All the while sipping her cuppa Joe. Speak of the devil.

❝Poster child for growing and letting go,❞ Booker scoffs under his breath when he means to laugh.

Conversely, he hasn’t seen Andy die of a broken heart yet. Maybe 'cause it happened before him. Or maybe she just doesn’t have any left. These are both ways she’d like to bullshit him, he has to tell himself.

The mark moves and with her, Booker’s aviators.

❝I won fair and square, right under God’s nose.❞ That someone’s husband won’t see that is an old age problem, but sure as shit not Booker’s. ❝Take it up with Him.❞

Not my name.

❝Every night.❞

A cottage for what, huh. To be lonely in?

— No, no, no. Digging graves for anyone but himself. Anaïs. Jean-Pierre. Alain he wasn’t there for. Léon he couldn’t bury for the grief.

But bothering with a piece of shit’s send-off, that’s all Nicky.

He’ll shoot up salting the earth, shovel at the ready. Special rules. Makes him feel better, Booker wagers, when he’s exacting his own justice.

None of that, though, the ugly moment Joe takes his sweet time waking up. Down in Rieux-Volvestre, it had Nicky mad-eyed with the ancient rampage stuffed down the slim-necked genie bottle of his body. All morning, in denial. One wrong rub and he’d spill. He shoved two fingers into the mountainous forehead of his dear god looming over Joe’s body and flicked.

Booker saw another waiting crack in the ground then. But that one, he couldn’t. Would not. By the time Joe made it back, Booker had been wine-tasting his touristy way up North where his roots had rheumatized into a beast of the present as abstract as thoughts of Joe.

After, they wouldn’t hear from him for months on end.

He still has the bullet he would’ve tried his best with, round-nose. He would’ve put it in his mouth in the bathroom behind the shower curtain at the tried-and-true angle. You never know. Might get lucky.

❝For how many nights?❞

How many more?

where do you hold your love? . . . in your teeth. love has uneven edges but it is something you sink your teeth into. with love you give all of yourself over and feel everything as it happens- good and bad. for you love can be a fight, whether it's hard won or hard lost (or hard to hold on to), love has a way of leaving it's impression in your skin. it's not that it hurts, it's just that it knows your tender spots and seems to hit those first.

jude baker, 17, they/them. high school level gymnist champion. very flexible and limber. sarcastic as hell, thinks everyone in the karate war is stupid until their little brother starts getting picked on. joins miyagi do but learns some eagle fang to balance out their skills.

booker kelley, 17, they/them. learned martial arts from their dad, but stopped and decided they’d never use it again once their dad passed away. is forced to use their skills to defend themselves, and one of eagle fang sees them and asks them to join. dry sense of humor, introverted and relaxed, very into meditation.

Nile’s earnestness is embarrassingly hard to come by. Easier, because of that same thing, to want to challenge her on it. Booker knows better.

It’s not as simple as saying Anaïs’s name. He’ll never give that to anyone. There are still cheaper shots by far to take at himself, but with all his unlearning, this confusing place without defense or proper attack, he ends up almost— shy. 

Never thought he’d see the day.

❝Sometimes,❞  he half-asks.  ❝Less when I just let it.❞ 

Good enough for him.