and these are the snapshots of rowan carter - the leading role in every housewife’s fantasy, a heirloom ring offered to the wrong finger, the postcard ideal, necks twisting like fauna to catch another glimpse

for: @rccarter​

location: hypity house for len’s birthday!

Hype House was transformed. The instruments of their daily life had been tucked away and hidden, replaced with fat angels holding harps or devils with curling tails and pointed horns— as she walked through the crowd of bodies that swayed and danced and drank and laughed, she could not recognize the hymn of the mundane that they were all singing but she knew— this was some kind of holy-work. There was cosmic ringing in her ears, there were angel wings with feathers ripe for plucking.

Len settled herself atop a chaise, legs tucked elegantly, the open jacket she wore gaping shamelessly. They were speaking about sin, a language she had long since been fluent in. Champagne drunk on birthday toasts, she caught sight of Rowan and almost faltered when she called him over. How beautiful, she thought, so much so it always caught her off guard. Loving him was the loneliest thing she had ever done, but she feared she might not be able to give it up. Still, she would see this through. Still, there was a plan for tonight, and not all of them involved sin. This one— she thought, was about burning. She pulled him close to where she sat, making room on the seat for him to join her, so she could speak into his ear, intimate within the warm buzz of the room. “Where’d you go off to?” Len asked, leaning into him, feeling the solidity of his body against her own pale, shifting form. “I have a secret to tell you.”

.

Rowan returns from the firehall each night in the company of death and loss - he stands beneath the scald of water and rhythmically scrubs the smell of soot and flame from soft marrow and coiled tendons until the weight tethered to his shoulders is bearable enough to sit across those he loves and mean it when he laughs. That night is no different, not quite: he returns with ash swiped to his temple, scrubs at bronze flesh until he is remade into the boy of dawn, and when he descends into the party’s thrall he is of light once again. The gold adorning his frame emphasizes his rays and paints Rowan as something godly as he roams through the thick of bodies, tipping back champagne until starbursts blink in his periphery. A beam splits his mouth as his attention is grasped in whole by Lilith herself, and a half bare frame folds long to the spot at her side. “Hi birthday girl,” his syllables are drawn out to something honey-sweet, his hand descending to rest on the bony curve of her knee; it’d be a topic of the feverish whispers that would follow that night, how those in that house knew love at a decibel unattainable - years from then, when they had all since departed, one will walk past and jut a chin in the direction of their home and say love lived there once. Brows ascend and a chin tilts at the mention of a secret, “do you? Do tell.” 

Rowan is exiting his room when the heat of an argument draws his gaze, irises stalling on a blonde caged in by another, and the fear colouring her features tense suggests it isn’t just foreplay. So easily he can imagine it as Len or Andi, one he cares about, and thus he shrugs anger on as though silk, brows drawing in as a jaw grinds on approach, “I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing to my girlfriend,” heat suits him, and ire is no different; Rowan’s usual broad frame has coiled further following his time at the firehall, and his costume for the night’s festivities leaves little to the imagination - he could beat the other male to a pulp with little effort, “but get out of my house, before I break your fucking nose.” The moment the other skitters away, Rowan is assessing the golden-haired beauty for any harm, “it seems the open door policy was taken a bit too literally,” he attempts at a jest, his gaze traveling from her temple to the curve of a cheek, down the slope of a neck to the set of her shoulders, “you okay?”

joey: so some guy behind the bar @ daddy's just said we owe him a threesome

joey: well what he said was he was working the full moon party and mentioned a 'guy who looks like hercules, the disney one but blond' and i mean that has to be u

joey: oh btw this is joey

rowan: hahahaha

rowan: is he at least half cute out of the moon worship glow?

.

Here, in the cabin of his car and drinking in the warmth of him, she bloomed like a desert flower, petals unfurling after a rain. They deserve one last day, she convinces herself her body swaying as Ro turned a corner, one last beautiful memory before she knocked down the columns and brought down the temple. Her eyes are hidden but she’s smiling in that artificial dark, as giddy as a child. She loved surprises, and she knew he could craft a good one, careful Ro, who remembered all those important details, who knew best how to love a friend. A friend. Len bit back on her molars, that black acid eating up the ladder that led to her heart, rotting the rungs until she forsook it, banishing it away before he could ever read it on her face.

“None, because you’re and A-plus driver who would never take their hands off the steering wheel,” she replied back, turning her head in the direction of his seat, “Precious cargo, and all.” The car lulled, and she could hear the shifting of gears as it came to a complete stop. “What’s the surprise?” Len asked, leaning closer, her elbows digging into the arm rest between their two seats. “Wendy’s Frosty? A drink in a coconut? A meeting with all of Sardine’s illegitimate children?”

.

Ro laughs, a honeyed tune that fills the car, amusement coaxing him lustrous; in his next life he would know her earlier, know her first. “Of course. Precious cargo and all,” he parrots. Their home isn’t far from the intended destination, a few turns and they’re there, and it is when the truck is placed in park that nerves greet Rowan in a frenzy; up they slither from his belly to his throat. “Let’s swing by the docks and try and catch some on our way home. Nothing’ll go with my costume tomorrow quite like a foaming mouth and rabies,” he muses, the tilt of his mouth quirking upwards, and Rowan watches as she angles close; when was the last time they had been close like this? He can’t quite place it, the moment time had shifted and they slipped from the intimacy of lovers, of other-halves, to a distance that now made his heart ache. With guilt, as predicted, as was his ever companion these days. Gingerly, digits reach out to adjust the satin ribboned around moss-hued irises, reminding in a murmur, “no peaking.”

He exits swiftly, moving to the passenger side to assist Len’s exit; a coiled arm slips around the tilt of her waist to guide - from the car, through the building’s entrance, to a place he had spent the evenings at for several weeks now. “Ready?” it’s at an octave intended just for her, as is the moment, for he had passed over a fistful of cash to the manager, a day’s profit and then some, to ensure their time wouldn’t be marred with whining children or self-proclaimed critics. With a gentle tug the satin falls from her vision, exposing her gift: a wall’s length at Costa’s gallery, floor to ceiling, adorned in Len Covello originals. A hand presses to the supple curve of her shoulder, and he bends to press a kiss to the top of her head, “Happy Birthday, Len.” Irises wander from each painting to the next, and the nerves that unspool within a broad frame coax him to ramble, “my personal favourites are in storage, for my mantle or the Met. These were hard to part with, too, and while I want the whole town to see, I could only hand them over by convincing myself it would be nice to visit when you’re off doing bigger and better things- that I’ll have a piece of you right here in Costa, always.” He looks at her, then, and the angles of his face are softened to something boyish, vulnerable, “is it okay?”

.

“But you kissed her still.” Mickey was fixating, rolling hurt between his fingers like it was something tangible, unable to swallow it down, to find home for it in his bones. Love sat there and it wasn’t ready to sour, instead he felt a dull ache of disappointment within his skeleton, forcing fissures through the most delicate parts of his frame. I think it should be everything, the only thing, you know? He was still looking down, watching the carpet with great interest, his thoughts gnawing at the inside of his skull in the same way that he was sinking his teeth into the swell of his cheek. Copper welled on his mouth and he tongued at the sore spot, making it hurt more, giving him something to think about other than the fact that for him— love had been the only thing. He had wanted everything, not just for himself, but for the both of them; he had stood before Rowan, as vulnerable as one could ever be and presented the other man his heart, an organ that pulsed in his palms, bloody and weak, asking another to guard it carefully. Mick tucked in a breath, trying to formulate words, to fill all of the silence that welled between them. Before, they had sat in the quiet with comfort, fingers knit and smiles curved on their faces but now it was an impasse, legions wide and almost impossible to muster. “I don’t—“ he stopped, correcting. “I can’t be a second choice, Rowan. I can’t be your backup plan.” Hazel eyes lifted, finding blue ones now. “I don’t deserve that.” Not when he loved with everything he had, when he had thought that they had filled an entire house with it— every room spilling over like a jar. His words were choked, they broke mid-syllable, and he swallowed thickly. “I love you, I never changed my mind.”

.

A gaze cast down ascends at Mickey’s statement, “I didn’t kiss her,” it had been Joey’s small frame that had lifted to the tips of toes and brought their mouths together after years apart, after years of such a reunion being only dream-like wisps that haunted him in and out of consciousness, “but it doesn’t matter,” did it? “we still kissed.” The rounds of gilded features angle sharp swiftly, “you’re not my second choice, Mick. You weren’t ever, you won’t ever be,” the love he holds for the boy sat adjacent is an inferno, it lights him from the inside out. How could he put to words how he felt? “I love you Mickey. I needed-” a pause, “I just needed that closure with her to move on with my life,” she would be with Oz now, and she would be happy. “You are the only person I want to be with, Mick,” a hand lifts to rub at a jaw, “I fucked up. I know I did. I should have told you. I knew - I knew you would have understood,” he scoffs, how foolish he had been, “of course you would have understood, because you are so good, Mickey. So good. I don’t - I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve this,” he had known love, and he had taken it for granted. He meets his gaze, “I want you. More than anything, I want a life with you,” ask Rowan of the future, of what he wished for with a fervent of flame, and he’d speak of a life of simplicity, of a love that makes it otherworldly: a life alongside Mickey Villegas, that is what Rowan wished for most. And so he says, “I love you, Mick. I won’t ever stop. So if you want a breather, to think, then I’ll leave and be back the moment you ask. If you want me to stay, then I’ll stay, and I’ll love you so fucking much that you’ll be sick of me,” irises gleam something glossy as he watches his other half, “whatever you want, it’s yours.”

The bending florets of the love he knows now are raised to saplings by Len, tended to in a home they build from grime, through the dulcet of her laughter and the gift of companionship - it is through this Rowan knows love in a way unlike any before, or any to come. She deserves the world and beyond, he’d be the first to say so, and if he could he’d fetch a star and bring it to the curve of her mouth, watch it reflect in the rounds of her pupils and insist that he has seen better, for he has seen her. And so between shifts at the hall he works to construct a gift worthy of her, of the girl he owes so much to.

A tie is plucked from his pocket the moment they settle in to his truck, mirth tilting his mouth upwards into a beam he hadn’t worn much lately. “I think you’ll like it best if it’s a surprise,” and so he reaches across the console to the beauty sat adjacent, wrapping satin around her eyes and knotting it against ebony tresses. He puts the vehicle in motion before glancing sideways in her direction, “you can’t see through it, right? How many fingers am I holding up?”

.

A levy opens, and the words come. There’s no amount of bracing that can soften the barrage and beneath the blanket that had been tossed over his lap, Mickey fisted a handful of the fabric, his knuckles growing white just out of view. His gaze read that he understood, that he was listening— Mickey Villegas, the supportive boyfriend— but under the surface he felt as though he was wading through a pool of glass, all shards, sharp and glittering. He’d wanted to be loved, and the desire had always seemed like something that was simple, but people weren’t easy, they didn’t come cut out of paper just to suit his needs; and it seemed that whatever perfect world they had created, just the two of them, Mick and Ro, was the eye of a storm he hadn’t realize he had gotten caught in. Rowan kept speaking and he wondered if heartache reflected in his hazel gaze, if the tenseness in his wrist travelled up his arm and was visible in the ache of his jaw, or the hard swallow at words that felt like a dagger between ribs. It’s hard not to fall in love with the person who builds you up to be the version of yourself you were meant for.

Still, he remained quiet, allowing the more golden half of the duo to continue, to spill the words that had been pent up in his chest. It must have felt like wasps, swarming angrily— he had never known Rowan to keep a secret, he had never known him to be anything but honest. Mick cut his gaze over, studying him through sooty lashes, wondering what else there was that he didn’t know about a man that he had thought of himself as an expert on. She’d asked him to leave, and he’d loved her, and they’d kissed and Rowan had lied, tucking himself into their bed, pressing those lips to his skin as though they didn’t bear a secret, as if nothing had changed at all. Mickey waited for anger to well up, to settle in his chest, but instead he took in a breath and nearly choked on something unexpected— an overwhelming sadness. This was heartache, and he could hardly swallow it down. Quiet settled between them, and he could hear his pulse in his ears, before he parted his lips and finally spoke. “You don’t have to go.” He found Rowan’s gaze, clear and as blue as the Pacific— dark eyes were mirrors, but his was a well, there was a depth to them that now made him feel like drowning. The voice that he conjured was quieter now, and it lacked his usual brightness. “Do you love her still?” He would cry later, already water threatened to prick at the corners of his eyes, but he refused to let them well and fall. “It’s okay, if you do.” Mickey looked away, feeling sick, the clench of his fist matching the knot forming in the pit of his belly. “I just want to know.”

.

He knows the answer before he says it, but allows it to sit atop his tongue until it scalds, until it blisters: “yeah,” and brows collect as he sifts through all he knows to adequately voice what rattled in his chest: yeah, I’ll love her always, but it doesn’t matter anymore. “Yeah, I do,” the bare flesh of a bronze shoulder lifts to a shrug, “I always will, I think. But in a way thats-” he swallows, “different,” from how I love you, “it wasn’t enough love.” Rowan watches as the other male’s features tilt, gaze averted, and guilt prompts him nauseous, and so his words come stumbling out one after the next, worry knitting them together too closely, “I think it should be everything, the only thing, you know? I think there should be so much of it that it spills out of the room, that those around you see it on you and it haunts them, they can’t imagine it any other way. And that isn’t what I feel for her now, and it wasn’t what I felt then. So I’ll love Joey, yeah, but not like-” not like you, “not like that.” He had wandered this path before, reached the end and split the marrow beneath his breast and offered out the throb of his heart to another, and where had it let him? Abandonment had festered, had made a home within the confines of his ribs- and so rejection is a wraith-like linger who’s mouth splits into something feral then: oh, Sun, how you forgot the hurt, how you will greet it again soon enough. And so Rowan is quiet where he should speak, keeps the syllables guarded, swallowed down: I love you in a way that make those words feel inadequate, Mickey - like we are inventing something new, just for us, and none in time will ever compare. I love you more - I love you most. But it comes out as: “it doesn’t change how I feel about you, Mick. I want to be with you.”

.

Things were strange between them. There was no true reason behind the worry that flooded him like streets after too much rain, behind the fear that tugged at his curls impishly, whispering doubt into the shell of his ear. At night, he tucked in beside Rowan, studying seraphic features as he slowly fell into sleep, watching the knit between his brows smooth out, and whatever remained unsaid ebb away as he reached something restful. He was sweet like this, childlike with his long lashes drawn against tanned cheeks, his soft breath warm against Mickey’s shoulder. He loved him, his warmth and his strength, but he wondered what it was that Rowan kept guarded, tucked between his ribs— so deep within the cavern that he could just scarcely hear the tick of what he hoped was not a bomb.

The day stretched long, and he watched as the clock hands spun dutifully around the face of the kitchen clock, after lunch, after dinner, where he dines with his friends and piles plates high and laughs despite the fact that his gaze drifted too often over to the empty space beside his. After the meal, he didn’t bother to put away the plate, leaving it there, untouched, before he makes his way onto the couch. Aimlessly flipping through Netflix titles, Mickey finally found rest, dozing off until he heard his name, making him stir. It’s him, and his face is conflicted— most faces aren’t easy to read but Rowan’s has words scrawled between the lines, there is fear printed in the place above his brow, heartache in the corner of his mouth. His own heart stopped then, and the words feel like a barrage, making him inch closer to one side of the couch, away from him. You’re supposed to put distance between yourself and the blast of a shell, to minimize damage from the blow. Rowan said everything and nothing, and he sunk teeth into the soft flesh of the inside of his mouth while his mind raced, “What happened?” His other thought remained unsaid. What did you do?

.

The dim of Mickey’s rays is visible in a moment’s fraction, and Rowan’s stomach is something hollowed then, except for the twinning serpents of fear and guilt, whos swollen bodies coil against lungs until the boy of gold can hardly breathe. Silence is birthed between them as Rowan attempts to grasp at the beginning, of where to start. “Joey and I-“ the crescent of a full mouth rolls inwards, and he does his best to keep a cerulean gaze on his counterpart, to bear witness to how the suede ties between them would sour then snap, “we knew each other before here. We met in a bar, travelled together for a few months. We dated, and I-“ digits lift to rub at the vermeil flesh at the back of his neck, “I was in a bad place, when I met her. My parents were- my parents were shitty, growing up. I didn’t know who I was when I wasn’t busy trying to be who they wanted me to be. So I left, travelled a bit. And then there was Joey,” how easily he could envision her that fateful night even then, a celestial with a wattage to rival helios amidst the grimy transgressions of mortals, “and I became someone that I wanted to be when I was with her. I owe her so much. And it’s hard not to fall in love with the person who builds you p to be the version of yourself you were meant for, you know? So I loved her, and I-“ his wrist clicks as he rolls it, a fidget to still how his thoughts whirled in a feverish frenzy, “and I proposed to her after a few months. I thought - I really thought she loved me, too.” He had layered flesh to bone beneath her rays, and oh how he shook when she turned her back, when all he knew was the algid of her shadowed depart. “She took off. And then I didn’t see or hear from her for years, until she showed up here.”

Rowan’s irises are glazed, averted to the union of his digits resting between thighs, “I thought if I said anything about it, it would become a joke. And then I was so afraid it would ruin things here. So I was selfish, and I didn’t say anything, because- because this was the first time I haven’t felt alone in so long, Mick.” Molars sink in to the fleshy round of a cheek until metallic seeps to the velvet of his tongue, “we kissed, a few months ago, when you and I just got together. It was the first time we had spoken in- I don’t know how long. Years,” tenderly, pupils roam the supple angles of Mickeys features, committing them to memory, as though he would watch him leave, too. “She asked me to leave with her, to leave Costa. To take off, just the two of us. I said no, that I wanted to be here, with you.” The angle of his chin tilts, and Rowan’s swelter is doused to embers long abandoned, “I know I should have told you at the start, Mickey. I just - I so desperately needed the closure. For us, for my sanity.” Brows draw inward, worry softening features, “I am so sorry that I kept this from you, Mick. So fucking sorry.” His cadence descends to a decibel for them alone, quiet enough that the seraphs who listen above must lean their gleaming features closer to bear witness, “I’ll go. I can pack some things in a duffel and stay at Andi’s or something,” his digits twitch at his side, wishing to reach out to him - instead, they curl inwards, “whatever you want, I can do.”

“You are making breakfast in every dream that I have of you. You are in the kitchen, your soft middle pressed up against the cold marble countertops like a vision too beautiful for the magazines, sprinkling dark chocolate chips over pancakes. I think for a brief second that I am dreaming inside of my dream, that I had to make you up twice, just to get it right. You, brushing your dark hair out of your face, smearing batter across your cheeks. You have come and made my dreams smaller, narrower. Filled them with sugar and your body humming in the same room as mine. I dream, now, of a normal life with you. A life where breakfast lasts until the sun goes down, until I have finished gazing at you from across the table, flour dried to your forehead like a kiss.”

— Caitlyn Siehl, Chocolate Chip Pancakes 

-

The slaughter that had followed is armed to the teeth. Her presence that had him balanced is now staggering in intoxication. He tries to form the words, but his anger strikes his own, like sandpaper against a match. “Did you think that was easy for me,” he slurs. “Did you think that was fun for me?” His voice rises with each syllable. “To hear about how you bent over and fucked every girl you saw that looked like her? Newsflash Ro,” his arms part in front of him, spreading a headline for all those who surround him. “You’re not the only one in love with her,” he shouts. With that, his anger furls, muddled with awareness. His hands fall back down to his side; he’s itching for a cigarette. Instead his palms curl, nails digging into tender flesh.

He thinks back to that sunny morning, when he woke up alone in bed. There was a dip in his mattress where she belong, his pillow still stained in her scent. The morning light was bright yellow and he remembers with the flutter of his lashes conning him to thinking that he could pull her closer to him. When his arm reached out for her, he found the bed cold to the touch. He knows she’s an early riser, but it’s the kind of morning that leads him with his feet buried in the sand, with half a pack of cigarettes burnt away to the butt and six empty bottles that escorted him back to the house. His eyes trail the path she’s left now; the blonde is engulfed in a sea of bodies, but he feels her presence and her pull. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud, but the words had made a home inside of him long before he knew what they had meant.

He tears his eyes from the crowd, back to the sunlight that had long grown cold. Ro is a man who radiates like no other, bright and beautiful, good in most ways that he’s never grasped, and for that reason, he knows his wrath is true. Oz had been selfish, on borrowed time; he knows she’s not his, but he let himself pretend. “Tell her if you want,” he says, his voice is defeated. “I don’t care if she doesn’t choose me,” a lie, but he knows he wouldn’t choose him either. “I just wanted to be with her a little longer.”

.

You’re not the only one in love with her. It’s as though he’s dunked beneath the sea’s algid surface, the flames of anger swiftly doused at such an admittance. Anger peels back and he can see without the obstruction of red, and Oz is there, and Rowan is undeserving. How had he been so blind to it? To them - to the feelings of his friend, to the hurt he had caused. And so his head shakes faintly, “I won’t,” he should, as it’d be a haunt that lingers in the stretch from then and forever: would it have made a difference if she knew? No - he knew it wouldn’t, not really. They wouldn’t be happy, as much as they’d try: two people picking feverishly at old wounds with the hope that time had healed, that things would now be different. It was a fools dream, naivety would coax them blind to the hurt that had made a home between them; Rowan’s digits would always twitch at his side to twist the door’s locks in place to keep her from fleeing, he’d prolong each of her departs to memorize the tilt of her mouth, the slope of a nose, in fear it’d be the last he’d see of them. No, it wouldn’t make a difference, because he knew he would always love her more, and it would be the death of him. “It wouldn’t change anything.” Not in the way he wanted, at least. “You should tell her how you feel, though.” Did she know? Did he know - about the kiss, about her proposition to skip town just the two of them? A hand lifts to rub at the curve of his jaw, guilt blooming in a way that prompts him nauseous: Oz and Mickey had been sat on the sidelines, unaware at how those they loved were offering their blistered hearts out on palms to another - a bit longer and he would have brought hers to the billow of his lips, let it stain his mouth like wine. “I’ve gotta go-” he looks at the tender angles of Oz’s features and thinks of Mickey, at how his light will go out at the news. He pauses in his retreat, his lips rolling inward in thought before he speaks: “give me a bit. I won’t always be mad.” Rowan means it, he’d be happy for them eventually, “You deserve her, Oz.”

.

Beyond them, the party spins on; a chaos of strangers and friends and lovers, turning tides under a full-bellied moon. Joey tips her head back—her smile is luminous and moonlight silvers her hair. “It’s like one of our postcards. D’you remember?” They’d collect them in every new city, a memory scrawled on the back. Santa Barbara, CA: 05.12.18 - Joey’s Jellyfish Attack. Cheyenne, WY: 07.20.18 - Ro’s a Fuckin’ Buckin’ Bronco. “I’ve still got them and the polaroids in our scrapbook. You should swing by my place sometime, visit memory lane.” 

Friendship is a word that opens inconceivable doors; there’s time now, Joey knows, and maybe that’s why she relinquishes him so easily. “Can you help me find Oz first? I’ve been trying but everyone’s so fucking tall.” She doesn’t deny the itch of her own fingers; they curl around Ro’s wrist and Joey tugs him up the beach. As if summoned by his name, the crowd parts to reveal the familiar lean slope of Oz’s figure. “He’s there, thanks Ro—” she presses a fleeting kiss to the blond’s cheek. Oz turns just in time as Joey hurtles into his arms at full speed. “Hi you. Getting lost sucks. I don’t know how those milk carton kids do it.” 

(  enter: @ozvicario​​  )

He’s sloshed by the time she reaches him and is almost knocked over by her full force. “Hi baby,” he greets, his hands curling around her, lifting her up into his arms. The print on her thigh is a perfect match to his hand, pink palms dressing his chest that laid under the mesh. He kisses her then, one hand traveling up to her hair, pulling her closer. Oz breathes her in like survival, his feet grounds to the earth to keep them steady. "You found me,” he slurs when they break away. His smile as easy when he looks up at her. “I’m starving,” he says when he settles her onto her feet. “I didn’t find any food, but I found more booze, but here’s the problem.” He wraps his arms around, his hand slipping down to her ass. His nose brushes against hers as he speaks. “I don’t think I can move,” he says with a laugh, pulling her closer into his arms. Oz peaks out in the crowd and it’s then that he notices: a charging blonde male staring at him incredulously. He tears his gaze away from the onslaught and turns to face her again. “Let’s go home soon,” he says, smacking her ass before letting her go. “Go say your goodbyes,” he shouts over the music, watching her walk away. It’s when he turns that he’s greeted by another. “Ro,” he greets, offering a drunken wave. “What’s good?” 

Without thought, Rowan lingers, retrieving his phone from the depth of a pocket and typing out a swat the locals away text to Len - and then a gaze of oceanic hue lifts, and it’s as though his world is abruptly tilted on it’s axis; every star winks out of existence, the only light cast is that from the reunion of Joey and Oz. You can’t have both. This is what the other male had meant weeks prior, Rowan sees it now, and a fist curls at how he had missed it - it wasn’t Rowan Oz had felt for in that situation, but the girl curved something nymph-like to his side with an ease of familiarity that suggested they had been stitched together here, like this, in each lifetime prior. Envy is a rot that turns the satin of a tongue sour, and as though a fawn lit incandescent by the rounds of headlights, he is unable to pull his gaze from the onslaught; he watches as they kiss, as a hand travels from the tilt of her waist to the swell of her ass, as Joey’s lithe form slips away and is swallowed by the crowd. Oz’s attention slips to him, and golden features are gaunt of their usual balmy rays. “How long have you two been fucking?” his lilt is angled sharp, descending the full of a mouth like fragmented glass, “had you just come from fucking her when we met on the beach, and I told you I still loved her? Did you fuck her after, high on the fact that it was you and not me?” He scoffs, and his mouth turns up into something leonine: the angles of teeth are bared as though it’s amusing, how he had split ribs for Oz, showed him the decay that had festered within marrow after Joey’s depart, “you just sat there and listened, like a smug little bitch.” The bend of a jaw collects to a clench, “did you tell her that we talked? How I felt?” he’s something predatory, then: darkness collects beneath the angles of a boy of gilt now coloured something nightmarish, “no- no, of course not. Do you think she would have chose you if she knew?” He revel’s in it: the cruelty. He’s drunk on it. “I don’t.”

.

Together, they are golden; all flaxen hair and burnished smiles that catch the light. Joey wears triumph well—it glitters as they slip back into the fray, attracting stares like the irresistible pull of a magnet. Rowan has always brought out the best in her; his magic is contagious and heady, all for her after so long. Now, she beams under his praise. “To friendship,” she’s too drunk to taste the tequila. Instead, she follows the trickle of alcohol that curves down his jaw. Joey tiptoes; she sweeps her thumb in an arc over his cheek, catches the fullness of his bottom lip, before she slips it, sticky and sweet, into her own mouth. “I’m happy we’re friends again, Ro.” they’re by the water now—no less quieter, but there is more space and yet, their bodies remain close. “I missed this. I missed us. Being in the same room but not talking, not even looking at you,” her words are liquored too honest. “There’s so much I wanted to tell you. And now we can.” She smiles, hair dancing in the breeze.

.

He’d coin it as nostalgia, the satin unravel against lungs, how the angles of his features soften beneath the sprawl of her rays. Just nostalgia. Though is it truly? No, no, it is the tepid creature of feelings unforgotten that surfaces, that sets his flesh ablaze beneath her touch: embers trail the plush of a thumb, collecting at the billow of a bottom lip, coaxing his tongue to drag outwards along the half-moon of his mouth. “To friendship,” it’s a distant echo as he watches a rosebud mouth encircle a thumb, and his jaw briefly collects to a grind as he catches himself watching - so easily he slips back into her orbit, as though a man lost and now found, trailing behind the descent of a star long awaited. Friendship - it’s recited within his skull over and over, as though that will scald their ties of anything more. And there was more, he knows that now, he realized that weeks prior on that deck, in the shadows, with their lips pressed together. How do you be just friends with someone who you would have shared a life with? “Me too, Joey,” but he’s watching her smile, and feels the burrs of regret: alone, with her, he’d do something he may regret. And so his mouth peels back in a beam to mirror her own, something boyish and toothy, no evidence of the feelings that linger wedged between teeth, “I’ve got to go look for Len, I couldn’t live with myself if she was kidnapped. Or worse, kissing a townie,” his digits itch to reach out, to tame a tress brought to life by the wind, but instead they are stuffed deep in a pocket, “I’ll see you around, friend.” 

.

If Rowan was the sun, Mickey was sure that meant he gleamed brightest when it set– neon carved out his features and made him feel god-like, it was low words pressed against his ear that draw a smile upon his features, lighting warmth in his belly. His lips parted and closed around the fleshy pad of the other’s thumb, hazel eyes caught on russet ones and Mick dips his head for a moment, devious, before releasing it altogether with a pop. A laugh doesn’t leave his throat but it’s painted on his features; his wide, happy grin, he too is a boy in love. “Just tonight?”

.

Ask Fate, a creature who’s teeth are wedged with the fine bones of damnation, if it has ever known kindness, and it will murmur of a time where the sun and moon are mortals, men, lovers. They are cosmos reunited after a millennium of knowing each other only in fragments, and this is their Zion: it’s evident in how they touch, in the longing that scalds their tongues. How easily the bodies surrounding descend into nothingness at the site of his counterpart’s mouth wrapped around the width of his thumb, and Rowan’s near reaching for the length of a zipper if not for a stranger’s shoulder grazing his spine and tenderly tugging him from the depths of something dreamlike, a syrupy haze with Mickey the catalyst. “No,” his mouth dips to trail the slope of a jaw, tender kisses pressed in a rove, and he pulls back enough to meet the other male’s gaze, “you’re stuck with me always, Villegas.” Fate laughs at this. Digits descend to knot within the spaces between Mickey’s, “let’s go grab a drink and find somewhere I can blow you without all of Costa and then some getting a free show,” Ro’s syllables are punctuated with a grin, “I don’t want the boy who bags our groceries or the church lady down the street to see that.” He turns then, beginning to tug his boyfriend through the cluster of bodies grinding to the song’s pulse.