banal'ras

That gets a snort out of them. 

“Oh, poor you, do you need some coffee, sweetheart?” They grin as they hide behind their face behind their own cup of coffee, sipping delighted. Their only cup of coffee that is. There was the intent to bring it it to him from the kitchen, it was why the came along, but somewhere along the walk there their attiude shifted. Suddenly the act of bringing a cup of coffee seemed— charged with some kind of meaning they didn't want to give it. It was just coffee.

Arie looks annoyingly fresh for someone who had been keeping up with Taron’s drinking the night before, if not running past him. Enough that at some point they had somehow moved from flirty, playful talk to more serious conversations. Too raw. Was the thought in their mind at the time, like a feral creature reeling back from a sudden movement. For a paranoid moment it had felt like Taron could see right through them, reading every thought in their mind with the ease of someone snooping through a diary. Reading their feelings out loud to them with terrifying clarity. ’It's killing an' I wish it would but it never does— makes me do mad stuff that jus' makes it worse.’ Maybe that’s what makes them particularly vengeful that morning. It feels like they should somehow repay him for mocking them like that, cutting so deeper into them. Beucase it felt aimed at them. No one could possibly being to understand that, no one. He didn't understood, he simply saw it in them, as plain as day.

“You looked kind of cute babbling nonsense with your pink cheeks— a few more drinks and I might have kissed you until you really started talking nonsense,” a dramatic pause, just barely enough to let their words sink a little, before they cut them off with a careless shrug of their shoulders “Or maybe I did and we just don’t remember.” It is, of course a lie, neither was drunk enough to forget the way arie’s expression shut off after Taron’s long confession, mumbling something about being tired and going to bed. Disappearing on their own short after.

Keeping up their playful act, they give him a few condescending pats on his cheek before slipping away, still sipping their coffee. 

Somewhere, in the back of their brain they are unsure of how they are still alive, if  they are actually still alive or if this is all just some hallucination as they still lay there on the dirt road, watching @sorrowsick carve pieces out of them as if it were butter. It all happened so fast, they killed the guys that were after them, the ambush was a complete success, but Fel just wouldn’t stop, it kept carving into the guy until there was nothing else, then he tried— and so they had to stop him. Break that barrier that had so safely existed between them, that trust they had built so painstakingly. They tackled him to the floor and saw— the animal fear in their eyes, probably reflecting their own.

How they managed to get him out of there is a blur, their own arm bleeding so bad it wouldn’t even respond when they tried to open the motel door and shove him inside. 

Now Fel has locked himself in that bathroom for what feels like hours, the first aid kid thrown in with them. As for Arie, they are still sitting on the edge of that bed, on the exact same place as the moment they stumbled inside. Only having enough presence of mind to tie a shirt around their own arm to stop it from bleeding them out. 

Now, looking at @canivo , he looks so vulnerable, standing there by himself— or maybe it's just nostalgia coloring in the blanks. It’s hard to find their vitriol when he looks like that. They can’t help but see the child he was, that simple and innocent sense of belonging that once connected them. Two lonely dots standing close together, holding hands against life, the world, however big and small it was back then. He was theirs then, for a little time, it made them feel untouchable, unbreakable. Now— he’s almost unrecognizable. They are unsure if that means he stopped being theirs or they stopped being his somewhere along the line, in all those years— that just would be easier, wouldn't it? If it were true.

“Hey—” they hate the uncertainty of their hand as it reaches to touch his arm gently. It feels as if they they should have some kind of pre-ordained claim over that right, should be able to pull him into a hug, hold him tight, pray to the demons behind the wall that heals some part of them. They want to— but all they can do is keep their hand there for a brief moment before letting it slip away, fingers itching with a strange kind of tingling sensation.