#-- august

location: MILF

Knowing that if the better part of a week had passed and Lia didn’t show her face in the shop front to fill the near addictive habit of the same deliciously satisfying gyros twice weekly, the guys she’d known for years would be calling to check and see if she was okay. The only real explanation for her not being seen so regularly had to be that she was sick -- not that she worked doubles and sometimes forgot that eating was a necessary bodily function. Tonight, however, the uncontrollable twist of her stomach was impossible to ignore and with absolutely no intention of cooking, she’d set herself up for the night and perhaps even, if a regularly scheduled 2 am snack didn’t get the better of her, lunch for the next day too. The take out tucked safely in the bag she held, the overly warm goodbye she received enough to keep her distracted a moment too long. Her own wholehearted goodbye, blown kiss and all as she stepped out into the street - backwards and definitely not looking until features that wouldn’t so easily fade from lingering memory pieced together in reality and the bag slipped from her hands to the sidewalk below.  It’s the inner turmoil that does it, the impending decision she has to make between being angry and being collected that always pushes her a little closer to the edge. Teeth that bite into the inside of her cheek searching to pull metallic into her mouth -- to pool blood against her tongue and feel the inward wince of pain that would give her a moment longer to decide. Only, perhaps her heart has stopped, faced with everything she’d once held within the warm palm of her hand, now ice cold in her chest. In what might very well have been the first instance of her whole life, the state of her food is forgotten as she steps right over it, reaching to curl lithe fingers around his jaw as she looks him over, “Huh..” Brows knit together in contemplation, the roughness of her touch a little more purposeful than she’d like to admit, “Would you look at that,” spoken, mostly to herself. Fingers let go with gentle force coated in ire disbelief. “You are alive.” It’s impossible not to feel it, the twisting in her chest that feels worse than the previous notion of starving, better to have dwindled away on such an ache than the contorted, torn pieces of her heart trying to find enough string to tie itself back together, but she cant tell him that. She can’t tell him anything, because she’s so unfathomably aware that this is her fault, that he ran because of her. Instead, she swallows thickly, a tirade of empty words settling on her tongue and embedding themselves in flesh to further pave the way for the only thing she can really manage anymore. Dire hatred. “---- Fuck you, August.”

“Strictly speaking, nobody, but in a place like this that’s just unrealistic. Theo, Atlas and my brother. If any of them were hurt, whoever did it would want to hope they had the Gods on their side.” @atlasxrose @jaguarsandoval @augustgaines

“That’s a complicated question with multiple complicated answers. I don’t think being with me is good for August. Unpredictability is the last thing he needs in his life and everything between us is so fueled with.. everything that happened that, I’m not sure either of us will ever be whole enough again to be together. There’s been so many things left unsaid between us, as much as I love him and undoubtedly always will, I don’t think it’s my decision to make anymore, even if my answer will always be yes.”