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౨ৎ long, snake moan. ╱ dr2. ( ao3 link here. )

chapter two: yes, i need you, my fairy-tale.

president's daughter!paige x older!art historian/professor!azzi. men and minors dni.

wc: 24.2k

synopsis: against the backdrop of her mother's re-election campaign, america's first daughter finds that she wants something different. to lose is not in her nature. cw: near-drowning, family estrangement, a mother that is the founder of the mother wound is2g, media harassment, paparazzi, forced separation, referenced past parental death, grief, dissociation, house arrest/confinement (familial & also non-legal, we are so down), implied infidelity (not between pazzi), romantic reunion, explicit sexual content, bdsm elements, dom!p, sub!a, mommy kink, cunnilingus, breath play, cfnf (clothed female, naked female), facesitting, tribbing, dirty talk (lowkey on an insane level but we move), pet names, non-linear narration, unreliable-ish narration, hopeful and happy ending. notes: after more revisions than i care to admit, this finally feels like the version i wanted to tell. this story has been a real labor of love. not everything is neatly resolved because, truthfully, neither are the people in it. we spend most of our time in p's head, but maybe someday i'll return to this world and let a have her say.

again, as tagged, this is a dark romance. some of what's in here is meant to be uncomfortable. it is not a blueprint; it is certainly not aspirational. it is two people who are, in various ways, bad for each other and also somehow the best thing either of them has ever had. please read the content warnings. take what you need from them and leave the rest. i trust you to know your own limits better than i do, and i'd rather you skip a work than push through something that isn't good for you.

i hope you enjoy. let me know what you think. love you. x

part iv. ⊱ dante gabriel rossetti, ‘study of dante holding the hand of love’, c. 1855-1856.

azzi had learned, over these months, to recognize the sound of paige coming home before she ever saw her. there was a certain languishing spirit to the way she moved through a door, unhurried even when she was clearly in a hurry, as though she spent her every effort in restraining her body so as not to reveal the truth of its frantic nature.

but on this evening, the blackest well of winter, the sound was discordant. the door opened sharply, not quite slammed but near to it, boots kicked off with more force than the task required, clattering against the baseboards in the hallway, and then paige’s voice, aggrieved, carrying down the hall before the rest of her had even appeared.

“i look insane.”

she rounded the corner like a rankled cat. that was the only way azzi could think to describe it afterward, the affronted stiffness of an animal that has been made to wear something against its will. a white-collared shirt, dark trousers, otherwise entirely herself, except for her hair: swept up into an enormous, gleaming sixties-style ponytail, teased at the crown into a shape with real architectural ambition, blonde curls as big as the barrels that had spiraled them, extensions generously woven in. and the crown jewel of the production: a bow the approximate size of a dinner plate, white silk, chopped cleanly at the ends at two opposing angles, tied so neatly that it could have only been by the hand of a professional.

“they were going for a ‘wholesome, american family’ and were instructed to strap me down if i refused to cooperate,’ paige hissed, stalking closer to then fling herself onto the arm of the couch rather than the cushion, legs still rigid with the residual fury of having stood still and smiled for photographers for ninety straight minutes. “wholesome, and photogenic, and—i quote—approachable. i have never in my life felt less approachable than i did standing next to my mother in this fucking bow, being asked to laugh at a joke a communications strategist wrote for me on an index card. i wish i could just be her daughter, not the first daughter. i mean, for christ’s sake, she has lauren as well, who’s much more eager for the limelight. i’m telling you, she’s just doing this to torture me!”

azzi, from the kitchen doorway, towel snaked along her arm, did not manage to hide her laughter, and—in all fairness—was not giving it her best attempt.

“az, it’s not funny.”

“it's a little funny.”

“azzi.”

“my god, you look like a cake topper,” azzi giggled, coming closer, amused despite herself, amused in a way she rarely let herself be about much. “a very cross, very beautiful cake topper.”

paige glared at her with real, committed offense. azzi thought it adorable, how she often balked at being teased and had to decide whether to allow it, so that then she could laugh. and it was this—the pure, unguarded pettiness, no strategy to be found, performed for no other than azzi—that always undid her a little. this was the version of paige almost no one else ever saw. not the first daughter (this still sent her head spinning) but a woman closer to what azzi imagined she must have actually been at eight years old, before any of it had had to calcify; funny, and sweet, and stubborn in a way that had nowhere sharp to go because there was, for once, nothing here to defend herself against.

azzi reached out and caught the tail of the ribbon where it dangled loose past paige’s shoulder, and gave it a hard tug.

the bow gave at once, unraveling in one long satisfying slide. paige spun with it: dramatic, delighted, arms out in a ‘t’ as though she was being unwound from something enchanted, a whole loose cascade of hair coming down around her shoulders in the wake of it, and in the light the flare of it appeared moon-white. and she was laughing now, really laughing, the sound of it packing the whole apartment wall-to-wall in a way that made azzi’s heart do a helpless flip.

“you should spin me around more often,” paige said, finally twirling to a stop, breathless - hair a hazardous, golden mess around her face.

“yes, i suppose someone has to,” azzi agreed, putting on the haughty voice she affected when teasing paige about her upbringing. she’d caught her by the waist before she could spin a second revolution, scooped her up with more ease than she'd expected to manage, and deposited her, laughing and squawking in mock outrage, onto the couch cushions properly this time.

paige lay there a moment, sprawled, hair everywhere, chest still moving with the last of her laughter, and looked up at azzi with an expression so entirely open that azzi had to glance away for a second—overwhelmed by the plain, uncomplicated fact of how happy this girl looked. paige, lying in her living room with a bow undone and her hair a disaster, happier than azzi had ever once seen her look at any dinner, in any photograph taken by the outer world revealed to her by paige herself.

“i love you,” paige said, easy, unthinking, the words falling out of her as that was the only way they knew how.

and then they were up again, paige forcing azzi into ¾ time, spinning and spinning, hammering out a waltz which had no melody other than the wheezing hum paige was attempting. azzi dropped the kitchen towel she had been unaware of holding all this time and set her arms on paige’s shoulder, a laugh sounding from her like the strike of a bell. around and around the flat they went, paige turning them faster and faster, as if she hoped to gain enough speed to send them straight out onto the balcony and then into the air.

“i love you,” she said again, and azzi knew the feeling must’ve felt enormous, a hot rushing swell, because it was building inside of her too. and her mouth opened, her body anxious to return the affection, to expel the possession house inside her—but then paige stopped it. a hand came to azzi’s mouth, index finger trailing her bottom lip as she leaned in and kissed the bridge of azzi’s nose.

“keep it, please,” she whispered. “just a little while longer.”

azzi agreed, keeping silent, though dread was now an invasive species in her throat, and they waltzed ‘round the room, paige having somehow gotten “fee de lilas (sixth variation)” to come on. and azzi liked that, that paige could sweep her up and make her dizzy, could blow a spark into a fire only to tell her to keep the flame in her mouth.

and azzi dreaded it, the day that paige would tell her it must be put out.

azzi wanted, more than anything, to believe that she was fine with it. they didn’t talk about the revelation for a long while after, the only reminder of the truth found in the seams: events paige got ready for in her—their—apartment, the thick cream cardstock of invitations paige brought along from her home with her brother, the flicker of a name in her periphery whenever the news was on and circling the campaign.

azzi knew that if caroline knew, she would’ve accused her of blinding herself willingly to feel her safest, but azzi was unashamed at this opulent level of self-protection. if she looked right at it, then it would strike, and this would all be over.

the cracks spidered early, their waltz the outro of their honeymoon, the last throes of the illusion thwarted; dashed and shattered.

azzi had never been one to back down from something ill-advised. people often made the mistake of thinking she was marshmallow-sweet, spun sugar, easy to bend under the applied pressure of a single fingertip. azzi could bend, flexible as needed, but she would not snap if she didn't have to. paige seemed to believe the same for a while until they’d arrived at the base of the mountain, the frail beginnings of future planning, and azzi had asked in what capacity she saw them continuing.

she was under no illusion of their positions on the board; the two of them sometimes across each other in the field rather than side by side. paige was practically woven into life’s largest tapestry, hungry for it no matter how often she tried to outsource her desires.

azzi was quieter, older; she dreamed of something smaller, all her passion somewhat behind her, magma cooled into rock. she desired an end, marriage as a finishing school; either an elopement or a courtroom, something conservative, smarting at the thought of display. her full fantasy was simple: the entirety of her, 5’11, draped in an a-line lace sheath dress less bone and more rice white under certain light, possibly bought on a bargain from anthropologie, maybe the loose idea of dinner after at the little french place on fifth.

she knew that paige would not be thinking of this as much, and she felt no ill will toward her for it. she was only twenty-two, a bare beginning. so, azzi had approached from the side, gone at it from the shadows, casually asking what paige’s plans were if she so strongly wanted to be free of her mother.

paige, of course, had been incandescent with fury, seeing clearly through the ruse azzi had shabbily constructed, spitting that if azzi wanted out she could just say that. in an effort to control the rising tide of emotion, one she hadn’t asked for at all, azzi had suggested one of their walks. they’d gone seaside, driven out to the coast, and azzi had spent the better part of the hour talking about art pieces on her wishlist worth more than the current note on her car and the dizzying level of strategy necessary for securing an efficient art dealer if you were serious about these things. the wind coming off the sea kept stealing pieces of her voice and carrying them out over the cliffs, but never once taking enough to stop her.

“you're not understanding me.”

the words cut straight through, paige having no heart for nonsense, and azzi sighed, a hand coming up to tuck an errant curl behind her ear. her mouth opened briefly, a dark space of silent fear as her foot slipped on a hold in the path, before she said,

“honey—”

“no. you don't.” paige’s hair whipped across her face, and azzi watched with no shortage of fondness as she shoved it back impatiently. from here she could smell her—cherry powder, theodoros kalotinis—pale essence of cherry, more the flower than the fruit, a hint of milk and a clean, neat powder that made the entire tower of scent lean cool. “you think you're not a big deal to me.”

it took a considerable amount of effort for azzi’s shoulders to keep from rising. it was incredible, the way certain words could be twisted by paige’s silver tongue into a blackened slur. she kept walking.

“i understand your position.”

“my position?” paige repeated, incredulous. azzi nodded, eyes trained on her feet as she let her arms open to the side, acting as though she was trailing across a tightrope.

paige let out a noise of disbelief that made azzi spin around, incensed.

“to you, this seems like everything. but, my god, you're the first daughter, paige!" azzi shrugged out a grim laugh, hands raising briefly to her own face before dropping. “it's not that i don't want this to be serious, but i just—i could be your flight of fancy. you didn't even want me to say that i love you in return. you can let go of me whenever you want. you may be forced to let go of me, and with your entire life ahead of you, you'll be fine! and i—”

“jesus, azzi, you're thirty-two. not a vampire.”

“—i cannot let go of you,” azzi roared over her.

paige went silent at that, her mouth twisting. then,

“you say that like this is all happening now. you keep listing consequences as if they'll eventually frighten me into agreeing with you."

“it is happening, sweetheart,” azzi told her. “i mean just the other day someone took a photo of us at our favorite coffee shop. i lied to you, i said i had to use the bathroom. i didn't,” she gasped. “i didn't, paige. i had to chase him down. paid him fifteen hundred dollars via zelle to keep your world intact.”

paige froze then, turning to face azzi properly from where she'd turned away, hands flexing by her sides. “what?”

“i'd do it again.”

paige stared. below them, the sea crashed against the rocks in great white bursts.

“i don't—i don't think this isn't a very big deal to you. honey, i know it is. i just don't think that it is as big a deal as it is to me,” azzi said, and she could hear the high climb of her voice, traversing rungs on a ladder to get to a height she didn’t quite like, “because you are the president’s daughter and i am a thirty-two-year-old woman who teaches you twice a week, sees you privately at least once in that same frame, and if anyone connects those two facts to that—” she gestured, helplessly, at the whole unspeakable shape of it— “i lose my job. i lose worse than my job. do you understand what happens to me?”

“nothing happens to you,” paige said, too quickly, so earnestly. azzi wanted to kiss her. “i wouldn't let anything happen to you.”

“you can't promise that.” azzi’s hands had found each other, knotted white. “you're twenty-two. you can't promise me the world won't come for both of us because you got bored one tuesday.”

the words sailed, an arrow loosened by accident, landing further and deeper than azzi intended; landing the way she meant it to, and also the way she didn't. for a second, there was a flame of emotion flickering across paige’s face. before azzi could get a grasp on it, it was gone, a moth singed into ash. paige let out a breath through her nose, tilting her head from side to side until her joints gave and her neck let out a great crack.

slowly, she became very still, a stillness she engaged with before she rose to her most dangerous, the same manner in which the sea went flat and green before it committed the ugliest act.

“is that what you think this is. that i’m bored.”

“i don’t know what i think,” azzi whispered, and it was honest, though it came out sounding like an accusation. “i think you don't understand what it costs, being the thing someone loves who has that much to lose. i think you've never once had to be careful in your life, and i am careful about everything; i am careful about you, constantly, and i am so tired, paige. i am so tired of being the only one who’s scared.”

“you think i’m not scared?” paige’s voice cracked somewhere in the middle, unlovely, and she hated that it cracked. azzi could see her hate it. “you think i don't lie awake doing the math on how fast they'd destroy you if they found out? i do that every night. i have done that every night since we’ve met. and you still think you're some—some liability i'm managing.”

“i never said—”

“‘i never said—!’” paige mocked, her voice reedy and high. azzi felt a lump begin to coalesce in her throat. “azzi. do not do this. don’t be a liar to my face.”

“i’m not doing that, paige. i just—”

“you think i’m stupid,” paige snapped, her hair tangled into a great golden mass by the wind. azzi turned away from her, wishing they were home. “just like all the rest. you look at me like i’m a fire you're standing too near, doing the math on when i'll finally burn you down.”

azzi didn’t know how this had all gotten away from her.

“and you're doing what you always do,” azzi shot back, “that coy act where you pretend not to understand.”

a sharp laugh bled free of paige, irritation rising murky and black in the pit of her stomach.

and this was yet another instance azzi would replay for months afterward, turning it, trying to find the sentence that would have gone differently. she reached for paige’s wrist, and paige let her, and something in azzi broke open; a thousand horses running wildly, the white of their eyes rolling as their mouths foamed.

“i love you so much,” azzi told her. "i have such a soft spot for you it terrifies me. it has terrified me since the first week, since before i let myself admit it lived inside me. you have to understand that the fear isn’t instead of the love. it’s the same size as it. that’s what you’re not hearing. only half of a fall and the full range of winter into spring, and i could die for you, paige. i would.”

azzi meant it as the truest thing she owned. again, she watched her efforts not land that way at all. paige laughed, an awful sound, nothing like her real one, the one azzi had spent a semester chasing after.

“yeah,” paige scoffed. “i've heard that one before. from my mother, mostly, right when she needed me. i’ll believe it when you're in the ground.”

an ugly silence was left behind, and azzi watched as paige’s mouth tightened, the world eventually blurring. she didn't cry immediately—that came a beat later—and she swayed half away from paige as if that might undo it, one hand pressed flat to her own sternum as though she could keep the rest of herself in by main force.

and paige, who had spent the whole conversation armored, quick, certain of her own cleverness, watched azzi’s face slacken and felt something in herself go with it, all the fight draining out in an instance, leaving her hollowed and about nine years old. she didn’t yet reach for azzi. she only stood there, destroyed by what she’d done, by how easy it turned out to be to hurt the one person who had never once tried to use her.

“azzi.” her voice had lost all its edges. “azzi, i didn't—”

“i know,” azzi said, not looking at her, still not looking at her, and the not-looking was somehow worse than anything else she could have said. “i know you didn’t mean it. that’s rather the trouble, isn't it.”

paige crossed the small distance between them, a jerky rush forward, as if coming apart at the seams, but didn't touch her, waiting, hands open at her sides, asking without asking. it was the first time in the whole strange occurrence of them that she had waited to be let in rather than simply walking through the door.

it took azzi several moments before she could gather the strength to say,

“sometimes i think you enjoy hurting me.”

paige fell back at that, armor on again, her gaze narrowed momentarily before widening back out, the iris a ring of glacial water.

“and sometimes i think you enjoy martyrdom more than you enjoy being loved. we all think things.”

the look azzi gave her then could have stripped paint.

“you know what your problem is?"

paige sighed. “no. but please enlighten me.”

“you've spent your entire life having it all, belonging to something larger than yourself, so you don't understand what it means to be nothing.”

and here was the viper's bite. for a moment, neither of them moved. the sea struck the cliffs with wild abandon, and they eyed each other, two serpents coiled in wait. azzi’s chest rose and fell, and after a moment she turned and returned to walking, clearly expecting paige to follow. she could feel the hot swell of salt, and she angled her face upward, hoping to slow the spill.

she made it perhaps ten steps (eleven, twelve) before she realized the sound of a second pair of footsteps had vanished. she glanced over her shoulder and found that paige stood near the edge. her anger had abated, so she was only standing there, watching the other with a remote gaze that seemed enormous to cross; the distance between them suddenly immeasurable.

“paige?”

a long moment broken only with a seagull’s cry before,

“you’re going to leave me.”

azzi laughed once, disbelieving.

“what? no.”

“you are.”

“paige, you're being ridiculous. we’ve only argued.”

“yes, probably.”

“honey, come here. get away from the edge.”

azzi was scared now, tainted by fear, and paige considered this—this version of her lover that was trying her best at keeping face. and then she thought, i have to win.

so, she slipped her coat from her shoulders and set it carefully on the grass.

azzi’s face went through a wide range of expressions before it settled on one that made the vein at her right temple bulge, ugly and dark like an infection of a river.

“paige.”

azzi’s voice was a blade now; her hand displayed palm up as a sign of peace.

“paige.”

paige only tilted her head. there was something nearly curious in her face then, as though she were examining the same problem from a new angle; an expression close to that of being caught enjoying herself.

“you know,” she said softly, “i think this may be where we keep misunderstanding each other.”

azzi took a deep breath and closed her eyes, working at the bridge of her nose with two fingers before reopening them.

“what in god’s name are you talking about?”

“you think eventually i’ll choose the thing you want.”

“paige. come here.”

“i never choose anything other than what i want. i’d have to leave you.”

“that’s not—”

paige cut her answer clean through with a slow lean to the side. conservative at first, then farther and farther, a generous tilt into an open lurch to which gravity introduced itself. the fear returned to azzi all at once, sudden and naked, exasperation having fled. belatedly, she lunged forward with a sound that barely qualified as a scream, but her fingers only curled over a thin patch of fabric before paige pitched left and disappeared.

for one impossible second, there was nothing. the world was robbed of movement and sound, not an inch of a splash gaining flight to reach her ears. the air was left empty, absent, where her girl had been.

the sea had swallowed her whole.

azzi screamed.

( the first full weekend paige had spent over, she had woken from a vivid dream, somewhere near two in the morning, and then woken azzi right after to speak with her.

i had a dream that i was a young girl, mangled and bloody in the middle of the road, paige had said, eyes glittering, her voice as low as the babble of a creek. we'd been in a car crash, the two of us. i could smell the pop of melting rubber, but my body was strawberry sweet, maybe even bubblegum. i thought of looking up the meaning when i woke up, but i already knew all of its twisted symbolism. i missed you. i missed my age of innocence, when i thought things would last forever.

azzi had only gazed at her, unflinching in the face of her crooked heart.

sometimes, paige continued, i find you so beautiful that i have to bite down on something or i'll scream. i can't bite you because if i get your blood in my mouth, i'll never be the same again.

it was scripture that belonged in the deep recesses of her journal, the one hidden in the drawer of the bedside table. the one she hoped azzi would one day read, if only to understand her endless affection. it wouldn't be a breach of privacy at that moment; it would only be that gap finally closed. paige’s love would no longer be lost in translation.

azzi had combed through her hair, liquid bone in the low light, and smiled indulgently. again, she kept silent.

paige had wanted to cry; of course she did. azzi had been the only one to pierce through her hardened shell, who’d looked past her rhinestone nape glittering in the light and had decided what mattered was the grey matter in her head.

it was a good dream, paige clarified, and only then did azzi answer.

i know.

she’d reached out, sliding an arm underneath paige’s thin body and rolling her inward until she lay against azzi’s side, the warmth of her bleeding through paige’s sleep shirt. paige had fallen back asleep easily, deeply grateful that she had found someone who would not flinch at the full sight of her—who could take it.

azzi had dozed off several hours after, grateful that she had simply found her.

it was a good dream. )

azzi got her up the path somehow.

she would not, afterward, remember the particulars of it; only fragments, disordered: her own hands under paige's arms, the impossible weight of soaked fabric, the car heater roaring stupidly the whole drive back because azzi’s hands wouldn't stop shaking long enough to turn it down.

paige had come up from the water twenty feet further along the rocks than where she’d gone in, coughing, alive, laughing once in a horrible thin hiccup that might have been shock, and azzi had not been able to make herself ask why she was laughing; had not been able to make herself ask anything at all, had simply gotten her out and up and into the car and driven.

back at the apartment, azzi ran the shower at least sixteen degrees too hot and stripped paige out of her ruined clothes with hands that still would not cooperate, fingers fumbling twice at a single button before she gave up and simply tore it. she got a towel around the girl’s shoulders and started drying her hair roughly, too roughly, not really thinking, but needing more than anything for her hands to be doing something, anything, some task simple enough that she wouldn’t have to look at the actual size of what had almost happened an hour ago on those rocks.

“azzi.”

azzi didn’t want to listen.

“azzi." paige’s hand closed over her wrist, stilling it mid-motion. “stop. stop, baby, stop.”

the petname grabbed azzi by the throat, and so she looked down and found her hands were shaking so badly the towel had gone slack and worthless in them, and that she couldn’t, in fact, remember when they’d started.

"you’re freezing,” azzi told her dumbly, which wasn’t what she meant, which had nothing to do with anything either of them were actually feeling in that bathroom, steam fogging the mirror, paige’s hair dripping water-dark down her bare shoulders.

“mmm. i’m fine, baby.” paige pried the towel out of her hands, gently, the way one took something dangerous away from a child. “i’m fine, i'm here, look at me.”

azzi looked straight at her. it didn’t help.

“you went over,” azzi said, and heard her own voice catch around the middle of the sentence. "you went under and i couldn’t—for a second i couldn’t see you at all, there was nothing, i thought—i thought—”

“i know.” paige's hands came up to frame azzi’s face, thumbs sweeping once under her eyes, dragging at her cheekbones, and something in her voice had gone deeply calm, deeply steady, the exact opposite of the wildness that had put them here in the first place; as though the fall itself had used up whatever recklessness living insider her for the night and left behind only this: quiet, competence, self-assurance. “i know. i’m sorry, baby. shouldn’t have done that to you.”

had paige always been this much taller than her?

“i’m sorry, and i’m here, and i’m not going anywhere. look at me. feel that. this is real. i’m real.”

azzi’s breath was still coming too quickly. paige guided her hand flat against her own chest, over the fast, living thud of her heart, and held it there until azzi's breathing found some ragged approximation of matching it.

“you don’t have to be scared right now,” paige said, low, and there was something in the shift of her that azzi would only fully understand much later: the way paige’s whole bearing had changed the instant she’d registered how frightened azzi actually was.

some innate, primal instinct sliding into place; the same instinct that had once made her the only adult in a room full of grieving staffers; the same instinct that made her, underneath every thoughtless thing she’d ever done, someone entirely capable of holding another person together with her bare hands when it mattered enough.

“you don't have to hold any of it up right now. let me take it.”

azzi didn’t answer—couldn’t, yet. but she let paige walk her back toward their bedroom, let paige pull her down onto the unmade sheets and gather her in close, skin still faintly cool from the sea, and for a long while neither of them said anything else at all, just the two of them tangled together in the dark; azzi’s face pressed to paige's collarbone, paige’s hand moving slow and steady along her spine, patient, in absolutely no hurry now to be anywhere but exactly here.

it was paige, eventually, who tipped azzi's chin up. paige who kissed her first, heavy and languid, none of her earlier recklessness left in it at all, only a kind of careful, total attention that made azzi understand—not for the first time, but more clearly than she ever had before—that whatever else was true about this girl, however untethered she could be about everything else in her life, here, in this particular room, she would always know exactly what she was doing.

azzi let her.

slowly, the world tilted upright, and azzi realized paige had brought her back into a seated position and was pulling away. she watched as the other woman settled in front of her, eyes flat with the way the light hit it, and tugged on the hem of her blouse.

“arms up, baby,” paige murmured, and azzi raised her arms dutifully above her head, head a bit dull, allowing paige to slide her shirt free from her body. paige’s breath hissed once through her teeth, an involuntary sound, low and almost animal, at the sight of azzi’s tits rising over the top of her violet lace bra.

the same unhurried process repeated at azzi’s jeans: a deft unbuttoning, the gleaming teeth of the zipper easing down, the high-rise line of her gauzy lilac thong revealing the spill of her pussy around it, before paige’s hands moved past it, careful, uncaring of the sight for only a moment.

“jesus, fuck, azzi,” paige muttered, half to herself, but her hands stayed steady, methodical, entirely focused on the task in front of her rather than on the heat building between her thighs.

once azzi was fully undressed, paige stood and drew her up by both hands, gentle, patient with the slight sway in azzi’s balance, and led her out of the bedroom into the heart of the flat; azzi’s bare feet cold against the floorboards, toes painted ladybug red, curling instinctively against the chill. paige crossed ahead of her to the kitchen table and pulled one chair free of the set, turning it out and angling it until it sat alone in the middle of the room. she patted the seat back once, nudged a cushion free until it dropped to the floor, so that the seat itself was bare, and looked back at azzi with an expression dark and quiet as black ice.

“c’mon. sit for me.”

azzi sat.

paige knelt in front of her without any hesitation, settling back on her heels, hands coming to rest lightly on azzi’s knees, not yet urgent, but grounding, the way she'd been grounding her since the bathroom. she looked up, waiting for some small, wordless permission, and found it in the way azzi’s breath caught and held.

“i’m going to take care of you, okay?” paige told her quietly. “here’s what’s going to happen: i’m going to taste you, eat this pretty pussy, and you’re gonna let me do it. if you need something extra, touch yourself, do whatever you want, mommy. but you can’t touch me, okay? or i’ll stop.”

azzi’s hand found the back of paige’s head, fingers threading loose through still-damp hair, and that was answer enough.

as expected, the beginning was awkward. at first, azzi was unsure of how to move. she kept thinking, so much so that her limbs sat sluggish and stilted. but paige knew how to push, how to open her up. paige had a sense that azzi had never been good at just falling into bed with people, but at least now she was sleeping with someone she loved.

carefully, she maneuvered azzi so that she leaned backward, chair leaning until her knees jerked against the edge of it in fear. one of paige’s hands rose to wrap around the base of her neck, while the other angled azzi’s face until their lips slotted together. almost immediately, paige bit down, making azzi gasp just enough that her tongue could snake inside of her mouth.

azzi let out a moan at the pressure, body softening as paige claimed it. she stumbled a bit and pushed back, but paige didn’t let go, free hand flashing out to stop the chair from upending with a hard push down. azzi almost wanted to laugh at the way paige kept gripping her, at the way she was trying so hard not to lower them both to the floor and crawl on top of her, practically eating her alive. but she didn’t because what was the point of laughing when you were also the fucking joke.

paige broke the kiss with a wet gasp, then dragged azzi back in. she sat up slightly, hands sliding underneath azzi’s thighs so that she could better hold her. one hand found a grip on the edge of wood beside azzi’s hand, and she groaned gutterly as she groped at azzi’s tits through the thin fabric of her bra with the other.

“fuck. fuck, mommy. you feel so good. such pretty, perfect tits for me. want them in my mouth. want you—just want you.”

they kissed for a while, and azzi knew she was indulging her because kissing made azzi sweet, docile, easier to fuck into something mindless. like clockwork, azzi’s legs widened and splayed weakly to the side, and paige moved further into that open space. azzi could feel the ripple of her back as she pressed into her.

“need you,” paige groaned.

gently, she brought a hand down to azzi’s inner thigh, nails scratching lightly at the sensitive skin before trailing her fingers up to finally cup azzi’s bare cunt. azzi hadn’t registered when paige had taken off her thong, knew only now because of the rough press of her fingers against the pearl of her clit. paige began to circle it, gentle stimulation, endless rotations that set azzi on slow fire, ignited time and time again.

she pulled away from paige’s mouth, mouth opening slightly as she let her head fall back, worked down into her palm. azzi rocked her hips, that electric warmth steadily rising until she began to tremble, hips going faster, impatient. and for a moment, paige let her, eyes blown out into a void of black, thin ring of sapphire roving over azzi’s body with vicious hunger, catching on the hard tense of her thighs as sweat began to bead.

azzi whimpered, unable to keep quiet, reaching down with both hands to hold paige’s wrist still as she ground in tight, minute circles. idly, paige tugged down the straps of azzi’s bra so that her tits fully spilled out. her hair was dripping over azzi’s chest, droplets beading her nipples like dew, skin wet and slick under the tracks of seawater, bouncing softly as paige let her fuck herself on whatever she could get.

and she was. letting her. because azzi had already broken the rule, had touched her, had held paige’s hand.

she knew azzi, and azzi knew herself, so they both understood that she had broken the rule, that she was always going to; that if azzi came now paige still had full authority to tear her apart a second, third time.

paige had always been setting her up to fail.

with a sigh, paige easily shrugged free from azzi’s grasp and lazily pulled her hand away. azzi made a wounded sound in return, eyesight blurring slightly as she tried to focus on paige.

“where—”

the question cut off as paige grabbed her by the ankle, other hand wrapping securely around a chair leg, and pulled. azzi slid like water until her ass was spilling over the edge, pillowed more in paige’s hands than on the chair’s seat. paige glanced up at her from on the floor, shameless on her knees, eyes low and dark. she moved like smoke, body rising as she pressured azzi’s legs open wider than they had been before. azzi’s thighs burned.

paige didn’t bother speaking to her, only leaned in to watch her cunt spasm and leak, weeping desperately for her touch. the tips of her tongue slipped pink and small across her bottom lip as she brought two fingers together to drag through azzi’s brown folds, arousal drooling over them, dripping warm and syrupy over the nail; her mouth twitched in pale amusement as she spread azzi further apart, heard azzi’s consequent whimper.

“fuuuuck, mommy. look at this pussy. so fucking pretty.”

the inside of azzi was a deep, soaking pink, like a glass of lychee billini; wet like one too. her arousal oozed again over paige’s hand, drenched her, and she sat back to suck the taste of her from her fingers, dipping them far enough to make her gag. she lapped at every trace, even under her perfect square nails. paige shifted then, leaning back on her heels. azzi’s cunt was so hungry, it had to hurt.

“there was only one rule, ‘nd you broke it. right, mommy?”

azzi’s eyes lowered in shame, brown skin flushing a dusky red. slowly, she nodded. paige smiled, all teeth. it was akin to being at the mercy of a wolf.

“mmhmm. so, you gotta work for it.” paige reached up, slapped across azzi’s tits, pulled at the nipple until azzi cried out. “convince me.”

it was as if every ounce of air had fled azzi’s chest. she began to close her legs, but paige lurched forward to knock them apart.

“no. i didn’t tell you to cover up. need you to fucking listen.” her next hit landed right on azzi’s swollen clit, and azzi’s back bowed with the pleasure. “i said convince me. do you understand, baby? you’re not stupid, mommy. i know that for a fact. convince me to put my mouth on that gorgeous, slutty cunt. convince me that you need me.”

azzi shivered, a heady rush starting to kindle through her. she flexed, thighs rippling as she braced her body. sluggishly, she set herself up, feet on the floor. step one.

the body exposed and twisted was the heart exposed and twisted. paige, without a doubt, could already tell what she wanted.

with a harsh breath, azzi slid her first finger in. she wanted to get right to it, puncture that heat and aggravate the wound until she wet herself with its release.

“mmm,” she groaned, tilting her head back so that her throat was bared. paige watched the shift of her delicate cross necklace, hardly breathing.

azzi continued working herself open, inserting a second, so that she could better scissor her pussy open. her cunt was tight, sticky with desire, creamy like a fucking pastry, white and wet and suctioning around her fingers; act of self-cannibalization.

one touch was enough to remind azzi of how neglected she’d been. she found herself a bit angry, frustrated and starved. she used to plunder her body relentlessly, fuck into herself with an open desperation, breeching and breeching until her mind went white and she woke with cum honey-sweet and tacky over her. now, she mimicked her old ways, fucked her cunt until her breath was hitching and her body was writhing over the three fingers gouging somewhere deep and dark inside of her.

she let out a little sob, voice dipping up and down as she rutted against her own wrist. the sounds of her masturbation were slick and almost fleshy, made louder by increased speed. while she coaxed her cunt into a wet gape, paige watched her do it with a barely open mouth. the sun had long set, the room soaked in an orange so burnt it appeared almost blood red. the color splashed over azzi’s skin, warmed her to an intolerable degree.

and paige looked so hungry, and azzi couldn’t explain the way that undid her. with a wail, she came, her other hand coming to her assistance as it massaged over her clit in furious, hard circles. the stimulation streamlined azzi’s orgasm, magnified it until both of her hands slid off and out of her with a wet ‘schleck’, left her jerking through the high, legs clamping shut in an act of self-preservation, as she moaned.

there was only a brief second of reprieve, of silence, before paige was on her. she surged forward, prying azzi’s legs back open, pressing her torso back into the chair’s mahogany back.

“brilliant pitch,” she murmured before sealing her mouth over azzi’s rosy-red, angry clit.

azzi arched into the heat of her mouth, throat scraped by a silent cry, taste of blood in her mouth. paige simply adjusted her so that her legs fell over her shoulders. again and again, she ate at her, messy eater - pussy all over her mouth, eyes half-shut, lower half of her face glazed with it, tongue wicked and wanting. azzi glanced down with great effort to see her, taking in how paige was still fully clothed, on her knees, frantic in between her thighs. her stomach fluttered at the sight, mind working over the thought of paige being so desperate to taste her that she couldn’t have been bothered to get naked first.

paige’s hands held onto azzi’s hips as azzi began to ride her face, palms hot and large, clit catching on her nose. she placed a hand on azzi’s stomach, nails digging harshly into the hard muscle. azzi moaned at the pressure, spine nearly snapping as she felt paige push her tongue deeper inside of her. her ‘s cunt gushed over paige’s tongue in response, and paige laughed at that, right into her, mean and expectant.

she flattened the tip so she could drag it up and down azzi’s pussy, moving with an apt precision. azzi felt like a champagne tower, body fizzing and spilling over with gratification. her eyes fluttered shut, mind drifting into a baby pink haze, every inch of her fallen prey to that all-encompassing darkness. behind her eyelids waited a mural of neon pink, amaranth, tangerine orange, apricot, pure gold. she reached out to it, pressed down on the acceleration so that she could glide straight into its open arms.

all of her blood was flowing south, heart pumping relentlessly, beat pooling in her stomach, filling the fat folds of her swollen hole, pussy sopping.

“‘m gonna cum,” azzi whispered, voice ragged. she said it to paige over and over, scream building in the back of her throat. “‘m gonna cum, paige. please. please. please don’t stop. pleasepleasepleaseplease.”

paige hummed her agreement, pushing azzi’s thighs so far back that she felt a new stretch, molding azzi’s pussy into a tight slit—money slot, her mouth the coin.

“paige,” azzi moaned, a high, sweet call. she dragged out the end of it, throat working feverishly as she swallowed.

paige grazed her clit one last time, dragging one of her lips out with her teeth. she let it fall back, enjoying the wet plop as it settled. it only took a couple more bites, a little more suction and pull for azzi to finally crest the wave. she sprayed all over paige, and paige welcomed it, letting her mouth stay wide and open so that she could drink her fill, her body shaking like a dog as she brought azzi over the edge.

“holy shiiiit,” azzi whined. “fuck, paige. fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“yeah?” paige cooed, not wasting a second, suddenly standing, dragging azzi up and out of the chair. she placed azzi down, bare body rigid once in contact with the cool tile, eagle spread in the middle. paige bent over her and tugged a nipple between her teeth.

“baby,” paige nudged her hip, pressing errant kisses to her cheeks. “hey, baby, can you look at me? can you—”

azzi hooked her fingers in paige’s mouth, and paige lazed her tongue over them, walking her fingers down azzi’s sweat-soaked belly until she found her pussy and slid two straight in, working her them up to speed, eyes burning with a desperation azzi could feel at the base of her own spine. she felt it as azzi’s pussy pulsed, dribbling out more slick, a small puddle sitting warm and sticky beneath her; begging for another hit without an ounce of shame.

there was no time for that when you were this carnivorous.

azzi’s body had always been speaking to her; it just wanted paige to understand.

paige thought of the dream she’d had—of the car crash and her twisted, bubblegum body. she thought of how real it all felt, how she had been so aware of azzi watching her melt on the pavement. paige looked at her now, saw how azzi was the one impacted, paige the one over her - drool spilling down azzi’s wrist as she fucked her into a third orgasm.

this is how it should be.

paige would lick her right off that fucking road.

( azzi wanted, more than anything, to believe that she was fine with it. they had made it nearly to the end of the school year, eight months on the cusp of nine, and still she wanted more.

in the end, it was not her choice. )

paige had been leaving for her afternoon lab, running later than she meant to, and azzi had walked her the ten feet to the door the way she always did, a small domestic ritual neither of them had ever formally agreed to, but both showed up for regardless.

paige kissed her at the threshold, quick, unremarkable, the same kiss she'd given a hundred times before—one hand braced on the frame, the other at azzi’s jaw, gone in under three seconds—and neither of them thought anything of it at all. though maybe they should have, because paige had held her just a touch too tight, fingers digging into her until she thought the skin might split and bruise.

maybe there had been a sixth sense; one aware that just down the street, a man with a long lens had been sitting in a parked car for forty minutes, had finally gotten the shot he’d been waiting nearly three weeks for. paige didn't notice him. azzi wouldn’t have known to look.

paige was already halfway down the stairs, phone in hand, texting mar something about dinner, by the time the shutter had done its work. she found out on the drive to mar’s, not word of mouth, the group chain suddenly a constant vibration; her phone aflame as with holy light, glowing fervently at a red light. three texts from numbers she didn’t have saved, one from a communications staffer she did, all variations on the same four words.

have you seen this?

she pulled the photo up at the next light and felt her entire afternoon stutter and go still, heart playing dead. it wasn’t a good photo, technically. grainy, shot through glass, her own face turned mostly away. but it didn't need to be good. it only needed to show what it showed: two women at a doorway, one considerably older than the other, the kiss unmistakable for what it was.

a second and a third: paige, mouth fallen open wide at the sky as she laughed, so wide the moon could’ve rolled right down and sat like a pill at the base of her throat.

mar and niki were already outside when she pulled into the driveway, standing at the mouth of the path itself, shoulder to shoulder, a small, determined fortress.

behind them, parked at an angle that suggested he hadn’t cared whether it blocked anyone in, sat a black sedan paige recognized immediately, saturated with the air of anonymous expense that every car her mother’s people owned. a man in a grey coat leaned against its hood, phone in hand, entirely unbothered by the cold, posture held because he had done this often - waiting outside someone’s house for their arrival and reception of bad news, executed more times than he could easily count.

paige got out of her car slowly. her legs did not feel entirely her own. she was the colt of samson, a baby really, brand new.

“paige,” mar said, before she'd even shut the door, stepping forward to close some of the distance between them. his voice had none of its usual dry theater in it. “paige, look at me. don’t say anything to him yet. come he—”

“what is this?”

she only really asked that whenever she knew what it was not.

the man in grey leisurely glanced up from his phone at the sound of her voice, and offered her a patient smile that seemed to crack at its edges.

“ms. blessing.” a beat, the correction arriving with little cruelty and all the more chilling for it. “or should i say, ms. bueckers. bueckers-fuller, i suppose, in all formality. it’s lovely to meet you. i’m peter caddick, one of your mother’s aides.”

silence, though peter seemed not to take it personally.

“right. well, no need for the theatrics. i’ll get straight to the point: your mother would like to see you. today, if that's convenient. right now, even if it isn’t.”

niki had come up on paige’s other side without her noticing, his hand settling warm and heavy against her shoulder blade, not urging her anywhere, but there, the same steady presence he’d always been for mar, extended now to her. paige realized, distantly, that both men had positioned themselves exactly between her and the car, without either of them saying a word about why.

“she’s seen it,” paige said. it wasn’t a question. she was looking at peter when she said it, but some part of the sentence was aimed past him entirely, looping back around to the warm slab of glass and wiring, already visciously lit up again, trembling in her own pocket. “she’s seen the pictures.”

“she’s seen it,” he confirmed, pleasantly, terribly. “obviously. and i’d imagine most of the country will have seen it by this evening, ms. bueckers. your mother would prefer you hear the rest of it from her directly, rather than a headline.”

paige stood very still in her brother’s driveway, the cold coming up through the thin soles of her shoes, niki’s hand a steady weight at her back, and thought, with a strange, suspended clarity that felt entirely disconnected from the size of what was actually happening, that she had spent months being so careful about the wrong thing entirely.

she’d spent all her caution on protecting azzi from being seen.

she had never once considered that her mother would sidestep this strategy, would do the most unexpected thing and, for once, head-on, turn to look at her.

interlude. ⊱

well, you know.

part v. ⊱ eugène-ernest hillemacher, 'psyche in the underworld', c. 1865.

her mother did not raise her voice in the last of it, and so paige felt it like a bullet to the neck.

that was somehow worse than the screaming had ever been, the flat, tired finality, the voice of a woman who had already run every version of this argument in her head and arrived, without much pleasure, at the only outcome she considered survivable.

“you will end it. before the announcement. you have to. i don’t care how, but do try to be delicate. we don’t need any further outbursts to increase the scandal.”

paige, in her horror, didn’t fight for an inch. this was what would frighten her later, once there was room again to be frightened: how easily she'd said okay, how little resistance the word had needed to leave her mouth, as though some old, well-worn groove in her already knew it was best to comply before the rest of her had caught up to the decision.

she ended it over the phone, because she couldn't make herself do it in a room where she’d have to watch azzi’s face as she did it.

she kept it short, clinical, a diagnosis. she used words she would’ve never chosen—this was never going to work, too much risk, can’t anymore, can’t anymore, can’t anymore—and she let azzi go quiet after, on the other end, speechless in a way that told paige everything she needed to know about how badly she’d just done this.

azzi said nothing further. she hung up first.

and for days after paige had a dream where she held a blade in her hand, and she’d watch as it would move without her direction, sliding quietly into the slight give of azzi’s stomach, blood warm and swarming all over her hands like a great crimson insect.

sometimes it was azzi who cut into herself instead, hand on the hilt, blade buried in the slick wet muscle that urged her to live. and she’d look surprised after, hand on her heart, hand on her stupid, hopeful, heart.

the days after did not go the way she expected grief to go.

paige had pictured, if she’d pictured anything, something operatic: tears, sleeplessness, the appropriate performance of loss. instead there was only a strange flat static, days passing without texture, herself moving through them at one remove, like watching someone who resembled her attend the remaining (now-online) courses required to complete her sophomore year as well as eat her own meals. they wouldn’t even allow her to see mar, her transgressions so great.

she finished the year in a haze of tears and cadaverous sleep.

on to the next.

the static broke exactly once. it happened over dinner, of all the settings for it. her mother across the table, mid-sentence about changes she’d like inserted into a draft of a speech, promises from a version of herself that would appear within the next six months; whatever had happened to azzi already absorbed, repackaged, and taped off.

paige watched her mother’s thin mouth keep moving, the cracked vermilion coated in a clumpy layer of true peach satin lipstick—shade “stockhold”—and felt an animal die twice over in her chest. she turned to stone, went still and cold, an ever-familiar signal to herself; the lighthouse flashing fruitlessly right before she committed a depraved act she couldn't, wouldn’t, take back.

she picked up the water glass beside her plate.

she didn’t remember deciding to throw it. she only remembered the sound it made against the wall just past her mother's shoulder, not a shatter so much as a detonation, glass and water finding every surface in the room simultaneously, and the silence that followed it—total, everyone at the table frozen in the wake of her violence.

“she was my whole world,” paige spat, and her voice came out strange to her own ears, clear and twisted, bare of the rage the moment should have carried but no doubt ugly. “do you understand that? where is she? where is she right now? tell me.”

her mother didn’t answer, still stunned into silence. paige nearly laughed. her mother spent so much time daydreaming, plotting her survival from illusory assassinations; she should have been able to stop the sudden attempt of her own daughter. peter moved toward her, hand out, and paige let herself be steered from the room without further incident. he was ever present to paige’s irritation, clearly more than just her mother’s aide, but they all ignored it, as if it were passing scenery on a train.

some part of her, even now, even here, understood that there was no version of continued escalation that would get her any closer to an actual answer. she asked again, quieter, in the hallway. she asked again that night, into her pillow, half-formed and half-asleep, the question worn down to its barest shape: what have you done to her.

because they had done something to azzi, she was sure of it. had amputated half of her, no anesthesia, just as they’d done paige. her mother co-signed wars for less.

but no one in this house would ever tell her, not even if she died, whispers silenced through six feet of dark ground.

paige did not cry. she kept picking up her phone to text the single letter they’d used for months only to put it back down, screen dark, the words arriving each time with the same absurd, useless clarity: k for kryptonite. the only thing that could take me down.

she’d made a joke of it once, handed it over funny and small on purpose so it wouldn’t harm anyone. she understood now, with the lifeless, unnatural calm of someone finding out a diagnosis, that the joke had simply been true.

dinner was an exquisite torture.

paige was seated across from a woman who looked close enough to azzi to qualify as a mirage in a desert, because of course she was. the universe had always had a particularly chafing sense of humor. candlelight caught in the woman’s three-tier proustite necklace as she gestured, commanding the attention of the venture capitalists flanking her. paige watched her hands flutter and flare; remembered, helplessly, how azzi’s had felt on her skin, in her hair, gentling her through endless presentations and bedroom vulnerabilities alike.

she was my whole world.

paige took a large gulp of water, followed by a rather ambitious swallow of her aperol spritz. the bitterness slid down her throat thick as syrup, and her head swung down briefly as she fought, valiantly, not to be sick at the table.

her mother had taught her to wear perfume at pressure points: behind the ears, inside the wrists, behind the knees, places where the heat of the body would make the scent bloom properly. paige wondered if not-azzi could smell her on the shawl still draped around her own shoulders; wondered if she'd carry the memory of that heat back to her room later without ever knowing whose it had really been.

the wine kept flowing. paige’s leg twitched, knocking severely against the knobby knee of the guest beside her, and she apologized too quickly, anxiety slurring her words together, which the man mistook for an invitation and used to strike up a conversation she had no ability left to follow. she was too aware of not-azzi instead: the way she cut her food into precise bites, the exact tilt of her head while listening, the angle of her wrist lifting a glass, all of it close enough to the things real-azzi did that paige’s skin had gone uncomfortably tight for her body, pasted on wrong, the way it used to feel at sixteen—desperate for someone’s approval, unsure which someone it was that she meant.

she tried to feign interest in whatever the man beside her was saying. her hand shook reaching for her drink, sloshed wine over the rim, and paige felt herself go visibly unstable—must have looked it too—because she pressed one hand flat over her mouth, palm facing outward, and then let it travel back to the nape of her neck, fingers finding the clasp of her heirloom lapis necklace. a press down, piercing, as if enough pressure there might strike bone and send some steadying chime throughout her whole body; calling her back into herself the way you’d call a lost dog home.

her mother's voice cut through the thought before she could finish having it: so obvious. so needy.

paige excused herself before dessert and went after not-azzi, followed her out to the car like a ghost half-formed, conjured. her dress felt too revealing, black satin and floor-length, unnatural to her - pattern work at its bust and side exposing too much of her rabbit-quick pulse, her trembling hands, the whole cherry-blossom vulnerability of her unwellness.

she stumbled at the exit, nearly took a crystal vase down with her, caught it and apologized to a waiter whose lip had already curled at the sight of her. she tucked her fingers together without deciding to, taut snare, an old childhood instinct to interlace her hands so it might better hide whatever was written across them.

she’d left her clutch behind. she only recalled this once she was already shuddering her way into not-azzi’s open doorway, the woman’s rolls-royce forced to accommodate one passenger more than it had planned for the evening.

she was drunk. paige knew this, and not-azzi knew it too, and was kind about it anyway; surprised, but not alarmed, the way you might be kind to a stray that had followed you home out of the rain. there was a moment where not-azzi stroked her hair, one pure second of unadulterated tenderness before paige was pushed away from her and back out into the world’s callous hand.

her room felt too small after dinner, skin electric with unspent energy.

she’d already paced its length a dozen times, kicking off her heels somewhere near the door before pouring and abandoning two glasses of wine she hadn’t wanted in the first place. the shawl, the fucking shawl, lay across the bed where she’d dropped it, a splash of accusatory gold against white sheets.

her mother’s voice cut through her again, uninvited: shameful. always wanting more than you deserve.

paige was halfway through her second minibar whiskey when the knock came, startling a soft curse out of her. too late for housekeeping, and far too early for a briefing. she knew anyway, with a bone-deep certainty that didn't require checking, exactly who it was. she didn't need to ask. her body had already answered, leaning toward the door the way a flower tracked the sun, a humiliating loyalty in her that had yet to get the message.

outside, the night had gone riotous, trees bobbing fearfully in a sudden wind. paige let out a bleak little laugh at the thought of everyone inside being flung to and fro, like a snowglobe shaken by a child’s hand. eventually she found it in herself to move, reached out a manicured hand, and turned the knob with exactly the pressure required.

the hallway was empty. her clutch sat perfectly centered on the threshold of the door, gold clasp gleaming under the passage lights. beside it, cut with military precision, lay a piece of cake. a thick slice, mulberry-dark, dripping cream all over its porcelain plate. a fork was set gently behind its high back, and a note was tucked between the plate’s rim and the winking clasp of her purse. paige crouched to read it.

the paper was thick with the spray of cinnamon, but she was unsure of whether it was imagined or an honest moment. you missed the end of things, her mother had written, but i remember you always liked odd, sweet pastries. this is plum cake trimmed with a little dark chocolate.

paige could barely hold herself upright by the end. she sank down right there in the hallway and began to sob, unsure of what had been the final blow that forced her to this. if it was the sweetness of the gesture, or the idea that her mother still thought of them as allies - close to one another, even at the most damaging of times.

she cried harder still at the thought of azzi. at the small, useless, humiliating wish that it was her kneeling in this hallway instead; a forkful of plum cake lifted to paige’s mouth, that low warm ribbon of a voice cooing at paige through her tears, one hand at her neck, massage of the throat to get it all down.

paige barely lasted the summer.

it was a long, wet crawl on the belly.

on the ending hinge of august, her mother found her in the townhouse library just before bed, and something in paige’s face must have given the whole thing away before either of them said a word, because her mother didn’t ask what was wrong.

it was the same thing that had been wrong all summer.

she sat down across from her daughter, uncharacteristically careful about it, and said, “i need to tell you something, and i need you to actually listen instead of waiting for your turn to speak.”

paige said nothing, her expression glacial. her mother took it as permission.

“before your father, there was someone else.” a pause, her hands very limp in her lap. “for exactly one summer i thought i might get to keep him.” her mouth twisted downward, nose wrinkling, the recollection still potent enough after all these years to physically move her. “i did not.”

paige scoured her mother's face and found, briefly, something she’d never once been permitted to see there - a softening. for a moment her mother was younger, a woman with only twenty-six years under her belt, wilted in a peach dress, a bow gone slightly deflated at the back of her head, hardened not by nature but by the near miss of a life she’d almost gotten to have. devastation white-tracked down her face, miserably watching what she’d wanted get snatched out of her palm by those who’d decided, on her behalf, that the desire itself had been a mistake.

“we don’t get what we want,” her mother said. “not this family. you learn to want what’s actually available to you, and you learn to want it well, and eventually the wanting settles into something that looks enough like happiness that most people—including you—stop being able to tell the difference. that’s not a tragedy, paige, it really isn’t. it’s just how it goes for you and me, people born owing a debt before we ever got to choose our bargain.”

there was something almost hopeful in the way her mother said it—people like us—as though the two of them were made of the same material, poured from the same mold, twinned exactly enough that one woman’s vintage grievances could stand in perfectly for the other’s modern-day tragedies. paige sat with that for a long moment, the cool barrenness of the last four months momentarily interrupted by something sharper coming up underneath, and found, buried in it, a small cold clarity.

they were not twins. they might, at best, be sisters - close enough in shape to be mistaken for each other from a distance, close enough to have inherited some of the same hungers, but built, underneath all of it, from decisions enacted differently.

“you don't,” she said finally.

her mother blinked. “what?”

“you don’t get what you want.” paige’s voice didn’t rise, the emphasis clear. “meaning it's true of you. all i hear is that you decided you didn’t get to fight back. and then you spent years making sure i’d decide the same before i even had a chance to know that there’d been a choice at all.”

her mother said nothing, visibly thrown.

“i'm not doing that,” paige continued, “i already tried it. i gave you months of it, and all it’s done is hollow me out.” she stood, legs heavy, feet gone numb from sitting too long. “i got back on samson after he threw me. let him do it again and again. he kept me out for the longest time. but once, once, he let me ride him properly. that’s all it takes, you know, all that i need. the one time, the one thing.”

she thought, briefly and without meaning to, of niki standing in the kitchen doorway months ago, dry and amused, telling her how mar had once been a client and how niki had nearly transferred the case rather than risk the loss of his future. she thought of the version of that story neither of them told as easily: the year before that, when their families had kept them apart, when mar had gone quiet and grey for the better part of a winter, convinced he’d only imagined the whole thing.

it had not looked, from the outside, like anything you’d call happiness.

“you'll destroy yourself,” her mother said, voice hard now, unflinching, never one to soften a warning. her heels clicked against the floor as she stood too, closed the distance by two measured steps. “you hate me now. but i am only making sure the evidence of your utter disregard for this family, for yourself, doesn't find its way into the wrong hands.”

“is that all you have to say to me?” paige asked softly, and her mother’s face tightened at that, some genuine hurt moving across it despite everything. “you’ve ruined my life.”

“i only protected you.” her mother’s voice had gone pleading, and paige had to look away from her face because of it. “this is not your life, paige. nothing has been ruined. it only feels that way right now because, at your age, everything feels this enormous, this final. you’re the best of us. people are endeared to you. you can, and will, move on easily.”

“it is,” paige said, “my life. right now. right at this moment. it doesn’t just stop being mine just because you’ve decided that you don’t like the look of it.”

her mother settled back, words like a slap to the cheek, her hand twitching once at her side before falling still.

“i’ve rarely known joy since dad died,” paige said. “pain, mostly. that’s mostly what i’ve known. and then i had something, small and lit up like a firefly in my own two hands, and you smoked it right out.”

“oh, peanut. that was never the intention.” her mother’s voice had gone soft. paige wanted more than anything to believe it. “i never meant to hurt you.”

peanut. the nickname hung there between them like mist off the water, and paige’s hands curled at her sides, wondering distantly how many times that exact final phrase had already worked its quiet magic on some other sibling who’d dared, once, to want something for themselves.

“i used to love when you called me that,” paige told her. “you were my whole world, first. i would like you to know that.”

to be trapped was to choose it, eventually. so, paige went outside.

she glanced back once at the camera mounted above the front door, black eye unblinking; her own portrait caught for a half-second in black-and-white feed, pale hair a small white beacon in the dark, before she stepped past its reach and disappeared into the night.

part vi. ⊱ lara cobden, ‘category of half-things part i.’ c. 2022.

she hadn’t thought to call ahead, but she hadn’t needed to.

the door flew open before she’d even finished climbing the last few steps to the entrance, mar already halfway down to meet her, suzy barking somewhere behind him in a fit of outraged joy, and paige made it exactly three more steps before the degraded strings that had been holding her upright all summer simply gave out.

it was niki who caught her, though not by design. he was simply closest, one step behind her brother, arms already open at the sound of the door and the cry of her name, and paige fell into his chest as if struck by an arrow, face pressed into flannel that smelled of woodsmoke and the same coffee he continuously over-brewed. his arms came around her, careful, solid, entirely unsurprised, and without much further fanfare, she shattered.

paige cried the way she had barely let herself cry all season—immobilized by the tight management of her house arrest—a weeping that was loud and total and finally permitted, her whole body shaking with the release of four months held rigid. niki didn’t say anything. he simply held on, one broad hand moving slowly across her back. mar hovered close, one hand resting light on the lower curve of her shoulder, the same unhurried patience he brought to every frightened child seated at his piano now brought to her.

and paige understood, dimly, even through the wreckage of the moment, that her family had never been the one she’d been born into. it had been this.

later, showered, wrapped in the thick, salmon pink bulk of ingemar’s old knit sweater, paige sat cross-legged on the shag carpet with niki’s laptop open in front of her and forced herself to read it all—everything she’d been kept from for four months. it was worse than she’d imagined, and also, somehow, exactly what she'd expected.

the world, as it did, had enlarged the severity of things. there were the tabloids first, predictable in their cruelty—A POLITCAL SEDUCTRESS, SCANDAL STAINS RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN!; LOVE, LIES & LECTURES: INSIDE THE SECRET AFFAIR ROCKING THE WHITE HOUSE!—her face cropped small and grainy beside a photo of azzi they must have taken from an old faculty page, unflattering, barely decipherable; chosen purposefully for how ordinary it made her appear next to the manufactured glamour of paige’s own portrait.

some were more restrained—Art History Lecturer at Center of Questions Over Relationship With President’s Eldest Daughter—and there were think pieces about power and predation, the word grooming surfacing in comment after comment, article after article, applied to azzi with the ill-advised confidence of people who had never once met either of them.

paige sat with that word longer than any of the others, grooming.

she was twenty-two. she had turned twenty-two throughout their time, soon to be freshly twenty-three in october, an adult by every legal measure anyone cared to check, and if anyone in that relationship had ever actually held any semblance of power - real power, the kind with a secret service detail - it had never once been azzi. azzi had most likely lost her job. azzi most likely had lost her whole professional life, had probably been instructed to pack a bag as soon as she was able. paige had lost nothing yet that her mother couldn’t eventually smooth over.

the word being used for azzi wasn’t just wrong. it was, paige thought, the exact kind of error you’d expect from people who needed a simple, familiar hook to hang a complicated story on.

one tweet in particular she read three times over, a clinical and self-satisfied “guide” surrounding textbook grooming dynamics, a thread with eleven thousand likes explaining exactly how power imbalances like this one tended to work. paige sat staring at it with ire for a long while, her jaw so tight that she heard her back left molar moan, and then—before she could think better of it—she’d logged into an old account she hadn’t touched since high school and typed, no context, no thread, nothing but the bare bite of her:

@ pb_5: you’re actually fucking stupid. i’m twenty fucking two. @ pb_5: we met when i was twenty fucking two. fucking dumbass.

she didn’t intend for it to go anywhere, really, but it had garnered five hundred retweets before she’d even set the phone back down, four thousand by the time she’d finished her dinner, and by the following morning it had detached entirely from its original context and was simply everywhere: screenshotted, captioned, argued over by keyboard warriors who had no bravado when outside their screens.

we’re leagues better than them, paige seethed to mar over breakfast, his face impassive in the face of her vitriol. we live real lives.

it didn’t fix much. it didn’t even feel especially good, once the hot initial flash of satisfaction burned off. but it was the first sign of life paige had publicly given in months, and something about that—however small, however petty—steadied her. with a fury-tightened throat, she typed her mother’s name in the search bar, sought out the statement she knew must’ve been made.

and sure enough: the first daughter is entitled to the same privacy and dignity as any other citizen navigating a personal matter. while this has been a difficult moment for the first family, president fuller remains fully focused on the work of the administration and the campaign ahead, and will continue to serve the american people with the same commitment they have come to expect.

paige read it four times. difficult moment. a woman’s entire career and reputation, reduced to a phrase set neatly inside a press release—she could sense peter all over this—sandwiched in the clause of a sentence speaking to her mother’s commitment to the public rather than her daughter.

there was no mention of azzi by name anywhere in the statement. there didn’t need to be - the omission did its own work. paige shut the laptop with more force than strictly required. she thought: i can’t do this. this can’t be the rest of my life, standing behind a podium, condoning the erasure of someone i’ve actually loved.

to love azzi fudd had been the most challenging and enlightening time of her life. it was as if paige’s true self had been backed into a corner inside her own body, and only azzi had been willing to sit on the ground with a hand out, promising it no harm.

paige didn’t know, yet, what shape these thoughts would eventually take; didn't know yet the specific words to be emailed, the room they would be spoken in, the exact size of what she’d be giving up to mean them. but the seed of it was already there, planted clean in her sternum.

whatever the presidency required of the people who served it, paige was no longer willing to be the kind of woman who paid that price twice.

orlaith had not changed at all over the summer, which felt, somehow, like the final nail in her own coffin.

every sighting of the slate roofs, unchanged, and the maples (now beginning to falter into orange and reds), even the ever-present wet bell peal rolling in off the chapel at the top of the hour made paige feel as though someone was pressing down on the top of a dark, wooden box - her body tied still inside.

paige had half expected the whole town to appear differently, given everything that had happened to her inside it. it didn’t. this current passage of time was only highly significant inside her own life.

she’d dressed as comfortably as she could, ideally to keep the anticipated hungry eyes off of her: dark jeans, an oversized black button-down left half-tucked at the waist, sleeves rolled twice at the forearm, a single opal initial pendant shifting under the collar, ‘p’ sitting cool against her throat. her hair had been braided to the side into a long plait, chosen in place of her usual half-finished bun, drawing on the illusion of steadiness; a try at refusing to come apart no matter how the day went.

she’d wanted, dressing, to take on the day with the appearance of a person who had her life in hand. she was not at all certain the appearance would hold.

sure enough, the looks started before she’d even crossed the quad. nothing overly hostile, but seemingly worse. careful, shaky glances followed by a hand over a mouth as they whispered. the politeness of people who knew something incriminating and had collectively agreed not to say it to her face. this was then followed by the ridiculously fevered flight of various fingertips over a noisy keypad, texts sent in a rush of feeling.

a group near the rusting courtyard fountain went dead silent as she passed, and conversation didn’t quite resume until she was well past them. a boy she vaguely recognized from her old labs actually crossed to the other side of the path, as if proximity to her might rub something off on him - might send him swooning into the arms of the head of the business department.

she had spent enough years being watched like a hawk by the nation. she had never once, until this exact walk, understood what it felt like to be watched by people who’d actually known her before.

she didn’t think she’d done something so wrong, loving somebody.

dr. taurasi’s office door was open, which paige took, perhaps unfairly, as an invitation.

“you've got some nerve,” she said, not once glancing up from the stack of syllabi she was annotating, “showing up just like that. half this campus thinks you’re a ghost.”

“or a plague. but half this campus is full of idiots and cowards, so excuse me if i’m not that inclined to pay them any attention,” paige shot back, sitting without being permitted, old habits dying hard. “look, i did miss you, but i need to know something, and i think you’re the only person here who’ll actually be straight with me.”

dr. taurasi set her pen down, peering at her with mild distaste, the same look paige remembered from that very first semester: appraising, unsentimental, entirely uninterested in performing sympathy she didn’t yet feel.

“she resigned,” she answered, before paige had even begun framing her inquiry. “the day the story broke, before anyone had the chance to do it for her. always had good instinct, that one. she didn’t want to wait for the committee, or the piss poor severance meeting they surely would’ve given her. had no time for shame so she walked into the dean’s office and put her letter on his desk before he’d even opened his mouth. i've never seen anyone move that fast in my life.”

something in paige’s chest fell straight through the floor.

“where is she? please.”

the plea was added last-minute, her fingers twisting at the end of her braid. the action was deeply symptomatic of how much this all meant to her, her calm a one-woman show. she watched as the woman across from her settled back in her chair, arms crossed, considering.

“hungary, last i heard,” she finally breathed out. “caro—dr. ducharme got her into some residency program outside budapest. visual arts scholars, month-long thing, i think it was meant as much to get her out of the country as to get her working again.” dr. taurasi’s mouth twisted errantly, as if helpless. “she wasn’t doing well, paige. i’ll say that much. ducharme more or less had to drag her onto the plane.”

paige was already calculating flight times before the woman had finished her sentence, three-quarters of the way through the mental arithmetic of expedited passports and layovers and how fast she could get a car to the airport in burlington despite not yet being of the age to rent one. she could bribe peter; everyone wanted something.

“sit down,” dr. taurasi ordered, cutting through her obvious calculations. “those residencies run four weeks, sometimes six if someone’s really dug in. it’s been past that already. if she was on a plane in june, she’s more likely home by now than not.”

paige went very still.

“home,” she repeated. “as in—”

“as in wherever home is for her now, the details of which i’m not privy to and wouldn’t tell you, even if i did. not without her permission. but, i’d guess it’s considerably closer than budapest.” dr. taurasi picked her pen back up, already returning her attention to the syllabus in front of her, the conversation apparently concluded as far as she was concerned. “you’re welcome, by the way.”

paige was nearly out the door before she’d finished, braid pelting hard against her back, before she paused.

“thank you,” she offered, “for helping me.”

“i better see you here come next semester.”

paige smiled, a small uptick of the corners of her lips.

“no promises, diana.”

then she was gone.

the apartment was empty when paige got there, though it possessed none of the monumentality she had assigned it over the summer.

she had expected something redressed to perfection, had harbored a secret fear that azzi had covered it all up, the affair of them. instead the sticky prints of their shared affection were all over: a textbook paige had lost stacked horizontally, a teacup abandoned atop a monograph on bernini, an umbrella still damp in the hall with one of the inner stretches bent improperly. living had interrupted the composition.

paige found herself absurdly relieved. she stood in the doorway for a moment too long before she made herself leave again, because staying there, idle, felt like only a second failure.

she felt at a loss to find azzi’s home abandoned, a large empty heart, not a flicker of her to haunt its chambers. for a moment paige thought she might sob, the image she’d had all summer—rushing to azzi’s rescue, shielding her from paige’s world and that outside of it, keeping azzi by her side like a stuffed animal, curled in bed through another turn of the seasons, unbroken in their little corner of the world—was now dissolving, unreachable, marred by the reality of what she had to work with.

for a moment, paige thought of calling a car, but didn’t. she was proving a point. she gripped her phone firmly, running through the ten digits of both her brother’s home and mobile, determined to set aside pride and call for backup if needed. she ran a hand through her hair and turned away from the flat, her braid spinning out behind her.

and there. a park two streets over, the same small municipal woods every vermont town seemed to keep tucked behind its houses. a walking loop, with a clearing nested at its center, shallow spring-fed pool gurgling sweetly. it was the sort of spot azzi might have gone if she’d wanted somewhere private enough to hear herself think.

paige didn’t know any of this for certain. she only knew she had nowhere else left to try, and that, in and of itself, sent her walking.

the path narrowed almost immediately, asphalt surrendering to beaten earth packed dark by the week’s earlier rain, its edges feathered over with ferns and clusters of queen anne's lace bowing under their own weight. sugar maples rose in loose congregation overhead, interrupted every so often by the white-paper peel of birch trunks and the deeper shadow of old hemlocks, their branches lowering the temperature by several degrees.

the afternoon filtered through them reluctantly, gold divided again and again until it reached the forest floor in long sideways strokes, illuminating suspended gnats and drifting milkweed silk before abandoning them altogether, bored. somewhere ahead, hidden by the density of the trees, water sung beneath its breath, low continuous murmur against a stone floor.

paige walked quickly at first, each stride driven by the stale panic that had settled beneath her ribs since arriving at the apartment, but the woods refused her urgency. roots shouldered their way through the path in thick knuckled ridges, insisting upon her attention. moss had claimed the fallen trunks so completely they appeared less dead than returned, their bark disappearing beneath velvety green so verdant it seemed lit from within, branches lichened within an inch of life. every few yards the smell changed, the sweet mineral scent of wet earth surrendering to pine needles, then to the pepper of molded leaf, a thin strand of an unknown floral note beside it, one she could not label

it struck her, with a strange pang, that azzi probably could. she had always known the names of natural things, as paige had delightedly discovered. her mind was not only for paintings, periods, or sculptors. she knew fauna, flora, the origins of a common bird.

once, on one of their turns about the lake, she’d interrupted herself halfway through a sentence to point toward the reeds and say to paige, almost absentmindedly, red-winged blackbird, before continuing exactly where she’d left off, as though naming the slightest children of the world was no more remarkable than breathing. paige had thought about that for days, drawn to how assured azzi was in her intelligence, how unashamed she was of what she found interesting.

a movement to her left drew her eye. fabric, she thought desperately, heart vaulting painfully into her throat. azzi.

only birch bark.

further on, sunlight pooled over the smooth face of a femininely carved statue (which, upon further investigation, had been donated by a nearby family) and for one humiliating second paige mistook it for the curve of azzi’s shoulder. every brightness became a possibility, every opening between the trees inviting hope before withdrawing it again. everything was suddenly Heaven to her.

the path curved gently before widening in a sudden instance, as though the woods had stepped aside, tired of her now. the clearing sat at their center, imbued with its secrecy, a bowl of long grasses nodding toward a spring-fed pool whose surface carried the sky in broken pieces. dragonflies skimmed low over the water, stitching brief cobalt lines across its skin before disappearing into the cattails. the spring itself emerged meekly beneath a scatter of rounded stones, clear enough that every pebble resting at its bottom appeared sharpened by the current, each one trembling beneath the constant pilgrimage of moving water.

and there—she found azzi at the far edge of the clearing, feet bare in the shallow water, cotton three-tiered skirt gathered up over her knees, pale pink fabric bunched, her body achingly alone. the light came down gold, italic through the trees, igniting the surface of the pool in small sections, and azzi sat very still within it, gaze fixed far-off, fastened on nothing paige could identify, shrouded in an exhaustion so complete it had settled past her face and into the set of her shoulders.

paige stopped at the treeline. stared, for one vast moment, in naked terror of what she might be looking at; the low, ugly fear she hadn’t let herself once hold to the light come knocking. she’d been worried about azzi’s destruction, self-imposed or otherwise, had been stressed at the thought of her in some state the paige wouldn’t be able to fix.

a twig snapped under her foot, presence revealed without choice. azzi turned.

for a second neither of them moved. then paige was crossing the clearing badly, stumbling once over a root reaching out from the dirt, and azzi was already rising out of the water to meet her. paige got as far as “you—” before her throat closed around the rest of it, no sentence left in her that could hold the size of those last terrible months.

she pressed her face into azzi’s neck instead. breathed her in—salt water and a green note, maybe hyacinth—and felt azzi’s arms come up around her like a defense, one hand rising to stroke through paige’s hair, over and over, the tepid rhythm of someone confirming, again and again, that the thing in her arms was solid and actually there; strokes getting stronger until paige thought it possible for her to press every last thought out.

they stood like that a long while, saying nothing, the water lapping quietly against the pool’s edge, birds wheeling overhead unconcerned with either of them.

it was azzi who finally spoke, voice rough with disuse, her hand still moving slowly through the length of paige’s braid.

“i swear you’ve gotten taller.”

paige laughed, a broken, helpless thing, half a sob caught somewhere underneath it and held on tighter instead of answering, because there was nothing to say in return; nothing that wouldn’t send them both to the floor.

“i feel so short and small,” azzi murmured into her neck.

“you are short and small,” paige teased wetly, always one to lord her two extra inches over her, but mostly because she could feel the mountain pass of azzi’s spine - every ridge a jewel. “but only next to me.”

“but only next to you,” azzi agreed, dark eyes warming to it.

“only next to me,” paige whispered, eyes shut tightly, heart twisted - halfway up her throat.

she had to fuck her before they could talk.

paige had the thought within two minutes of entering the apartment. she lay lengthwise across the bed before she’d been invited to, then shifted again until her shoulders reached the edge of the mattress and her head tipped over into empty air, the room spilling upside down around her. blood arrived slowly behind her eyes. the ceiling settled beneath her, floor floating somewhere overhead.

it was easier, she thought, to look at azzi in this way. gravity rearranged enough of the world that she could pretend the impossible had already happened.

“you’ll make yourself dizzy, paige.”

“mmm.”

“you’ll be sick, i mean it.”

“i know.”

azzi disappeared briefly into her wardrobe, speaking while half-inside, her voice muffled by hanging linen and wool. paige watched her legs first, the quiet shifting of weight from one foot to the other as she reached for something farther back. she had forgotten, over the course of the summer, how little azzi ever slowed inside her own body.

when azzi reemerged, she had exchanged the stiffness of the day for a softer spirit. a pajama set of dove grey satin, laced at the hem, material thin enough for her nipples to poke through under the breath of the cool air; shorts loose enough that they answered only intermittently to the shape beneath them.

paige looked, then kept looking. it embarrassed her less now than it ought to have. no—not less. differently.

there had been a time when she’d believed beauty would announce itself to her, that attraction would enter the room complete, unmistakable; that she’d receive the book in the mail, soon to be aligned with the rest of the world’s consensus on what was indisputably, inarguably, remarkable.

azzi had disabused her of that. loving her eyes had led to loving the way they darkened when she was angry, miles of wet earth that narrowed when she was backed into a corner. loving her mouth had somehow expanded to include the smooth plane of skin above it, the shallow groove of her philtrum glistening with traces of water as she drank, disappearing again, the soft sweep of her cupid's bow, so delicately drawn it seemed almost unfinished until she spoke. even at rest, her lips rarely closed, remaining parted by the smallest measure, as though there was some sort of pixie residing there permanently, peeking at her, waiting for the signal to break out.

keyhole, paige thought suddenly. ridiculous, though entirely correct.

azzi bent to untie her shoes. the motion gathered her top briefly across her middle, satin creasing as if bothered before it settled again, revealing only the suggestion of the body beneath. paige felt something in her chest tighten with such quiet insistence it was almost painless.

there was a softness to azzi she had never permitted herself to imagine during term. not fragility—god, never that—but the ordinary generosity of a body that had been lived in for thirty-two years without apology. the slight give at her stomach when she leaned forward. the graceful certainty of her hips beneath worn fabric. the broadness of her chest expanding with an absent breath before easing back into itself. it was all so so ordinary. which, perversely, made witnessing it feel near sacred.

she could’ve been saint paige, patron of 28 north orchard drive, right then and there.

the richness of azzi’s skin, a brown soft spread, gathered the late light differently than marble ever had. museums lied about light. they taught illumination as though it arrived from above, clean and impartial. azzi’s skin refuted that teaching. it held warmth inside it, returning the sun altered, gentled somehow, every movement drawing another quiet variation from it. paige thought suddenly of old oil paintings after restoration, the impossible realization that what everyone had mistaken for shadow had in fact been color all along.

“you’re staring.”

“mmhm. i like to look at you.”

azzi looked over, startled at the admission. paige watched a dark curl slip free from behind her ear. it fell nearly to her shoulder. all summer long she’d reconstructed azzi from memory and repeatedly failed at the same places. her mouth had been wrong, her curls too short, the line of her jaw too severe.

paige had discovered, to her mounting frustration, that memory possessed astonishing confidence and dreadful accuracy.

“i kept forgetting your face,” she told azzi quietly.

azzi frowned.

“i don't mean all of it.” paige turned her head a little farther over the edge of the bed, smiling at the ceiling beneath her. “just enough to make me angry.”

“paige…”

“i'd get one part exactly right and lose another.” she spoke of it casually now, as though she had never once sobbed outside her door over a stupid, little piece of cake. “your eyes survived. your voice did, mostly. but your mouth kept changing every time i remembered it. sometimes i’d think about your hair and forget the fall of your shoulders whenever you laughed.”

paige swallowed.

“i hated that.”

azzi went to answer, perhaps to commiserate, but paige lazily raised a hand, beckoning.

“come here.”

azzi hesitated, lips pressing tightly together, but she crossed the room, slow enough that paige could hear each footfall in the floorboards beneath the mattress. when she reached the bed, she peered down at paige, upside down before her, a mess of impossible limbs and pale hair spilling toward the floor.

“always ordering me around.”

“you let me,” paige said, with a wry smile. her expression softened into something almost mournful. “god, it was awful without you.”

“paige—” azzi began, but she was cut off again by paige’s firm grip around her calves.

azzi let out a squeak of surprise at the manhandling but allowed it nonetheless, body already obedient. paige let out a small smile at that, pressure building as her bloodflow continued north. she trailed her index finger up azzi’s inner thigh, tugging at the apex of her shorts. as expected, azzi attempted to close her legs in surprise—paige could feel their shudder against her temple—but paige used her free hand to wedge them open, slapping the inner corner as a silent reprimand.

azzi allowed it, slightly trembling.

“this first, then talk,” paige murmured. she waited until azzi nodded in agreement, and then tilted her head up. “kiss.”

azzi let out a light laugh at that, a bare puff of air, and met her unhurriedly, bending down slowly to press against her mouth, biting gently so that paige’s lips parted and she could slide her tongue in. she was breathing slightly harder, shaking with a carnal fragility. paige snaked a hand back between them to rub at her clit through the cloth, grinning wickedly against azzi’s teeth as the kiss became sloppy with the lack of focus.

gently, she pushed at azzi’s chest to create a slight space between them, and then reached back further to pull every inch of fabric—panties and all—from azzi’s cunt. it was shaved bare for the most part, with a landing strip of dark hair, and paige shamelessly swallowed, saliva flooding her mouth. there was a tan line over it from the way her bikini bottom had slept against her over the past months, and the dichotomy of light and dark made paige nearly incoherent.

“fuck, mommy, forgot how fucking yummy you are.”

paige sat up, finally, her skin berry red under the duress of hanging upended for a considerable amount of time. azzi reached out to steady her, warm hand on her shoulder, and paige turned to press a kiss to it, lifting it to press another to her palm.

“‘m gonna lay down again,” she told her, brow scrunching as she felt gravity pull all her blood back south. “before i do that, though, i want you to take your clothes off. because when i go back down, i want you to sit on my face.”

“paige, i don’t know if that’s a good idea,” came the reply.

paige turned around properly at that, sitting herself at the very edge of the bed, tugging azzi in with an easy pull at her shorts, nails scraping the fat of azzi’s ass. paige fucking loved her ass, loved the fullness of it, how it felt when she pulled azzi into her lap and practiced leaving the perfect hickey on her tits. she’d missed the give of it, how nothing ever changed hands because azzi would never debase herself by being anyone's other than paige’s.

“it’s gonna be fine, baby. you’re not gonna crush me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

azzi flushed, soft and pink. and paige knew that shade of pink by the gums of her teeth. it had rewritten her bloodstream the first time she'd gotten a taste, and it lived under her tongue when she couldn't sleep, dripping down the inside of her skull every time azzi so much as breathed.

“c’mon, mommy. give me what i want,” paige pleaded. “please?”

because it was all she wanted, the only entry on her fucking wishlist, to crawl between her mommy’s legs and worship that pretty, rosy slit she didn't let anyone else touch. but paige didn't move, exercised considerable self-restraint. her throat clicked with the effort of it.

“are you gonna let me have it?" paige asked. "or am i going to have to ask nicely?”

before azzi could give any answer, paige flipped herself onto her back, inched closer and closer until her throat was bared to the ceiling, hair a sheet of gold suspended, mouth hanging open lazily. she watched as azzi slowly undressed, revealing herself piece by piece, and paige couldn’t help the loud groan that snaked out of her at the sight of a brand new belly piercing sitting diamanté and sweet in azzi’s innie.

paige turned her head to the side, for a moment overwhelmed, and azzi felt the warmth of her breath at the crease of her thigh. then a kiss right there, in that soft, hidden place. slow and molten, white sugar soaking into cake.

“sit.”

azzi breathed heavily above her. then, a soft, broken moan as she settled.

paige didn't wait for further permission because she knew she didn't need it. she dove straight in, licking a stripe up the length of azzi’s cunt, an unashamed groan clawing out of her chest. azzi wailed. it was obscene, wet and gluttonous. paige ate like she was starving, like she was licking melted chocolate off a hot spoon. the tip of her nose nuzzled into the base of her, her tongue fucking slow and deep and reverent. azzi’s thighs were already shaking, her hands clawing at the sheets beside paige’s head, her face screwed tight in an expression that could have been grief.

paige moaned against her, loud and greedy. her tongue circled azzi’s engorged clit like it was something to worship, her teeth grazing it gently, just to hurt. azzi gasped like she'd been stabbed. paige alternated, sliding from long flat strokes of her tongue to kitten licks to just around her clit, felt the buzz of azzi’s body every time she did so.

“you taste so good. fuck,” paige mumbled, pulling back to breathe. her lips were shiny and flushed, nearly neon with all her effort, and she used her thumb to pull azzi further open. “always taste so good.”

azzi whimpered. and then paige spat up into it, sloppy and hot, just to see her jump. her hands kept her open, two fingers spreading azzi’s ass with practiced ease, until both holes were glistening, clenching desperately. she raised a little higher, nosing into the hot pink clutch of azzi’s pussy until the lower half of her face had a thin glaze all over. she lapped at her as if it were penance, as if she could swallow azzi whole and still ask for more. she probably could.

again, she broke free, tapping azzi’s hip for her attention.

“hold my throat, baby.”

azzi followed the instruction, obedience mindless. she waited until paige swallowed another bit of air before her hand rose almost absentmindedly, the pads of two fingers settling beneath the hinge of paige’s jaw. her thumb rested lightly along the side of her neck while the remaining fingers followed the soft column of her throat, not pressing, only accompanying the motion as the swallow traveled downward. she felt the small lift of paige’s larynx beneath warm skin, thumb curving further around the side of paige’s neck while her fingers traced the front of her throat, following—not directing—the small ascent and descent hidden beneath her skin.

her hand lingered a heartbeat longer than necessary, thumb inscribing one slow, thoughtless circle beneath paige’s jaw, smoothing the path her swallow had already completed. and she did it again and again, hips jerking occasionally as paige ate her fill.

following me all the way down, as though she can’t bear to lose sight of anything once it belongs to me, paige thought, the notion making her dizzier than any other current circumstance.

she wanted azzi to do this always and forever, wanted to get her fitted with a strap, ass spilling over the harness as she worked paige’s throat, paige working herself over her cock.

"shit, paige. fuck, i'm—fuuuck. honey, 'm gonna cum. i'm gonna cum, paige."

paige pulled back slightly, cunt drunk, forcing azzi’s legs wider so that she was further exposed. "i know, az. it's fine. you're okay. you can cum for me, mommy."

when azzi came—sharp, full-body, twitching as though something inside of her had short-circuited—paige didn't stop. her hands slipped beneath her to catch the mess, fingers wet with it, and she let out a high whine into the older woman, tongue still dragging up and over like she'd gone blind to everything else. her own hips were moving now, grinding into the sheets, helpless. a fiend and a believer.

she shook her head back and forth, mouth opening wider to better suck at azzi’s pussy. the sounds were filthy. azzi’s curls stuck to her damp neck. her mouth hung open, her stomach heaving, whole body jolting forward with every lap of paige’s tongue. after a moment, she went silent. her spine trembled, her face scrunching, lips parted, thighs slick and spasming. and then—

she squirted.

it hit paige’s chin. her mouth. the sheets. the scent filled the air like something ripe, humid, heady. paige came with a cry muffled by azzi’s cunt, boxers wet with the cream of it, jeans still on - whole body stuttering behind her. despite how weak she felt, paige still found the strength to scramble up, nearly tipping over, casting a hand out to find azzi’s waist and sling her around blindly; paige over her, azzi’s legs splayed like a doll's as paige maneuvered her so that she was on her back on the bed.

once satisfied, paige leaned back and spread azzi’s pussy with one hand, the pink so angry it almost looked red. she took one long look, then leaned down and let a warm glob of spit leak onto azzi’s hole, so that it looked as though paige had cum right inside of her. she took a long look at that too, thumb catching against azzi’s clit on purpose as she spat twice more, determined to make azzi look pumped full. azzi jolted, hips bucking, and paige kissed the bone in apology.

gently, she settled on top of azzi’s chest, pressing a firm kiss to the other woman’s neck. she could feel azzi’s body like an electric wire, twitching with the aftershocks, and she only hummed, pressing downward with her body weight to still her.

“it’s okay, it’s okay. shhh, just relax, baby. you’re okay. let's stay here for a minute.”

after a few more minutes, paige pushed herself up so that she could settle backward and unbutton her shirt, peeling it off of her shoulders, shameless about the fact that her tits were bare beneath - pale and smaller than azzi’s, nipples tight and more red than pink. she shimmied her pants and boxers off, swirling her ring and middle finger through the mess sitting inside, leaning forward to hook them inside of azzi’s mouth until she properly sucked and swallowed.

“goddamn it,” she hissed, cunt clenching, a warm thread of arousal beginning to roll down her thigh. “so sweet for me, az.”

once her clothes were off, she crawled in closer, dropping a spray of kisses along azzi’s nose and forehead, before she reached down and raised azzi’s right leg over her shoulder.

“my turn, princess.”

she rearranged them until their clits kissed, azzi arcing up at the overstimulation, paige hissing through her teeth at the wet warmth pressed against her. her hair was an aureate flare around her shoulders, the strands drifting as she began to rock forward, grinding against azzi’s pussy, sticky and slick.

“oh fuck, mommy. feels so good.” azzi only gazed up at her, eyes blown out, a wet scrape of noise sounding from her throat. “jesus, mommy, i missed this. missed you. i thought about you, how you were probably needing this so badly, how you probably felt so empty. thought of you wet, used, stretched. nothing but a sloppy wet snatch, gaping for me to fill you; thought about how pretty you’d look - pussy drooling out all the drops of me you couldn’t hold. and i’d just fuck it back inside of you, fuck every inch right back into that slutty. fucking. cunt.”

she was moving harder now, faster; breathing out through her nose, abs contracting with the strength of it, one hand pressing down on azzi’s stomach. she moved it up, groped roughly at azzi’s fat tits, let her head fall back as their clits caught again and again.

“oh. oh, shiiit. fuuuck. holy shit, baby. mmm,” she let her hair hang down, kissing sloppily at the edges of azzi’s perfect mouth, sucking on her tongue before sliding off with a wet pop. “thank—thank you, mommy. thank you, fuck. fuck, ‘m sorry, just needed this.”

the next press was electric, and they both keened. paige could feel azzi, foamy and pulsing against her. a dribble of cum spilled into her as she fucked down again.

"uh-huh."

azzi let out a hoarse squeal, rocking up to meet her as their cunts slid together. paige held her down, grinding just hard enough to make azzi buck in place.

"yeah, mommy," paige cooed. "fuck me just like that. gonna let me get this pussy all loose and messy, huh?"

she slipped slightly, unbalanced, and azzi’s hands steadied then. they gripped paige’s thick hips firmly, keeping her moving slickly against her dripping pussy.

"please," azzi moaned. "please."

"i know, mommy. you’re doing so good. so good, baby, a fucking natural." paige leaned down, tits warm and heavy against azzi’s own. "just a little more, az, you can do it."

“paige,” azzi sobbed out, spine snapping into a perfect rainbow. “please fuck me. wanna finish, wanna—”

paige sushed her, pushing a few curls back from her temple. she leaned back, left a little gap between their pussies so she could slip two fingers in. azzi let out a small scream, and paige kissed the rest into submission.

“you don't even know how crazy you make me. i could rip you open and still want more. if i died right here, i'd haunt this room, fuck you open whenever i wanted. and you let me, wouldn’t you, would spread your legs so i stuff that pussy full, keep you happy, keep you so well fucked.”

paige felt that feeling rise inside of her, and she moved faster, the wet squelch of azzi’s swollen pussy spurring her on.

“i just can’t help it, mommy. don’t want any other bitch touching you. i’d fucking maul her, do you hear me? i’d crack her skull right open. this is mine. i worked for it. worked so fucking hard, mommy, got on my knees, got you on my mouth and ate that shit until i saw stars. couldn’t breathe, mommy, and it didn’t matter ‘cause i knew i had to do it, knew i had to have you. and then i found you, i came to you, didn’t let anything stop me.”

azzi ‘s breath was irregular, her legs spasming. “fuck. fuck, paige, honey, i can't. i can't hold it.”

paige panted, a dog in heat, and nodded. “yeah, baby, that’s okay. don't have to.”

azzi came.

paige felt it flood her, thick and relentless. she spread her legs, tried to tug herself open so that as much as possible could spill inside of her. still, she kept going. azzi whimpered, pushing futilely against paige’s belly, but paige didn’t slow until her own scream fled from her throat, muscles screaming, mind shot to hell as she squirted all over azzi’s cunt.

finally, she relaxed, rolling her neck as her orgasm fizzed down her spine, to its base.

"hey," paige called hoarsely, tapping azzi’s face as she began to slip under. "hey, mommy, look at me."

azzi let out a hum, and paige kissed her, slow and heated, before asking, "you wanna taste?"

it took a moment before it registered, but once azzi understood, she nodded shakily. paige smiled, pleased, before dipping down and pushing her girlfriend's legs apart. she felt one of azzi’s hands come down, felt the gentle graze of her nails along her scalp as she held paige against her pussy. paige squeezed her inner thighs as she lapped up as much of their mixed cum as she could take without it spilling free.

when she felt it was enough, she crawled back up until their mouths were an inch apart. with a raise of her eyebrow, azzi’s lips parted, full and half bitten. paige opened her own and let azzi taste herself, allowing her cum to drizzle like icing into her mouth. she didn't stop until she'd transferred all of it, swapping the sweetness of their cunts and spit until it snowballed to sit perfect and warm at the back of azzi’s throat.

paige pulled back some, not bothering to wipe her mouth, and tapped azzi’s throat. "swallow."

azzi obeyed, eyes dark and low.

it went down like water.

“this is mine. i worked for it.” paige repeated, voice cracking with vehemence.

“yours, honey,” azzi whispered, reaching up to bring her down to her chest, fingers carding through her hair. “all yours.”

and paige felt something unstop then, her first sob bubbling up, the dam broken, an ocean following after.

azzi had gotten a dog. it was a black lab named, rather unremarkably, julia.

she’d been rescued from a shelter two towns over, large-pawed, with eyes black as a raven’s wing. when paige asked how she decided on the name, azzi had told her, she was someone i knew in budapest, and then did not say anything else about it, ever, no matter how many times paige brought it up, over days, over weeks, hoping to trick the rest of the story loose.

paige never got it. she decided this was fine.

(it was not.)

julia and paige largely existed running parallel to one another. given that samson had quite literally kicked her and suzy made her displeasure rather clear every day, paige had resigned herself to being someone whom all animals worked their hardest to avoid. so, when she happened to fall asleep on julia, drifting into a dream in the rainy midst of a sunday, it had truly not been the plan.

she had planned to sit on the floor for no more than five minutes, and then shower. paige was wearing the sweater she lived in almost daily now: cream, oversized, a flag worked into the front of it in the flattened, friendly shorthand of campaign merchandise, stars turned into little white asterisks, stripes turned from symbolic into an overcharge; summer slump over a folding table outside a rally for the stunning price of thirty-eight dollars.

paige tended to avoid this line of thinking. she had decided not to think about several things lately, as a kind of experiment, curious to see what was left over once she stopped. what was left over, apparently, was taking a restless nap on the black back of a dog she had known for only eleven days, in the middle of the afternoon, while azzi talked quietly on the phone to the west of her, her voice a low drizzle, probably in conversation with caroline, who paige understood to be deeply distrustful of her.

she woke with a mouth full of cotton, sweat skating down her back, her vision blurry before the four blinks it took to clear it. julia’s ribs were a wave beneath her, pulsing up and down under her arm, steady as a small machine built only for this. azzi was sitting close by on the floor now too, back against the couch, looking at paige with unadulterated fondness, some sort of embroidery project lounging in the middle of her lap.

“do you think it means something,” paige asked, mouth still coated with sleep, “that she doesn't know me at all, and let me sleep anyway?”

azzi gave it considerable thought, picking at a knot on the underside of her canvas as she did so. azzi always thought about the things paige asked her, which paige still found almost unbearably moving. in the silence she stretched, the ligaments in her knees cracking, a popcorn chain of motion. julia sniffed her neck, then lapped her tongue over the bottom slant of paige’s jaw before settling back into rest.

“i think it only means,” azzi finally answered, “that you’re not nearly as terrible as you think you are.”

paige returned to julia’s spine, breathing in the orange-peony scent of her - courtesy of her ouai shampoo - so she wouldn’t have to reveal her own face.

you need better instincts, she thought—both to julia and the woman she so deeply loved, but now you have me.

part vi. ⊱ tara strubing, ‘tired’, c. 2024.

she would have to do something about her mother.

she’d said as much to azzi, who had subtly frozen in the kitchen, mid-meal-prep—no doubt remembering the theatrics paige was capable of; cliff dive at a moment’s notice. paige hid a smile, pleased at the proper assessment of the dark spots within her. but she knew her mother, and her mother would not let this go. it was how she’d won her current position in the first place.

eager to remove herself from the public eye, paige had turned over the logins to her official social accounts back to the aides assigned to her and promptly created two brand new ones under an innocent handle, her instagram and twitter beholden to one pb_5, as well as a new email address. she made no move to hide who she was, though both were private.

somehow, her new email had been found, leaked probably by some rankled minion of her mother’s, and so there had been emails for months, arriving with the unkillable regularity of garden weeds. paige had mostly ignored them, deleting whole batches unread, disregarding them with the same nature she’d use to swat halfheartedly at a half-dead fly in the flat, its sluggish black body returning weakly to the same windowsill.

they were a small, persistent annoyance that seemingly reproduced asexually: a word from you would mean so much to our readers; we'd love to offer you a platform to tell your side. the same two sentences rearranged by forty different bylines, all aching to be the one, identical predators dressed up in rotating costumes of concern, hoping they’d one day find her black and blue enough to give in.

she’d gotten exceptional, in the midst of this circus, at recognizing the shape of a hand reaching for her under the guise of an open palm.

there was one, from a woman at the atlantic named rhea, that she’d let loiter in her inbox without quite meaning to. it sat unanswered in a folder for six weeks, unread past its first line, until one endless evening—a few weeks out from election day, julia curled heavy and warm against her shins, azzi somewhere off in the other room preparing them an ill-advised latenight cup of chilean coffee, two scoops of milk—paige opened it once more, this time properly giving it a read instead of skimming for the parts that would allow her to close her laptop with a clean conscience.

there was no your side buried in it, nor the unashamed fishing for scandal wearing the mask of sympathy. only a plain, unadorned request: if paige ever wanted to say something in her own words, on her own terms, this was an offer to actually let her do it, no holds barred, without the usual editorial vulture-work stitched invisibly underneath.

paige wrote back that same evening, before any part of herself capable of talking her out of it had the chance to wake up and object.

hello, rhea. i’d like to take you up on your offer. it turns out i have some things i’d like to say. however, i want final approval on the piece before it runs, and i need forty-eight hours’ notice before publication, non-negotiable. if those terms work for you, i'm in.

they worked.

it took three weeks of meetings in various hotels and diners, and one long, strange afternoon in rhea’s own living room - tape recorder between them on a coffee table, slim as a cigarrette and scarred pale at its corners, tonkinese tabby paige never quite got the name of watching shrewedly from the top of an inundated bookshelf, pale tail swinging like a hypnotist’s tool - for paige to finally say everything she’d wanted to.

in the end, not much of it was about azzi (who she referred to as ‘k’ throughout, determined to allow some privacy despite the refusal of the public), though she spoke about her at length, plain in her adoration, smiling in the best of it with leaking reverence. but mostly, she spoke about her father.

about losing him, her only source of uncomplicated love, her only alleviation of her inherited pressure; how he’d been gone in an instant, body broken into four in a rockslide that could have never been planned for. how she had a fear of climbing, couldn’t go on hikes above a certain amount of feet; how she probably needed a therapist to deal with the way she spent both the anniversary of his passing and birthday vomitting, hugging the bowl of a toilet as she sobbed herself into a dehydrated sleep, dreaming so vividily of how he had been that when she woke she felt cut into all over again.

she talked about her mother’s first campaign, and the second, about being raised in the brittle heart of a machine that had only ever loved the parts of her that were useful to it, polished and photogenic and quotable. she spoke about deciding, somewhere over the course of this last unbearable year, that she would rather be unremarkable and entirely her own than remarkable and endlessly managed for the length of a whole life. how it had taken a while to admit that she was unhappy and clinging to the only parent she had left, at the expense of well, everything.

at the end, rhea went to click off the recorder, then paused.

“one last question,” she said, and paige braced for the betrayal she’d been expecting all along. but instead, “you wrote a beautiful essay about the circus and two artworks that portrayed it. i believe the pieces you chose were by chagall and seurat. have you ever considered a career in art criticism?”

paige, surprised, answered honestly, “that’s a thought. you know, i don’t think anyone’s asked me what i’d like to do before.”

rhea had looked at her for a long time, a gentle understanding in her wide hazel gaze before clicking off the tape. paige knew without her saying it that that would be the ending line of the article.

the piece would run in two days. paige read the final draft four times, alone, in the dark of the bedroom with only the desk lamp lit, and changed almost nothing. the only note she sent back was a picture of her father, for a better written likeness.

it was, she thought, closing the laptop the final time, the first thing written about her in years that had actually worked, tirelessly, generously to get her right.

she stepped out into the hallway, pattering to where azzi was closing down the flat for the eveing. she hugged her from behind, breathing in the scent of the other woman, her nervous system alight.

"was it bad?" azzi asked.

paige flattened her curls against her skull, coming in close to place a kiss to azzi’s crown, then the middle of her scalp, lips plainly against the skin.

“far from it.”

“i’m glad, honey,” azzi said, never pushing.

she’d be a lovely bueckers, if she so desired.

it was she who reached out to peter, asked him to arrange the necessary meeting, which she understood to be an act of mercy.

she could have let her mother read all about it in print alongside the rest of the country, could have let the piece simply detonate without warning, the way the photograph once had, without her consent, without her knowledge, without a single hour’s notice extended to her. she chose not to.

whatever else was true between the two of them, however much of this last year her mother had earned through sheer accumulated cruelty, paige found she did not want to become the shape of the thing that had once been done to her.

her mother received her in the same library in which the confession about her youth had happened months before, and paige thought, briefly, standing in the doorway, that her mother must have chosen the room on purpose. some base instinct toward symmetry; some need to seal the circle in precisely the place it had first been broken.

“you asked to speak with me formally,” amy said, not unkindly, settling into the same chair she’d occupied that day in august, hands folding themselves neatly in her lap. “i assume this isn’t a social call.”

“there’s a piece running in the atlantic in two days.” paige stayed standing, hands loose at her sides, bundled inside of a thick indigo knit sweater and straight-leg jeans, no regret in her posture to be found. she’d rehearsed her opening on the drive over and abandoned it the moment she decided to stay standing- exhausted, sick of preparing for her mother’s disapproval. “i gave an interview on the record with my name attached, as well as a few appropriate photos azzi took of me. there was no anonymous sourcing, nothing to be spun as a leak from a source close to the family. it covers all of it: azzi, the campaign material, my ambitions moving forward. i chose the publication since i knew they’ve been more favorable to you throughout your campaign, figured they would respect my neutrality when it came to certain topics.”

her mother’s face had gone exceptionally tight, actively recalculating, paige knew. she’d seen her do it a hundred times across a hundred crises not her own.

“and what is it that you have decided?”

“that i’m done,” paige answered. it was without flourish; she was no longer reaching for effect. “it’s not like i’ve renounced the family publicly, worry not, though i’ll be referred to by only my father’s name now. and when the time comes, azzi will be a bueckers, if so desired. no, mainly, i’m finished being useful to you.”

her mother took a tremulous breath in, and paige relished it. she continued.

“no more campaign work - not this cycle, not the next, not ever again if i can help it. no surrogate appearances or soundbites to be scripted by strategists or photops for your perfect family narrative. if people ask me about you, i’ll say that i love you, because it happens to be true, and then i’ll say nothing further, because that, too, is also true. it’s my right, and has long been, to decide how much of myself gets spent on your career.”

“you understand what this costs me.”

at that, there was a flare of an old wound, and paige rankled, her mother’s poison surging under her skin.

“i understand what it costs me,” paige snapped, and she took a breath to calm. when she next spoke, there was no true cruelty loaded into it, only fact laid flat on the table between them. “despite appearances, i’m not doing this to hurt you. i’m doing it because i’ve finally worked out what i want and it’s not this.”

amy was silent, gazing hard at her daughter with an expression paige couldn’t fully parse; some tangle of grief and something almost like respect, arriving decades too late to do either of them much good at all.

“send me the piece,” she said finally. “before it runs. i’d like to know what's coming, at the very least.”

“no. you’ll get the same forty-eight hours everyone else gets.” paige moved toward the door, unhurried, done with the conversation. “and that’s not spite—that’s just fair.”

she was nearly at the threshold when her mother spoke again, more defeated than paige had heard her in years, something in it almost unbearably human.

“for what it's worth, i hope she’s good to you. i hope—i hope that she takes care of you.”

paige paused, one hand resting flat against the doorframe, and felt something within her gather itself briefly into a thrum of melody nearing forgiveness, but its note could not be sustained. her hand flexed, fingers transforming into claws, momentarily rigid before relaxing. paige focused, for one second, on an outstanding vein.

“she will,” she responded, without turning around. “she’s not you.”

then, she let the door close softly behind her and did not look back.

peter’s desk sat at the base of the main stairs, the same spot it had occupied for as long as paige could remember, papers arranged with the military tidiness of a man who considered disorder a personal failing. he looked up as she approached, already reaching for whatever polite, closing pleasantry the moment required.

paige didn’t sit. she rested two fingers on the edge of his desk instead, light, almost idle.

“my sister will do this better than i ever would have,” she said. “and she actually wants it. let her have it. she’ll be good. she’ll be what you need.”

it was the truth. lauren would be good. she could count on that.

“noted,” peter said, careful, eyes latched onto her as though she were a phantom soon to be exorcised.

paige tilted her head, leveling him with an unreadable gaze.

“you’ve been very loyal to my mother this year. more than the job requires, i think.”

peter’s face went very still.

“it’s my job to be loyal to her.”

“mm.” paige let the syllable sit, doing its quiet work, and did not clarify further.

she watched the understanding eventually arrive to him anyway, a slow roll of a train, finally stuck at the same station as the rest of them.

“i don’t mind it,” she offered gently. “it’s good that she has someone.”

he recovered faster than most people managed to, which she gave him credit for.

“for what it’s worth,” he told her, straightening a stack of paper that most certainly didn’t need straightening, “what you did in there - walking in, setting your own terms, giving her the courtesy of warning anyway? that took nerve. most people don’t have that. you may hate to hear it, but you’d have made a formidable successor, if you’d wanted the job. a genuinely frightening opponent to run against.”

poor peter.

“i'm formidable now,” paige said.

and there was something in the way she said it, an eerie assertion, her voice three shades flatter and colder over the words, face gone briefly slack in a way that didn’t match the loose fall of her hair around her shoulders, nor the simple girl-shaped persona standing in front of his desk. for just a second, there was a spirit old and unplaceable moving behind her eyes, peeking out with its bloodied mouth and black teeth, gone again before peter could attempt to properly speak to what he’d seen.

his hand stopped on the papers. he didn’t say anything. paige smiled at that—shallow and pleased, entirely aware of what had been revealed to him—and turned on her heel, exiting without waiting to see whether he’d manage to compose himself before the door swung shut behind her.

peter recalled the night she had thrown the cup. they’d been so sure it was a product of a fugue state, an odd remnant of grief they brushed into the fire along with all other ashes. but now—

he felt the churn of his stomach as he recalled his seat next to her mother, the shatter of glass over him like a material annointing. and for a moment he was back there, paige’s hand soft and white, encircling the base of a second as she looked at him, considering the fantasy, before she’d forced herself to let go.

۝

STATE OF GRACE

by Rhea Ballentine

For most of her life, Paige Bueckers has been defined by the office her Mother has inhabited and the headlines she generated. In a rare conversation about grief, art, family, and the freedom to disappoint, she begins defining herself instead.

❝ She arrives twelve minutes early, carrying a black Picotin leather tote that has begun to fray at the left corner. Her hair is wound into a loose ballet bun that, upon first glance, appears accidental until I notice how deliberately the errant pieces have been allowed their escape. A bun with a publicist, is what I write in my notes, and then feel bad about, and cross out, and then privately do not disagree with. She’s wearing a navy fisherman sweater despite the concerning late-October heat. I compliment it. She brightens the way a much smaller person might. “eBay,” she tells me, with the pride of someone reporting a personal achievement. “Thirty-four dollars.” A pause, then. “Actually twenty-eight. I negotiated.” This turns out to be the first of many moments in which Paige Bueckers—“No Fuller, please”—is delighted by something so small and ordinary that it briefly eclipses the extraordinary fact of the rest of her life. Below the sweater: black denim shorts, tiny climbing roses embroidered along the hem, the stitching gone soft the way only real wear could make it. On her feet are a pair of black Maison Margiela Tabi flats, the famously divisive split-toe shoes that have inspired as many internet jokes as fashion editorials. I ask about them. She laughs. “They're evidence.” “Evidence of what?” "I'm trying to prove a point to—" she stops herself here, and an expression settles across her face that makes her look, for one full second, considerably younger than any photograph I studied of her beforehand. “Just…someone I love thinks these are the most comfortable shoes ever made. I have maintained, for months, that they're anatomically hostile.” Another pause, more self-conscious. She wiggles one foot experimentally under the table, testing something, possibly her own argument. Mainly, I think, she is trying to dispel any awkwardness. “Although," she amends. “I might be becoming a believer.”❞

[…]

❝There is a specific moment, and I can locate it almost to the minute—somewhere between her describing the realities of grief (how you keep doing the small tasks of a day, brushing your teeth, answering discussion board posts, while some other larger version of you has simply stopped functioning in another room) and her apologizing, sincerely, for crying over a glass of sparkling water she has not managed to drink—where I stop being able to think of her as the President’s daughter. I want to be honest that this isn't the generous admission it might sound like. I had spent three weeks preparing to interview a public figure. I had a folder. The folder had tabs. Instead I found myself across a small table from a freshly twenty-three-year-old. I had, I’m mortified to admit, briefly forgotten this number, had forgotten that her birthday had been just a week before, had kept her flattened to a woman whose face had been on television since before I personally knew who she was. She kept stopping mid-sentence to apologize for the fact that she was overwhelmed by her emotions in front of me. An apology on the record, as though her feelings were an oil spill threatening every sign of natural life. At one point I wanted to interrupt her. Not to ask a follow-up question—though I had several, sitting patient and unused in my notebook the entire time—but to tell her to drink the water. To eat something, anything, off the small plate of charcuterie the hotel had arranged that neither of us had touched. To go home and sleep, ideally for several consecutive days. The impulse embarrassed me. It was, unmistakably, maternal, and I am not anyone’s mother, and she is not anyone’s especially fragile child. But grief has a special penchant for stripping the skin off of a person, however many titles or headlines they’ve accumulated on top of it. For the better part of that hour, America’s First Daughter had simply left the room, and in her place sat someone’s eldest daughter, someone’s left behind child, green to twenty-three and long traumatized, trying her best at doing the ordinary and unsolvable work: trying to think her way out of a loss that has never once, in the history of anyone, responded well to any one school of thought.❞

684 Comments ⏷

username: i genuinely forgot she was younger than me.

⤷ username: because u all have been fucking talking about her like she's the one in office and not a fucking human being lol

⤷ username: clock it

username: so! that line where the reporter said she felt maternal toward her absolutely destroyed me!

⤷ username: she needs a fucking hug. thank god she has her brother and his fiancée plus her girlfriend.

username: remember when we all weren’t fucking weird and suffering from severe mob mentality and wouldn’t have crucified a woman for falling in love and being a regular twenty-three-year-old???? lol me neither.

۝

there was a night, early november, where paige was horribly ill, swallowed mercilessly by the flu; a night spent lying on the bathroom tile, emerald press to her cheek, azzi’s hand along her back. she’d fallen asleep, but azzi woke her once, in the dead of night, lips pressed softly to paige’s brow. paige reached for her, hand settling on her stomach, eyes slipping back closed.

“she’s won.”

paige didn’t need further context, soft blue flicker of the tv sliding beneath her eyelids. she opened them and glanced to the side, to the darkening grout underneath their claw-foot tub.

her fever broke.

epilogue. ⊱ norman rockwell, ‘girl reading palm’, c. 1921.

niki turned forty-three on a saturday in october, two days shy of paige’s own twenty-fifth birthday, two years free from the mess she’d ushered onto his doorstep.

she’d organized the entire thing herself over the span of three weeks, doing so without telling either him or mar, which meant her brother had spent the whole party in a state of low, delighted shock every time he discovered another detail she’d handled without his knowledge.

the cake was a tiramisu crêpe cake, a nod to the summers of niki’s childhood he’d once had with his father against the backdrop of war, crêpes infused with coffee and baileys then layered with mascarpone cream and a generous dusting of cocoa powder. it had to be shipped from brooklyn in an ice-cold cooler, the sort of contraption that spoke more to the transport of organs than a gourmet pastry. paige’s gift to him had been a stack of rare first editions niki had been quietly eyeing on some dealer’s website for months, books surrounding the naval history of the world of all things, a purchase mar had told paige in passing that he’d never once justify for his own sake.

and beside them, a proper set for the guitar he’d talked about learning for as long as paige had known him and never once actually started; a decent instrument, a stack of beginner's method books by its base, and a stand for it all to sit on in the corner of the living room where he couldn’t pretend not to see it.

“you really didn’t have to do all this, донечка,” niki told her, several drinks in, turning one of the first editions over in his hands like he wasn’t sure yet whether to be moved or embarrassed by it.

(paige had once asked mar what донечка meant, blonde brow furrowed in confusion. mar had looked at her for a long time and then said, i think you know, never one to underestimate her.

she never told him that yes, she did.)

“of course i didn’t,” paige told him. “but you’ve had the time for years, niki. you just needed someone to stop letting you put it off.”

suzy, for her part, had declared an unofficial truce for the occasion, spent the whole afternoon curled against paige’s feet under the folding table instead of fleeing the room the moment she entered it, tolerating an ear-scratch here and there with the weary grace of an old enemy conceding a single, symbolic battle.

paige took this as the honor it was clearly not intended to be. perhaps julia was doing wonders for her image within the canine community.

by eleven, the guests had thinned to almost no one, blood under a pill. mar had gone up to bed early, happily drunk, humming something off-key that might have been chopin or could have been nothing at all. paige had read somewhere that humming stimulated the vagus nerve, kept one regulated, so she needed him to hum always, thank you. niki was still downstairs, quietly straightening his new guitar where it sat propped in its stand, hand shaking in lingering disbelief. paige smiled at the sight as she slipped past.

she found herself outside her bathroom door instead of in bed, hair piled in a mountainous bun on top of her head. the old keyhole in this house’s ancient lock had never once been covered, some charming failure of the building’s age, and paige had discovered she still had it in her, that old appetite, the simple animal wanting to look at something before she was given full permission to have it.

through the narrow gap she could see azzi at the sink, sleeves pushed up, water beaded along her stark collarbone where she’d splashed her face, a few strands of hair gone dark and damp at her temple. she looked, in the low bathroom light, unbothered and sweetly near sleep, the way she only ever looked after a time well spent.

“you don't have to stay out there,” azzi called, without turning around, not even the faintest trace of surprise in her voice.

paige startled anyway, caught, and pushed the door open the rest of the way, falling into a space between embarrassment and its opposite.

“i know,” she said. “but.”

she stopped, came and stood in the doorway instead of crossing the rest of the distance, watching as azzi dried her face with a hand towel faded into honeydew green, gone fuzzy from constant washing, admiring the water still catching at her throat in the low light.

“sometimes,” paige told her, “i get this feeling. that i don’t have you just yet, and i have to look at you like this. i like that, getting to look at you like this.”

azzi turned to her, towel still in hand, face tender and amused and entirely without judgment, a smile landing around the corner of that perfect mouth. keyhole, paige thought dutifully.

“you do have me, sweetheart,” azzi said. “you’ve had me for a while now. so, there’s no reason to be worried, if you are.”

putting up with me for so long, paige thought, putting up the same old fight.

“i know,” she answered instead, smiling small and real. her nails cut scarlet crescents in her palms, pinky tucked in to play with the diamond band hidden inside them. her hands interlaced. “that's not really what i meant.”

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