#willstrayham

1) her manners are probably the shittiest you'll ever see. she's very erratic and rude and bad at handling social situations, which is interesting because at this point she's very capable of having learned how to? she just chooses to find small, sometimes not so small ways to make """the normal people""" uncomfortable and distance herself from them. 2) i love the people she idolizes as heroes because they're never the people she wants to be around or who she wants to influence her life? like she really admires strong women, brave women, women who do things and voice their opinions and have good stuff to say but she's so bad at handling herself around these people? goddamn 3) she hates, legitimately hates, herself and jake. the end

22. who are their friends? lovers? ‘type’ or ‘ideal’ partner?

she likes to get close to people who don't care about bad things happening to her or what kind of person she is or what bad things she does. there are a few exceptions to this but for the most part she wants to be close to people she's never really close to. if she's looking for a partner, as in romantically, she's often looking for the same thing but her views on romance are heavily distorted by misogyny and the abuse she's witnessed.

23. what do they want from a partner?

what do they think and feel of sex? see above. she thinks sex is gross

24. what social groups and activities does your character attend? what role do they like to play? what role do they actually play, usually?

none of them? i mean if she went to a party or something her role would be to freak everybody out or to bring drugs or to be the thing people tell stories about the next day like 'tf did you see that tiny child tripping balls last night i think she ate a battery', ect

25. what are their hobbies and interests?

he says nothing.

(her hand almost touches his ruined cheek.)

ii.

she wakes up at five every morning, without fail, until his stomach clenches with dread and annoyance at the soft padding of her feet on his floors, half asleep as he is. he'll see her at the table, later, bandaging a shoulder or her knee or cleaning out a cut in the kitchen sink.

she pushes at skin where there was once blue steel armor and then doesn't understand why she breaks. every morning, he'll clear the mess where she's tried to make sense of her body.

he runs water in his sink and watches the red swirl into rose pink down the drain.

he can't afford to help her put herself back together like this.

iii.

where her kisses should be lenient, they are hard cut and jagged; she has forgotten tenderness. there is no gentleness in her eyes, no affection in her too-blue gaze. kindness is her stiffest muscle.

he turns his cheek towards her clinical gaze.

(her eyes are soft as scalpels over the ruin.)

iv.

maroon eyes, deep like clotted blood, slide down the sliver of space between him and her, the knife edge of them not dulled, even through the glass, even through the leather muzzle keeping lecter's mouth from that too full smirk. he thought it would be like two wounded predators meeting, but he's wrong.

her eyes are lightning bright, the smell of her skin crisp and sharp as ozone next to him, shoulders brushing. she is mother nature facing a parasite, facing a perversion of creation. he shivers when she turns to him, wordless question, and doesn't nod. when she turns back to look at lecter, she threads her fingers through his, eyes blank, pallid ice.

they walk away. her grip is a brand. and he doesn't pull away.

v.

her hands are soft when she cups his face to kiss him; she is hot when he carves out a home in her, keeps his body in hers.

he hates her for it.

vi.

the golden gate bridge collapses, a man on the screen in a blood red cape, grey hair curling out from underneath an equally blood red helmet high above the ground, manipulating the structure around him with a twist of his wrist.

he says nothing when her lips thin and she switches it off, but his lips are reverent over the scar on her shoulder all the same.

vii.

the first time she wears a backless dress, he kisses the bumps of her spine, runs his tongue along the dip of her back and she smiles, a small, fleeting, flighty thing.

he smothers it with his own mouth.

viii.

sometimes, there are signs this could work. on the days where he can look at himself in the mirror, the days where she can do the same. if he can smile a little more (and forget that the scars make his smile ugly even when he doesn't mean them to be), if she can be a little less angry at the world that abandons her time and time and time again. he could be less sad, she could be happier.

but the rims of her eyes are as red and hot as the inside of her mouth when she opens it to him.

ix.

'stay.'

x.

he keeps dogs, more dogs since molly, more feet around the house to pick up the absence of hers, and he talks them out for a walk. he walks towards the indifferent, low burning sun and he comes back with the night chasing his heels, and her on the patio, cigarette in hand.

the wisps of smoke catch in his bobbing throat. she doesn't protest when he crushes the ember under his heel, the stick still mostly unburnt.

if i say i love you, would you believe me?

he whistles and calls the dogs inside, the screen door shaking on it's hinges behind him; the answer strangles his tongue.

xi.

the truth is that he feels like he never went off the morphine; the constant numbness of his face, his feet, gives a dream-like quality to life. he is floating, he is onyx stone unravelling, she tells him, one night.

he doesn't know if she means it to be a good thing or a bad thing, but she kisses the space between his shoulderblades and doesn't mind the sweat; she tugs him back to bed and lets him curl into her, the line of his jaw against her chest where he can hear her heart beating. 

he wakes up, sometimes, with his mouth open and damp against her collarbone, and he thinks it doesn't matter.

xii.

stay, she tells him, one night. his feet grind to a halt. there's no warm grip around his wrist, no thumb across his thudding pulse. no maternalistic, paternalistic palm on his shoulder. her hands are still, on his bed, instead of twisted in the back of his shirt.

stay, she asks him again. her eyelashes are a dark smudge against her cheek when his fingers brush the ends of her short hair, follows the trail along her knife edge jaw.

xiii.

this seat wasn't taken, was it?