@mixtcpe asked: 💫 - Loukari .-.
shuffle for a drabble
“what if i told you, that i missed the old you, baby? i used to hold you tight — a ride or die for life.”
Arguments between the two were few and far between — impossible, nearly. When they do occur, they were always the same song written in a different note. Some were avoided, easily changing in tune before the problem could ever crescendo into something more, but whether they chose to hide it or not, the problem with them always seemed to come down to the same sobering point: honesty.
In the grand scheme of things, they both were two people weaving stories out of their lives, withholding all the ugly little details and fabricating little things into grand and great accomplishments. Day one, and he just knew that he needed to keep this from her. This past. This ugly part of him, connected to him like a growth. It was all part of a past anyway, and his might’ve been uglier than hers, but it was never something he filed away as ammunition to use in a future disagreement. Anyone else might have done so willingly — everyone did, the moment of his birth, the entire world had been ready and set to use his transgressions against him — but not Louise. It would never be her. Never her, never her, never her.
So on a night when he puts action behind the violent anecdotes he avoids having to tell her, a night spent in her care with literal blood on his hands and yet another body to his name for loyalty, the problem sings loudly in the background and bleeds itself into the silence of everything unsaid between them, an argument considered won leaving him less prideful and more empty. Because proving himself in the right meant nothing to him when watching in real time as her shoulder grew cold and her wall went up, and suddenly, her eyes are a flood and she’s silent towards him. His words echo in his head as loudly as he’d shouted them at her, I was like this when you met me. But her words didn’t echo, didn’t reverberate like it should have. Instead, they felt like a metaphorical bullet lodging into his gut, like standing at the edge of a subway platform for a train that wouldn’t come, like regret. (Bakari Vaughn does not feel regret. He doesn’t think he’s allowed to. But fuck if he doesn’t realize it now, that most things his father told him never to feel, he does for her — always her, always her, always her.) Her words don’t echo but they should, you promised you would never do anything like that in front of me...you’re different now. Why are you being like this?
Winning meant nothing to him now, defending himself and his name meant nothing, his father’s words following him around his entire life like a long-dead boogeyman meant nothing. I can’t stop being like this, and no matter how much he hates it now, he knows that he’d been right. But she had been right, too. The person she’s with now hadn’t been the same person she approached in his shop for the first time, and each effort he made to shield her did nothing but fill her with yet another lie, another hopeful expectation, another disappointment when he doesn’t fit the role he plays for her. He wasn’t sure how far his trust would initially go with her before (doesn’t expect to care about her, not like this, not enough for something like a fucking fight to matter to him), but knows that he doesn’t want to be the cause of another lie, another disappointment, another tear on her face in response to his reckless behavior — telling the truth about himself and his family was a risk he never takes, but for her, he would.
Always her, always her, always her.
