#maggieswrite

Amir frowns like they can hear that thought. More likely they can smell it- you see them tilt their head just so, a not-so-subtle sweep to take stock of your injuries. Their carefully neutral expression crumbles at the flaking trail on your foot, pass the hem of your sleep pants. You see the dots connect like chains of lightning behind their yellow eyes, zipping rapidly through dread and condemnation and right into pity.

Not that you deserve it. Especially knowing what you’re going to do.

“Oh, azizam. Kim.” They open their mouth, but nothing else comes out. At last they reach across the kitchen counter and rest their hand by your wrist, just so, just shy of touching as always- no use burying you further in whatever pit you’ve submerged yourself in. The warmth of their palm is radiant, and for one moment it is almost enough.

Amir gets out of their chair. Mechanically, giving you time to weigh your options. The time it takes them to round the counter lets you twist away, facing them, always facing the threat, pushing the stool so it stands between them and you like a warning. They falter, hesitant, and finally settle back down. Closer. Stiffer.

“Can I stay here with you then?” They whisper. Soft-voiced, warm with concern. You hate that you’re gonna have to break it, gonna have to drag the shattered ceramic shards of ten hours ago back to the forefront of their mind.

The thought brings you back. To Bautista, sleeping off her own dose of painkillers in bed. Much more than what you’re willing to put up with. She has insisted- no, not insisted, she’s too soft for you to do that. No, she has hovered, and grimaced, and dug her feet in stubbornly until you folded yourself in her arms and let her pull you chest-to-chest. Amir at the back, looping their arm over your waist, kissing your ear absently. Stinking of iodine and fresh gauze.

None of you should have walked out of that alive. You know that. You also know it was sheer dumb luck that the anomaly bled out before you did, with its claws stuck in your thigh. How close was it to tearing your artery open?

Amir looks like they know. They haven’t been able to get rid of that look, the haunting one that screams blind prayers and volatile gratitude. Shaky, because it was close. You walk away once more but it is different now. Because you let them trace the outline of your nanomesh sleeve with their little finger. Because you let them-

There is more to lose here. More feelings to empty to the yawning void if you had struggled just that bit longer. Bleed yourself dry beneath the carcass.

so tight can’t breathe lungs spine flattening where help just you help ground into dirt help blood down your throat please must free must break snares-

A noise in the background draws you out. Amir? You aren’t sure. You let go of the memory, turning your hand palm-up, an invitation. They leap at the chance, lacing their fingers through yours and holding on. It feels like a mistake- it is a mistake. But you are too hurt to deny yourself the small mercies, no matter how underhanded.

“We need to talk.” You start, snuffing out the budding warmth you can feel behind their smile. They know what this voice entails, the slow, measured one, careful without meaning to. Their back straightens, eyes alert- but they do not push, content to let you play with the tips of their fingers, gathering your thoughts. Buying yourself time.

Time to do the thing you do best.

“You got distracted.” A flinch. Not enough to tear them from you, but close. It is just like you to go right for the jugular. You are not looking at them now but looking at their hand, smooth tawny skin soft against yours despite. Despite the- You shake your head. Hold on tighter. 

“You let me go because she was screaming.”

Blood thrums beneath the surface. Good. You move your finger to the vein on the back of their hand, a blue-green snake draping across delicate bones. It is only fair that you feel the thunders of their pulse as they are undoubtedly listening to yours.

“I’m not wrong.” You say when the silence holds. Too long.

“So that is what this is about?” Their voice is calm. Cultivated. A step back from the flutter of worry moments before, but no harder for it. Hurt, but nowhere near enough to push, to snap. A marble statue against your barbed attacks. “Are you mad that I got her first?”

“Of course not.” There’s no trick you know, no softening voices or lowered glances that can pry you open enough for the honesty to tumble out, plain for them to see. If you try you are a fraud; if you don’t, you’re a coward. It is hard to decide which is worse, or if they are just one nail among many in your bed at this point.

“What is it, then?”

“You were distracted. Are distracted.”

Pride crashes headfirst into compassion. A willingness to hear you out. To listen. That argues there has to be a reason behind this, the hurt, the wounding, because you are you and you would never do this. Attack for no reason.

(Says a lot about what they know.)

“You can’t fucking save everything, Amir.”

“I didn’t try to.” They let slip. Grimace at the defensive tone. “Just Mari and you, Kim”

You don’t acknowledge that, just scrub at your face with one hand. The other is still held fast by them. “And then it got you, too.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“You do.” The snarl fits over you like a second skin. But loose. Wrong. It slips whenever you so much as breathe, and what’s beneath is even worse than simple cruelty. You drag your forearm across your eyes, revel in the familiar rasp. Will it to focus. “You know exactly what I meant.”

Amir pulls their hand away. The tug feels more like a slap, and you guess you deserve that; they wrap it around their mug, blowing at nonexistent smokes. What hasn’t cooled already has been chilled by the dropping temperature between the two of you.

“I know I am infallible.” They mutter at last. Blinking slowly, deliberately, features sharpening. Wrinkles you don’t normally see surfacing, allies or proofs of the battle against an all-out reaction. “I never thought of myself as much. If I make you think so, then I-”

“For fuck’s sake, Amir.”

“You gotta tell me what’s bothering you, azizam.” They snap. Sharp. Pushing back. Finally. “Don’t curse at me when I have to infer what you mean.”

“That’s precisely your problem. You try to be everywhere at once- you thought you can intimidate the nasty fucks into running, but then every time a new one rears its head you’re there trying to gouge its eyes out-”

“Should I not have done that? I’m a hunter. My job is to be in the field.”

Your job is to stay behind. Old arguments surfacing, blows glancing off the metal sheet barricading your weak points. A helping hand that turned into suffocating restraint, incessant one-sided fights that wear down even hard bones. Are you remembering the car with the blue dice or the flower-patterned room with the chair? Hard to say. Hard to summon anything but bitter bile at the back of your throat and the blooming bruise in your chest.

Ah, not a bruise. Bruises don’t pull at skin until it rends, off-white and slick. Words slip from you like shredded fog, their aftertaste ringing. This is deteriorating faster than you anticipated.

“You need to focus!” Thoughts and sounds crash together, melding, echoing back and forth until you don’t know what is spoken and what is not anymore. “You can’t just- tear yourself apart, trying to get to everything. You’re too greedy.”

“Then what do you suggest I do then?” Amir’s voice is a clap of thunder, slipped through clenched teeth. Fury elbowing its way out behind the exhausted veneer.

God, and this is the worst part. It is also the only part that makes sense, the most natural conclusion. You can’t see how else to do this.

“I’m saying you can’t pick and choose. And if- if you have to pick, you have to pick her. Don’t waste everyone’s fucking time.” A breath, and you’re off, now. “I mean it. Take this as insurance, we can’t have you losing your head out there like this again. Permission, consent, whatever, I’m giving it up to you. I want you to. You need to prioritize better, and this way-“ And then you make the mistake of looking up.

Whatever fire simmering in their throat has burst, roaring in its intensity, setting the buttercup yellow of their gaze ablaze. Nostrils flaring, their lips pulled back, almost-human teeth gnashing. Cradling behind them a sound like wild wolves’ warning, hold it back the way one holds a chainsaw that’s gone haywire. Instinctual, animal fear seizes you by the scruff, a chilling knee-jerk reaction to cower, to hide, pulling your shoulders to your ears. You claw that back tooth and nail, squaring up under the palpable waves of their anger, more aware than ever that even wounded, even behind the kitchen counter, they are no less a predator to you.

“So that’s what this is about,” Amir grits. Their knuckles crack around the marble lip of the counter. “How could you say that? What the fuck, Kim?”

How could you? How could they? The howling void always at the back of your mind rises to the challenge, flooding your limbs, your chest, a red monsoon devouring everything. You throw up your hands, and when that doesn’t make you feel any better, bury them into your hair, stopping yourself from something unfortunate. Like slamming them into hard marble or knocking the mugs clean off.

“Look at yourself!” You hiss. “How many times have you got your ass handed back to you this bad?”

“Enough! I’m not invincible, but I can-”

“That’s the whole point!”

“I try my best, alright?” 

They tear their eyes away. Like they can’t bear to look at you, look down at you- when did you both stand up? On level ground your leverage chips off even further. Their shoulder in your face feels even worse than their loss of control, rejection and dismissal making your skin break out in goosebumps. Your throat wells over with apologies or pleas to just Please, look at me but you can’t bend now, can’t afford to gut yourself so deep as to admit defeat. Ego swollen like a parasite in your ribs, blocking airways, stealing rational thoughts.

“Try harder!” You pull the shivering thing inside you out to the world, shattering it into a million pieces against your mouth. Even as you let the pieces out, plucking them from behind your molars like spit-wet dream-teeth, a part of your sobs for you to stop. “You can’t even protect us! You can’t protect yourself! Nazeri-”

It is the warbling of the word that catches you by surprise. A wet, brittle No thrown between you, much less an attack than a cry for mercy, and it strikes you as sure as a clawed hand to the chest. You watch their red-lined eyes watering and feel yours rapidly plunging after the same chasm. Moth after sunlamps. You’ve never seen Amir cry, never been able to make them do anything they themself feel no need to. 

Were there tears when they finally pulled you from the meaty coffin crushing you into the mud? Were there tears before that, when the thing buried its claw into the flesh of their stomach and ripped?

You don’t see how they react when the first sob punctures you and writhes its way out. Your arms are already up, hands in fists, a futile bid against unseen assailants. But you’re the only one here. 

You curl into your chest to hide the sobs, but they must know, surely they must. The bottom of your stomach drops out beneath you, and so do your legs. You feel too much to fight gravity for whatever shred of dignity you have left so you surrender, crawling until you are flushed against the cool fridge, scrubbing at your face. Every part of you the salt marks feels like a dead zone, going bright and unignorable in your mind. You rub at them until they chafe, until you forget what wetness feels like and then relearn them anew. You hope it’s blood smearing on your face. You hope you have torn something open to echo the rift in your chest.

You’re dimly aware of Amir dropping to their knees in front of you. The thought of them only twists you deeper, tearing a protest from your locked jaws; for one moment, one fleeting, stupid moment, you are ready to scream for Bautista. But you have enough of yourself still- you have enough in your head still to know there would be no going back after that. That would have been too low a blow, even for Amir.

“Azizam, I’m sorry.” They try to place their palm over your ankle. You can tell by the nearing warmth of their body, pressing against you in all the wrong way; you bite back a shriek but you’re not quick enough, so you gather yourself up tighter, smaller, and their warmth settles somewhere in the vicinity of your foot. “Moosh moosh am, please, I’m so sorry.”

Why should they be? You’re the one who picked the battle, pulled the trigger. Bleeding in a different way. The sounds of your lungs constricting quiver in the air, like moans, plunging you deeper into blind hysterics. If you make noise Bautista will investigate, and what if she has been listening in this whole time, what if she’s going to see too and you’re too raw too bruised too large still in this worthless body, crawling with nothing but beetles and fire ants

“I can’t,” Amir says, distantly, somewhere a million miles above, “I can’t leave you like this. I’m sorry, come back to me. I’m so sorry.”

Wet. Your leg is wet, is your wound weeping- but it is not, it’s Amir crying above you, big fat tears shaken loose from their trembling chin, freefalling towards you. They flutter, unsure where to hold, unable to settle between your violence and the need to comfort. A bloodless war, no more merciful for it. You peel your sleeve down from the top, exposing the meat of your inner arm; the raw noise they muffle against their hand makes your teeth itch. No breath is deep enough to quell the urge, diaphragm quivering making you light-headed, but by some miracle you only press your face in familiar tender warmth there and weep. Leathery scars drag across your lips tauntingly. Your mouth fits every single one of them.

It hurts so bad you want to throw up. Breathing. Like being strapped to a seat on a derailed train, careening towards oblivion. Worse than even the gouges in your leg, the memory of the monster’s full weight bearing down on you. Time jump-starts every time a hiccup is wrenched from your trachea, the only point of reference your syrupy thoughts retain. It could have been minutes or hours since your last pitiful squeak and you are none the wiser. You just want to sink into yourself. More noises, a perfume you know well. Breathing deep, claws in your ribs. Tiled ground doesn’t separate itself from the pit of wool you’re in and you’re still not sure what’s up or down but at least you know the shell of your body.

“Good girl,” Amir croaks. Their relief bleeds through their disembodied voice like too-sharp sunlight after a bottle of whiskey. “That’s good, just- come back to me. I have you.”

The hiccup catches on a hard-earned breath, too rough on your softened stomach. You’re broiling from inside out. Lab rat in a running microwave.

“Good girl.” They repeat, shakily. “I’m so sorry.”

“Stop fucking saying that.” Was that you who spoke? It doesn’t feel like you. Your face is numb and spasming, chafed pink from brutal scrubbing. You are not sure you’re in the right body. “Stop, just- stop.”

The breath they release matches how you feel. Brittle to the very core. “Okay. Okay, azizam.” Then, “You love her. I know you do. I shouldn’t have pushed. Come back to me.”

They stumble slightly over the first half, like the thought cannibalizes itself in their mouth and spits out something they didn’t mean to. A sickening thought: that this is what they believe. That this is what they hear when they-

Do they not know? You feel new tears building behind your eyes. Don’t they know what you would do?

say it say it speak you piece of shit tell them

“I love you.” Your breath feels too shallow. The confession lands like a punch in the throat, forcing you to swallow. Dry, or you’re going to lose it. Then you do, anyway. “I have nothing to give up, do you hear me? Nothing but this- this,” You scratch at your arms, uncaring if they are covered or not. The parts that aren’t immediately welt up blood red. “I can’t get you out. I can’t do- anything- I cannot watch you go like that. You or her. I have to- I have to let go. You hear me? I have to- You gotta let me go-“

Your teeth click shut abruptly, because Amir. Amir is standing. Pushing away, to their haunches, then their feet, walking away from you. The shock of it is enough to shut you up; through two layers of cotton fluff you taste blood and oh, your teeth have caught your lip. Isn’t that unfortunate. Before you can do something ill-advised (like start crying again, or reaching up and dig into your new wound) they are back, loud, thunderous steps. So unlike their usual feline grace. They drop so hard the thud of their knees zips through you, reverberating. They’re breathing hard, and- they paced? They didn’t leave, they were pacing? You can’t work up the motor control to speak before they push forward, hands flat by your hips, plunging headfirst into your little bubble and-

“You love me?”

You inhale on reflex, sharp, keyed up on the dumb need to jump. Feet off the ground before you can say ‘how high’. When that fact catches up to you you are left floundering, grasping for straws, trying and failing to chase down your tangent of thoughts.

“I- Amir- That is what you chose to focus on?”

Amir throws up their hand, movement choppy and wild. “Of course I’m going to focus on that! I cannot even begin to unpack everything else right now!” Then, an afterthought, “And I’m not entertaining your self-destructive spiel!”

Despite everything an offended squawk bursts out of you. “You fuckin-”

They are close again. “You love me?” And their voice is so bright, teeming endless with hopeful abandon. You’re halfway through a nod when they shake. “No, say it. I want to hear it.”

And, god, you’re not sure if you can. Your guts have hardened into lead again, edges and points poking at you funny, and you don’t know if- If you can- Your teeth are ground tight together, to stop your tingling jaws from clattering. Don’t, don’t hyperventilate. Just will yourself to look at them, and, oh, fuck. You have to. You have to, because you would do anything for them, and. What is carving yourself up like caught game in comparison to the look in their eyes right now?

“I love you.” Your bottom lips wobble, throat deforming around your heart, bastardizing the sounds. Amir doesn’t seem to mind.

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Say it and mean it.” Oh, that is just cruel. They are closer now, not touching, but pushing their way between your lax knees to pin you against the fridge. A predator following the scent of blood. Greedy, so goddamn greedy. “Tell me again, Kim.”

“I love you.” You confess. Wondering how far is too far. If you would drown where they have you pegged, held by nothing but a gaze and hungry pleas. You wonder if you can sink into yourself like this, cresting above the haze in your head only to freefall, spilling everything they want to hear until they deem you worthy. To land. Be caught by hands that are not yours, hands that are fit for more than unmaking.

Amir’s nose brushes yours once, lidded golden eyes widening to take you in. You feel gross, despicable, full of tangy blood and snot, but none of it feels like it matters. Even dirt would seem holy under a devout gaze, and Amir is already on their knees.

“One kiss?” They whisper. “Please?”

God.

You only need to close your eyes; they swoop in and do the rest. Close-lipped, because that’s all you can afford, everything either of you can give up to this moment. Anything more would have choked, so- No, already this burns too bad. You tremble beneath the force of a quiet sob and they swallow it up. You don’t know how they can stomach it. 

Amir nudges, and you yield. Let them pull, tug, replace, overtaking you joint for joint. Gathering you in their lap, brushing half-blind kisses over your face, eyes, shoulders. Hands. Careful over your busted knuckles. Back up again, this time to press your foreheads together. Guiding your breath.

“Fuck, we still need to talk about that stunt you just pulled.” The kiss they can’t help but pressed on your forehead dulls the razor edge, making you feel less flayed than you probably should. Then, “You love me.” Their voice drops into reverence, and you shiver.

You squirm until you can hide beneath the shadow of their jaws. Even as warm as they usually run their skin feels cool on yours now, feverish from panic-induced tantrums. You don’t know what to say that won’t break the delicate balance of being held, so you say nothing, sniffling miserably, trying to block every point of contact you share from your mind. Drowning it beneath the sea of static, willing it to pass over you harmlessly- but even if it doesn’t, even if your body begins caving in on itself from being touched, you don’t think you would let go. You’ve never been smart enough for the gentle alternatives anyway. Maybe you even crave it. The punishment. But they wouldn’t let you bite yourself or claw at your thigh, not here, not cocooned in their arms. Instead they kiss you like it’s the closest to breathing they can get and card their fingers through your hair.

You grow too exhausted to fight yourself eventually.

Amir tightens their arms around you. If they had lifted you then and there you wouldn’t have put up a fight, wouldn’t dare do anything that can shatter the truce. But they don’t; they stick their nose in your hair and breathe deep, once, twice, then slowly draw back. Not enough for it to be a rejection. More like cracking open the door.

“Bed?” Their voice is shot. You give a tiny nod.

Getting to your feet is a slow process. Your leg is numb- they will need to take a look at that, you know. Trace the scars you left again, hardened eyes, playing back everything you said in their head. You’ll cross that bridge when you get there. Your abdomen feels like craft tissues, threatening to collapse under your weight. Somehow you hold, tearing into the hem of your shirt as they get up, wincing. Hand pressed into the sutures on their stomach.

It feels unfair. Like there’s still so much they didn’t hear. But you don’t push.

You guess even your destructive streak has to have a limit.

You are quiet the rest of the way back to your room, with them trailing behind you. As if you can escape to anywhere else. The wooden door is unyielding against your palm, as unyielding as the line of their body when they pull you back and nuzzle into your neck.

You try to say, I’m not going to kill myself tonight, but what comes out is, “I love you.”

They hold onto you tighter. The steadying breath they take feels like shoveling dirt over an open grave, like trying to bury the hundred thousand things wrong with that admission, and a hundred thousand more that just suddenly make sense. 

(Bautista’s hand on your scar comes to mind, the way she said, I’m so fucking scared of you, Kim.)

Gasps don’t suffice so you break down in heaves, and sobs, and squeeze your temples against the dreams. You don’t feel that far from them, five seconds behind yourself, somewhere beneath the fuzzy cotton coils in the mattress and over that quaking body on top. Even when you dig your nails in, even when your hands close around warm, familiar metal.

Slipping the pocket knife from your waistband is second nature at this point. You press the knife against your chest- unopened and enclosed tightly in your palms it doesn’t hurt, but you wish that it does. You wish that you have the guts to put it through your throat and-

The clock is so loud in your head. Everything is loud: the bloodless ring behind your eyes, the shuffling, shoveling dirt; sounds of sleepy, ordinary night and every other in-tact things, slumbering on beneath it.

(but you do not deserve the respite you do not deserve it)

You push hard against your eyes until the colors give out and your vision explodes. Fragments. Sick to the stomach, light-headed, you claw at the bedsheets, twisted all around you. Desperate all of a sudden to be as far away from everything as possible. You land on your knees, stitches pulling, and it’s all you can do not to crumble and curl up on the carpet.

(it hurts more than you you wish you didn’t know this comfort)

You are still holding the knife. In it there is a prayer, a constant loop of make it stop make it stop that you try to press into your eyes, but it isn’t enough, you aren’t enough. Snip, snip, the blade clicks into place and you stare, transfixed, so hungry you want to scream. But screaming brings running, and- no, can’t have that, can’t. Just once. Let it. Make it stop. You curl around yourself and the blade, dreaming again of steel and blood and something real enough to stop you from floating.

If you- if you are quiet, no one can hear you. The clock is glowing but you don’t see it, the dark is rich, and it encompasses. No one can find you here- not you, not Bautista, behind two layers of wooden buffers, and certainly not any of the unwitting civs who share this floor with you. You are utterly alone.

(alone amidst the birches)

With.

A.

Knife.

Make it.

Stop.

Make.

It.

.

.

.

(god, what else is there to say? it never stops, it never just fucking stops)

You do not feel the first. Or the second. They layer, patterned, and you tremble with release, thumb dragging at the edge, blinking through the blooming spots. Beads of red swelling and breaking. It fills you, this visceral glow, this act of pure mindless emptying. So close, so- close enough that one slip can do it. Get the job done. Finish what you didn’t start but should have ended years and years ago. 

How fast can you? 

How. 

Another to appease the prowling hunger. If you are thorough they won’t get the door open in time. They won’t.

Get.

To.

You.

The knife clatters and spins in the corner, loud enough that it should have been gratifying but it isn’t, just more. More blows against your temples. You tear your shirt from your back to throw it over your thigh, stemming. Smothering the unspeakable brightness in your skin. Someone is speaking, have you woken Bautista? No, it’s- it’s you, warbling out words behind your thumb, mouth sanguine with whatever has gotten on your hand. Teeth clamping down bone to bone because it’s better than the. It’s better than.

You almost don’t hear yourself. You certainly don’t feel the sobs in your mouth. 

(god no more no more please no more)

You cannot go back to sleep. You cannot face that chasm again. Sweat stings and you’re shivering from the cold, one wrong thought away from trying to spill over. It’s not enough to cut through the ice in your chest. Nothing feels good enough. Every door is open and you are here but you are not and everything bears down and.

You bend until the stitches on your back strain, bend until your forehead is on your knees, breathing in the scent of sweat and sweet metal. Notes of floral detergent like a noose around your throat, cinching. You know, surer than anything else in your life, that if you would pry loose the sound behind your lips she would come running. If you let yourself be found, she would hunt you down. Pull you out of yourself.

You want Bautista the way splinters want skin and bullets want bodies. Foolish, pathetic grabs for meaning. Shaking, you pull yourself to your knees, then to your feet. Stumbling in the dark, you make your way to the door, pressing your forehead against the wood. Breathing in varnish and paint.

You don’t need her to keep yourself. You don’t need her to feel sane.

In the morning, you will have to hide before she knocks. In the morning, you will be dressed and glued back together, and she wouldn’t have to know about the things that go on in the dark.

Here, and now, you push away from the door. The closet you will ever get. You push away, and backtrack until you find your duffel bag at the foot of the bed. Emptying it over the floor now, shift through its entrails. Find what you’re looking for.

You hold it to your chest. Make your way into the bathroom. Close the door, lock it. No lights, folding yourself into the furthest corner of the tub. Wrong-way, wrong-shaped, knees to your nose, you put the headphone on and hunker down, into yourself, breathing through the clicks in your throat. The song comes on, and fuck, you are sick with how much it calms you. Relief flays you alive. You cover your eyes despite the dark and wedge your head between porcelain and bone, idly picking at dry bloody flakes. It doesn’t even sting, not with the way your chest constricts. Blood brightens the edges of your mind. You are you again.

It isn’t an open window on the road. Isn’t the hours looking outside while she fiddles with the radio, isn’t the warm, affronted snort she makes when you pick apart the tunes.

But it’s something. You are something. In the morning, you won’t be able to look her in the eyes, but right now you need her in any way your filthy hands can have her. Here lies the door you can never cross, the one line in the sand you won’t desecrate. God knows you have spoiled enough things in your life.

Most days it is an afterthought, a scrawled note in the dog-eared corner of your mental checklist. Stray whims that tempt you to tear into your cuticles as you are reminded of them. Other days it is at the forefront of your mind, ever-persistent. Buzzing. A haze of gnats circling some forgotten rot, begging to be let in.

It solidifies in your throat, the irritation, an inevitable fallout of trying to navigate these impulses. Better when there’s something to draw your attention away, to keep you from fixating. None of that for you now, locked in a moving vehicle in the middle of nowhere. You can no less throw yourself out of the car than you can convince your partner to ease up on the radio.

At least she’s exhausted her options hours ago.

You tug on your hair when your shifting finally undoes the mess. It snares your fingers as you comb it through, hardening the molten lead in your throat. You don’t have to look to reweave the plait, but you don’t have to be gentle, either, and your nails on your scalp tether viciously on the edge of too much, too forceful, and yet not enough.

You can tell it’s going to be a long day.

“Stop shredding all over my car.”

You toss Bautista a withering look. She barely takes her eyes off the road to acknowledge you, mouth pinching ever so subtly at the corners. The light playing off the planes of her face, more prominent now than ever from the way she frowns, makes her look more harried than she should.

Doesn’t mean you’re gonna give her a break.

“Why should I? I’m not the one who has to clean it.” You taunt. Voice light, but sharp around the edge of your grin. You can’t help it. “I’ll just take the backseat.”

She takes the bait; narrowed eyes darting from the asphalt to you, then back, indignation bleeding rapidly through the line of her jaws. Her nostrils flare in a pointed inhale.

“New flash, this is your ride too.” The leather wheel creaks beneath her fists. You can see her fingers flex, trying to regulate the tension.

“Doesn’t that mean I can do whatever I want?”

Her voice trips first into a disbelieving squawk, then it darkens, going dour and deep in her throat. “Not in the way that you think.” She mutters.

You scoff, insufferable. Bautista greets the world at arm’s length and with an even, impassive drawl, and it always gives you a kick to trample all over that buffer. But it’s so easy to lose your head riling her up like this- too easy- so you do the magnanimous thing and fold first this time. 

Twisting the fallen hairs around your fingers, you roll down the window. The temptation resurfaces, tease-quick, telling you to wind the strands around one finger until the purpling skin breaks. You toss as many out of the window as you can.

Bautista is quiet again. Sore, unwilling to humor you. You want to dig for it, some reaction, an argument, some kind of signpost. To realign yourself. Then comes a bump in the road, and- you hear the tell-tale rattle of her mints, see the shiny capsules slipping every which way in their plastic container. Memories stir like a warning, or a promise: freezing burns, peeling the flat of your tongue, like a flame made to melt.

That’s it, then. You reach for them to before she can catch you.

“Rest stop.” She announces suddenly, pulling over. You didn’t even notice the gas station until she’s spoken. “Gonna fill up, get some coffee.”

Was that intentional? You squint at her, gauging. Her expression betrays nothing, just boredom tinted with exhaustion, and she pockets the box before she gets out. Damn it.

Following her lead, you try your best not to disappear into your jacket, watching her man the pump in sullen silence. Her shirt is unbuttoned to the chest, dark grey tank only gently muddied beneath, and her collar is unkempt and awkwardly popped. Has been, since you left the motel in a hurry. 

There is a sudden urge to straighten it. You’re positive she would punch you if you try.

(Not like you can reach it with ease, anyhow.)

Bautista comes and leans against the car with you, a little way from you. No doubt trying to savor some fresh air outside the car as much as you, despite the pungent stench of gasoline. Absent-mindedly, she digs out the mints. The way she rotates the box idly between her thumb and pointer reminds you of looping one finger beneath your waistband in rest, searching for your pocket knife. Not much of a debate as it is a habit. Then she notices you looking, takes some, and squirrels the whole thing away.

Your eyes involuntarily follow the blood-tinted capsules as they disappear into her mouth, claimed by teeth and bruised lips. A shiver races down your arms, reverberates through you, as deafening as a gong is struck. You imagine- clear as day, as violent as it is inescapable: Tugging on her skewed collar. Relishing in her shock.

Tasting fire off her palate.

Burning with it, letting it fill the hollow of your mouth. Letting the rasp of her tongue spreads the sting, slipping behind your teeth, teasing at the plush corners of your lips. Greedily soaking up the weighty warmth of her torso as she folds over you, enveloping you. Breathing in the artificial sweetness of her detergent.

Your head snaps sideways, as if slapped, senseless in your blind desire to flee from what your mind has constructed. Goosebumps scurry down your arms, your legs, spurred by a rush in your system commanding you to run, to hide. Or maybe bury yourself in the loose soil off the main road.

What the fuck was that?

The roof of your mouth dries out, so quickly the brittle sandpaper of it creeps down your throat. You are a small thing, cut down to size, hidden away in the earth while the visceral heat of your imagination hounds your burrow. Smoking you out.

“-uyễn?” Bautista’s looming presence crystallizes, centers, nears. Warms. She just took a step closer. “Everything alright there?”

“Fine.” You lose the fight and fidget. Thumbing your nose, touching your braid. Real convincing, there.

She must know something is up. You don’t look at her but at her hand, relaxed, hanging limply by her belt loop. A much more realistic scenario unfolds, unbridled, behind your eyes: of her shoving you back, scowling darkly, of anger and menace saturating the unyielding arch of her shoulders. Of dread filling your insides up like ash.

(That one probably isn’t your imagination.)

A different swarm soars in your mind and this time you- you really don’t know where to begin unpacking this. Intrusive thoughts, you are familiar with. 

This is- 

You don’t want- 

No. No. You inhale deeply through the nose. Slowly unspool the pressure, depriving the nervous buzz in your stomach of air.

“I’m fine.” You repeat, stepping again out of reach. Keeping your distance. Still unable to look, but no longer rooted in place. “I’m... gonna buy something.”

You hook your thumb over your shoulder, at the convenience store behind the pumps. Bautista’s follows your gesture, looking doubtful, but her question is cut short by you spinning on your heels and marching. Her eyes burn a hole through the back of your neck, making your scar itch.

Inside, you actually don’t know what to buy. Didn’t actually plan on it, to be perfectly honest, but the bored teen behind the cashier is giving you the side-eye, so you browse around mindlessly. Keeping busy.

The fleshy pad of your thumb goes between your teeth. You’re not getting into it. You’re not. More deep waters for you to drown in. You know enough to understand by now not every thought that crosses your fucked-up brain deserves to be humored. If it had been, well, then you’d have been dead long before Bautista gets to kill you. You’re just going a little loopy from the car ride, is all.

(Now to throw your weight behind that.)

A packet jumps out at you on the rack- some illegibly named snack in obnoxious green, featuring cartoonish avatars making googly eyes at you. An admirably nauseating sight. It’ll do. You grab one and pay for it, fleeing the store just as Bautista is finishing up. She gives you a measuring look. You try your damnest to hold her gaze.

In the end, she only heaves a sigh. 

“Done?”

“Yeah.” Your voice is surprisingly even. Blasé, even. “Didn’t you say something about coffee?”

Her face says she’s not distracted in the slightest, but she also wisely mentions nothing of the matter. She gives the hood of the car a light pat as she goes around you, staying close so as not to raise her voice but not so much that you’d be tempted to backpedal right into a pump, as you both know you would. Perks of being stuck together for months on end.

“Keep an eye out.” She cautions lamely. Your half-hearted ‘yes, mom’ is greeted immediately with a frown. “Anything else you didn’t get?”

She’s found your bounty, eyebrows climbing as she sees it held captive in your fist. You stuff the thing in your pocket, defensive, and shoo her away without another word. 

She goes, mercifully, though she stops occasionally while browsing to glance at you, expression too subtle to pick out behind the window of the store. You tear into the packet as an excuse to break eye-contact. The snack turns out to be some kind of sour candies, syrupy outside sticking to your hands and teeth, and your grimace this time is genuine. Sheer stubbornness keeps you from spitting it out.

You watch her from the corner of your eyes. Something turns your stomach as she runs a hand over her collar at the counter, straightening it at last. You tell yourself it’s probably just irritation; discomfort always has a knack of bringing that out of you, and right now is the most uncomfortable you remember ever being.

You’re getting behind the wheel after this, whether Bautista likes it or not. That should keep you focused enough. She can use the nap, and you’d have something to do. Something to take your mind off... things.

You sigh. Bite on the candy, cracking open its exterior even as your eyes water. Sliding shards of sugar push at your delicate gums, unkind. Still not enough. The mints make a comeback in your mind, absently wistful, and you’re too tired to do more than resent them.

So you don’t think too much, when it comes to her. Only when things truly suck- and that’s about 80% of the time, so go figures.

Whenever it feels okay to do so, though, you let the constant tug-o-war in your head recede. Follow the directions of whatever is left. That usually leads to you, speechless, kneeling over Bautista’s thigh because there are only so many ways to get on her eye-level, and her staring a hole in your skull until either of you figures out what the hell to do.

Usually, that’s around the time you press your mouths together.

It’s not exactly a kiss, not really. Kissing implies some modicum of affection, a pitiful dreg of kindness. This feels neither kind nor affectionate. Just hungry, and furious, and around twenty different shades of conflicted.

It’s no wonder when you bring out the teeth.

And there goes her hand on your nape, her eyebrows pinching. You taste blood on your lips and still don’t know whether to be resentful. Is this not what she asked for? Her hand on the scruff of your neck is that much larger that it feels like she can break you. You barely resist pushing just to test if she wants to.

“We’re not on the field, Nguyễn.” Bautista is firm, her other hand curls into a fist over her knee. She makes no attempt to pull you close but does not throw you on your ass, either. “We are not. Fucking. Fighting.”

Pity that. Somewhere along the line the thing that comes already rotting grinned at you and you woke up forgetting how to keep it all in. Your teeth. The need to pick at things until they bleed.

(You gnawed on your lips, tugging at the flesh just for that sick flare of pain and the gash on your face took forever to heal. You remember Bautista growling at you to stop no less than four times.)

You bare your teeth in an approximation of a grin, knowing full well you never quite manage the illusion when it’s her. How many have signed over their life when they fell for your helpless little act? It feels gross to do that now, even if your heart isn’t in it.

A part of you wants to hurt Bautista this way. To make her let down her guard and cut her mouth on yours. But the part that always always always squirms out of reach begs. It wants her to see.

Even now, with her thigh burning between your legs and her blood on your tongue, you want that fearful part to come out on top.

“Sorry, was I not clear?” You keep your voice airy and light. Incendiary. “I’m picking a fucking fight.”

Bautista tightens her hand. You have to fight the nervous reflex to gasp even though she is nowhere near your windpipe.

“You’re such an asshole,” She grumbles. But her ears are red. And she steals glances of your mouth, gaze flickering every time you swipe your tongue over its chapped surface.

Then her eyes narrow.

When she shifts to frame your face and hold your waist, your guts twist and a quivering tension you can’t dispel begins to spread. Out, eating up the soft give of your underbelly, going straight through your chest into your throat. You would pry her off if your fingers remember how to; instead they grip on uselessly, surprised into passivity as she turns the table on you. Her thumb slips that much further down your cheek, following the silver ridge of your scar to the seams of your mouth. She traces it, like it’s soft, and not something deceitful.

“Pick fewer fights,” She says.

You fume. Can’t wrap your mind around it. Can’t bring yourself to say the things you want to say, lacking the words, can’t tell her how you want this to go or why you wish it would all crash and burn. She’s still holding you, flushed everywhere, and she’s waiting, the arrogant piece of-

You do what you always do when you’re stumped and very, very close to Bautista, and by that you mean you try to kiss her again. But she keeps you exactly where she wants: far from cheap tricks, and far from another attempt at getting to her.

Failing that, you turn and scrape your teeth over her thrumming pulse, on the tender inside of her wrist. Her hissed ‘fuck!’ does nothing to mollify you.

“Are you done acting up?”

The very obvious and very demanding reply at the tip of your tongue is ‘no’, but you say nothing, merely sit and stew in the mess in your head. If normal people have butterflies, what you are experiencing errs generously on the side of carrion insects feasting on your entrails, and the buzz of beetle wings is canceling out everything.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

“Hey.” She murmurs. “Hey. Easy, alright?”

Bautista guides you forward. Presses her brows against yours. You realize you have squeezed your eyes shut when you open them and see not her, peering intently at you, but her hand around your waist, keeping you steady. Keeping you grounded. You pluck at a zipper on her cargo pants, stupidly grateful that you don’t have to meet her gaze right now.

“Don’t need you babying me.”

… And it’s down the beaten path you go. It’s a half-hearted gripe, barely a mumble, so she graces it with exactly the amount of dignity it deserves. To cushion the insult she lets go of your face, instead hooking her hand behind your thigh, her thumb on the outside. The invite to shake her off is encased neatly in the soft twitch of her fingers.

You don’t take it.

This time when you try to kiss her, she doesn’t pull you off. Her grip on your waist is beginning to feel clammy, so you move it a bit higher, over your ribs. It starts a trickle of observations you didn’t notice before, so hopped up on the need to tear something down- like the worn-soft feel of Bautista’s t-shirt beneath your fingertips. Or the rasp of her calluses on your pants. Her mouth tastes like fire and steel, sharp, and sort of unpleasant, and yet you sink into it.

Coming out of the kiss this time is like coming out of a trance- you’re still wide awake, but there’s a silence you can’t place, like you’ve been forgotten, however momentarily, wrapped up in foam and cast out of the static.

Bautista is still close when everything comes filtering back. But you don’t… mind that, not really.  You thumb at the scar over your lips, noting with some interest how well the placement complements hers.

“So.” You gave her a wide smile. Close-lipped. “Maybe ‘babying’ isn’t the right word for it.”

“Christ. Okay.”

With a groan, Bautista tips you over on the bed, and you go along with it, snickering loudly. She complains under her breath about the bite and how it‘s going to burn like mad tomorrow, but when you reach for her wrist, she doesn’t pull away.

“Thanks.” You tell the ceiling of your shitty motel, running your pointer along her pulse point. Each beat falls steadier as she stands and breathes, her back to you. Safer for both of you.

She clears her throat. Fidgets. Ears softly aglow going bright again. “Yeah, sure.”

Well. Figures you aren’t the only one to go in blind. You’re not sure if you should feel comforted by the revelation- your head is still weird after the kiss- but imagining the grimace pulling at her expression makes you snort. The sound is fond, even to you, and she peeks over her shoulder, curious. 

You chose that moment to let go. Sitting up, throwing your legs over the edge. Grabbing your jacket and knife as you stand.

“Better go get ready, then. Work’s waiting,” You said.

Bautista rolls her eyes, making sure that you see. She could have easily brought up it was you who climbed into her lap first, but lets it slide without further comment. There is a quirk to her lips when she turns away, teasing at the reddened split. Sweetening it ever so slightly.

(She burns, and you’re scalded whatever you do.)

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