I started actually publishing Vattu in July of 2010, and planning and development around a year before that. So let’s call this an anniversarial thing, but really I just think it would be helpful to collect my thoughts publicly a little around this book that still feels extremely personal and quiet and idiosyncratic to me.
I struggle to think about how big this project has become, and how long a period of my life has been covered by it. While the broad strokes of the plot have been clear from early on, in the last few years I’ve felt myself slipping into a different sort of approach to writing it: less like I’m dutifully recording a self-contained story, and more like I’m using the story I’ve built so far as a way of exploring ideas. The more of it there is, the more it feels like I can live in it, instead of just building an interesting thing. I don’t know how else to say this, and I’ve never felt that it’s a betrayal of the plot-focused approach to the story. This isn’t like anything I’ve made and I have to believe that whatever value there is in it is because I’m doing it my own weird way?
This isn’t to say that it’s been consistently exciting and engaging to work on. This is something I want to be clearer on because I feel like a lot of people approach creative work as something you should only pursue when you’re 100% engaged or “inspired.” For me for practically any large-scale project, the most exciting part is early on, when I’m developing the idea and it’s clear enough to fit in my head, but not clear enough to feel too nailed-down to one particular finite incarnation. My excitement about a project is significantly lower than that throughout the entire rest of the process, but it varies a lot within that. It’s a commitment, it’s not a magical feeling all the time. Vattu has occasionally been a struggle, and I’ve occasionally felt totally out-of-touch with the vision I had when I planned it and started it. And the guiding vision of it has changed considerably, in a way that my previous books never did. But I feel that I still know what I’m doing with it, and I’ve been doing a lot more writing on it lately and getting pretty excited about where we’re going. (Having a couple of other things to jump between usually helps me through this process)
Where we’re going: in the interest of having four books that aren’t of enormously different lengths, I’ve recently decided to change the ending point for Book 3 (the one we’re currently in). This decision comes from a formal place but I do feel it works for the story, and makes Book 3 work a little better as a unit. I estimate now (July 2017, page 847) that we’re around 100 pages from the end of Book 3. I am thinking of the current moment in Book 3 (or the moment starting in the next couple of scenes) as a major turning-point for the story; I’m excited about finally being here and I don’t want to say more than that. And Book 4 will be intense, and even with all the planning that’s gone into it it’ll be the most challenging writing I have ever done, and it may be bigger than I think it’ll be. I am thrilled and horrified to think of what the whole story will look like in a few years when it’s done.
Oh and titles! I’m changing the title to Book 3 slightly (it’s hardly been posted anywhere, but until now it was “The Lantern and the Shadow”). Here’s the titles of all four books of Vattu; finally:
The Name & the Mark
The Sword & the Sacrament
The Tower & the Shadow
The River
I’d like to be getting the third book printed this time next year. I have the cover art pretty clear in my head and I’d like to get that done and visible in the next few months.
I would like to write more about my process in the future; maybe this at least will be an annual thing if I can remember. I know that my approach and my aesthetic and the place of webcomics in the internet have changed dramatically since I started Rice Boy 11 years ago. But I love doing this work and I love that I have an audience that makes it possible for me to pursue idiosyncratic projects at absurd scales. Thank you so much for reading.
Okay, allow me to explain:Recently, it was brought to my attention that some people on my page had a problem with me drawing black people because I, a black man, was drawing far too many of them (and not as stereotypes or tropes) when I’m known for having diverse character designs in the first place. This struck me as odd because there is literally no problem with me drawing characters of other backgrounds any other time, but the moment I start to draw us in a way that doesn’t make us look like the same stereotypes you’re used to seeing, it’s a problem? Check yourself. I literally got asked, “Do you ever draw white people?” And “You only draw black guys. Why?” In the same morning and I’m like, “Oh so this is a PROBLEM now?” Anyone that has seen my work knows that I draw people from all over. That said, there IS a conscious decision to represent my people in a way that is just and equal to how every other race has been represented since like…forever. Don’t come at me for actually taking the time and effort to show us in positive light. If me drawing people of color as characters and not stereotypes and over used tropes offends you, then get ready to hate my black ass then, because I’m not about to sit by and let us not be represented in a respectful, uplifting and positive light anymore and if you don’t like it well…. Too bad. But since it was an issue with me drawing my own heroes of color, I decided to do other heroes and villains from a game I’m fond of and make them people of color…. I specifically chose FFVII because it’s already a diverse case and to Square Enix’s credit, you could literally tell the same story with these designs. Enjoy.
so i know that theres been some discussion on how the fandom treats nursey vs. how it treats dex, but can we also talk about how nursey gets treated vs. how shitty is treated? bc i think a lot of time nursey is treated as the “privileged rich liberal whose out of touch w/the reality of being oppressed” and shitty is treated as “actual good ally but maybe annoying occasionally but in a good way” which is very telling…
Thing/Idea 1: Nursey gets talked about way, way more than Shitty by the fandom, which by extension means they’ll talk more about him vis-a-vis privilege.
Whether this is because people like Nursey more or because we are in a crash-course with the #nurseydex singularity, I can’t tell. I don’t know how to disassemble tumblr tags into data, but I can definitely mine some stats from AO3 and trawl through a couple pages of sort-by-kudos.
So here’s some fic counts, by character/relationship, as of April 2017:
Dex/Nursey at 966 fics
Shitty/Lardo at 380 fics
Nursey character tag at 1300 fics
Shitty character tag at 1376 fics
As you might expect, Dex/Nursey is a popular pairing, with over twice the fic count! You might be wondering why Shitty’s tagged more than Nurse overall, but (a) Shitty was introduced at least a full year earlier than Nursey, and (b) Shitty gets tagged a lot as a side character in fics. In the first five pages of Shitty’s sort-by-kudos, he’s typically the 3rd-8th tag. There aren’t many/any “solo adventures with Shitty” fics - he’s typically a tool to help Jack along his journey around his anxiety and/or into Bitty’s heart. We’re not following Shitty’s point of view very often. But there’s plenty of fics that follow Nurse from sort-by-kudos page one (though mostly in the Nursey/Dex context), and sit in his head, and invent his past.
So why do people like writing, and writing about, Nurse more than Shitty?
Thing/Idea 2: With or without from #nurseydex, Nursey has a lot of unknowns that make him interesting to write and speculate about.
We get a ton of Bitty/Shitty interactions in the comic, either because Shitty is like Bits’s crazy older brother, or because living in the Haus together means they’re more likely to interact regularly. We get a lot of what Shitty’s all about, but much less about Nurse. (Like, the bit about how Nurse thinks he’ll probably be able to annoy Dex out of Haus and into space in 3.17? Actually surprised me!)
Let me count the ways - what makes a Black kid from New York start playing hockey? What makes a prep school outsider (is he an outsider?) want to be a poet? Why’d he get sent to boarding school anyways? What, actually, is the deal with his parents, two moms or bad dad or okay parents or all of the above? Or, hey Nurse, how come we’ve never heard of you dating ever, making it so no one can say for sure what your sexuality is? Like, I know we’ve come up with a lot of cool fanon reasons for all these things, but the point is that it’s all speculation, and we are making up some really cool stories off of crumbs of information. Which leads me to:
Thing/Idea 3: Shitty’s entire existence is a backlash against his upbringing and defines his character, while Nurse’s perceived/actual privilege (and how he really only talks about it twice) deepens our interest in him.
Shitty’s at Samwell, instead of Harvard. He’s doing Women’s Studies instead of Law. He’s got long hair that he’s not supposed to have, and he’s loud about women’s/reproductive/gay rights instead of learning cool golf or toting expensive cars. He’s not shy about how much he hates his family. Like, we get it, Shits - you’re paying for the sins of your family by being everything they’re not. When you graduate Harvard Law, $10 says you become a public defender because your family hates the poor. We don’t need to analyze or talk about your privilege, because you would rather chew your own foot clean off than go to the country club one more goddamn time. You’ve said it twice now.
But Nurse... well, we can say so much more about Nurse. We can get tropey with him and make him not understand poverty, sure. I see more fics depicting wealth as a synonym for loneliness to Nursey. But I think the point I’m trying to make is that I think we talk more about Nurse & privilege than Shitty & privilege because we just talk about Nurse so much more.
I could be totally wrong. I think the racial element is 100% worth discussing, and subconscious racial bias is definitely something to point out. I just felt like there were more sides to this than just the one, so I thought I’d write for like an hour on race issues vs who gets more air time in the fandom??
this is me formally suggesting we kill the “jack is useless as tits on a bull in the kitchen” trope because like?? there’s no way jack 110% zimmermann would just…let himself fail at something? without trying? like? cooking is a calculated science at the end of the day, a science with step-by-step instructions and specific rules and measurements, and jack is a meticulous bro in all other aspects of life, so why does the puck stop short here???
And we already have proof! He does a swell-looking onion chop in 3.07. I like thinking they cook a lot together because it’s more interesting than just watching movies + it tastes good + yes nutrition (questionable) + big food for game-watchin’ days?
Maybe I’m hijacking the thread, but - Bits and Jack watching games together? What’s that like? Does bein’ a hockeyman make it difficult/impossible timewise to recreationally enjoy your sport outside of churning through old tapes to pry the weaknesses out of your opponents?
I’m pulling my harp out of the back of my car. There’s a man sitting on a stoop near me—he’s got too much red in his tan, too many wrinkles for his age, his clothes don’t look well-cared-for, and he’s got a backpack. My first thought is “homeless man.”
“Is that a harp?” It’s a common question. “Do you need a hand?” I usually don’t (and didn’t).
“Could you play a song for me?” he asks, sweetly. Less common question.
"I’m sorry, I don’t think I can unpack it right now to—”
“I don’t mean right now, I mean—I mean tonight, later.” He screws up his face a little. “My daughter’s in the hospital, and she could use your music.”
“Sure, um, what’s her favorite song?”
“Her name is Brittany Meyes (?), and she just, she just needs...” he’s tearing up. It’s a loud street and cars are passing, so maybe he didn’t hear me.
“Does she have a favorite song?”
“Her name is Brittany, and they’re all her favorite. They’re all her favorite songs. She’s... they’ve got her tied down to a bed. She’s in a wheelchair a lot, but they’ve got her tied down to a bed, and there’s tubes in her throat. I’ve asked so many people for prayers, but I just wish...” he trails off. I can’t hear everything he’s saying because of traffic, but he’s crying now.
“Then this’ll be mine for her,” I say, patting the harp. My teeth are clenched down on the inside of my mouth to keep from crying myself, but it’s hard.
“She’s everything to me... I don’t mean anything, but she does.”
“Everyone means something, sir.”
He scoffs. “I’m not a sir, I’m just me.” He’s clenching a fist around nothing as little shining rivers are creeping down his wrinkles, shining bright in the late-afternoon sun. “Just—play something tonight, would you?”
“Of course I will. I’ll find some songs I think she’ll like. And I hope your daughter feels better, and I hope your day gets better.” It looks so customer-service written down, but it sounded heart-felt when I said it. Or at least I wanted it to. I meant it.
“I love you, and thank you,” he says as I start rolling the harp away.
“You’re like my best friend, but I want to fuck you like my wife,” says drunk (?) girl nonchalantly to other drunk (?) girl as they make their way through the hallways toward, conceivably, someone’s apartment. What strikes me is how calmly she says it, like she’s commenting on a TV show or noticing a weird crack in the wall. Like she just realized it, but it’s “I just realized I’ve been spelling ‘restaurant’ wrong for three years” instead of “I am only now discovering that I want to be yours forever.”
Once Dex and Nursey move into the Haus Dex becomes a lot more publicly affection with Nursey because he’s saving enough money by living off campus to afford fines.
I took it in a slightly different direction! This was longer than I expected it to be! Epilogue in the tags! Fourth sentence ending in an exclamation mark!
“You know I could pay your fines, right?” Nursey asks, his eyes trained on the fiver Dex freely dumped in the sin bin.
“I’m not about to squeeze a sugar daddy for five goddamn dollars,” Dex huffs. “I’m your boyfriend, not the IRS.”
The smell of bacon mixes heavily with the pancakes Bitty made minutes earlier; the whole morning is warm with light flooding through the kitchen windows. Though his attention was mostly fixed on his laptop screen, Dex could usually sense when Nurse was coming back in from an early morning Annie’s run—something about the smell of the coffee, the way his clunky feet stomped out snow on the way in. He’d chosen to lazily feed Nurse a square of pancake once he was in range, and pull away from the code on his screen long enough to plant a kiss on Nurse’s cheek. Chowder didn’t notice until Nurse garbled an “mm, chofcorate schip” mid-chew—rather than shouting “FINE” at his fellow frogs’ cuter moments, C had taken to simply pushing the jar over to them with a grin. (Today, he nudged it into Dex’s arm with a badly-stifled giggle.)
Nursey gestures with the two coffee cups in both hands. “You say that like I don’t get you coffee at least twice a week.”
“But you’d do that anyway,” Dex says, hooking his elbow around Nurse’s to grab one of the coffee cups. Nurse snorts and mirrors the gesture, linking their arms such that both can drink from their own cups with their faces close together. It would theoretically be a rad-looking, Nordic-style toast, if the coffee wasn’t still piping hot.
“Shit,” Nursey coughs, puffing over his tongue to try and relieve the burning while Dex cackles at him. “That’s why we stopped doing that one.”
“If y’all want to keep pulling this weird Game of Thrones courtship, may I suggest feeding the pig?” Bitty says, prodding the fine jar once. For the sake of true irony, he plants the plate of bacon to its immediate left.
Once Dex and Nursey move into the Haus Dex becomes a lot more publicly affection with Nursey because he’s saving enough money by living off campus to afford fines.
I took it in a slightly different direction! This was longer than I expected it to be! Epilogue in the tags! Fourth sentence ending in an exclamation mark!
“You know I could pay your fines, right?” Nursey asks, his eyes trained on the fiver Dex freely dumped in the sin bin.
“I’m not about to squeeze a sugar daddy for five goddamn dollars,” Dex huffs. “I’m your boyfriend, not the IRS.”
The smell of bacon mixes heavily with the pancakes Bitty made minutes earlier; the whole morning is warm with light flooding through the kitchen windows. Though his attention was mostly fixed on his laptop screen, Dex could usually sense when Nurse was coming back in from an early morning Annie’s run—something about the smell of the coffee, the way his clunky feet stomped out snow on the way in. He’d chosen to lazily feed Nurse a square of pancake once he was in range, and pull away from the code on his screen long enough to plant a kiss on Nurse’s cheek. Chowder didn’t notice until Nurse garbled an “mm, chofcorate schip” mid-chew—rather than shouting “FINE” at his fellow frogs’ cuter moments, C had taken to simply pushing the jar over to them with a grin. (Today, he nudged it into Dex’s arm with a badly-stifled giggle.)
Nursey gestures with the two coffee cups in both hands. “You say that like I don’t get you coffee at least twice a week.”
“But you’d do that anyway,” Dex says, hooking his elbow around Nurse’s to grab one of the coffee cups. Nurse snorts and mirrors the gesture, linking their arms such that both can drink from their own cups with their faces close together. It would theoretically be a rad-looking, Nordic-style toast, if the coffee wasn’t still piping hot.
“Shit,” Nursey coughs, puffing over his tongue to try and relieve the burning while Dex cackles at him. “That’s why we stopped doing that one.”
“If y’all want to keep pulling this weird Game of Thrones courtship, may I suggest feeding the pig?” Bitty says, prodding the fine jar once. For the sake of true irony, he plants the plate of bacon to its immediate left.
“Nope,” Dex replies immediately, grinning and typing something in a spreadsheet before shutting his laptop. “I put in five already. Chowder’s my witness.”
“Chowder?” Bitty asks, swiveling his head toward C.
Shark boy sighs. “Yeah, he did, at um… 10:05, right? So he’s got until 11:05 before he’s open again.”
With Bitty, Chowder, Dex, and Nursey all in pretty committed relationships and living in the Haus together, they were likely to all go broke if they hounded each other for fines at every turn. So a deal was struck—anyone who put five dollars in the sin bin for a relationship-related fine was free from further fines for the next hour, as long as they didn’t pull anything egregious.
Which meant Dex had a full hour of public Nursey cuddles that he had to act on right now, on the shitty couch, watching shitty Saturday morning cartoons, and having a wonderfully un-shitty start to the weekend. He practically shoves the rest of a pancake in Nurse’s mouth as he pushes his fellow d-man into the living room, constructing a hodgepodge of breakfast foods on a plate to satisfy both their crazy appetites.
“Have you even seen any of Game of Thrones, Bitty?” Chowder asks as Dex half-jogs to the living room.
Bitty makes a face. “I’ve seen enough of what that man thinks of eating. I love food, Chowder, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t consider myself a food-sexual.”
Sunday finds them with a similar post-fine safe hour in the early afternoon, out on the reading room doing homework. Normally the cruddy wifi reception would be enough to send them both back indoors, but Dex’s programming assignment is offline and Nursey had enough reading to not get bored of it.
Every so often, though, when Nursey looks over at Dex, he finds Dex worrying over a spreadsheet. There’s a shocking number of formulas, sub-sheets…
“Hey, when did you say you were free in May, again?” Dex asks, out of the blue.
“Uh, any time after finals should be free. You planning something?”
Dex bites down on a lip to keep from smiling. “Maybe. Just don’t plan anything second week of May.”
“Maybe,” Dex repeats back, and checks his watch. He pulls a five-dollar bill out of his wallet, after wrestling it out of the back pocket of his jeans. “When you head back in for water, can you give this to Chowder?”
“How do you know I’m getting water?”
“Because you’re a thirsty goddamn fish.”
“And how do you know you’re gonna need the five?” Nurse asks, amused.
Dex holds a finger up—wait. And then Derek sees him point out a pair of yellow running shoes coming into view from behind the tree, and he’s just able to register the idea that it must be Jack coming to visit when suddenly Dex is there, in his space, teeth over Nurse’s lip. Derek feels the weird dirty gravel of the reading room dig into his elbows as Dex leans him down, shifting his palms around the tiny rocks. Their mouths collide—a little more openly than normal, and a little more forcefully too, when Derek stops to think about it. Still, he lets Will block the sun, and bite his lips, and breathe his air, and tongue over his teeth without complaint, because Will in his honesty is far better at this form of physical free verse than Tennyson could ever hope to be.
“Should I bring the jar up, or are you coming down?” comes the voice from below.
“Hey Jack,” Dex calls, surfacing. He’s got a wry smile on his face that Derek would have wanted to kiss off a few months ago, but now he can’t bring himself to wish anything that would tear the smile off Will’s face.
“I’m coming down,” Nurse groans as he sits up, rubbing the pebbles off his arms.
“Don’t trip on the window this time,” Will says, handing Derek both his glass and the bill.
“So where are we going?” Derek asks hopefully-nonchalantly, his feet up on the dash of Will’s truck. They’re chugging along 95N, Derek loosely holding the envelope of cash they’re using for tolls.
“Do you really want me to spoil the surprise?”
“If you’re secretly taking me to meet your family, I’d kind of like to be prepared?”
Dex scratches his nose, keeping the other hand on the wheel. “I guess I hadn’t considered that,” he muses.
“Wait—so we are? Meeting your family?”
Will flicks at Derek’s ear reflexively. “No, we’re just going to Maine. We could meet my family if you want, but honestly I just wanted to show you the bluffs and the parks and all that. You like nature junk, right?”
“Yeah, but—goddammit that’s really sweet, fuck you—but how are you affording this?”
Will laughs so hard Derek’s afraid they’re going to run off the road, but he just whips a sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and shoves it in Derek’s lap.
“What is this, a check?”
“It’s my tax return.”
Derek gapes—it’s a pretty big number. “Holy shit, dude, how did you—aren’t you a dependent still? How did you get this much back?”
Will takes a deep breath, unable to keep completely calm, and Derek realizes that he’d been keeping this—whatever this was—a secret from everyone. Dex was about to out his dumb plan and get so excited about it he’d botch the delivery. Yes, gold, beautiful gold, thinks Derek, relishing this moment.
“So we’re on a hockey team, right?”
“News to me.”
“Shut up. We’re on a hockey team, and sports teams are typically supported by donations at some level, right?”
“Right twice.”
“And who owns the Haus?”
Derek thinks about it—was that ever established during taddy tour? Hm. “The school?”
“It’s crazy because it’s true—a former SMH coach was also a landlord, and donated the house to the team when he retired. Meaning that every time we get fined, we’re actually—”
“—making a tax-deductible donation to the athletics department, holy shit, is that why you never let me pay your fines for you?”
“I made it my final project for the accounting class I took this semester. It turned out to suck a lot less than I thought,” Dex replies with a smile. “I’m paying for this whole dumb vacation and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.”
Derek chuckles and runs his fingers through Will’s scalp. “Can I at least buy you coffee?”
“I’ll allow it,” Dex murmurs as his head rocks back and forth to the tune of Nurse’s fingertips. “But stop massaging me or I might crash the car.”
Pretend we are a few years post-college, and Jack has some kind of injury. The best doctor to treat whatever he has is in Vegas, and against his better judgment he opts to save some money by staying with Parse. For his own reasons, Bitty comes along too.
Some TWs in the tags because this is Parse being Parse, but it’s PG. Must be rough, Kent.
The place looked alright, Bitty thought. Alright until you looked in, under, or behind anything, which seemed ironic and appropriate. He looked at the glass Parse had handed to him for a moment—it was chipped—before glancing back at the human salt mine trying his best to be hospitable.
“Figures he’d go for another blonde,” Kent rambled, rummaging through his fridge for some hummus. “He always liked good hair.”
“Are you—” Bitty stammered.
“Fast blondes, yeah, it makes sense,” Parse interrupted, dipping a pita chip in the hummus and sending it aimlessly toward his mouth. “Always knew Jack had a type.”
Bitty plants his glass on the table and gives the Ace a hard stare. “Parse, what the hell are you trying to pull?”
He takes his eyes away from the window and looks over to Bitty, smiling with a little “hm?” as if he’d only just noticed he wasn’t alone in the room. “Protecting an old friend,” he muses. “He’ll trade off the Falconers eventually.”
“You don’t even—”
“I mean, there’s professionals in sports medicine closer to Providence, yeah? There’s closer doctors than Las Vegas, there’s certainly nicer hotel rooms than Chez Kenny.” He dips another pita chip in the hummus, the gesture perfectly constructed to look absent-minded. “But what do I know?”
“Oh, so you’d rather he played games with his recovery?” Bitty sneered, trying to grip the island a little less furiously.
“I’d rather he played games with me,” Kent murmured. “But I’ll make do with you. It’s good to see what he’s into.”
“Wh—”
“Eat,” he said firmly, spooning his palm over the outside of Bitty’s knuckles. He uses Bitty’s shock to raise both their hands, and gets Bitty’s fingers into a grabby-claw position to get a chip from the bag. Barely breathing, Bitty watches from outside himself as the chip hits the hummus and makes a slow journey toward his mouth, guided by fingers tightly gripping between his own.
Parse’s other hand goes for Bitty’s chin—strokes across it once, and then holds his jaw lightly. Without thinking, Eric opens his mouth, and the Ace pushes the pita chip so that, in the end, all the fingers of both their hands are brushing Bitty’s lips.
“Chew,” he says, softer this time. At the first crunch, he lets go of Bitty’s hand, but Bitty doesn’t remember to move his shaking fingers away from his lips. When a blush starts creeping across his nose, Kent grins at him with something like hunger and turns to start putting the hummus away. Bitty realizes he’d never seen Parse actually smile.
“I hope I don’t need to tell you to swallow,” he chuckles to the refrigerator. And then Bitty remembers himself.
“You’re poison,” Bitty growls. “That’s all I could think about after that first kegster—how similar ‘Parson’ is to ‘poison.’”
“And you’re bitter,” Kent retorts. “Bittle, bitter—that’s easy. I picked that one up after Jack came out on live TV.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Eric thought he had managed to forget everything that had happened between Jack and Kent so many years ago, but it’s all coming back up now. He’s hoping fists-on-a-countertop is a good way to keep his arms from shaking.
Parse emerges from the fridge with a handle of Smirnoff, orange juice, and two whiskey tumblers. As he pours, he talks. “Sure it does. You got his confidence back, you had all those years of great games with Zimms at Samwell, you built him back up so he could charm the NHL again. And then all that fierceness,”—was Parse even capable of being wistful?—“all that strength and focus gets spilled out all over the country for the great 82, and you can only pretend to be part of it.”
“I am part of it—ugh! Look, Kent,” he says, pushing the tumbler back when it’s offered toward him, “he’s not yours. He’s not coming back to you, ever. Give up for once!”
Kent sneers, downs his whole glass in one worrying chug, and gets right in Bitty’s face. “Never, bitters?”
Bitty holds onto the countertop to steel himself, but doesn’t back down from the forehead pressed against his own. “Never, poison.”
Hands come up and grasp either side of Bitty’s face. Kent looks a little wild—shaken, real, hurt, hungry again. Dangerously so. “Funny. We’d make a great manhattan.”
Bitty almost laughs, because it almost seems like a joke, but then Parse is staring fiercely into his eyes like he’s looking for something, someone. “We’d make. A great. TEAM,” he shouts, his mouth straining too wide and his brows seizing too fast. He pushes his fingers hard into against Bitty’s face for a half-second, and Bitty’s getting ready to fight back, until Parse’s hands drop entirely.
“Let me know when you’re ready for a fucking drink,” Kent calls, already halfway through the foyer and just as quickly, out the door.
Bitty doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
An hour later, when Parse comes back from the grocery store, he wordlessly drops two of the bags in front of Bitty. The contents—a Pyrex pie plate, a rolling pin, an acceptable amount of butter, a bunch of Granny Smith apples, and an assortment of flour, sugar, vanilla extract. Bitty spends the next thirty minutes staring at it.
vaporwave
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