“Baby,” she says, the start of an old argument you only half-remember. “Stop going out at night.”

You can only shake your head minutely, tongue glued to the top of your mouth. Her features are blurry – you can’t quite tell the shape of her nose, or what color her eyes were. Did she have dark roots, or was she a natural blonde? Fuck.

She repeats, “Baby,” drawing the word out in a low tone. The kind of tone she’d use in bed.

You swallow, mouth uncomfortably dry as she lifts herself up to settle in your lap. Both hands on your face now, sliding into close-cut hair, and she leans in with the sort of wild grin that looks unnatural on a girl like her. Blood is shining on her teeth. Her fingertips are ice-cold on your scalp.

“Do you even think about what I want?” she murmurs against your lips. There is no warmth here. “I died for you.”

Something in your chest seizes. What did you ever do for her? Wait - that’s right.

You pull back slightly, reposition, rest your forehead on her shoulder. Your chest heaves with the effort it suddenly takes to breathe.

God.

"Come on," she says. Sly. "Let me see them."

You really can't say no.

Obediently - like a dog, you think to yourself - you open your mouth, just enough that she lets a thumb slide in and press against the point of one too-sharp canine. She presses firm, but not enough to split the skin. She's smart like that. She knows your limits. You let her touch your teeth like that, inspecting you and studying you like a science project. And you might be, for all you know.

What you do know is that your mouth starts salivating the longer she touches you like this. You think you feel a little woozy.

She's right there.

You want to bite down on the long, thin fingers in your mouth. You want to sink your teeth into her pretty throat. Your breathing gets a bit ragged, and you hope she doesn't notice the way you grip the fabric of your jeans, denim twisting in your hands. She just wants to look at you. She's not scared of you. Self-control can only go so far, but you have had a lot of practice on the matter.

She presses further, and skin splits. A metallic taste blooms on your tongue. It takes everything in you to not throw her to the ground and taste her, to drink in everything she has.

You are a dog, you think fiercely. An attack dog, made to kill, bred for that purpose and nothing else. Your teeth ache. They ache more than anything and if not for the heat emanating off of her it would be all you could focus on. She takes that thumb out of your mouth and holds the sides of your face, looking you closely in the eyes.

You swallow, hearing a harsh click in your throat. "I couldn't."

"No payphones around?"

You shook your head. "No time," you correct. He pulls your close, one hand resting on your hip and the other sliding from your face to the back of your head, forcing it closer to his. Your breaths mix with his.

You feel dizzy.

"Bullshit," he says. "You forgot."

This is true.

You try to pull away, cheeks flaming with heat. You're embarassed, and he smirks and holds fast onto you.

"It feels like you don't think of me at all, sometimes," he tells you. He's teasing you. He's mocking. And you turn your head away, desperate to get away from this heat.

"We're here to lay low," your friend says to you. He's talking much quieter than usual. Your friend is explosive and loud in the way you never are - so he must be serious. "You know how to do that, baby, don't you?"

You do know. You have lived a very solitary life before meeting your friend. You know how to keep to yourself and how to stay in the shadows and how to not draw attention. And so you nod, jostling the hold he has on the back of your neck and when he speaks again he sounds pleased.

"Good," he says. "Good, okay. Because if we're found out - if they find us here, we can't run. We're at the end of the line."

The end of the world as you know it. You traveled from one coast to another and now you're in a tiny, sleepy town with a crime rate as close to zero as possible.

"Shut up," you sneer, but your voice gets caught up, and something else leaks out.

He's still got bandages around his head. He's covered in blood, splattered like paint all over that varsity jacket, and he smells like cigarettes. You know what he's just done, and you're fucking angry, but you're so, so glad he's here. You hold out your hand and he takes it, and you pull him into you for one long hug. You can't remember the last time you hugged someone. Like this, warm and fuzzy and full of feelings you've been trying to ignore since forever. You hate him.

You take a long, deep breath. "You fucked us," you say. "We gotta leave Florida now. You know that? Maybe the country, too."

He tucks his nose against your neck and you shudder. It's cold, but you don't push him away. You just hug him tighter.

"You could stay," he whispers against your skin. Hot breath warming the cold. You think a shiver goes down your spine.

"And leave you behind?" Your laugh is harsh.

You pull away from him and he's looking at you with that searching, blank gaze, and you want to kiss him. You want to dig your fingers into his skin and never let go, never let him be alone again. You want to kill him with your own hands one day.

You grin, mouth stretching wide and showing off your teeth.

Ed doesn't reply. He stares at the ceiling of the military dorm they've been stuck into, at the cracks snaking through the plaster, and wonders how they got to this topic.

"I know he looked like us." Al sounds wistful. He sounds like he's searching through all the memories belonging to the brain he doesn't actually have anymore, and just coming up with nothing. "Blonde and… Mom always said you looked like him."

"She said both of us looked like him," Ed says, unable to curb the bitter edge of his tone.

"Yeah," Al agrees. "Yeah. But she always said it more about you. Said I had the colouring, but I took after her. You looked just like him."

Ed thinks about seeing Hohenheim in Resembool. He thinks about the long blonde hair pulled back and the line of his jaw, eerily similar to his own. After seeing that man - not father, that man is not his father anymore, hasn't been for a long time - he can't help but compare the similarities of their faces whenever he looks in a mirror now. Same hair, same eyes. Same face, just younger. He guesses, with some irritation, that the only thing he hasn't inherited from Hohenheim was his damn height.

He raises his right arm, studying it. He notes the metal edges of it, the slight rusting, the slight dents that Winry is going to kill him for. Ed can imagine it now, the look on her face when he sees her next, with his busted up arm. She'll try to beat him to death with a wrench again. Winry is probably the only person he ever would willingly let beat him up - except Al, maybe, when they spar, but Ed always puts up a good fight then. Not with Winry. Not because she's a girl, but she's just different. She always has been.

Something else he has inherited from Hohenheim: he's always fucking up other people with his stupid mistakes.

Your hands slide through his hair, blunt nails scratching his scalp as you say this. His head is in your lap - eyes closed, breathing slowly. Vulnerable. There was a point where you wanted to kill him, certainly. And maybe you still do. Not out of anger or revenge or just plain fun - you're attached now. If someone is going to kill him, you want it to be with your own knives. You don't think you want him to die any other way.

He cracks an eye open and stares up at you. He's completely relaxed. In another time, he would have tensed, probably gotten up and left, instead of staying calm and composed. In another time, he wouldn't have let himself be in this position in the first place. In another time, you would have taken the opportunity to slit his throat. In this time, you pet his hair like you would a dog and he lets you.

He nods his head once. And at once, you're filled with all sorts of questions - and you have to hold yourself back from verbalizing them all, spitting them out rapid-fire one after the other. He doesn't like it when you do that. You think it's just overwhelming for him, too much stimuli. You have to go slow. So you keep petting his hair, and he keeps staring at you with dark eyes that you think you might be in love with, after all this time.

You tilt your head as you look down at him, letting your hair fall down around your face. You need to cut it again.

"How would you do it?" you ask. There's a growing excitement deep in your chest that you have to tamp down before it leaks into your voice.

The corner of his mouth twists. You think he's just unsure of this line of questioning. Pushing won't do anything. You just stare down at him, making eye contact until he looks away himself. He turns his head away and you think for a second he might just get up and leave. You freeze, waiting for him to push you away. Your heart beats too fast. You don't want him to leave. You want him to stay here - your life is too fast, sometimes, too fast and violent and always running, and you crave moments like these. There's times when you want to kill him and times when you'd rather sink to your knees in front of him and times where you just want him like this. Safe, vulnerable, and yours.

But he doesn't get up or push you away. You slide the hand not in his hair over his neck and jaw, slowly turning his face back to yours. He frowns at you.

"I'm just curious," you tell him. "C'mon. How would you do it?"

He sighs silently, exhaling through his nose. It takes a moment for him to speak. He talks more than he used to, but it's still a quiet rarity when he does. You love hearing his voice, but you'd never tell him that.

"With my hands," he says. His voice is low and you grin just at hearing it - wider when you digest his words.

"Your hands," you repeat.

He nods.

"What, you'd beat me to death?"

He's looking at you oddly. You're unsure of how to read it. There's just some strangeness to the way his eyes open wider to take you in more fully, roaming over your face.

"No," he says. "No. I'd strangle you." And you'd be lying if that doesn't excite you the littlest bit.

One hand is still petting his hair, twisting through short blonde strands. The other, settled on his jaw from earlier, slowly slides down until your palm rests against his throat. He doesn't react. You just let your hand rest there and he stares at you and doesn't stop you. You think you're shaking.

There's a certain trust between the two of you. Started out as enemies and became tentative partners in crime, so to speak, and now you're something else entirely these days. You think you're in love with him. You don't know how he feels on the matter. You don't know what you are to him at all. All you know is that there's just a sort of implicit trust between you and him, and you don't know where the line is. But your hand is resting on his neck. And God, you want nothing more than to take advantage right here and now. But he's not stopping you, and that's the thing.

Your thumb rubs against his skin and you let it press down lightly. He doesn't stop you.

"Sometimes, I think about killing you too," you confess. Your voice sounds too loud over the silence of the room.

"When you die -" your voice fails.

You choke on your words and you have to look away from him to finish speaking. This feels like a confession too personal to give but you say it anyway. You have to, like this. There's no other time.

"When you die one day," you say to him, looking anywhere but down at him, down at his eyes, dark and critical and curious, "I want to be the one to do it. I don't want anyone else to do it. They don't deserve it."

"Is it a privilege to kill me?"

His question surprises you and you nearly freeze up again, hearing him. He sounds almost like he's teasing you - bastard. You tighten your grip on his hair and look down, grin back in full force.

But this is your mother. She calls you a wild child and a demon and everything else under the sun but this is your mother. This is your mother. And despite all that, you love her. And despite the thorns curling into you, corrupting you, you weren't quite ready to hit back just yet.

That stinging reminds you of now. Blood dripping from your nose gets into your mouth and you can taste the iron. Your body is killing you. You think you have a concussion. But, fuck, you're still standing.

Contrary to mainstream belief, snakes don't actively squeeze tighter. That takes too much energy. It's inefficient. Instead, they keep a steady grip, waiting for their prey to run out of breath or gasp for air and take the opportunity to go just a bit tighter, just a bit more - until there's nothing left. No air. No nothing.

Just a corpse, still fresh with warmth. But nothing behind the eyes.

But this isn't one of those giant anacondas wrapping itself around you. No, it's this man, this friend you've been running around with and his knees are on either side of your body as he crouches over you with hands wrapped around your neck. Blunt nails digging into your skin. He's angry - no, he's furious. You don't know what you expected. You pushed him too much. You pushed him too hard. You thought you could break him, and you could and you did, but he didn't react the way you planned.

Black encroaches on your vision, edging in from the corners. You can't breathe, now. He has a steady grip just like a snake squeezing its prey.

You have the errant thought that he might kill you. Your heart races.

If you survive this - and you will, because you always survive - then you're gonna have bruises. Dark ones; black and blue and purple on the edges in a ring around your neck. Bruises that'll last for weeks, fading into oranges and yellows and greens, shaped like his hands.

Thinking that thought - shaped like his hands - jolts you. It makes you excited, in a fucked up sort of way. Where your heart beats faster for a reason besides the man currently trying to end your life. Electricity hums under your skin and making your fingers twitch where they rest on his wrists, going slack and no longer pushing him away.

His hands, you think to yourself. A mark belonging to him will be on you. And isn't that special?

You smile wide at him, with your crooked, fucked up teeth bloodstained from this ongoing fight. A wheeze of a laugh tumbles out of your mouth when he just curls his lip in response.

And he kisses you.

you do not trust yourself to speak. you rarely do. words try to push past your throat and out of your mouth but they crumble to ash on your tongue, and you swallow them all back. this is a constant of your life. instead, you nod. and you feel sick.

he smiles. you like this - what you remember from before was a cruel, mocking facsimile of this expression. he smiles and it is kind, it is gentle, it is something that lets warmth race through your body despite the cold of his own. he is not alive. but he looks it, like this, and at times like this you wonder why he did what he did.

"it has been a long time since someone told me i was kind," he says. "there is reason for that, reason that you saw first hand."

you nod again.

he breaks eye contact and his gaze slowly drifts all over you, from your hair - blonde but darkened, like rusted gold - and down, down, down your body. and you shiver, suddenly cold, and he does not look so kind to you anymore. this is a ghost, and he is not a friend. he is different from before but you mistook different for kindness, for friendship, for something alive and well instead of dead and attached to you like a parasite. he is not a friend, much less yours.

"i did," you agree. and your voice comes out scratchy and rough and cold because you feel that chill down to your bones now. it feels like you are the one who is dead, and not him.

he frowns. and this is an expression you are unfamiliar with. all throughout the fight and even with his last dying breath he laugh and smiled and smirked. and there was no kindness then, and there is only a spark of it now.

"detach yourself from me," you tell him. and this is all the words in the world you will need, and his expression freezes, shutters, falls. and he suddenly looks much more like the imposing villain you knew him as before.

you turn your back. there is no need to leave the spirit spring you are already in. you don't know if he leaves, or if he is even able, because you are tired and you do not care and you need to stop hoping for things that aren't there. that don't exist. you fought him, he died, and that's it. the end of it. it doesn't feel like the end but it is, because he is supposed to be gone instead of haunting you for the rest of your given life. it's the end. that's it.

That's just what the visitors who roll in every few years say. Whenever they manage to find a way through the forest, through tall redwoods that shield the sun and everything else, through winding roads that seem to lead nowhere and half the time loop back around to where you came from in the first place. Hazelwood is what they find, if they make it through, and that's what they say, and that's about anything anyone knows about the tiny little town of maybe three thousand on the southwest coast of Oregon.

Your name is Bridget. You live in Hazelwood. You are apart of the small minority that isn't a fisherman or a farmer because you work at the single bar that exists in Hazelwood. It's a small establishment called *Ron's*, or at least that's what the sign says, Ron being the scruffy old man who owns the place and isn't here half the time. Your day to day life is boring. Five days a week you work evenings and nights at the bar and you go home. You stay inside and take care of your mother on the weekends.

You have one friend, and he's busy these days. He doesn't tell you with what, and sometimes when you look at him you feel afraid to ask what's on his mind - so you don't. He gets this weird look on his face, sometimes, and it makes your skin crawl, so you don't ask, because it's not your business. It's not. So you don't hang out with him that much lately, not since he started acting strange and being busy all the time, and that's fine, it is.

You wake up and go to work and ignore the creepy stranger who always comes in at seven in the evening, on the dot, who only drinks water and stares at you without a word. You don't know their name, though you feel like you should, the information ping-ponging around in the back of your head. You should know it; you don't. They never tell you, though they clearly know your name. You wear a nametag.

"Go to Florida," he tells you. "I hear it's nice down there."

You let out a disconnected hum, and think. He continues.