maddie‧˚꒰🐾୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ

Your eyes flash open as you wake up to the sound of someone's alarm three booths down in the internet cafe. The first thing your eyes adjust to is the bright glow of your boyfriend, Scara's, phone screen.

He's been awake, sitting cross-legged in the seat beside yours, doing his makeup to get ready for the day. He has the compact mirror propped up against the keyboard shelf, and his face is tilted as he drags the red eyeliner he stole two weeks ago across his eyelid.

No, it's not absurd that your boyfriend, Scara, is doing his makeup in an internet cafe in Kabukicho at 9 AM. And it's also definitely not absurd that you both spent the night here just to sleep somewhere that isn't a nasty cardboard with a blanket on top of it.

Because you're both homeless, Toyoko kids who never finished your last year of high school. You're both 18, and the school year is still going on. You both just… ran away. It wasn't a choice you made, but one he forced you to make. This is just your life now.

His eyeshadow is already done. It's dark, as per usual, but with the lack of sleep you both get, it looks like it could be natural.

You sit up, and the reclining seat makes a terrible crunching sound that makes you cringe at first; then you make a small, pained sound the minute you lift your head fully. Your back and neck both ache terribly, which should be a pain that you are used to because you haven't slept in a nice, soft bed in what seems like longer than a month… but it's only been a month.

A bed sounds like absolute heaven right now.

"My neck is literally broken, Scara," you mutter, pressing your palm against the side of it, wincing as you tilt it left.

"Your neck isn't broken." Scaramouche doesn't look at you, doesn't say good morning, doesn't acknowledge that you're awake beyond responding to your complaint. "If your neck were broken, you wouldn't be talking. You'd be dead, and I'd have significantly more legroom."

"Wow. Good morning to you, too."

He just uses his free hand to reach into the bag between your seats to pull out your Kuromi makeup pouch, dropping it onto your lap without comment.

"How long have you been awake?" You unzip the pouch and pull out your foundation with a yawn.

"An hour." He tilts his head, examining the wing on his left eye. "Maybe more. But I have no idea why it took you this long to wake up with that guy behind us snoring way too fucking loud that I genuinely considered smothering him with his own blanket."

You pause for a second as you're pumping foundation into the back of your hand, giving your boyfriend a sideways look. "You didn't, though… right?"

He gives you a quick glance and shrugs. "I'm still thinking about it."

You glance over your shoulder at the guy in the booth behind you, dead asleep with his mouth open, headphones half off his head. You glance down at the ground, noticing pink crumbled-up-looking paper. That paper… it looks familiar.

When you turn back, Scara's already switched to his other eye, his hand perfectly steady despite the obnoxious snoring behind him.

"He sounds like a lawnmower with asthma," Scara mutters, dragging the liner along his lashline, his jaw tightening at a particularly loud snore. "I threw paper at him, by the way, about half an hour ago. Figured I'd let you know before you noticed on your own and made it a bigger deal than it needs to be."

Your hand stops mid-pump on the foundation bottle. You look at the paper on the ground, again, then at your bag that you never remember opening, then at him.

"You ripped paper out of my notebook?"

"I ripped paper out of your notebook," he confirms, still focused on his eyeliner, not looking at you. He keeps his tone casual, even though he knows what he did is going to piss you off. "Crumpled them into balls and threw them at his head… about six or seven of them."

You squint your eyes at him, at the audacity that it wasn't just six, that he went up to the number seven. When he doesn't react, you sink back in your seat, arms crossing tight over your chest. "What else did you do with it?"

"I didn't read it." He adjusts the angle of the mirror, unbothered. "I just ripped pages from the back. It's all blank at the end, you won't miss it."

"That's not the point, Scara." You reach into your bag and pull out the notebook. Pink Sanrio, the one that you've been writing in since the very first week of being a Tokoyo kid. You flip to the back to check the damage. Seven pages, torn along the spiral.

Just as Scara opens his mouth, the guy behind lets out a snore so aggressive it sounds like he's choking on his own throat. Scara's eyes narrow at the sound. He glares at the man, then at your notebook, which you're now clutching to your chest. "Give me one more page."

You shoot him an offended look, clutching your notebook even tighter. "Absolutely not, just pick up the ones that are on the ground, just like you said you would."

His nose wrinkles in disgust at the thought, "Gross, no. I have an idea, and that idea requires clean paper. It's one page." He holds up a single finger, his other hand already reaching for the notebook. "Just give it, and if it doesn't work, I'll stop."

You shake your head, and his hand stays extended, palm up, fingers curling slightly in a "give it to me" gesture. His eyes are on yours, steady, and the corner of his mouth is lifting slightly in a smirk that he's trying to hold back.

You exhale through your nose, loosening your hold on the notebook slightly. "Fine, Scara. But if this piece of paper doesn't wake him up, I'm dunking your vape in water. I still have it on me, remember?"

His smirk dies instantly, his hand dropping half an inch. "You wouldn't." His hand moves to check his pockets, only to find cash and a gum wrapper in there. "I don't even remember handing it to you."

"You shouldn't just leave it out all the time. I need something to threaten you with anyway." You say it in a light tone that doesn't match your words at all. "It's the purple one you're so obsessed with, right? Imagine that one… in water… all the way submerged."

The vape in question is currently tucked into the water bottle pocket in your bag, and his eyes flick to its location, watching as you push your bag closer to you so he's unable to reach for it.

"Fine," he says, taking the page you reluctantly tear out and hand to him, but he doesn't crumble it this time.

He rips the page into smaller pieces, about the size of a coin, and pulls them toward his mouth. He chews three of them, quickly, just enough to get them wet and compressed between his teeth, then rolls them between his fingers into tight, little balls.

Then, he picks up the straw from the soda you bought last night, and he sticks the straw between his lips.

You watch this happen and realize his 'brand new idea' wasn't about throwing crumbled balls. "Scara… are you serious? That is so middle school."

He doesn't respond; he just loads the first wet paper ball into the end of the straw, angles it over the booth divider, and aims at the guy's open mouth.

It fires, the wet paper ball shoots through the air and lands directly inside the man's mouth. Scara lowers the straw and loads the second one. The ball ends up somewhere near the guy's tongue, and you can see his throat do a reflexive half-swallow. Scara loads the third.

You're pressing both hands over your mouth at this point, your body shaking with the effort of trying not to laugh.

The third ball fires and hits the back of the guy's throat. He wakes up choking, inhaling a wet paper ball mid-snore. His eyes snap open, and he sits bolt upright, his headphones flying off his head.

You and Scara both spin around in your seats at the exact same time, facing forward, your backs to the divider. Scara picks up his compact mirror and resumes his makeup. You follow, grabbing your foundation and starting to blend, your shoulders trembling as you're still, even more now, trying not to laugh.

The guy behind is sputtering. You hear him spit, and then a disgusted, horrified, "What the FUCK is in my mouth?? WHO THE FUCK DID THIS?" You hear his chair creak as he stands up, and then his footsteps as he comes around to the side of the booth divider, scanning the area.

He looks at the pink crumpled paper balls on the floor, plus the three wet ones he just coughed up. All of them are pink, very, obviously pink.

His head lifts, and his gaze sweeps the cafe. It passes over Scara, who is calmly examining his eyeliner in a compact, and lands squarely on you.

You. In your pink hoodie, with the pink Kuromi pouch on your lap, sitting three feet away from a trail of pink paper that leads directly to his booth.

"You." He points at you, his face red, a piece of wet paper still stuck to his lower lip. "Did you put shit in my mouth while I was sleeping??"

You turn around, eyes wide, your head shaking. "Huh? I didn't do anything, I literally just woke up-"

"It's PINK." He gestures at the ground, then at your entire outfit, like he's presenting evidence to an invisible jury. "It's all pink, you're pink. Who else in here is pink?"

"Hey." Scara's voice cuts through without him raising it. He snaps the compact shut and turns in his seat, looking at the man. "She said she didn't do it. She just woke up. I've been sitting here for an hour, and I would've seen her do it."

The guy looks at Scara, then back at you, then at the paper on the ground. His mouth works like he's trying to form a rebuttal, but the conviction in Scara's flat stare makes him doubt himself even though he's right, and is staring straight at the culprit.

"Then who the fuck…" He trails off, looking around the café, and that's when two employees start walking over toward the guy who's standing in the middle of the aisle, red-faced and pointing at an innocent girl in a pink hoodie.

Scara watches them both approach; his expression stays neutral while his hand lands on your thigh. And the second the staff is within earshot, close enough to hear but not close enough to have heard the beginning, Scara shifts his tone completely.

"Hey, can you guys deal with this?" He raises his voice just enough, gesturing at the man with a lazy wave. "This guy's been screaming at my girlfriend for the last two minutes because he woke up with shit in his mouth and decided to blame the first person he saw. He's harassing her for no reason."

The guy's face gets even redder. "I'm not harassing anyone, she put paper in my-"

"Sir." The manager holds up a hand. "Please lower your voice."

"I'M NOT GOING TO LOWER MY VOICE, SOMEBODY PUT WET PAPER IN MY MOUTH WHILE I WAS SLEEPING AND THIS LITTLE-"

"Sir." The manager steps forward. "I'm going to need you to calm down, or I'm going to have to ask you to leave.

Scaramouche leans back in his seat and picks up the compact mirror, angling it as he runs his pinkie along his lower lash line, cleaning up a nonexistent smudge. The perfect picture of someone simply minding his business in a cafe while an unhinged stranger yells at his innocent girlfriend.

The guy is still going. Every decibel he adds is another nail in his own coffin because the staff doesn't care about pink paper. They care about the man screaming in their establishment at 9 in the morning, while the other customers have to witness this.

They don't escort him out gently. The manager has him by the elbow, and the employee holds the front door open. The guy's protests fade from inside-voice loud to outside-voice loud to distant, muffled, and gone.

You and Scara sit in silence for exactly three seconds after the door closes. Then you look at each other, and the laugh you've been holding in for the last four minutes bursts out of you in a wheeze that makes you bend forward in your seat.

Scaramouche doesn’t laugh the same way you do; a snort slips out of him before he can stop it, and he brings a hand up over his mouth like he can smother it after the fact. His eyes cut to you and immediately narrow, because you’re damn near folded in half, wheezing like an idiot, and that only makes him laugh harder under his hand. “You’re so fucking ugly when you laugh,” he says, which might’ve sounded mean if he didn’t have to choke the rest of it out. “Stop before they come back.”

"I'm trying… I'm trying!!" You manage between breaths, wiping your eyes. "That's not going to work every time, you know, you just got lucky."

"It doesn't have to work every time." He opens his compact again, checking his liner one final time. "Plus, it was you who almost got caught, not me."

You're still giggling, quieter now, residual, when you reach for your foundation to actually start doing your face. You grab a tissue and blow your nose because you laughed so hard that your eyes and nose both ran. You catch Scara watching you in his mirror.

He holds out his hand, expecting you to hand him something. "I want my vape back. You don’t get to keep confiscating it every time I do something you don’t like." You make a face at him, then reach into your bag and dig it out of the side pocket before you can be accused of stalling.

You finish your makeup shortly after, checking the final result in your palette mirror before snapping it shut. You're in the Jirai Kei pink-and-black outfit from yesterday, and he's still in his pseudo-VK punk outfit.

Your phone buzzes with a text from Childe, and you pull it out to check.

ginger haired-fuck: got the good stuff, meet me at the usual spot in 20?

Scara picked the contact name, not you, obviously. You show Scara the text, and he makes a face that says "reluctant yes." You can already predict he's going to complain about Childe the entire walk there.

"He's so fucking loud," Scara says, already packing his stuff up to meet the very person he's annoyed to see. "Every time we see him, it's like someone gave a golden retriever cocaine."

"That's why you like him." You point out with a quick glance as you zip up your back. Scara stops packing for half a second just to glare at you. You just smile to yourself and decide not to push it.

Childe is predictably exactly where he said he'd be. He's sitting on a bench near the Toho Cinema entrance, scrolling through his phone with one leg crossed over the other, looking like he belongs there in a way none of you actually do.

He's dressed well, better than most Toyoko kids, because Childe is a rich kid who ran away from home for reasons unknown. You and Scara are like that, rich and spoiled, who ran away, cosplaying as someone in deep poverty.

You could leave.

He just wouldn't let you.

Childe looks up when you and Scara approach, and his mouth tilts up into a grin that is friendly, and also… transactional. "Morning, Lovebirds. I was starting to think you both died."

"We slept in an internet café," Scara says, sitting down next to Childe and holding his hand out, palm up, without looking at him. "The dying is more of a slow process."

"Well, you look like you're speedrunning it." Childe reaches into his jacket, pulls out the ziplock, and drops it into Scara's palm. "That should last you guys a week. Maybe five days if she," he nods at you, "keeps going through it like last time."

"She doesn't go through it, I regulate how much she takes," Scara says, pocketing the bag.

“My mistake." Childe pulls a joint from his pocket, then glances at you with a grin starting at the corner of his mouth. "He’s your boyfriend and your parole officer. Cute." He lights the joint, takes the first drag, and passes it to Scara, who takes two drags before passing it to you without looking.

"Saw something fucked up last night," Childe says after a couple of seconds, exhaling smoke through his nose, his tone shifting into something quieter. "There was a girl on the street, younger than us, maybe 16, 17. She was seizing, full on convulsing right in front of the Family Mart on Yasukuni-dori. There was foam and everything."

You stop mid-drag, the joint hovering near your lips. "Did someone call an ambulance?"

Childe shrugs, looking forward, "A couple of people stood around. I saw someone rolling her onto her side. I didn't stay to fuck around and find out. I had someone I was delivering to on the other side of Okubo."

You look at Scara for a reaction that isn't Childe's… casual one. He's scrolling through Twitter on his phone, his free hand resting on your thigh. He doesn't have anything to say about it because this is the same story he's heard for the past 2 weeks, and he's just become… immune to it.

"That's the second one this week," you say, quietly, head tilted down, to nobody in particular.

"Third," Childe corrects gently. He taps ash off the end of the joint with one finger and glances at you. "There was a guy on Monday near the batting cages. But he was older, not really one of us."

The "one of us" sits in the air for a second. You take your drag from the joint and pass it back, and nobody says anything for the length of two rounds.

Childe leans forward, elbows on his knees, looking down at the pavement. "You ever think about what happens if that's one of us?"

Scara doesn't respond; he just keeps scrolling on his phone, a bored look on his face. Childe's eyes move to you, and you don't say anything either, staring straight ahead. No one pushes the conversation further.

Childe randomly produces a pill from somewhere inside his jacket, small and round, and he drops it into Scara's palm. "For the happy couple."

Scara looks at the pill, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger as he examines it. "What is this, the same as last week?"

"What?" Childe puts his hand to his chest. His grin turns offended in that theatrical way of his. "You really think I'd give you that shit again? This one's better, cleaner cut. My guy switched suppliers."

"Your 'guy' switches suppliers like he switches girlfriends." Scara holds the pill up to the light, squinting at it. "If this makes her throw up again, I'm finding your supplier and making him a supplier of his own organs."

"So romantic." Childe leans back. "The things you do for love."

"Ugh. Shut up." Scara breaks the pill with his nail, neat and practiced, because he’s done this one too many times.

He places one half on his tongue, and he turns to you, eyes half-lidded as he leans in. His hand comes up to the side of your neck, his fingers curling around the back of it, and his mouth meets yours.

The kiss is soft. His lips press against yours in a gentle way that doesn't match at all with the context, but you melt into it anyway. His tongue pushes the pill half into your mouth, sliding it past your teeth, and you feel the chalky, slightly bitter texture dissolve against your tongue as his mouth stays on yours for one second longer than the transfer requires. His lower lip drags against yours when he pulls back, slow, like he's reluctant to end the contact.

His thumb traces the side of your neck once before his hand drops.

He pops the remaining half into his own mouth, swallowing it dry, already going back to scrolling on his phone like his tongue wasn't in your mouth just seconds ago.

"Genuinely," Childe says, watching, his brows lifting as he points at you both with the hand holding the joint, "if I ever have a girlfriend, I hope we never look like you two."

"You won't." Scara scrolls, not bothering to look up. "You'd need someone willing to date you first, and that requires a whole new personality."

“Wow, and here I thought we were building something beautiful.” Childe clutches his chest. "You're not a good friend at all, Scara."

"I'm not your friend." Scara’s thumb keeps moving across his screen. “And you'll live.”

“Barely...” Childe grins anyway, pocketing his phone as he stands up and stretches, his jacket shifting crooked on his shoulders. "Alright, I gotta go. I have three more deliveries before noon, and one of them is a guy who insists on counting every pill individually before he pays, which takes about nine years."

Childe waves over his shoulder as he walks away. "Don't die before I see you again. Both of you. I mean that."

"We'll try our hardest," you call after him.

Scara watches him go, his expression flat, his thumb still moving across his phone screen. "He's exhausting," he says, after a pause.

You lean your head against his shoulder. "You like him."

“I didn’t say that.” He shifts just slightly under your weight, enough to make room for you instead of shrugging you off. “I said he talks too much.”

"Mhmmm, sure, Scara." You drop it for his sake. Your hand finds his under the blanket of his jacket, and your fingers thread together. He looks at your hands for a second, then looks away, letting you keep it.

The afternoon follows the same, recurring pattern as every other afternoon. Moving through the streets, weaving between salary men and tourists and other Toyoko kids who look exactly like you, and dress the same, and who're running from… similar things.

You and Scaramouche's friend group hop… a lot. You stay long enough to film a few TikToks, long enough to feel like you have more friends than you actually do, and then Scara grabs your wrist and moves you to the next group before anyone gets too close.

A group of girls near the entrance to a game center is filming some kind of dance trend, and you jump in for two takes because you recognize the choreography from your feed. After filming, one of the girls, a redhead with a choppy bob and a Sanrio backpack covered in pins, slides up next to you while you're adding a caption to the video.

"You're really good at the choreo," she says, tilting her phone toward you. "I got your angle on mine, too, wanna see? You look so cute in it."

"Yeah, let me see," you say, leaning toward her screen.

She shows you, and you actually look cute in it. The angle she got is better than the one you filmed on your own phone. "Oh, that's actually really good." You glance at her. "Can you airdrop that to me?"

"Yeah, totally!" She nods excitedly, as if she were waiting for this question. "What's your LINE? I'll just send it there, the quality's better than airdrop."

Before you can even open your mouth, a voice comes from behind you. Scara, who was standing four feet away, doing absolutely nothing, being eerily silent in the way only he can be, answers for you. "She doesn't exchange that with people she's just met."

The girl's smile drops half a degree, and she straightens up, looking past you at him. She's taller than him, not by a lot, but because of the tiny height difference, it makes her find him a lot less intimidating, which is a mistake most people only make once.

She stares straight at him, crossing her arms. "I wasn't asking you."

"And yet," he says, already moving to grab your wrist, "here I am. Answering."

The girl doesn't fold the way most people do when Scara shuts something down. She crosses her arms and steps toward you, touching your shoulder. "Hey, you can answer for yourself, you know. He doesn't own your mouth."

You feel Scara's grip on your wrist tighten, the pressure saying more than any words could, that his patience just went from a 4 to a 1.

"She's fine," Scara says, his voice dropping into a flat, calm tone that people mistake for relaxed, but it's actually the opposite. "She doesn't need a stranger she just met to teach her about autonomy. Thanks for the concern, though."

"Scara," you say, quietly, tugging at his grip slightly.

The girl looks at you, then at his hand on your wrist, and her expression shifts into concern for you and pure judgment for him. "Hey, are you okay?"

That's the wrong question to ask in front of him.

"Is she okay?" Scara repeats, his head tilting, and the corner of his mouth lifts into a slow smirk, a quiet threat. "She's standing here, fully conscious, fully dressed, voluntarily next to me. What part of that looks not okay to you?"

She raises an eyebrow at him, not at all threatened. "The part where you answer every question for her like she's a ventriloquist dummy."

One of the other girls in the group lets out a low "oooh" that she immediately tries to disguise as a cough when Scara glares at her.

"Listen," he starts before the girl can open her mouth again. "You've known her for six minutes. I've known her for six years. She's not your friend, she's not your project, and whatever savior complex you're dreaming about, you can crush it. She's fine. Everything is fine, and you're done here."

The girl opens her mouth.

"You're done here." He says it again, more slowly, and the repetition of it makes it land less like a request and more like a fact.

You give the girl a tiny wave over your shoulder because you feel bad, and she waves back, her mouth still slightly open, before turning to chat with the other girls who are all looking at each other with expressions that range from finding that attractive to being creeped out.

That's the closest thing to a friendship you've built today, and it lasted approximately 6 minutes before your boyfriend shut it down.

"You didn't have to do that, Scara, she was sweet," you say, once you're a block away.

"She was too fucking nosy." His grip has softened back to a normal hold. "There's a difference between being sweet and interrogating something that doesn't need to be interrogated."

You furrow your brows together, shaking your head. "She was just looking out for me…"

"That's my job." He squeezes your hand once, eyes straight ahead. "You don't need anyone else when you have me."

You glance down at your joined hands, then back at his face. “You’re sounding a little possessive right now.” You say little because you’re being generous. “It’s not helping your case.”

“Call it whatever helps you sleep on that cardboard at night.” He pulls you closer to his side, your shoulders bumping. “You’re welcome.”

The spot behind the nightclub is where you end up every night, eventually.

It's a wide loading dock flanked by the back walls of two clubs whose bass you can feel through the concrete. There are other Toyoko kids here besides you two, occupying the space in small clusters.

There are a couple of girls sitting against the far wall, passing a vape between them, a boy lying flat on his back with his phone held above his face, and a group of three filming something on TikTok that involves one of them pretending to faint while the other two catch them.

You've set up the usual arrangement. Flattened cardboard, blanket on top, bags against the wall. You're sitting cross-legged, phone propped against your bag, watching TikToks with the volume low enough that only you can hear, and you're biting beads off the candy bracelet you bought an hour ago, one by one, barely thinking about it.

Scaramouche is sitting next to you, his back against the wall, scrolling through his Twitter feed, one knee up, and his shoulder close enough to yours that you feel his warmth through your sleeves.

He glances at the candy necklace resting against your collarbones, and his eyes narrow in curiosity. Without a word, he leans over and bites a bead off the necklace.

The elastic pulls against the back of your neck, and the snap of the bead breaking free tickles you. You scrunch your shoulder up, giggling. "That tickles."

"Good." He chews, swallowing it, and the taste hits him immediately. Artificial strawberry, sweet in a way that makes his own face scrunch up. "You actually like this shit?"

"I love this shit." You look at him while taking a bite at a bead from your candy bracelet, making a point of how little the taste bothers you.

"It tastes like someone melted a crayon into corn syrup and called it a snack." He leans in for a second one, this bead closer to your chest. He tilts his head, and his lips brush against your collarbone as his teeth bite through the candy. "I don't know how you eat this without gagging."

You let the bracelet fall from your mouth and give him a look. "Said by the one who won't stop eating the 'gross' candy at my neck." You glance back down at your phone, attention dropping to the screen as you mindlessly scroll to the next video.

Scara makes a dramatic gagging sound after swallowing the bead, face twisting immediately. “It’s disgusting,” he says, and another smaller, more irritated gag follows. “Actually disgusting.” His fingers catch the necklace near your collarbone, tugging the next bead into place with zero intention of stopping. “The crunch is still better than listening to your TikTok doomscrolling.”

He leans in again, mouth brushing your neck as he bites through another one, and immediately regrets it. His hand disappears into his bag for a second before coming back with a little sanitary pouch he keeps napkins in, because god forbid anything in here gets sticky. He pulls one out, spits the candy into it, folds it, and sets it aside. Then he leans in and goes back for another bead anyway.

You didn't see him spit out the candy because you're fully focused on watching TikToks. His mouth returns to your neck, working his way bead by bead, his mouth coming back to your neck every few seconds, biting through candy, pressing his lips to your skin, pulling back to spit into the napkin. His mouth has been on your neck so many times in the last three minutes that the entire area from your collarbone to below your ear is damp.

He bites through the last beads, spits them into the napkin, and the string hangs bare around your neck, just a damp cord with nothing left on it.

You reach up to touch the necklace and feel only string. Your fingers trace the wet cord. "Did you eat my entire necklace?"

He's back on Twitter, scrolling, expression flat, as if he decided to lock in at random after getting his slobber all over your neck.

You touch your neck and grimace at the dampness. "Ew. What the fuck, Scara?" You move your hair so it doesn’t stick to the side of your neck. “My neck is, like, soaking wet from your spit. Can I at least have a napkin?”

He rolls his eyes, leans over, and licks a full, slow stripe up the side of your neck. You yelp, shoving at his shoulder. "SCARA-"

“What?” he says, wiping the corner of his mouth with his thumb, not even pretending to be sorry. “You were already whining about it.”

“You made it worse.” You scrub at your neck with your sleeve, face twisted in disgust. “That was disgusting.”

His eyes lift from your sleeve to your face in a way that makes it clear he thinks you’re being dramatic. “You kiss me with that mouth, and you’re acting like my spit is a biohazard?”

You stop rubbing for half a second, mouth opening, but nothing useful comes out fast enough. He leans in before you can move back, pressing a quick kiss to your mouth. He pulls away just enough to look at you. “Was that gross?”

You glare at him, lips still tingling. “You’re so irritating.”

He kisses you again, slower this time, hand still at your chin, making a point of it. When he pulls back, his eyes stay on your mouth. “That?”

You push at his chest, but there’s no strength behind it. “Stop testing me.”

“I’m proving something.” He lets go of your chin and goes back to his phone, perfectly calm. “You’re just mad I’m right.”

You touch your neck again, still damp, and make a face. “I still want a napkin.”

He sighs through his nose, not paying close attention as he pulls a napkin from his bag. He holds it just out of reach for a second, watching you glare harder, then finally drops it into your hand. “There. Since you’re apparently fragile.”

He accidentally handed you the napkin with the chewed, half-dissolved, saliva-soaked candy inside.

Your brain connects the dots rather quickly, as the biggest, most well-known fact about your boyfriend is the fact that he hates sweets with his entire being. You stare down at the napkin, then you slowly look back up at him. 

You start laughing so hard that the boy sleeping across the area flinches in his blanket.

Scara notices and rips the napkin out of your hand, stuffs it into his jacket, and places a clean one into your palm without a word.

"You hate candy," you wheeze, wiping your neck. "You literally despise sweet things. You did that entire thing, every single bead, and spit every single one into a napkin like a child at a dinner table."

"I wasn't going to let you walk around wearing it." He scrolls his eyes fixed on his phone with too much effort, which is how you know he’s embarrassed. His jaw works, still trying to get the taste out of his mouth. "It was annoying me."

You press the clean napkin to your neck, still laughing under your breath, while he reaches for his water and takes a long drink with visible resentment.

“Stop laughing,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before settling back against the wall. “You’re the one who paid actual money to wear edible plastic.”

You bite the inside of your cheek, failing immediately, and he gives you one flat look before turning his phone slightly away from you.

“Laugh again, and I’m eating the bracelet next,” he says, already back to scrolling like he didn’t just threaten you over candy jewelry.

The neon cycles through pink and blue in a pattern you've memorized. It's eight seconds per cycle. You count it every night because there's no clock, and counting the neon is the only thing that proves time is still moving.

Toyoko kids get high to forget that their life is the kind of sad sobriety that makes it unbearable. You get high because the alternative is lying on cardboard behind a nightclub, feeling every second of how far you’ve fallen. Eight seconds is already too much time to sit with when you’re sober.

When you’re high, you stop counting altogether.

As the night went on, the crowd behind the club had thinned into something small and intimate. Two girls are making out against the fence, lazy and slow, leaning into each other as they'd fall without the contact. A girl alone against the wall, her hand between her thighs, her eyes closed, her phone balanced on her knee with something playing that she isn't watching. A group near the back exit is filming TikToks.

Nobody is watching anybody else.

Scara reaches into his bag and pulls out the bong. It’s slightly too large to be convenient, clear glass, decorated with your stickers, Sanrio mixed with peeling black stars, and one glittery sticker you know he hates but never took off. He sets it between his legs, repacking it with fresh bud from the ziplock. He pinches the weed between his fingers, breaking it apart, pressing it into the bowl in a layer that's tight enough to burn evenly but loose enough that the airflow won't choke.

He holds it to your mouth first, the mouthpiece angled toward your lips, his other hand already flicking the lighter.

"Hands on the base," he says, and you wrap both hands around the glass. "Breathe when I say."

He brings the flame to the bowl, the water starts bubbling, and he watches the smoke gather inside the chamber, waiting until it’s exactly where he wants it. He knows the exact amount of smoke you can pull without choking, and he's timing the carb release to that threshold.

Once three seconds pass, his eyes flick up to yours, and he lifts the carb. "Now."

You inhale, and the smoke fills your lungs. Without being told, you part your lips for him, showing him the empty space of your mouth, no smoke spilling out, proof that you pulled it down right.

His gaze holds on your mouth for a second, then your face. “Five seconds,” he says. “Hold it.”

You hold it, counting to five in your head. He nods, and you exhale only after he lets you, smoke slipping out in a slow, curling stream that thins into nothing as it drifts into the neon.

The hit lands almost immediately, a softening at the edges of everything, the world's volume turning down one notch, your shoulder dropping, the ache in your back that's been there since the internet cafe loosening just slightly.

He takes the bong from you, brings the mouthpiece to his own lips, lights the bowl, and the cherry flares. He watches the chamber fill, pulls the carb at a density that's noticeably thicker than what he gave you, and inhales.

He holds it longer than you did. His eyes close, his chest expanding, and you watch the column of his throat stay still. He exhales through his nose in twin streams that curl downward and dissolve.

"One more," he says, already repacking.

He packs your second bowl slightly lighter than the first. He's easing you into the high instead of hitting you with it all at once.

He holds the bong up again, and this time, he watches your face as the smoke fills the chamber. His eyes move across your expression, and he reads something there. The dilation of your pupils, the slack in your jaw, the way your body is already looser than it was two minutes ago. He's checking how high you are before deciding when to release the carb.

He lifts his thumb. "Go." You inhale, and this hits your lungs more gently, the smoke thinner. You exhale after four seconds, the second hit layers on top of the first, and the world goes softer, warmer, the neon blurring at the edges just slightly.

He repacks for himself, and this time his bowl is dense. He packs it tight, pressing the bud down with his thumb, and the cherry burns hot when he lights it. The chamber fills fast, opaque white, and he pulls the carb and inhales the entire thing in one breath that would've put you on the floor.

But, he doesn't exhale. He holds the smoke in his chest, sets the bong down on the cardboard beside him, and turns to you. His hand comes up to the back of your neck, fingers curling in your hair, and he pulls you toward him.

His mouth meets yours, and his lips part against your lips. The smoke transfers from his lungs into your mouth in a slow exhale. It pushes into the back of your throat, the taste of him and the weed mixing together as the secondhand hit settles into your lungs.

You try to hold it, genuinely try, but the density of his hit, combined with the two you already took, catches in your throat, and you break the kiss, coughing. Your hand presses against his chest as you turn your head and cough hard enough that your eyes water.

He grins, clearly enjoying himself, hand still cupped around the back of your neck, thumb rubbing the sore knot beneath your skull while you cough hard into your elbow.

"Oh, my god." You manage between coughs, your voice rough. "Scara, I'm going to be so fucked up."

“That was the point.” He says it simply, too pleased with himself, his fingers rest at the nape of your neck, keeping you close while you cough. “It’s going to flatten you in about two minutes. You were being too coherent.”

"You did that on purpose." You're still coughing, your hand on your chest.

“Obviously.” He doesn’t even pretend to feel bad. "Stop acting like you're going to die," He reaches for the water bottle beside his bag and presses it into your hand before you can keep being dramatic, "You're just going to get stupid for a couple of hours and annoy me slightly less."

“That’s so mean." You take it from him, glaring over the rim while your throat still burns. "I'm not even going to be able to walk later.”

"You don't need to walk." His hand slides from your waist to your hip, his thumb hooking into the waistband of your skirt. "You're not going anywhere."

The high hits all at once, the cough unlocking whatever gate was holding it back. The world goes soft and heavy, the neon stretching into streaks when you turn your head too fast, the bass from the club vibrating through the wall and into your spine in a way that feels like a pulse.

His hand is on your thigh, his thumb tracing a line along your inner thigh that you feel in your entire body because every nerve ending is amplified right now.

You lean into him, your head falling against his shoulder, and his grip on your thigh tightens just slightly.

You watch the neon cycle through pink… blue… pink.

Then you stop counting altogether.

His fingers slide up, pushing the hem of your skirt higher. His fingertips trace inside your thigh, and every point of contact feels wider than it should, like his fingers are leaving warm trails on your skin that linger even after they move.

He reaches your underwear, his fingers tracing the elastic, back and forth, the repeated motion designed to make your hips shift before he actually touches you.

His other hand is on your thigh, his thumb rubbing slow circles into the soft skin above your knee. The soothing motion feels so good while you're high that your eyes close and your head tips heavier against his shoulder.

He tilts his head down, his mouth close to your ear. "Hey."

"Mm." You barely manage the sound; it's hard to talk when your body feels like it's made of warm water.

"Look at me."

You open your eyes, and the effort of focusing on his face takes more concentration than it normally would. He's close, the neon coloring half of his face pink, and his expression is a mix of want and control that you've seen enough times to recognize.

"You good?" His thumb is still circling your thigh, his other hand still on the elastic. "You're pretty fucked up right now."

"Obviously, I'm good." The word comes out slurred. Your hand comes up to poke his chest, missing slightly and hitting his collarbone instead. "You're the one who made me this fucked up… take responsibility."

His mouth twitches in a smirk he doesn't try hiding. "Responsibility, how?"

"However you want." You poke him again, more accurately this time. "I'm not going anywhere. You said that, so do something about it."

He hooks his fingers into your waistband and pulls. You lift your hips on muscle memory. The underwear slides down your thighs, past your knees, off your ankles, and he pockets them.

His hand returns between your legs, and this time, there's nothing between his fingers and you. His middle finger parts your folds and presses flat against your clit, and the direct contact is so much when you're this high that your body flinches.

"Ah…" The sound comes out before you can catch it, soft and involuntary.

His free hand moves to your other thigh, and instead of gripping or pushing, he just soothes. His palm slides against your skin, slow, from your knee to the crease where your thigh meets your hip, and back down.

He turns your face toward him with the hand that was on your thigh, his fingers finding your chin, tilting it until you're looking at him. His thumb brushes across your lower lip before he leans in and kisses you. It's slow, more tongue than lips, and his finger on your clit shifts from circles to a long stroke through your folds, collecting the wetness and dragging it back up. The wet sound of it makes you moan into his mouth.

He breaks the kiss and moves between your legs. His hands push your thighs apart, and before his mouth gets there, his thumbs find the insides of both of your thighs and rub slow, firm circles into the sensitive skin. The touch is so grounding that your body sinks deeper into the cardboard.

Being touched like this while high feels like floating and being anchored at the same time.

He leans in and presses his lips against your cunt. A soft, closed-mouth kiss against your folds. His tongue replaces the softness, dragging flat and broad from your entrance to your clit, and his eyes stay open, watching you the entire time.

"Ah, f-fuck…" Your hand flies to his hair, fingers threading through the dark strands.

He hums against your clit. The vibration radiates outward, and the moan that falls out of you is loud enough that you slap your hand over your mouth. He reaches up and pulls your hand away, intertwining his fingers with yours and pressing your joined hands against the cardboard.

He wants to hear you.

His tongue circles your clit, slow at first, then faster, building a rhythm. He pulls off with a wet pop, presses another soft kiss to your clit, seals his mouth over it, and sucks. Another pop when he pulls off. Kiss. Seal. Suck. Pop. The cycle repeats, each time his mouth reconnecting with a fresh suction that makes your thighs shake.

He pulls off, and you feel him spit directly onto your clit. You feel it drip down through your folds, and his tongue follows, spreading it, mixing it with your own wetness.

"You're so fucking wet," he says against you, his lips brushing your clit as he speaks, and the movement of his mouth forming words against your most sensitive spot makes you whimper. "I've barely done anything, and you're already dripping. It's almost sad how easy this is."

His tongue flattens and drags, then circles, then he pulls back and presses his teeth gently against the swollen bud. He nibbles, his teeth grazing the hood of your clit in a light, careful pressure that's just this side of too much. Your back arches, and the sound you make is high and broken.

"Sc-scara, that's… hah… don't stop doing that…"

"Doing what?" He nibbles again, lighter, teasing, his tongue flicking across your clit immediately after. "This?" Another graze of his teeth, followed by his lips closing over you and sucking hard. Pop. "Or this?"

"B-both… ngh… both, please…"

"Say it properly." Another pop. "You sound like you're drunk."

"I am… basically drunk, that's your f-fault…"

"And yet I still expect full sentences." He spits on your clit again, tongue chasing it. "Try again."

"Please don't… don't stop, please, Scara, it feels s'good…" The words come out in a slurred tumble, and he hums against your clit in response, the vibration making your thighs lock around his head.

His tongue traces letters against your clit. An S first, then C. His tongue curls around you as he traces an A. The tip of his tongue flicks across your clit as he transitions to an R, then to another A.

"What are you…" Your brain sluggishly tries to piece together what his tongue is doing, and when the next letter registers, M, your head drops back against the wall. "Are you… hah… are you spelling your…"

He doesn't confirm it; his tongue just continues, finishing the rest of the letters. O. U. C. H. E.

He spelled his name on your clit.

He pushes two fingers inside you, curling upward against your front wall, dragging them in slow, firm strokes, his mouth staying sealed on your clit.

You pull your vape from your skirt pocket and bring it to your lips, the hit filling your lungs with cherry vapor.

He pulls his mouth off and takes the vape from you. His thumb replaces his tongue on your clit, rubbing fast circles, and his fingers inside you pick up speed. He takes a hit, exhales the smoke onto your cunt, the warm cloud drifting over your clit and folds, and his mouth returns before the vapor dissipates.

The vape passes back to you. He takes it again a minute later, his mouth leaving and his fingers compensating, faster, harder, his thumb brutal on your clit while smoke curls from his lips onto your pussy. Each time his mouth returns, it's wetter, sloppier, his tongue dragging through the mix of his spit and your slick and the lingering vapor.

"Hah… fuck, Scara, right there, don't… ngh…" Your words are slurring, your voice pitched in a way you can't control. Everything you say sounds drunk and far away. "Scara, I'm… hah… 'm gonna…"

"Then cum." He says it against your clit, his lips forming the words on your skin. "Cum on my tongue. I want to taste it."

His tongue seals on your clit and sucks at the exact second his fingers curl deep, and the orgasm crashes through you. Your thighs lock around his head, your hand yanks his hair, and the sound that comes out of you cracks in the middle.

He works you through it, tongue slowing, his hand finding your thigh and rubbing soothing circles. His fingers stay inside you, still curling.

His tongue traces his name into your clit again, S-C-A-R-A-M-O-U-C-H-E, the letters sloppy this time, less precise because your hips keep jerking and your thighs keep tightening around his head. His hand on your thigh squeezes, his thumb digging into the muscle to keep you still.

"Scara, I jus'… I can't, 's too much, 'm…"

He hums against your clit, the vibration making you jerk, and his fingers slow but don't withdraw, curling lazily inside you while his tongue circles at a pace that's less aggressive but no less relentless.

By the time his tongue finishes the final letter, you're cumming, harder this time, your walls clenching around his fingers. Your grip on his hair goes slack, your fingers just resting in the strands, trembling.

"Oh my g… hah… hah… f-fuck…" Your body is visibly trembling, your chest heaving, your eyes unfocused on the neon cycling above you.

He pulls his mouth off with a wet sound. Wipes his chin with the back of his hand, then wipes his fingers on the blanket beside your thigh. His eyes move over your body, reading your state.

He leans over you and pushes the hair off your damp forehead, tucking a strand behind your ear. His thumb traces the shell of your ear in a motion so gentle it almost doesn't feel like him.

Then something small and hard presses against your clit. You look down through your haze and see him taping a bullet vibrator to your clit with medical tape, his movements careful, positioning it directly on the spot where his tongue was.

He turns it on, and the vibration against your spent, throbbing clit feels like lightning in your current state. Your hand shoots down to grab his wrist, your fingers wrapping around it weakly. "Scara, wait, I just… that's… hah… that's a lot right now…"

"I know." His hand comes up and takes yours off his wrist, but he doesn't let go of it. He threads his fingers through yours and squeezes once before setting your hand back at your side. "Come here."

He sits back against the wall, his legs spread in front of him, the remote in one hand. He pats the cardboard between his thighs with his free hand. "On your knees. Come to me."

You crawl to him, and the movement is an event. Every shift of your body makes the vibrator press against your clit from a new angle that makes you gasp with your hands flat on the cardboard. By the time you settle between his legs, your knees on the cardboard, your hands finding his zipper, you're already trembling.

He reaches down and cups your face. "You look so pretty like this," he says, his thumb tracing under your eye. "Fucked up and shaking, and you still crawled over to me."

You lean into his palm, and he lets you stay there for a second, his thumb moving across your cheekbone, before his hand slides from your face to the back of your neck, resting.

You pull his cock out, and he's hard, the head flushed and leaking from the tip, pre-cum beading at the slit.

Your lips close around the head, your tongue pressing flat against the underside, and his hand moves to the top of your head, his fingers threading through your hair, petting. His fingers are combing through the strands in slow, repetitive strokes while your mouth works the first few inches of his cock.

"Shit…" The curse comes out of him low and strained, his head tipping back against the wall. "Just like that."

You take him deeper, your jaw stretching, and his fingers keep moving through your hair. The vibrator buzzes against your clit in a steady pattern that makes your thighs tremble and your concentration fracture every few seconds.

He adjusts the remote's settings, turning it up higher.

Your jaw goes slack, and your rhythm falters, your mouth loosening around his cock as the vibration intensifies. Your eyes lose focus, and your body leans forward, your forehead pressing against his hip.

"Stay on it." His hand in your hair lifts your head, but gently, guiding your mouth back onto his cock. "Don't stop. You can do it."

You take him back in, your tongue working the underside, your lips sliding toward the base. The vibrator kicks up again, a pulse that makes your entire lower body clench, and you let out a garbled moan around his cock.

His composure slips as he lets out a low, rough groan. "Fuck… your throat tightens every time you moan. You probably don't even know you're doing it." His fingers comb through your hair, slow, while his hips twitch upward. "Tightens up like you're…" He trails off into a sharp exhale when you swallow around him, your throat constricting involuntarily. His hips twitch upward, and the thrust pushes his cock deeper, past your tongue, hitting the back of your throat.

"God…" His voice is strained, cracking at the edges in a way he can't fully hide. "Fuck, that's… do that again."

You swallow, and his groan breaks in the middle. His hips roll up deeper, his cock pressing into your throat and holding there. His hand in your hair tightens, the petting turning into gripping.

The vibrator pulses harder and your body just… gives up. You go limp, your jaw slack, your mouth still around him, but the rest of you sagging forward, boneless. The vibrator is pulling what's left of your consciousness between your legs, leaving nothing for the rest of your body to use.

He starts using your mouth.

His hips roll upward, his hand on the back of your head holds you in place, and his cock pushes across your tongue and into your throat with each thrust. You're dead weight that he's holding up and fucking into, and the sounds coming out of you, the wet, garbled, involuntary noises that happen every time his cock hits the back of your throat, are the only evidence you're still awake.

"Shit… fuck…" He curses under his breath, his hips stuttering. "You can't even keep your eyes open." His voice is strained, rough, his composure cracking, and you can hear in the breaks between his words that the high is affecting him too, just less obviously, his control looser, his sounds slipping out more freely than they normally would. "You're so fucked up right now that I'm doing all the work and you can't even tell, can you?"

You try to respond, but all you make is a garbled sound around his cock that sends a vibration through him that makes his jaw clench.

"Don't try to talk with my cock in your mouth." His voice is strained, mean, his composure slipping. "The only sounds I want from you right now are the ones you can't help making."

Your jaw is open, saliva pooling at the corners of your mouth and running down your chin. The vibrator pulses against your clit, and your hips jerk forward, the stimulation chasing, and the movement shifts his cock in your mouth. The chain reaction makes a sound come out of you that's somewhere between a whimper and a gag.

He adjusts the vibrator again, turning it down this time. The sudden drop makes your body sag. His thumb traces your jawline, and he turns it up. Your throat clenches around him, and his head snaps back against the wall with a strangled "fuck" that breaks in the middle.

"You're drooling on me." His voice is rough, less controlled. His thumb wipes saliva from the corner of your mouth. "There's spit on my… shit… on my pants. You're such a mess."

His thumb lingers at the corner of your lips, tracing the wet skin there, and you can feel his eyes on you even though yours are barely open.

"You can't even suck my cock properly right now." His thumb presses against your lower lip, pulling it down, watching your mouth stretch. "Your jaw's been hanging open. You're just kneeling there with your mouth full, drooling, not doing a single thing."

His free hand leaves the remote to cup the side of your face, his palm against your cheek, his thumb pressing into the hinge of your jaw. The hold keeps your mouth open at the angle he wants, and his hips thrust into it, using his grip on your face and your hair to control the depth.

"God… fuck…" Drool runs down his thumb, pools in his palm, but he doesn't wipe it away. His eyes are on your face, watching the mess he's making of you.

"You're going to swallow every drop." He says, voice rough. "When I cum, you're going to hold it on your tongue and not swallow until I tell you. You understand?"

You make a sound that's supposed to be an acknowledgment but comes out as a wet, muffled whine around his cock. His thumb presses harder into your jaw.

"I said, do you understand?"

"Mmhm…" It vibrates through his cock, and his hips stutter, and the curse that comes out of him is half-voice, half-breath.

His thrusts get shorter, harder, his cock staying deeper for longer on each push. The sounds between his clenched teeth are bitten-off groans and fragmented curses he's trying and failing to keep behind his lips.

"Shit… fuck, I'm… hah…" His hand tightens in your hair, his hips driving up, and you can feel the shift in his cock, the way it gets harder, thicker, the pulse at the base that means he's close. "'M close, don't… don't fucking move."

Three more thrusts. Hard, deep, each one pushing his cock into the back of your throat with a force that makes your body rock backward, held in place only by his grip on your hair and your jaw. He cums on the third.

His hips push up one final time, his cock burying itself at the back of your throat, and you feel the first pulse of it fooding across your tongue. The groan that comes out of him is wrecked and longer than any sound he's made tonight, dragged out through his clenched jaw while his body shudders underneath you. His hand on your jaw holds you still while his cock throbs, each pulse pushing more cum into your mouth.

You let it pool on your tongue. His cock pulses twice more, the last of it spilling, and his hips drop back down, his breathing coming out in rough, uneven exhales.

He stays inside your mouth for a moment. His hand in your hair resumes the slow petting from before like nothing just happened.

When his cock slides from between your lips, a string of saliva and cum connects your lower hip to the tip for a second before it breaks. His hand moves from your hair to your jaw, gripping onto your chin and lifting.

Your face comes up, your eyes half-closed, your mouth still holding everything he gave you. His fingers press into the underside of your jaw, tilting your head back until you're looking up at him.

"Open."

You open your mouth. His cum sits on your tongue, thick and white against the pink. You hold it there, your tongue slightly extended.

"More. Tongue out."

You push your tongue out further. A tiny amount drips off the edge of your tongue and lands on your chin, and his thumb catches it, pushing it back onto your tongue.

He leans in, closing his mouth over your extended tongue, sealing his lips around it, and he sucks, pulling his own cum off your tongue in a long, dragging motion. You let out a broken whine that vibrates into his mouth.

He doesn't pull back when your tongue is clean; he pushes his tongue into your mouth instead. His tongue slides against yours in slow, heavy drags, and his hand moves from your jaw to the back of your neck, pulling you closer. His other hand finds your waist, his arm wrapping around you, pulling your body against his chest while his mouth stays sealed on yours.

He eventually pulls back slowly, resting his forehead against yours. His breathing is uneven, and his lips still brush the corner of your mouth. His thumb traces the nape of your neck, his eyes closed.

Then he opens them and wipes his lips with the back of his hand. "Messy," he says, wiping a streak from your chin with his thumb and drying it on his pants. "You got it everywhere."

"You got it everywhere," you mumble back, your voice wrecked. The corner of his mouth lifts for half a second before he reaches into his pocket to turn the vibrator off. He peels the tape from your clit with gentle fingers as his other hand presses flat against your lower stomach to steady you.

He tucks himself back into his pants and pulls you into his side; the blanket comes over both of you.

You curl against him, your face pressing into his chest, your legs tangling with his. Your jaw aches, your clit throbs, and your body is trembling faintly. Your brain feels like it's somewhere that doesn't belong to the rest of you.

His hand finds your hair, the petting resuming, and his other arm wraps around your back, pulling you tighter against him. His chin rests on top of your head.

You close your eyes and drift out of consciousness.

You dream of that night again… the night it started.

You're in your room at home, the one with walls painted your favorite color, with the curtains your mom chose that have stayed in your room since early childhood, and… the bed you haven't slept in for a month. Your phone is on the nightstand, set at the oddly specific time of 00:00 that never moves, which is how you know this isn't real.

You know your mother is still awake because of the light strip under your door. She's watching TV at night, on a weekend, relaxing.

You hear your window open, and your entire body jerks, your hand flying to your chest as you sit bolt upright. For one awful second, all you can think is that someone broke in.

Then, you see him, and the panic leaves as quickly as it came. You let out a shaky breath and sit back against your pillows. "Oh my god," a nervous laugh escapes you. "You scared the shit out of me."

He climbs in the way he always snuck in. One leg over the windowsill, ducking his head, but your eyes narrow at the bag over his shoulder. He doesn't seem like his normal self; his movements seem rushed and devoid of the fluidity he normally has. And when he straightens up in your room, his eyes are wider than you've ever seen them.

"Get up." His voice comes out too fast, rushing you into something you have no context for. "Get your bag, essentials, phone, charger, money, whatever. We're leaving."

You stare at him, still half-sitting against your pillows, blanket pooled around your waist. "…What?"

He doesn't answer straight away. His eyes sweep over your desk, your closet, your chair with your clothes thrown over it, every familiar thing in your room turning into something he's mentally sorting through and discarding.

Your fingers curl into the edge of your blanket. “Scara, it’s almost midnight. What are you even talking about?”

He turns toward you fully, and the look on his face cuts off whatever you were just about to say. You couldn't see it before, but you see it now; his eyes are red-rimmed. You've never seen him cry before, and some stupid part of you refuses to put the word on him, even now. But his eyes are wet, his breathing is uneven, and his face is pulled too tight in places it usually isn't.

Something is very, very wrong.

"Did I fucking stutter?" he snaps, but the anger in it lands messily, due to his state. His hand lifts, then drops again. "Get. Your. Bag."

You don't move from the bed because something in your gut is telling you that standing up, that doing what he says, is a line you wouldn't ever be able to uncross once you cross it.

"What happened?" You ask, quieter, wanting answers. "Did something happen with your mom?"

The noise that comes out of him sounds like a laugh devoid of any humor. "That woman decided she's going on another trip. Another fucking trip. 2 months, but it's never really that long with her; she didn't even bother to specify, because why would she? I'm just the kid she forgot she even had."

Your mouth opens before you can stop it, "Scara..." Your hand shifts against the blanket, fingers uncurling in the instinct to reach for him, but he’s still standing too far from the bed, and you don’t yet know whether touching him would help or make him snap.

"She didn't even tell me in person." He's pacing around your room now, his hands in his hair, pulling, and the pacing makes you feel even more tense. "She left a note. A fucking NOTE, on the kitchen counter, next to a stack of cash, like im some dog she hired a fucking petsitter for."

His voice pitches up into a mocking register that sounds nothing like Ei but sounds exactly like what her words feel like inside him. "I'll be back soon, Kunikuzushi. There's money for food, don't miss school." He lets out a laugh under his breath, the laugh sounding more hurt than amused. "Don't miss SCHOOL. Like she's ever been to a single-parent conference. Like she's ever asked about a grade, or anything, ANYTHING that would require her to acknowledge I exist outside of that house."

"I'm sorry." You say it because there's nothing else to say. You know it's not enough; he knows it's not enough, and the gap between what he needs and what anyone can give him is too big for a word that small.

"I don't want your sorry. I want you to pack a bag." He stops pacing and turns to face you. "Both of us are leaving tonight. I know a spot in Kabukicho where people like us go… I've been looking into it."

"Looking into it?" Your thoughts are spinning, but they catch on that alone, and your stomach drops. "How long have you been planning this?"

"Long enough." He says under his breath.

You shake your head, pressing further to get a real response out of him. "How LONG, Scara?"

He lets out a long breath, head tipping back slightly, irritation tightening across his face. "Weeks." It takes him a couple of seconds to say it, and that tells you enough. "I've been waiting for the moment it became worth it, and tonight," he gestures vaguely at the air around him, "it became worth it."

"I can't just leave." You say, and your voice sounds small even to you, small in a way that you hate, small in a way that makes his eyes narrow. "My mom is downstairs, she's-"

His hand shoots out and grabs your wrist. His fingers wrap so tight around your wrist that you can feel your pulse hammering against his palm.

"Your mom," he says, and his tone sounds like he's leaving no room for argument, "is the same mom who didn't notice you climbing out of your fucking window every night to see me for six months. The same mom who grounded you for missing curfew but never once asked why you missed it. The same mom you told me, to my face, that you hated."

Your mouth drops at first as you process his words, and when you do, you start shaking your head. "I didn't, that's not even what I-"

"You said you hated her." His grip on your wrist tightens. "You said, 'I hate her, Scara. I wish she'd just disappear.' Those were your exact words. You remember that?"

"Are you kidding me?" You stare at him, caught between offense and panic, thrown by how quickly he turned your impulsive words into something ugly. "That was ONE time, I was upset, we had a fight, and I said something I didn't mean. You're twisting my-"

"You said it." He cuts through your sentence like he doesn't care what you'll say to defend yourself. "And the thing about saying things is that you can't unsay them. They exist now. In the world, between us, as fact. You hate your mother."

"I DON'T." The tears spill over before you can blink them back. His hand is still locked around your wrist, so you wipe at your face with your other hand, dragging your sleeve under your eyes. "I love my mom, Scara, I love her. I was angry when I said that, people say things when they're angry that they don't-"

"People say what they mean when they're angry." He repeats it like a rule he carved into his own brain a long time ago. "That's the only time anyone's honest. Everything else is just… masked behavior."

You look up at him, helpless, chin trembling, "You're scaring me."

His eyes narrow at your words, and they drop from your face to your trembling mouth, to his own hand gripping onto your wrist painfully tight. He loosens enough for your wrist to shift under his fingers, enough for both of you to notice the red marks starting there. His eyes just drift back up to your face. He looks aware of himself, aware of the fact that he's forcing the very person he cares for the most into a plan he never asked if they wanted.

The thought of him calling it off crosses over him. He could climb into your bed, pretend this conversation never happened, let the night close over both of you.

Then, his fingers close around you again, firm enough to make it clear he still isn’t letting go.

Leaving mattered more than staying. Wanting you safe mattered more than asking nicely. And in his head, you were coming with him whether you understood that yet or not.

"Good," he says. "Be scared. Because out there, on the street, being scared is the only thing that keeps you alive. And I'd rather you be scared and breathing with me than comfortable in this room, letting it suffocate you until you turn into her.”

Your eyes search his face, trying to find the part of him that knows he’s being unfair. "I'm not going to turn into-"

"You already are." He lets go of your wrist, and the absence of his grip feels empty. "You sit in this room. You follow rules that don't protect you. You smile at a woman who locks you in here, takes things you like as punishment, and calls it love." His eyes move toward your door, to the strip of light underneath it. "And one day, thirty years from now, you'll be her, because that's the environment you chose to stay in."

His voice drops to barely a whisper, "And I won't be there to watch it happen."

The tears fall harder now, breaking your breathing into small, uneven sounds. "Please." You say it to the blur of him through your tears. "Please, Scara. I want to stay home. I don't want to…"

"This isn't your home." He says it with the finality of a closed door. "This was never your home. Home is wherever I am. And I'm leaving. So the only question is whether you walk out with me, or whether I carry you."

You go with him. You go because his hand is back on your wrist, because he tells you what to pack and you pack it with shaking hands. Your mom is downstairs, still watching TV, and she doesn't hear the creak of the windowsill, doesn't hear the last footsteps her daughter takes inside her own bedroom.

The morning is the same as the other day. Internet cafe instead of sleeping on that cardboard behind the nightclub. Going through your morning with a sore neck, Scara is already awake and locked in, doing his makeup. Meeting Childe at the usual spot, just the same cycle as any other day.

The drugs help to alleviate the depression that comes with the never-ending loop. That's why you take them; that's why you can never let yourself be too sober.

The group you settle into today is a big cluster of Toyoko kids, four girls and one boy, all dressed in variations of Jirai Kei and streetwear. You engage with them while Scaramouche leans back against the wall, on his phone, tolerating you filming TikToks with the girls.

All of the girls are unmistakably forgettable, except for one. The pink-haired one. Her hair is long, healthy, and bleached pink, and she dresses eerily similar to you. She's your height, maybe a little shorter, and she has a cute overall appearance. What makes her stick out is the fact that she's the only one in the group who's engaged with you outside of filming TikToks.

"You're so cute, y/n… right?" You nod, and she smiles back, looking way too pleased that she got your name right. Her fingers move to the bow attached to your LIZ LISA blouse, fixing it even though it wasn't really crooked. "We practically match. Look at us, we could be twins."

"Stop, you're cuter," you say immediately, smiling through it as you look her over in return. Her skirt, her hair clips, the soft pink of her makeup. "Actually, no, you're way cuter. It's annoying."

"Shut up, no." She links her arm with yours for the next take, and you can feel the way her big tits press against your arm. You dismiss it, though, because girls with big chests can't really help where their tits end up.

Scara glances up from his phone, clocks the way her arm is linked with yours, and goes back to scrolling. He's dealt with Childe for long enough that a touchy girl with a flirtatious personality doesn't set off his radar.

She tucks a piece of your hair behind your ear while you're looking at your phone, and her fingers linger on the shell of your ear. You don't move away because why would you? She seems sweet.

“Your boyfriend’s hot,” she says, casual, glancing toward Scara against the wall before her eyes slide back to you. “Like, stupid hot. How’d you land that?”

You glance over at him too, at the bored set of his mouth and the way he’s still scrolling with his shoulder pressed to the wall, then shrug. “I didn’t land anything.” Your thumb pauses over your screen, and your mouth quirks because it sounds ridiculous out loud, even if it’s true. “He kind of decided I was his problem before I had time to run away.”

She laughs louder than she needs to, and instead of reacting to any of the very obvious warning signs in that sentence, her hand finds your waist. “That’s so cute. Are you guys open, or just each other?”

“Uh?” You let out a nervous laugh, brows knitting as you turn your head to look at her properly now. “No. We’re not open," you say as if it should be obvious. “We’re in a normal, closed relationship. He starts acting insane if I even look at someone too long.”

She doesn't look embarrassed; if anything, your answer seems to entertain her more. “That’s kinda hot, though,” she says, squeezing your waist. “The possessive thing. Some girls are into that.”

Scara spots Childe across the street, leaning against a vending machine, scrolling his phone with one hand and eating something with the other. Scara pushes off the wall and looks at you.

"I'm going to go talk to him for a second," he says, jerking his chin toward Childe. He looks at the girl, then at her hand on your waist, then back at you, and decides it's nothing. "Stay here. Don't leave this group. I'll be back in a couple of minutes," he says, already walking.

He's barely fifteen feet away, still in full view, when Miki's hand slides from your waist to your hip.

You glance down at it, unsure if you’re supposed to laugh it off or move away. Miki follows your gaze and smiles, not at all apologetic. “He’s not looking.”

“He’s literally right there.”

“I know.” Her thumb rubs against your hip, and the touch makes your stomach tighten. “That’s why I said he’s not looking.”

You open your mouth, but her hand comes up before you can get anything else out. Her fingers curl behind your ear, tilting your face toward hers, and then she kisses you.

Her friend group reacts with a chorus of "aww" and "that's so cute." The kiss lasts about two seconds, maybe three, before she pulls back with a little giggle.

Every part of you is frozen in shock. Your mind, your body, everything since the minute her lips touched yours. The pink-haired girl just wipes the corner of her mouth with her thumb. "Sorry," she says, smiling, not sorry at all. "You're just really pretty; I had to."

"What the FUCK."

The voice comes from behind you, and when you turn your head slowly to the side, you see that Scaramouche saw everything. He was mid-sentence with Childe, and the exact second he turned to check on you, his eyes landed on the pink-haired girl's mouth pulling away from yours. His eyes are narrow as he sets his gaze on the girl, and he starts walking fast, hands at his sides, fingers curled, and every step he takes looks like it's costing him something to not sprint.

"Who the fuck," he starts before he's even fully within earshot, "do you think you are?"

The pink-haired girl doesn't look the least bit threatened. She smiles at him with the intention of making him angrier. "Hi," she says. "You must be the boyfriend."

"I'm going to ask you one more time." Two girls from the group scoot back from the danger in Scara's tone. "What the fuck did you just do to my girlfriend?"

"I kissed her," the pink-haired girl says, still smiling. "She's a really good kisser, by the way."

"Scara," you say, finally unfreezing, reaching your hand towards his arm. He doesn't look at you; he just stares straight at the girl, not moving.

"I think you're overreacting," the girl says, looking him up and down with a kind of interest that makes you feel sick. "She's fine… I'm fine. You're really hot when you're angry, though. Has anyone told you that?"

His fingers curl tighter at his sides. His knuckles pale under the pressure, and his shoulders stay locked in place while she keeps smiling at him, completely unaware that she’s talking herself past the last bit of restraint he has.

"And honestly?" She tilts her head, her grin widening. "I'd date both of you, like, at the same time. I'm not picky." She pauses and looks past him, straight at you, still wearing that same pretty, careless smile. "Actually, I'd rather me and her have some fun, while you sit in a chair in the corner and shut up."

His fist connects with the side of her face before she can finish the cute little head tilt she was doing. Her head snaps to the side, pink hair whipping across her face as she stumbles hard, one hand flying up too late to catch herself. She hits the pavement on her hip first, then her shoulder, her bracelets scraping against the concrete.

Childe pulls out his phone and hits record. "Oh shit," he says, grinning, already angling the camera. "Oh shit, oh shit."

The girl makes a strained sound and tries to push herself up, mascara already smudging under one eye. Scara steps forward and plants the sole of his platform sneaker in front of her hand. “Stay down,” he says.

She looks up at him, lip split, all the confidence finally gone from her face. “You’re fucking insane.”

“No,” he says, breathing hard through his nose as he bends just enough to look at her properly. “You put your hands on my girlfriend and doubled down when I confronted you. You wanted a reaction.”

Her eyes flick to the people around them, hunting for sympathy, but the girls who were laughing a second ago have gone quiet.

Scara’s hand flexes at his side, still aching to hit something. “So don’t act confused now.”

You don't move to stop him. You know it's the right thing to do, but you can still feel the place where she kissed you, and the thought makes your skin crawl harder than the sight of her on the ground does. You take a step backward, then another, until you're next to Childe. Your shoulder bumps his arm, and he glances at you, then back at his phone.

"You good?" Childe asks, quiet, still recording.

"Yeah." That's a lie; you don't feel good. Your fingers lift to your mouth before you stop yourself. "Is he going to stop?"

“Probably.” Childe keeps the camera up, but his voice loses some of the joke. “Hopefully before someone calls the cops.”

The girl tries to scoot back, one heel scraping against the pavement, and Scara steps with her. Following her, keeping her pinned there by the fact that he’s still standing and she isn’t.

“Don’t crawl away from me while I’m talking to you,” he says, voice low enough that it sounds like he's nowhere near being done.

“Scara,” you say again, and this time your voice actually reaches him.

Scara's eyes leave the girl and find you standing next to Childe, one hand hovering near your mouth, your whole body held wrong. There's nothing accusing in his face when he looks at you and realizes your state. He isn't just angry anymore about someone kissing his girlfriend. He's pissed that someone put their hands on you, touched your face, and kissed you while you stood there too stunned to say no.

Then he turns back to the girl on the ground, voice colder than before. “If you touch her again, I’m not stopping at one hit.”

Childe lowers the phone a fraction. “Okay, that’s probably the part where we leave.”

Scara looks at him, then at you, and only then does he seem to remember where all of you are. He wipes the hand he punched the girl with on his jacket, not wanting to leave with any of her filth on him. His hand closes around your wrist the second you're close enough, and he pulls you next to him as he starts walking.

Childe pockets his phone and follows, still looking over his shoulder. “For the record, I think that went really well.”

"Shut the fuck up, Childe," Scara says, his grip tightening once around your wrist. You don't say anything, and neither does Childe. For once, he reads the silence properly.

Childe waits outside when you three make it to a public restroom. Scara doesn't join Childe against the wall and doomscroll until you're done in the restroom; he follows you in. It's not a big deal because the bathroom is unisex, and it's not weird that your boyfriend who can't spend an hour apart from you is inside the same stall you're in.

TMI just doesn't exist anymore between you both.

You sit on the toilet, and he's standing in the stall with you, facing you, scrolling on his phone. You pee and reach for the toilet paper, but the only thing your fingers find is an empty cardboard roll.

"Ugh!! Are you joking?? Scara." You stare at Scara, then back at the roll. "There's no toilet paper."

He looks up from his phone, glances at the empty roll, and a grin spreads across his face. "There's a bidet right under you that you can use like a normal person."

You roll your eyes at him stating the obvious. "I know there's a bidet, Scara, but I can't just-"

He leans over before you can finish the sentence, his free hand reaching past your thigh to the control panel on the side of the toilet. He presses something, and a jet of warm water hits you directly on your clit, and the shock of it makes you yelp and slam your thighs shut.

He's already laughing at you, shoulders shaking and all, clutching his stomach like it hurts to laugh this hard.

"Scara!!" You're squeezing your thighs together, the bidet still running because the timer on whatever button he pressed hasn't finished yet. "Turn it off, oh my god, and there's literally nothing to wipe it with!"

He reaches over and presses the stop button, the stream finally cutting off. Because of him, your thighs are wet, and your clit is throbbing from a bidet that found your clit faster than Scara ever does.

"I could clean it with my tongue," he jokingly suggests, but you can't find the joke in his tone, or even in his expression.

"That's disgusting," you grimace, watching him slide his phone into his pocket, watching him drop down to crouch in front of you. "What if there's still-"

"The bidet literally just washed you off." His hands find your knees. "That's the entire point of a bidet."

He pushes your knees apart with both hands; your thighs open, and you scoot forward on the heated seat toward his mouth without him asking you to. His mouth is on you before you're even ready. His tongue drags across your folds, collecting the residual moisture from the bidet. The warmth from the heated toilet seat and his mouth makes your eyes flutter shut, and your mouth fall open.

His hands slide up the outside of your thighs, gripping, pulling you closer to the edge, his tongue dragging through every fold, circling your clit with a slow pressure.

"Scara…" Your hand finds the top of his head, fingers threading through his hair.

He hums against your clit, the vibration making your thighs twitch. He looks up at you, his eyes dark, his mouth sealed on you, and he holds the eye contact while his tongue works in slow, tight circles that make your stomach coil.

Your head drops back against the wall as his tongue speeds up. His lips seal around your clit and suck, pulling off with a loud pop that would scare you if anyone was in the bathroom, but you're too close to care. He spits on your clit, his tongue chasing it, spreading the warmth, and his fingers dig into your thighs hard enough that you can feel the pressure in your hipbones.

You cum on the toilet seat with his mouth on you, your hand tightening its grip on his hair, and you let out a moan that bounces off every tile surface in the bathroom.

He pulls back, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and stands up.

"You're the worst," you mutter, recovering.

"You came in under two minutes; I barely even did shit." He pulls his phone back out, already scrolling. "Hurry up, that ginger is still waiting outside."

It's already noon, and Childe has a violin bow. You and Scara have been with him all day, and not once have you seen where he randomly acquired half of an instrument, but you don't even bother asking.

Scara is sitting on a bench, high out of his mind, his eyes half-closed, and Childe uses this as an opportunity for… something.

"Okay, okay, listen." He's leaning into your ear, voice barely audible, grinning so wide it's taking up his entire face. "I have a plan; it's stupid, but you're going to love it. Trust."

You give him a puzzled look, glancing between him and Scara’s fucked-out state. You roll your eyes and mutter, “Whatever,” because you’re bored anyway.

“I knew you’d give in easily.” He pulls out his phone, opens TikTok, queues up a dramatic violin solo, and hands you his phone. “Record me.”

He walks up behind Scara, and before Scara's sluggish brain can register the movement, Childe bends down, wraps both arms around Scara's waist, and lifts him off the bench like a sack of rice.

"What the f… CHILDE, PUT ME DOWN."

Childe throws Scara over his shoulder, one arm locked around the back of his thighs, and Scara's upper body hangs down Childe's back. Scara's legs kick; his hands try to grab at Childe's jacket, trying to fight back. "Childe, I swear to FUCKING GOD-"

You hit record and give Childe a thumbs up. He raises the violin bow with his free hand, positioning it between Scara's ass cheeks, and starts imitating a violinist. The bow drags back and forth, his wrist making exaggerated, theatrical strokes, matching the audio sound.

Childe is playing music with Scara's ass while Scara screams obscenities into his lower back.

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU." Scara's face is red, his arms flailing, not really making an impact. "PUT ME DOWN, PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN, CHILDE, I'M GOING TO DUMP YOUR BODY IN THE RIVER AND TELL EVERYONE YOU MOVED BACK TO RUSSIA."

Childe keeps bowing, shoulders shaking with laughter. “You remembered I'm from Russia? Aww, that’s so intimate.”

“YOU’RE NOT SPECIAL.” Scara’s voice cracks from pure outrage. “YOU JUST NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT YOURSELF.”

Scara's fists are pounding on Childe's back, but his coordination is shot because he's high, so the punches are landing in all the wrong places, his knuckles hitting Childe's shoulder blade, his ribcage, his hip.

"Ow,” Childe adjusts his grip under Scara’s thighs and gives the bow one final dramatic stroke. “Careful, pretty boy. You’re going to bruise your hand before you kill me.”

You're laughing so hard that it's hard to keep the phone steady in your hand. Childe turns slightly toward the camera, still holding Scara over his shoulder. “For the record,” he says, breathless, “he consented to none of this.”

“CHILDE.”

“And he’s very ungrateful.”

 “PUT ME DOWN.”

Childe puts Scara down. Scara’s feet hit the pavement wrong, and he has to grab the back of the bench to keep from eating shit. When he straightens, his hair is messed up, his eyeliner is smudged, and his face is red from being upside down for around fifteen seconds.

He looks at Childe with an expression so loaded with murder that Childe takes one precautionary step backward.

Childe's hands lift, violin bow still between two fingers. “Okay, before you commit murder, think about how bad you’d look in court.”

Scara snatches the bow out of his hand and throws it as hard as he can. “The fuck was that?” Scara snaps, dragging a hand through his hair and only making it worse.

“Art,” Childe says, giving him a wink, fully aware that he’s about three seconds away from getting hit.

Scara takes one step toward him.

Childe’s eyes cut to the phone in your hand, looking at it and you with a sudden sense of urgency. “Post it,” he says, pointing at your screen. “Post it right now before he can get to it.”

Scara turns his head toward you.

For half a second, he just stares at the phone in your hand, then at your face, then back at the phone. You watch him realize, in real time, that you recorded the whole thing.

Scara's eyes narrow. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

You look down at the screen, thumb already hovering over the button.

Childe leans around Scara’s shoulder, suddenly invested in your survival and the video’s public release. “Quick, before he remembers he has legs.”

Scara lunges.

You hit post before he can take the phone.

You're behind the nightclub again, in the same spot, on the same cardboard, same blanket, watching the neon cycle through the same colors.

Scara's drinking some expensive liquor he got from Childe before he left to do his rounds, an “apology” for the violin TikTok so he wouldn’t get his ass beat.

He takes a long sip and hands you the bottle. You take it, and before you bring it to your lips, you wipe the mouth with the edge of your sleeve.

He watches you do it, his face dropping once he fully processes it.

"What the fuck did you just do?" he asks, his voice flat.

You take a sip, pretending not to hear him as the liquor burns a line down your throat.

"Did you just wipe the bottle?" He takes it back from you, looking at the mouth of it, then at you, offended in a way that it almost makes you laugh. "You wiped my spit off. Like I'm contaminated. Like you don't put my cock in your mouth on the daily."

You shrug, badly hiding how amused you are. “It felt dirty.”

His face goes still, but you move on before he can say anything. Talking about the violin TikTok and how many views it's getting, waving your phone in front of your face as if the conversation is already over.

He takes a sip while watching you talk. You don't realize he never actually swallows it.

His hand comes up and grabs your face, one palm on each side of your jaw, and he squeezes until your mouth pops open mid-sentence. Your eyes go wide, your words cutting off into a confused "wha-" that gets interrupted by him spitting the liquor from his mouth directly into yours.

Before you can close your mouth, his palm connects with your cheek. The slap wasn't anything more than a harmless 'wake up' slap, but the alcohol does splash against the inside of your cheek from the impact, some of it dripping out the corner of your lips and down your chin.

"Swallow," he says, watching your face.

You swallow; the alcohol and his spit going down your throat together, and you start laughing, the sound muffled by the last of it going down. You wiped the bottle to piss him off, because messing with him is your favorite hobby, and his response to it was so worth it.

He takes another sip, his eyes on you, and he doesn't wipe the bottle. "If you ever wipe that bottle again, I'll make you drink the whole thing through my mouth, every sip, for the rest of the night."

He hands you the bottle again as a test. You bring it to your lips and take a sip, maintaining eye contact, not wiping it this time.

His mouth twitches, satisfied despite himself. “There,” he says, taking the bottle back once you lower it. "That's what I thought."

Scara's sitting against the wall, legs out, the bottle resting between his thighs. You're next to him, leaned into his shoulder, your body heavy and buzzing, and at some point, the leaning turns into kissing.

His hand is on the back of your neck, making the kiss deeper, his tongue pushing past your lips, and you can taste the liquor still coating the inside of his mouth. You slide on top of him without breaking the kiss, your bare cunt pressing against the front of his pants, and the rough drag of his zipper against your clit makes your breath catch. You're not wearing underwear because he stole it a couple of hours ago when you both went to a bathhouse and made out in the bathroom.

He unzips his pants with one hand, pulling himself out, and you feel his cock press flat against your folds, the heat of it making your thighs clench. The first drag of your bare cunt against his bare cock makes you both exhale into each other's mouths, and his hand grips your hip hard enough that his rings press into your skin. You start grinding, hips rolling forward so his length drags through your wetness, and his head drops back against the wall.

"Fuck…" Low, strained, his throat working around the sound. His hips push up against your grind, and you feel his cock twitch between your folds when you roll over the head.

You sink onto him, slow, taking him inch by inch, your forehead dropping against his as your walls stretch around him. His mouth falls open against yours, a sharp hah slipping out that's more breath than sound, and his fingers dig into your hip as you take more. He's holding the bottle near his mouth with one hand, his other arm wrapped around your lower back, and when you fully bottom out on his cock, his jaw drops just slightly, breath hitching, his eyes half-closing.

"Shit…" he breathes against your lips, and you feel the word more than you hear it. "You're so fucking wet."

He takes a sip from the bottle while you adjust, holding the liquor in his mouth, and instead of handing you the bottle, he pulls you toward him by the back of your neck and presses his mouth to yours.

The liquor transfers from his mouth to yours. He pushes it past your teeth with his tongue, the alcohol flooding between your mouths while his cock is inside you, some of it dripping down both your chins, and you swallow mid-kiss, the burn going down while his tongue chases the taste. He pulls back, licking liquor off his lower lip, and watches a drop slide down your chin.

You start moving in slow grinds, your hips rolling in circles that keep him deep while your clit catches the friction of his pelvis on every rotation. His hand tightens on your hip, and his hips push up to meet your grind, and you can feel the way his cock throbs inside you when you shift the angle.

He takes another drink and does it again. He grabs the back of your neck and feeds it into your mouth, and you swallow while you ride him. He still doesn't give you the bottle to hold; every sip you take comes from his mouth, warm and secondhand, but you aren't really complaining.

You feel something press against your clit. You look down, and his free hand is holding the bullet vibrator from a couple of nights ago, the same one he taped to you on this very wall. He presses it against your clit while you're still seated on his cock.

He turns it on.

"Ah…" Your hips jerk, grinding harder, and his cock pushes deeper from the motion. The vibration against your clit while he's inside you is a combination that makes your walls pulse around him involuntarily, and you can tell he felt it by the way he groans out.

"There she is," he says, pressing the vibrator harder against your clit. "Keep grinding… just like that. Don't fucking stop."

You roll your hips, and the vibrator catches your clit on every forward grind, building a pressure in your stomach that tightens and tightens until it breaks. You cum with your face buried in his neck, your walls pulsing around him in a clench that makes him curse under his breath, a bitten-off "fuck" that vibrates through his throat against your lips.

Your rhythm falters, your hips stuttering, but he doesn't let you stop. His hand on your hip keeps you moving, guiding your grind through the aftershock.

"Good girl." He says it into your hair, quiet, the words almost lost in the bass from the club. His thumb rubs a circle into your hip. "Keep going."

You keep moving, slower now, your body heavier after the orgasm. He holds the vibrator against your oversensitive clit, and the stimulation makes your thighs tremble on either side of his hips. Every grind pulls a small, involuntary sound from your throat, and he's watching your face, his own breathing faster than he'd probably want you to notice.

He feeds you another mouthful of liquor through his lips, and you swallow, moaning into his mouth, the alcohol and his tongue and the vibrator blurring into one sensation. You cum again, this time quieter, a full-body shudder that makes you go limp against his chest.

"You're getting lazy," he says, once your hips slow to almost nothing.

"'M tired…" you mumble into his neck. "My body is quitting."

"Your body doesn't get to quit." He adjusts the vibrator, turning it up, and the jolt makes your walls clench around him again. His breath catches, and he pushes up into you, a shallow thrust he can't help. "I'm not done with you."

You whimper against his neck, and your hips keep moving because his hand on your hip keeps them moving. The third orgasm is less of a peak and more of a wave, a slow, rolling contraction that makes your whole body tremble in his lap, your cunt pulsing around his cock in rhythmic squeezes that make his breathing go ragged against the top of your head. His hand in your hair tightens, his hips grinding up into you with each pulse, chasing the way your walls are milking him.

He sets the bottle aside, and both hands find your hips. He grinds you down onto him while his hips push up, and the pace gets faster, his cock hitting deep on every thrust. You're barely moving on your own anymore, and the sounds he's making slip out without permission: low groans between his clenched teeth, his breathing ragged against your hair.

"You're so tight when you've been cumming." His voice is rough and strained, his composure cracking. "Every time you cum, it gets tighter… shit… you know that?"

You make a sound that's supposed to be words but comes out as a moan, and his grip on your hips tightens, pulling you down onto him harder.

He cums inside you with his face pressed into your neck and a groan that vibrates through your collarbone, his hips pushing up one final time and holding there, his cock pulsing deep. You feel the warmth flood through you, and his arms wrap around your back, pulling you flush against his chest, his breathing hot against your skin.

You stay there, on top of him, his cock softening inside you, his arms still around your back. The vibrator is still buzzing against your clit, and you twitch every few seconds, oversensitive, but he doesn't turn it off yet. He likes watching you twitch.

He turns it off eventually, peeling it away gently, and pulls you against his chest while he's still inside you. Just as he's about to pull the blanket over both of you, he hears your phone buzz.

It's in your bag, face up, and from where Scara's sitting, propped against the wall with you half-asleep on his chest, he can see the screen.

It's a message from your mother.

The contact name just says "the bestest mom ever" with a heart emoji next to it, because you never changed it, because you never blocked her. He told you to block her a month ago, the night you left, and you said you did. He believed you, and you lied.

He picks up your phone and unlocks it to see the message. It's a long, full paragraph.

Baby, I don't know if you'll even see this. I've been calling and calling, and I know you probably have me on silent or maybe you blocked me, and this won't even deliver. But I need you to know that I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was too hard on you. I set rules that didn't make sense, and I didn't listen when you tried to tell me. I should have asked why you were climbing out your window instead of threatening to lock it. I should have asked why you were unhappy instead of grounding you for showing it. Please come home. I don't care about curfew or rules or any of it. I just want you here. I'll do whatever you want. I'll change. Please. I love you so much, and this house is so quiet without you, and I can't sleep knowing my daughter is out there somewhere and I don't even know if she's okay. Please, baby. Please come home.

Scara reads every word. Every "please." Every sentence that sounds like his mother should've written to him but didn't, because his mother doesn't beg or chase; his mother leaves half-assed notes on kitchen counters.

When he told you to block your mom a month ago, he told you he blocked his. He lied the same way you did. He didn't block Ei; he never did. He kept the door cracked just enough that if she ever wanted to reach him, she could.

She never did.

Not a single text, not a call, not a voicemail… nothing.

Your mother texted you a paragraph. His mother probably doesn't even know he hasn't been home for longer than a month.

He looks at your face. Your eyes are closed, your breathing is slow, your mouth is slightly open against his collarbone. You're drunk, high, and exhausted, and you have no idea he's even on your phone right now.

He blocks your mother's number and deletes the message. The message thread is all just… empty now, the last message sent being from a month ago. Like your mother never reached out, like she isn't sitting in a quiet house staring at a phone wondering if her daughter is alive.

He locks your phone and sets it back in your bag, screen down.

His arm wraps around your back, pulling you tighter against his chest, and his chin rests on top of your head. His eyes are wet, and he blinks until they're not. The neon cycles through the main colors; the pattern continues as if nothing happened.

You'll never know she reached out.

You'll never know how close you were to going home.

And he'll carry that with him the same way he carries everything else, silently, selfishly, with both hands gripping the thing he loves too tightly to ever let it breathe.

true that... true that #evilEVILscarylarryscara

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