Dylan

He/Him

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Ive never been a gal allat into muscles attractiveness-wise but bro, Enjin…

the tattoo piercing muscle combo is doing unholy things to me, the girl is weeping at the sight of him, PUT ME IN BETWEEN THOSE MEATY ARMS AND SQUEEZEE (but not too hard) LORD HAVE MERCY

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✦ COUNTERCURRENT ✦ ENJIN X FEM!READER ✦

• SUMMARY: What goes around comes around. Post-sex conversations have become the most Enjin ever commits to, but at the same time, they are inching towards their final catastrophe. Holding you through the tears-drowned sex is all comfort he can offer to someone who’s a bit rough around the human edges. You have yet to realize how deeply you have fallen into the trap of needing another breathing body beside you, even if the relief you seek is always inadequate. He’s not any better, circling his teammate with his own compulsion.

• CONTAINS: dark content, cleaner!reader, dub-con due to reader’s emotioniality during sex, hurt and angst/little comfort + bittersweet ending, possible canon divergence due to an extended timeline and weather-based worldbuilding, cycles, dark imagery, unhealthy fwb situation, unhealthy coping and co/dependency, bad aftercare, reader has an avoidant personality and unspecified traumatic past, animal death, using painful sex as comfort (but Enjin stops reader), bleeding during sex, discussion of having children, (kind of) pregnancy scare but reader isn’t pregnant, non-explicit smut, suggestive, swearing, unsafe sex, smoking, manga spoilers. WORD COUNT: 16,3k.

• NOTE: 1. Hello for the first time, or hello again. ❤️ I’ve been working on this fic for weeks now, rewrote some scenes, but it is finally here. 2. Since Enjin’s past is still a big mystery, I won’t lie, this fic has a major flaw: me assuming things and creating theories about him that are not yet cleared about his character to fill in some canon gaps. I still aimed to keep the reasons for the certain behaviors of his in this story as vague as possible. (This is the price I pay for not being patient enough but who knows when we’ll know more about him. Enjin just makes me want to write.) 3. I hope you’ll enjoy your read (angst or not)! It’s much longer than I originally planned for it to be. I focused on the dynamic a lot.

NOVEMBER 22 OF THE CURRENT YEAR, FALL.

It’s hard to tell what's still real at this point, albeit troublesome things are a guarantee of the fact that you’re still there — they hit with a double force enough to keep your senses awake, an eddy pushing itself down to your toes.

In moments like this, Enjin’s voice becomes a distant whisper, lost among the broken gears in your mind, muffled by them igniting sparks against as they collide with the tar of contemplations that your body struggles with expelling. Overwhelmed with the malaise that can be heard ricocheting with every of your sobs, it’s only the cheap thrill of another touch that allows you to erase the weight of your own existence.

Despite what your lips call for, you still can't hear him. You suspect you’re inaudible too, your lips moving on their own with the voice you can’t claim as your own; you at least would find it equally disturbing and shameful how fast it’s crumbling in its cadence. “Harder… Enjin…”

The fulfilling is as distant as ever, as it is close — teasing with its balmy touch, only to never develop into a sun in full. The taut, searing pressure blooming between your pelvis is the closest you come to feeling like something, somewhere — you’re full of him, hidden gaps filled by his wide size.

The fantasy bursts when the anticipated wreck on your nerves is cut short, forcing you awake.

It’s just you. It’s just him, panting above you, motionless, scrupulous in watching you with conflict, as you’re holding onto his arms. Even the creaky, wooden bed placed under the window stands still, reminding you of the closeness it keeps dragging you back into — as if waiting for the moment it can bind you to itself forever, just as Enjin’s arms pinning you to the sheets are doing now.

There’s no concern visible clearly — it has become the luxury he no longer works hard for to be able to afford. Pointless, if he knows you’re perennial in your fissuring he can’t stop; burdensome, that he refuses to let you take him down there with you. He’s only restless, frustrated with the fact he’s incapable of understanding why.

You think he’s handsome, with eyes full of piercing honey; through the mirage of your tears especially, distorted just enough not to startle you with whatever judgment might lie there. You think you’ve known him all your life; after seeing that face so many times as you unravel beneath him, you can recall every detail of his features and tattoos. There’s more worship in that habit than most of the trash rain on the Ground will ever receive.

This ritual is still never welcome, if it had crept up your mind at your weakest.

He still doesn't know you, his coworker who remains as secretive as he is. Enjin can see you’re real, Enjin can comprehend the idea of you wearing your troubles, but Enjin cannot fix whatever you’re making up for by letting him use your body, nor can he fix himself.

You realize he’s speaking to you when his hand ends up over your jaw, warm and real, but hesitant to offer anything else that won’t be a false promise. Stuck in the daydream, you nearly grab his in return.

“Yes? What’s up? Why stop?” you pose the question drowsily, dazed by the world being blurred for at least a few minutes. You’re melting in his arms holding you securely enough for you to not slip away entirely; he’s heavy and tobacco-pungent on top of you, leastways anchoring your physique to present.

A few minutes are hundreds of seconds, hundreds of seconds swell into hundreds of thousands of milliseconds. In this light, the fleeting moment stretches into near eternity. With each minuscule breath with pleasure blooming over your long-hardened essence, you’re temped to stay here forever.

He grimaces, lips and brows tightening, as he observes how annoyingly unaware you are of your own unmooring. “You were crying…” his rasped voice falters with uncertainty as he explains, though his aches for you haven’t lessened inside of you.

The verbatim acknowledgment of your state — one that never stopped him in his pursuit of your body — sends a defensive pressure into your muscles, turning them rigid under the bitter for you reminder. You suffocate his biceps for a second.

He fucks you in his room, both bodies screaming for a raunchy release. Halfway through, tears come unbidden — the only time your walls you’ve held up for years crack under the weight of your vulnerability. Unable to be raw and console you, he can only hold and fuck you harder until sobs fade into your exhaustion. If you're too sore to go with tears still unyielding, he eats you out until you're done. It wasn’t like this originally.

“I always do, what about it?” you scoff, threading a right amount of playfulness into your weeping to fight his intention of denying you. Hurry, Enjin, hurry, you plead inwardly, feeling that you’re regaining awareness of the tears’ molasses sticking to your throat, your skin drying under the salty tracks, and the soreness transcending the pleasurable level — you’re coming down to reality too soon.

“It’s different. I can’t explain why, but it is. You sure you don't need a break?” he grabs your chin, firm yet gentle, insistent in his demand for a sound answer from you. The honesty he’s seeking is not about the true nature of your tears. Enjin doesn't believe he could soothe you the way you’d need it — if you’d even let him — but he refuses, at the very least, to make you worse.

“I’m just tired more than usual. You know, the Raiders’ mess just keeps piling up for us Cleaners,” you argue casually. “I can take it. Don’t you dare to stop when I’m about to finish,” the need in your tone slips out too easily, even as your heart is busy tearing itself apart before it can mend itself enough to live another day. A greedy creature is the role you fall into the most earnestly when sex is the one thing everyone is known to desire, and the one indulgence you need most of all.

Enjin scrutinizes you again. Before he could decide you are underestimating your strengths, you beat him to it — wrapping your lips around his thick finger, sucking with all the wantonness you know he loves, showing you're still not about to become a pulp, squashed by your own emotions coming in deadly tides.

The next press of your body into the mattress has you thanking him.

After you’re both done and he wipes his own mess from your body, he covers you to then pull you close. It’s merely an arm being thrown across your waist, yet you still are inclined to force down the visceral urge to move him away from you. As if curling yourself into his arms would account for the image of him letting you close being out of pity only, with you proving to be far from the solid mass you he once knew.

But he keeps your two sweaty bodies under the blanket close, burning you with his presence and not allowing distance for the sake of what’s been brewing in you for the last few months.

Your eyes go through a drought soon enough. Now they burn, each sting honing the lines of the desaturated reality for you. At least it’s quiet now; still with ataraxy beyond your reach. There’s only a torpor pressing itself between your bodies like an intruder, then raising its ghostly hand to smooth over your head until it is empty again. You’re most peaceful post-orgasm, even if you can’t feel your legs.

“You’re good now?” he asks, casualty betrayed by the awkward undertone, fitted for the man unaccustomed to dealing with crying women.

He can sense the strain you have never allowed to drip and bleed on the surface of you — neither during the missions you have run together, nor during the moments you fooled around for giggles like old friends. However, between the two of you who refuse to pry about each other's histories, ‘good’ is only the synonym for “not willing to cry again”, no “are you actually doing alright?”

For your answer, you can only nod your head on his shoulder, comfortably numb. Tender, spent, and already having forgotten the nasty ghosts of your past that had tried to resurface through your first tears before Enjin made you cry these out properly. Lock them, open the cage storing them, lock them again.

You typically avoid looking at him right after your display of emotion in all kinds of colors, worried that the vulnerability still hanging loose in you will firm up the risk of attachment to Enjin — a little of intimacy goes a long way. Being naked as the day you were born is just the tip of the issue’s iceberg. As his other arm is shuffling around his bed, your eyes are tracing the lines of the Too Lily poster instead.

Under the terrible light of Enjin’s rusting desk lamp barely scratching the gloaming atmosphere, she's almost mocking you with her eyes full of something you don't have. She’s painted into an inanimate object, yet it’s you lacking vitality. She’s scraping your ears too, the upbeat notes Enjin put in the background before you’d come still playing.

You shake yourself off the dream with the laughter, charmed at the cigarette being placed between your lips, not the rightful ones. You’re reanimated, finally looking at him looking at you with no clear emotion. “You're quitting smoking or something?” you tease, watching him scowl — Enjin doesn't share his tobacco treasures easily.

That earns you a scoff, safely played as nonchalant a veil for his next words, “Not worth with the withdrawal guaranteed to be the pain in the ass. I deserve little something when everyone around is so demanding. It’s you who looks like she might use one.”

You raise your brow at his proposal, as if saying “you care?”, also safely light. Ultimately, you don’t protest against extending sharing the poison even after the sex is over.

And yet, you think him then lighting up the cigarette for you is the most romantic thing he has even done for you — the proximity of your face this close to his, in this position, for sure awakens your heart, just as it wraps it in anxiety.

The smoke doesn't hit your tear-scraped lungs well, coming as an unappreciated guest and forcing your features to twist into a caricature of your face. The glee you hear in response is heightened after your cough you can’t help either.

“Damn,” he barely stifles his mocking guffaw, one grinding your gears.

You roll your head on his shoulder, shaking it with disapproval. “Shut up, I haven’t smoked in ages, and—what the hell do you put in those! It’s a whole bomb! How do you even smoke that?” You wave the cigarette in front of yourself, staring at it with disgust, as if pointing out its intoxicating quality. The stench soon takes over his entire room, adding to the smell of sex, and adding up to the invisible layers he’s been building up here for years.

Then the leftover of smoke you exhale settles in you. Goes into the crisp that provokes your post-sex dizziness, as well the empty stomach begging for food, until the velvet layer is coming with cathartic peace and sticks to your chest. Thrumming your heart, lively, for at least a second. He hands you over the ashtray, setting it on your stomach.

“You mean to say: you screamed louder for more your throat is all rough. Enjin, Enjin, please—”

His crass taunt is interrupted by you throwing a pillow at him, pretending you find being the butt of his joke funny yourself. Pretending you're not instead humiliated by the reminder of your pleas. Scared he doesn’t mean the pleas that come out as innocent at first — full of lust and desperate to be fucked — but the later ones, that develop into being full of sorrow, over who knows what.

“Hey! Don’t get your panties in a twist, takin’ everythin’ so seriously…” he grumbles, knocking your shoulder with his, as if to shake off your supposed stiffness, turning his head to grin at you.

The silence that falls after is not as funny. Your exhaustion would have appreciated it if his silence wasn’t something you tend to find dreadful. You’d much rather hear him say something both so appalling and humorous, than be made to think he’s quietly evaluating you and your today’s actions.

Although, he really is romantic — you realize that after noticing no separate cigarette is being lit for him, as he’s stealing it from your moist lips instead. You glance down at his fingers, shivering from them brushing you gently as he departs it from here.

“Just a half today?” you remark, looking away again.

Now it’s him turning oddly defensive, furrowing his brows with irritation at his being perceived. He looks away too. “’m tired. Doubt I can stay awake enough to smoke the whole thing… and who can afford burning two cigarettes, at the same time?”

The scintilla of sadness that comes in at the thought he’s doing no more than using you to avoid the cigarette waste feels comical to you.

And yet, something within you tries to split open again when he places a light hand on your arm he then starts stroking. He has recognized your today’s particular restlessness, and the fact he did startles you; on top of the lingering skin sensitivity he’s provoking. You hate being scrutinized, analyzed, assessed, assumed about— especially by him who seems in tune with emotions of those around on another scale, oddly for someone who still refuses to commit to a woman.

The second stroke, and you remind yourself it’s still not given to you with the embodiment of happy to, merely, not cruel enough to leave you be. Whatever is there to Enjin himself, he also cannot leave a root he’d regularly come back and tend to, watching it grow into a flower with time.

The fourth brush, and you wonder if his silence is exposing he’s beating himself up for not addressing the elephant in the room: what has happened to you that you cry as if the world is ending? Crying is self-explanatory, but Enjin doesn't know what you’re crying for, as he’s never asked or started a conversation about those tears… or who you really are, at the core of yourself.

The eighth touch, and you think you don’t want him to ask anyway. He’s just your teammate and friend you fuck. He’s not someone that owes you responsibility for your blues. He’s not a person that deserves a right to speak about the consequences of withholding past. He’s not your boyfriend especially; he does not want to be any woman’s anyway.

The twenty-eighth kiss and you’re so absentminded again, you don’t notice him looking at you this close to him. You’re busy observing through the lenses of his room, heart rhythm synced with his. You’ve been here many times, you’re trying to crack his mystery over and over.

The hefty smoke produced repeatedly had jaundiced some things — curtains and sheets especially— yellow, and you wonder if you had made the effect worse, with your presence alone.

You think he’s messy, as he is wild, exactly replicated in his room: from the cigarette maker spilling scobs on the tiny TV stand, through the bottles clinking over the collapsing dresser, to the laundry on his chair still waiting to be stored. You notice some porn magazine you’d tease him about more awake too, and then the wallpaper peeling off you’d gladly tear off to hide yourself under. He also needs to clean that nasty dust from his dark furniture.

You’re glad it’s not your own room he takes you in, as you’d remember him in your own items, or the scent you suspect you can never wash off from yourself or your room.

Your mind stretching thin, you’re next watching his fog’s wisps curl like inside of a shaken snow globe, twisting into different ribbons, wings, and flowers, tiny dancers coming onto the scene of the grimy room. Elaborate but jagged, mesmerizing and distracting you with a fleeting beauty in the trash land. Something enthralling your own mind cannot ever be. You’re blinking only every time he presses the ash onto your stomach.

By the thirty-fourth contact, he hands you the leftover of the cigarette to roll on his side, his touch gone yet still all over you. You take a drag without thinking, pressing your lips to where his own were just seconds ago; clinging to the kiss you stupidly imagine it is, for a heartbeat feeling like a real one he never gives.

Only then do you start theorizing he’s lied about being practical, has extended his cigarette to comfort you instead. About to fall asleep, he could have claimed he was avoiding waste this one time you also smoked — but if that were all, wouldn't he have just handed you a neat half? Something as small as taking turns still feels too intimate for a man like him. This tiny gesture is the only way you’ll see him show empathy; Enjin never does it verbally nor through “grandiose” gestures.

You really need to go, before that fantasy would get to your head. He’s really weird today.

With the first rather obnoxious snore you hear, once you gathered your clothes and shit together, you and the smoke are gone from his room.

On your own in your cold room again, feeling much emptier than his, you are forced to acknowledge the shift in the air. You can feel it in your bones: the upcoming dry winter on the Ground will be harsh, and so you go back to past to recount your moments with him — and he does too, from across the building.

Back to not the first winter together, but the first winter written this nightmarish way. Then the cycle’s seasons after. Until another winter will come.

The idea of winter or any season described in the texts about the Sphere that weren't redacted is difficult to follow without a calendar. The seasons in the Sphere are artificially created, yet based on real, ground-based seasons before they raised themselves into the air and before the trash became all there is to the atmosphere.

Solstices and equinoxes down here manifest only in the shifting length of days, though on the Ground the light is perpetually dim, obstructed by dust anyway. According to the Cleaner's archive, weather on the Ground differs drastically from that above the Sphere, warped and disordered by the pollution. It’s always somewhat warm and dry here, with an often stagnant wind, heavy with smog.

You’ve become obsessed with using the idea of seasons to track your own relationship with Enjin.

DECEMBER 21 OF THE LAST YEAR, WINTER DREAM RECOLLECTION.

Many pages of your calendar have been turned with a nagging sense of something going amiss. The past left lacunas that you taped shut; not enough to avoid the cold zephyr of something or someone occasionally flying through. Some memories are blurred, difficult to identify; and some are vivid as blinding neons of the Canvas Town, coming to you at nights with Enjin.

The type of incompleteness no of the beautiful spectacles world shows could satisfy, food satiate, and people fix. No remedy for it that’s not as useless as licking your own wound.

Even your Vital Instrument is only a cement to fill the desiderium from the surface, not inside, and you wrapped its meaning around what you wish would have been protected. Like a dependent non-Givers call your kind, you’re nurturing your precious item over and over; you let it shine under the light and appreciate its detail, you let it destroy, you let it turn worn from the usage like you do to yourself. And yet, nothing changes.

You used to manage the hovel yourself, not letting anyone have a glimpse on it or offer something to restore it, knowing that most prioritize the importance of their own survival above someone else’s problems. Letting yourself bleed in front of the sharks is not an option.

And Enjin had to ruin that safe management for you.

He yanked you out of the jungle of emotions you had learned to navigate, its vines always carefully avoiding your steps. Instead, he threw you into its deep and acid waters, forcing you to confront them until you were drowning and begging for help, not knowing how to swim.

Seeking hedonistic things do is the closest you ever came to achieving at least the temporary kind of completion in your entire life; at some point, it started as an episode, the first point being a bar before you even joined Cleaners per his request.

Enjin has been the nearest in your reach, as he was the one you clicked with the most, and outings regular enough to meet your demands would have been daunting to schedule anyway.

But this one night, any motives born purely out of need for pleasure were shifted into personal, the oxytocin from another warm body cracking you open. In hindsight, worrying about having to sleep with a stranger instead maybe wasn’t so bad, in comparison to doing so with someone you’re associated with.

This one blunder you made — one of those originally only lusted midnights ended with you allowing the intimacy of sex to unleash the Pandora box of your stored up emotions. The storm of sudden tears was unanticipated by you both. In your defense, you never had any chances in defending yourself — let someone close, open a tiny of gap of your heart and legs for them, and the dams you had built up for years start cracking on their own.

They can store a lot, but their material is still fragile.

The first time you cried mid-sex, Enjin thought he has hurt you. He’s never seen you cry before, and while he believed you naturally carried your own baggage like anyone else on the Ground or between the Cleaners, he assumed you had learned to keep it in check. Learned to like he did himself, which is why he wasn't afraid to get close enough to end up in the same bed; to be able to let go of horny consistently was all that he wanted from you at first.

The instinct to stop was immediate, but with you so inconsolable, he quickly realized this is no physical pain — someone like you would handle it better. He should have stopped, but with you vitreous and breaking in front of him, the pull on his heartstrings still working to this day was enough to win over. Holding you, while still fucking you through your tears, hoping exhaustion would obfuscate your pain — that was all his obdurate brain could have thought of.

He has never held a woman properly, in a way devoid of motives. A normal man would have cuddled you on your side, trying to talk to you; he did so on top and still inside of you, silently.

And oddly to him, you let him, blurring the lines of pain and pleasure with each sob, until there was nothing left in your memory’s evanescence. Nowadays, this act of capitulation holds the title of the worst mistake you have ever made since knowing him.

You both knew you should have walked away the moment he suffocated you with silence after, unable to offer anything real and empathetic. No proper worry more other than clean and tuck you in, as the decision to send back you this small would have haunted him all night.

You didn’t anticipate the relief of crying your heart out would be of this magnitude, forcing you to realize you have underestimated the tension you carried under all the debris you were suppressing for years.

You couldn't go back to living normally after only single time he held you like this, having had the taste of both comfort and release you thought you’d never require enough to need another person. Something you had never admitted aloud to him, playing the role of a woman not needy or clingy that he hates, but of a woman free and adventurous, seeking out to indulge herself.

Chasing relief, except it’s stuck in the loop, as you need one more after the first ends, and then another, and then—

So this cycle will keep happening, like a recrudescence. Too caring to let you just cry, too closed up to take care of you properly. Too hopeless to stay away, too proud to admit you need someone’s hand to hold.

He knows how to provoke, what to stroke, and what to scratch; being fucked over and over will get you in this headspace the closest to nothing and everything.

You will always end up all over him, eager to do no more than handle your sex drive; you will always end up under him, singing threnodies and telling him it’s about to rain. The only words that will leave his mouth during the act are affirmative about his pleasure, purposely avoiding the topic of your tears at hand, saving his dignity and yours.

One heart open is a lot between you two, and unraveling his own is not worth the pain or responsibility.

It will be both of you getting to know you again, meeting the real you for the first time, previously unaware of who you are without the self-modifications.

It will scare him when sometimes will see himself through you, vicariously reliving his own past without having to cry about his own too — because you will cry for the both of you, the warm and cold air coming together.

MARCH 20, EARLIER THIS YEAR, SPRING.

Sometimes, you dream of a single red circle, porous red ember, burning bright against the dark. The cigarette guides you, but the space never gets truly lit up by it — it only chokes you with its cancerous smoke. Enjin has been already corrupting your dreamscape by the time spring came.

The next sharp turn Enjin takes with the jeep car jolts you awake.

You’re still on your way back from the Polluted Zone, exhausted after a successful mission — the beast itself was not the problem, as it was the fact call you received came in very early of this morning. Nestled between Riyo and Rudo, the latter is mutually growling something at Zanka next to him, but is also too tired to make it a proper fight. In the row behind sits Tomme, resting her legs across the free space comfortably.

The serpentine trash beast fell apart, mostly by its own undoing, ironically after trying to outsmart you all by burrowing under the trash-sand. It bit its own tail, snapping with its fangs pointlessly when it could have dodged both its own teeth and your blows, choosing to stay stuck in a loop instead.

The caller behind the job was mysterious, asking to stay anonymous, with a promise of a sweet extra bonus as an incentive.

Yawning, you stare at the desert’s red clouds of aerosolized trash forming and sticking to the windows from outside, sad that you can't see the mythical sun that’s supposed to linger at the sky. Its only substitute is the weather unbearably hot today, air warmed by the trash.

You imagine the artificial springs of the Sphereites is much more beautiful, something that could actually make you happy: green, lush, petals and leaves coming alive, pollen making you sneeze, blue sky. In the Pit, there’s not even flies to feast on the rotten garbage, that would work almost as hard as bees once did.

At least, you hope it is better like that up there, not daring to ask Rudo about the truth.

When a familiar tune Enjin’s currently blasting suddenly reaches your ears, you tense up into a more awake state. Looking at him in the front, you get to see a cheeky glance given to you in the rear-view mirror. Unable to believe this asshole is playing the same music he did last night, you glare at him.

“He’s bothering you again?” Riyo asks with a knowing smile, used to the little games between you two that whirl around the Headquarters daily.

She only won’t show if her knowledge about your dynamic goes beyond the evident friendly banter, in the ways that would be clear to you, not insinuated. You wouldn’t put that past her, knowing she’s a smart girl. In the narrow space of the truck, the weight of what she might know makes it hard to breathe.

She’s still loyal to Enjin. If she does know something, she won't ask about that.

“By having a shitty music taste? Definitely,” you reply dryly, closing your eyes again. You're so tired today you manage to sleep even though Enjin’s rocky driving.

You’re forced to reopen few hours later them when Tomme yells from behind you, “Enjin, watch out! You’re about to hit a cat!”

The force of the car’s sudden stop sends everyone flying to the front, soon weaving you into a bundle of limbs.

“Now. Why would a cat be right in front of us instead of moving out of the way?!” he yells dramatically, making it everyone’s problem. Then hits the steering wheel with his face, gripping the edges of the leather.

You’re surprised he managed to stop a car in time with his driving skills at all. Which doesn’t save Enjin from thrown groans at his incompetence any more.

“Maybe it’s blind and deaf— Hey, get away from me!” Rudo yells.

“It’d still feel the vibrations,” Zanka says bluntly, pushing the boy away from him.

“But why would a cat be here in the first place…” Tomme hums with worry and straightens her body, patting her clothes down.

“We can at least guess it’s in a bad condition,” you realize, untangling yourself from Riyo’s hair. “Let me see.”

Before Enjin could stop you, you’re already stepping out of the car with Tomme and Rudo trailing behind you like a cat rescue squad, everyone putting their masks on.

“Great,” he grumbles under his nose. He follows you all anyway, too curious and maybe a bit protective, while Zanka and Riyo stay to shut an eye for at least a minute without being thrown around or growled at in the sardines’ can.

The assessment of the cat’s state is not bringing promising results. You all gather around a female, gray-tinted white fur feline. Even with everyone now closer to the Headquarters, the lighter dust here is not something to ignore either.

“Poor thing. She must have been abandoned by someone from the nearby town, then poisoned by pollution… look at her heaving…” Tomme murmurs, brushing her hand away when the cat flinches from the pain. “I doubt she has much time left. She still stayed strong for so long…”

You absentmindedly rub Rudo’s shoulder as he tries to not cry, his shoulders shaking and he biting his lip. You imagine it feels personal especially to him.

You eye the nearest rock. You don’t want it to suffer, and suspect letting the cat go quickly would be more merciful, but you doubt Rudo would forgive you.

Then it starts raining; you flinch under the drops, having forgotten how rare rain is with the trash pollution stopping any coalescence. The first taste of Spring, cleansing, as it is staining with acid. Rain always makes the moldy and sour stench around worse, amplifying the deadly mixture of burning plastic, rotting food, chemicals, human waste and decomposing bodies.

Lost in your thoughts, you forgot about Enjin standing above you all lamenting over the cat as well. You narrow your eyes when he extends his umbrella over the cat. He’s not letting her run cold for at least the last moments of her life.

None of you say anything for a while, like a silent prayer in funeral. You’re given time to think about your own past, staring at a glass item spilling out from one of many trash bags around.

Enjin finding you in your favorite bar, some spring, you drinking away your soul. You barely remember what was that shitty flirt like he threw at you, also curled embarrassingly drunk, eyeing his big hands and sharp jaw instead. Both strangers meant to do no more than hook up in a love hotel, until you alcohol-vulnerable blurted out you also were a Giver, curious to know what it means exactly, in the pink bed after. Soon, he was chasing you week by week, strict, aiming to convince you to join the Cleaners, and then preferably his team.

Then you remember coming closer as some kind of friends — if friends’ definition only was supposed to be knowing how to joke, not unite — still sleeping with each other, no tears coming to ruin things just yet.

You might as well be the cat lying at your feet, defeated by some kind of poison. But unlike her, there’s no umbrella for you to be protected from the toxic rain.

The cat is soon gone. As Tomme walks poor Rudo shaking back to the car, you watch Enjin give the cat a proper burial from whatever trash heaps he could utilize — an old shoebox she’s put in, a barely torn blanket she’s wrapped in, the contraption covered with a pall some Sphereite’s white silk scarf is.

“Alright, let’s go.” he says laconically, then turns around towards the car. You wonder just how familiar and friendly with death Enjin is.

You trace his steps, allowing yourself to watch his back for a moment as you pick up the object of your previous attention, then speed up to be in front of him, shaken by the rain and the whirlwinds that are forming.

He doesn’t see the tiny snowball you slip into his coat’s pocket.

Back inside the car, Riyo poses you an interesting question. “They say cats have seven lives. Wonder what six lives this one went through previously,” she muses. “Anyway, can I do your hair once we’re back? Pretty please?” she clings to your arm like a child refusing to be denied.

Your eyes widen, more so to mock than criticize her choice to stay imperturbable. “You’re discussing hair styling right after discussing death?”

“Well, sadly animals die all the time… if I had to stop to cry about every, where would I be right now?”

You suppose antipathy to death is only natural. However, how many lives do you have left? You’ve been through so many, you’re worried it might be your seventh already.

You guess only a demiurge would know, for now covering you in caducity.

JUNE 21, EARLIER THIS YEAR, SUMMER.

The summer has fooled you, allowing a lighter day to turn into a lighter mood between you both, as if everything was over and you were allowed to go home. In reality, it was only a momentary fantasy of the longest day in year.

You ask him this after sex: “Where the hell did you come from? I’ve known you for quite a while now, but this dilemma remains unsolved…”

It’s supposed to be a jab at the mystery surrounding Enjin, pronounced as frivolous and non-binding by the soft circles you draw on his forearms’ tattooed clouds. It’s quite frustrating you can comprehend only the idea of himself he’s made for others as if some wannabe enigma; this itch of curiosity is against your will. Information is a currency itself, here on the Ground.

Just his tattoos alone are a whole conundrum. It’s a shame you can’t afford Kuro’s services.

You even question if the place Semiu told you about is in actuality the place he has a wanderlust for — the town he runs to chase skirts. Considering he was in the Polluted Zone on his own when he found Rudo, this being an occasion he definitely had to come clean about, who knows where else he goes, under a disguise being a womanizer would give him? Who he sees is something you have never asked about anyway… for the sake of your peace. It’s not as if he needs more of good sex than you already give him, as the only thing he thinks he’s supposed to want from you.

It's not as if Givers had ever won a good reputation among other people.

Although, you for sure believe him when he’s claiming he can't handle women’s emotional needs. Yours especially are of high maintenance to him.

The shivers previously drawn out by your touch bristle harder under the pressure of the question that still lands as oppressive for his cherry Enjin’s past-picking ears. “Well, where did you come from?” he deflects playfully, tone low and relaxed enough to fool.

He’s even sexy to you today, relaxing his body against the headboard. Sweaty from what he did to you and the heat outside, warm hair ruffled from your hands that you want to touch it again.

Everything seems just right today: the weather less windy of trash, the whisky in your hands, his smile, you wearing his t-shirt and bruises. Enjin’s room is particularly clean today. You only hope you could see Sun and blue sky, filtered of dust in the clouds. Must be summer — you’re fully thawed after winter, yet you’re only another six months away from it coming again.

Now it’s your turn to turn tense and pivot. “Out of my mama’s womb, duh,” you scoff dryly.

Enjin bursts into a booming laugh, enjoying the ridiculousness of your answer, having to hold his stomach. The sound rings nicely in your ears, and so you lean closer to him on the white sheets.

From the point on staying down on your belly, your face above his, it’d be very easy for you to kiss him… till this day, you don’t know what kind of kisser he is — soft and then rough, rough and then soft, always soft and gentle, always rough and hungry? You’d let him steal all of your breath, if only he could hold you close while he’s at fondling your lips. They itch for him sometimes.

“Nah, that’s come out from, not come from,” he highlights the difference with an annoying to you lilt.

“I asked first anyway,” you slap his bare shoulder, earning yourself his petulant look, but almost flinch at skin touching skin. Sometimes you forget how his closeness veils you with odd and contradictory feelings. Apparently, post-sex hormones are not something you’re being spared from either.

You sit up and extend your arm above his body, giving him a view of your breasts under his t-shirt bunching up and adhering to them, as you’re reaching for the box of cigarettes. Back to next to him, you raise your brow at him having no banter to your slap; an ass slap is the least he’d do.

“Well? Or are you thinking about something else right now? Two somethings, round-shaped?” you tease, then on your knees, you put a cigarette between his lips.

He looks at you with a question. It almost turns you nervous, but how do you tell him you don’t like changes, attached to stagnation and no hurricanes unpredictable is? “You always smoke. I thought you forgot to… or something,” you shrug your shoulders and flick the lighter you’ll steal again, soon watching him inhale.

He is your vice, so you expect him to keep up with his own, just to keep things balanced.

He doesn’t pry at your “kindness” behind helping him smoke. Nor does he tell you cigarette today felt unnecessary with you as his vice here. “Hm, very mindful of you,” he finally speaks, muffled by the filter in his mouth.

You roll your eyes. “And I’m still waiting.”

“Like I’d tell you,” the response is a murmur, as if maintaining quietness to dim the topic of his life, before it could develop into more inquires. “Besides, I’d be looking like a loser if I were one upped by you having some story that’s far more tragic than mine,” he jokes and takes the stick from your hands. “Not that I’m saying mine is tragic,” he adds quickly and takes a drag, wanting no assumptions.

You pout, regardless of being glad he’s maintaining the distance as always. This dramatic expression has him wrapping an arm around you and pushing you down next to him. “Anyway,” he yawns. “Playtime is over, firecracker. We’ve got a mission tomorrow, and I don’t want you slacking off because you’re tired.”

“Me? You’re the one slacking off,” you grumble, knowing you’re not wrong.

“You’re sorely mistaken,” he drawls… characteristically lazily.

“Come on—sorely?” you frown, suddenly remembering how sore you are. How will you even walk tomorrow, let alone fight? You want to blame him — his size and roughness — regardless that you begged for it.

“See what I did there?” he grins, satisfied at the successful distraction from you making accusations.

“You know, Enjin, nights are my favorite. It’s quiet, so you can think in peace. But with you next to me, all I can think about is murdering you,” once you say the petty stuff and he snickers, you turn away from him in bed. It’s too many sensitive questions for today anyway. It’s snowing the Sphere’s stardust outside the headquarters again, the wind is restless from the heat tonight, but that’s something to lull you into sleep.

When the biting words are soon replaced by your light snores, that gives him enough time to reflect. For once, he lets you sleep next to him, the first day of summer. If he spoils you only one day out of three hundred thirty-five, that’s still not an exception to the rule — if he had to make excuses. His free hand rests on your head.

He knows it's wrong. He knows what this — whatever excuse of intimacy using you through your tears is meant to be — is doing to you. He’s always been self-aware of his own shortcomings, as well of those belonging to those around. Believed in learning from the mistakes, always improving his mind, thinking you’re never too old to be without something you still have to outgrow. With you, he fell into inertia.

You’ve become unable to go about your days without being held this way, no matter if previously you were self-sufficient. He’s become unable to deny you, especially with the sensation of your nails clinging to his back with desperation, them begging for him to not let you slip into your own head, now fully written into his body’s wires.

The storm brewing under his ceiling coils into a vortex, pulling in every dark thing left unsaid — poised to strike you with feelings neither of you can handle, or destroy you entirely. You’re already wearing your heart on your sleeve at nights together.

Above all, you and Enjin still have a mission to fulfill. There is no time to fuck around, literally as well figuratively.

He should have not begun this, the thought passes through his mind for the one hundred thirty-seventh time in the last months, as he’s adjusting a blanket draped over your body and veiling you from him. If he did, where was he, not refusing to let it happen again for at least another, fourth, eight, twenty-eighth time?

You wouldn’t know this: he’s a coward, wanting you too much to let go and not doing enough to keep you properly. The coward to bang his fist at the gates of your citadel while never inviting you in to his. Suspecting you’d turn away from him eventually, this was the only way to make you stay.

Enjin takes in the big, sixth puff, and stubs it out on the ashtray, hissing sound making him wince when it shakes him awake.

He likes picking up broken people and pushing them until they think they have gained a new sense of self-purpose. With you, he’s helpless without fail. You're frozen in time, focusing on holding and hiding the pieces he now knows are more fragile than at their face value, instead of reorganizing them until they make new contours, or not having enough of them left. There’s a big difference in advising someone and holding them anyway.

Seasons change and start things anew, but maybe you wouldn’t know with no trees around to tell time, and you’re also poisoning the soil, with salty tears as the accomplice to the ever-present trash doing its labor. It’s summer and you’re still stuck here.

Enjin finally lies down beside you. He counts the empyrean stars he’ll never see along the constellation of your spine, fearing they might dim if he comes too close. Although as his hand brushes your back, he finds out nothing falters in your glow. You only press closer, and it is he who must pull away, shielding himself.

He has learned to move with the seasons, only taking shelter under his umbrella when the rain comes, silently wishing you’d find your way beneath it. In the crowd, you don’t even spot it. Outside, you tell him there’s not enough space under the canopy. He agrees without a word.

Sleep barely comes to him that night.

DECEMBER 20 OF THE CURRENT YEAR. THE ANTICIPATED WINTER HAS COME.

It hurts. It hurts so terribly. You've never felt more alive, embarrassing anything vapid in your vicinity.

The one taking you roughly and wringing your hips is still unaware. He’s assuming the moans mixed into the typical wallowing are of pleasure. Afraid of him stopping, him being disappointed even, you don’t announce any discomfort. Instead, you let the flame burst and crinkle in you and your sting, as it’s pushing away any thoughts and overheating your nerves — your glow of life almost shines above your sweat.

You barely hear the mattress coils ripping each other apart through the sobs and ears’ ringing, not disconcerted in the slightest bit about how hard Enjin is going at your body.

“F-fuck… you keep squeezing and squeezing on me…” he growls through his teeth, blissed out by the tightness that turned shortened like a belt tonight, so suddenly.

Eager, he pushes your legs closer to your chest, needing you deeper and harder, with one skillful hand and the other between your thighs. He hits your insides hard, sending another wave of dizziness the pain brings, swirling down your shaky limbs.

The pleasure turns dimmer, shoved away by the aches demanding their space and your attention, but you welcome them. They’re much more pulsing, bright, vivid on your nerves, tickling you with both scorching sun and gentle kisses, than you have known pleasure to be. You’re begging them to ruin you, invigorated by the notion.

No pain up there if the pain is down there.

As for Enjin flying on the cloud nine, he has to take in the view of what’s almost a torture wrapped around him, watching himself disappear too.

The blood he spots is not the part of his typical fantasies about you, coming out as tiny flares and cigarette burns on him.

You give him a whiner type of cry when his pace turns uneven, startled by your harm. He’s used to be your rough, but so is he used to your body’s durability currently rejecting him. “Enjin…”

He stares at you with disbelief. “You’re bleeding. I think we should…”

“No!” you butt in immediately, clinging to him with your fingers on his shoulder blades, making indents for the sweat to flow here. Instead, you sense he’s so cold today, the sweat condensing into beads of a dew instead. “It’s just a bit of friction. I took worse lacerations,” you assure, giving him your best wanton look.

When you squeeze purposely to stimulate his body again, he’s almost convinced to keep going. The cruelty behind stopping you amid your desperation would be hard to swallow, as if it would consist of denying you something crucial to your poor excuse of haven.

His keen eyes glance all over your body, watching every twitch and rigid form, then your lashes drowning in your tears. Your sight is supposedly no different from the usual “Aren’t you in pain though?” His stomach knots unpleasantly at the thought — it took him a whole year to have to consider the possibility of your limits being violated past what even he could allow. You crying, he let slip you away with; you showing physical manifestations of your torment is what he needed in order to fully hesitate in letting you disintegrate.

“Barely,” your response is met with even more skepticism brewing behind his gaze. “Okay, maybe just a bit, but it’s a background noise, please—” you try to convince him, dragging him closer, the heat in your eyes now becoming deliquescent, a dysphoria’s victim.

Only to expose yourself, wincing as he with the next shallow move, he angles himself into the places already raw and torn.

He stops any movement immediately, taking in you, a grim realization knocking at his face. Enjin gulps, then closes his eyelids for a second, before giving you an anger knitted between his brows — the type of frown you see only if someone in the Akuta did something particularly irresponsible. You can't tell if his revulsion is directed at you enjoying this or himself for aiding you in hurting yourself, and as his mouth opens to scold severely, you brace yourself for the impact of his words.

“Why on earth would you not tell me it’s that bad. I was hurting you and you just took it,” he's fuming, confused and concerned, there above you, raising himself to rest his palms on the sides of your head than still crushing you with his weight.

You’re surely wide-eyed right now, a prey trapped under him and the pressure of his observation coming after your entire existence. Having been caught self-harming yourself, you find yourself feeling the smallest you have been in a while, abject and laid-bare. “Some people are into pain…” your excuse is flimsy and you know it, stuttering on the words as if you’re believing in their liability yourself.

There’s just no way you’d make the admission of your abased state of mind, regardless of the face value speaking for you. Things like that make no logical sense, and Enjin himself struggles with it — showing or implying something is wrong with you or him, only to contradict yourselves by playing oblivious about it, as if saying those things aloud hurt physically.

It does. You wish he would shut up and change the topic already, feeling susceptible to his disappointment.

Enjin’s anger is spun by your indifference again, willing to shake in some sense into you — his hands move to grip your shoulders. “They are. They can get off to whatever, I don't give a shit. But it’s different when they’re punishing themselves with malice!” Each harsh word is being accentuated with a forced wriggle.

“I'm not punishing myself! I’m just into this!” you argue back, a bit scared; frozen under him, even if the old you would be kicking him already. The sight of him loosing his cool in a way separate from dramatic is a vagary in his weather, and you are worried about what kind of forecasting this is.

“While you’re crying at the same time and thinking about whatever past memory is fucking up with your mind? I don't buy that.

I won’t help you destroy yourself either.”

Your desperate attempts to keep him inside are futile. He’s pulling out, leaving your needy hands hanging in the air for nothing.

Why does he even care? Why now?

He's far away from you, so suddenly. He is on the bed next to you, but the iceberg between you two is splitting in half. You don’t ask him if he’s mad at you, him at the ceiling like it might crack open if he concentrates his anger at you here telltale enough.

The silence is killing you, each second drawn out with you, your trepidation, and your vein-deep-Weltschmerz anticipating he’s going to kick you out into the cold weather of your own room; you wouldn't blame him for that unkindness.

No languor comes this time after, filling you with lassitude instead. The winter’s here for sure, filled with another angst and disappointment, and you’re unmoving as if frost got to you. Has he also gone cold-hearted?

“I’m sorry,” he eventually blurts out, laconic. No turn of his head is made, Enjin worried about seeing a mirror reflection in your eyes again.

“About what?” your voice is full of surprise. You think it’s you who owes him an apology for alarming him with your weirdness.

“Being aggressive. Must have scared ya.” He did see the eyes you have given him a moment ago.

“… Don’t mention it. I should have told you I’m ruining your sheets,” no melancholy escapes your tone, as you keep on staring ahead, just like he’s been doing.

“It’s not about those damn bedsheets, you stupid woman,” he grumbles. He rubs his forehead, and already is turning to the side for a cigarette box, willing to forget what happened a moment ago.

You finally defrost and wipe your eyes, hoping for the same.

Settling straight on his back against the headboard, arms safely away from yours, he sighs deeply and puts the sparks into his cigarette. “You need something? Ointment of some kind? Maybe Eishia has something—”

“No. I can barely feel any pain. It’ll heal up on its own,” you say dismissively, ignoring how swollen you feel from the inside.

And he knows better than to argue with you, pretending the shake of your legs has never been spotted. Enjin says nothing.

You're willing to gather your clothes and escape another silence weighing heavy on your paranoia, but he stops you last second. You’re freezing, but it’s the dismantled state of no layers to hide you that you brood over. “Hey, can I ask you something?"

You tense up sensitively. Questions that are not simply sex or job-practical are not predictable by you. “What is it?” you ask too calmly, gripping your pants above his floor.

“You’re still taking the pill, yeah?”

You whip up your head to the side and straighten your back, hearing the serious voice your vulnerable ears translate as condemning. “Are you… accusing me of something?” you ask with disbelief. Surely Enjin doesn’t believe you’d force a baby on him; that’s too much to imagine regardless of your latest mood.

“Geez, no. I’m just… capable of understanding it’s easy to forget about consistency when you're… all over the place,” he explains, weighing his words carefully. Turning on his side for you to see his tattooed chest after the sheets slipped down to drape over his hips, he’s placing an ashtray between you two. “Work… and all that jazz.”

Your behavior outside of his bedroom is unsuspecting. Focusing on your cleaning, drinking with the crew, shit-talking him, sometimes outsmarting him and getting him all hot and bothered when the debate inside a mess hall turns heated (and he happens to love a smart woman.) But it’s Enjin who gets the most reliable knowledge about you — from the first-row seat — and is able to gauge how you’d lose the rhythm in some routines.

There really must be something wrong with you, and you almost want to blame him for it — you can't accept the idea of becoming a disarray of a person willingly. Because, your visceral thought isn’t of worry about a pregnancy scare. Imagining delusions about a baby giving you a sense of purpose when you're still exposed and susceptible to impulses is easy.

It’s really his stressed look that allows you to remember the objective.

“Ugh… right… well…” you trail off, watching him almost crush his cigarette in half from the anxiety. Poor man must be thinking he’s going to be a father.

Have you been consistent? You remember taking your pills for many days in the row, but what if you missed a dose and didn’t realize? You don’t want to put Enjin or yourself in this situation because you were too distracted; you’d never forgive yourself.

If there is a baby, you hope they will take after him… or maybe, it should turn out like none of you — grown adults who can’t even communicate without using sex as a leverage.

Forget it. Your period ended three days ago. If you ever have missed a dose, you're not pregnant.

“I’m taking them. My period just ended,” you confirm, strongly enough to sound honest. “I know better than to have a kid here, as a Cleaner. Yours especially,” you stick out your tongue at him, dispersing the fog of apprehension that’s been controlling his body.

You drop onto the pillows for one more moment, something within your instincts urging you to feel his presence properly once more.

Enjin’s shoulders slack, relieved from down here to the Sphere. No daddy Enjin. Still, he has to protect his pride, falling into the trap of your provocation like any other time. “Mine especially?” He gasps with an overdone offense, hitting your shoulder, as if you uttered an insult directed at his entire excellency. “What’s wrong with Enjin Junior?”

You stare him down with the theatrics of disgust, looking as if you just imagined tiny Enjin running around and bothering everyone, playing out a shiver down your spine for a good measure too. “I'd rather die than name the child I birthed myself after you. And answering your question — everything,” you say pettily.

He shakes his head wistfully, taking a dramatic puff of his cigarette as if his life depended on it. “Oh, okay. I get it. I’m that bad. Same old story I’m hearing. I’ve never done a single good thing in my life. I’m lazy.” “I can’t hold you properly and be brave, the man hiding under his childish charisma and false pretense.” “Everyone has been under-appreciating this guy and taking him for granted already anyway,” he throws more dramatics at you. “You can say that for them. Say how bad Enjin is. Come on. Make yourself feel better.” He ruffles his own hair.

You laugh, loud enough to bounce against the walls. It’s an insane idea, to talk about having a child with Enjin carelessly. As if at this point you’re not here mostly because of a relief that’s still ephemeral and shortens itself every time. Soon it would be only a sunk cost bringing you back to him.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I must have forgotten something. Then, do you care to enlighten me about what am I missing?” you tease.

Enjin grins, so happy to oblige it makes him cocky. “I thought you’d never ask. One — I’m an excellent mediator. Our team stays focused because of my advice.”

You pretend to ponder over the validity of his words, pursing your lips and looking to the side with thought. “Hm, okay, let’s say I’ll give you that, but only when you’re not bothering the poor kids,” you agree, just nonchalantly — to keep him humble — despite knowing how he connects those around. You envy him sometimes.

He kicks your calf under the blanket, lightly, yet takes your “praise.” “Great. Glad that’s established. Next thing: I have a pretty badass umbrella,” he says playfully, his face moving closer to yours.

Your heart races on its own, but you don’t yield to his charms just yet. “I mean… I guess it's alright.”

Another scorned puff. “Alright? Not amazing?” he mocks, clicking his tongue at you. His eyes spot the tiny bruise he left on your neck, but they don’t leer, in case his brain turns it into some ownership thing that's as dangerous for you both as anything else already has been. The last time he felt like that was when Tamsy stared at you for too long. “You don’t need to be embarrassed. You can admit that you like it.”

“I'm not doing that,” you deny him on purpose. You’d hand lifts itself to brush his undercut from behind his head and you watch him shiver. “Anyway — is there more to you, or am I supposed to be impressed with double things?”

“So impatient. Of course there’s more to me,” when you smile and condescendingly lift your brow in question, he leans too close to your wellbeing’s safety. “I, for a fact, can make you come reaaaalllyyy hard,” he lowers his tone, speaking just between you two, as his hand crawls up your waist and spreads chills.

You gulp, feeling the heat coming between your legs again; you disregard the pain that flows in the current under. He’s right, and you enjoy the memory of les petites morts as long as your brain instinctively ignores anything else that happens during sex with him. “Unless I’m riding you. Then it’s me making you come,” you still bite back; excluding the part where no matter how you start, you always end up below.

For a second you think he’d pounce on you again, clearly aroused and challenged by your comment — his hand tightens on you, and you know he’s still hard after having to stop halfway through sex. It’s only the remembrance about your physical state that deters him. “Smartass,” he comments lowly and leans away.

Then adds, as if it’s a reminder you might need. “… But yeah. Having a kid here sounds like a craziest kind of idea. No birthing babies in the HQs.” He points his manicured finger at you like a strict father, still playful, making sure you listen. “Don’t need another brat running around anyway.”

And yet, kids is all he’s surrounded himself with outside of you. Stray-collecting.

You both turn silent for once more this eve.

Eventually, seeing you gather your stuff thirty-four seconds of unspoken thoughts later, one more question burns on his mind. He changes his mind about vocalizing it last second as you catch him staring with too much for his agenda worry.

Regardless, as you finally leave wobbling, he makes a note to himself to buy condoms before next time.

DECEMBER 21 OF THE CURRENT YEAR. THE WINTER,AFTER MIDNIGHT.

Being ripped away from your sleep mid-night has you wanting to murder Enjin.

It’s cold, and any wind howling through the tiny cracks in the window frames sinks down into your bones, trying to whisper to you about something coming. There never will be snow here like the toxic one in the North Ward staying at the higher elevation, the effect of dry air caused by pollution, but you imagine the soft fantasy happening over here too.

You're not necessarily freezing like you imagine a real winter to be, yet the coldness tonight is still a relief from the heat the pollution on the Ground easily produces.

You still wonder: what's the winter up there like?

With the last day of the calendar taking a big step everyday, you feel all the year’s garbage piling up on top of you. Him calling disallows any proper contemplation over your mistakes.

You falsely assume that it’s your sleepiness that has turned his voice distorted through the Choker — it’s more restless than usual. “What.do.you.want,” you force the words roughly, through your teeth.

“I’d praise you for the ability of making a scary tone sound so hot, but you need to get your ass over to my room, right now.”

Your mind warps things real fast. “Huh? You think you get to demand when we sleep together—”

“It’s not about that.”

Your heart stills, and it’s as if all the sleep is knocked out of you under one, solemn line. It’s always about that, so whatever else he wants from you, you have a bad feeling about it. “Did we lose someone?” Your stomach hurts plenty — from the moment you woke up — as if you were right about prophesying bad things catching up to you.

“No. Just come here already,” he demands tiredly, as if been up for a while.

“Alright, alright…” you curse under your nose, gathering some slippers and a favorite worn out hoodie for a walk to his room. Watching how you step, legs still aching.

Each step through the hall is dusted with a sense of doom growing within you, foreboding, as if you're about to walk into something with a point of no return. You’re not sure if you’re hallucinating, but you suspect the ground started breaking too, in the shapes of your footsteps you took through this corridor many times before.

Your path gets blocked by Semiu on her way back from the reception; you could easily wish owed goodnight and pass her by, but it’s her look that stops you. She needs no words to tell you her order, and her glasses sparkling under the power-emergency lights tell you she’s seeing through you.

“Enjin’s called?”

“Enjin calls me all the time, mostly to annoy me with unsolicited information. What about it?” you shrug, playing with the strings of your hoodie.

“I mean a booty call type of harbinger.”

“How— how did you know?” your throat tightens, and a hot flush of shame spreads itself down your body. Not a sex shame. An Enjin shame.

She gives you an incredulous, knowing look, her smart eyes crinkling under her brows crunching. It’s not a matter of her being smarter than most — your closeness to Enjin would be noticeable to many at this point. Be it seen taking a wrong turn out of your room’s way deliberately timed to be at night, pairs of eyes lingering for too long, the odd stiffness between you two that appeared just a few months ago.

You smelling like bad cigarettes.

You’ve been so involved in your lethal duo of reverie and night terrors, you barely had a chance to stop and think of the outside perspective… or through it. The bubble bursting, its impact bringing you back to reality, you suddenly realize just how much of your life you’ve made to be about him. Truth be told, the last year feels covered behind a hazy curtain when thought about; you wonder if you’re stuck in labyrinth, the next corner about to reveal the same path.

“It’s not even about the fact a pillow placed behind a headboard is still not enough soundproofing,” she says humorously; her tiny smirk dies when you shuffle your body with weariness she’s seen in some women worried about some men.

“Alright… maybe we weren’t sly, but…” you swallow your pride and ask, meekly “Are you disapproving?” You question when did you turn so pathetic, or if you ever were not — asking for approval over staying confident.

Snowballs freeze easily, then explode upon expansion, and you think Enjin shook you too much inside of it already. You can either break free through the cracks and leave injured, or not survive the explosion at all.

“I want to say it’s not none of my business, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice you turning hollow-eyed, that craze some women get when they get involved too much. He’s been a freaking weirdo too, snapping at everyone for no reason. Sex with him can’t be that good, he’s got things to worry about too, so make a wise choice yourself,” she gives her two cents with enough equilibrium of reverence and disapproval, then pats your shoulders, before departing for her own rest.

You’re halfway through the way away from your room, halfway through the way to his. You think it’s still too early for plummeting from the high floor, mistakenly assuming it’s best to see Enjin again.

Soon, you’re standing at the doorstep of your jack of all trades again. The handle fights back, and you have to turn it twice to open, given one more chance to retreat.

Inside, Enjin greets you all solemn-faced, his body slouched on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees. For a guy who loves to laze, he does look sleep-deprived. Either forcibly awoken or has stayed up, the truth shown in the wrinkles under his eyes pronounced in the terrible light of TV on, or in his clothes creased from twisting in bed. The honey is now dull like tobacco.

“Sit down next to me,” the invitation is straightforward, for once with him not beating around the bush.

When you remain dormant in the doorway, worried about the scenery of you, he pats the spot next to him. “Come on,” he insists.

Him trying to level with you spikes up your disquiet — serious-talk-Enjin seems like a bad, bad news.

“Do they ban smoking now or something?” you try to eradicate your anxiety with humor. Things just don’t make sense — the meeting from hours ago was ended with a laughter; the sentiment possible only if ignoring the first half of the meeting.

He doesn’t appreciate this. Enjin uses your name bluntly and sharply to summon the same attitude as his.

It sends a jolt into you, but you’re moving forward, legs stiff and made of cotton, accompanied by a pounding of your heart.

The spot you take next to him is still with you maintaining a space between you both, your eyes gluing themselves to the dusty floor.

“Did I… start turning you off or something?” you ask awkwardly. “I know my behavior tonight wasn't the best, but—”

The weatherman Miyo’s voice mocks you through the TV’s speakers, yelling “bingo!” at something. “You guessed correctly! It is 'hurricane', the nature's strongest storm. We don't get too many of these in our polluted climate, but when they come, they always cause destruction and twirl trash particles into motion, so watch out!”

You expect a disagreement or confirmation, even if given the opening by you taking responsibility for once. Instead, he hits you with the truth, putting a light on everything that’s been on his mind for the last year. “We need to stop this.” Laying it out frankly, before he’d try to lose his conviction he gathered staying up to think about your incident.

Actually, it’s not the first time you hear him say that — the difference is that they're no longer a part of your mind that’s been dreading and imagining he’ll finally say them. Breaking the cycle.

It’s them said for the first time that is too difficult to digest. You stare blankly at the floor for first few seconds, your mind refusing to accept their imposition and realness just yet.

“Who is she?” you finally ask, barely above whisper. Assuming Cupid’s shot Enjin with the arrow is far easier than taking the hindrance of admitting he’s done with you because of you.

“What?” he splutters with disbelief, eyes gulping as he also locks his gaze below him.

“Who is she?” you repeat, now unfairly angrily, pulling at your pajama pants. “Who is she that you can no longer sleep with me? You grew bored and tired of me, like I’m some toy to discard?”

Concentrating your mind on the objective truth is becoming increasingly difficult, but you still try to recall any signs you could have missed about him being enamored with someone. Enjin has never owed you a type of loyalty you’d associate with romantic bonds, but your heart’s perception is so warped at this point, the thought of someone else warming his bed stings and ruins your entire worth — the void within you, always hungry, was still filled by him.

“Listen up closely! A hurricane occurs when high and low pressure masses of air come in contact with one another,” Miyo drags on his show meanwhile.

“There’s no one, you stupid girl,” he doesn’t spare you any abrasive tone, slapping the side of his bed. “I’m denying you because you’re not doing well and I feel like I’m taking advantage of you!”

You have never suspected Enjin to gloat about your dependence on him, yet not have you assumed his reluctance was wrapped into something of compunction. “That didn't stop you before,” you point out weakly, watching his knee flinch in your peripteral vision in response.

Not that you believe he’s been taking advantage of you; you took everything, you begged for everything until now. If anything, it’s you feeling guilty, over this.

“I know,” he mutters, doing the most warmth he could muster — putting his hand on your thigh, right before he’d stab you with more consciousness. The winter is supposed to let you hibernate, but Enjin’s only letting you wake up. “And that was a big mistake. We shouldn't have been doing this in the first place, let simple sex turn into your pouring your heart out and me pretending I’m helping you. I let you dig your own grave for too long.”

The answer should be obvious to you. You cling with all hope instead, placing your hand next to his on your thigh — the closest you ever were to him, only radiating cold. “But… why? I don’t understand. You were bringing me relief. I didn’t get worse or anything,” with your tone breaking, you think this is another woman speaking.

“A significant difference in temperature between the two masses is nothing you should ever ignore!” Miyo exclaims, the colors on the screen turning rapidly and blinking over your hands with their hue.

Enjin sighs, his pinky finger coming across yours. “Take a good look at yourself. You cry harder each time. You get stuck in your head, and every time I’m hanging above you as we fuck, I can tell I’m making you remember something you’re not ready to face. That relief is temporary… and I can’t offer you more, now that I did force you to face your own demons.” He takes his finger away before he could cross his heart.

You want to be a hypocrite. You want to beg. You want to cry. Instead, you throw all the venom at him, refusing to let go of everything you had just hours ago, wounded by the inevitable truth. “And you’re telling me this now? I know you can act dense, but if it bothered you so much, you could have opened your mouth sooner!” you stand up after almost yelling that.

You don’t know why you’re like this, already growing restless for the future without him to sail with you through the night — you managed without any Enjins your entire life.

For your question, he has no defense; nor should you be able to hear him out about his own motives, in case you’ll think of him as caring or mirroring you enough to keep ruining each other. “I should have,” he agrees with you, bumping his leg with nerves. “It’s only after you pushed yourself through pain, that I decided to act.”

He stayed up for hours after you disappeared into your own room, each smoke-inhale with him replaying your noises he then knew were pained. The tiny incoherent look you had after his question about birth control. The awareness another winter might be a beginning of another self-destructing, all-year long cycle if he doesn't sever the loop into a line with both endings.

To ultimately choose to push his selfish need for keeping you close to the side, in name of you learning how to be yourself through yourself again.

“One is warm, the other is cold….” red and blue lights dance across the room and spread over your legs for once not tangled together, as the scornful and knowing laughter of Miyo reminds you of your mistakes.

You stop right in front of him and his regrets. “Enjin. What am I supposed to do now?” you put one more responsibility on his shoulder, asking him that as if your life depends on it, your voice a thinned sizzle. You wonder when did thinking for yourself become difficult as well — with you revolving on your axis around him.

He lets himself respond to your call, lifting his head to offer some strength before his departure. He nearly avoids your eyes again, overwhelmed by their trembling need for a lodestar; he reflects them with a wistful gravity, his smile caught between yearning and restraint.

“You somehow were handling yourself before me, weren't you? You can go back there. I believe in you.”

Barely. The exsanguination of your soul happens with or without him, but at least you are sheltered from it every few nights.

“The warm air rises, and the cool air falls…

“I-I was, but… it’s different now, now I know what it’s like on the other side of things. Having someone there for me for at least a moment, even when he’s just as bad as me in all this… feelings’ carousel…” you admit shamefully. “I can’t go back just like that, snapping my finger and going about my day.”

Your confession is something he seemingly can’t take easily — you’re trying to pull him back into your vortex no one else than him can enter — causing him to further realize just to which deadly point he had dragged you both to, with you as his partner in crime.His brows sink low and lips press into a downturned line in a rueful way.

He’s so beautiful, finally human and open like this for you — why must your dreams come true only at the end?

…the low pressure area slides down the sides of the high pressure area.”

“No. Listen to me, pretty girl. You think I’m helping you,” the words are audibly becoming harder for him to form, but he counts on you to keep looking at him. “And maybe, somewhere this is comforting— but in the longer term, I’ll just make you worse. And I can't keep fucking someone crying and hiding under me, clinging to me like they’ve lost everything, while I’m there trying to not be too unseemly eager, and I can’t do any shit about them being like that!” his raised voice cracks into something rougher, hoping to make the truth stick to your brain. “It’s like I’m using you. Because I shouldn't be enjoying you when you're crying.”

You blink away your tears. “I doubt you’re getting off to me crying. It’s just physical.”

“They swirl in and around one another, creating the beginnings of the storm, speeding from the 64 knots in their lowest, to 137 knots in their highest classification in the scale—”

That annoying weatherman won’t stop talking. Enjin slaps him silent, turning off the volume of the CRT screen with a remote.

“And how can you know that? How can I know your pain doesn't excite me somehow, if I’m still getting hard at the same time? Maybe it’s all physical, but maybe, I also should have been deterred by your misery.”

“I-I don’t care which one it is,” you say shakily, hands clinging at your sides to not touch him again. If he were to enjoy your pain, you wouldn't care at this point — if only he could not abandon you.

“You don’t care?” he flickers his head down and pulls on his hair, frustrated by you lacking respect for your own body and mind. “You letting me do this is another issue. You don't know what you want. You think you want to sleep with me, all giggles and shit when coming to me, but you might as well have stayed only out of desperation to be consoled. That’s why I think I’m taking advantage of you.” The splintered wood he’s staring at is starts to drown and swell in your tears, but he keeps his feet steady, unwilling to go with their flow.

“We literally fucked before it all started!” you plead, grabbing his hands and forcing them away from his head, begging that he looks at you again and can understand your rationalizations. They stiffen as he tries to pull away from you. “I’ve been wanting you from the start, before I started breaking down during sex.”

Enjin gulps, unable to take you crumbling into something so small, the product of both of you. Then it’s your hands begun shaking on his, and he’s at once unable to push them away. “Yeah, we did… but…” he tries to say something delicate and groans when words are not adhesive enough. “I think you were doing this to cope from the start, the first night at the bar that I’ve met you. I think I’ve always known that and disregarded it because that's what folks here do. Because that’s what I do. Because it served me well. You’re… desperate.”

Desperate sounds like the most humbling thing you have ever heard from him, coming from the man whose tongue is sharp enough to humiliate in many different ways. Is that all you have been to him the entire time? Desperate-, needy-, fragile-looking; just like the kind of women he hates?

“Then it was me taking advantage of you. Begging you to fuck me so I can be nothing got a second, so I can feel a relief in the tension I never knew I carried for a second, even though you shouldn't have to be burdened like this,” you take the blame easily — you do believe in your words, as you are ready to try any methods. “I’m not your responsibility and I made myself that. I'm not your lover. I'm barely your friend. I'm your teammate supposed to only demand help in her job,” you ramble as quickly as possible, before he could kick you out. You turn his knuckles white, tattoos gray.

Enjin sighs again, worn out by you needing different arguments to end something that needs to be ended. “You didn’t. I could have stopped you the first time you cried and I kept going instead. Then you cried again and I let you in again. I knew I was risking a lot, but I pitied you like an idiot, I put my possible guilt above your well-being,” he pats your palm as a last kiss that has never happened and pulls separates your hands from each other. “If you somehow did take advantage of me, I wasn’t any better, so…

I was opportunistic, thinking this is the only way I can keep you with me. Because when you cry, I don't have to. If I hold you, I can taste the normalcy of holding someone without paying the price for it at least a second.— goes unsaid.

“…We’re even.”

“So this is over?” you ask with bitterness making its raise once more. Then you’re breaking, shattering, collapsing like a ground breaking off when the first sob comes in.

Enjin seems incapable of taking it easily. Biting his lips hard enough to bleed, huffing as if he’s stopping the thought of letting your sadness become his again, as if you're being a bitch that refuses to let him leave in peace and as a full piece. “Yes. I won’t sleep with you again. I can ask Alice if she can figure out some—”

“I don't give a shit about doctors or meds! I’m not crazy,” you hiss out through your sobs. Then you're malleable again. “I need you, Enjin. Even if it’s just you holding me. You don’t have to be mine. You can sleep with whoever you want. Please, don't leave me,” you beg, all pride abandoned, coming closer and closer. Your shadows loom over his form.

He freezes in his spot. Even he's powerless against your desperation; especially he, always have been , but now you're thrusting a knife at his heart. “Don't… seriously,” he says your name with an excuse of seriousness, “you're only making this unnecessarily difficult for us…”

That moment of weakness only encourages you to glue yourself to his body, arms wrapped around him. The repeated mantra of “please don't leave me” corrupt his ear, moving upwards to mess with his mind. So unlike you; yet it’s the real you, pulled out of the deepest corners, the vault to them finally been opened, forcibly.

He tries to push you away. It’s a weak current at first. “Hey, I said something…”When your body shakes with every fear pouring out in black rain, it’s instinctive to put his hand on your back. Almost enough to reconsider some things.

Until he’s reminded of another reason why he can’t be with you:

“Enjin. I love you. Please, stay with me.”

These words, the most you have ever said and meant, the most arduous you have ever spoken, hang like clouds between you. They are the simplest to vocalize this moment, yet the heaviest to bear. In this singular articulation, you proffer your heart, for once in your lifetime, but they reach a receiver who scarcely possesses the fortitude to cradle his own within the first place.

Your words wrap around his neck like a snake, choking him more than tar has been doing for years. He’s pushing you away; not just out of the shock that goes through his body at your claim. You try to touch him again but he raises his hand.

“Don’t,” he orders. You’re saying this because you're attached. You— you haven’t been this close to someone in ages, you’ve got to be confused,” Enjin says that like he’s trying to convince you both and swallows, barely stopping more fractured emotions from melting his “cold” scolding.

Those three most radiating words carry the weight and burden he cannot handle, a trap you made for him. The one he refuses to fall for this lifetime. Not again.

“You should go,” he says, finally quietly and weakly; averting his gaze from you standing stuck in his rejection’s stupor.

You think you’d handle no love yous back. Anything as long as it’s not the hurricane sweeping you away from the one man you care about, deep down under your parasitic need to latch yourself somewhere between his ribcage and the smoke frozen here.

The steps you take back to let the wind carry you, still holding him in your gaze for the last few seconds, are of a drunk person. You want to blame him. You think you can’t.

The force behind you shutting the door is enough to shake off the frozen snowball on his wall shelf, knocked down as the door bounces back in the hinges. “You hate rain, but do you hate snow also?” you were probably asking when silently slipping the item into his pocket, last spring.

Now it’s shattered, and Enjin worries it’s something even Rudo can’t fix.

MARCH 20 OF THE NEXT YEAR, SPRING.

Moving to new places in never fun. Comfortably used to avoiding arcane things, knowing what to expect, it’s hard to resettle. Home is where… well, somewhere.

Convincing Corvus to let you move over to the Southern Branch was (un)surprisingly easy; you moved out on the New Year's Eve, never seeing Enjin before or after again.

For who you know your boss to be, you suspect he's been acutely-aware of your relationship with Enjin. He bought the explanations you know were loose — overly perfect — officially taking them as valid, as if he’s been awaiting the moment he could be given an excuse to separate you both without being too personal. Perhaps letting you mingle for so long doesn't seem the most professional, but he believes in allowing freedom enough for you to follow him willingly and learn from your own mistakes.

The only curio of your relationship with Enjin is all the white lighters that you stole from him when he particularly annoyed you in the past; holding them is easier when you're pretending he didn't need that many anyway.

You’re playing with one in your hand, the flame dancing lively, making up for the disappointment you went through seconds ago — having to finish on your own, because no men in the nearest town can do it right.

It’s certainly hard to maintain your peace when there’s no outlet in a form of a man pulling at your flesh and hair in the right ways, waiting for you like a respite (or punishment you’re finally remitted from) at the end of the week. You’re not sure if it’s because other men lack deftness, or because they are strangers to you, lacking worrisome endeavors in common with you.

So you take it out on work instead. Trash beasts fall apart beautifully when you’re still angry sometimes, three months later, even if you occasionally see your own reflection in their eyes, brewing with dark anima.

You suppose you manage yourself better now, Enjin or not. It's only the stench of cigarettes that follows you everywhere. You smoke. Someone smokes. Sometimes, in the crowd you smell a distinctive brand of tobacco and you think it might be him, as you're barely stopping yourself from following the trail.

Months of beating yourself over one guy who didn’t even do a good job at comforting you. A guy only ramming you into the mattress until you can’t cry, nor even think — what would your coworkers say about this farce, if you were to tell them the truth?

A funny guy. A mean guy. A silly guy. Maybe even a bit handsome, and definitely good at making you see stars. Also the guy who never owed you any responsibility for your wellbeing but still offered the last traces of his own warmth. Also the guy who turned you addicted to him this way.

The guy who you held hands with only to get the angle right.

The guy who you miss sometimes, even if you dread the day your base collides with his orbit one day. You miss everyone, but Enjin took the only vacant seat in your head for forever.

The guy that has you reflecting what you did, what you didn’t, what you could have done, and what you shouldn’t have done; now that you’re calmer a few months later. How you weighed your own sense of security on him. How you wish friends stayed friends, as he’d be there next to you, laughing, only painfully reticent.

The past is in the past, and you should be moving forward; but the past, cycles, continuum also teach — they make you see what you unknowingly turned a blind eye to, lead by all kinds of desires, some selfish, some innocent.

And Enjin, he misses you too: today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

A week ago, he realized he never got to learn your birthday; he only recognized he missed it some day of the last year. It’s Meriege that helps him in delivering it to you, today.

The knock on your door has you throwing on your clothes back on properly, until you’re facing her.

“Well, look at you, receiving gifts! You’ve got a secret admirer?” she teases with a pleasant smile.

“A secret admirer?” you repeat with confusion, wondering who this could be from.

“Well, I don't know who’s the sender, but it’s got approved, so it’s all yours. Goodnight!”

As you settle on your bed and open the green box, you find the delivered contains funny, something you could imagine from him. A few crooked anemones: medley of purple, red, white, and blue, clearly lacking in their contrivance, but not lacking the thought put behind them.

Access to real and fresh flowers on the ground is very limited, but people do their best to replicate the language of flowers; you see the prism consisting of stained glass and metals. They win over the organic ones by being eternal.

The note confirms it’s from Enjin, and you fight your instinct to push the box under your bed and forget about it. Remission of pining is a huge risk…

… but you need to know if he hates you.

“Happy belated birthday, whenever that was. I’m not good at this, gifts, flowers, anything like that — but I thought you could use a little color to keep things flamboyant. Rudo and Delmon helped me make it, because I clearly can’t do it alone. Don’t drop those ones… or do. There’s always more flowers to make. Don’t hate me for sending this, and… take care, pretty.

Sometimes, it’s only when the countercurrent separates us from facing each other that we can finally see life from other perspectives. I think. The water banks are dirty here anyway.

— that bastard.”

Him letting you go was the act of care in itself, you realize instead.

And from the other side of the world, Enjin paints the imagery of your reaction in his head, standing in front of the window. The surprise he finally and actually reached out. The hesitation to allow the smallest of doubt by accepting the gift. And then, hopefully a smile — sad or happy, amused or exasperated, uncertain or relieved, but definitely honest and gorgeous.

He hopes you’re doing well over there. Blooming anew. Wishing he told you he cared back then. Wishing he held you properly; buried against his chest until you can’t breathe, told and asked real things, appreciated and kissed breathless.

Wishing he could have told you he loved you too, if only there had been a right moment, a right way, a right cause to do so.

He’s never been the first to fall asleep beside you, pretending, hoping you’d leave early so he wouldn’t have to watch you fall — and now he sleeps alone.

JUNE 21 OF THE NEXT YEAR, SUMMER.

A worn little bar with restless crowd,with green neons toxic against the dark walls you’re in, stenches of vomit and cigarettes less heavily than usual. The half-dim underworld of this settlement’s bar is a short pit stop before hitting the road again with the crew,

The same bar where you first met your first love. It’s ironic. It’s poetic. It’s still a salt to a wound.

The place is unchanged, suspended in the same dim glow and hum of drunk-excited voices. A few regulars still recognized you from your days of rage and abandon, offering short greeting…

But what they don't recognize is you reformed, has shed old skin — the woman they once knew well was haunting the bar’s velvet stools and men, for many months before a mysterious man took her with him. Now that she’s back, there’s no specters clinging to her shoulders; she’s wearing a sundress.

Moving through the fog-shrouded counters and sticky floors, in search of somewhere where you could breathe, a familiar scent of cheap cologne stops you in track. You’d mortify half of the men here for drowning themselves in too much alcohol, but you find this particular pepper to be too distinctive to be ignored.

The same brand he always wore; usually, you couldn’t catch it, buried beneath the cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes and skin. But one summer day, when he didn’t smoke immediately after sex, it rose freely and you smelled it fully for the first time.

You doubt it’s Enjin, the avid smoker. Besides, there still could be many other people using it.

You take the opposite current behind the second part of the counter anyway; not in hopes of seeing him, if only to burn the cologne into your brain’s drive.

For a heartbeat, you think you’re stuck in a bar-heat mirage. Your pulse stops, then sprints, a tumult of endorphins surging through you.

He is here — tangible, corporeal — even with his back turned against you. Unchanged, yet different; from the angle of his head, his eyes are searching for something or someone specific. White t-shirt, eye and hair still suffused with sun. He takes the space as if he belongs here, a revenant made flesh, yet somehow renewed. You know he has been here before, doubting the fate is in mood for making such coincidence. More than once.

You should flee, vanish into the crowd, yet he has long sneaked himself into your marrow. Fear expands in your chest; this may be your sole chance to see him again.

Moving behind his stool, the cologne thickens in your nose. You wonder if there is attenuated difference in the smoke that always lingers on him — as if he has switched his tobacco, to something of its acridity softened.

It's now or never; six months not before the winter, but after the winter, you hope you both reached your own summers.

You realize you can’t greet him with the same old woes, if you want him safely. Summers as something to come back to, not a cycle.

Tapping his shoulder, you almost laugh at the grimace that spreads over his face, surely anticipating some stranger obstructing his hunt for a lighter. “Yeah?” he murmurs all annoyed, turning toward the touch. His frown turns into abundant shock, a cigarette dropping from his wide mouth.

“Hey there, stranger. Looking for this?” You offer one of the lighters you pilfered in the past, placing it before him. Then you slide onto the seat beside him. “I saw you from across my table and thought — I could get to know someone like you.”

Not his mask. Not his humor. He.

Not your body. Not your tears. You.

Being called a stranger by someone who once vividly existed in his memory, in an enigmatic definition, confuses him terribly; yet when she smiles in ways he has never seen, the possibility of a brand-new beginning clicks into place. You don’t want your pasts to define the bonds between you anymore, now that this is your homecoming.

He clicks his tongue, shaking his head too — he shall play your game called the endings but beginnings, or simply, convergence. He hides the cigarette back into his pocket. “If you’re ready to take some risks, then I won’t stop you. Name’s Enjin,” he grins.

Telling him your name, you shake the hand extended for you. This Enjin is familiar, as he is a stranger. It's a clean slate you need him to be first, it’s a clean slate you will be for him, before you two could learn how to flow down the same, gentle and steady stream together.

And maybe one day, he’ll tell you his real name, and you will tell him yours — not the ones borrowed, not the ones stolen.

:'))))))

AFTERNOTE: If you’re still there, know that you’re awesome, and thank you for reading <3 Should any things remain unclear, I will soon write a separate post explaining some elements of the story and then share the link here. I just needed to get this story finally posted; before I’d have a busy weekend too, and I don’t trust queue with scheduled fics 😭 Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the story! I’ve been having a very stressful period in my life lately and finally finishing writing this story and adding a few scenes was cathartic. I hope my anxiety levels still allowed me to not make too many mistakes, and I’m sorry if there’s any.

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the last boogie bread bridge bad boy :(

!!please do not repost or use my art without my permission!!

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Tea time with the princess

Also Fischl is best friends with all the fatui skirmishers, hoyo told me so/j

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i am never

EVER

drawing a genshin character ever again

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currently sitting in a cold bath in my “jesus died for me! what an idiot” with 2 toenails ripped off, a spilt papillon monster on the ground, and mac and cheese thats parmesan flavoured with nuggets while watching violet evergarden

if this isnt me at my peak idk what is

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If Lizzie, Mumbo, and Skizz were in Double Life HCs

Warnings | Mentions of death, Mostly no angst, Unedited |

Characters included | DL!Mumbo, DL!Lizzie, DL!Skizzle

The Overalls Duo

| ~ The overall duo includes Mumbo and Lizzie

| ~ Lizzie and Mumbo would find out they were partners FIRST when they spawned near eachother

| ~ After a bit of consideration they would decide to make a cute little farm for their base and in the next episode Lizzie would force Mumbo to wear a matching skin with overalls

| ~ Jimmy and Tango assumed they built it to rival their ranch and make the two their first enemies

| ~ In the series Lizzie decided she would be more chaotic this time around while peace love and plants mumbo would make a return

| ~ They’d build their ranch in the plains biome by bdubs and impulse and have a house rivalry over whos is better

| ~ they’d also put it up to a vote with the other players and the Overall Duo would win because Lizzie bribed them with her friendship

| ~ In the end the four of them became the best of bros and bonded over ruining other peoples relationships

| ~ During the entire series Lizzie would go around stealing peoples stuff and no one would ever do anything about it because its Lizzie and they didnt wanna make her their enemy

| ~ While Mumbo built their cute little farm which at some point got set on fire by unknown sources and Mumbo got very upset by it

| ~ ahem the ship burns everything burns

| ~ Before the two were turned to yellow they teamed up with Grian and Scar because the greenies needed to stick together

| ~ Scar and Liz would bond over causing chaos and become best friends which would cheer up Scar from his dysfunctional relationship with Grain

| ~ The duo would be the second to last to lose their green life and Lizzie ended up dying to her husband, Joel after leaping out of Pearls tower with the other greens</3

| ~ On their 2nd life Mumbo decided to start making traps around their base to protect their goods, that he completely forgot to tell Lizzie about which ended up being their downfall, literally.

| ~ So soon after Grian and Scar turned red, so did they.

| ~ During all the Warden shenanigans Lizzie was in the middle of stealing Jimmy and Tangos things before a bunch of people cane over with a WARDEN on the surface

| ~ Mumbo was building their house the entire time quite peacefully and only heard about it after the Warden was in the river

| ~ Mumbo and Lizzie were also completely unenchanted the entire time because both of them were too scared to go down into the ancient city

| ~ in the end where only a few duos were left, they never had any alliances because the people that were left remembered how much Lizzie had stolen from them and didnt want to ally with them

| ~ The two of them lost their final life the night before etho and joel lost their lives because a creeper snuck up on the both of them and exploded them, causing them to take double damage and ending both of their series

The Power Couple

| ~ Mumbo and Skizz are the Power Couple (no its not Bdubs and Impulse, they are the GOSSIP GIRLS 👏)

| ~ The two would find out theyre coupled together probably 2nd to last apart from cleo and scott

| ~ the reason being that Mumbo spent most of his time getting goat horns because he would definitely be in love with them

| ~ eventually they found eachother and built on the snowy area by Grians birthday cake, although their house was very ugly it stayed around until the end because they made it out of cobbled deepslate and everyone was too lazy to take it down because its a nightmare to mine

| ~ Mumbo surrounded their house with powdered snow to stop people from coming in and it stopped them from coming in MORE than other people

| ~ Pearl frequently visited for the powdered snow and was actually on good terms with Skizz and Mumbo, well, atleast until she took their powdered snow

| ~ Skizz would want to bring back together the broken relationships and tried to act as a relationship therapist while Mumbo tagged along for the ride, at times being jealous of the lifestyle the divorced people had

| ~ Mumbo would die after being pushed into the river with the warden by Grian as a joke right before it was killed with fishing rods 🥲

| ~ Skizzle would put Grians name into the book for accidentally killing poor Mumbo, but he generally wouldnt be upset at Mumbo and would actually comfort him

| ~ When Grian was being hunted by the reds and Cleo and Scott they built whole tower above their house to watch the show and came over to help when Grian started getting away on a boat

| ~ They got down to their third life when they got caught in the crossfire between the reds and the two greens and soon after grian and scar got down to their 2nd lives

| ~ The two probably allied with Small Etho at some point too (because they strong 💪) so they also got free enchanting

| ~ On their 3rd life Mumbo saw the tnt sensor trap Joel made and really wanted to make more so he set off to try and steal some from people while Skizz made alliances with other reds

| ~ At some point Mumbo got really desperate for them and ended up going into the deep dark where grian was trying to bring the warden to the surface

| ~ Soon after Mumbo watched his down fall he skedaddled out and never looked back while the Warden slowly made his way up to the surface with some sensors

| ~ Unfortunately Skizz got separated from his allies and cornered all by his lonesome by Cleo and Martyn and got killed

Flower Pals

| ~ Finally, the Flower Pals, Skizzle and Lizzie

| ~ For the first while Lizzie would be out with Pearl and Martyn getting gifts for her soulmate while Skizz lingered around Scott and Cleo

| ~ Unlike Scott and Cleo, he actually forgave his soulmate for basically ditching him for the first long while and accepted Lizzies gifts

| ~ I think they would be a passive duo and try to refrain from making enemies

| ~ For their base, Lizzie just said “i’ll take it from here” and built them and nice cottagecore home near pearls base

| ~ Skizz wasnt really fond of that because i think he’d value protection more than looks but he grew to love it

| ~ Theyve definitely gone flower picking together to make their house cuter (hence the name) which somehow went wrong because Skizz fell down a large hole, killing both of them

| ~ When the first Warden was released to the surface Skizzle took it upon himself to try and lead it away from everyone while Lizzie stayed behind thinking it would be the end for them.

| ~ Luckily he survived and the Warden was pushed into the river below everyones bases and everyone praised him because of his bravery

| ~ Pearl and Skizz actually had an expedition together to the ancient city and created an alliance together (yay pearl has friends!)

| ~ Afterwards, Skizz being Skizz, tried to save Pearl from being killed by Small Etho while Lizzie being him not to because theyre stinky reds which has backfired horribly because not only was the Divorced Couple killed, so were the Flower Pals

| ~ At that point since they had gone from green to red in a matter of an episode, they decided they werent gonna play nice anymore

| ~ They made multiple traps around the world (some of which were never touched) and the first people on their list was Joel and Etho, but with Lizzies charisma she somehow managed to make them trust the two of them again and waited for a sneak attack

| ~ Similar to bdubs style in Last Life, they prepared to sneak attack boat boys when they had their back turned but ended up being outnumbered by the amount of reds and were killed realizing it was too late to escape

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I drew my buff DL!Pearl hc

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DL!Pearl has abs, you cant change my mind.

she and Scar worked out together and talked about their relationship problems before he died along with Grian 😌

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DL!grian who only realizes scars worth AFTER he dies and feels horrible for being the cause for their death 🥲