#praevol

A BETTER GUIDE TO ROMANCE WRITING PROMPTS   /   ACCEPTING

   𝚆𝙸𝙻𝙻 𝚃𝙸𝙿𝚂 𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝙷𝙴𝙰𝙳 𝙰𝚆𝙰𝚈 𝙵𝚁𝙾𝙼 𝙷𝙴𝚁,   and a heavy snag of his curls, caught in a thick lock, falls across his forehead. Nearly into his eyes. He blinks hard, and pushes his thumb along the notched lip of the table’s edge. She’s being deliberately disappointing—or else she really doesn’t know. Failure to connect. The lack of reciprocation doesn’t make the connection a failure, unless she really came here expecting symbiosis. Expecting anything.

    “Maybe, when I was a kid. But not anymore.”

   It’s not that everyone is the same. It’s that they think the same way.

   “I guess you could call it a—lack of interest.”

   He looks at her deliberately;  his blue eyes limpid, almost plain.

   Basic time management. It had taken ten or fifteen years to fully ascertain that reality, to reconcile the repeated disappointment  (and, yes, the recumbent sting)  of being cyclically ununderstandable with the unavoidable reality of the ever-expanding sample size. Meeting more people, or different people, in different places and under different circumstances, didn’t seem to have any significant effect on the results. It’s not the lack of connection that’s wilfull. That’s inevitable. What Will can control is the amount of time and cognitive or emotional effort he is willing to expend on reaching that inexorable conclusion again and again and again.

   A little, or a lot.

   That depends more on the other person than it does on Will—on his assessment of them. How much he likes them, whether they need him. If they need him, how likely he is to be able to actually help. Whether or not they deserve to be helped. It’s a lot of moving pieces. A lot of moving pieces that fall into place for relatively little reward. Usually.

   Will glances up at Ray where she’s sitting on the dark corner of his bed beneath the slant of the sideways-vaulted ceiling. It’s a tiny apartment on a narrow alley in a tight, quartered part of the city. Four stories and leaning a little—an old house built on unsteady earth. All of New Orleans is sinking. Two inches a year. At the kitchen table where he’s sitting, the slight variations in the slant of the linoleum floors are offset by the slight variations in the length of the legs of the table. The place was furnished when he signed the lease. All he’s added are his belongings—some clothes, books, his fishing equipment, the old fold-down desk he uses as a tying table. His uniform is hung on the inside of the closet, door closed. Firearm in a lockbox beneath it. He doesn’t like them;  doesn’t like to live in the same room with them. It’s not a lot, but the space is small, and with two people in it, Will feels stuck. Defensive.

   The city doesn’t suit him, but he likes the sound of the cars passing between the buildings, and the sound of dogs barking in the distance. People yelling far away. A soft curtain of separate sounds that solidifies the singular sense of being alone here in his apartment. Alone, at the moment, with her. In the middle of nowhere, the boundaries between inside and outside, private space and public space, can become meaningless. You can’t get away from people when everything is open. He feels more trapped here, and, therefore, marginally more free. For now, at least.

   Maybe he just feels more invisible around people who can’t see him then he does when he’s alone. Maybe that’s what it is. A relief—cool, and passive, even in the salty humidity of the stagnant bay at the edge of the block. Raynne is looking right at him. It makes his skin itch. It annoys him that she’s seeing him the wrong way, because his expectations for her are higher, and when they go aggressively unsatisfied it fills him with resentment.

And to think he attributed it to ghosts haunting these hallowed halls !! Of course, they may yet be there ——— the two aren’t mutually exclusive, after all ——— yet his reasoning remains incorrect.

❝ Yet you aren’t a necromancer, lest there are more things you’re hiding, ❞ far too bland of a tone for him to be a barb ; the arch of his brow too casual. Something more like a quip accompanied by a flippant wave of his hand and the truth is the truth and he’s hardly one to skirt about it, is he? Much like he isn’t one to deny his CURIOSITY, when he can help it. So, he asks. Or makes a statement akin to a question, which is close enough.

     "     𝐡𝐞𝐲 . i probably should know better than to ask , but .    "     he’s going to anyway , because it’s raynne , and because he’s almost certain that he can .     “     where do you go when you’re not , you know . here .     “ 

     “LIKE WINE,”  HIS MOUTH SLANTS into an agreeable, muted smile. He tries not to sound skeptical, tries not to seem worried——   and succeeds, because he has had years and years to practice, to process, to compartmentalize; teasing, “...you’re an acquired taste.”  

Owen takes up most of the space inside the small aisle of seasonal dresses and bleached denim shorts; there are thirty miles between his cabin and this modest boutique in the township of Payson, Arizona. In the blue, dusky evening, they are the only customers inside the building. 

She peers up at him over the black dress that hangs like spider’s silk between her long, long fingers. Raynne’s pale eyes crease around the corners, framed under dark brows and periorbital bruises that remind him of interstellar medium. 

But Owen remembers the blood, washed away by the jet of water from a showerhead, too red on her body, too red as it drained into the little black hole inside the motel’s bathtub. He does not forget what human people are capable of. 

                           A  LAUGH  is  held  back  as  he  nods,  and  a  smile  is  SLOW  to  formulate.  Jackson  doesn’t  laugh  MUCH  these  days,  HELL  he’s  too  busy  dealing  with  BLOODHSED  to  take  a  moment  to  humor  self.  Yet,  the  subject  matter  itself  is  GRIM.  What  he  SEEKS  is  intel,  information  that  he  himself  cannot  AQUIRE.  To  take  someone  out  ?  Well,  you  don’t  exactly  want  a  TRAIL  leading  to  your  goddamn  name.  What  he  does,  is  ask  a  FAVOR,  and  he  HOPES  that  it  doesn’t  end  with  a  goddamn  bullet  between  his  eyes.  

                          ‘  You’re  a  fuckin’  GEM  y’know  that  ?  ’  PLAYFULNESS  ensues  as  he  shakes  head,  and  chin  rises  in  the  slightest,  ‘  Remind  me  why  we  never  worked  out  ?  ’   OH  CHARM  OOZES,  and  puddles  at  feet.  OF  COURSE  they  never  worked  out,  and  it’s  due  to  Jackson’s  BULLSHIT.  He  wonders  sometimes  if  he’s  EVER  loved  anyone.  LOVE  a  four  letter  word  that  ended  up  FUCKING  him  over  in  the  end.  ‘  You  wanna  grab  a  beer  after?  ’  

     𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 . the ache has become more and more noticeable in actions that ask of his fingers to spindle the more complex handheld doings , and it never takes long to announce it’s unpleasant arrival . but heugh’s become familiar with impartiality , never minds it as it gnaws on his knuckles and the webbing of bone in his palms like he did when this hurt had been an acquaintance he’d rather not speak to . his porch smells like citrus . heugh has seen other men use knives to cut up their fruits but he’s still fond of the mist that jettisons from the torn skin ; he’s been reluctant to let that go for years , and he will be until he’s no reason to eat at all . a wedge has split and bled on his thumb , he sucks the juice away , offers to her one of her own if she likes , but not with that hand . they’re still favorable in the autumn time, he thinks . they were for him , anyway .   

            CRITICAL ROLE SENTENCE PROMPTS   /  𝙰𝙲𝙲𝙴𝙿𝚃𝙸𝙽𝙶 !