she's a giggle at a funeral

(LANA JAMESON AS) IRIS, PERSONIFICATION OF THE RAINBOW: modern gods.

Leo nodded firmly, feigning seriousness as Lana went on about her sunglasses. He’d worn them to a party, once, when Lana had doused him in enough glitter to choke a cat, insisting the glasses would complete the fit, “Put me on the team, there’s never been a case I can’t solve. Scooby and the gang got nothin’ on me. Old man Jones is in for it this time,” As he spoke, Leo began to think over what he’d put onto Lana’s cast. It’d have to be good - as good as she was. It was only right. Maybe a star - but if he put one, he’d have to put thousands. Maybe then they’d be as bright as her. The sun would do. Maybe. For someone who didn’t find importance of much, it suddenly felt like he was about to sign his life away, scrawl his name across a scrawl and sell his soul to the devil if he didn’t get this right -, “Wait, huh? What?” It was as if a cheesy, static squeak of a record screeching to a stop played through Leo’s brain. Freeze frame and all, as he stared at Lana for longer than was probably necessary, mind catching up and processing what she’d said, brows knit together in focused confusion. Yep, that’s me! You’re probably wondering how I got here. It would’ve taken a lot for Leo to realize the calamity of her words, even if he’d been sober, images flashing in his mind’s eye, “Jamie drove with you… while he was drunk?” Instead of reaching for the Sharpie, it went forgotten in favour of Leo reaching to cup Lana’s face. He wasn’t sure if it was meant to ground Lana, or himself more, “Are you okay?” Though she was standing right in front of him, just as Lana as she was yesterday, and the day before, as Lana as the day they’d met, it felt like something worse should be happening. His brain was still stuck in halted motion, slideshow pictures of him, hanging upside down in a car on fire projected onto a screen just behind his eyes. This time around, where Vaughn should’ve been, unconscious and bleeding was Lana - it made Leo’s grip on reality slip even further, mouth dipping into an uncharacteristic but firmly set frown. Finn had once told him he looked dangerous, when he got angry like this, “Why the fuck would he do that? Were you just with him?” It’d been like this before they were even close. Leo, throwing punches at Felix, someone he didn’t even know because he’d made Lana cry. But this was worse - this was about as bad as it could get. And now they were close, and he did know Jamie, and he knew him well. But Leo knew Lana best, had loved her best once upon a time, too. The combination was a macabre one, at best.

Lana’s smile was still molten lava, hot as a feverish forehead and impossibly bright, when he interrupted for clarification -- it wasn’t uncommon for people to let out some form of a “huh?” when she spoke three hundred beats per minute like she did, always the embodiment of a heart on stimulants, so nothing about it registered as ‘out of the ordinary’. Nothing, that was, until he reiterated the facts of the situation, facts Lana hadn’t even considered as offensive despite the fact she probably ought to. It was difficult, sometimes, to be mad at anybody for endangering her. She only tended to get concerned over things she valued: every person that’d ever smiled at her, honeybees wet from the rain, even something as pulseless as a buttercup crushed under boot, to name a few. The list was astronomically long. Odd, perhaps, that she wasn’t on it. That there was an infinity of things she believed were more important. Or maybe, when you considered her track record, not odd at all. Not in the slightest. “Um... I mean, yeah,” she breathed out with a laugh that didn’t quite have legs, more worried about the look on his face than any injury she’d retained. Blinking, Leo’s hands cupping her face somewhat stilled the slosh of her brain, rum settled like an ocean calmed from a storm. Instinctive as the dip of a knife to retrieve butter and spread it on toast, her fingertips slunk up his wrists. Tried to soothe the skin, there. Etched them as she’d always wished her mother would the hair at her temple, fondly smoothing freckles. “Hey, it’s cool. I mean, I was drunk, too. Obviously. I’m, like... You know, it’s cool. Only hurts a little. Like, a teeny bit, smaller than a shrimp. The complete opposite of Gunner’s horse cock,” she made a rambled bid to console him, lighten the mood, apples of her cheeks perked with a warm attempt at a smile. “It’s okay,” slipped out softer, overcome with the slow, creeping realisation that it might’ve been better to lie. Lana struggled with thinking before she spoke. Always an afterthought. A confident stomp of a foot into quicksand, realising the risk when she’d already been dealt the consequence. “We left the bar, I don’t know. Kinda got bored, I think. Can’t really remember. We wanted to head to the villa and, like, Jamie’s... Jamie. It was fun, mostly. Like, apart from crashing. He gave me a piggyback, so, like, chivalry isn’t dead, or whatever. And he--,” cut short, about to say that he apologised when she realised, eyebrows gently knit, she couldn’t remember an apology. At the time -- hell, even now -- she didn’t feel that he’d owed her one. Lana never felt like anyone owed her anything. Forcing herself to focus, she brushed past the brief falter in chatter, eager to get a smile on his face. Sprung onto her tiptoes, she pressed a soft kiss to his lips. If somebody were to snap a photo and compare it to another of her calmly stroking the snout of a muzzled, growling dog, it might’ve been difficult to tell the difference. “Don’t worry about it,” she eased, best she could, smile already curling -- leading by example. Another kiss found his cheek. Jaw. Tip of her nose to his throat, she left one there, too. Breadcrumbs to lead to a gingerbread house -- steer him into the woods, leave his anger away from the trees. “Come on, how about that beach? Ugh, the beach? I love her work. The crowd goes wild. Let’s go to the beach-each! Ninki Minjaj...” trailed as she slipped to rest on full soles, already moving to take his hand and pull him in the general direction. “You can autograph me, there. Maybe other parts of me, too. Super interested in a collaboration. It’ll increase my market value. The Leo Fowler, leaving his mark. Showstopping! Maybe I can autograph you, too. And I wanna do that thing -- you know the thing, where you’re buried in the sand, all the way to your chin, and you have those huge sand titties? I think you’d suit them.”

Val was accustomed to waking up in strange places. It was almost routine, slamming into consciousness in an unfamiliar room with a pounding headache and a foul taste in her mouth all the while waiting for the night to piece itself back together. There were no real clues in the bedroom–no photographs or posters to scrutinize, no person in the bed beside her to jog her memory–although the bed was large enough to stand out on its own. She’d definitely never been in this room before. There was no way she would’ve forgotten a bed like this, so massive it took up nearly the entire wall. She just wanted to roll from side to side and curl back up in the fluffy down comforter until her muscles stopped screaming and her stomach settled down a bit. Thankfully she wasn’t as hungover as she expected, perhaps still too drunk to feel it. Or maybe she’d built up a concerning tolerance in the past few months of binge drinking. She bypassed that thought as quickly as it had come, willing it out of her mind fast enough to pretend she’d never thought it at all. Either way, she didn’t feel entirely nauseous and her headache was more like mild dehydration than the result of a night she couldn’t remember. 

As her bleary eyes squinted around, still too dry to see clearly, they snagged on a blurry figure on the balcony. Even without a good look, the hazy movements were so distinctly Lana, she could’ve picked her out from a mile away. How did she manage to make retching over the balcony feel like a dream sequence? Val would have been content to sit and watch her, not ready to own up to being awake, but Lana caught her and promptly shattered the peace. “I don’t know at all what you’re saying,” Val grumbled, using the heels of her hands to rub her eyes and getting distracted for a moment by the pretty patterns against her eyelids. When they opened again she saw her wrists had come away black with smudged liner and bits of flaked off mascara, enough that she didn’t risk taking a second look at the white pillowcases. “This bed is fucking huge. It’s like, the biggest bed I’ve ever seen. No normal bed.” She was distracted again, brows furrowing as she tried to remember what happened last night. There was a party. There was… drinking. There was Lana. And if the awareness of the place between her legs and the clothes strewn across the room were anything to go by, there was sex. Her nose crinkled. “Where are we? I remember– There was… Hm… You were there. We went to the bathroom at that place. With the guy that–oh my god! That guy gave me his Gucci belt. Do you remember that? He took off his belt and fucking gave it to me. Do I still have it?” 

A sheer curtain fluttered by the open balcony like a ghost from beyond the veil attempting to cling onto Lana’s waist, pull her in to press a kiss to her throat. She stood, still, allowing the fabric to tickle, the sun to soak her like the steam of a mid temp shower. Imagined herself, briefly, as something for the spirits to play with the same way people did. She felt like a statue, most of the time -- the hand that carved it, too, a tourist’s etch of marble in a crowded museum. An object, built with intention, always appraised for it’s worth. Not a person. Never a person. She indulged it, on excursions like these. Deliberately gambled memories with several drinks or a dozen, lost her brain for the night so it’d all become true. So she’d feel like the statue she’d been taught to behave as. Love it and hate it, all at once. Lana realised she’d been staring at the Colosseum when she received another honk, some zipping Mini Cooper signalling thanks for her tits being on show. Blowing a kiss over the railing, brain envisioning her lips sprouting like the red wings of an Emperor butterfly and leaving her face entirely, she turned before she could picture it singeing it’s wings on the sun. Flying too high, as she always did. Chasing such a brightness it burnt. “That’s ‘cause I was talking dirty in French. I’m super fluent, Val. Add it to your Lana files in pink glitter gel pen,” she lied, wandering back into the room with a nonchalance you’d only expect from exploring your own. There was red velvet over the bed, botanical crowning painted gold. Lana hopped up, crawled, reached to sift fingers over the tiny, glittering leaves. Tried to imagine them soft, pliable as taffy. “Nuh-uh. That wasn’t me. That was my stunt double. Roxanne. She’s crafty. She probably stole your credit cards and adopted twelve different snow leopards, all named John. Names aren’t her strong suit. It’s her biggest flaw.” Make believe. She revelled in it. Clambered aboard it’s lily pad with webbed feet, lounged in it’s pond rather than facing the grim reality of catching flies. A grin sprouted like an answer in itself, gaze sliding towards Val once she’d grown bored of tracing -- restless, always restless, never satisfied in one place. 

“I hope so. We can, like, use it as a weapon. Whip whoever owns this place with it. Change our names, live here for a week as Shelly and Shirley. You’d suit Shirley,” she thought aloud, reaching to gently ping at Val’s bottom lip with an index finger, watching how it bounced back like elastic. Predictable. Still, engrossing. Lana almost forgot their predicament -- almost, that was, until her eyes caught on something cream, abandoned on the bedside. Hopping over Val with the dexterity of a rabbit, Lana crawled until she could snatch it. The crinkle of an envelope. There was another, on the other side, but she didn’t notice. Instead, she flopped down besides Val, thumb slipping the tab. “This has my name on it. Gross. Did we give our real names? Snore. That’s how I know I was drunk. I mean, I love fake names. It’s, like, my legacy. I’m trying to work my way through the alphabet. I’m only on C, but. Honestly, there’s way more names than you’d think,” she rambled, practically against Val’s shoulder, punctuated by a kiss there before she wrenched her chin to investigate, properly this time. Huddled up close, two barely clothed girls in a stranger’s bedroom. Envelope open, a quick gape revealed wads of cash. Not just one, multiple. Not just singles, hundreds. “Whoa. Cha-ching! This... Huh,” slipped out before a laugh tensed her ribs, envelope tipped to let them scatter. They fell across her chest, notes leafy, garnished like a salad. Inviting just about anyone to come and eat her up. Always putting out the impression that a buffet was open. “How much money do you think this is? What’s -- wait,” she realised, head tossed back so that laughter constricted her throat, panged with it. “Do you think they thought we were, like, hookers? I don’t even -- was it a guy? Just one? I don’t remember. God, I hope he was hot... I mean... he, she. They.... Whatever. Even just some, like, Rolex wristed Martian. I hope we fucked a really hot Martian.”

Jamie suddenly had the urge to rip off part of his shirt, tie it around her wound like they did in movies to create a makeshift bandage. It surprised him, the guilt churning in his stomach looking at Lana’s bleeding arm, knowing that he had been the cause of it. His first instinct had always been self-preservation. Even as a kid he had stayed silent as his best friend got in rouble for the classroom graffiti they had both been responsible for. But Lana stirred something in him, regret and apology flooding his eyes as she smudged his chin with blood. “Ew, what the fuck! Is this how you get cold sores? Cooties, Lana,” he huffed out, swatting her hand away, wiping at his chin. His ears perked up, straightening his back, trying to decipher the Italian voices around them, still heavily intoxicated. He managed to catch a few swears that he wouldn’t bother to translate for her, and an English voice cussing at their wrecked bike. Something about it made a grin spread on his face to match hers, like two conspiratorial children who had just broken his mother’s favorite vase. Taking off after her, he was slower to move, ache of the bruise forming on the back of his head distracting him. His steps slowed to a walk, head flying around in circles. “Fuck, I -” he answered to her question, trying to spot anything that looked familiar. He settled on an old drunk passed out on the sidewalk, a man Jamie had noticed on their way to the bar because of how much he looked like the boy’s uncle, mouth slung so far open in a snore that Jamie wanted to try to toss peanuts into it. “Oh! I know where we are. Fuck, I feel like Magellan. I’m changing my major to map making,” he exclaimed excitedly, trotting in front of Lana, crouching down into a position that suggested she should hop onto his back. “Get on! We don’t have much time!” He ordered, smile falling at the sound of a police siren. Probably for something more serious than a moped crash, but Jamie wouldn’t take any chances in case they were on their way to avenge the bike’s death.

“Fuck, I? Are you, like, announcing you’re gonna fuck me, Yoda style? So hot, but... Um, Jamie, this totally isn’t -- this isn’t the time,” fluctuated with laughter -- childish, bubbling springs of it, borderline infectious -- as she studied his face, eyes panning all over, only focused on him. Not the sting in her arm. Not the fact that whatever threads she’d felt untangle from Danny as they zipped down the streets felt tangled again, now, knots swallowed and sitting uncomfortably in her stomach. Maybe it would always be this way, with something like that. Someone like him. Maybe he’d forever leak from her pores at the slightest reminder. “What’s Magellan? Is that, like, ice cream? Like Magnum?” she asked, no hint of a joke in her voice, genuinely curious. Hooked on his every word. Fully engrossed as she tried to keep up. Any thought of receiving an answer was wiped from her brain when he squatted, grin charging onto her face with all the tenacity of a bull let loose in a China shop, destroying ever delicate concentration. She gasped, instantly enamoured by the idea. “A noble steed! Donkey from Shrek, I love your work,” she gushed, already in the process of springing onto his back when the sirens began to wail. “Ew, can they keep it down? Like, my ears. We’re wahlkin’ here!” A horrifically butchered try at an accent from Queens, some disgruntled pedestrian cursing out a cab. You’d think, considering she’d grown up feasibly local, that she’d be better equipped to attempt it. Lana had always been terrible at accents, though -- it was almost as if she didn’t try, sometimes, like she found her failures funnier, far more sensational if they were rough around the edges. Hissing softly when she looped her arms, accidentally poking at the worst of her scrape, Lana instinctively shut her eyes. Childish, in a way. If you couldn’t see a monster, it didn’t exist. She phased over the reaction with a hum, right against his ear, adjusting so she could grasp without pain. Secure, then. Thighs either side of him, clasped to support her weight. “Bella and Edward roleplay. Is this the part where you tell me to hold on tight, spider monkey?” Despite the laughter in her voice, tone light as spun sugar, a finger etched his shoulder so gently that it almost implied an apology -- who was to know what for, Lana certainly didn’t. In fact, she was barely even aware of it, always straying into idle touches like subconscious habits, especially with Jamie. It was difficult, sometimes, to remember where the line was drawn. Exes probably weren’t supposed to behave that way, but Lana had never known anything different. Even with friends, with strangers -- with people that weren’t supposed to come near her -- physical intimacy was more normalised than a handshake. “Lemme know if you get tired. We can swap. I’m, like, super ripped, not to brag, or anything. I once bench pressed a Jeep in a Taco Bell parking lot. With a dog inside. My twelve pack’s way intense.”

it was sad to see that even in a foreign country, becca found everyone just as annoying. the students of yates had a tendency to make any place their personal frat house, as if they were modern day colonizers invading a place just to make it as unbearable as the last. “maybe those gossip bitches were right and you really are obsessed with me. you’re not my type, jameson, so maybe you should stop crying on your instagram story every two months and we can all move forward.” even though becca had a resting bitch face and the eyes of dexter, there were still people dumb enough to come and speak to her, like they’d been friends all their life and becca was just waiting for next piece of hot gossip on lana jameson. frankly she felt that her life would be marginally better with lana out of it, which had become painstakingly obvious in every interaction they had. “yeah, you’re on ow—” just as becca has turned around, she was pulled back, startled by lana grabbing her. her guard had been down naturally, which was exactly how she found herself drenched in dirty fountain water, right next to lana. the loud splash had surely caused a crowd to form around the two, with people having nothing better to do than watch whatever would happen next. even as she was wet from head to toe, the outfit she’d so carefully picked out for her day utterly ruined, becca was still, almost too still. it wasn’t because she hadn’t had a reaction to it, it was because she was still processing that lana freakin’ jameson had really pulled her into a fountain. but the moment the inital shock had passed, becca was stuck between drowning lana or pounding her head against the pavement she’d only nearly missed. both were terrible, dangerous options, especially in front of the many spectators, so becca did the next best thing. she lifted her hand up, swiping it forcefully across lana’s cheek, both the sound and the action itself sending a gasp throughout the crowd behind them. “what were you saying before? me being the peanut butter to your jelly? because you’re more like the bug to fly swatter.” her words were filled with venom, resisting the urge to further assault lana in front of what felt like half of the yates student body. “are you an idiot? did your parents not like you enough and dropped you on your head thinking it’d fix your shitty personality?” 

Lana had been the recipient of a lot of slaps in her life. Perhaps most people wouldn’t find that surprising -- sometimes, jacked up as an Energizer Bunny, she bounced all over the room. Never subtle. There wasn’t often a house she entered that wasn’t immediately made aware of it, be it through a prance onto a coffee table turned into a stage, a laugh so warm and loud it carried to every corner. She had all the modesty of a firecracker thrown in a church confessional. While she’d gotten used to receiving blows -- verbal or physical, all in abundance -- she’d never gotten any better at it, incapable of letting the humiliation bleed through, always ready with an incredulous grin that wasn’t at all appropriate. It was like she cut the string that tied her to the reality of these situations, the seriousness, drifting up amongst the clouds in search of something kinder, a red balloon escaped from a child’s hand at a fairground. One day, she’d inevitably get caught on a telephone wire. Burst right into flames. Have to deal with real consequences: the fact that actually, these things hurt. But for now, head thrust sideways from the force of the slap, cheek searing, all Lana could think about was a particularly bad Tinder date. It might as well have been his hand. He’d made a face so ugly, during climax, that she’d burst out laughing. The memory brought her a smile -- Becca’s attempt at a pun only widened it. “Wow, Becca, you’re, like, such a fucking wordsmith, it’s actually unreal? Future author? Autograph my tit?” Barely conscious of it, her fingers had crept up to nurse the site of impact, sifting as if it wasn’t her own -- sometimes, in times where her body sought comfort, growing up, she’d be the only one to give it to it, gently clutching at her fingers like her mother should’ve done. She opened her mouth to say more, spin another laugh, but Becca’s continuation stopped her short. Perhaps it should’ve stung more, Lana realised. Salt in a never healed wound. Far too close to the truth. Briefly, she wondered if something inside her head was broken. But it was difficult to really acknowledge the punch the statement packed when she’d heard so many different iterations of it, before. Danny had said something similar under the guise of a ‘joke’, last September. She remembered his t-shirt. The incantation of his voice. How white his teeth were, in his smile. “Sheesh, Becca. Ouchie! At least I have a personality. I mean, what’s yours? Um, lemme guess, the walking personification of burnt toast?” Pushing up straighter, aided by her elbows, she didn’t hesitate to say it up close. “Yeah. Big word. Craaaaazy, right?! I bet you almost just sharted in your overpriced, untouched underwear. Lana Jameson has a brain. Imagine that. Pinch me, baby, I’ve gotta be dreaming.”  Something got lost in translation, where she was usually concerned. Her words came warm and careless but they cooled too fast, food left untouched on a restaurant plate. Unpleasant to chew. Lacking her usual charm. Climbing to her feet, white dress gone sheer and dripping from the fountain, Lana reached to swipe wet tendrils from her face. Her ribs constricted with a laugh as she shook droplets off her hands. “Ugh, total Mr. Darcy alert. Who did it better, me or Colin Firth? Twitter poll?” she posed the question to a member of the crowd, smoothing the fabric to her curves, always aware of what ought to elicit a reaction. She cast a glance down at Becca after the arrival of two separate wolf whistles, already beginning to stride her way to the edge of the fountain. “Someone should probably, like, shackle up that Minotaur before she, like, hoofs us all to death. Sooooo intense. Seriously,” slipped with a burst of amusement, dimples ever prominent. “Such a downer. She literally needs some milk.”

“Oh, really?” Leo indulged, quirking a brow at Lana with an expression equal parts confusion and playfulness. “Source? ‘Cause I find that a little hard to believe. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that man had any hair in the first place. Feel like he just came out of the womb ready to do some hypermasculine activities and, in turn, just never grew any hair. But hey, what do I know?” She was rambling, and not just to return to Lana’s jubilant manner, but because she was nervous. It was a habit she had difficulty breaking; as soon as the familiar tug of nerves hatched in the pit of her stomach, her mouth went off like a top spinning on its point – fast and with no sign of stopping. It compensated for her typically equanimous, reserved manner. The sole of her Converse tapped the deck of the boat with tiny little thuds, thankfully drowned out by the ensemble of voices and clanging of silverware around them, intertwined with bass pumping out of massive speakers. “No, this is weird, Lana,” she huffed, eyeing a shorter woman in a purple dress who was shooting coquettish glances to a much younger man, “like, that woman over there has to be, like, at least in her forties. Maybe even older. And she’s flirting with that guy.” Leo cringed at the sight before quickly downing the champagne in hopes it would dull her nerves. “Shrimp can give you E. Coli,” she refuted, “so. Yeah.” Shaking her head, she spun around to face Lana, narrowing her eyes. “Who even told you about this anyway?”

“Source? Gross, Leo. Like I’m some college student, or something, that writes essays and cites things. That’s so not what I’m about. You should’ve read my label before you bought me at the store,” Lana scoffed playfully, ignoring the fact that she was, quite literally, a college student that should’ve been writing essays and citing things. She didn’t always adhere to the typical restrictions. There was a boy with a wind of tape keeping his glasses together that always typed her a meticulously thought out argument, for a kiss or four. Beneath his botched glasses, he actually had quite the charming face, in Lana’s opinion -- it wasn’t particularly a chore, though some would definitely class it as a charity, even with his payment. “Wow, Leo. I totally didn’t take you for one of those. Lit. Ral. Shock,” she broke her words down into bitesize pieced, imagined them heaped on a spoon and airplaned into a baby’s mouth. “I can’t believe when we dock you’re gonna go rabid, just, like, throwing everyone elderly in a five mile radius out of their wheelchairs. So sick. Old people hater, loud and proud.” Laughter tinged everything, seeped like a wine stain in the expensive lace of a wedding dress. Undeniable. Vibrant. “Um, first of all, don’t call me Coli. The Ting Tings alert, much? That’s not my name. Second of all, I’d love it if a shrimp gave me an E. I never knew they were so much fun to party with. Ugh... I’m learning so much. Evolving every day. I’m so proud of me...” trailed off, blinking over to receive Leo’s squint like a child called to the front of the class, expression still mischievous in the face of her reprimanding. “Um.” She thought on it, briefly. “Some guy. He had this really nice accent -- like, it sounded like a bowl of spaghetti, it made my mouth water. I can’t explain it, you had to be there. Made me wanna slurp him up, or something. Anyways, he said it’d be erotico -- a bunch of emphasis, he loved that word. And I love that. I mean, I call things erotic all the time. We were kindred spirits, I could tell. And he was kinda right, wasn’t he? I mean, this view’s pretty erotic,” she spoke of the lake’s surface, glittering with the moon, lights of the boat casting everything gold. Just as Lana gestured again, hand aimless in it’s pan, she caught glimpse of a woman rearing her glass, chiming a fork in announcement. Letting out a gasp, Lana took Leo’s hand. She even leaned in, whispered excitedly to tickle her ear. “Maybe this is, like, the start of Jurassic Park, where the rich woman unveils her mutant dinosaur. I think I’ll let it eat me. Remember me as sexy.” Not quite. Instead, something about how the evening was ready to begin. About picking your first partner. “Huh...” Lana said gently, eyes sliding around in an attempt to make sense of things. “Is she, like... Maybe it’s a dance battle,” she suggested, already beginning to doubt as a man nearby had an ass cheek gripped in means of introduction, pair slinking into a quiet corner. “Um.” Shooting Leo a look, she couldn’t help but cackle, biting her lip in an effort to cage it. “So, like... Okay, not to alarm you, or anything, but. I think I know what’s going on here. And all I’m gonna say is, everything’s fine. We’re fine, it’s a story.”

Though they’ve only been here a short while, Selene feels as though she can see her time in Tuscany stretched out before her—long and thin and fragile. There’s an aching realization, equal parts riveting and terrifying, that her reality is no different in Italy than in America. She’s the same person everywhere she goes, just as rigid and exacting, and she would always be this person regardless of where she went in the future; she’d be the same in Cairo, the same buried under dirt, the same melting into a cloud. And she doesn’t drink, doesn’t think absinthe really sounds fun, but this ache she’s feeling puts her in the mood to destroy whatever reality she’s been stuck in. She wants to believe she’s capable of change. But change requires bravery, and she hasn’t been able to pull that emotion from her gut since she was a child. “No. I’ve never seen it. I’m not really a fan of musicals. I don’t get it. I mean—just— why do they break out into song? In real life?” Her eyes scan the field for a spot where she can sit down without completely ruining her dress, but there is none in sight. “And there’s something about Nicole Kidman…she unsettles me….I don’t know why.” She keeps looking around as she speaks, swiveling her head left to right like a snake,  avoiding the bottle that’s being held out to her. She’s trying to work up the nerve to take it from Lana. By the time the other woman has declared to allow Selene the first sip, though, she finally grasps it by the neck and instead of bringing it up to her mouth immediately, hugs it close to her chest.  Fuck it, she decides. Now she’s sitting cross-legged in the dirt, beckoning her friend to sit down next to her. Tentatively, she takes a particularly large gulp and has to force herself to swallow instead of spit. “Fuck. This is disgusting—” she groans, basically tossing the bottle back at Lana. “That’s enough. Fuck. Gross. How do you drink this shit? Without wanting to puke almost immediately, I mean.”

“You’ve never seen Moulin Rouge?!” Lana gawked like she’d just witnessed an orphan in a prairie dress leaping from a church steeple, jaw dropping even wider. “I mean, that’s what’s so good about it. It’s, like, this whole other world, where rules don’t matter. And everyone’s so happy, even when they’re sad.” Some might say that Lana, herself, lived life like a musical, like anything could be solved with a twirl and the perfect costume. An ex had phrased something similar, in the past. Something along the lines of “you’re gonna have to start taking things seriously, you know, life isn’t a fucking movie”. But it was easier, following a script, cutting the worst parts in the editing room inside her brain, a big screen that only had room for smooth sailing. It hurt less. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone ever wanted to take a bite from a bruised pear -- better to whittle the dark flesh, present them with something appealing, so ripe and sweet that she dripped down their chin. “Nicole Kidman looks like she’d eat me alive for sport. It’s so sexy. Honestly, like... that’s an iconic aura. Wanna just... catch it in a jar and sit it on my shelf. Like a night light, you know? I think it’d glow. Her aura would be, like, silver, like the moon. Werewolves fear her,” Lana rambled, blinking with a little fuzz already infringing on her peripherals, almost as if the world had taken a dusting of the fine hairs from the skin of a peach. She settled where Selene pat, legs kicked out and cowboy boots knocking, gentle against one another. Dorothy summoning her way home. Her grin was impish as Selene spluttered, bottle plucked for her to deliver a gentle kiss to the label, finger cropping up to etch it, after. “Don’t listen to her. Don’t do it! She doesn’t mean it. You is kind, you is smart, you is important,” she quoted The Help, bottle propped against a thigh where she’d doodled a game of noughts and crosses -- or her version, at least, hearts and stars that glittered. Lana lost. It meant her opponent had taken her by the hand, lead her behind a wall to kiss amidst the fig trees. She hummed, at Selene’s question. “I got drunk off this really gross whiskey when I was nine. My dad’s friends were cool. Fun doesn’t always taste nice.” Something there, in that word. Cool. A lone thread spooling from the very last letter. Hastily stitched. Subject to unravelling, should anyone think to yank. “Anyways, can’t you feel it? Warm, and stuff. Makes your toes tingle. I bet this is what hedgehogs feel like when they curl up inside of bonfires. Or when you’re falling in love,” she rambled thoughtlessly, already in the process of pulling the absinthe to taste it again. It paused, by her lips, hovering like a firefly was a few feet over, glowing in the leaves. Lana wet her lips. “Don’t you think?” Blinking at her, wide and curious, she couldn’t help but ask it. Hot on her tongue. It needed omission, needed the air to cool. “Don’t you think it kinda feels like falling in love?”

Lipstick smeared across the side of Rosa’s mouth like a dollop of wine crashing against white fabric. It was poetic, what she was drunk off of anyway, tipsy enough that she’d forgotten Lana had convinced her to try on some of the shade she liked to wear, smudging it with a hand to the back of Rosa’s mouth. It’d always made Rosa feel pretty, when her lips were stained like this, and for some reason that felt dangerous. Especially now, as she walked side by side with Lana down the cobblestone of the town, glancing over her shoulder as she heard someone call out Lana’s name, “I think you’ve got a fan,” she observed, mouth still twisting in entertainment despite the hairs on her neck automatically standing at attention, guard up so high Rosa wouldn’t be able to glance over it if she were on her tiptoes, “What’s the play here? If we need to run for our lives you gotta let me take my shoes off first, they’re new. Haven’t broken into them, my feet will be bloody meat slabs if I try to go any faster than we already are.” @lanajvmeson​

Lana felt like clothes had ghosts in them, sometimes, embedded between the stitches. Memories that shocked like television static. She’d felt two, as she knotted the string tie of her skimpy crochet halter, a ghost of the girl she’d been when she’d taken it off for everyone. Seven in a night. There were almost corresponding creases in her nose, a possession of sorts, Danny’s wrinkling when he’d caught wind of the rumour. You’d be more interesting if you made it a challenge. Regardless, Lana strode on the cobbles with reckless abandon, smile on her lips the equivalent of a label on a vial from Wonderland. Eat me. Drink me. I’m magic, I promise. It didn’t slip at her name being hollered, even if it wanted to, glance cast back. “Oh, it’s him,” she breezed, letting slip a split second, idle sigh. Swallowed, after. Replaced with a playful eye roll, the beginning tweak of a grin. “He’s, like, totally harmless. Anyways, avid tag supporter. If we run he’ll just, like, think we’re entering the championship. He’s super into it.” She’d had a pinky twined with Rosa’s in everlasting promise, a childish vow’s take on holding hands, and she didn’t break the link as he approached. Ruddy complexion. Wine drunk, overly streaked with sun. There was a freckle on his cheek under his left eye that almost looked like a tear. She wanted to thumb at it, sometimes. It made him look pretty, breath constantly on the verge of a tremor. Dangerous. “Hey,” he greeted, already reaching to boldly brush the hair from her throat, eyebrows knit when they spotted a shape there. Cartoon, small. Red. One of the many poisons of the rainforest. “What’s... Is that a frog? You get a tattoo? Hate frogs. Slimy fuckers. Hi, by the way,” shot Rosa’s way, smile lopsided as a tick. “Temporary,” Lana answered, conducting a playful slap at his knuckles to dismiss his touch. “I named him Harold. If you hate frogs so much, feel free to kiss him and turn him back into a king. Anyways,” came with a gentle swing of Rosa’s pinky, nodding elsewhere. “Charlie called us back to the headquarters. We’re an angel down, it’s, like, serious business. Did you wanna say something?” Sucking in a breath, he threw Rosa a look, tone light and endearing. “She’s mean, today. Don’t you think she’s mean today?” Rather than wait for an answer, he gestured a thumb over his shoulder. “We’ve got a car. Open top. Pretty nice. Thinking of driving to this place, up the hill. You guys interested?” As if he anticipated concerns, he laid a hand to his chest. Lana, already apparently distracted, had taken to lifting Rosa’s hand, pressing a nonchalant kiss to their furled up fingers. “It’s got an infinity pool. Maybe an inflatable flamingo. I know you like those. C’mon, who could say no to that?” Next, Lana blew a raspberry by Rosa’s knuckles, a makeshift gameshow buzzer to a contestant who’d delivered the incorrect answer. “I’ll only come if Rosa thinks it’s spicy.”

becca had been having a grand time on this trip. she’d successfully ignored majority of her classmates, venturing out into the city at the wake of dawn, only to promptly pretend that she was deaf and blind anytime a local had even shot her a smile. it was like being in heaven, that was until she got to the hotel. she’d been having such a good day, yet even the sight of lana made her feel as if it was taking a turn for the worse. lana had become one of the few people that had severely managed to get under her skin, a difficult feat in itself. it was awful, and it only made becca dislike lana more. she didn’t care that lana thought she was serious. frankly, she didn’t care for a single thought in her head. it was lana splashing around in a fountain like a 4 year old that did it. “i don’t have nightmares about things i don’t care about. it’s odd that you’d find yourself so important.” she already felt too close to the other girl, even if there was still a few feet of distance between them. unlike most days, she liked her outfit, probably because it wasn’t sweatpants and a hoodie. she didn’t captain bimbo to ruin her clothes too while she was acting like a dog in the pool. “uh oh. looks like the whore is right in front of me. maybe you should drop dead in the water like a fly, make sure we’re all out of danger.”

Lana let out a gasp. “Ooooh, ouch! Branded a thing on main by Rebecca Stevens... Branded a beast, I say! A stinky little beast.” Hips swaying with the bass coursing through the villa’s terrain, it was a surprise all of the surrounding grapes hadn’t trembled off into the soil of the vineyard, squished underfoot by wobbly, inebriated steps. Inevitably, tomorrow, the visiting population of Yates would be waking to some form of noise complaint. Each night seemed to outdo the last. A crescendo they could never seem to reach. “You know, Becca,” Lana began, half in singsong, kicking up a spray of water with the tip of a red cowboy boot. There was a fluidity to her movements that almost made her ballet training obvious, yet Lana lacked the necessary control to master the craft, always far too free, too spontaneous. “You talk, like, a lotta shit about the fact I like to cum. Kinda makes you sound like you’re not doing enough of it,” earned a whoop from the man she’d been dancing with, hand moving to idly paw a tendril from her cheek, faintly damp from a wayward splash. A passing partygoer thumped into Becca, unsteady on their feet, somewhat closing her distance to the fountain, and like a lightbulb had blinked to life overhead, Lana sprang closer to the edge. Leaned into it, hands cupping stone to support her weight. “Okay, though, I’ll bite. I love the whole reborn in the water vision. Let’s have a baptism.” It barely felt plausible that enough time had passed for a single heartbeat, yet somehow, an entire row of dominos collapsed into place: Lana’s hand grabbing Becca’s, a corresponding lurch to pull her in, so hard and sure it could’ve easily popped something from a socket, should she have any real strength to her. She didn’t particularly estimate the landing well, because her legs buckled with it, sending them both flopping down, Lana briefly submerged. Soaked. Surfacing with a bewildered splutter, it quickly dissolved into a laugh, pushing Becca off her enough that she could blink in disarray. The roars of surrounding spectators almost drowned her voice out. It rose to compensate. “Ugh, you’re right! You’re so, so right! Just what I needed! I loved it!”

He’d begun to only exist in peripherals; the shadowy figure at the top of a staircase - holes lining the walls of Kincaid, peeling wallpaper like fingerprints smeared down glass. A silent mark of territory for a spirit who would not cross; he’d begun to only exist as a pair of eyes in the dark, the glimpse of something animalistic. A gaunt face in the background of a house party well documented; alive in some sense, but unrecognizable. Split between making his presence known and the white-hot of skin stretched tight, like outgrowing childhood clothes - like there’d been too much of him, somewhere, that he desperately wanted gone. He could split at the seams if he wasn’t careful. Could feel it now, matter of fact - knuckles white and a cigarette clasped between two fingers; small comfort in the way it fit between his lips and the coolness it left there. He could almost ignore the tingling in his fingertips; it’d been there for days now, nerves constantly static shocked. Felt like a countdown - felt like his skin was stretching, and by the end of the countdown, he’d split - that’s what it felt like. Like everything had been a warning, of sorts. Hadn’t known what his body had been warning him of until it was too late; until marshmallow swamped his mind until he’d been stuck in it like tar, until he’d been standing in front of a candy store’s selections, suddenly, despite not coming within fifty feet of one in months - he started to avoid them, because it left a twist in his gut and it was too easy to confuse longing with nausea. Until he could feel her eyes on him, before she’d even opened her mouth, because of course he could feel her there, because her presence felt known and felt like white-hot, but felt warm instead of uncomfortable, instead of seam-splitting and rotten and unlike floorboards done up and stripped bare. Viktor let out a laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed - only that it felt natural, suddenly, even though he’d been sure his muscles would forget the memory; hoarse from tar, hoarse from silence; his laugh cracked. Fizzled, after a moment. Didn’t know what to say after it - was pretty sure his legs had stopped working, and cigarette ash fell onto the toe of his boot, scuffed leather. He pressed hand to cheek, palms into the hollows of his face, “Huh?!” It felt like a crow mimicking human words, Viktor making a conscious effort to widen his eyes, copy her shock - he let out another laugh. Looked like a madman, almost, in his actions - he still hadn’t drawn closer towards her, couldn’t pinpoint which fear this was because of. “Christ, Lana,” he said after a moment - when the laughter passed again, short-lived in nature; he hadn’t had to raise his voice to be heard, “You’re a real… fucking, uh - hoot, sometimes. If that’s the fucking… word.”

Lana didn’t like anger. Fled from it. Crossed the road to avoid the bark of a chained up dog. Where she was concerned, anyway. In other people, it seemed inevitable -- their one, reliable constant, something she could trust to always be there. She’d grown up around volatile outbursts, breakfast bowls of Lucky Charms snatched and catapulted against cabinets, wide eyes working overtime to pretend all that colour was just a firework in July. It’d only snowballed, as she aged. The red cheeked rage of a nasty comedown had inhabited many, in Lana’s life. Danny’s knee couldn’t stop twitching, when he needed a bump. That’s how she knew a bad mood was on the horizon, already in the room with them -- it reminded her of the tremor in a glass of water, the first sign of an impending earthquake. Whenever she felt it bubble in her chest, she didn’t know how to react. It was like spotting someone sunbathing in a bikini in the peak of a blizzard. Her brain didn’t know what to do with it, an unwanted tenant that paced around her skull, never making itself at home, always a breath from a speedy eviction. She couldn’t count the amount she’d swallowed a bad thought simply because she didn’t know what to do with it, because it didn’t feel like her own. Most of the time, it felt like Caleb’s, scary in itself. She knew what anger could do, the things it could make you say, even to those you loved most -- especially then, especially to her. And yet she still couldn’t help it, the way her jaw clamped shut, lips pressed together like a puppy denied a treat, almost enough to summon a lump in her throat. It ached, the urge to swallow. “I’m... a hoot?” she echoed, gentle even then, a slow slide of windscreen wipers in the face of torrential rain. Her fingers grasped a little tighter, tissue paper crinkling, something to anchor in. The ceramic was hard and she wished it was soft. Wished it was someone else’s hand. She was so happy to see him that she almost couldn’t stand it, constantly a dog whining at a front door, always waiting on the delight of an owner returning home. It made her feel small. Lana always felt small. “Where’d you go?” More conviction, now. She even took a step forwards, desperately trying to sound sure of herself. “Do you think it’s just -- just, like, cool, to disappear, like that? Without anything? ‘Cause it’s -- it isn’t. It’s not, and I... I... hate it,” she declared, word sour as a penny in her mouth, entirely unused to meaning it. Danny had laughed, once, when she used that word. Sounds like a fucking five year old trying to swear. Like a kick at the back of her car seat, a twinge nestled deep in her tailbone, she barely realised she’d thrown the statue at his feet until a blink acquainted her with a newly severed head, still and staring from the soil. Looking right at her -- through, maybe, through like so many people had before. Her eyebrows drew, lips parting, but she didn’t issue an apology, not even when one came rapping knuckles at the backs of her teeth. Flailing, in a way. Fish on land. Freefall. “That was for you,” slipped out without thought, far quieter, fat skimmed off the top to reveal what was really there: hurt, not anger, never truly anger. Then, in a last ditch effort to redeem herself, she pointed at him in an accidental impression of a disgruntled elementary school teacher. “You’re stupid and mean.”

Jamie was no stranger to being roughed up. Schoolyard scraps, bike accidents, had all made him an expert in his own pain. Even now when he leaned down to touch his knee, he could still find a piece of small gravel stuck underneath the skin, a spot he rubbed often when he was anxious. Now, the protective blanketing of alcohol kept him from registering most of his wounds, minor surface injuries as worst. There wasn’t too much damage to be done on a moped that barely reach 10 miles an hour. The worst pain of it all was flashes of a similar accident. His hands also at the wheel. Closing his eyes, he saw flashing lights behind them, blue and red, before they flew open wildly to look at Lana from the hunched position he was in on the ground. “Two. Two perky tits,” he answered, still managing to make a joke as he groaned the sentence out. He stayed splayed out on the ground dramatically, like the dead body in the first five minutes of Law and Order, eyes flashing to her wound. “Fuck! It’s bleeding! Best to cut that one off, Lana. It’s a lot cause. 127 Hours it,” he instructed her, finally scrambling to stand up, bonking his head on the handlebars of the moped in the process. “Fucking…. I’m fine, I’m fine, he assured her, stumbling once he got to his feet, dizzy, rubbing at the back of his aching head. “Jesus, um….” he exclaimed, looking at the banged up bike, it’s mottled carcass, grasping onto her arm, starting to drag her away. “We have to flee the scene of the crime!” He shouted, clutching her bleeding arm, his first thought self-preservation, abandoning the evidence of their drunken escapade. He was practically panting, laboring heavily, turning a corner away from the accident. Once they had retreated a few feet, he finally realized he had blood on his hands, looking at Lana’s wound. “Oh, shit! Um, fuck, you’re bleeding, like, a lot. Get her a tourniquet!”

Lana began to rise as soon as he’d assured her, knees dusty from the street, hair even more tousled than it had been prior to hopping aboard. “I totally feel like that one catfish in the pond at Chernobyl,” she exhaled dramatically, gasping in a laugh when he knocked his head. “He’s tap dancing, your honour! It’s a jig, it’s a river dance!” bubbled up with regards to his stumbling feet, thoroughly amused as she imagined his heels clacking up a storm, legs so fast they’d rendered to a blur. So absorbed in the fantasy, it took his hand wrenching her arm to pull her out of it. A butterfly fished from a swimming pool, saved from drowning in her own imagination. “Sheesh, just, like, hollering down my ear. Drill sergeant roleplay. You’re like the guy in Princess Diaries who, like, announces whenever her royalty has to pee,” she laughed, easily following along. There was an itch to thread their fingers, for some reason, grasp to warm the crease of his lifeline -- there always was, with Lana, real as a mosquito bite. She liked her hands better when they were someone else’s. “God, you’re -- you’re honestly the fastest man alive. He’s superhuman! Part wildebeest, on his father’s side!” Not that she was struggling to keep up. Stamina wasn’t an issue, for Lana -- it was implausible that it should be, excessive recreation considered. Admittedly, she could feel a dull sear beginning in the arm he’d clutched. Her smile still clung like a shelved doll, faint and unassuming, apparently incapable of not enjoying herself. “It’s whatever, it’s cool. It’s...” trailed off, eyes latching on the blood again and prompting the stutter of a slide in her brain, present memory overlapping with a past one. Parking garage. The slam of a car door. “Huh,” she stalled, voice gone lukewarm, breath of laughter escaping like the bow to tie her composure in tact. “Saucy... Who ordered the marinara?” It didn’t read phased. Especially not when she caught a drop with an index, reached to smudge it down his chin. “Simba. Gross, Jamie. Who told you you could rock a goatee? Shave it off, I’m serious. Shave it or I’m telling Billy Ray. He’ll sue. It’s copyright infri--,” was cut short by a raised voice from the street they’d left, cussing following suit. Something about “whose fucking bike is this?” Lana sprang to action like a wind-up toy, grabbing his hand so they could take off down the cobbles. All the while, a grin on her lips. In Lana’s brain, the crash was just the plummet of the rollercoaster. Something to make her stomach flip. She could dress any black hole up as a comet. “Do you even know the way back?” came after aimless sprinting, steps gone slow. “I’m literally -- like, I won’t lie, I don’t know where I’m going. I feel like Katy Perry’s plastic bag.”