#our content

i'll ask you one more time before i start. are you sorry? for what? for being so incredibly rude to me and calling me a fucker. you did, i don't know why you're even trying to deny it. you're so funny. you are literally smiling right now. you can't just say no, i'm looking at your face and you are smiling. shall we make it more obvious then?

this position is so perfect, i love sitting on your thigh. and it means i can feel how much you like it too. you have a wet spot. shall i press my knee into you? give you a little bit of pressure? maybe after i get your sides. aww look at you squirm. oh i guess it didn't matter if you're gonna move so much you grind down on me anyway. you are so naughty. i think you'll find i can pull away if i want to actually. looked like you were enjoying it too much. i want you to suffer for me. do you think you can do that? good, my little tickle slut.

as fun as that was, i wanna break you. i will. if you're so confident then you won't mind if tickle your feet? what? is it because i said tickle? i forgot you're like that. i thought you were such a strong brat? are you telling me all i have to do to make you flustered is tell you you're ticklish? aw, how embarrassing. are you embarrassed? you're blushing. you are. i can take a picture if you want. i should do that some time, take photos of all your best spots and post them and ask what people would do to them. do you like that idea? of course you do.

you've had such a nice rest, i think i need actually torture you now. what about if hold back your toes and i drag one nail up. and down. (laughing) cute. shall i add another nail? say please. okay, you only get one. i'm happy here. one nail trailing over your sole and to the ball and under your toes. lemme get between them. i know that pinky toe drives you wild. wouldn't it be so much worse if one finger was all it took to break you? i don't think your ego could take it. oh now you want more fingers. is that just too embarrassing? beg me then. say, "please, please tickle me, and make it bad". if you don't want to i'll just untie you. if you don't wanna be tickled that's fine. or you could just say it. are you going to?

*-*-*

Basil’s grief is destructive. It eats him alive from the inside until tears stream out of his bloodshot eyes like a faucet. He weeps unconsolably from the moment he gets up in the morning until he cries himself to sleep at night. He doesn’t think he will ever stop crying. He doesn’t think he deserves to.

Even thinking about Mari brings tears to his eyes to the point where he can’t even remember her—can’t even hold on to the good memories. The pages of his photo album are all colored out now as if that could somehow erase them. He doesn’t feel he deserves them anymore. He doesn’t deserve to remember her happy—to remember her as anything more than contorted, still, and lifeless at the bottom of those stairs or swinging limply in the wind from the limb of that tree outside.

It almost doesn’t feel real. A part of him still wakes up hoping it was all some horrible nightmare, but it wasn’t. It isn’t. Mari’s gone and playing a role in that means he doesn’t deserve to remember her. His grief will destroy him.

*-*-*

Aubrey’s grief is volatile—loud. She cries and screams as if the sounds of her wailing could somehow bring Mari back. But she knows that it won’t. Most days, she feels like she’s falling down a dark, bottomless pit without anything to catch her—without anything to hold onto. She can’t make sense of it—how something like this could happen. Why it would.

Her hands clinch into fists, throw things at walls of her room, pound into her pillow as she screams because she doesn’t have the words for the pain she’s feeling. Then, everything goes quiet, and she weeps.

The weight of a world without Mari is too heavy for her small, trembling shoulders. She’ll have to make them stronger.

*-*-*

Hero’s grief is overwhelming. It crushes him until he can’t breathe. He hasn’t been able to catch his breath since he heard she was gone. He feels like he’s drowning in pitch black darkness—dark water seeping into his nose and mouth if he tries to breathe, drowning out any cry for help he could possibly make. But he doesn’t make them. He doesn’t deserve to—not after he didn’t love her enough. If he had, maybe she’d still be here. The truth that she isn’t constricts and strangles like a chain around his heart, a crushing weight he’ll carry for the rest of his life. He crumbles under it.

Every time he thinks he’s finally stopped crying, the tears keep falling again. He can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t do anything but stare blankly at the ceiling of his room, tortured by guilt, by “what ifs,” by questions of if there was anything he could have done, if there was any way he could have saved her. But he is too weak. He can’t even save himself.

He always believed the sun shined brighter whenever Mari smiled, but he knows that better now because losing her has completely snuffed it out. The world is dark now, and Hero drowns in it.

*-*-*

Kel’s grief is aching like the dulled pain of an old injury when it rains. There’s an empty space in his heart now and it pangs every time he finds himself turning to say something to her or wanting to show her something or tell her a story only to realize that she isn’t there and that she isn’t going to be there ever again.

He doesn’t cry as much as Hero or Aubrey or Basil, and he worries it isn’t enough—worries it means he didn’t care about her enough. But he knows he did. He had to because even if it doesn’t always bring tears to his eyes, something breaks a little in him every time he realizes he’ll never make her laugh or make her smile again.

He tries to think of what would make her happy, if there’s anything he could do to make her happy now. All he can think is that she wouldn’t want another person crying for her, so he tries his best to heal, to remember the good times, and to smile when he thinks of her, even if his smiles are a little bittersweet, a little empty now.

He worries that his friends don’t remember how to be anything but sad and grief-stricken. Worries he’ll never see his brother smile again, will never see Basil without bloodshot, weeping eyes, will never see Aubrey without gritted teeth and clinched fists as she blinks back tears, will never see Sunny again at all. Kel’s grief isn’t just losing Mari—it’s losing everyone. It’s watching them suffer without anything he can do to fix it. Left wondering if any of them will ever truly be happy again. Wondering if they even can be in world without Mari, even when he knows that’s what would make her happy.