decay.

there’s a kind of ignorant bliss drunkenness affords - the mild delirium, the utter glee at nothing, nothing at all, the revelry of the moment. moonsik loves it in the company of others, be it strangers or friends or distant stars - but then, a hand assails him, a hand that belongs to none of the above but perhaps all of them in one. moonsik’s smile is bright but alien, warm but vague, and he raises a glass at jaewon’s greeting. “certainly,” he smiles, slick and amiable. “i’d feel like a troglodyte if i missed out on this.” 

he’d nearly forgotten jaewon was in alpha, and he’d nearly forgotten his warmth - how very like him to remind moonsik at the most inconvenient time, when he was weakest to it. there’s memories of plush sheets against bare skin, as light as a daydream but as heavy as a phantasm, but he flicks them away with the crook of his lips.

“but only a selfish man would steal a host away from his party,” he says easily. it’s an excuse. “of course.” and he ends it there, because vagueness is easier than anything else.

troglodyte. jaewon doesn’t pretend to know, not when he’s like this, but it sounds like a dinosaur, and it sounds like a joke, so he laughs. there’s a way he holds himself a little farther than how he’s used to, leans a little bit away, and excuses it as a side effect of intoxication. then he talks about selfishness and jaewon almost places a hand over his mouth and asks him what he’s talking about until he makes sense of it, half a beat later ( they both know the only selfish person between them both is the one with half a mind to do something scandalous, just because ).

“who’d you come with? s’it somin?” it’s the quickest conclusion, and the easiest one. he hasn’t seen the other male, their pet, their somin, though somin is more moonsik’s than jaewon’s, and he tries to smile as easily as he normally would. “or did you get a new date?”

– thought i should do something nice, s’all. she smiled, smiled because she wanted to. it would hide the guilt, mask what she truly thinks, hide how bothered she felt  – but the comes the constant wondering… 

why did he continue to even try when others would give up, why anyone would want to do anything nice for her? but jaewon – a nice boy, would do this for anyone, not just her. but that single thought made her feel less important because she was – is – less important than anyone else in his life. she had to be. this was all a mere infatuation that would dwindle once he realized she doesn’t have character or substance.

“romantic?” she looked to him before staring straight ahead. “romance and parties hosted by alpha? – that’s like oil and water…” a small smile, a subtle indication toward her attempt to tease him.

she nodded, taking his phone from his hold. any song would have been fine, but she didn’t say a word as always. before he could place his free hand on the wheel, she laced their fingers together, hoping it wouldn’t catch him too off guard. she opted not to look at the expression on his face as she disconnected the auxcord from his phone, connecting it to her own – trying her best to look nonchalant as she put on a kaytranada album on shuffle. 

“if my hand gets too sweaty, you can let go.”  

it wasn’t always easy to brush things off. there were things he was aching to talk about, but it was never the right time, and never the right place, and with his dog dutifully sitting in the backseat and a smile on his girlfriend’s face, it was even harder to bring up the darker shadows cast by brighter days. so he smiled, too, and laughed at her teasing – or he thought it was – and shook his head, but did not refute it.

“you’re right. but i meant this – today. not the party.” he continued to drive, thought to keep his full attention on the road, but it was slightly distracting to finally have her by his side. the wait was always worth it. “but – hey, if i want you to say yes to going with me to the party, then i gotta try and make it hard for you to say no.”

because there was a chance, wasn’t there, that she’d refuse? – he didn’t know if alpha parties were her scene, and it usually wasn’t anybody else’s ( he could at least admit to that, no matter how much fun he had ), and he didn’t want her to go with him just because she felt obligated to.

her hand in his, of course, had him glancing at her, half in surprise, and half in disbelief. she was always somehow warmer than he remembered ( time apart made things seem a tad colder than he liked ), and he gave a light squeeze as if to say thank you ( and for what, he didn’t really know ). 

she stands like a concentric-moving circle, serpent choking on its own tailed shoved down its fucking mouth, wanting to pull away but unable to so much as flex her fingers in case the movement inconvenienced his gentle hold. why is he holding her, why why why. like a petty thief she wants all or nothing, and this first lick of a nitroglycerin trail to something burns up her throat, her intestines, the lining of her stomach. when her gut has disappeared the butterflies held captive there fly throughout her whole body, turning her fluttering, afraid, a tremor.

“no,” has she ever tried that word on him before? “then what would you need me for? alpha boy, physics major, golden boy of new york – i need something to stay relevant in your life.” i need you in mine. she’s speaking properly but everything feels clumsy on her tongue, like she’s tripping over cracks in a sidewalk. “besides, you’re not that big.” her hand burns. please let go now. “we haven’t grown up so much…” marceline shifts her weight, a hip closer to him. the air between them burns now too. “we’re still the same, aren’t we?”

you remember, when we were on the balcony?

what mask is this: one or two, comedy or tragedy? it feels like both. the butterflies inside marceline startle, panicking. “yes,” she answers slowly. i remember. you don’t. there’s caution in her pitch, the way with which she watches jaewon lift her hand to his mouth and press her knuckles there. she chokes on the heart of it. whose watching? why is he pulling her open like gold thread? “i thought you didn’t remember.”

he touches her palm and it’s gentle and ticklish and makes her white-hot like that inked rose on her thumb is really blooming, opening up. she’s so nervous, so fucking nervous. she wants to take her hand back but waits for the promise that he’ll let go. “… no. you know that. i got it after graduation.”

this is how it feels like when someone points at him and asks him what he’s done, asks him to confess even though they know it already. it feels like condemnation, because there’s no way this is anything other than a crime. jaewon is not a nice guy. he’s not good, not in the way that counts, and he feels himself drifting again to where his mind shouldn’t. alcohol drags him there, like an unwilling asshole, and fucks him right over when she says no and doesn’t take her hand away. he doesn’t notice how much closer she is.

he hums in response to whatever she says, laughs like someone prompted him to: something to fill in gaps that aren’t really there. it chokes his heart, so he stops, and, just a tad, a millimetre-difference, he leans against her, because she’s the only thing that ever comes close to stable. his silence is enough.

so, now, see, he can’t help it when he brings her palm to his lips. it’s just another tug towards an unknown he used to have a name for. he remembers this – how it felt like on that balcony – and he lets his mouth linger, breath warm with alcohol, and brings the inked skin away from him when he’s content. it’s the only selfish thing he might remember doing, and still he thinks: maybe he’ll keep this safe ( this thing that might turn to ashes, if she crushes it enough ), and maybe he’ll keep her safe, too. 

marceline runs a hand over her scalp and the end of her ponytail. “hellions roll some strong shit, hey?” blame my head on this drug, the haze on the substance, the way my mind slants sideways until it passes all the way off the fucking shelf and into the depths i try to bury on the inebriation. it’s the weed, god, the alcohol, shit, fuck. the pink, fleshy insides of her brain fall off their perch and smash against the hard sculpt of her skull, squishing flat before starting to reshape into sentient, moving puppets of their past. she fixes the upper layer of her suit and swallows the question do you think i look pretty? it settles in her stomach like a mean black stone and her head spins.

her neck turns and her gaze offers jaewon terrible, terrible fondness as he palms and labels an old nickname not good enough. “you’re right.” she concedes with lilt, intoning his fact-checking is obvious but endearing. “but i couldn’t just go and let him call me seelie anything.”

his skin is so soft and she’s so, so sorry that she can’t stop her eyes from dipping over his abdomen, a smooth water-drop roll from collarbone to hips. there’s more muscle than ever before, though she can hear his younger voice defending the leanness of his shape. it’s their first time colliding tonight but she doesn’t have to have been standing with him to know how many girls had stretched their imaginative selves like film over the sculpt of his body.

their hands are together and somewhere there’s a glass breaking and the house screams. marceline hears nothing. her heart sweats, puts its hands over its ears. she looks at their fingers and feels gold molt down her throat, pausing her speech until it slides into her stomach and turns to gilded butterflies. she wants to ask forgiveness for whatever this is. 

but then her grin is window-wide, playfulness coming in and out like air because jaewon is safe, so safe, even when he wracks her with fright it can’t survive. “shh!” she inhales, gasps, uses her free hand to messily cup over his mouth. “don’t you dare. she is a - no, you listen - she is a fine woman, jung jaewon, and you could do a lot worse than miss toni. i hope she finds you again.” her body turns to the street, mouth to the sky: “TONI -” she calls a girl that’s not there to make him laugh, to play this like a wrestling game because they’re not supposed to spar in bathing suits on a college porch. her eyes slate on him and her mouth stands open in the jovial threat of calling louder, like she might just summon the strange girl into existence.

her restless laughter takes a hiccupy bed as he raises his arm, and she tucks her own behind her back. the other comes to hold his wrist, pulling his forearm out. “oh yeah,” she teases, loud and unafraid when they have joy between them. “this is what makes you a real gangster. you and your finger puppets and your adoption centre up in your room - you’re basically a kkangpae.”

in the beginning, when the stars were still fireflies, his soul, once, perhaps, prayed to some god for some change that left him warmer, left the world brighter, and he was given marceline zhao, years younger, smile more beautiful and skin so much softer, untouched by mortal crime. between the two of them he’s the only sinner, and he thought – thinks – he’s accepted it, but something in him drowns again in the temptation to go far away from this noise and this procession of monstrosity, towards somewhere they can be people, without power or evil, and only the goodness of each other. ( but this is a forgotten dream. )

instead he laughs, and laughs until his sides begin to hurt, even with her hand over his mouth, and he yells in return, unintelligible, and does the same for her, as if to catch the name from her lips and crush it in his palm. 

but instead he focuses – he’s distracted! that’s it – and his hand seeks out the one that holds onto her wrist, arm slipping down so he can, and holds it and holds it and doesn’t think about anything other than he doesn’t want to let go. ( because that’s what he always does, isn’t it, when he’s sober? ) “make me more finger puppets,” he blurts out, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind that isn’t venturing too far into places it’s learned not to go. “you should teach me how to make them! i gotta be a big boy, you know – be self-sufficient,” and learn to live without you. “it’s about time, isn’t it?”

he laughs because it’s something he finds funny, and she might not. he still doesn’t let go.

with a cool fingers curled around his wrist and the soft smile on softer petals somin never stood a chance. he couldn’t have refused, he had no real options and in the end he’s being pulled through the door and into a room with a vibrating bass and pushing bodies. at first he reckons it could be alright; he’s clutching onto moonsik’s fingers and trying not to notice all the hands that wandered beneath clothes and further than they should go, but it’s only minutes into them having entered the party that he loses his grasp on moonsik’s fingers and sight of his face. it wasn’t the first time - and it wouldn’t be the last - that somin ended up being dragged to an alpha party and ended up alone, but no time was more fun than the previous one. somin liked to believe he could handle himself fine enough to not accept too many drinks, even when people try to press them into his hand, but the lack of space makes him panic and he’s pushed into corners by dancing bodies and wild limbs and quickly becomes the living definition of uncomfortable. he’s fishing for his phone and trying to fish for excuses to leave when jaewon’s voice calls for his attention and somin gets onto his tip toes and cranes his neck to meet his eyes. the smile he’s greeted with alone seems suspicious enough but jaewon quickly and easy covers the distance between them, pushing uncomfortably close and into somin’s personal space. ( he’d never stop remembering the catnip incident from years ago whenever jaewon was this close. ) the request that’s voiced close to his ear makes as little sense as the innocent and wide smile it’s joined with and somin squints. “what.” he’s heard jaewon perfectly clear, despite the loud voices and louder music, but he doesn’t want to believe what somin heard is what jaewon actually meant. a movement from below jaewon’s shirt catches his eyes and it’s then that it dawns on him that he knows exactly what jaewon was smuggling. a sigh leaves his lips before he’s pushing the fabric of jaewon’s clothes out of the way and reaching for the terrified felines beneath. any annoyance vanishes from his face; the previously slightly sour expression changes into a soft smile as somin peels the two cats off jaewon and holds them close to himself. the purr that vibrates through his chest is instinctual and something somin can’t help as reaction to the two cats nuzzling closer. “why the hell are you subjecting them to this torture, jaewon? i can barely stand it here, can you imagine how it must be for them?”

alcohol works wonders, but it does not lessen the kind of pain that claws bring to skin. he’s still got scars from before. some bandages on his hands are there as a symptom and not a preventative measure. but jaewon, like all things, does not know when to let go of things that hurt. he buries it, like all things, and smiles and holds his pets ever-gently, because he’s well aware they’re frightened and he should’ve placed them somewhere safer, if he had time. but that’s a regret sober-jaewon will worry about the morning after. so are the marks that are sure to arise on his skin, new ones, better ones. as long as they aren’t on his face, he doesn’t have to explain them to anybody, and god knows jaewon will lie if he had to do that anyway.

so he’s glad that somin realises what he means, because he can’t even stand upright without wobbling a little. it’s turning out to be an extremely long night, and his search for his partner has, so far, proved fruitless, and especially disheartening by the minute: people keep streaming in, and there’s hardly space to breathe. somin, now, looks like an angel in comparison to the teeming hordes of youth and sweat and smoke and noise.

“i’m not subjecting them to it! i’m trying to save them!” which, really, is why he’s taken them in in the first place. he doesn’t remember if he’s told somin the story; he can’t quite form a solid memory when everything’s shimmering. it’s good that he’s consumed some of the better alcohol, after all: he’d rather be dead-drunk than remain sober on shitty drinks that can hardly be called any kind of ‘drink’. 

one foot after the other – repeating the steps over and over again, eyes glued to the ground as she trails back to her dorm from the lotus building. she was already tipsy – no, drunk. unable to look straight ahead without her head spinning off her body. “heh.” she laughs, nearly tripping, feet fumbling as she attempts to skip. her attention shifts to her phone vibrating in her pocket, but as she takes it out, her grip loosens, the device colliding against the pavement. 

goddammit.

she crouches down, lifting it carefully, frowning upon seeing the cracks visible on the screen. she opens the message, smiling as she sees it’s from jaewon.

( sms – jaewon ) i boke my phone ( sms – jaewon ) brrke** ( sms – jaewon ) broke*** fml

the hellion dorms were really only a few short steps away, surely jaewon would be in view soon, knowing he doesn’t like entering the building. and as her gaze lifts upward, straight ahead, her smile widens further as she spots him in the dark, quick to rush to his side as she waves her phone in front of his face. “see, it’s broken!”

infatuation is a terrible thing when it’s fuelled to consume everything in its path. she smiles and he burns. it’s impossible not to meet her halfway when he’s so used to running the whole green mile to get to her, and this feels like a perfect execution of a half-drunken dream. he doesn’t even check the screen when it lights up, and he catches her by the elbows, laughing, too, not knowing if she’s aware of how infectious her laughter is when she graces him with it. 

“we’ll replace it,” he tells her, reaching for her phone, not to inspect it, but to help her maintain a better grip on it. “don’t lose it, okay?” 

“well i didn’t know you were coming – the surprise makes the falling all the more exciting.”

everything about that night is pieces and wholes, details tucked into a locket and a picture painted on the back of her eyelids. she remembers a rose-coloured sky and green, thick bottles of warm champagne, sand turning their bare feet into sand paper, rubbing them together anyways; that blue-and-white striped towel looking grey as the morning light came. the way they huddled together up the beach and into the house, damp and dirty and exhausted, only stopping to wash their feet in warm water before climbing onto the balcony. the moment she thought the world was end-beginning and he was a sunrise. 

she laughs and its real, whole, tastes like the night they’re conjuring with cushions thrown haphazardly over jaewon’s exposed body on the pool deck. “oh, he would’ve cared the second time. twice is too much skinny ass for him to see racing out of his hot tub.” and maybe that’s how he feels about them, brother to something slight and un-grown, but her heart is a wild beast and her ribs are cages it wants to escape. “please. i know you like to think you’re essential to the zhao family operation,” you are. “but he would’ve loved to have knocked that boys teeth in himself. now, maybe, he’d let you do it – getting kinda soft in his old age.” she spreads her lips open because it’s a joke he can unlock by memory. zhao chen is a tooth in the eye of god, sharp no matter the day. “he could stretch,” she corrects. “like, elasticity. used to be kinda fun though - he’d help me do it myself, ‘till i almost got better than him. called me ‘bendy wendy’ for a while.”

she sighs, and it has no edges. just frothy, kind dew.

her palm smacks against jaewon’s shoulder. “do NOT speak ill of toni glowacki! that girl,” she’s full-up and overflowing, spilling, toppled over by joy and impishness. her body turns to him, flowing seeking ray, shaking her head. “is your other half. just you wait - your love story isn’t over yet, i’ve always said it, i’m still saying it. you’re gonna see more of toni yet -”

reality is the opposite of a dream; he can recall the beginning with such clarity – and every day leading up to it – but cannot, for the life of him, remember ever saying good night, or good morning. it must’ve been something, for sure, and he doesn’t bring it up again. he’s too drunk to try. ( as he always is, when alcohol tugs him down further, and centres his gravity to the bottom of a bottle that’s cheap in comparison to his usual tastes – but that’s something entirely different, and he tries not to get too distracted by the fact that his drink is all but finished – )

and when she brings up home, and happiness, and youth, he laughs like they’re back then and not now. oh, truly, the elder zhao would’ve kicked his skinny ass out of that pool and into the open sea, if the man didn’t treat him as a second son already. these are people he’s known, who’s known him in return, and never to the same measure as marceline – no one ever gets that close and returns unscathed. “bendy wendy! that’s a terrible nickname. your name is far from wendy,” he says, with unabashed distaste, mostly because he’s always preferred her name more than anyone else’s ( even his own ). 

so he laughs harder when she hits him, and notes, with regretful clarity, that she’s started to hit harder. she’s grown up. but her hand feels the same, and he reaches for it before she can pull it back, hoping to hold it still, and doesn’t think about why he’s holding on still.

it’s hard enough to be here, now, pretending to be a new version of her and an updated version of him, without their past. he’s still so kind it makes her ache, so handsome the moon peeks out a little further to slant its light across more of his body. marceline knows the feeling. she wonders where jennie is.

– and it’s even worse that he wants to be the them they were (still are?) collecting remembrances like pearls and stringing them out on a chain between them. let that girl die, something inside her screams. the one that waited for him when he was already right there and unable to give you everything you wanted. but she’s tried killing that girl before. the knife always goes straight through. “yeah -” she chortles instead, eyes opening and eyebrows raising, pretending now to feel gardens open inside her. “you got to five seconds maybe once. i had to stay on two feet to make sure you didn’t drown.”

why didn’t we?

she wants something to do with her hands, her mouth. another spliff, a bottle. there’s nothing so she slides her tongue out and over her lips. she lapses into english out of habit, back into their world, just them, private from anyone else. “dunno.” you left. “it’s okay.” i wish you hadn’t. “i had family stuff to do all that week anyway, it’s no big deal. i probably would’ve been too busy to hang out much.” how might things be different if – he looks down so she looks up, and god she thinks she’s reading tea leaves trying to guess his expression, but she looks anyway. her smile is soft, a reassurance. something else entirely. “it was still my favourite birthday.”

“oh, c’mon!” back into reality, to what they have to work with. congenial laughter and mutual childhood. “my dad loves you. you’re like the only guy i ever brought over he ever let do anything. remember, that time he caught us skinny dipping? you were only banned from the house for like, a week. now if that had been andrew lin – he would’ve exiled him from the entire state right then and there.”

he wants to fall again into the ocean: return to the breathless closeness, the gasping for breath, and every excuse to hold onto her hand. he laughs but doesn’t deny her claim; he can hardly remember, but he’s getting better at it. there are fragments of memory that he’d rather recall than the ones that stab at his dreams, even when the ghost of his sins has long since left. and maybe he has every reason to do the same, now, but they’re all terrible, selfish ones, and jaewon returns to drowning in his own way. she forgives him for his transgressions, and it feels like condemnation, like another burden, and this, too, is one he wishes to have forgotten. (  he should’ve stayed drunk. )

“i’m glad you enjoyed watching me fall off my surfboard,” he jokes, but is grateful nonetheless for her effort to lighten his shoulders – where else, and from whom, will he get this sort of weightlessness? something inside him glows, and it’s not the same soft fire; now it’s angrier, more regretful, and he puts another lid, another jar, another thing to try and kill it, and hopes to god that time will make it turn to ash. 

it’s perception or it’s a knowledge of him, and there’s a difference. he doesn’t answer, and her gaze glosses him in concern. god knows he carries fireflies around in him to make him glow; there are ghosts in there, too. 

“mmm,” she hums instead of asking what’s wrong, because that’s not a story for right now, with their bodies laid bare and open with so many people around. it’s repetition, knowing he wouldn’t tell her anyway, but her words soften around the edges in an attempt to knit comfort together. “should i go in their and embarrass you then? get really drunk and start calling for you? or should i go straight to the story of your exit at jimmy fischer’s year end party.”

but he wants to talk memory, wants to revisit memory instead, and it’s marceline that shifts in uncomfortability here. “well, we were younger then. in our prime. now we’re old and can’t hold our liquor.” a gaggle of hooting alphas exit the door in a rush and proceed into the street, marc watching. she makes the decision not to look at him. but there’s gold unravelling like a pretty string from inside her, despite the lacquered hardness of this specific memory, pulling detail from her mouth and dropping it out in their hands. “plus on my 16th, we had the freezing ocean, which made it easier to stay awake. you kept falling off your board, throwing water on me and trying to drag me in, remember? god, i don’t know how we stayed out there so long.” a breathy thing almost like a laugh. a silence unlike a pause. “i remember thinking i could’ve stayed up with you for days like that.”

the stars align in all important events, and one day, it might allow him to restart, and return to sometime when the thing in his chest hasn’t began to rot with time. he isn’t the only one who can touch things and make them go away ( and he’s done it before ) ; it just hurts more, he thinks, when he’s on the receiving end of what he can do. perhaps, if they weren’t so close, he wouldn’t have destroyed what they’ve been, what they could’ve been, and everything else that comes after silences that shouldn’t have existed between them.

so he laughs, because it’s all he can do when he feels that familiar twist, an old kind, the one he keeps safely tucked in all wrong parts of his bones. it rattles around, this laugh, and sounds a little too empty, so he drinks, takes a long swig so whatever it is, it’ll drown somewhere at the bottom of a bottle. 

“oh, please,” he says, and ignores the usual hooting and yelling, “if you’re old, then i’m a dinosaur. oh, to be young again.” he doesn’t look at his youth beside him. they’ve grown up, and she’s in his grown-up space, she said, and this space isn’t one that allows anything between them to thrive. there’s too much, too often, and not enough; he’s never been good at letting things grow, and helping things live. whatever they have isn’t some stray he can pick up from the street. “i recall being able to stay on my board for five seconds. you probably couldn’t beat my record then,” he jibes, and they both know this probably isn’t true, but he says it anyway, and laughs all the same, and ends with something like a sigh.

i wish you wouldn’t, she thinks as he pushes his hair back without thinking about what she means. i wish you wouldn’t try and fix your hair. i wish you wouldn’t try and smoothen your delightful mess. i wish you wouldn’t come to me alone and beautiful as you are. i wish you wouldn’t.

“ah, yes,” she nods, exaggerated emphatic gesture. “you should hear our plans for the eclipse. it’s going to be a riot.” her eyebrows rise and fall with a chuckle, turning around to face the open span of gumi and lean on her elbows. she looks over at jaewon, thinks about how similar a background this could be to the summers they used to know if she forgets about the screaming in the background and the cheap vibration of the floors around her. thinks about how he looks the exact same, only moreso. 

“sure,” she shrugs, shoulders shrugging and then leaning into his. “comes with the territory of having –” she makes a vague motion at her chest. “so little territory on my chest. nothing i didn’t handle right away.” her gaze strips itself to his face, blooms in playfulness and repetition: “old habits die hard.” redbone filters through the door for the sixth time tonight, and begins with the same cheer of appreciation at its opening notes. marceline chuckles and runs her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “what about you? enjoying it so far?” her hip now juts against his gently, momentarily. “is it weird seeing me in your grown-up space?”

“worse than this one? why, you trouble-maker, you.” he laughs at their silliness. some things remain a remnant of their youth, and he remembers more than he should, thinks of something more than he’s allowed to. instead, he’s careful, and closes his eyes, and pretends that his mind is somewhere far away, where his heart doesn’t rest. he doesn’t have to be sober to regret so many things, and there’s only so much he can carry around before he gets tired. 

face turned upwards, he imagines they’re back home again: their own private beach, and their pools and their balconies and perfect views. he remembers how the expanse of nothingness at night glitters with the light of a party, and when he opens his eyes again, it’s because of the weight against his shoulder grounding him back to the present. 

“i’ve gotten used to it,” he replies, and ignores her earlier inquiry. there’s much to be said about jaewon, but he can’t lie to marceline very well. it’s parties like these where people lose themselves, and jaewon is afraid, more than anything, that the control he’s so carefully maintained over himself will spill over, and slip out of his gloves, and remove the world because he hadn’t been careful. ( but he doesn’t move away. ) 

they carouse through the streets and into the house like imperious kings and queens, young and nimble delinquents that did not have to kick over property or spill garbage to be jailbirds: their very existences were criminal against the human race and its practices, a constant defiance to the etiquette and custom that meant each and every individual should be beholden to a kind of moral law. they were young and beautiful, powerful in ways money can’t buy, and as such, did what they pleased and nothing of what they didn’t. graceful tyrants, magnificent criminals with permanent impunity thanks to their old last name or new, unending ability.

and they make a fucking mess of this goddamn castle.

it’s sloppier than the parties she’s used to; a concession, she thinks, to the kind of boys playing host: like a dog growing to resemble its owner, the party is shaped like its men. or vice versa. it doesn’t particularly matter. she steps outside with a group of hellions for the promise of a joint, comradery formed while the paper and kush burns down. hellions always have the best weed, and while the especially drunk ones lose hold of their propriety enough to stare at the floral appliqué of her bodysuit and the breasts beneath them, largely they’re fine company for a smoke. the group dissipates as the joint burns down, but marceline remains outside, grateful for small reliefs and slight silences. there’s a voice and a boy coming into the darkness and he’s the kindest ghost she’s ever seen. marceline smiles, the world around her warm-hazy.

“she did,” her mouth turns half moon, lips open. “it’s the moon.” she gestures upwards, to the blue in the sky, playing along with the fae royalty he swears she might be. “needed to visit. recharge. discuss our plans for the eclipse and subsequent on humans trickery.” her chuckle fades into a hum, the hum mists into her closed smile. his hair is mussed and he’s too handsome. “sure i did,” she retorts, canting her head to lean against the pillar. “i said hi. you just weren’t there.” it’s playful. deflection, maybe. a bell jar over their conversation, like the glass between so much of them.

everything inside the madhouse is lost in short-term memory when the long-term lies before him ( and for so long ), and he doesn’t dare touch past the hazy outlines of everything, just in case the madness follows him here. they’ve been to countless parties before, but never like this: around people they haven’t known for years, in a place both of them have come to escape the one place they always find themselves returning to. there’s a slow kind of burn, and he attributes the gradual rise in temperature to previous shenanigans and wildness, and thinks that everything that swims in his vision can be fixed if he calms down enough.

being around her does everything, all at once, and he finds himself smiling, finds his heart aching less, his lungs expanding to give it room to give.

suddenly he’s conscious about his hair, and tries to brush it back, even when he laughs, and hopes that the expression on his face is more put-together than the mess he’s become. “i hope the scheming is going well,” he tells her in good faith, bowing his head as if to acknowledge the power people might not have acknowledged today; it’s the least he can do.