ULTRAVIOLENCE

     “you couldn’t do the silk swinging, 가시 배.  …maybe.  maybe trampoline.”

not that they know – the videos on the internet, when that was of interest, showed it difficult.  where your body would never stop aching, your ankles would throb and whine as they were bent to near breaking.  but that’s not the point.  refusal of gabriel’s abilities is like a fire to loose gunpowder.  sometimes gabriel can control the explosion and agree, other times he gives a rise.  looks offended, almost insulted, arms crossed and arguing for the life he hasn’t – and will likely never – lived.  sure.  he has the attitude for performing.  but not the one that would keep him out of breaking the law.

seyoon methodically wipes most of the blood from their hands.  not enough wipe for their face, already wet and dripping pink, alcoholic scented fluid that makes their nose curl.  bad.  almost enough that they miss the smug raise of gabriel’s lips.  one that speaks of i knew it and just begs for an answer.

without control, seyoon throws the wet wipe at him, and settles down as though such a thing had never touched their body at all.  

     “sure.  numbers.”  seyoon says, a half sarcastic motion of hand following the request.  

like it matters.  as if grades matter with the lives they live, gabriel an illusion that his town barely remembers as more than a story to warn children about strangers.  the twins may have never existed beyond an abandoned apartment with moth eaten fabric and broken furniture across every inch.  

still.  they like offering.  like the idea of telling off the people that made gabriel’s life hell in their own little ways.  

a slow shrug of shoulders.  rocking to stand after a moment, seyoon pads towards the aisle for cleaning.  ironic to be splashed with blood, almost to the bottle of bleach that they pick up and bring back over.  pausing for a display of ziplocs.  quart.  big enough for that organ waiting in a pile of gore.  seyoon tears it open not seconds later, freeing a single bag from the cardboard and working it open.  

      “you’re like…. a mom.”  seyoon settles on.  “like you should have these on you in a pocket.  gabriel ramos, purse full of knives.  money.  condoms.  wet wipes.  right.”

“okay. that’s fair. i’m not that good. and also, i’m not a fucking gymnast in my spare time or anything. i’m sure i could manage something, though.”

          gabriel’s biggest talent is not his flexibility. he’s fairly flexible, enough to pull some pretty scary shit in a fight, but that’s dependent more on how fast he is than anything else. he would be a terrible cirque performer. but it’s the drama that counts, of course. the hyperbole. he’s trying to look fake convinced of himself, but it’s not really working. it’s just a fucking joke at this point. gabriel likes stupid hypothetical arguments over things he would never ever know, do, or be involved in in his whole life.

          then the wet wipe hurtles at him, distracting him from his train of thought. gabriel ducks out of the way and the wet wipe hits the side of the counter with a particularly horrible slap. 

“it’s not just numbers, babe. you’re going to make some college student who sunk their whole high school career into thirty ap classes and a perfect gpa burst into fucking tears, throwing shit like that around.”

          gabriel puts a hand to his heart and makes his best effort to look absolutely crushed about it. he’s not. he was the exact opposite of that kid. pretty much everyone back in irvington, new york would remember gabriel as the opposite of that kid, if they remembered anything outside of the tragedy. that was one of the things that really pissed him off about living there after the cabin. he wasn’t a person - even a person that used to get shitty looks from waitresses for being loud. he was just that poor boy with the dead friends, and the trauma, and everything else.

          some of that bitterness still lives in him.

          he lets seyoon head off to the cleaning aisle and gather appropriate supplies. he’s never liked the smell of bleach, but it’s effective for what they need it for. he’ll probably take the box of ziploc bags with them. no reason to leave them. there’s always something useful with them - sometimes even kyara stores some witchy things in bags.

seyoon hums – because truly, they can’t say anything to that.  it’s a fair judgment.  words are a weapon, using them for anything but laceration of others, self mutilation, that’s an uncertain known that makes their stomach knot even now.  not much.  not enough to stop them, the way that they slowly toss a leg over his, hook closer, like a spear through flesh.  they feel… softer.  like that was a weight seyoon felt but could never name, buried so deep in them that it took the unexpected to pry it free.  pus from a wound, seyoon thinks.  squeezing gabriel’s hand as they revel in the soft of his shirt beneath their cheek, lines not squeezed together, but little space between both bodies.

      “huh.”

or until there are words for the things they do know, words and the will, the comfort between bodies to speak them aloud.  

a small shift.  stopping their chin from burrowing hard into his shoulder, softening the blow of sorts.  kissing soft there instead.  seyoon doesn’t get lonely – but it sometimes makes their belly blister, to be besides him after time without.  maybe it’s love.  one of those funny, unexplained wounds that it opens in your organs and refuses to close.  

or maybe it’s gabe, with his bad jokes and conversations and shitty, dumb drama.  that smile that they sort of want to cover with one hand.  sort of want to revel in.

     “so they all want to murder people.”  they say, dry and soft.  “and lie to everyone they meet.  gemini.”

          gabriel takes a moment to let himself be moved closer by the way seyoon’s leg hooks over his. they end up like this a lot - practically intertwined, moving constantly closer together. gabriel reaches over to casually braid some of seyoon’s hair together. keeping his hands busy. it’s something to do, to be honest. so he takes a few minutes more and keeps pulling seyoon’s hair neatly together, gathering up some more of the loose strands. he can braid seyoon’s hair just fine but he sure as hell can’t brush his own, apparently. even right now, it’s got a whole artful mess look going.

“you’ll get used to it. it gets easier.”

          it was something gabriel himself had to learn. but for him it was easy. communication, especially verbal, has always been something gabriel’s got a natural ease with. he rolls his eyes at the description of geminis according to gabriel’s personality traits. on one hand, true. on the other hand, c’mon. exaggeration, like everything else.

          not that gabriel himself exaggerates all the time constantly or anything.

“i mean, maybe not the murdering part but gemini’s the twins, right? two-faced as fuck. talkative. but at least i’m fun about it.”

@monsteredboy

healed, not healed.  twisted cartilage of the nose, matted hair pastel turning dark, red, crusty holding place on every jolting twitch of bones broken, rebroken.  healed wounds are scabs to be picked open ( or bashed, bashed wide and raw with the gore of your own moving cadaver ) to heal again in that painful drag, a body that wants and does not want.  paradoxical enough to make skin crawl and stomach knot as bubbles of snot, blood, blister in whistling breaths.  a static sound to the slammed shut door.  

to the critical attention they can feel from the living room, where tongue drags to a halt on a tooth too loose to keep in place.  pushed left.  swinging back, right.  a loose molar that makes their entire jaw ache all the more.  seyoon follows the motion of it for five seconds, ten.  enough that what time there was to turn and leave has fled already.

and where could they go, but here?  in the end, he’s it.  gabriel has been it for awhile.  maybe they just didn’t want to admit it.  

maybe now there’s no questioning anymore.  only that odd, warm calm in their belly, and the awareness that they don’t want him to have to ask.  no room for his guesses, not here and now.  this time, the conversation begins to them.

       “i paid gwynn.”  seyoon says, mouth wet and red and dripping from the corner of their split lips.  “to do this.  it’s fine.  i’m fine.”

          it’s not often gabriel sees seyoon fully hurt like this. and it’s not the worst he’s seen - he remembers that time in seoul, of course. both of them were fucked up bad after that fight. the blood is what alerts gabriel that something is up. the smell of it is familiar and thick in the air. gabriel looks up from the couch and watches silently. not judging. not really. just trying to put two and two together. he comes back from a full moon once per month absolutely destroyed, so he really can’t judge in the way that he would like to. so he sits quietly. the evening news goes on in the background - weather, and car crashes, and all the trappings of a normal world. 

          he exhales. he doesn’t ask. seyoon’s going to have to start the conversation here. after a moment gabriel tugs off his glasses and sets them and his sketchbook on the table by the end of the couch. silence stretches onwards for a while. gabriel turns his attention back to the television for a moment in order to reach for the remote.

          he actually gets an immediate explanation. the words, and the fact that he got that to begin with, are a surprise.

          gabriel blinks. he reaches for the glass of water he has and takes a sip in order to keep himself busy for a few moments.

“you paid gwynn to beat the shit out of you.”