#emo time

Siobhan wanted to feel Xóchitl. When she pulled Xóchitl’s shirt off—breath caught in her dry throat over the taunt lines of Xóchitl’s body, yes, but also for the forest green bra underneath—and when she pressed her wanting mouth to the lace, her own hands had already begun unbuttoning her blouse. It was foolish; the glamours weren’t holding, Siobhan liked control, couldn’t stand being touched and if she were ever to learn to like it again, it certainly wouldn’t be a human that brought it out. And yet, she had taken it off. She had taken it all off. 

She had to admit, the press of her cool, bare skin to the hot, flushed body of someone underneath her was something she missed. That it was Xóchitl of all people brought her a smug delight. She hadn’t expected the woman to show up at the hotel, and now she imagined that they were both very glad that she had. By some miracle, the glamour held as time sweated and moaned by. She pressed another kiss to Xóchitl’s neck, far more gentle than any she had given, and untied her hands from the bedpost. Siobhan massaged the red line across Xóchitl’s wrist, pressing a kiss to her palm. She rolled off of Xóchitl, her wrist still held tenderly in one hand, and propped herself on her elbow as she looked at around the hotel room: their clothes crumpled on the ground, furniture in disarray, the leggings she had torn off Xóchitl in shreds over the lamp. Slowly, she dragged her attention back to Xóchitl.

Siobhan was smug, she couldn’t help it. There was nothing like a good shag to do wonders to the ego. There was nothing like knowing the exact effect she could have on someone—pleasureable, for once—and every sound and twitch she could elicit. All mine. She pressed a kiss to the inside of Xóchitl’s wrist, tender despite everything. “How are you feeling?” she asked. She was being too nice but that was another thing she couldn’t help: sex tended to make her squishy. “I have to admit, I didn’t think you’d come tonight,” she said, tracing a line down Xóchitl’s radial artery. “Given our history.”

—

She knew this was a mistake. It wasn’t even one of those mistakes that she realized after the fact. Xóchitl had gone into this understanding just how intense of a mistake all of this was. But it didn’t matter. She knew that she could have a good time if only physicality and no feelings were involved with Siobhan. Plus, she knew Siobhan didn’t think highly of humans and so to be able to do things to her that showed just how much she could be satisfied by humans was its own sort of win against all of the nonsense that people like Siobhan were. It wasn’t an overall success, but it made her feel something, and that was all that really mattered to her right now.

When she’d arrived at the hotel and made her way up to the room, she knew that neither of them had necessarily expected the other to actually be there. Moments of fallen poker faces were quickly replaced with hungry grins and hungrier hands that rid each other of their clothes, and Siobhan’s quickly tied Xóchitl’s against the bed. She knew she was vulnerable here, but she found great pleasure in it, and even if that was giving something of a win to Siobhan, Xóchitl was taking plenty of wins for herself. Finally, the other woman untied Xóchitl’s wrists and the kiss that followed on the palm of her hand was so tender and gentle that it nearly made her recoil, except it made her nearly melt against Siobhan’s touch. She wasn’t dead, but she was cold and there was an undeniable comfort that Xóchitl felt with that. When Siobhan’s gaze found its way back to her, she basked in it, in the sort of cold sunlight it provided her. 

Another kiss found its way to her wrist and Xóchitl didn’t think that she should be faulted for the pleasured sound that escaped once again from her lips. She couldn’t help it, and it was just a natural response. She was thrilled with the responses that she’d gotten from Siobhan just moments ago – that despite it all, despite what she might have expected or assumed, she still had some amount of control over the other woman. She took far more pleasure in this than she should have, but where were the rules about how much pleasure one could take from falling into bed with someone who you considered an enemy? There weren’t rules, and there was something entirely more appealing about all of this.

“I’m feeling… good, actually.” It had taken her a moment to decide on whether or not she should use that word, but it was true and since she was already well and good under Siobhan’s influence and had undeniably had an enjoyable time, she didn’t bother lying. There was something about lying together that made her feel both vulnerable and safe all at once. “I didn’t think you’d show up tonight either.” She looked up at Siobhan. “For the same reasons.”

—

“Good,” Siobhan repeated, enjoying the taste of the syllables. The inside of her body swam with warmth. She pressed her lips to the curve of Xóchitl’s collarbone and then settled her head down against the beat of her heart. So human. All that blood pumping inside her skin, under the bones. She knew exactly what it would take to stop it. She could do it right then. Siobhan lifted her cold fingers and pressed the tip of her middle finger to the inside of Xóchitl’s elbow. She traced the swell and curve up and up, like the whisper of a feather. Up and up until she found the pulse at Xóchitl’s throat. She pressed two fingers down gently, feeling the throb brush her fingertips. “Good,” she repeated again; she liked the flavour of the word.

She tilted her head up, admiring the dip of Xóchitl’s jaw. She drew her fingers away, setting them against her own lips. “Does it bother you to lay with a monster?” she asked slowly. “Was this out of self-pity, boredom, or both?” She couldn’t imagine it was hatred—whatever Xóchitl claimed to feel about fae, it was hard to lay underneath something you loathed. Harder still to let that thing tie you up… though, Siobhan didn’t doubt the power horniness had over humans. Though certainly Xóchitl couldn’t have had any issues satisfying that bodily demand; was sex with Siobhan really worth whatever turmoil it caused? And for all Siobhan claimed about her own perfection, she was woefully aware of the truth: she wasn’t worth it. 

Sex always made her painfully honest, even inside her own head; it could make her drop her guard, and with magic what it is…  

Siobhan didn’t notice that her glamour had slipped—starting at her legs for now—a tapestry of scars poking out over her once-perfect skin. What she noticed was a faint tickle along her calves, which she ignored. Her attention remained on the human. 

—

She let her chest rise and fall, trying her best not to think about how good and comfortable it felt with Siobhan’s head against it. Xóchitl had made it a point of her personality (perhaps more than even she’d intended) to loathe fae, and to loathe Siobhan in specific (after all, she was the reason Xóchitl had answers to what had killed Mackenzie, and that was both exactly what she wanted and everything she didn’t want. Those two wants didn’t work together, but that didn’t mean that she felt a need for either of them any less. Siobhan’s fingers were cold against her throat and she tried, again, to not think about how comforting the chill was. Siobhan wasn’t dead, but she was connected to death somehow, and maybe that was why she was so cold.

Maybe people connected to death were what fit best into Xóchitl’s world. She wasn’t as entwined with death as Siobhan or Metzli or Mateo were, but all the same, death had found her when she was young and had its own firm grasp on her ever since. No matter what anyone else said. She and death were playmates – after all, didn’t you find your playmates on the playground? And that was where Death had first found her.

Siobhan’s fingers moved away and without trying, Xóchitl felt her body trying to follow them. “No.” She found herself answering honestly. “Desire.” Again, more honest than she would have liked to be but for all that Siobhan made her feel fiery with anger, Siobhan also was someone who she couldn’t help but be honest with. It was a character flaw, surely, but she hadn’t exactly done much to stop it.

She took in Siobhan’s body, eyes narrowing out of confusion for a moment. “Are you alright?” She motioned down to the woman’s legs. “I didn’t think we got – and those look healed…”

—

“Desire,” Siobhan repeated, she liked that word too. It had pleasurable weight to it, like two fingers pressing down on her tongue; it made her teeth feel sharp. She held it, for a moment, until she followed Xóchitl’s narrowing gaze. She jumped up and her glamour withered at once. She scrambled away, her blood cold and her hands quivering. She felt bare, which was odd because she was already naked. It was different like this: no one had ever seen the grotesque way her body had healed from her exile. Her skin was a nest of scars, ranging from short to long, hypertrophic to contracture (the two scars down her back, at the edges where her mother had torn flesh, had healed over like a web). 

Siobhan knew how she looked, she was keenly aware of it at all moments. She had stared long at herself, poking, proding, hating. Once, she tried to remember the origin of each line. Was that the stone that Caoimhe had thrown or was that one Aisling’s knife? Siobhan didn’t look fae; not even with the darkened fingertips and veins of a banshee. She hardly looked like anything at all. Her body, which had been hers for sixty-five years, was unrecognizable to her. Who was the woman hissing and cursing, trembling as she searched the ground for her rumpled clothes? Not Siobhan Dolan, beloved daughter of Fate. 

She found her pants and pulled them on. Her panties were somewhere else—fuck them. They were probably unsalvageable anyway. Siobhan couldn’t look at Xóchitl, so she didn’t. What she hated most of all about her body was its obviousness: it only took one look at her to understand that something terrible had been done. One scar might carry a story. What did hundreds say? They might as well open their raised-skin lips and scream. And that it was Xóchitl, of all people, looking at her. 

“Look away!” she warned, though she sensed that was about as useful as telling Xóchitl to stop breathing. She grabbed Xóchitl’s shirt, giving up on the search for her own. Her fingers, trembling like cornered animals, couldn’t fasten a single button. “Look away,” she repeated; there was a rupture in her voice that split the words into a frightened rush. She blinked and a tear fell. Pathetic. What reason was there to cry? This body was obviously not Siobhan; she would never be so weak.  

—

“Desire.” She echoed back, again. She wasn’t sure why she echoed it, though she felt the same way. Being an echo chamber was easier than being anything else, sometimes. She was angry, and it was easier to be angry at someone than to sit with it. Siobhan was easy to be angry with, even if not everything that Xóchitl felt toward her was entirely fair (even she could admit that), but it worked and it felt better than being angry at an eight-year-old who hadn’t even been alive in two decades.

She couldn’t look away. This time, her lack of following direction wasn’t a result of her desire to infuriate Siobhan. If anything, right now, she felt a certain sort of sympathy for the other woman. Not one she would dare vocalize now – or even ever, perhaps. She could hear the other woman’s voice breaking and Xóchitl moved toward her, not even entirely in control of her own body. Xóchitl shifted on the bed. “Come, sit down.” It was almost a command, but it was stated more flippantly than she intended. “Besides, what am I supposed to wear, given that you’ve stolen my shirt and all?” She lay back against the bedspread, finally giving into Siobhan’s wishes and staring up at the ceiling instead of at her companion’s body. “I’ve – fuck.” She closed her eyes, hand pressed over them as if to make extra certain that they were closed, and let out a sigh – one closer to sorrow this time, versus the many ones of contentment that had crossed her lips earlier. “Forget it.”

—

Attired—grotesquery hidden behind rumpled layers of clothing—Siobhan, with her heart swollen inside her throat, sighed. She looked at herself in the mirror hanging beside the bed: ink-veined and dark-eyed as any banshee, if those banshees also had skewed, wrinkled clothing and sex-ruffled hair. She ought to be worried about going out like this—except she had no wings, and all of her being could be explained as make-up or a costume. All of Siobhan could be tossed aside: her identity, her appearance, her being reduced to a trifle. The scars on her face were limited, but she ran her fingers over the one on her lip. She’d gotten that one when she was thrown to the ground, her tooth tearing through her own flesh. 

Fae were fast healers. What did it take to make one scar? How bad did it have to be? Siobhan didn’t know; if her own blood had not blinded her, then the pain would’ve. It was not a time in her life that she lingered on—at her age, memories were a forest. This tree with its neon red bark, wailing in the wind, was a stain in her periphery. It crept at her from the corner, but she wouldn’t look at it. Knowing where it was was enough to stir the breeze, which carried the leaves, which reminded her over and over again what she was: defiled. In the mirror, she watched Xóchitl cover her eyes. She turned and smiled at her; the gesture was kind. Pointless, as most kindnesses were, but kind nonetheless. She wiped the tear at her cheek. 

Siobhan would like to be the cat, the hawk, the fox, the full-bellied predator atop its throne in the trees bearing witness to the scampering prey below; she wanted to be the creature that picked chunks of gore from under her nails, contemplating not the next meal—she’d be too full for that, and meals were so common, she spared them not a single thought—but the ways she would fill her hours. She wanted the fae concerns of entertainment. Tonight, do we behead the humans or make them dance over the fire? She wanted to be home. She could never go home. Home did not want her. 

This woman—human, pathetic—wanted her. This was what she had to claim: a kind woman, shielding her eyes. How might she fill her hours? With wine and sex, it seemed. Common things. Human things. 

“You may look,” Siobhan said, calmer now for being clothed. “I will not be sitting. I will not be staying. I don’t care what you dress yourself in; wear the bedsheets for all it matters.” Siobhan stood at the foot of the bed, any lingering affection was wrung out of her expression and voice. “Speak of nothing you saw. Speak of it to no one. In fact, do your sniveling best to forget it.” This was better: this impassive vision of Death was Siobhan Dolan after all. 

—  

She’d never gone through a phase where she’d hated what she looked like. At least not outwardly. But of course Xóchitl had hated getting older – not so much for the sake of her looks as for the sake of what it all meant. Everything that it had meant, none of which was something she liked to think about. Seeing Siobhan ashamed was weird – not that people like her didn’t feel shame (in fact, Xóchitl wished people like her (that was, fae) would feel shame more often, but when it was laid out like this, so literally naked, even she didn’t feel good about it (and then, of course, didn’t feel good about not feeling good about it), but the shame seemed so foreign to her in nearly every way possible that it made Xóchitl want to itch and crawl out of her skin. Almost. Because it was also comfortable, and nothing about Siobhan was supposed to be comfortable, even though at first, nearly everything had been.

Xóchitl was still learning many things about fae – and though they seemed to be magic (or at least closer to magic than humans were), it was interesting that they could still scar. The ember in her chest flared at that – because what if those scars were times when a human would have died. Under which circumstances a human would have died. That, at least for a few moments, turned her feelings back into disgust, but it was still fleeting. She should have been angriest with Siobhan, second only to the leprechauns who’d killed Mackenzie. But she wasn’t. Not entirely. But she couldn’t fully explore that thought trail right now. Even if her ever-present curiosity called out to her, poking and prodding her in ways she found nearly impossible to ignore.

You may look. So she did. Siobhan, wearing her shirt, which would have been endearing under most circumstances.

She hated how it still was endearing. The woman who she hated the most in town but couldn’t entirely hate. Who she still felt herself drawn too, almost magnetically.

“Fuck you.” She spat out, except that there was a certain gentleness to her voice. Sex made her softer, tore her open and let everything be laid bare. “I’m not very good at forgetting.” She sniffed. “You know that.” She wrapped some sheets around her, finally. Maybe she’d call someone to drop off some clothes.

Xóchitl knew she wouldn’t do that.

She still had a sweater, somewhere. Maybe? “But fine. Just – don’t speak of this.” An errant tear fell from her eye. “This never – well. You don’t like humans. I don’t like fae.” She pressed her lips together. “So that makes sense.”

—

“Good girl,” Siobhan sneered. Her fingers twitched as she watched a tear roll down Xóchitl’s cheek. She took one step forward before she remembered herself. Adjusting the collar of her—Xóchitl’s—shirt, she turned and walked towards the door. There were many things she could have said: that she’d enjoyed her time, that she wanted to do it again, that she was certain she’d see Xóchitl once more and again in this way because the woman had a pitiable appetite. Her hand curled against the doorknob. She owed the human nothing and, quite honestly, was degrading herself by being here. 

As a fae, her standards ought to be a little higher. Siobhan opened the door and paused again, as if her body knew something her mind did not; as if there were words she wanted, but couldn’t pull up. No, she didn’t care for that sobbing human. Not at all, in fact. She was unperturbed by the flagrant display of wet, disgusting emotion. She took one step slowly, like wading through thick swamp waters. She didn’t care; as a fae, that was natural. As a fae, she would not turn around and offer any comforts. As a fae, she would say nothing to the effect of “thank you”. As a fae, she was so much better than all of this. 

But as a woman, scarred—as a fae, wingless—she was more human with every shameful day squeezed out of her life. Which was to say: she was more pathetic, useless. Siobhan was hardly better than the carpeting, let alone Xóchitl herself. She took another slow step and then released the door, which shut unceremoniously behind her, blocking any attempts she might make at a comfort that could only ever feel hollow because it was coming from a hollow woman. She could be better again, exist in the highest order as any fae did. She could, couldn’t she?

Siobhan walked away, forcing her nose a little higher to the sky. All she had to do was wring out her flaws, the little fungal weaknesses which had grown in the years of her exile—which persisted still, she reminded herself. She was, very technically speaking, still in exile; it was only that this exile she had claimed, you see. This exile was her own doing, unlike the first one, which was also  due to her actions. This was different, because she was accepting it. There was no home, she could say it in her head. There is no home. There is no home. She knew that, she breathed it in like microscopic shards of glass, dancing in her lungs. There is no home. There is no going back.