“Come on, come– shit, fuck!”

The back gate leading from the alley separating their street from the next swings on its hinges and knocks to the beat of a relentless wind against the latch. It squeaks, then knocks, squeaks, then knocks, the only interval in the steady swishing of the back garden’s whipping grass. Were it not for that gate, the scene would be peaceful, the wind a passerby in a sleeping town with little to report aside from the odd toss and turn of a restless dreamer.

Up the back garden path, past the back door left ajar, its handle smeared with blood, the crooked, cracking house of one sleep-deprived lifeguard tells a different story. 

“Come on!”

When he’d set foot on the street after closing up the pool, Milo had expected the comforting routine of kissing his beloved hello, then sliding into the car’s passenger seat to let Will drive them both home. What he’d found had shot his heart straight into his throat, perhaps even past it, so that it sat heavy on his tongue as he grappled with the grizzly sight.

Will was leaning against the vehicle, but there’d been something else there with him. Membrane and teeth as lethal as a piano string, with bottomless eyes swallowed up by a darkness like the night such creatures belonged to. And that tongue. A long, gluttonous thing that was smearing over two identical little puncture wounds spurting blood from Will’s neck. Milo had seen red, and then he’d seen red. 

He doesn’t remember how he’d gotten that thing off, only recalls dragging Will round the car and speeding them home. He’d tried talking to Will to keep him conscious, but then the spasms had grabbed at Will’s arms, legs, hands, fingers, even his fucking soul, and he’d screamed. Milo can still hear the bloody gargle in the depths of that sound.

For now, the twitching’s stopped. He has Will in his lap, in the bathroom upstairs, towels pressing hard into the wound on Will’s neck. He’s still breathing, Milo can see his chest rising and falling, albeit shakily. There’s still a pulse, albeit slow. Slowing. “Will?” he dares to whisper, “love?”

Everything seems to shatter for what Will thinks has to be the final time this week. There’s no way anything inside of him could break or splinter any more than it has now.

He’d expected the lights to be off when he walked through the door, hoped to sneak into a quiet home. To make his way across the floor and maybe, just maybe, find his way to his bed without disturbing Milo. 

Now that he’s standing in the doorframe, he’s made aware of how utterly impossible such a thing would be. Even if he could make it all the way to bed, there isn’t a reality in which they don’t have to have this conversation. Somehow, Will had deluded himself into thinking he could fast forward through the interrogation, as if he’d only been out for the afternoon. But he’s just too numb, too raw now to think of anything other than tucking himself into their sheets and sleeping away the week’s worth of hopelessness, guilt, despair, agony. He just needs to sleep.

“I...” But there isn’t anywhere to go from there. 

Will Moody, so practiced in conversation, never without a witty retort, well-rehearsed and suave and clever finds himself without a card to play.

date: sometime in june time: 9:30 pm location: will and ingrid’s flat interaction: will & ingrid

Since when the hell does William Nirav Parekh walk home thinking about the feeling of one specific date’s—who he found on a fucking app, at that—lips on his lips? Because, right now, as his feet drag him up the steps to the door of the flat, that’s all he can think about: that sweet little press of their mouths before turning separate ways to their respective places.

Date three in the books, and they still haven’t screwed. This is an anomaly; it should be a scientific impossibility for two people to be this attracted to each other and not have ripped each other’s clothes off already.

Not to mention the fact they’d gone miniature golfing. That meant they were stone cold sober for the entire night, laughing at Milo’s clumsy attempts at swinging a golf club as he repeatedly reiterated “I told you I was no good at this.” And Will had crept up behind him, arms wrapping around Milo’s, hands settling over his, guiding him, speaking softly into his ear at nearly every hole... And they walked away without exchanging more than a little peck of the lips.

He would groan as he swings the front door open, but he’s not entirely sure he has an audience to hear it. That is until he looks up and finds Ingrid sitting at the kitchen table, and a wave of relief washes over him. It’s only 9:30pm, after all. He hadn’t expected her to be asleep.

Will slumps into a chair, perfectly composed, until he wipes and hand down his face and whines. “Ingrid, he is wasting me. Wasting me! Tell me how the fuck you go on a date, have a guy you’re into all over you all night, and not even ask to go home with him? How is that even possible?”

who: aj & frankie where: a house party when: sometime in the spring, 1:25 am

Having grown fed up of being relentlessly badgered into a game of spin the bottle (turns out news of her sexuality had reached even the ivory towers of Eddington College), Frankie had retired to the kitchen– a fairly less busy room in Billy Hawthorne’s massive house, on the North end of town. She sits on the island in the middle of a mess of bottles, bowls of snacks and baggies– some of which she’s pocketed –containing a myriad of substances. In her lap rests a place of red velvet cake, with which she’s calming the near violent rumbling in her stomach. Every now and then, people have filtered in and out, drunkenly stumbling to raid the place of its seemingly never-ending supply of booze. 

Frankie looks up when another person enters the room, strawberry waves bouncing around a goofy grin. Her brow quirks when his gaze lands on the cake.

who: connor, will & milo where: the moody household when: sunday morning, 12:00 am

Nobody can sleep, it seems. Even Miranda, who tends to quietly retire sometime around ten-thirty, has taken to the greenhouse. The faint glow coming from the structure’s lights has been tinted green by an overgrowth of shrubs climbing the greenhouse’s side. Connor watches his mother’s figure slip and glide past, silhouetted and misshapen in the glass waves forming the windowed walls. She looks like the very ghosts with whom she speaks. The thought has the youngest Moody boy shuddering, and puffing harder still on his cigarette. 

He smokes outside, on the roof. When he’d first started, Connor had tried keeping it a secret. Now, he doesn’t bother. Not when the lectures have simply turned into brief glances and quirked brows; sometimes, the odd head shake, followed by a disapproving sigh. Unless Will and his mother want him to walk around doped up, a cigarette is the next best thing to calm him down. It’s what he argues, anyway. 

Across the roof, a few feet away, movement flits past Will’s window, catching Connor’s eye. Then there’s an arm, muscular and pale, shoving the frame open. A faint “woah”, slightly breathless, makes Connor chuckle. Milo’s been staying with them for a little while– a few days, Connor’s counted, having been driven here by a rattled Will. Connor had later learned that he’d had to banish Milo’s mother’s spirit from her old abode. He still hasn’t spoken to his brother about it. As much as it pains him to accept it, he knows he isn’t brave enough to hear about such an encounter. Even if they can’t hurt you, vengeful, angry spirits are still a terrifying thing to consider. 

“Can’t sleep?” Connor calls out softly. A breath of a chuckle falls from his lips when he hears Milo startling. 

“Oh, hey, Connor.” Connor raises his hand, letting it drop into a lazy tilt as his greeting. “No, uh... No, we’re kind of wired in here– ow, Will!”

who: connor & ivan where: connor’s bedroom when: april 22nd - 14:45

With the Easter holidays coming to a close, a wave of resignation sweeps over Stow-On-Tarn, putting a tiny damper on an otherwise glorious day. Yet even so, Connor can’t quite shake the giddy little zaps and swirls darting about in his gut. He lays on his bed, feet up against the wall; ankles crossed. There’s a towel wrapped around his wet curls: a new habit he’s slowly developing after the very reason he’s so elated. Even now, as he dials Ivan’s number, he can’t stop thinking about Lucas. Or his smile. Or the way his eyes never seem to shop shining. Or how warm and solid his shoulder had been when Connor had finally fallen asleep against him, even after Lucas had fed him a belly’s worth of Starburst.

“Ivan, hello!” Connor breathes, feet swaying from side to side. “Are you free? Can you come over?”

who: amani & frankie where: the nook café when: thursday, 10:26 am

“Oh my god.”

She’d all but forgotten last Wednesday night, the memory lost in a haze of thick, pungent smoke. But, upon looking up, she finds that the familiar prettiness of her waitress’ face reminds Frankly all too vividly of how much of a fool she’d made herself. 

“Are you okay?” “Dude, ‘m like... I don’t have any legs... Woah...”

As she stares, wide-eyed, at the fleeting surprise dancing across Amani’s face, Frankie feels her entire face starting to burn. Everything seems to still; hold its breath, with the coffee in Amani’s perfectly balanced grip acting as a high-strung onlooker of a Mexican standoff. Yet, when the corner of Amani’s lip twitches, so does Frankie’s; just like that, she can’t tell who’s the first to crack a smile. Not that it matters, with how lovely Amani wears hers.

For the longest time, Ivan thought group projects were the worst thing the institution of education could have ever conjured up. He realizes now he’s spared little thought for working in pairs. Working in pairs is far, far worse.

Dread is supposed to work like adrenaline, right? Thrill through one’s system and drain as quickly as it came, stirring and pitching behind the skin for a few moments before flattening out and disappearing. Ivan’s finding there isn’t a clear timeline for its reign of terror over his core. It continues to fight its way lower, into a part of his stomach Ivan wasn’t even sure existed until that excruciating pang vibrates the muscles all around it. 

This dread has been swelling and throbbing behind his skin since the name Victor Marlowe fell from the instructor’s mouth. It slithered into his bones the moment Victor was sure to stand, indignantly—nearly everything he does is done indignantly, and every time Ivan has to wonder what the damn prince has to be indignant about—and assert there must be some sort of mistake.

Ivan cannot and will not understand the petulant, sulky pouts several girls in the class wore the moment Victor’s partner was revealed, upset they couldn’t spend another couple of hours after class to admire his shimmery golden hair or the high arches of his cheekbones. The fullness of his rosy lips or the infuriatingly perfect arch of his nose— okay, he’s attractive. Ivan will give him that. Silently and reluctantly, never to be admitted out loud, if he has any say in the matter. But he’s also a pompous, insufferable, ignorant, snobby posh boy. Though, Ivan supposes it’s better than being Ivan Farley, which is a lot like being nobody.

He sits at this mahogany table, surrounded by book shelves that reach very nearly to the ceiling, leaving plenty of room to disappear in their shadows. And if that doesn’t work, Ivan can lose himself underneath the oversized, threadbare sweater that’s wearing him more than he is wearing it. It’s a hand-me-down from his father. Though when Dave Farley wore it at the same age Ivan is wearing it now, Dave was 6′3″, 210 pounds, and a first-string quarterback. Ivan, five inches shorter, a couple pounds less than the national average for his height, and whose only work in athletics is in avoiding them, makes the top look more like a smock.

His hand is beginning to ache again, more from the essays he wrote in History than the few measly ideas he’s scrawled onto a piece of notebook paper. And after giving those ideas a once over, he decides they’re useless. He scrunches up the paper, working it into a ball which he promptly throws against Victor’s temple.

“Marlowe.” The paper rustles all the way to the floor, rolling feebly across the marble. “When I said ‘brainstorm,’ that was not code for ‘scroll your Instagram feed.’”