UNBEARABLE / borne .

mother, make me a bird of prey / so i can rise above this, let it fall away

WARDEN STAGG III. TWENTY-NINE. HE & THEY. written by abby. ( 24, she & they, pst ) APP ( “ABBREV” ).  SKELETON.  PINTEREST.  QUICK STATS.

Everything disappears. Even dreams. I suppose I just flew too close to the sun. 

𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐊 𝐈𝐈 — nihilum vitae.                     ↬ 𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑.

Warden dangles Anezka in front of him, as if he’s plucked a white swan-feather off her and threatens to blow it in his face, and Mateo wonders if he’s ever witnessed him, all those years ago. When he’d still looked at Nez as little more than a fairytale, breathless and foolish, the lost-puppy of it all as he walked behind her. Unreciprocated crush, but not entirely unreciprocated in its fondness. There are forms of adoration that needn’t be romantic or lustful, after all. It can be a head tucked between someone’s neck and shoulder, her cigarette lit with his own, three strands of blonde hair messily braided by his rough hands. If Warden wants to scratch at his jealousy and trigger it, he’s a few years too late. All that’s there now is a protectiveness that rears his head.

But he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t bothered. He justifies this weakness by mentally reiterating that most things Warden say bother him, no matter the substance of his words. “A mating call is just another form of ego, if you ask me. Expecting someone to flock to you – yes, let’s stick to the bird metaphors – when you show even a glimpse of your masculinity?” A scoff, a shake of head. How he hopes Anezka doesn’t answer this call now, just so his point can be driven home. “And if you call that a performance …” He leaves it at that, for a moment. “Maybe there’s a perfectly logical reason as to why she’s been dodging you.”

He’s attempted to amputate his violent nature but has failed to cut it out over the years, despite all the hacking, slicing and purging. It resides, like an extra organ. He thinks Warden might have the same problem, but whether he’s made a life out of trying to make his violence leave his body is something he doubts.

“Stagg, most of us here are vicious, violent fuckers, regardless of what bird we were named for.” There has to be some kind of logic behind the names, but it doesn’t serve his point. What does serve his point is the monotone condescension that fills his mouth. 

“Erin’s vendetta is hers, not mine. Maybe you should have a chat with her, one bird of prey to another, tell her what you should also be telling yourself: that your grudges are too small to take up our time, here.” Discomfort thrums underneath his skin, right where his neck dips. Of all those he’s not wanted to see again, Erin is first on the list. He wonders where he stands on hers, wonders if the years have dissipated her rage or just let it grow. 

What he does know, is that the years have hardly done miracle work on his own feelings on the matter. They’re still best left unpacked. “So, if it’s up to me? That shit is parked and it has been for quite – some – time.” There’s a tenseness at his jaw, revealing the lie. 

Sometimes he considers moving forward, looking Warden in the eye and telling him that he should attempt it, letting go of the grudges, the hatred, the wish for vengeance. My mother was murdered and I vowed to make it right, but never succeeded. But I’ve left it in the past and I am better for it. 

But then, if Mateo had what Kasimir is to Warden, would he be able to let go? The answer remains no, even now. Hypocrisy has kept plenty of men afloat over the centuries, though. Mateo is no exception.

This is getting close to rubbing alcohol in healing wounds. Mateo gives a nod. “Sure. Include yourself in the equation and we should be swell.” 

It was a mistake to bring up Erin. Ward tastes her name like blood on the tongue, antiseptic in the air. A distraction from the Kasimir of it all, and the rage like rod in his brain that their proximity fires off. Electric. Lightning-hot. But not one that settles his pulse or cools the blood in his veins, dilated. The hospital is too close of a memory to access, barbed and easy to grip. Plastic chairs against the walls, rows and rows like toy soldiers. Nurses, armies of them. Clogs squeaking on the linoleum in time with a thousand heart monitors out of sync. 

“But it’s not really.” 

Ward bites the skin beside his thumbnail and curves his smile around it. He considers the space between them, how easily it was made and how easily closed. No more than a few paces. Less, if their arms are outstretched. Not that Ward is eager for a rematch, so many years later. There’s still a scar on the inside of his cheek where his teeth sliced through the first time. He spent days after, mouth purple and both eyes blackened, running it over with his tongue. He does it again now, but there’s no sting that comes. 

“Up to you.”

He closes the distance. It’s easier, he finds, than breathing. 

“Is it, Blue Jay? See – that’s the thing about our kind of shit. The river never flows just one way. You Corvids are all the same. Preening. Telling yourselves and each other that you’re the righteous ones. It’s our anger that’s heretical. Our –” Ward pulls back with a breath yanked sharply between his teeth, turns on his heel in a half spin until he’s looking at Mateo with a cheek turned across his shoulder. 

“Sure. I’ll talk to her. She can talk to me. We can have our ... intimate rituals – you’re familiar with the ... concept. Rusty as they might be for all of us.” Another few steps, a half turn once more to make a full circle. Ward rests his back against the wainscoting again and lets it dig into his spine. 

If the thing that lives in his very core is nothing but a creature of violence, an angry beast that snarls and growls and scratches — then let it be for a purpose that exists outside himself. Mateo has always known best how to live when he did it for others, you see: he is best at being anger on someone else’s behalf, at raising a fist to serve someone else’s purpose. And maybe that’s not what Kasimir wants, but not every desire can be met, and maybe that’s for the best.

So, there’s a creature in his chest. There is a creature inside of Warden’s, too. They stand here, like polite young men, on opposite sides of each other, the biggest act of violence the touch of hand to shoulder. A touch Warden slips out under. Mateo lets him. They stand like polite men, but Mateo has an inkling that both their instincts demand the complete opposite. 

Should those creatures get to meet, it could be carnage. ( He’d win, he thinks, if they were to go head to head. Or, at least, he would win the fight and lose himself — but that’s all he does these days, anyway. Lose sight of the person that stares back at him in the mirror. Point is: he’d win. But he’d rather not. ) It would be a body slammed against a wall, a pair of knuckles thrown against the soft of a temple, gut-punch, head-butt, improvised-weapon, the crack of bone. But it’s not.

A huff of air falls from his lips, tumbles onto the ground between them. “Yes, you seemed entirely chill just moments ago.” Even if there was no history between Warden and Kasimir, even then Mateo would resent him, he thinks. How could you not, right? “You were inflating like a balloon, chest rising. Even now, I can see your ego getting ready to burst past the seams of your body.”

He meets the question, the very pointed and apt one, with a blank face. “See, you do know what this is about. So smart.” Warden grins without humour and Mateo meets the sugarless expression with a raised eyebrow. “Anyway, do you think you’ll be capable of parking that ego of yours? This reunion is not for your personal vendettas. Which, for the record, you’ve had plenty of time to deal with.” He wants to point a finger forward, prod it in Warden’s chest, wants to say you’re not the only one with unresolved shit, not the only one with grief and rage, don’t make it my problem. In stead, he keeps his eyebrow raised and leans back, mildly, against a closed doorpost.

There was a time when this scene could have played out differently – might not have played at all. Warden is not so arrogant to say that he and Mateo would have ever been friends. No, not even absent of Kasimir and the grief he cleaves between them. Not really. The oil-black that lives in them is at once too alike and too different. A predator recognizing another outside of its niche. There is no way for Mateo and Warden to grasp each other and not wound. Every touch is teeth and claws; this is the way of things, of boys let to become beasts before men. 

He likes to think, though, that it might not have always been this: fight or flight. Weighing the odds and coming up wanting. And, really, Warden doesn’t want to fight. He’s tired. It’s a dog he’s let sleep for three years underfoot, only to kick it on the way out of the door. Watch it become a wolf, snarling at his hand. So, no, Ward doesn’t want to make this a fight either – and not just because he knows it isn’t one he can win. 

And maybe it didn’t have to be, but these are the spaces they inhabit now. These, the roles they filled, forgot, and are made to remember. The skeleton in the closet is a costume – go on, see how it still fits. Mend the elbows. Wear it. Remember. 

Warden dismisses Mateo with the extended index finger, dropped into a lazy flick of the wrist. 

“Your mistake. Ego? No, darling, that was a mating call, if we’re going to lean into the bird metaphors of it all. Anezka’s been dodging me, thought I’d put on a whole performance of it for our reunion, as you say. I really think I’ll have her this time, don’t you? Well – would’ve.” He casts a glance past Mateo, back into the foyer, waits a beat for any indication the other still linger. Nothing. So either they’ve dispersed, or, more likely, they’re doing the same as Ward. Waiting to hear what becomes of Harrier and Blue Jay, left alone. 

“No doubt someone’s snatched her up now. Everyone always preens for the swan, don’t they? Have you ever seen a real swan, Mateo? Out in the wild? Or as as close as they get. Vicious, violent fuckers.” Ward flashes another smile with the same humor – which is to say, none at all – thinned and toothless. 

“Speaking of – violence, personal vendettas, and the parking of them. Which – sure, fine, whatever. It’s all very convenient for you to stand there and lecture me, but I have fucking eyes. You and Erin?” Ward flicks his wrist again, between Mateo and the door. “Is that shit parked, too? Or does my shit only matter because it distracts from yours? Because from where I’m standing, you just like having something to feel self-righteous about.”