#fawn fletcher.

[girlsiren]

@vitalphenomena as cullen: i don’t have your number.

the ringing in her ears was getting louder. the ringing in her ears was getting louder and fawn was certainly going deaf.

from the moment fawn got on the stage, her ears began ringing this quiet insect sound, just enough to drown out the sound of her own voice. the audience cheered the way they do at poetry readings and the ringing came to crescendo. she’d been left deaf and dumb and a boy was speaking at her (with her) in what was certainly a very pleasant voice, only she couldn’t hear it because she was going deaf.

“can we go outside? i need air. or maybe a cigarette? to be sort of gross?” each word more uncertain than the last, fawn didn’t bother waiting for a response before her hand had made contact with his forearm. the site of ignition.

without the harsh buzz of a baseline under her toes and poetically drunken voices shouting overhead, the smoking area was the kingdom of god. “sorry, it was really loud and warm in there. i got a bit, sort of, squirrelly.” the ringing had dissipated to little more than a whisper: a reminder of her bravery. “what was it you said again?”

[girlsiren]

@janedoez: nice sweater. where'd you lift that?

a flinch at her upper brow. pinched, too quickly for the unobservant to catch. all face, no words. fawn had never lifted anything in her life. in fact, the very thought of it discomforted her; not the act, but the getting caught. unneccesary guilt worked its way into her unfixed gaze. "it was my dad's. it shrank in the wash." a glance at the traffic lights, a glance at calamity; an invitation to cross together. "you dress cool. where do you... get your stuff?"

[girlsiren]

@joyousdefunct as alan: you hear that bird this morning?

the morning and the evening were never utterly clear to fawn. as a girl who seemed only capable of napping periodically throughout the day cycle, she remained an interloper to the night owl and an anti-granola freak to the early riser. it had been hours since this morning, if she was keeping track, but she blamed every off-putting noise on the other neighbours. (that was what made alan so agreeable, us versus them.)

“oh, that was probably me.” fawn spoke dry around a cigarette. her back garden, as connected to his, found her often caught in these moments of respite. the comfort of being in her territory, wearing pyjamas she wouldn’t be caught dead in on the other side of the house, made her far less charming. she was too comfortable for the facade, mask strings always too tight behind the ears. she cracked a smile, glancing down at an open notebook in her hands, like it was an inside joke he wasn’t in on in. “how did it go? twwt-twwt?”

fawn had never made a bird noise before and decided at twenty-seven years old that she never would again. “sorry,” she laughed, caught behind a hand with a pen tucked in it. “i must have been dreaming.” or daydreaming, they all blurred into one. “interesting bird, then?” the little joys of small talk to talk. it made her like him desperately more.