here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed

Her mother is. Father—whoever he might be—is probably one, too. A familial affliction. Maybe that's why she stays away from it. Never bothered to even try. Addiction. Vices. Another dead-eyed girl wandering around town, nicotine staining her nails. I'll be better tomorrow, baby. Tomorrow I'll quit. We'll leave this place forever, baby, I promise. Just you and me. You and me.

Swallowing down the unease that brims at the thought of them, an uncomfortable itch in the back of her head she can't get rid of (a persistent sickness), she thumbs one out. Thin and long. Lighter than she thought it would be. A feather in her hand. Anchoring. Dangerous.

She should tell him no. No thank you. That she doesn't smoke. That the thought of being like her mother in a real, tangible way makes her want to peel her skin off until it lays in a heap at her feet. Something she can kick under the bed. Forgotten. Gone.

But she doesn't. Can't. Just leans in obediently when the man closest to her—the one who smells like sweat and leather, whiskey—moves, offering her a light with a shallow quirk of his thick, full brow.

He's handsome enough, she thinks as she peers up at him. Mapping the rugged symmetry of his face, his motions, as he moves around the tight confines of the idling van, chasing the shivering tip of her cigarette with an ease that makes her wonder just how often it is that he lights cigarettes for girls who can't stop shaking. Trembling. Vibrating out of their skin from nerves, fear, the crash of adrenaline.

Must be routine, she notes as he pursues her with ease. Catching up on a sharp exhale. The soft snick of his lighter a victorious cheer amongst the low buzz of a conversation in the background when he pins her down. Nonchalant. Almost lazy. Effortless.

The win barely changing the impassive expression on his face.

A handsome face, she adds as the cigarette dips down, heavier now that it's burning. Attractive in that soft, rugged way. Unassuming, mostly. A face that could blend in with the crowd. Masculine, though—in a way that makes her think of Robert Redford. Parental. A full jaw beneath a thick, umber beard. Soft peach poking out between the tangles fur along his upper lip. Hawkish nose. A leonine list to his flat, slate coloured eyes.

He cups his big, tanned hands around the flame, watching her impassively as she inhales deep—too deep—and calmly reaches for a bottle of water on the bench beside him when it feels like her lungs are burning. Her throat full of flames. Shivering, heaving. Hacking through soot-stained lungs as he offers the bottle to her without a word. Just cold plastic against her arm. Silent and steady. Cool as she hunches over and chokes, coughing into space between her knees, gasping for air that can't get through the smoke.

"Easy now, sweetheart," he drawls, an airiness to his low, brassy tenor that prickles along her nape. Makes her huff against the denim covering her shaking knees. Bell bottoms from a thrift store. The faded tag said LEVI'S 646. "Just breathe, alright? Ain't supposed to inhale—"

Ain't supposed to witness a murder, either, she wants to snap, churlish and mean, hiding her embarrassment through a dense fog of blame; shifting the conversation from her follie to the elephant huffing in the corner. And she almost does, but the bile clawing up her throat renders her mute. Immobile. Docile as he watches her through lidded, heavy eyes. Scrutinizing. Calculative.

The look in sun marled umbre reminds her, vividly (viciously) of that night. The one she tried to use a weapon. Double-edged sword. She has no one to blame but herself when her palms split, blood gushing out like the phantom in the back of her head. A man strung up on a hook. Arms overhead. His back to her, but his insides pooling on the floor in an ugly red and purple heap. The screams. The scent of blood and—

Meat.

Sharp, dark eyes on her. Face hidden beneath a black surgical mask. Broad shoulders unfurling into an impressive, terrifying height. Well—a voice like chiselled stone; metal on granite. Hellish. Looks like we got ourselves a lil' stray.

She's plucked from this nightmare when the man takes the burning cigarette from between her numb fingers, drawing it up to his mouth, and sinks his teeth into the filter as he gazes down at her. Assessing. Cold. Like he knows what she was thinking of. Which labyrinthine nightmare she was lost inside.

And he nods to himself, then; a shallow dip. Something she can't see, can't understand, confirmed.

"Saw the butcher," he mumbles around it, smoke pouring from the tip when he breathes. Speaking the words she tries to run from and weaponise out loud as she unscrews the cap on the bottle she'd forgotten about, hands shaking so hard, she can feel the water spill over her knuckles. "And we got some questions about that."

His arms come up, folding over his broad chest. The gold badge glints when it's catches the waning sun pouring through the windshield. F.B.I.

She swallows again, tastes soot and blood. Feels hands around her neck, sticky and blood-warmed; squeezing tight. Not a word, kitten, or I'll hang you up next. "I don't—I didn't see anything—"

He shifts in his seat, scoffing. That dark, calculative gleam is back, and she knows there's no more running. No hiding under the covers and convincing herself it was all just a bad dream. The pendulum swings. A choice must be made:

the hook or the cage.

John's not one for charity, though, and makes quick work of the idea with a shake of his head. Another snort filling the empty bathroom. A man gone mad, maybe. Lost in this tenuous thing that shifts, and changes shape around him by the day. An ugly, broken web. The spider is too old, too tired, to fix it so it dangles there, half in tatters. Catching nothing but pipe dreams. Hope on an exhale, riding the breeze.

That's what this is, he thinks. An exhale. Breathe out. And out. Keep going until your lungs collapse. House of cards.

It's what most of his life has been, hasn't it? Stacks. Paperthin. Held together on prayers and physics. And one of them he truly believes in.

This idea frames him now, too.

She skirts on the edges of his periphery—a ghost in his house that he isn't sure what to do with. How to handle. The idea of taking her in—receptionist, the notion still makes him scoff—was an amalgamation of nostalgia and obligation. And—

Something he'd rather not think about.

Puts it back inside of himself with a grunt, a fist knocking hard against his chest. Right above his heart. Tucked away where it belongs. Untouched. Unnoticed. Collecting dust like the boxes Coyote shifts through when she isn't sitting on the small couch, phone in front of her, waiting for calls that won't come.

It was a little cruel, maybe. Giving her the idea of a distraction. He knows what it's like to be left listless. Working dog without a home, a job. Restless. Cagey. But she hides her unease well enough.

Hides most things well enough.

Feline. Won't show an injury until it's too late, and even then—will curl up in a dark corner and die alone. Stubborn. Prideful. Prey animal unable to show weakness.

The name she takes—Coyote—is fitting for her. Predator, but predated on by bigger hunters. Bears. Wolves. The wrong end of a man's apathy. His cruelty. Mutts. Pests. Starving beasts that struggle to survive on their own. Pack animals. Social beings.

(tricksters, Elliot had said, and John hadn't pressed. Didn't ask for more.)

Poor thing, he remembers Savannah uttering, and finds himself thinking the same when she glances at him if he startles her, if he doesn't make enough noise to let her know he's there. Wide-eyed. Frozen. Silent. Waiting.

She doesn't flinch. Can't. Can't show an iota of weakness. Predator-prey. Instincts gone haywire. It's all wrapped into itself, a ball. Tension in her shoulders. Frozen stiff as she tries to make out what's moving in the dark. Food or foe.

(Typical white man, Elliot jokes. Always gotta go and pet the wildlife, huh? Just don't gut ‘em when you get bit.)

Slanted eyes, heavy with fatigue, stare back at him. Chest bare. He runs a damp hand over his belly, scratching at the fur by his navel. Absent. Lost in muted thoughts.

All about her.

(Stray, Elliot said. Take in another one? Shit, man. What happened to getting a dog?)

A dog adapts easier, he thinks. A warm bed, food. A scratch behind the ear—

It reminds him of the look on her face when she stared down at the burger. Half-hopeful. Sad. Lost in turbulent memories that fractured over her features; shading them in loss. Yearning.

It felt voyeuristic even then. Intrusive. But he couldn't look away from her misery. The shape of it pinching at the corner of her mouth. A heavy, aching thing.

But that's not the only reason he struggled to look away. Why he kept glancing at her while she stole sleep like it was a rare delicacy, snatching it from his hands like a thief in the night.

She's a pretty girl. He'd be a fool to deny himself that truth, but she's—

All teeth. Claws. Hackles raise. Eyes dimmed in distrust, lowered in skepticism. Brow heavy with it. Wary. Watchful. Like a wild animal.

He thinks about her out there, silent and still. Waiting for him to emerge so she can cover her tracks in his own steps. Hiding her scent under his. Wrapped up so tightly inside the brackets of his shadow that he'd forget she was even there.

The reds of her eyes tracing his bulky silhouette through the glass, brow pinched as tight as the corner of her mouth as she glances around for an escape whenever he comes too close.

And as her face swims in his head, he shakes his because maybe she isn't really all that pretty, is she? No. Using that word for her is a disservice. Pretty is soft. It's gentle. And she's anything but that. Prickly. Tense.

She's more like a disaster. A trainwreck. A car crash. Something he can't look away from. The aftermath of a hurricane. Brutal and ugly and gut wrenching.

Raw, is what she is. An open wound. Roadkill. Sad-eyed girl in a trailer park, fingers curled over the chain-fence as she stares him down. Blank. Distrustful. Nothing at all like the women he usually picked up—

And maybe he doesn't know how to deal with someone like her. He'd been expecting tears. Flinches. Sorrow. The most he'd gotten was that moment in the parking lot—her anger. Her resignation.

If she hadn't been pregnant, Coyote would have been gone already. And then—

Adoption.

He breathes in. In. Stares at himself in the mirror, and lets the ache of it cut him in half.

(the agony is a vicious, living thing but it's not nearly half of what he deserves.)

He slips out of the house before she can follow the still-warm footprints he leaves on the wood, pulling the collar of his jacket tighter around him, and tells himself it isn't her he's running from.

—cut from MÎSCACÂKANIS

Elliot grunts, fingers wrapped around the neck of a bottle. "Shit," he mutters, clicking his tongue as he glances around. "Think I left the bottle opener in the house. Hang on—"

John doesn't say anything when he rises, slipping into the tangle of trees clustered around the path that breaks off to this little nook from the main house. The fire burns bright enough that he doesn't bother carrying the flashlight with him.

"You'd think that man would learn by now," Savannah hums, her head shaking in his periphery.

He grunts, shrugs. "Leave 'em be. He's doin' his best."

Her lips quirk into soft, secretive smile that gouges an ounce of flesh out his heart. Another pockmark in the thing and it'll be riddled with holes—

"So." She says at length, eyeing him from across the bonfire. Gaze measured. Cool. But that's just how Savannah is. Cool. Distant. Not cold, but—

Still waters, he remembers Elliot saying when they met. When John pulled him aside and asked if she was okay with him being in her house. It hadn't made sense then, and even now he struggles to understand what he meant, but sometimes he thinks he gets it. Understands what Elliot was hinting at all those years ago.

Still waters. "How is your guest?"

Guest. She says the word with the same derision he feels itch inside of his chest.

"Guest, mm?" He pretends to ponder the question while she takes a sip of beer. A smarter woman than them, undoubtedly; or just so attuned to her husband that the idea of leaving the house with an unopened bottle doesn't even cross her mind anymore. And—

"Yep," she pops the p and he swallows down the urge to reach for a cigar.

"Fine," he grunts, fingers tingling. Numb.

"That all? Just fine?"

"Yep." He doesn't. "Just fine."

She leans back, a supine line of ink splashed across the hot pink patio chair, and apprises him under thin, dark brows. Silent. Pensive.

Still waters, he thinks, and snorts.

"She's fine. Eatin'—" his scraps, mostly. Picking at leftovers and weighing the amounts she eats as if she's expecting a bill at the end of her meal.

And that draws him up short. Itches under his skin in a way he hasn't contemplated since hmhe filled the fridge with food Savannah told him to buy. No more fish, you fool, she'd scoffed, and he half expected her to pinch his ear. Fruit. Vegetables. Eggs. Chicken. Only a cup of coffee—something Coyote seemed a touch resentful about when she glanced from the pot to him. No beer. Prenatal vitamins.

All untouched unless he eats some first.

"That's a scary look."

"m'jus' thinkin'," he grunts, but relaxes the clench of his jaw for her. Swallows down the anger.

"doin' that a lot lately, haven't you?"

Typical Savannah. "You say that like I don't."

"I haven't seen much of it," she shrugs, eyes glinting like pretty gems over the fire. "Bringin' in a stray, and all—"

He started it, of course. A stray. Has no right to feel any particular way, but it digs at him. A sharp, sudden thing.

"She ain't a stray."

She leans forward, resting her elbows on denim-clad knees. Eyes flint in the smoke. Bottle dangling off the hook of her index finger. "Then what is she, John?"

He can't offer much but the truth, and even that feels tenuous. "I don't know."

"Bloody hell," she mutters, tone dry. Words too clipped. Too sweet to carry the same weight. Her chin cocks to the side, soft. Contemplative. "That's what you guys say, isn't it?"

"Bit more bite to it, love."

For a minute, he thinks she might make a snappy rejoinder. Volley his playful tone back into him—a little barb that'll sting so sweetly in his chest. But she doesn't. Instead she rips the ground from under his feet.

"The baby isn't yours, John."

He swallows, tasting ash. Swallows again. Again. It doesn't wash the bitterness away, and when he speaks, his voice is cinder. Soot scraped off metal.

"I know."

"It's not your responsibility," her thin brow arches. The bottle wobbles. "Or your problem."

He glares into the flames, unable to meet her placid stare. He knows. Has known it since the beginning when her hand curled over her lower belly and she looked like she was going to be sick—

"Yeah."

"You're a good man, John—" the scoff he lets out is draped in a thick layer of contempt. Of things he can't put into words. Hands dunked into a putrid well. Rotten tissue and regrets. Shame. "I think you're a good man," she amends, but it does little to wash the muck from his skin because he doesn't really believe her.

"You're a poor judge of character, then."

"She's not wrong."

Elliot's voice floats from the dark. The clink of metal on glass. The scuff of boots on gravel. John doesn't know how long he's been standing there, but when he emerges from the trees, the look on his face is even. Hard.

In many ways, he considers Elliot to be as close to him as a brother. Whatever they have between them is deeper than friendship, deeper than kin. An innate understanding of just what makes each other tick. He pulled him from a litany of nights hunched over the rotting wood of a bar, drinking himself into a furious stupor, and throwing himself at anyone, anything, that looked at him too long.

Elliot included. Slamming him against the brick when he'd offered his hand to help him up. Stumbling in the dark after the bartender threw him out on his ass, spitting on the pavement beside his bloodied, swollen hand. Fuckin' drunk. Don't come back.

He stepped up, hands in his pocket. Eyes kind, offering help. And John had him pressed against the wall, forearm lodged against his throat in repayment. Snarling at him like a mad dog.

(an angry fuckin' bear, Elliot had laughed, months later. Shit, man, thought you were gonna rip my throat out.)

He might still be at the bottom of that bottle, snarling at ghosts, if it wasn't for Elliot.

But right now, Elliot looks like a stranger to him.

It slices deep. Even more so when he slides himself between John and Savannah, terse, as he says:

"Helpin' her ain't gonna bring back—"

He can't. Not now. Maybe not ever—

"I know."

Elliot hands him a bundle of meat, eyes warm despite the tension that simmers in the background. A low grade fever. But he shouldn't be surprised.

He's always been pyretic, hasn't he?

A tinderbox in the shape of a man.

Whatever Elliot sees in his expression, it makes his mouth pull to the side. The burgeoning crest of a smile. Easy as breathing. All forgotten. Forgiven.

Too quick, John wants to say. Lemme have it a bit longer.

But Elliot isn't that kind of man.

"Here you are," he murmurs, low and even. "Cut 'er up myself. The rest of what we caught today will be fixed up in a few days. I'll call ya when it's ready."

Savannah moves closer to him, drawn back into the fold by the steady, artless inflection nestled warmly inside Elliot's tone.

Her husband is too nice, she says sometimes, and even though it's spoken like a joke, drenched in exasperation, he knows that she hates it more than she'll ever let on. The bold truth of it sits cradled in her brow as she flicks her dark eyes between them, catching some unseen tether he's not privy to. The same cord, the same wire, she saw before that made her relax in his presence after a few day of stiff, unwelcoming silence after her husband dragged a strange, drunk man to their house, offering a reluctant click of her tongue. A word he can't remember, can't even begin to pronounce, rolling off of her full, cherrywood lips like a fond curse to the heavens above.

Here, she'd said, and offered him a glass of water. Beneath the veneer of friendliness, her eyes burned. Hurt him and you're dead.

Oblivious to their discord, the slight tip of Elliot's mouth lifts into a full, crooked grin. "Next time, you should bring Coyote around. Might like to get outta that old, stuffy cabin of yours."

Savannah snorts. "Elliot—"

John can't let the picture of it take shape. Grow roots. He cuts it off before it can sting. Burrow deep.

"We'll see."