#margothq

In the beginning, Key didn’t mean for all of this to happen. His night went like a blur of colors, like a hazy reflection of light in the distance that made everything a little bit misty, a little bit uncertain. It isn’t typical that he sets out with a particular reason in mind to forget something these days, like shoveling so much cold dirt over a fire just starting to work itself into a blaze, and none of it works --- not any of it, and not at all. 

The inevitable sense of defeat begins to settle over him at about two in the morning when he can no longer stomach the sight of the people surrounding him or of the glass in front of him. While there comes with it a certain modicum of relief that he no longer has to hold out, he is also painfully aware that he will probably regret this when he sobers up completely, and the autopilot of pulling his jacket back on and heading out the door of the bar feels so much like sixteen months ago. It feels so much like two weeks ago, for that matter, when he could still trust himself to show up on Margot’s doorstep and not cross the same familiar boundaries they have been toeing at almost since they met one another. Fuck. Fuck. It’s a bad idea, and he knows it, but somewhere along the line, what is good and what is bad ceases to really matter --- ceases to make any of sort of sense, really, if it ever did to begin with.

Hard liquor leaves a bitter taste on the tip of Key’s tongue. Normally he would’ve texted her to leave her place unlocked, that he was going to come, but tonight, he gives her no warning at all. Instead, here he stands, knuckles already sore before he so much as raises them to rap on the door, and he sucks in a deep breath like it might be the last clear one he takes before he makes a decision he can’t retract. Like that decision hadn’t already been made by the both of them weeks ago.