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Amala Moreno
Wyatt Finley
Lilura Laqueus
Roxanne Zuzen
Alfie Correa

oozey mess

Product Placement
sheepfilms
dirt enthusiast

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
YOU ARE THE REASON
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Sade Olutola
Misplaced Lens Cap
Not today Justin

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izzy's playlists!
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Three Goblin Art
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if i look back, i am lost

@theartofmadeline
hello vonnie
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@hxache
This is a multi-muse blog for boneyardfm. Please dni if outside this group.
Amala Moreno
Wyatt Finley
Lilura Laqueus
Roxanne Zuzen
Alfie Correa
The look she gave seemed to leave him under the impression that she cataloged him with the other horny sleeveballs that lurked around the establishment. Fair, his eyes wandered, he kept calculating her, taking in all of her in an assessment of a person. It was easy to see how she would feel about that. As it was though, he didn't mind her making her own conclusions about him.
Not caring what people thought of him was something of his brand. The nonchalant way he didn't bother to correct people, the indifferent mask that was his usual expression. He did care of course, no matter how minutely. But in this instance it made for intersting game.
"Never really go into photography, sorry." He offered a half shrug, his crooked smirk settling into his features nicely. Sleeping with her was no longer a goal that even crossed her mind. The disgust in her eyes awoke another challenge. He wanted to conquer her in a way that was well beyond physical. He wanted his annoyance to live somewhere deep in her head, a place where it couldn't be pushed out. At this point, it was a game of wills.
The smirk lights something in his own eyes, a small victory, a reaction other than eyerolls and a sharp tongue. He takes it as an invitation.
"I'd like to waste a lot of your time." He admits it as if it's not obvious she isn't interested, as if he had been given any reason to think otherwise.
"Hmm." He lets the time drag out, his eyes locking on hers. "Why don't we save that for next time." It wasnt a question. With that, he took a few steps back, watching her as he retreated. It was slow, a few steps to give her one last smirk before he turned and left. There would be a next time.
He quips back—something about photography—and it almost makes the corners of her lips twitch into a hint of approval. Interest, even, if she analysed the sentiment. It was funny. A little bitchy. It's a dangerous combination, and she's always had an inclination towards lethal things. Unfortunately, she also wants to strangle the smirk right off his face.
"Learn," she insists in a barbed voice equally as unyielding.
A distant reminder echoes in the back of her mind in a voice she doesn't care to recognise, dug up from a life dead and buried, about patience being the most respected virtue. Something about taking the high road and turning away from temptation in all it's broad-shouldered, smart-mouthed beauty.
Amala's never taken the high road in her life. She's sure as hell not about to start now.
The thought of paying this arrogant inquisitor a visit in a hazy dream was far more interesting. To gauge a reaction, above all else, to see if he doubles down on the way he presents himself; knowing, steadfast, and so very smug. I'd like to waste a lot of your time, he says, and Amala can think of a handful of unique ways to waste his right back.
She hums a note of irritation through closed lips in response, twitches a smile that doesn't reach her eyes and folds arms over her chest. She's making herself tall, raising her chin, thankful for the six-inch heels that mean she's almost eye-to-eye with him. Size doesn't matter when Amala's entire being is fuelled by spite.
He's leaving—good riddance, she thinks. She wants to glance at the clock hidden away from an obvious eye-line, but he's commanding her attention. She gives it to him, and the hint of her own smirk as he turns. "Next time, baby," she murmurs right back, a phrase hidden in her tone; we're not done here.
FIN.
Graham puttered forward, letting Alfie lead the way through the home. "Yeah," he confirmed. "I'd say I'm in this house once... every month? Three weeks? Something like that. Certainly more often than a cleaner, that's for sure." He stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs to fish out another device and began sweeping it from one side of the hall to the other.
"She's adamant she's got something somewhere, but I haven't found anything." He shrugged. "But you never know when a spirit is going to move in, so it's worth the time to check. That, and she's a monthly donor to the museum, so I feel like I kind of owe it to her to visit every so often."
Graham's eyebrows furrowed a bit, but eventually gave way to a simple smile. "Oh, no, you're fine," he replied to Alfie's question. "I don't think anything Mrs. Dennison does takes less than a few days. And that's assuming she even remembers asking you to take any pictures." He chuckled, a small rattle of a laugh in his chest. "But if she forgets, I'll take them. Nice to have some proof that my services are legit."
Graham says something about frequenting the house more often than it's cleaned, and Alfie shoots him a crooked grin over his shoulder. Don't doubt it, his expression reads as he presses on down the hall, floorboards lifting and creaking under the weight of earned footsteps.
"What's that thing doing for you?" The question comes as Alfie lifts the camera again, walking backward to track Graham's movements down the lens. He's showing off some new flavour of alien tech and his instinct to document it is initially driven by curioisty.
Alfie settles the viewfinder into his eye socket comfortably, closing the other eye to focus in on symmetry. His index finger's light on the trigger before the flash goes off, murmuring a Camera loves it to the other. Two birds, one stone; might've been a passing comment about legitimising his practice, but Alfie took it as all the more reason to snap a few photos.
He turns the handle to a room that's stale musk sucker-punches him square in the nose, closing it swift and unceremonious within a few regret-filled seconds. "What's a seasoned ghosty doin' lurking in a house this big?" His knowledge of the paranormal—the veil between this life and the next—is limited to blockbuster bastardisations of something that seems complex and reverent.
"Gimme a crash course," he continues. "Top reasons something's cause'n Missus Dee grief." He's stepped aside for Graham to pass through, back to the hallway wall, careful not to interfere with whatever frequency he's search for. "Personally I'd put it down to trees bangin' on a window and the fact that that room," he says, pointing to the door he'd opened directly opposite him, "needs it's plumbing checked. But I don't have all of that goin' for me," he says, a finger circling the contraption and the specialised equipment tucked away in a ruck sack.
private starter for @hxache roxie at the underworld
There are four fire exits in The Underworld. Theo knows this because on any given night that they’ve decided to play along to capitalism’s rule and work some moron will attempt to exit through one of those doors, ignoring the massive unmissable lettering adorned on it in blood red that says FIRE EXIT. DOOR IS ALARMED, DO NOT EXIT. Literacy in general is on a decline, they’ve noted, the invention of short form messaging and slang a repetitive uphill battle for them to comprehend. Every time someone tries to exit through those doors, a silent alarm is triggered in the security office, and every time without fail, since the doors never close right, Theo is forced to do a lap and ensure each door is shut tight so the alarm resets.
That’s what they’re doing, irony not missed that Firestarter by The Prodigy is blasting in the club at the same time, when they get called in their ear piece about a disturbance at the mezzanine bar. It’s a busy night with a lot of fires to put out. This club is always busy, but Theo enjoys being busy the same way a dog enjoys guarding a house – it gives them purpose. Most of their recruiting happens at The Underworld, and most of it fails here too, newer vampires that frequent this cesspool are looking for a quick feed, a good fuck, or both and the visitors aren't looking to employ people who can’t keep their fangs in check. But still, if they can give vamps a place to feed safely, then that’s all part of the greater plan.
Theo heads to the mezzanine with an effortless and practiced way of weaving through the crowd without getting noticed or approached. It’s always a difficulty, ignoring the glimpses of her that manifest in the crowd when then the lights hit shadows a certain way, but Theo dismisses the ghost in focus of their current duty. Through the earpieace of their radio, another security personnel asks if they need to attend and Theo replies with a quick I’ll let you know.
On arrival, Theo clicks their tongue in their mouth in disapproval at the loud argument two people, one of them a personal thorn in their side, are having with the bartender about being cut-off. They should have known by the way everything else tonight was being difficult that Roxanne Zuzen would be in attendance, some sort of cosmic alignment where everything messy and complicated would dump itself on their lap apparent in her presence. Did Roxie ever attend The Underworld and not get dumped out by Theo? Was she regularly a thorn in security’s side on nights Theo wasn’t working?
Unfortunately for her, Theo’s not in the fucking mood to deal with Roxie or whatever shitstain vampire she’s managed to attract the attention of tonight. They've got enough on their plate, lots of movement behind the scenes happening at the perceived instability of the Weiss family. Theo whistles on approach to get the bartender’s attention and dismisses them back to other patrons with a nod. “Let's go, you’re done,” they say as they grab Roxie by the bicep and begin dragging her towards the exit, a well-rehearsed position for the two of them. The vampire that was hoping to get lucky follows and Theo silently hopes he gives them a reason to turn around knock him on his ass. “Why is it always you,” they hissed under their breath at her, “is learning not to be a problem that difficult for you?”
A tight little micro skirt should've gotten her a few freebies and some fast friends. Instead it gets her a one-way-ticket to the shit list in this fucking club. Still, Roxie returns week after week, varying her days of self-entitled, heated bitching between bar staff and security. On a particularly successful night, she gets chewed out by her team the following afternoon (because they know better than to ask the front desk to patch through before midday) for memories a glaring hangover refuses to conjure, a stranger that's long-gone, and a level of accountability she's fatally insensitive to.
She was already peeved for being overlooked; she's the It Girl, the West Coast's favourite flavour of the month for 12 months in a row! It should've been a given that she'd receive an invite to a wedding that's been shoving her over to page three. Instead, she's bitching a fit for attention at the Underworld. Again.
She's got a man at her side, a large palm splayed against her back, whispers of sweet nothings in her ear to try and pull her attention away. Look at me, Roxanne, he says, in an effort to compel someone oblivious to his fangs and his bloodlust and, frankly, too much for him to handle on a good day. It's not surprising when it doesn't work; takes far more than just a caressing touch and a low murmur to try and pull her out of a karmic tunnel vision dealt by the swift justice of her own judiciary.
Roxanne's hellbent, slurring her words, pausing when a few vowels are particularly difficult to curl around her consonants. She doesn't remove the finger from their face, nor consider retreating back off the bar, even as they walk away. No, she's doubling down, practically lunging over it, reaching over the bar top to hurl individual cubes of ice in the direction of a bartender that's walked away from her. Patrons give her space. Bar staff call security. It's a little clumsy, she's probably flashing the fucking club in the process, but it's not like it's the first time people have caught a glimpse of Roxie's ass — it's usually a ticketed affair, projected to the silver screen in all of her cinematic beauty. In that moment, it's the seal of her coffin.
"M'not... fuck'n...fin'sh'd," she repeats, for the third time and lobbing ice with terrible aim until her fingers are numb, until her hand's dripping with condensation, and until there's a distinctly familiar voice—an entire presence—replacing the one tracking a failing grade in compulsion 101: how to tame a brat.
She knows how this tango ends, and still she tries to change the order of the steps.
There's a hand on her arm, firm and familiar, and her head's whipping around so fast her eyes practically rattle, unfocussed and glossy, to glare at Theo. Sobriety would've done her a favour in that moment; the snarling tiger was much of a hissing kitten, shoving this way and that on her way towards fresh air. A half-assed thrash—the quicker she moved, the faster nausea caught up with her.
"You're hurting me!" It's loud enough to draw a couple of eyes to their direction, and a frequent enough lie that they both know it's all for the theatrics of the moment. It'd worked once when a benevolent stranger had tried to intervene, and it was Theo that shoved Roxie forward and them back in one swift movement of the same strong hand that held her captive. How she'd smiled, saccharine and hypnotic, and tried to find a way under Theo's skin with false sincerity and flattery. Theo didn't buy it, but she swore they were a little more than bothered by it. Roxie still thinks about it sometimes and it makes her mouth water.
It takes ample concentration to get the words out clear and sharp. A damp hand is smearing on whatever fabric she can find—Theo's shirt apparently, right at their shoulder—and swatting away the cold hand from somewhere close behind that keeps trying to take her wrist and demand her attention while he follows through the parting bodies making way for them.
Theo says something about learning not to be a problem and Roxie may as well have worked out how to freeze time, because nothing else mattered in that moment. There's something in Theo's choice of words that sends synapses firing and has her digging her heels into the floors as she's pulled towards the exit. "Problem?" It's incredulity, total offence taken as if she'd been slapped across the face by the back of Theo's hand. "Oh," she laughs, humourlessly and melodically, through the remark, "you're sooo done."
It's said with full-fledged snark, furled lip and all, as heels meet pavement and an arm jerks free.
You're done, she continues to repeat, raising the same manicured, pointed finger at Theo as she had at the bar staff, unable to keep herself from poking and prodding at them. She's pushing the pad of her finger into the hollow between kissing collarbones hidden beneath a dark tee that fits them a little too well, outlines every ripple of muscle that haunts her, with a gaze heavy and glossy and swollen with undue anger.
You're so done, she continues, still poking and prodding for a reaction—for validation that she was under their skin just as deeply, and as quickly, as they had burrowed under hers. Knows it just takes a little push over the edge of their cliff of duty and responsibility to sink to her level and give her the satisfaction of feeling like she has the upper hand. She's lost in it, caught up in the depth of a honeyed gaze that reminds her of a burning wick, dedicated to making herself well and truly Theo's problem just for the (correct) insinuation that she was incapable of having the self control to take the high road. It's sport at this point to test their most rehearsed virtue; patience.
It doesn't even register when the scene changes; when she's gazing up into blown pupils, her own a perfect mirror, and a command trickles down her spine. Paralysing almost in the way it takes effect, weighing down the tips of her fingers, the heels of her feet, and pinning shoulders to an imaginary wall.
Stop, he'd said, and Roxie stood motionless.
There are hands cradling her jaw, thumbs pushing under the lobes of her ears, fingers reaching back in a comb through damp locks around her hairline. It's not loving, and it's not gentle. It's pure frustration, leaving tracks along the warm skin of her neck, her jaw, her cheeks, in the mar of white, possessive lines from the pressure of passing fingers. Moments before, she was eating out of the palm of his hand. His mistake was obliging her for one last drink before they left for her penthouse at the Monte Carlo. He was so close, taking the moment to suck a dramatic breath through his teeth as he pondered what could've been an easy target, and tilted her head aside. To caress silky strands damp at the nape and around her hairline, cascading over her shoulders, and push them down her back. To expose the flesh of her neck, the pulse point at her jugular, and swipe his thumb across it in longing, predatory scrutiny.
I'll take her from here, he says. Doesn't bother to take his eyes away from the starlet's, despite addressing the security guard. She's a real fucking bitch, this one. Talks like he's earned the right to camaraderie just for putting up with an uncompelled Roxie for an hour.
There’s a heat pressing against her leg and Naomie’s eyes blink slowly as she attempts to focus them on the source of it. Every movement is calculated with herculean effort, and Naomie follows the heat from her thigh with her gaze up to the woman’s face. There’s something tense in the pull of her brows and Naomie finds her own eyebrows furrowing in reply. Pull yourself together. Naomie wants to tell her that she’s still here, in her head, as together as she can be with the amount of shit coursing through her veins. She wants to tell the woman that she’s really pretty but she’s wasting her time trying to be kind to someone whose head is so far in the clouds she might as well be on another planet. Except the words die before they even form at the back of her throat because the woman is holding her wrist with slender digits. It’s all shiny in her vision, Naomie wonders if she’s making it all up: the stars are touching her. She holds her breath.
Naomie is used to contact, expects it from most people in a way that asks something from her – she hates how much her chest tightens when the touch is different, when it’s gentle. The cigarette comes to her mouth with ease and then the lighter schlicks loudly in her ears. This close, Naomie makes out the curves of her face, the fullness of her lips, the warmth that dances in her brown eyes. She inhales just as the cigarette comes to life and there’s something dangerously intoxicating about making eye contact on a first drag. Heat and smoke and nicotine fill her lungs, making her senses come alive and Naomie feels like the woman has set her on fire. She throws her head back and exhales the smoke back towards the star-lit sky, warmth in the cold of Nevada winter. Time passes and Naomie's taken all of two drags to her cigarette before the heat of it had burned her fingers and she'd dropped it on the floor.
Roxanne. The name is like the needle of a record player in her mind. Naomie watches her, watches the upset way she approaches the cabby, the way her hands flail to open the back door. Naomie can’t hear anything she’s saying because the entire time, Sting is crooning in her head. You don’t have to show your body to the night. What a great song. 1978 had been a good year to Naomie, the kind of year that you remembered when you were older, whenever people asked you if you had memories as a kid. Men sometimes asked her, when they’d misheard her name as Roxie, if the play on concept had been intentional, if it was meant to be inspired by Roxanne. It’s Lexie, baby, she’d reply, but you can call me whatever you like.
Her thoughts are snapped to attention. Get. In. Naomie hates that she doesn’t hesitate, and wonders if one day she’ll have enough self-preservation to question getting into cars with strangers. Her legs are shaky as she stands up from the bench and walks towards the cab. There’s a weightlessness to her limbs, and yet at the same time they feel like she’s dragging anchors tied to each of them with every step. As she approaches the back door, and looks at Roxanne, Naomie exhales with a smile and softly sings (slurs? struggles? mumbles?), “I have to tell you just how I feel, I won’t share you with another boy.”
Naomie collapses into the back seat with a laugh and then scoots over ungracefully as far as she can before sitting up and making eye contact with the unimpressed driver through the rear view mirror. She turns as Roxie gets in and finally says, “you’re, like… really pretty, you know?” A pause and then, almost as the same time as the driver, "where are we going?"
She can't decide whether she likes Naomie or loathes her for making her decision easy; for climbing into the back seat without so much as a chirping question. Couldn't possibly be further from something Roxie would do, and it bothers her that the dark-haired, dark-eyed, slender-framed songstress is now well and truly Roxanne's responsibility. She resigns to the back seat with a roll of her eyes, a scoff at the other's folly, and the slam of the car door declaring the two passengers were now the cab driver's problem.
You're like... really pretty, you know? She would've wallowed in the compliment, demanded she be fawned over again, were she not unclasping her necklace in silence, seething over the imaginary needle of her apparently functional moral compass that was pointed directly at Naomie. It's why Roxie's glaring at her with a chin tucked towards her chest, a gaze so icy it could freeze the first three layers of hell.
"No, baby, you're not talking right now," she whips the other, continuing her mean streak as Naomie questions their destination. Holds up the necklace unclasped, dangling in front of her eyes like thread of wool in front of a lazing cat. Roxie has their cab fare pinched between her fingers. Roxie asks the questions.
"You just sit here and look pretty, okay?" Of course she's condescending. She's Roxanne fucking Zuzen, and keeping an eye on Naomie is a burden of her own making.
Were she to examine those feelings a little deeper, she'd see envy staring back at her in the reflection of Naomie's gaze, littered with the shimmer of rubies and diamonds in the depths of blown out pupils growing wider by the second. She's free to be whoever she fucking wants, and destroy her life however she fucking pleases. Such is the price of fame and fortune, so all Roxie chooses to see glinting back at her is the image of success. Smudged mascara and all.
"The Monte Carlo," she answers both of their questions in one fell swoop, the cabby quickly asking for a destination shortly after Naomie.
Roxie's shifting her attention back to the driver begrudingly. She tosses the necklace forward with the flick of her wrist, hearing it land on the passenger seat with a graceless thud like it didn't cost a pretty penny. The studio can chew her out for it later.
"No questions," she elaborates, stern and sure of herself, falling on deaf ears.
If you're gonna throw me a couple diamonds, miss, I've gotta ask a few questions.
"Here's an idea: how about you shove those questions up your ass and save them to ask them to the pawn shop instead!" She's quick with it, a smile just as fake as the enthusiastic glow of consideration in her eyes. The shift is abrupt as her mask falls, impatient and unwilling to keep up the ruse longer than a few torturous seconds.
"Shut the fuck up, Pablo." Hardly lets him finish speaking, or spy the way her eyes dart to his credentials taped to his sun visor. She's already decided she hates him for little more than his ugly mug shot of a license photo. At the very least, though, he falls silent to lap at his wounded ego.
Her attention shifts, trying to switch the full blown flames of Hades down to a simmer before she addresses Naomie.
"Are you gonna, like... you know... make it?" Another ignorant question, unsurprising on some kind of scale; she's the people's princess, the silver-screened starlet that was papped one time, then never again, with a powdered nostril at some hot-shot party on an island in the Caribbean. The last time she'd been around Naomie's kind of hard drugs she was put on trial for manslaughter, saved by the late Augustu Vitelli and absolved of obligation when he dropped dead—and good riddance. This... community service, riding with a passenger treading water between this reality and the one that existed in her mind was entirely uncharted territory.
"Can you just, like... try really hard to.. I mean, like, really, really hard... for twenty minutes?" Once is an accident, twice is a pattern, and she's not going down again for a stranger.
𝐬𝐢𝐱 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐝𝐞 — (𝟎/𝟓) !
another disappointing evening left defeat flooding his veins. he'd drove around the city with a tight grip on the worn steering wheel, tempted to land at his place or at a bar until last call, but it was the blinking neon light of the music store that pulled him in and was the comfort he'd been looking for. his guitar, acoustic and the most expensive thing he'd ever bought for himself, needed new strings.
it was therapeutic, plucking at the bronze when life got too heavy. he'd learned during his time in the military, when his options were few and far in between. now, when the space inside of his townhouse got a little too quiet, he'd strum until his fingers ached and then he'd play a little more just to prove that he could.
"here i was thinking i'd have the place to myself," he greeted, a small curve pulling on his mouth as the door settled closed behind him. sin city had a reputation for a reason, but not everyone lived up to it. "haven't taken all of the good stuff for yourself, have you?" another joke, a feat for the man who rarely went out of his way to strike up a conversation with people if it wasn't work-related.
𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫 — ( @boneyardstarters )
She's not in the business of asking for permission. Doesn't make a habit of asking for forgiveness either, really. Amala takes as she pleases—'living' for almost two centuries will do that to a person—and persuades her way into getting what she wants. The objective in question lands her in front of a rhythm and blues section of a well-loved music store, too close to closing time, and filtering through the new releases for a new track for her soon-to-debut, yet-to-be-green-lit routine that wasn't a new flavour of Ginuwine, TLC, or Madonna.
"Slim pickin's are about to spoil your evening before I even get the chance to," she answers, her tone light, sarcasm rolling off her tongue like a foreign language spoken fluently. Her gaze is decidedly focussed on the alphabetised cases of CDs, sifting through E to I, that two nimble fingers flicked through with the clack of cases unceremoniously landing on top of each other.
The final few cases flick forward: INOJ's EP earns a scoff as it rounds out the abysmal selection.
"What's your poison of choice?" Maybe he could offer a little inspiration in these unsuccessful, borderline exasperating few final minutes before the pair of them are ushered out at the close.
At face value, it's an unintentionally intimate question. To her, it's market research.
It's then that her gaze lifts, a warm, honey-flecked brown, uncommonly patient as fingers push back the toppled-forward stack and hovered in preparation to start on a new row; J to M. Offers him the small respect of paying attention to his answer, and the simple pressure of undivided attention.
There was always something about having someone in her house that made Naomie uncomfortable, but with Wyatt that discomfort changed to something more in-line with remembering that her and her dad lived in a shoebox. Maybe that’s why it always felt suffocating when she was here. How was it that the fire of her father’s anger had enough oxygen to breathe, how had it been kept alive for the last quarter of a century? Naomie looked at his closed door with a sense of dread that he might wake up at any moment and that this total stranger would see the kind of grief that was able to pull cabinet doors from their hinges.
Wyatt moved through their space in an almost comical way, shaking the floor with his footsteps and taking up so much room that all Naomie could do was watch and step aside whenever he approached a new curiosity. “Yeah, I’m alright,” she answered easily. It had stopped shocking her how quickly that lie could cross her lips. Before she could even ready herself to help him with her request he picked up one of the doors as though it weighed nothing and was trying to match it with the corresponding cabinet.
“Oh okay, right into it,” she said, mostly to herself, as she raised her hands to… help him? He was already several steps ahead of her, Naomie dropped her hands and diverted her eyes to the floor to pick up the screws and whatever hinges hadn’t remained stuck to the door. She placed them down on the island behind them when she realized she would need a screwdriver to be of any assistance. “That’s the middle cabinet door,” she supplied over her shoulder as she made her way over to her father’s bedroom to retrieve the tool box that was under his bed. Naomie reached for his door handle at the same time as the handle rotated. Her stomach dropped and the door swung open.
Tommy Fletcher wasn’t an imposing sort of man in the traditional sense of the word. At six feet, he had four inches over Naomie, but the alcohol had worn on his disposition. The countenance of his face was pallid, his jaw sharp and covered in stubble but his eyes were sunken in and always a little bit far away. Naomie couldn’t remember the last time she had seen the white of his eyes be anything but bloodshot and watery, and every time he looked at her Naomie felt like he was looking right through her.
“Noams,” he rasped as he stepped through the threshold of the door to put a hand on each of her shoulders. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” So close, Naomie could almost taste the whiskey emanating from his breath. What he was apologizing for was always a fun guessing game. Was it the cabinets or the drinking or that he had made her mother leave? She tried to drop her shoulder so she could navigate out of his grasp but found his hold heavy.
“It’s alright, dad,” she mumbled, her heart racing in her chest. If she could spin him around and lead him back to bed he would pass out before even acknowledging someone else in the house. Except that he sniffled and his gaze looked over her shoulder and directly at Wyatt, cabinet door in his hands, a man the size of a boulder in their kitchen. “Oh, he’s just helping me with the cabinet. This is….” Her brows furrowed, what was his name again? Her dad inhaled shakily and looked back down at her with a dangerous kind of assumption in his eyes.
“You don’t know his name? Are you fucking him?” His hand dug into her shoulders and he gave her a shake. “In my house, are you fucking him? Answer me.” But before she could, he turned his attention towards Wyatt. "Are you fucking her?"
"Copy," he confirms her correction, taking a step to his right to readjust the wooden slab. Can maintain his focus for all of five seconds before his eyes start to wander again, though this time they followed the curiosity piqued by his ears.
His head tilts back, neck acting as a hinge while he puts a face to the voice hidden past his shoulders that's holding his focus. It's decidedly masculine and groggy, but too casual to be anything but integral to the chaos of a trailer that feels well-lived in, affectionately, and the destruction of a deconstructed kitchen.
With the voice came a concept entirely foreign to Wyatt; a present parent. One that spoke fondly to their daughter, or so he assumed from a tone of voice that wasn't riddled with contempt. A tone of voice that was just as unrecognisable to him as the words that left the man's mouth. He's watching, his usual boyish light dimming about him, dissolving into something deeper — more pensive and longing for a similar exchange. Wonders what it must be like to hear an apology from the very figure that was supposed to protect you, and adore you, unconditionally.
He reflects, briefly, about his odds; what he might do if an apology did come from his father. How a dark-haired, lithe woman bore similarities to a blonde-haired, blue-eyed teen still wearing his headgear, his mouthguard, his maroon and rust team kit. How her father had morphed into his, blonde-haired and blue-eyed and harbouring an abhorrence for his son that struck him harder and deeper than any reprimand could. How he was always encroaching on his personal space, towering over him, pushing well past a boundary he had any right to. A hand was always raised, sometimes open-palmed, sometimes closed-fisted. It rarely landed gently, his body tensing in anticipation—to brace for impact—before it was demanded he relax; drop his shoulders, stand tall, and take it on the chin. To feel the full force of his father's gambling debts and the perpetual inadequacy of his youngest son.
Wyatt's unconsciously lowering his arms, and with it the detached wooden slab. His pulse is slowing in time with his breaths, entranced by a scene he has no business watching unfold. Proximity doesn't equal permission, and yet he's standing too wide and too tall in a kitchen too cramped, listening to a daughter forgive her father. Thinks, for a split second they're like the scrawled, loving handwriting on the back of an aging photo, washed out by sunlight and fingerprints synonymous with pride and affection.
Her father addresses Wyatt and takes all of two minutes to tear through the fantasy. Two minutes to prove that an apology doesn't absolve a father of his temper.
"Pleasure, mate. Was jus' deliverin' some'a your mail. I'm—"
Are you fucking her?
He's seen this film before. Knows it doesn't much matter what he says, the permutation of a perfect truth impossible, but it's not a lesson he's willing to learn from.
"Beg your pardon, sorry?" He asks, the wood panel set gently on the floor, leaning up against the door to a cupboard. He's heard right, but the very question is almost incomprehensible. It's clear in the way his brows pull together tight as a knot, how his lips part and air pulls through them like he's going to venture an answer. I'm gay, he thinks, but that could easily do just as much damage irrespective of it's perceived believability. Would it be smarter to play it straight, for once in his life?
No matter. His silence is too long, too dense, and is infinitely worse.
He's not sure how the man crossed the trailer in what felt like blink of an eye, or why his feet carried him to meet in the middle. It's something hard-wired in him. Maybe his father would be proud of that.
"I'm not, promise," he finally answers, but it's too little too late. He's taller than Naomie's dad, his chest squares up broader, and his hands are raised, palms facing the pair of them, in the illusion of a white flag. Right-hook 'em, Wy, his father chimes in his thoughts, so fucking loud, so sure he almost checks over his shoulder just to see if he was there. Can feel the hair standing at the nape of his neck and the way his fingers itch to fold into a fist, aching to be guided by his father's phantom touch.
He pushes through.
"I'm not," he says again, firm, decided, through a clenched jaw and gritted teeth. His anger is infectious and Wyatt's always been a sponge for another's emotion. He can blame his late mother for that.
"M'not gonna fight you, mate." It's a murmur, quiet enough to be an intimate resignation between the two of them. Unfortunately for Wyatt, he knows acutely it's an opening more than it is a truce. A crossroads where the 'right' path is rarely ever chosen.
Are you fucking her? He's asks again, giving each word a beat to scald. He wants a different answer.
He's close enough that Wyatt can smell the sting of liquor on his breath and see the worn lines at the corners of his eyes, across his forehead, between his brows. He can't help the wandering thoughts, that this card could've been dealt to his daughter instead the same way his father had dealt him a losing hand a thousand times before. It doesn't do much to quell the broil of heat rising up his neck and caressing the shell of his ears. He can break the pattern. He can be more than a stripper-turned-carpenter's apprentice. It's better this way, to direct the full force of his drunken, heightened state to someone who can do something about it.
Tommy needs help, but Wyatt's incapable of giving it to him.
The blonde's hands drop to his sides, his head dips lower to encroach on his personal space the same way he encroached on Naomie's, and hovers his body closer. He's goading him, tension palpable as the pulse in his throat, the saliva building in his mouth and the sudden awareness of his canines vibrating in a plea to bare his teeth. His gaze matches the sharpness of the other's.
Third and final, Wyatt strikes him a chance to back down. "No."
ZENDAYA for the 98th Academy Awards — March 15, 2026
open starter: alfie for @boneyardstarters where: outside the photoflix when: 11pm.
"If you're tryna be discreet," he calls over his shoulder, Australian accent thick despite the years he's been a Vegas local, "think a little harder about y'shoes next time."
He's used to having his head on a swivel, and having no movement to show for it; makes it almost impossible to get the jump on someone who's always ready for it. Almost.
The sun has well and truly set, the street's lit up by some flickering LED that blinks and buzzes to life before it dies out cyclicly every few breaths. The lights to the shop are decidedly off, despite the specific instruction to leave them on for every junkie, drunkard, and hopelessly lost tourist to wander through the backstreet. The alarm code strings a long, activated beep, heard clearly even through the metal bars of a protective, anti-theft door—that same cautious intelligence not applied to the glass windows in the shop's front—and the thick wooden door behind it.
It's eerie, the diegesis that follows. The sound of a hand pushing keys into his pocket, strung around a keychain that harbours the shop's name tag, and the shuffling of his own feet on a sidewalk in desperate need of a new layer of concrete, small rocks broken off and blown down the alley crunching under his feet. The thick, dense silence of limbs settled, body facing the other's, eyes unmistakeably disinterested, unthreatened, in their lazy-lidded blink of thick lashes and a dulled green hue.
He's sizing them up without meaning to; a brief threat assessment that's filed as inconclusive, for better or for worse. So he pushes for details.
"Got a reason for this show-and-tell?" A beat passes, giving Alfie space to pull his hand from his pocket; to fold arms across his chest and venture a follow-up. "Bit late for an odd development job, don't'cha think?"
Nevermind what he's doing still hanging around.
Janella ran a business, though she knew that just the business side of things really annoyed her, she wanted more, she needed to dance, she needed to move. It was in her bones and when she was forced on a bench, bad things happened. Though… she’d never say that out loud. Nobody needed to know she had been the reason her rivals didn’t make it far. Nobody needed to know she had a vicious streak, even if they could probably see it in the way her deep frown followed those she disliked.
She had gotten used to getting her way. It was why her business ran so smoothly, she had her wishes, and her employees either followed those to the letter, or they would be out of a job. But if you did follow her the way she supposed you should, it was a very nice place to work.
As long as you avoided the owner when she was with a beautiful woman.
She smirked. “Just for you, baby,” she said, leaning comfortably with both feet planted on the floor against the barre. She’d stretched before, she started every moment in her day with stretching. She made sure her body was in tip-top condition, even if she never danced shows again. “Only the best,” she said. “Or those who need… a bit of extra work.” Her features expressed some fight, she had never been kind with those she cared for. She had always gravitated towards those who needed to be pushed, because she needed to be pushed as well. Only those who could put their fingers on what needed improving, and really drive it home, knew what was needed to push. Not niceties, never compliments.
There's something wicked about the way a smirk slowly pulls at the corners of Amala's lips, and the way she looks up at the other from beneath dark lashes. Sinister beauty in the whites of her eyes and the cruel intentions that coursed through her veins, easily mistaken for flattery in the face of a flirtatious compliment. Just for me, she thinks. As all things should be.
She acknowledges the statement with a righteous mhmm as legs part into a split, sweeping one limb behind, toes pointed towards the floor, and Amala's body folds forward towards the knee in front of her.
"And what category do I fall into?" She dares to ask—dares the other to volunteer another answer she'll like.
Realistically, Amala could use a refresher. A little discipline to her craft that's wasted dancing on a stage with next-to-nothing on. It's the thrill of it all; the illusion of exposure, of vulnerability, when the eyes staring back are connected to a soul unguarded. It's almost too easy to flex a manipulative finger, even as she hit her mortal forties—she doesn't look it, and it's why she stays at the Gulch. There's still a market for her, and she's always in the market for intel.
She shifts her weight towards her other hip, switching legs with ease and folding her body forward again. Poised in posture. Impossible to mistake her dedication to an art form—an outlet—she keeps well and truly to herself. Well, mostly, if not for the way she sought out Janella's time and talent.
She won't be admitting either statement out loud, but her actions clearly speak for her.
"Best of the rest," she offers an answer to her own question. A nudge in the right direction of pampering her ego as she straightens her back, butterflies her legs, connected at the flats of her feet, and pushes her knees towards the ground. "Yes?"
Roxanne Zuzen was too magnificent to be casually leant forward in front of Vi. Vi was too soused to be the one pouring tequila into her empty glass. "Whatever you say, princess." Every time Roxie’s head would tip back, alone, Vi couldn’t conceal her grin. Each victory was fleeting and rare, but she’d take what she could get. The hardest part was inevitably having to re-group to try and strategise a way to repeat the process again. A prompt received and initiated, like clockwork. It is predetermined and instantaneous, the way Vi flicks on the lighter to tend Roxie’s awaiting cigarette. She watches the dull end darken until set alight and thinks of what it also resembles; her own highly flammable composure, a bright and smouldering thing. Stoked by their shared oxygen, stoked by entrapping phrases. Although she fronted reluctance, Vi would have done anything asked, perhaps too readily. Being of service was an ethic that had nothing to do with work, she’d never responded so promptly to directions or radio cues on set. It was her singular hypnotic effect. Purely by virtue of existence, Vi strived to avoid any consequences for not fulfilling any of Roxie's demands. Though their playing field was harmless and leisurely, even disappointing her for half a second felt sickening to imagine. Too tipsy to resist the doting housewife it turned her into, Vi was at Roxie’s beck and call at every stage. Caught up in the glamour, scale, and luscious comforts of this alternative universe – where the actress felt embedded, Vi felt like a visitor with revocable privileges. Even their appearances bore a striking contrast. In dark denim overalls and a charcoal undershirt, stripped of production’s utility toolbelt and radio wires, Vi slipped back into civilian mode with ease. Where sets were cold and contrived, the cosy design of Roxie’s trailer felt warm and welcoming. It was all too tempting to fully relax into the space, forgetting herself in being part of the fold, lightheaded with awe before even breaking the seal of that first drink. Made vulnerable by the attraction of her own ultimate vice, admitting herself for scrutiny and playing too truthfully had been her first mistake. The game had gotten the upper hand on her too quickly in an embarrassingly short time frame. As a result, Vi had nearly all her fingers out of play, only two still standing in a holy peace sign that represented the last of the dignity she possessed. Before she’d gotten a steady grasp on more tactful phrasing, at least half of her consumed shots and lost fingers had been self-inflicted from her own misspeak: opting for easy low-hanging fruit that impacted them both. Vi's mouth – always moving too quickly for logic or reason to catch up and interrupt – confidently playing the fool card, time and time again. Never have I ever had coffee after 11pm. Never have I ever paid someone to do get what I wanted. Never have I ever signed an NDA. Never have I ever faked it. At first, it had been thrilling to have something mutual when the ground they shared was far from equal: Roxie occupied the peak of a mountain Vi had never attempted to leave the basecamp of. Even a few overlapping missteps was an achievement in itself. For whatever reason. Fuck. Indeed, every day Vi pretended across a series of encounters, typically concerning the same re-visited people. History repeating itself, one red lip at a time. Here and now, she pretended the hardest. She briefly considered lying, but it was a thought which arrived far too late to the party. Her body language had already shifted and given too much away: complexion flushing, expression clouding, teeth clenching, pulse racing, hair falling forwards, eyes swift to divert from the intent pair challenging her resolve. Delivering their desired effect, Vi caved with a groan.
“Okay, yeah, whatever, but also soooo not your business. M'not a sore loser though, so I’ll still take it,” Vi announced, bloated with false tequila-laced courage. “You’re a dirty cheat,” she grumbled across the rim of her glass, unable to fully nullify the amused warmth which saturated her tone, “y'know that, right?” Nonetheless, she takes the shot without further complaint. Swallows and winces through the searing path carved all the way down. She attempts to move along with haste, keep their momentum going without snagging on unwanted questions. Her mind races, intent on overturning something private and too specific to relate to her own life. It was also risky, making assumptions that she could not officially certify. Then, of course, Roxie could lie far better. Denial for an actor was like brushing teeth, skilfully blurring the lines between fiction and fact so well that there was no telling where award-winning artistry and reality merged. Waging an inner war between competitiveness and focus, a new genre of concepts ricocheted around Vi's head, distracting for what they required her to think of – sat directly opposite their star – her tongue too warm and loose to be bitten. “Never have I ever fucked a cast member in my trailer.”
Vi calls Roxie a princess and the actress purses her lips in a kiss, smooched to the air between them to travel into her orbit. She is a princess through and through, and the acknowledgement—sincere or not—lifted her ego to new, warm heights. She replaces the lip of a shot glass with the filter of a cigarette, leaning forward, waiting for the spark, the mesmeric flame to mirror in a deep brown gaze fixated on the other concentrating on her task at hand.
She likes Vi, and anyone willingly treading water in the throws of Roxie's affections knows it's always a dangerous current to be caught in. She likes Vi enough to thank her in a mutter behind a cigarette, between the faint pulls to bring it to life, and the cloudy exhale to her left; away from the other. Pinched between her index and thumb, she holds it somewhere along the body between its waxy, kissed-red tip and its slow-burning, ashed end over the heart-shaped ceramic ashtray between them. Still encroaching on the space between coffee table and couch. Still very much interested in winning the game at hand.
"Didn't say you are, baby," she taunts as Vi says she isn't a sore loser. It's a little too flirtatious—winning just about anything gets her going—and she doesn't care to pull back or to correct herself in the slightest. Vi was in her space, invited of course. Roxie was free to be hellish in all of her vices.
"You will be losing, though." There's a smile on her lips then, small and smug and entirely triumphant despite the fact that the game was only halfway through. Vi might not be a sore loser, but Roxie had always been born a god-awful winner. Capable of gloating to the most unenthused and walking away with a new devotee in her princessdom that stretches far and wide, both in grandeur and delusion.
She shrugs the allegation off—of course she's a cheater—as she takes another pull from her cigarette. Unbothered, muted in her celebration as Vi knocks back a burn well-deserved. Her leg's swinging lazily, folded over her knee in practiced and poised posturing, her middle finger's tapping the end of her cigarette to trickle ash into a tray, and she's distracted by the pearlescent, french-tipped, square-nailed manicure in the silence. Hates it, actually; much prefers an obnoxious bubblegum pink and nails shaped into almond tips. Really gives a hearty punch when she decides to flip a middle finger to an unsuspecting, but entirely deserved, co-star.
It's why Vi catches her off guard; mouth hanging open like a fish caught in a hook kind of off guard.
"Never have I ever I beg-your-fuck-ing-par-don?"
There's absolutely no chance of playing this off. Dumbfounded silence fills the space between them with what would-be tension if Roxie's brows weren't raised high enough to look like they were trying to assimilate into her hairline, and the corners of her lips weren't fighting a smile of absolute delight.
"What the fuck, Vi?" A laugh, incredulous and wholeheartedly impressed by her jab, litters her question.
"So it's gonna be like that huh?," she continues. "Alright. Fine. Okay." It was not alright, fine, or okay. It was a clear loss, and Roxie accepted it with grace for the first time in her life.
Two in a row. An awful feeling, complimented by the burn down her throat and the quell of her four-fingered-farewell with the dignified reduction to three; her index, ring, and pinky.
"If I lose this game over a fucking man, I swear to God," she complains; Roxie settles back with a huff and an audible collision of her back to fabric. "He wasn't even worth it." Men in her circle never are.
"Off the record," she demands, letting her head cock back as the faint warmth of a buzz tingles the apples of her cheeks. "Was that a total stab in the dark? Because if you saw me with Cody then, girl, you can dig me a hole about six-feet-deep."
If Roxie was responsible for a dictionary definition, 'Cody' would have two; smooth-talker, and recurring regret. She was so careful with her flavours-of-the-month, so discreet in the way she kept her refrets out of headlines, kept her image free of her shortcomings and impulse decisions (thanks to top tier representation with absolutely no choice but to handle it on her behalf). Unravelled by a game of never-have-I-ever.
What a way to go.
"Whatever. Live while you're young." Terrible advice to give Roxanne Zuzen, and yet the only piece she'd properly listened to.
closed starter: alfie for diana (@themayorandthequeen) where: city hall, diana's office when: noon.
There are certain privileges to being the godson of the city's most influential, and arguably most deserved, Mayor. The first is the most frequently used by the slayer, and the quickest to piss off just about every person who occupied a sliver of space within the grandeur of City Hall.
Mister Correa, the stern voice warns. He acknowledges it the same way he does each time, their caution always beginning with a sigh and ending with Alfie's blatant ignorance; with a finger held in the air—the international gesture for yeah, one sec—as he powers on by the desk of the receptionist (so he calls them, knowing full-well their title is executive-assitant-something-or-whatever) without a break in his stride, leisurely and unbothered.
They were saying something about the Mayor being busy, something about a phone call, but Alfie already had two jewelled hands—a signet ring on his right pinky finger embossed with the family's crest, an heirloom from his father in worn and weathered silver on the index finger of the same hand, and treasures he's taken off conquests on his left, a mix of alloys and gold bands. All complimentary to the dark inked rose, petals engulfed in flames, stretching from the fleshy back of his hand, right under his thumb, down his wrist. An unmistakeable mark, and one he thinks an honour to share with his father, hidden ever-so-slightly by the silver face of a heavy watch wrapped around his wrist.
In a firm push, the heavy double-doors pushed open, the sound of wood unlatching from its kissing panels and air hissing through the hinges, under the weight of aged oak, declared a dense announcement of both the building's permanence and Alfie's arrival. Strong arms outstretched, a fitted black tee, a leather belt, single-pleated black slacks, and boots.
It's a uniform of sorts, and an announcement of it's own; his visit has a motive. He's not necessarily surprised that the receptionist was truthful, but he was certainly inconvenienced by it. He breathes a sigh as hazel eyes settle on Diana, a corded phone held to her ear, eyes meeting his own.
He's seen those eyes catch him in compromise more times than he could count; when they were on vacation in the Hamptons when Alfie was ten, and he had a slingshot aiming at his brother's temple from a third-story-window. Right place, right time maybe, or just an uncanny maternal instinct; he still thinks about that slingshot.
Then again, when he was fifteen and was pinching the keys to his dad's car to take it for a joyride, just for the thrill of it all. He had a hand in the bowl, the jingle of keys in his palm, and the stern gaze of his godmother behind him once he turned around. Crock'a shit, he'd said, his language making her double down and his hand instinctively lift to hand the keys over.
His mother's always said the pair of them have their own language of gestures, brow raises and smirks, and of silences that bear different meanings depending on their proximity to each other. Realistically, it was a language of being understood transparently and intrinsically, simply because Alfie knew exactly how much he could get away with but insisted on moving the goalpost anyway.
And it's warmth that fills him almost instantly, a smile twitching the corners of his lips as the stern warning of maternal affections apprehends him again, now, in silence.
Wait your turn, her gaze reads.
When Diana tells him to, he falls in line.
Doors close behind him with reverence, quiet and controlled. Dares a wink in total triumph at the receptionist leaving his field of view in a silent next time, baby. When he turns, it's to cross the distance between Diana's desk, the chairs opposite them, and the doors he's just closed, with hands clasped behind his back. An illusion of patience above all else, Alfie lurks in silence. Quite likes the silence projecting back at him as Diana listens to whoever has bothered to waste her time—someone inexplicably less important than her godson, so he thinks. Makes it known as he dares to round her desk of the same heavy, weary oak as the panelling on the walls and the timber beneath his feet.
He's got that same gravitational intrigue as his mother, and the same suave charm as his father. He's trouble, made evident a thousand times over to Diana whose unquantifiable fondness he uses to his advantage. And, so obviously, echoes in his respect for her. Made apparent by the way he rests against the ledge of her desk, legs outstretched in front of him and crossed at the ankles, with arms folded over his chest.
He's anticipating a couple of remarks: something about how he needs to call ahead of time instead of showing up unannounced, and something about the length of his hair. It's shaggy, curling against the nape of his neck, and she'd be right to tell him he needs a haircut. It's not like he's done anything about it since she last told him.
Contrary to popular belief (mainly perpetuated by her own self-deprecating humour) – Vi could read very well. Had the capacity to enjoy the act, even. Sometimes. But it was a cumbersome bore, far from the best activity to make use of one’s eyes with. Nowadays visual entertainment was a vast matrix of decadent options and could amount to so much more than some scattered ink impressions on paper, leaving far worse behind than a shallow papercut or tension headache. The lurid sights of the city were far more delicious in their fullest and most tangible state, in constant flux and flow. Able to pull and push in return, impermanent and ever-changing. Livewire body language and eye contact were much more fun to absorb, interpret, analyse, and deconstruct than any flat page waxing purple prose would ever be. The rewards of reading people far surpassed reading text. Vi's jaunt through this bookstore had initially been a means to an end: it was too late to attempt at harvesting a couple more hours’ worth of sleep, yet too early to hide anything fun in the shadows. The location wasn’t as unbearable as other bookstores she’d unwillingly lurked in before. Libraries were the worst, which left the bar fairly low for all other book-filled establishments. Anywhere devoid of fluorescent overhead lighting, austere front desks, and an intimidatingly large cabinet of Dewey Decimal Classification cards was a welcome refreshment. By contrast, to Vi’s unexpected delight, this store carried a prominent sense of personality. Cluttered, colourful, chaotic, imperfection… qualities precisely opposite of the woman driving through the store like a hot knife through butter. Each observed step felt articulated perfectly, a precise economy of movement leaving no room for error or superfluous gesture. She was Vi’s sole companion in the store, based solely on the virtue that they were both browsing customers. Any further relatable comparison ended there. Vi hadn’t intended to scour and mirror the sharp stranger’s every purposeful move, per say, but she also hadn’t been able to look away for longer than a handful of seconds at a time. Leather bindings and shelving units blurred into one, no longer as meaningful as pursuing the magnetism on her left or right – she needn’t glance up to notice where she went next, merely confirming the inevitable when she caught her next glimspe. Just like that, Vi had taken the form of a needle designed to locate what radiated the brightest. Without uttering a word, it could not be misunderstood that to be made to wait may as well have been an insult. She was above being an anonymous nobody – and as a someone, her time was inherently more valuable than others’.
Vi’s hand intermittently darted out as she quietly stalked along, seeking purchase on the nearest mass market copy. A bare minimum illusionary effort in normalcy: performing the mundane shopper tasks she ought to have been too preoccupied with to care what tall temptations breathed nearby. So far Stephen King’s The Mist, Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House had found themselves in her possession, stowed dutifully between her ribcage and elbow. She had been following no different a rhythm when she randomly swiped up a folio copy of Ian Fleming’s Octopussy and The Living Daylights on her journey into the fictional depths, barely successfully maneuvering around two precarious piles. Half-turning, half-spinning around to face the direction already headed, she barely made it two steps forwards before she found herself decidedly not facing the familiar dark head of hair she had unofficially tethered herself to.
As soon as the stranger wheeled around, Vi’s composure crumbled beneath the weight of her gaze like wet sand. Yet again, concise and to the point, Vi felt as if she's been pricked in the jugular with truth serum. She couldn't lie, couldn't think, couldn't focus – any idea of defence presented as non-existent. Her jaw fell slack and her breathing hitched, maintaining balance despite the impulse to jerk away and risk dislocating a joint careening out of sight. “I wa–” whatever answer she’d intended to submit was barred from awaiting ears, swallowed beneath a brief overtoppling of brick-like books hitting musty carpet. Seemingly only able to remain coordinated on behalf of one set of limbs, though Vi’s feet were fixed in place, her hands had automatically flailed upwards in surprise. The copies she held flung from her grip as if the cardboard had become hot plates, a kneejerk reaction she tried to compensate for by both hands then shooting out beneath the falling objects. Two of the three landed with sad thumps on the floor, nowhere near being intercepted, and one bounced off her hands semi-hopfully before catching on her hip and inevitably joining their pulpy printmates. Only one was successfully recollected, awkwardly cradled between her hands like a shield.
With or without protest, Vi understood she’d been caught out and that was as flustering as it was humbling. She could only hope the denseness of limited space, nestled between a pocket of too many books, made it dim enough not to portray the embarrassed heat she could feel crawling up from beneath her shirt collar and rising to the apples of her cheeks. “I didn’t mean any harm. Hell, I didn't know you knew. Looking like that, I should be asking what you want.” She mumbled, lamely. Taken aback by the unanticipated confrontation, pinned under a level of perception she could only dare meet directly in sporadic glances, only genuine commentary survived, "I'm sorry, really, but on the bright side I'm also a total nobody... does that help at all?" She wanted to die, even if that death would be equally as humiliating, beneath an enormous pile of books no-one had touched for over a decade. Alas, going out with broken bones and covered in dust and lesions was not an adventurous enough ending to warrant such suffering. Self-consciously, Vi adjusted her stance in accordance with her stunned confidence, arms tucking around her torso and feet planted firmly together. “Was it that obvious? I was just… looking. That’s all. Is having some curiosity so wrong? You’re…” No sooner had the train of thought materialised, she obliterated all it represented, rapidly reassembling the intact core of the sentiment into something far more impersonal: “You don’t exactly fit in here, so...”
Vi's talking and Lilura's eyes are narrowing. Suspicion's hard to shake, particularly when it's imbued in the air between the city's coroner and (perhaps) the city's most inquisitive citizen. It's woven through her veins, the art of cynical disbelief hammered into her very state of being. Trained to know the familiar detonation of a gaze lingering on her person even so much as a millisecond longer than innocence would imply; to be able to surgically discern the moment a glance became a gaze, and a gaze became a character study. Just as Lilura's had become of Genevieve—a green so piercing, so clear in their course to burn through a target with the molten heat of laser precision that little else existed around them.
Vi's starting to crumble under the weight of Lilura's undivided attention, and she picks her apart in her mind like a vulture scavenging a carcass a few hours past it's expiration. Applies ample pressure in the way a heel connects with timber, a punctuative clip of a stiletto, then another, closing the distance between them like a knot pulling taught. Tighter and tighter until they're close enough for her attention to shift.
Vi's still talking, recovering it sounds like, while Lilura's index finger reaches forward for the collected stack held in her arm. She discards the folios with the walk of her index and middle fingers through the pages—not her taste—and catches a title, then another—ugh, Stephen King—and the final, before they fall back in line into a neat little pile with the withdraw of her hand. Gives no remark, no hum of approval as Vi explains, apologises, and questions.
Silence is a powerful dagger and she uses it well. Twists the blade in the other's discomfort as seconds turn to minutes, and eyes rake down her figure, taking stock of the self-confessed shadow.
Her shirt has a collar. Her clothing bears a glimpse into the semblance of her personality; imaginative, curious, harmless, she decides. Impressionable, even, given her doe-eyed gaze and the faint hesitation woven through testimony. Her eyes travel the course back towards her face, paying attention to sharp features, full lips, high cheekbones, a youthful glean to her eye that's more than just a fleeting moment of innocence. It's raw, lingering, giving away that she is young and impressionable. Seems like the defaultively optimistic type—an if all else fails, tomorrow's a new day type. Places her in her early twenties, given the general lack of subtlety to her amateur-hour approach to reconnaissance. She doesn't like that type very much. Redeems herself by the simple fact that she isn't cowering under heightened pressure and speaks with an honest conscience. Filters her thoughts mid-sentence, sure, but carries herself well enough.
How curious, she thinks.
It's enough to keep her interest.
I'm a total nobody, she'd said, and Lilura took the liberty to pry the bear trap open with a little jab. "You're kidding. You're not a regular Nancy Drew?" It's unintentionally pricklier, eyes pulsing wide to compliment the stresses in phrasing, when she was aiming for something gentler than her delivery. "If you're planning on following people without their knowledge, there's a career path for that. Make a living off your... curiosity," as she'd put it.
There are a few beats of silence before she decides she wants to unpack a passing comment. Discern what a total nobody might think of her before she'd played her hand as someone who doesn't make a habit of friendly conversation. It's been a long while since someone had ventured their first impression of her.
"Looking like what, love?" She finally asks. Formal? Professional? In a tax bracket worlds above the cramped, dark chaos of a bookstore on the fringe of bankruptcy?
She's on her lunch break. Her trousers are double-pleated down the front, a white blouse tucked into the waistband, a blazer over top, aware she's out of place but not out of her depth. She doesn't make habits of taking trips to establishments outside of her usual haunts in broad daylight and she's got all of fifteen minutes before she calls it a day and drives back to the office, anyway. There's a bag under her arm, small, the embossed monogram hidden under the tuck of her tricep, despite the golden hardware and it's square, boxy shape iconic in its silhouette alone. Arms are folding over her chest, keys to her car still clutched tight in her right palm.
"Read me, Nancy," she dares the girl, a test of her mettle born out of Lilura's own morbid curiosity more than anything.
Their shared dressing room was much too small for the size of their massive and constantly competing egos and Naomie felt it anytime the two of them squeezed into the room at the same, bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder as they did their makeup in the cloudy mirror. Sometimes, if Amala was particularly cunty, she would turn to Naomie and say, oh you look nice for once, and Naomie, always matching the energy she was given, would say something equally cunty back like, and you don’t even look like you're in your forties. Then they would smile sweetly at each other and give each other air kisses before turning away and muttering bitch under their respective breaths.
Still, Amala was probably the only girl in this joint that Naomie could even conceivably call upon in a moment of crisis. It was like some sort of secret fucked up girl code, a sense of loyalty unswayed by the catty nature of their relationship. A sort of we fuck with each other but no one else is allowed to fuck with us sentiment, which was crazy because of the little information they knew about one another. Maybe it was easier to care for someone on principle alone rather than because you actually liked their personality. Amala’s clear dismissal would have been concerning, if Naomie didn’t know the woman could more than handle herself.
Naomie stood, approached the dressing room table, and looked at the girl through the reflection of the mirror. She felt it all very metaphorical, the way that both of them mostly looked at each other’s reflections rather than the person. Appearances were deceiving. A look at the clock and Naomie rolled her eyes. How was it that her break felt shorter every day?
“You can make it up to me now,” she said, as she took her top off and then reached past Amala to grab the well loved tube of body glitter from one of the drawers. Nudity in the gulch dressing room was about as common as dirt, and inherently un-sexy. She squeezed some into her hand and then chucked the tube down in front of Amala before raising an eyebrow.
“Can you help me apply this to my tits? I’m going to be late to the pole.” Naomie rubbed her hands together and then paused as though remembering something in real time. “You know Romi asked for the craziest fucking favour just now," she said as she began applying the glitter paint.
There's always a weight to Naomie's gaze and it's always fucking annoying; makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand and forces fingers that were fishing through her things for a compact and a brush to freeze. A pause to her entire demeanour, though her gaze didn't bother to lift. There's a question coming—she knows this expectant silence well—even if whatever conversational trade seconds ago had already left her gravitational ring of relevance.
She has half a mind to ask, but there's no need. Naomie doesn't leave her in purgatory.
"Assuming that works for me," she replies, a reflexive backhand with no bite to it. Just an irritated grumble for a pretty, soon-to-be-space-cadet brunette in her personal space. "Baby, I just walked through the door."
Amala lifts her gaze to find Naomie half naked, and doesn't so much as bat a false lash. Her gaze is as unimpressed, as inconvenienced, as she is when stuck in dull conversation with a particular client that grinds her fucking gears just for the thrill of it all. As Naomie reaches forward, it was then that Amala decides to vocalise her want for personal space in a very clear, and ever-so-dramatic scoff. Follows through with a girl, get your own as the tube lands in a clatter in front of her.
Naomi decides to cash in the favour, and Amala is suddenly enamoured with her own reflection. She's busy—obviously—with the soft bristles of a fluffy brush dipped in an opalescent, almost-pink, almost-golden sheen (depending on the angle of her cheek and the shade of the light overhead) swiping across the bridge of her nose and up the length of her cheekbone.
"Baby," she starts, with a brief pause to flick warm eyes up towards her, through the mirror, to make sure her condescension is worth the breath spent. "You literally," she says, turning her head to the left to apply the same shimmering bone definition to the opposite side of her face, "have two working hands."
Uninterested, uncaring, and unwilling.
The tube of her lipstick winds up, revealing a precious crimson bullet shaped into a perfect slant, loved and lacquered to near death. Eyes on her lips, a swipe across a plump lower, the careful outline of her cupid's bow.
And the mention of fucking Romi. Again.
"I swear to God, Naomie," she says, a figure of speech more than a backed ideology, in a borderline-incoherent muffle—the result of trying to keep her lips still as she swipes them to life in a satin-finished cherry red. It's a threat, clear in the sting to her words. She doesn't need to tell her to keep Romi's name out of their dressing room when the sharp twist of her torso, the whip of braids over her shoulder, and the sting of eyes so sharp, piercing the dilated pupils that were starting to look an awful lot like a bullseye. It's scalding. It's silent. And it's concession as she stands, glitter in hand, with a roll of her eyes of course, that she'll listen to whatever bullshit she has to say about the five-foot-blonde pain in her fucking ass.
"Make it quick," she demands. Amala doesn't give her the same grace.
The squirt of glitter into a palm—rings be damned—is unceremonious, discarding the tube with a flick of her wrist and the clatter of plastic to wood. The application, though, is with a reverent conviction; a glittering palm smooths between the valley of her breasts, pushing over the swell of the right and circling down towards her nipple, leaving a holy visage of sparkling flecks in her tracks. It's therapeutic in a way, routinely intimate, and it's one-too-many passes over a twinkling pink bud before Amala sighs something gentle and murmurs a genuine compliment—"Your tits are so fucking perfect."
CHOCOLATE-WINE EYES flitted from the brief glare into the back of the last teenager's sequin jacketed back to the figure abruptly beside her and in the way of crackling speaker ( no matter, fallon had already seen misery and tonight was just simply for something to do ). an itch to defend herself came and went when she realized there was no real threat, in the least with the buttered popcorn held aloft for her enjoyment. still, she surveyed the woman - classically pretty, kept and clean, all poise and detail down to the fingertips - as she tentatively reached forward and took a polite helping of popped kernels.
"you have no idea," the biker lamented, finally breaking eye contact and throwing a couple morsels between the teeth. rolling a shoulder, she couldn't help herself but continue, encouraged by the presence. "but no, i wasn't talking about you. actually, you almost scared the shit outta me with how quiet you were showing up like that." especially for the fact that one cursed like fallon was more apt than the average to notice the slighter things. "doesn't matter, i was just bitching. but glad to be of service," lifting a bemused eyebrow in reference to the other's smirk. "finding it more interesting than the movie or you just don't wanna go back to your hedge fund husband?"
She watches, eyes always fixed, always with some kind of observational intensity, as the other takes her olive branch in stride. She doesn't always mean to be so... cold. But it's a quick way to weed out the weak.
There's a smirk at the corners of lips and a huff of a laugh through her nose—you have no idea. She had some idea. Lilura's threshold for bitchy teens might be even lower than Fallon's. Then again, her threshold for company was a fuse almost always already ignited. She says something about Lilura scaring her and she takes it as a compliment. "So I've still got it," she says, finite and definite and warmed by the fact. "Didn't mean to, for whatever that matters." It doesn't.
"Ex-husband," she clarifies the other's bite, slow and annunciated, nice enough. "If you're going to swing at me, love, make sure it connects." She's calm, collected, unimpressed, and a little smug that that's the only bit of dirt this town has on her to hold against her. Maybe a little more that she's the fifth person in two weeks to be blissfully unaware that she doesn't carry the Crane name anymore. Not that she's still keeping track of the people that piss her off—there isn't enough ink. Still, she entertains the question.
"Finding you more interesting, yes." A beat passed, a shift in her demeanour; the cock of her weight to one hip, the rattle of the popcorn in a gesture to the direction of the teens gone, the ones she'd snapped at. Tit for tat. "Is this where you come to pick a fight you can actually win?"
Maria's expression contorted into something resembling an embarrassing amount of apology. Her brows pulled, raising up her forehead as she displayed a sheepish grin. He was very hard to understand. English was difficult on it's own, accents even harder. She wasn't sure if how he spoke could be considered an accent; she thought maybe, it was a learning disability. That was the source of her embarrassment.
Looking him over again, she couldn't be sure if that was the case or not. Given the state of his vehicle, it could be a head injury. She tried to sneak a look at the sides of his skull, looking to make sure he hadn't cracked it.
"Oh no." She began, her hand waving in front of her as if to wipe the slate clean. "My English, it is still not very good. Yours, it is nice." She lied, always too eager to spare the feelings of others, even if it meant she would have to nod her way through the rest of the conversation.
A small laugh escaped her lips, her head shaking so that the sun caught the red in the strands as they fell loose. "Everything." She admitted. Another bad habit of Maria's, was being entirely too open. She didn't hide her faults, her struggles, only implied that they weren't such a hindrance. They weren't something that needed to inconvenience anyone.
"You must have a strong brain." Perhaps his speech impediment was due to deafness. He seemed to have a good memory atleast. "The things here, they are just very new. So much to learn at once."
She's nice, friendly, lying obviously but with good intentions. Something he can relate to. He chooses to accept her flattery with a shrug, an if you say so written across his forehead in the consolation of a friendly smile and a complacent expression. Happy to breeze on past.
He listens to the things that she's struggling with which, thankfully, was a single word. One that made him laugh, a smile wide and genuine, head thrown back just a little, face scrunched and contorted in genuine warmth. Crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The kind of smile that's wide enough to be infectious. He radiates it like fucking sunlight as jostling shoulders settle and he composes himself.
"Sounds 'bout right. Vegas' it's own kinda beast. You'll work it out." He's got every confidence in her; she seems smarter than he is, simply because she's attempting to converse in a language not in her native tongue and Wyatt's barely got half a tertiary education. He's built like a brick shit house, strong through the shoulders, the back, the arms, the legs—save for a scar from knee to mid-shin, hidden under long black slacks—and survived most of his education on athletic scholarships. She seems the type to have earned her way into whatever level of education necessary. Like a panel was practically jumping at her with offers. He thinks it's her kindness that convinces him so.
"Strong brain?" He pauses deliberately, giving a shrug, a raise of his brows, then a gesture to his absolutely fucking clown suit of pants a couple centimetres too short and a shirt poorly ironed, sporting the LVPS logo against his top breast pocket. "Dunno 'bout that one, Maria. That's a real first for me, but I'll let you whistle that tune." She might be the only person alive that thinks Wyatt's got some kind of intelligent cell willing itself to multiply.
"You don't gotta learn it all in one sweep, though. Just take a small bite today, 'nutha one t'morrow. Make a couple friends, cop a tour from a local... You'll get there."
“Lucky me,” he nods, fishing his keys from his pocket and lifting them in surrender, waving them like a white flag. The metal glints under the sunlight as he smiles, tired and soft around the edges. “Let’s get you washed.”
Following Wyatt upstairs feels like stepping into a time capsule.
The railing has a chipped patch of paint where Eric can envision catching his sleeve and cursing under his breath. The hallway light flickers before settling into its dull, yellow glow. It’s disorienting, moving through a space seems to hold so many versions of himself—what he had been, what he had wanted to be, what he never quite managed to become.
They didn’t make out against that specific door, but if Eric concentrates, he can see it anyway. Their silhouettes tangled against the wood, mouths crashing together between bursts of laughter, hands everywhere and nowhere at once, fumbling for friction, for keys, for excuses to keep touching. It had always been like that with Wyatt.
The apartment is another problem entirely.
He remembers a different flat. Smaller. Windows also perpetually open, curtains fluttering like they were trying to escape. Mismatched furniture scavenged from secondhand shops and generous friends. Cups that never matched, plates with chipped edges, a couch that sagged permanently in the middle.
He remembers how none of that had mattered.
He remembers thinking, with terrifying certainty, that he wouldn’t mind spending the rest of his life drinking from the wrong mug if it meant coming home to Wyatt after every shift. He’d carried that certainty like a talisman, convinced himself it was unbreakable.
He also remembers the exact moment it shattered. Ripped out at the root.
Eric knows there will never be a right time. There never was. There never will be. Their lives have always been a series of almosts and too-lates and maybes that collapsed under their own weight. Still, he is content—if that’s the right word—with the knowledge that, once, in a finite moment, he had been held by Wyatt like nothing else in the world mattered. That, once, they had hidden together from the future and called it love. That, once, he had his happily ever after.
He clings to that memory until he can crush the dangerous thought that maybe those feelings are still alive, crawling just beneath the surface, refusing to die.
"What's mine's yours," Wyatt says with such sincerity thar Eric can’t bring himself to call him foolish too.
Two dogs chewing the same old bone until their teeth fall out.
“We both know I can’t be still for over ten seconds,” Eric replies lightly, forcing motion into his body before his thoughts can trap him. He wanders into the kitchen, touching things he hasn’t earned the right to touch anymore. Cabinets. Counters. Memories. He finds an apron and ties it over his scrubs. Too tight. Then too loose. Shit. He should’ve changed clothes. He definitely should’ve thought this through. “At least this way I can help you out. Meal prep and all that jazz.”
A twitch of Wyatt’s hand. A small, fond smile. Eric feels his jaw clenching until it hurts. He should’ve kept his distance.
"Whatever the doctor orders."
Eric is staring.
Wyatt is smiling.
Eric is still staring like an idiot.
It’s that carefully teasing smile, the kind that feels like plausible deniability you could tug between your teeth.
It takes several long, humiliating seconds before Wyatt finally disappears into the bathroom. Only then Eric blows out a harsh breath, sighing as he leans forward on the counter, gripping the edge, trying to collect himself. He needs to be grateful for the moments he gets. He needs to be present. He needs to stop catastrophizing every interaction like it’s the prelude to emotional ruin, because he doesn’t know when this whole thing will come crashing down around him.
Again.
The doctor will prescribe himself a “chill the fuck out” pill.
His gaze drifts across the apartment, tracing the layout like a map. The place feels like a hug, if he’s honest. He knows scientific evidence suggests that scent is the strongest, most vivid, and most emotional trigger for memory among all human senses. Unlike other senses, olfactory signals bypass the thalamus and travel directly to the brain's amygdala and hippocampus, which are responsible for processing emotion and memory. Nostalgia and pain, all bundled together.
If Eric happens to have a pine cologne back at home, tucked away in the bottom of his drawer, it’s nobody’s business but his own.
He takes Wyatt’s coat from the back of a chair and, before he can overthink it, brings it to his face and inhales. Maybe he should ask Wyatt about it. He liked the cologne, fabric softener or whatever brought that smell. He tells himself it’s normal. People like familiar smells. It’s human. It’s fine. He remembers falling asleep in Wyatt’s shirts once, wrapped up like a caterpillar in a cocoon, convinced nothing bad could touch him there.
Maybe insomnia is a good enough excuse to revisit that.
He sets the coat down and turns to cooking before he can spiral further. Wyatt had taken a good beating, so he needs to rest. Eric busies himself, chopping vegetables with surgical precision, seasoning meat, stirring sauces. Tastes, adjusts, tastes again. Makes a mental list of spices Wyatt desperately needs. How did the British colonize half the planet for seasoning and then use none of it? Absolute skill issue.
He hums Careless Whisper under his breath for an embarrassingly long time. Containers stack up. Freezer fills. Dishes pile, then disappear under his hands. Dinner simmers on the stove. Then the bathroom door creaks open and the smell of soap floods the place. Eric feels like he can taste it in the back of his mouth.
“You—“
Oh.
Oh no.
Water dripped from Wyatt’s hair, tracing lazy paths down his neck, catching briefly in the hollow of his collarbone before disappearing beneath the line of his hips. His skin glowed faintly from the heat of the shower, flushed and alive, like he’d been freshly assembled just to ruin Eric’s evening. A towel was slung low around his hips, precarious in a way that suggested it had been secured with nothing but optimism and prayer.
“Do you need any help? The food will be ready quickly,” was the sentence Eric meant to say, the polite, socially acceptable sentence that existed clearly in his brain right up until the exact moment Wyatt walked out of the bathroom looking like a Greek statue carved by someone with very personal opinions about shoulders.
Fucking wet dream.
“D’you need a quickie?” is the stupid reply he blurted out, covering his mouth in the same second. Great. Fantastic. At this point, should he just go all in? Confess to sniffing Wyatt’s coat like a deranged bloodhound earlier that evening? Admit that he’s been thinking about that lovely crooked smile for years now? Or maybe he should save that for dessert to really round out the humiliation with a dramatic three-course reveal.
“No, sorry. No. I mean—” He drops his hand and starts gesturing wildly, like his arms might physically grab the words and shove them back inside his mouth. “I meant to mean that the food will be… y’know. Cooked. Yes. Cooked. In a sex— sec! In a second.”
Eric briefly wonders if embarrassment can actually kill a person. Because if so, he’s living on borrowed time. He feels overheated, like someone’s cranked his internal thermostat to “surface of the sun.” The windows are wide open, cold air flooding the kitchen, and it does absolutely nothing. His shirt clings damply to his back, fabric sticking to skin, making him painfully aware of his own body. It's weird. And mildly concerning. Is this a thing? Does being in love come with somatic symptoms? Excessive sweating? Dizziness? A sensation suspiciously similar to imminent death? He tries to remember if he’s ever read about it. His brain, however, is currently soup. If this is love, it’s wildly inefficient and deeply hostile to human survival.
Eric really needs a glass of water. Or some essential oils. Or a lobotomy.
“I hate to limit your freedom in your own home,” he says, words tumbling out with strained politeness, “but would you mind getting dressed? I can’t quite think when you’re…”
Naked? Dripping over the floorboards? In front of me?
Maybe he isn't in love with Wyatt. Maybe, it made more sense that he’d been having the world’s longest, slowest heart attack this entire time. Eric might actually have a better chance of survival if that's the case.
“It was a slip of the tongue,” he adds quickly, staring very hard at the pot in front of him. “English is a stupid language and it’s not even my first.”
He turns back to the stove, clinging desperately to the safety of the apron and the blessed anonymity of facing away. He squeezes his eyes shut, as if that might erase the mental images currently staging a hostile takeover of his brain.
That was probably the worst part.
Eric had always had a creative mind. It was useful for diagnostics, for problem-solving, for noticing patterns other people missed, for making sure no one would notice features mixed to the point of incoherence inside his mind. Unfortunately, it was also extremely good at filling in gaps. When it comes to Wyatt, it does this with brutal efficiency, recalling the heat of his skin under Eric’s palms, mapping corded muscle, tracing scars and moles down to Eric’s prize. Every detail filed away, catalogued, impossible to forget.
Memory has always been a hit man, barrel of the gun warm against Eric’s temple, whispering: bring back the dead.
Ten years ago, this full 1950s-housewife spiral would’ve been rewarded with Wyatt pinning him against this exact counter, breath hot in his ear, hands everywhere, which is profoundly unhelpful information to recall right now. Wyatt is not even fully undressed. And even if he were, Eric is a fucking doctor, for crying out loud! He saw more naked people in a week than most people saw in their entire lives. Old people. Sick people. People in various stages of undignified distress.
This means nothing.
Nothing.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
“I’ve made you food for a week,” he blurts, stirring the pot just to give his hands something to do. “It’s in the freezer. Labeled. You need spices.” He clears his throat. “And rest. Doctor’s orders.”
For a split second—and thank god it wasn't even a moment longer—Wyatt thought Eric might join him. Might mimic a memory of warm hands traversing the small of his back, trapping the onslaught of warmer water that Wyatt shielded from his face with the hunch of his shoulders and the gentle dip of his head. Hands that held hips with an affection for a moment that made time stand still. It's obvious in the way he's silent, how his eyes linger a second too long, and the sound of a closed door is so uncharacteristically careful, as if to give the universe a chance to read his thoughts and change it's trajectory.
But the powers that be had never been kind enough to spare Wyatt's guilty conscience. They punished him with perpetuity, and he had yet to serve his sentence.
The door closes with a click and Wyatt feels the air leave his lungs, hears the whoosh of wind swirling round a tight, cramped space as a hand reflexively smacks a light, then a ceiling fan, then shoves open a window notorious for sticking to its tracks in the winter. Doesn't bother to look himself over in the mirror—the dried blood on his shirt is evidence enough that he looks like a hit and run would've been more merciful. Again, his own doing.
His greed overpowers, unbridled and unrelenting, convincing him to let violence be his repentance. Greed that bears the voice of his father, echoing in distant thoughts with weights attached to their beginning and end, pulling him down, deeper, until sabotage is second-nature.
He takes his time behind a closed door. Takes the liberty to dissociate under the warmth travelling down his back, hands balled into fists, knuckles pressing into cold tile, a head hanging with closed eyes as water runs red. His face wears the worst of it, but he knows that familiar pinch, that sting as he breathes in and that constriction through his ribs as he straightens and rolls his shoulders back means he'll be paying for every thrown punch and every full-forced blow for days.
The sound of the lock releasing, the faint creek of the wooden door opening, hinges and wood warped from the warmth, announces him before his gaze even lifts. A hand holds the towel snug around his hips, the other pushing through wet locks to smooth back from his face. His stomach growls—only then when his mouth waters from the aroma of a home-cooked meal does he realise he's starving.
His lips part to say something inevitably British, probably stupid, his gaze falling across the room to the apron-wearing head chef, but he's saved by the voice that fills the space instead.
Do you need a quickie?
"Wha'?"
Wyatt's frozen in his tracks, mouth agape, eyes stunned, beads of water accenting definition the only indication that the seconds hand on the clock was still ticking, and the earth was still rotating. He's the antithesis of the other's embarrassment, overcome by his complete folly with unabashed frivolity. It relieves the tension he can feel radiating from the other across the fucking room, made lighter still by the hand that leaves his hair, fingers rubbing at the corner of lips that had pulled into an irreversible grin to soothe them back into some kind of respectful rest, as he continues to shove his foot down the back of his throat.
"Hilarious, mate," he muses, a dangerous confession sitting on the tip of his tongue that he swallows back down. It's not the time and place for an I've missed you. Instead, Eric asks him to find some modesty, and Wyatt replies in complete sincerity with the mercy of comfortable silence, with feet that walk him to his room, and the swing of the door shut.
He comes back to him in gym shorts and a tee, crisp white and form-fitting after shrinking it in the dryer a handful of times and finally learning his lesson. Waves are taking shape in drying blonde tresses. There's a scar running from the underside of his left knee cap down to the middle of his shin, deep and raised and gnarly from multiple surgeries using the same site. It used to bring him a deep sense of shame. At least it proves that Wyatt's capable of healing from some things.
Eric's giving orders, instructions maybe, but Wyatt's slumped casually against the counter, forearm bearing the brunt of his weight, body radiating warmth even some few inches away, watching the doctor at work. Observing compassion spill from his head and his hands, and Wyatt's gently bumping him out of the way with his hip, the motion making muscles protest but Wyatt ignores it. It's gentle, a quiet you've done enough while his lips usher an earnest and sincere I owe you, hands moving hot pans to the sink to soak. Relieving Eric of any sort of obligation and barring his access with the width of his body; turned round, arms folded across his chest, the top of his ass resting lightly and comfortably against the jutted edge of granite.
Silence. Steady, strong silence. Eric was the only company that had managed to bear moments that could power-down Wyatt's restlessness and replace it with total comfort. His eye's still half swollen shut, cuts and scrapes and bruising showing true discolouration across the right side of his face, and a swell to the lower left corner of his lip. He's looked better, knuckles scabbing and stinging from their brief flex and fold. But it doesn't matter when Eric's in his scrubs, standing in Wyatt's kitchen again, instructing him to rest.
"You goin' back to emergency?" He asks, knowing the answer is a resounding no. He was in the room, heard the conversation with his own ears. And he's not really asking if Eric's going back to work. So he clarifies.
"Can I make you a cup'a tea?"