eyes away from whenever you’d watched him pounding away at a punching bag after hours. Considering he couldn't exactly see his target, it only had you more enraptured by the sight, curious to know how he was able to do what he did–not just in the gym, but as the vigilante he kept denying that he was. 

But now, as you watched him actually sparring with somebody else for the first time, seeing how his body easily twisted and turned as he dodged punches left and right with such ease, there was a part of you wishing he’d come home with you tonight. You could only imagine the way he could throw you around the bedroom a little bit. He certainly looked more than capable enough.

But as your eyes traveled over to the shirtless Frank next, you sucked in a sharp breath as you watched him fight. He moved with power and determination. Strong, calculated attacks that reminded you of a caged dog that had been finally set loose. He was almost relentless in his pursuit of Matt around the ring, his focus never once wavering as the thick muscles in his arms continued to flex and contract with each fierce jab of a fist through the air. The thought of sparring with him–of having him toss you onto your back and pinning you to the floor of the ring beneath his solid weight–caused something to stir deep within you.

At the exact moment you inhaled a shuddering breath, Matt’s head snapped over his shoulder in your direction. With him distracted, Frank took his shot and landed a solid jab straight to Matt’s jaw that had him losing his footing and reeling backwards. You gasped in surprise, a hand flying over your mouth as you watched Matt drop down to a knee, his jaw clenching tight in frustration.

“Told you I’d kick your ass tonight, Red,” Frank taunted.

“The fight isn’t over yet,” Matt snarled, quickly rising back up onto his feet.

“Either way, I won the bet,” Frank reminded him. “Knocked your smartass down twice before you even got me down once. You know what that means?”

Matt’s lip curled up into a sneer as he lowered back into a fighting stance, his wrapped hands raising up beside his face. He didn’t answer him though, so Frank continued on, his focus shifting to you through the window of the office as he spoke. Heat burned your cheeks at having been caught staring at the pair of them when his eyes met yours.

“Means I’ll be back lookin’ for a gym membership tomorrow, sweetheart,” Frank called out, loud enough to make sure you heard him. “And maybe I could use a personal trainer, too.”

You didn’t even have a chance to respond before Matt loosed an angry noise that echoed throughout the gym before rushing at Frank. He caught him off guard, managing to cause Frank to tumble backwards into the ropes before he was hit with a barrage of punches from Matt. A loud, guttural roar of frustration filled the gym as he continued his assault.

With a hand covering your mouth as the sparring match once more continued on in front of you, your eyes widened in shock at the sight of these two. While a part of you hadn’t wanted Matt to lose that little bet because you admittedly had a thing for him, the other part of you was pleased it meant you’d be seeing Frank again–and maybe be getting a little one on one time with him, too. Though, judging by the way Matt was fighting with a renewed fire in the ring right now as Frank had finally recovered, you figured he wasn’t nearly as excited at the prospect of that.

Richie didn’t bring up the wedding again for just over a week. He wanted that on the record when he did bring it up again while they were moving things into Sydney’s new apartment, and he told her as much.

“I told you I’d think about it!” she said as she propped the cardboard box she was carrying on her hip, pinning it to the door of her apartment so she could unlock it.

“Okay? Yeah? And have you thought since I told you about this shit like, eight fuckin’ days ago?”

The lock clicked and Syd immediately started stumbling through the door as it easily pushed open beneath the weight of the box in her hands and her leaning against it. With a slew of curses and a few wide steps, she was able to manage not only not spilling the contents of the box everywhere, but she also managed not to hit the floor beneath her.

She wanted to be mad that she could hear Richie trying his best to hold back his laughter, but truthfully she could feel a laugh or two bubbling in her own chest about it. Taking a breath, she resituated the box in her arms and pushed her shoulders back so that she was standing as upright as ever. She turned back around to Richie and nodded for him to follow her inside.

“Well, here it is,” she said with a chuckle.

Richie didn’t try to stifle his next laugh as he walked through the doorway. He looked around the small space, which was as barren as Sydney had told him it would be. Still, he let out a low, impressed whistle before he said, “So, this is fuckin’, headquarters now, huh?”

Sydney nodded as she kicked the door shut behind them and walked into what was eventually going to be something resembling a living room. “Yep. This is it.”

There was a beat of silence, both of them still standing there with boxes in their hands that weren’t exactly light. Richie looked around, and then at Syd, who was looking everywhere except at him. Richie could tell by the look on her face that this time it wasn’t purposeful.

Clearing his throat, he said, “So, you gonna make me carry this box around while you give me the fucking nickel tour, or…?”

Her eyes popped open a little wider. “Shit, right, sorry.” She laughed and squatted down so she could set her box on the floor. “You can just put it there—I’m not sure where everything is gonna go yet.”

“Can go anywhere if you’re not gonna put a couch in here,” he joked.

“Also gives me a good reason to not go couch shopping, aside from the fact that I’m too broke to buy a real couch right now.”

“Get a futon like the rest of us did,” he said as he set his box down right next to hers.

She pulled a face, “Mmm I think I’ll just leave it as my moving box space for now.” She watched him brush his hands off on his pants. “Tour time?”

He gestured for her to lead the way. “Dazzle me.”

She laughed, walking in front of him. “So this is the living room,” she motioned to the room they were in, “Or, at least, it will be eventually.” She kept walking, hearing Richie’s footsteps right behind her. “The most exciting room is also the closest, lucky for you.” Reaching, she twisted the doorknob and pushed the nearest door open. “This is the bathroom. Brand new shower curtain and liner,” she said, false bravado in full effect.

Richie chuckled. “No wonder you can’t afford a new couch. Shower liner’ll do that to you.”

They were both laughing as they crossed the apartment back the other way and went into the kitchen. It was a small space, much like the rest of her apartment. There were a few things scattered on the counter, random items that she must’ve brought over or had in her bag when she would stop in, in between stints at the restaurant. Richie wondered what feats of organization she was going to accomplish to fit everything in this kitchen that she wanted to.

“Kitchen,” she said as she held her arms out in an introductory gesture, “with all of its empty cupboards and refrigerator.”

He nodded approvingly. “Perfect sized kitchen for all the micro-greens you and Carmen keep ordering.”

She hated that she laughed at that, but she did. “It’s all coming together.”

Richie stepped deeper into the kitchen, the two of them instantly put closer than they would be in the kitchen back at his own apartment. Standing beside her, he reached out and dragged his fingers along the countertop before knocking on it lightly.

“Counters seem like very respectable surfaces,” he said with all the seriousness that he could muster.

That comment earned him not only a laugh, but also a shove as she tried to usher him back out of the kitchen. “Alright, so clearly we aren’t ready to handle the apartment tour.”

He allowed her to push him around, leaning back against her hands just enough so that she felt like she was helping not only keep him moving but also keep him upright. His hands went up in surrender. “I’m good! I’m good. I’m ready to continue the tour. Blocked off my whole fuckin’ day for this, you know.”

She stopped pushing him so that she could stand beside him again. “Well, I don’t know if you can tell or not, but I think blocking off the entire day for this tour was generous, to say the least.”

He just smiled and shook his head at her. “What’s next?”

“Two more stops.” Taking a few more steps, she stopped in front of a door that looked like window shutters, the type that folded open and closed instead of swinging like a regular door. “Here’s the linen closet,” she folded the door open, “which currently has no linens because my only two towels are in the bathroom.”

He nodded. “Yeah, saw those in there.” He caught the look on her face and raised his eyebrows. “What? I pay attention on the tour.”

She smiled. “Right. Anyway,” she closed the closet door and took two more steps to reach the only door in the apartment that she hadn’t opened yet, “this is the final stop at the tour of Hotel Adamu.”

He laughed. “Hotel might be—” He stopped when he saw the look on her face. “Might be the perfect way to describe this.” He gestured towards the door. “Continue.”

Sydney tried not to laugh at how dramatically Richie was pretending to contain his excitement—she didn’t want to give his ego that boost. He’d clearly been having enough fun at her expense already. Keeping as much of a poker face as she could, she opened the door.

“This is my bedroom, which contains two of my three pieces of furniture!”

Richie laughed as he stepped inside. Sure enough, she had a bed and a dresser in there and nothing else yet. The fact that the dresser had a vanity mirror attached to it helped it all look a little more put-together than it really was. The rest of the filler items were probably still sitting in boxes in the back of the U-Haul that they’d parked in front of the building. He stood halfway between the door and where her bed was as he turned in circles to look around. Sydney let him keep doing it, chuckling to herself because there wasn’t nearly enough in her bedroom, let alone her entire apartment, to require so much staring.

“I see you didn’t bring your twin-size bed with you.” He gave her a humorously suggestive look. “Bodes well for me personally.”

“Bold of you to assume that I won’t make you sleep on the floor.”

“Yeah, gotta take the floor because you’re too broke for a couch and too good for a futon.”

They were able to keep their serious expressions for about two and a half seconds before descending back into laughter. Richie walked back over to Syd, who was leaning against the doorframe watching him. He tossed his arm around her shoulders as he walked by, effectively scooping her back up along with him as he went. Sydney didn’t fight it, leaning into him enough to make him stumble a couple steps. Lucky for him there was nothing in her apartment yet to trip over.

“Ready to get the rest of your shit up here?” he asked.

Sydney groaned at the prospect of making so many trips to and from the U-Haul, but there was no getting out of it now. She was thankful that she at least had Richie there to help her so that she wouldn’t be doing it on her own. She’d thought about asking her dad to help but it had already proven to be a lot for the two of them so she figured it might just be easier to get the bulk of this part done while he was busy at work. He could help her with other stuff later.

Besides, if she had done this alone or found someone else to ask, she wouldn’t have gotten to listen to Richie’s riveting commentary on each and every box that the two of them moved. She’d labeled them all, vaguely, on the outside with the thought that it would help her decide where to set the boxes. But it only took until their third trip down to realize that she really was just going to throw everything in the living room until further notice. She wasn’t even planning on unpacking everything yet—she’d just start taking things out as she needed them. She could only imagine how much more Richie would have to say if he was helping her to through each box item by item. She’d been to his apartment enough, however, to know that he didn’t have too much of a leg to stand on in terms of interior design.

When they brought the last of the boxes up, Richie dropped it onto the floor. The second he’d let go of it to do so he’d regretted it, remembering too little too late that the particular box that he’d been carrying had a bunch of Sydney’s cookbooks inside of it.

Syd cringed at the sound it made when it hit the ground, and Richie just tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling. She stared at Richie and waited for him to look at her, but he held off on it for a surprisingly long time.

“Well. There goes your first impression with my neighbors,” she joked.

That got him not only to look at her, but also to laugh. He sat down on the box that he’d just dropped. “Please. Walls this thin? I had no shot at a good first impression anyway.”

She was smiling as she sat down on a moving box that was across from his. “Your self-awareness is something that might save you with the neighbors.”

“Hey, it worked on you.”

Her eye-roll didn’t do enough to negate the smile that was still on her face. “Yeah, that’s what did it for me.”

They were both laughing at that when Richie instinctively reached into his jacket pocket for his pack of cigarettes. He pulled it out and almost opened it before remembering where he was, and how not okay it was to do that. Clearing his throat, he awkwardly tucked them back into his pocket.

Sydney watched the entire thing with her hand over her mouth partially covering her smile. If he’d lit one, she only would’ve given him a little bit of shit about it. She wouldn’t have even made him put it out—probably would have just told him that he has to tap the ash out in the sink since they brought up her trash can but there was no garbage bag in it yet. It was probably a better precedent to set, him not getting too comfortable smoking in her new place where she was definitely not supposed to be smoking. But it wasn’t a hill she felt like dying on.

“Thanks,” she said, “for helping with all the boxes.”

“And driving the U-Haul,” he added on with a grin.

She shook her head but still agreed. “Yes, and driving the U-Haul.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was a long pause, and Richie couldn’t help but to look at Sydney as she looked around her apartment. He had no doubt that her mind was already running wild trying to think of where everything was going to go when she finally got around to taking things out of boxes.

He fidgeted with his lighter in his pocket. “Syd?”

She looked over at him. “Yeah?”

He let out a small sigh, not wanting to say it again even though he knew he was going to have to. “If the answer’s no, that’s fine. I just, I gotta fuckin figure something out.”

It was Sydney’s turn to sigh. She looked down at her hands as she twisted her fingers together. “I don’t…” she scratched behind her ear, “It just can’t be a good idea, can it? Bringing me to your ex-wi—”

“What, what the fuck does that mean?”

“What?”

“’Bringing me’,” he threw it in air quotes for emphasis. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

She was fighting the urge to look anywhere but at him. “I just mean that, I don’t know, there is a lot of history there, I guess? With Tiff and her family and—”

He laughed but there was more confusion in it than anything else. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Do you not see how that might be a little fucking uncomfortable for me?”

“For you what about—”

“They know you!” She threw her hands up. “You’re gonna know at least half the people there. I’m, I’m not. And Tiff is your fucking ex-wife, Richie.”

“I’m fucking aware, Sydney.”

“Okay, yeah, so can you also be aware that it might be a little hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that you wanna bring me and plop me down in front of her like that? For the first time ever on her wedding day?”

“She’s not gonna give a shit, Syd! She’s gonna be busy getting married!” He was standing up now, starting to pace.

“Then why—”

He stopped in front of her, pressing his fingers to his chest in a gesture at himself. “Because I give a shit!” He sighed, wishing he’d smoked that cigarette before. “You keep running around in this fuckin’ circle about Tiff being my ex-wife like we haven’t all known that! What’s your actual fuckin’ problem with—”

“When people ask you who the fuck I am, what are you gonna say? I’m your friend? Someone you work with? The girl you fuck at your apartment sometimes?”

“And my car,” he muttered.

The tic in her jaw at that was involuntary. “Richie.”

He sighed, knowing that he’d had at least half a leg to stand on until that. “Sorry.” He crouched down, lowering himself until he was eye-level with her. “You’re not just—” he paused, chuckling, “Well, I mean, you are the girl I fuck at my apartment sometimes.” He saw the way she mistakenly cracked a smile for a sliver of a second before allowing her annoyed expression to take over again. “That’s not why I’m asking you to go with me to this thing, though.”

She stared down at the floor. “Yeah, I know, it’s ‘cause you’re afraid your rep will be irreparably damaged by showing up stag.”

He laughed quietly at that, and instinctively wanted to create a whole riff off that comment alone, but he didn’t. There would be time for commentary later depending on how the rest of their conversation panned out. He waited for her to look him in the eyes again, but when she continued to stare at the floor, he reached and placed his hand on her knee. The gentle contact finally got her to look at him.

“I’m asking you because I feel good and comfortable when I’m with you.” He traced his thumb back and forth across her knee, smoothing the fabric of her pant leg in the process. “The reason I asked you and then waited with my thumb up my ass like an idiot instead of finding someone else to bring is because even when we’re in the shit you’ve always got my back and I, you know, it’s fuckin’ nice.” He paused and let his smile widen a bit. “And you’re nice too, I guess.”

The sincerity of his words, his refusal to look away from her, had Sydney feeling comforted and jittery all at once. There was something so reassuring about the way he was talking to her, touching her. She wanted to lean into it the way that she’d been leaning into everything else with him—one of the only things lately that didn’t feel like it was slowly disintegrating in her hands. But she still worried that this move was going to be the wrong one, the start of the ruin.

“I’m just worried it might not be the best idea,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

“You didn’t think any of this was the best idea,” he said, leaning in a little closer, “and I think it’s been pretty fuckin’ great so far, right?”

Her face warmed as she nodded. “Yeah.”

He waited a moment, then, “Listen, Syd, if you really don’t wanna fuckin’ go, like, if it’s that type of pulling out your fucking eyelashes type of wanting to avoid shit, tell me and I’ll drop it. But I just don’t think it is.”

Syd gnawed at her lip. “It’s not. It’s not that.”

Relief washed through untying all the knots that were built up in Richie’s chest from the nerves. He gave her knee a light squeeze. “You wouldn’t know this, but I’m pretty fun at a wedding.”

“Oh, yeah?”

He nodded. “Oh yeah. A dance floor hates to see me coming.”

She laughed, resting her hand on top of his. “I think I might believe that.”

“Might?”

“Yeah. Might just have to see it for myself, though.”

His face lit up. “Yeah?”

She laughed, a strange brand of excitement mixing in with her nerves. “Yeah.” She saw it on his face that he was about to stand up and shout something in the way of victory, so she squeezed his hand to keep him in place for a minute longer. “Promise me something, though?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Promise me that afterwards we’ll still be okay.”

The humor that had been building in his expression disappeared when he saw the genuine flash of fear in her eyes. He nodded, shifting their hands so he could interlock his fingers with hers. “I promise we’ll be okay. No matter what fuckin’ bullshit goes down there, or anywhere else, we’ll be okay.”

She nodded, staring down at their intertwined hands. “Thank you.”

“I’ve got you, Syd. And I know we don’t, you know, I know we don’t talk about it,” he cracked a grin, “since someone didn’t think that we ever needed to. But, yeah. I’m here for you. Always. Whatever you wanna fuckin’ call that.”

She smiled. “I’ll try and come up with a fun name between now and the wedding.”

He laughed as he stood up, pulling her up to her feet right along with him. He tugged her right into him so that her head was tucked against his chest. His arms draped over her shoulders in a hug. “Sounds like a plan.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head before saying, “Who knows, you play your cards right at the reception and I might just let you take me back here to disrespect some counters,” he felt her trying to pull away and he hugged her even tighter as they both laughed, “or maybe even judge the quality of the fitted sheets on your mattress.”

She gave in, laughing into his chest for a moment before leaning back enough to get a good look at his face. “If only I could ever be so lucky.”

They stayed like that for a moment, standing in the middle of Sydney’s essentially barren apartment. The moving boxes were stacked all around them like pseudo-furniture until Sydney managed to save up to get the real thing. There were no curtains up on her living room windows yet so the entire room was washed in the sunlight coming in from outside. It was a matchbook of an apartment, and Sydney knew that, but it felt just right in that moment.

She rested her hands against Richie’s chest, slipping them past his leather jacket so that she could feel the old, worn cotton of his t-shirt instead. He had his arms around her, his hands pressing against her back. He wanted to pull her in tight again, but he also wanted to stand there and look at her until she told him to get lost or help her start unpacking, whichever came first. He was very aware of his heart thudding inside his chest, and if he was aware of it, he knew that Sydney could feel it too with her hands on him like that. She could’ve said something but she didn’t, just smiling up at him instead.

Richie finally caved, pulling her into another embrace before pressing a kiss to the edge of her forehead. He dragged that out for as long as he could too before saying, “Alright, c’mon. Let’s bring that fuckin’ U-Haul back before they try to fuck me and charge me extra.”

Sydney groaned but she knew that it had to be done. “Alright.”

As the two of them headed for the door to her apartment, he asked, “You don’t have shit here for dinner, do you?”

Sydney laughed. “Nope. Not a single thing.”

He was laughing and shaking his head at her as he watched her lock the door behind them. He could the glimpse of the proud look on her face about it, that relief of having something that’s yours after not having it for a while. He followed her towards the entrance of the apartment building. “Sounds like we’re stopping at the grocery store on the way back.”

“Or,” she said as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, “we can just get takeout.”

He shook his head as he unlocked the U-Haul doors. “No, fuck that. We get takeout then we wake up tomorrow morning and starve because there’s still no goddamn food in your kitchen.”

She laughed as she hopped into the passenger seat. “That’s assuming I let you stay over.”

Richie rolled his eyes as he turned the key in the ignition. “Call me presumptuous, then.”

As they made their way down the road, Sydney took out her phone to start typing out a list of groceries that she would need. Richie weighed in with plenty of additional suggestions, and for every five things he said, maybe one would make it on the list. That part didn’t matter that much, but Richie kept nettling her because every time he looked over at her she was laughing and it was worth it for that alone.

They were arguing about how much of the freezer section they should bring back to her place when Richie reached over and placed one hand on her thigh. Sydney didn’t say anything about it but the smile was audible in her voice as they continued to playfully bicker back and forth.

“You saw the size of my fridge, Richie—there’s no way all of that is going to fit.”

“Whatever doesn’t fit I’ll just take back to my place. Problem solved.”

Syd laughed. “Oh, so I’m stocking your fridge too now?”

“No, no. I’m just preventing you from having to waste food.” He looked over at her for a second with a grin on his face. “You’re welcome.”

She rolled her eyes. “Truly a life saver.”

He gave her leg a squeeze. “Don’t say I never did nothing for you.”

She settled back in the passenger seat, looking at him while he was looking at the road. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

(divider by @saradika-graphics 💞)

The Bear Taglist (please let me know if you'd like to be added!): @garbinge @darqchilddaydreamz @withmyteeth @narcolini @hausofmamadas

A drunk in a cowboy hat stumbles into Javi’s table, knocking over an empty beer bottle. It rolls off the table, tumbling, unbroken onto the floor. The man tips the brim of his John Wayne costume piece and smiles. He has too many teeth and the smile seems less like an apology and more like an invitation. It’s unsettling. Maybe if the bottle had broken, or if beer had been spilled, Javi would channel his current mood into a fist fight. He’d come here, this local bar just far enough away from where he is local to, in hopes of finding a woman to spend the night with. But a fight would do too. Same itch, different scratch.

His fingers twitch. Ash from his cigarette falls to the floor. He shifts in his seat like he might get up, but doesn’t. Instead he watches. A familiar charge carried on the humid Texas air. Bogata before a gunfight. He can smell the carbon like an aftershock from an earthquake that hasn’t happened yet.

The man in the cowboy hat makes eye contact with a guy by the pool table. It’s subtle, but Javi catches it. He follows their gaze to a woman at the bar. She leans against the splintering wood, finishing a glass of something brown before setting it down. He can’t see her face, just her long exposed neck and open back tank-top, muscles sinew between her spine and scapula. She wipes her hands over frayed jean shorts and Peña is momentarily distracted by the curve her palms take. But not distracted enough to miss the cowboy tilt his head to his friend as the woman heads toward the bathroom. And he definitely doesn’t miss when they wait a beat and follow her. 

Fight it is.

Peña smashes the ember of his cigarette and stands. He rolls his shoulders back beneath the soft cotton of a well-worn shirt. The top three buttons hang open exposing tan skin and a smattering of dark hair. He stands and follows down the narrow hallway. A single door labeled “Bathroom” swings open easily when he pushes it; empty. He walks farther and finds a poorly marked, and clearly not alarmed, emergency exit. Instinctively, he reaches back for his firearm, the one he doesn't carry anymore. He enters the alleyway behind the bar anyway.

There is a grunt to his left followed by the distinct sound of a body hitting the brick wall of the building. His heart rate picks up. He rounds the dumpster. His foot kicks something. He looks down and sees the cowboy hat. It’s still attached to a head. A head that is no longer attached to a body. 

Javier Peña has seen a lot of things. He’s prepared for a lot of things. He’s not prepared for this. 

The man by the pool table is now pressed against the wall. The woman in front of him, a machete in her hand.

She smiles and presses the machete into his neck like a paper cutter. It separates with a spray of blood. She backs away, letting the head fall, the body slumping to the ground after it. She lifts her shirt, using it to wipe the blood from her face. She turns and sees Javi. 

His brain scrambles to fit the scene to his narrative. 

There is no more than ten feet between them in the shadowed alley. He can see a smear of blood across her chest. Round, dark eyes watch him, waiting for him to catch up.

“I thought you were in trouble,” he says as an explanation for his presence. 

She lowers the weapon, but doesn’t loosen her grip on it.

“And what do you think now?” Her voice even, a slight twang that isn’t from here, but that he can’t quite identify. 

“I think I was wrong.” He takes a step backwards. 

“Let me see your teeth.” 

Before he can voice his confusion she pins him against the dumpster, machete at his throat. She lifts his upper lip. Chipped nails and her fingers smell like tobacco and iron.

“You have two choices,” she says as she releases his lip but keeps the blade in place. “You can walk away and continue with your life like you never saw this. Or you can stay and I can explain.”

The answer is obvious. At least it should be. It would be to anyone who thought they had a life worth continuing with.

“Explain.” He holds her gaze, dark eyes set against burnt sugar skin. Close cropped curls frame her face. The tangy scent of blood and sweat tangled with something sweet and incongruously feminine. 

She doesn’t move. The blade sticky against his skin. Head tilted up slightly, she searches his face and she must find what she is looking for because she leans back, weapon to her side.

She kicks the cowboy hat loose from the dismembered head before grabbing it by the hair and lifting it, ignoring the viscera and blood that drips to her feet.

“Teeth,” she says. As if this explains everything.

Javier’s brow furrows. But she doesn’t say anything else, just holds the head closer to him. He lifts the upper lip of her prop to find pointed canine teeth protruding over a set of normal looking teeth. He examines them more closely, his finger brushing over the fangs where they emerge from the gums. They’re not fake. 

“Vampires.” She tosses the head into the dumpster and opens the back door to the bar, pausing when he doesn’t move. “You coming?”

He follows silently, wondering if he survived warring cartels just to be passively led to his death at the hands of a psychotic woman in an unnamed Texas roadhouse. 

She leans over the bar, grabs a rag and uses it to wipe down her blade.

“Did you leave me a mess to clean up?” The bartender says, his arms crossed, face pulled into a scowl. 

“Did you think to stop the civilian from wandering outside and interrupting me?” She shoots back, gesturing at Javi but not taking her gaze off the bartender. 

The bartender’s arms drop as he notices Javi standing there. “I thought he was going to the bathroom,” he says with a shrug. Then he pours a shot glass full of Wild Turkey and pushes it in her direction. “I’m still not cleaning up your mess.”

She takes the shot, slamming it down on the bar with more force than Javi thinks is friendly, but he gets the feeling this isn’t the first time they’ve had this argument. 

“Call Mel and tell him to come clean it up. It’s his fault those fuckers followed me here anyway. Asshole never finishes a job.” She pushes the now empty glass toward the bartender in request for another.

The bartender turns to Javi. “You want something before li’l sis over here drinks it all?”

Javi looks back and forth between the two strangers. They definitely don’t look related so he assumes the moniker isn’t based on biology. He has about fifty thousand questions crashing around his skull, but he knows better than to talk when he can listen. 

“I’ll take the same, on the rocks.” Javi slides onto the barstool next to the misanthropic vampire slayer. 

The bartender nods, grabbing a glass from underneath the bar and tossing some ice in with his bare hands. “I’m Caleb, by the way,” he says as he pours.

The woman cocks her head angry at Caleb but still pushes her glass toward him. Caleb shakes his head and pours her another shot. 

“Don’t worry,” Caleb says to Javi, “She’s more bite than bark.” 

Javi is about to point out the error in his idiom but the light catches off her blade as she slides it into a leather sheath. Probably not a mistake. 

“Javier Peña.” He extends a hand to Caleb, who shakes it firmly, like he’s trying to make a friend not an enemy.

The woman twists in her seat to get a better angle on Javi. She looks him over, her eyes darting quickly down his body before coming back to rest on his own. 

“You a cop?” 

This shouldn’t make him smile, but it does. The badge may be gone, but the attitude isn’t.

“Former DEA.” 

“DEA?”

“Drug Enforcement Administration.”

She thinks about this for a moment then squints angrily, like it’s his fault she’s never heard of the DEA. 

“I was stationed in Columbia, hunting Pablo Escobar.”

“Who’s that?”

“You don’t read the papers much?” Everyone knows who Pablo Escobar is. His face was on the cover of Newsweek. His death was covered on the national nightly news for days.

Her mouth ticks up into a fleeting smile, she looks at Caleb. “Not those kinds of papers.”

Javi studies her profile. The quickly vanishing dimple and long eyelashes give her a dollish look at odds with the rest of her. 

“Well, he was a piece of shit drug dealer who murdered a lot of people.”

“So you killed him?” 

Loaded question. But he’s come this far, no point in not continuing. 

“My partner got him. I was less than politely asked to leave the country and the DEA before the trigger was pulled.” He takes a drink and tries to bury the sting of the admission with alcohol. 

“Bad at your job?”

“Bad at following the rules.” 

Her fingers tap against the bar as she studies him. She gives him a slow nod. Javier gets the feeling he’s passed a test, one of many. 

“Good to know.”

Caleb gives her a subtle shake of his head. “I’ll be out back cleaning up. Don’t let anyone steal anything.” He gestures vaguely to the four other patrons in the bar sitting at a table against the opposite wall.

She waves him off as she reaches over the bar to refill her own whiskey glass. She raises an eyebrow at Javier and he holds his still half-full glass to her. 

“So, vampires are real?” He takes a cigarette, bringing it to his lips.

“Yup.”

“And you… kill them?” He lights, inhales, lets the cigarette sit between his fingers and exhales.

“Among other things.”

“Other things?”

She nods. “Werewolves, ghosts, shapeshifters, demons, poltergeists. The occasional lesser pagan god that gets out of line.” She rattles them off like she’s naming bands she’s seen in concert. 

Javi thinks back to his days in Columbia. Listening to a CI was always a game of spot the lie. Sometimes people don’t even know they’re doing it. They’ve convinced themselves so thoroughly of their own false narrative that truth becomes subjective and malleable.

“How long have you been doing this?” He asks.

“Hunting? Since I was a kid, I guess. My parents were hunters, I just took up the mantle when they were gone.” 

“Where is home?” 

She huffs out a small laugh and takes Javi’s cigarette from him before it makes it to his mouth. “Once a cop always a cop.” She takes a drag.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

“S’okay,” she hands the cigarette back to him. “You don’t believe me.” It’s not a question. 

Javi turns to face her fully but leans against the bar, head resting against his hand. “Should I?”

“Probably not, but you did follow me.” She leans in to take the cigarette again, but he holds on to it and she keeps her fingers resting against his.

“Maybe I just have a thing for crazy chicks.”

She runs her tongue over her teeth. “Every guy has a thing for crazy chicks. Most of them draw the line at dismemberment.”

He lets her take the cigarette. His now free fingers smooth his mustache and come to rest over his lips where they drum in thought. She’s right, of course. She might be crazy, but what did that make him? Horney and dangerously curious? He presses on anyway.

“How did you know they were vampires?” He lights himself another cigarette, letting her keep the one they were sharing. 

“They were part of a nest I took out with another hunter.”

“Mel?” 

She looks pleased he remembered her earlier complaint. 

“Mel,” she confirms. “He was supposed to take out the last two while I picked up a poltergeist nearby, but if I had to guess he got drunk in a whore house and lost his way.”

“So you tracked them here?” Javi asks.

“Actually, they tracked me. Once a vamp catches your scent they have it for life. Apparently thought I wouldn’t recognize them. Vamps usually aren’t the brightest of monsters.” She shrugs and finishes her drink. “And that about catches us up to when you got here. So,” she stubs her cigarette out in an ashtray, “What’s an ex-cop like you doing in a place like this?”

“What does someone usually do in a place like this?” He follows her eyes as she looks quickly over his shoulder, then over to the table in the corner, then back to him. He wonders if she’s waiting on another attack, or if she’s always this vigilant. She's keyed up from the fight, he can feel her pulse from here, her jaw twitches when she makes eye contact.

“They fuck or they fight.”

Javi follows her truck the three blocks to the motel she is staying in. She doesn’t say anything as she opens the door to her room, just presses him against it once it’s closed behind them. The cheap wood shutters with his weight and for a moment he thinks maybe she meant fight. But then her tongue is in his mouth. She’s up on her toes using his shoulders to drag herself closer to him. He is slow to catch up, his brain still swimming with everything that happened tonight. The severed head that rolled away from him on the asphalt, the blood that is still soaked into the shirt she’s wearing, the cigarette smoke that curled away from her fingers. Like even it knew she was too dangerous to be near. 

And maybe out of all the dumb shit he’s done, this is the dumbest. And maybe there is a world of actual monsters out there that he can’t begin to fathom. But this he knows. He grips her ass with his large hands and lifts her, letting her crush him against the door again. He digs deeper into her mouth with his tongue, biting her lower lip as he pulls back, squeezes her center against him. 

This he knows. This he can control. 

He pushes off the door toward the bed. Her legs wrap tight around his waist, her fingers scrape the back of his neck. She is all bone and muscle coiled around him like a python, dragging them both down to the bed. She unbuttons his shirt, quickly moving her nimble fingers to his jeans but before she can get to the zipper Javi is nipping at her stomach, pushing her tank top over her head. He digs his fingers into the flesh above her hips before dragging them down, tugging the rest of her clothes off. He settles between her naked thighs, sucks the sensitive skin until she squirms underneath him and breaths his name.

“Yes, princessa?” He asks just before he swipes his tongue against her.

“Don’t call me that,” she says.

“And what should I call you?” He tilts his head up, admiring the view, heavy breath and body stretched out before him.

“Probably best you don’t call me anything.”

The next morning Javi wakes to the familiar feeling of alone in a strange bed. The memory of last night settles around him. A dull ache near his groin reminds him he’s not as young as he used to be and maybe round two last night was pushing it. But his body thrummed with adrenaline, even after he fucked them both into the thin mattress. So much so that even after they’d shared a cigarette and a flask of bourbon his nerve endings burned for another release. 

At the memory of her on top him, hips rolling, controlled and fluid, his dick twitches. 

“Seriously?” He mumbles, lifting the blanket to peak down at himself. He doesn’t get to ask it any follow up questions before the bathroom door opens. Humid air and the smell of cheap motel soap hit him. She follows. She’s wearing the same shorts, he can tell because there is still blood spattered near the right pocket. Though maybe all of her clothes look like that. A gray t-shirt with a blue and black checkered flannel, the sleeves rolled up. In the light of morning he can make out a scar on her right arm and a tattoo on her left but he can’t read what it says. Her hair is still wet from the shower and a drop of water makes its way down her neck. 

“You’re still here,” she says. 

He’s not sure if he should be offended. “Do you want me to leave?”

She shrugs. “Checkout’s not ‘til 10. You can stay if you want.” 

He notices there’s a cup of coffee on the small table and several newspapers. Apparently she’s been up for a while. Which means she could have left at any time. 

“Why are you still here?” He tucks an arm behind his head and watches as she picks up the coffee cup and tosses it in the garbage. She gathers up the newspapers, throws all but one of them into the same garbage. 

“I gotta get to Wichita.” She finally looks at him. “You gonna be okay?”

He thinks maybe that’s an answer to his question. 

“What’s in Wichita?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe a werewolf.”

“A werewolf?” He sits up, the sheet falls to his lap. “And you’re going to go hunt it?”

“That’s the idea.”

She’s standing at the foot of the bed. He’s pretty sure what he should do is meet her there. Kiss her. Thank her for a good time last night. Tell her to be careful, or to see a shrink, or just to have a nice life. Any of those would have been more appropriate than what he actually says.

“I wanna come with you.”

“To Wichita?” She raises an eyebrow. It’s both a question and a dare. 

He’s already pulling on his underwear. Throwing off the sheets. He finds his pants on the floor. 

“Yeah, air capital of the world. I’ve always wanted to go.”

He’s got his jeans over his hips when she puts a hand on his chest. 

“No way.” 

“I want to hunt.” It comes out of his mouth so fast he’s not sure he even thought the words first. Just some primordial lizard brain response. 

She pauses for just a moment. It’s brief. But it’s not nothing and Javier latches on to it. 

“Give me a chance to prove myself.” He grabs her wrist when she steps away. “I swear if I’m just getting in your way I’ll—“

“You’ll be dead.” She says, cutting off his argument. “If you make a mistake on a hunt it eats you. Or worse.”

“I get it.” He wants to explain to her what it’s like chasing down Sicarios across rooftops in Medellin. With your own breath hammering in your chest and the weight of a gun the only thing keeping you balanced.

“You don’t. You think because you rounded up some drug dealers you know how to hunt monsters? No. You’ll get yourself killed.”

She pulls away from him. “Go back to your life, Javier.”

But there’s nothing to go back to. He’s not a rancher. He’s not an agent. He has no other skill sets. 

“I’m going to do it with or without you. I’ll survive longer with your help.” It’s a gamble. She’s given him no indication that she feels any responsibility for his well-being. She shouldn’t. She doesn’t know him. 

It works anyway. 

With a hard exhale she says, “You do what I say, when I say. Got it?”

He’s pulling his shirt out from under the bed so his response of yes ma’am is muffled. 

“Alice.”

“What?” He asks. 

“My name is Alice.”

It’s not that I need to find people love in time for Valentine’s Day. It’s just that there are so many lonely hearts crying out for love, louder and louder as we near the day. It’s impossible to ignore.

The recent heartbreaks are always the easiest to spot, but I don’t go after those. They need a little time. My bow and arrow can only point a lonely heart in the right direction. I’ve learned from experience that a heart still raw can’t be moved before it’s ready.

I look for the hearts that have mended but are still scarred. Take this guy, for instance. Waiting in line at coffee shop, the saddest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. He smiles so sweetly at the barista. Asks her how she’s doing before he places his order. She’s been here since 6am, she’s not interested in his pleasantries. But the woman who just walked in to order her double espresso, she will be. With the a little nudge from one of my arrows.

We don’t rock an actual bow and arrow anymore. Long gone are the times when that particular paraphernalia blended in. We’re a bit more subtle now (though I do have a cousin who loves to hang out at Renaissance Fairs just so she can blend in with her tried and true bow). I opt for a more modern take. Watch a master at work.

“I have an order for Marcus?”

The man hops up from the nearby table he was waiting at.

“That’s me.”

Slender build in a just too large gray suit, clearly off-the-rack. Ironed white shirt and a dark blue tie, firmly knotted. Hair combed neatly to the side it brushes over his forehead but keeps clear of his eye, conscientiously trimmed. This is a man who measures twice and cuts once.

But not in this instance.

In this moment he grabs the coffee cup from the counter, thanks the barista who has moved on to the next drink and heads toward the door to start his day. He takes a quick sip. The bitter drink stops him mid step. He looks down at the cup. Scrawled on the side is a name. Not his name.

He walked back over to the counter. One hand in his pocket, the other holding the beverage that doesn't belong to him.

“I’m so sorry, I think I--”

“--Are you Marcus?”

The man by that name turns toward the voice.

High ponytail atop her head not quite tight enough to keep the shortest strands locked in place. Yoga pants and a zipped-up hoodie, a yoga mat strapped to her back. Her morning routine clear.

She is holding a cup of coffee in her hand, extended toward Marcus.

“I’m sorry, I think I grabbed your by mistake.”

Marcus looks back at the cup in his hand.

“That would make you Mimi?”

She smiles and Marcus feels compelled to smile back like the muscles in his face don’t need his permission. Maybe none of his body needs his permission because he finds himself taking a step closer to exchange cups.

“I’m sorry, I took a sip before I realized,” he says.

“So did I.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Neither do I.”

She watching him now, wondering what he’ll do next now that the coffees have been returned to their rightful owner. Her lower lip pulled between her teeth, a nervous habit, one her ex always told her made her look like a child. But Marcus is still smiling at her.

I watch the interaction from a table by the door. Hoping that the simple mix up I orchestrated is enough.

“I, um, I don’t want to make you late.” Marcus gestures to the yoga mat.

“Oh, I just left class. I like to get very zen in the morning and then promptly ruin it by over-caffeinating and going to work.”

Mimi’s lips press together. She’s over-sharing again. Something else her ex didn’t like.

Marcus laughs. “I’m actually running early. Do you want to sit?” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. They’re followed by the memory of his ex telling him he’s too much, too fast.

But Mimi just nods her head quickly. The ponytail on top of her head bouncing with the movement.

I lean back in my chair as they sit down in their own. Another job well done. These two are destined for the alter, I can already tell. I almost leave. Almost. But my cupid wings tingle, so I hold my position.

“So, do you work near here?” Marcus asks.

Before Mimi can answer, Marcus’ cell phone rings. He looks down at the incoming call and frowns.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Just one moment.”

He stands and answers the call, walking a few feet away for privacy.

I scowl as he his face turns serious. It feels like one of the Fates is messing with me.  

Marcus returns to the table after he hangs up.

“I’m really sorry, I have to go take care of something at work. It was really nice meeting you.”

“You too,” Mimi answers.

With that Marcus is gone. And I need a plan B.

~~~

Okay, this time my set up is sure to work. The meet-cute in the coffee shop, not my most original work. But this will guarantee wedding bells.

Mimi sits behind a small table in the reading room at the National Gallery. Above her a sign reads “Meet the Author”. She doesn’t know why her publisher insists she does these events. She’s been here for two hours and only seven people had come over to speak with her. Of those, only three had even read her book.

She looks down at her watch again. She can leave in just a few minutes. In fact, shes sure that if she left now no one would care. Mimi’s problem is that she likes the rules. And the rules say she scheduled to be here until 4pm. Not 3:55.

When Marcus rounds the corner to enter the reading room he’s stopped dead in his tracks.

“You’re Mimi Zong?”

Mimi looks up to find the dark brown eyes that have been haunting her daydreams.

“Hi! I mean, yeah, I am. How do you know who I am?”

Marcus tilts his head back with disbelief. “Are you kidding? The Fault in Renoir is one of my favorite books. Your theory that his color palette may have been influenced by rare type of color blindness helped me catch his most notorious forger.”

Marcus cannot believe that just a week ago he was sitting across from this woman at a coffee shop. Or that he spent the last week kicking himself for not asking for her number before he rushed off to the office.

“You did what? What do you do for a living?” Mimi’s delicate eyes go wide on Marcus.

Before he can answer there’s an impatient looking woman behind Mimi.

“Hey, we gotta go. You’re meeting with the Chancellor starts in five minutes, what are you still doing here?”

Mimi looks back, confused, at her assistant. When she looks down at her watch she’s shocked to see it’s almost 4:30.

Mimi jumps up. “I’m so sorry, Marcus. I have to run.” With a wave she’s hurrying down the hallway and toward the exit.

I watch from a nearby table, a book obscuring my face. I slam the book down on the surface as I watch my perfectly arranged setup dissolve in front of me. Several patrons turn toward my commotion. I don’t care though. Now I know I’m being messed with.

~~~

I storm into the Fate’s cottage. Unlike most of us who have opted for more modern accommodations, the Fates insist on maintaining their rural lifestyle. Not a thing has changed here in the last five thousand years, probably more if I could remember that far back.

“What the fuck, ladies?”

Clotho doesn't even bother to look up from her wheel. Lachesis raises an eyebrow at my outburst but doesn’t say anything. Only Atropos deigns a response.

“Everything in good time, my dear.”

Of course. I don’t know what answer I was expecting. Not a god on this side of the milky way has gotten these ladies to change their minds.

“Why are you keeping my match apart. They’re perfect for each other, I know it.” Maybe I’m whining a little bit. But I know Marcus and Mimi belong together. I can feel it.

“Trust the threads, little cupid. Now run along. I know you are busy.” Atropos slices through a golden thread as she says this, letting the loose end fall to the floor.

Okay, warning received, loud and clear.

~~~

I’m following Marcus, studying his every move to plan my next attack. I mean match up. I watch him enter the crosswalk and pause to wait for the light. As the “walk” sign flashes green he begins to cross, looking back down at his phone. He doesn’t see the bus run the red light.

“Marcus!”

He stops at the sound of his name and turns back to see Mimi waving at him and hurrying down the sidewalk in his direction. A rush of air from the bus blows past him. It ruffles his suit and throws him off balance. He watches as it barrels down the road past him. His heart beat quickens in his chest. A feeling he can’t quite describe like he was on the edge of a cliff looking over and someone pulled him back just before vertigo took hold.

“Mimi, I’m so happy to see you,” he says as he shakes off the feeling.

He closes the gap between them and a notion takes hold.

“Yeah me too, I --”

Marcus doesn’t let her finish. “Would you join me for dinner tonight? On a date, I mean.”

“I was just going to ask you the same thing,” she says.

I lean against the brick building and watch them exchange numbers and make plans. Already I can see the tendrils of love winding around them.