#c:romy

@romyhunt

“Romy,” it was an oddly sullen greeting, despite the energy in the air; the bodies moving around them, glowing paint spreading from one to another - Viktor had reached forward, left a streak of neon pink across her cheek with the swipe of a thumb, just because he could. The week had worn him down - skin and bones, practically, but he still managed a smirk, anyways - leaning down so she could hear him better, “Wanna go do a fucking - line with me? Heard even the bathroom’s got fucking, blacklight in it - fucking, disgusting. Could be interesting.”

They’d spent most of the night in the town’s sole country bar, which Len hated but he and Sydney adored, drinking foamy beers and shouting the words to twangy ballads from below the Mason-Dixon line, watching as the mechanical bull threw off one drunken rider after another and the crowd hooted and hollered like spectators at a real rodeo. When the girls finally climbed into an Uber, Marlowe had waved his invisible hankerchief at the black Lexus pulling away from the curb, then made his way down the sidewalk alone, whistling three chords of a country song now stuck in his head. Sleep was too far away for him yet; the night was alive with possibility, the moonlight diffuse through the clouds. The beer warmed him from within, so he felt no cold in the embroidered Western shirt that he wore without a jacket, most of the buttons undone. And he was hungry. This is how he came to find himself outside EMILIO’S PIZZERIA, lured by the neon sign which promised late hours and two-dollar slices bathed in the glow of heat lamps, just like the ones used to keep lizards warm. His easy, loping stride took him all the way up to door, which he pushed on expecting the familiar chime as it swung open— except it didn’t budge. Marlowe blinked in confusion. Then he noticed the sign behind the glass, mysteriously flipped to CLOSED. 

“D’you want a tangerine?” dazed eyes flicker towards Romy, legs draped over another’s; an Amsterdam native whose current fascinations laid with the clouds above them, “they’re spiked,” she adds, after a moment, fingers digging into the rind and peeling off a segment of skin, “it’s really, like, cool actually. Y’just get, like, a syringe or needle or whatever? And you just inject ‘em, like human skin. Learned it in high school, ‘cos, like, y’know, tricks and all that. Not like I needed to smuggle ‘em in, but like...it just makes it funner, y’know?”