#nyla | memes

[reversecreek]

nyla palmer (their name is too short -- have to do the full name)

SPELL A MUSE’S NAME IN MY ASK BOX AND I’LL TELL YOU…

n: are they clumsy and/or prone to accidents? 

not necessarily clumsy bt very like.... in their own world. feel like they accidentally knock things over a lot n don’t even realise it. once set a pair of curtains on fire n just proceeded to walk away without registering this was a bad or real thing so now the bandmates try to limit their involvement w candles or matches. they also almost always have some sort of dirt smudge on an elbow or a knee or even a cheek from recklessly exploring places n not rly caring fr their own condition. clothes r often snagged or muddy too.

y: what movie could they watch over and over again? 

hmmm unsure. feel like nyla loves silly movies, animated movies (kids or ghibli... they have the Range) n david lynch movies. maybe smthn simple n nostalgic like the land before time.

l: how often do they post on their social media accounts? 

they only have instagram n twitter n i doubt they rly post much at all on instagram.... maybe once every so often....... they just kind of forget it exists honestly..... bt then twitter i feel like nyla posts pretty often n the majority of it is nonsensical n strange. peppered w typos n lots of :P’s for good measure. 

a: who are their exes? do they still keep in touch?

nyla’s never been w someone that was like Functional n Normal enough to actually put a label on things.... they had a whole thing with this guy called aj growing up n it was a mess. he was awful. nyla hasn’t spoken to him since they left their hometown bt sometimes they’ll see posts he makes on social media n feel this strange cold dread unfurling inside their chest like a fist losing tension. almost as if it’s taken a great effort to forget about him up until that point. there’s sebastian too who nyla spent time with briefly in france but he was rly into a lot of bad shit n got them into dangerous situations. nyla snuck out of their hotel room without saying goodbye n hasn’t seen him in years. there’s also spencer who nyla forgot they were dating n accidentally cheated on JHGFKSHGSKHGKH. i don’t think he talks to them if he can help it.

p: what are their thoughts on going vegan? could they do it?

they jst don’t have any thoughts on it i won’t lie. just isn’t even on their radar. they probably cld bc they love animals but tbh nyla’s very forgetful n kind of just eats whatever they’re given when they stumble across it. not picky at all. wouldn’t adhere well w a stricter diet.

a: who are their exes? do they still keep in touch?

done above!

l: how often do they post on their social media accounts? 

done above!

m: when’s the last time they talked to their mom? 

suddenly sucks in a breath thru my grit teeth.... it’s probably been a couple of yrs now. nyla’s mum rly receded into herself even more when stephen (nyla’s step dad) came into the picture. it got to the point where she just stopped acknowledging nyla at all for the most part. she’d be rly still n not make eye contact. nyla cld never tell if this was symptomatic or if not looking at them was some strange form of punishment. their mother’s a very complicated woman n sometimes it’s hard to tell if she’s struggling or scheming. regardless they’ve tried to call up home a few times but stephen always picks up and nyla always hangs up immediately before he can ask who’s calling. 

e: are they the happiest they’ve ever been?  

ummmmm. i won’t fk around here nyla hasn’t been happy for a very long time.

r: when’s the last time they had a birthday party? 

oh probably this yr.... i completely forgot abt their bday i won’t lie to u.... i doubt they’d organise anything themselves bc they just wouldn’t care enough bt. puts hand on hip n reviews the audience. perhaps their friends did..... mysterious. unknown. when they were younger their friendship group wld all go into the woods camping every yr for nyla’s bday..... i feel like they probably don’t care to seek out a big celebration now bc they like to distance frm their old life as much as possible. 

[reversecreek]

✵ nyla and mido circa barcelona ( or now.... choose ur fighter ) ✵

their first impression of your muse:

prettiest person they’d ever seen. they kept thinking they’d see the glow of a swallowed star through the cracks between his teeth bc he was so warm and bright. probably literally asked him to open his mouth so they cld look inside n check if the light was shining up his throat n then had to tell him about the swallowed star theory to explain which was a clear indicator they were off their tits bt he didn’t seem to mind. he was good at telling stories. they wanted to write them all down onto napkins bt then they’d have to stop looking at him long enough n anyway they didn’t have a pen. silly in a special way. sort of reminded them of this rly bright n colourful pop up book they had as a kid tht their step dad threw out n they missed terribly. every sentence out of his mouth sprang at them in 3d. it made them wish words were physical so they could put his in their mouth and suck on them like hard boiled candies. his smile could make the world vibrate. it did.

current impression: 

he’s like a flamingo in the middle of a grocery store aisle. ur eyes go straight to him. it’s always been that way to them n they kind of just assume everyone else thinks so too. he’s one of their favourite ppl. nyla doesn’t even drift off into daydream land when he’s speaking to a group like they normally might w others n that’s bc he’s very interesting n can command a room like an award winning tedtalk speaker in their opinion. he looks more open w nyla in the version of his face that they draw in the sand at 4am but nyla doesn’t like to acknowledge when doors have closed out loud, especially doors that could’ve taken them someplace happy, so they don’t. it makes them sad sometimes when they realise how safe they feel inside his bed. it’s his bed not theirs and they don’t know why that distinction feels like something went wrong bc isn’t that so silly to think so? it’s only when they’re particularly drunk tht they really unlock these kinds of feelings about the situation tho n they’ve never verbalised them. mostly they’re just happy that mido’s their friend n in their life bc that’s a pretty lucky position to be in. irving feels more like a beating heart since mido arrived. nyla’s heart feels more like one too. 

are they attracted to your muse?:

ya i feel like it probably shows they’re like. too overfamiliar.... n very nonchalant abt touch..... once they jst. felt around in the duvet n then settled again once they were holding his hand in their sleep......... that said nyla’s kind of intimate w most people but. idk. might be a case of like. everyone can tell but them. might be a case of people jst thinking nyla’s like that w anyone.

something they find frightening about your muse:

i jst had this vision of one time tht nyla climbed into his bed n after being quiet for a long time they were just randomly like “don’t become a ghost please”. maybe he’d even fallen asleep before he heard it but. ya. ig his mortality scares them.

something they find adorable about your muse:  

how when he talks sometimes it feels like he’s casting a wise old wizard’s magic spell even if he’s talking abt something boring (which isn’t likely bc mido is never boring). his smile. his laugh. also his appreciation for twilight even tho nyla hasn’t even seen all of the movies. they like when his face gets animated abt anything. they also like how his beach house seems to collect strays as roommates like an animal sanctuary. nyla likes it when he’s loud but they like it when he’s quiet too bc it’s a calm kind of quiet like bobbing on the ocean or at least it feels that way to them. 

would my muse sacrifice themselves for yours?:  

oh ya. i mean nyla wld sacrifice themselves for like. a hedgehog or a particularly bright buttercup bt. definitely fr mido. 

would my muse go on a date with yours?  platonic/romantic:  

looks away as wouldn’t it be nice by the beach boys plays. i’ll say no more.

one word my muse would use to describe yours:  

special.

would my muse slap yours if they could?:

no.... yo this question’s fuckin wild lmfao (sudden ziggy rp in shock)

would my muse hug/kiss yours?:

yes. lks away again.

[reversecreek]

blood & claret for nyla

blood: which of your family members is your favourite?

nyla’s fav family member was their dad george. he knew so many facts abt the trees n would often take their hand n go on walks w them just pointing out different types n explaining their differences. he’d always add a little fantastical spin to it too. he’d b like “oak trees are where the fairies live bc the honeydew that seeps from the galls is high in minerals n they use it to make their fairy dust” n nyla wld be like :OOOOOOOOOOOOO just eating it all up.... where their mum wld always kind of shut down nyla’s imagination n inquisitive nature nyla’s dad wld always encourage it. this gifset captures their dynamic rly well. i dnt think nyla’s ever properly dealt w him passing or rly like. Acknowledged it to herself honestly.......... denial denial denial. instead they crafted a whole new world inside their head where he’s alive in everything they look at. sometimes when it’s hot enough in summer tht the heat feels like a hand against their forehead they imagine that it’s his. 

claret: talk about a memorable experience on public transport.

ummm smiles nervously.... so in high skl nyla had this group of friends tht were rly chaotic n a lot of them didn’t like one another n it was this whole big tangled mess where nyla often thought a lot of them were better people than they were.......one time they were riding the train further into the city to see some band n stay at a hostel nearby n they were all drunk n doing god knows what like teenagers do <3 n then (nyla wasn’t involved in this discussion they were sat on the other side of the train w raya n evelyn n john) ryan bet aj (who nyla ws very in love with) that aj couldn’t get nyla to fk him in the train bathroom without evelyn noticing (literally aj’s gf at the time). needless to say he somehow managed it n then they returned to their seats. nyla didn’t even realise him n evelyn were together at that point so u can probably imagine how much of a double whammy of shock it was when they found out not only that aj was dating evelyn n had just cheated on her w nyla but that it was also a bet w ryan who was separately meant to be their friend too. just rly messy. aj literally said it afterwards like it was funny. finding that out was definitely memorable. it’s one of the things nyla hs difficulty bleaching away in their recurring memory scrub to keep their brain blank and shiny. like those rly tricky wine stains u can never get out of ur carpet. sometimes they think it’s a trivial thing n it’s silly to care that much. they have mixed feelings where they’re like ‘mayb i shd find it funny too’ bt for the most part it makes them sad. it’s one of the first times they started to realise their friends weren’t actually very good people.

[reversecreek]

lily for magda (thinking about figs feeling evil), tulip for cricket, marigold for ziggy, chrysanthemum for bradley, belladonna for nyla

lily :   how does your muse view their mother ?  

magda doesn’t know a lot abt her mum. she knows vague snippets n details bt they’re all very elusive. it’s kind of a tricky subject where her mum’s concerned bc when she was younger she’d come up w all these assumptions abt how her mum was n who she’d be if she were with her but the rational part of magda was like..... u don’t know any of this. ur literally making things up. it’s kind of hard for a kid to have that vital person missing from their life n to resist the urge to fill in the blanks with their own projections so the space feels less empty. it’s like having a tooth missing n ur tongue always going back to poke at the spot in ur gum. there’s a constant reminder of loss in that. magda knows her mum liked to sing bc her dad said once she’d always sing to her belly when she was pregnant. this is a lot of the reason why magda has always cared so much abt music bc she took this fact in her fist n grasped it tight n never let go n in a way grew parts of herself around it. it’s like............. i feel like her mum dying in childbirth gave her lots of issues when it comes to her identity n like. who she is n who she wants to be.......... bc of magda’s issues w her dad i feel like she got into this habit growing up of rly putting who her mum could have been on a pedestal n basing everything around that.... she’d be like I’m More Like Her (a belief which was only accelerated bc her dad would drunkenly say she looked so much like her) n cling onto that so she liked herself more bc the other option was her dad who she loves but he’s also an incredibly flawed person n they hv a complicated relationship...... i think as she’s gotten older she’s realised her mum cld very well have been that way too n putting people on pedestals isn’t the way to go about things but. idk. as a kid she was kind of obsessed w this idea of her n this idea that her mum being gone was the beginning n end of everything wrong in her life. for the most part now magda accepts she never knew her n sometimes even feels stupid for grieving her at all bc she never knew her to grieve in the first place but. there’s a tiny part of magda tht still hangs on to the comfort of what she could have had n it’s obvious by the fact she still keeps a photograph of her folded up in her pillow. she loves the mum she made up in her head n she wishes she got to meet her. there’s this sense tht maybe then she wouldn’t feel like this culmination of missing parts more than a person if she’d had that in her life. sighs n lks away holding my dyed black emo bang.....

tulip :   how does your muse view people in general ?  

cricket is like. the strangest little anomaly of a person FGHKSFGHSFKGH bc like. u would rly think that after everything he’s been thru he would just have this absolutely jaded view of people and life in general and i wouldn’t even......... blame him for it if he did like. i’d understand completely bc he’s experienced A Lot of bad stuff. n yet somehow he just.... idk. i think i wrote in a reply once this comparison of cricket n a cockroach in the sense that they have this incredibly reinforced exoskeleton n even if they’re stomped flat they can keep living n bounce back from it n that’s very him but it’s more specifically the hope inside him. he has this little candle lit that good things can still happen midst all of the terrible things n i genuinely can’t see it snuffing out at any point even tho sometimes he might want it to. sometimes i think he even gets into these frames of mind where it jst infuriates the fk out of him bc in his head he’s like why do u even think good shit can happen when u have sm overwhelming evidence to the contrary but then he’s also like. look u can dwell on the bad or u can notice the way the light falls thru the leaves in the trees and u can think to urself inside ur head as u listen to someone u love talking abt something that makes them happy ‘hey this feeling is nice n there’s a dozen others like it’. idk. against all odds he’s an optimist. he has tinnitus in his left ear n sometimes he pretends the ringing is angels trying to talk to him. he likes to search for the silver linings in things to make them bearable n that’s how he gets by. obviously he knows there’s evil in the world n that a lot of people can be shit bc he has firsthand experience w that but he also believes there are people to serve as the antithesis to that n he wants to focus on them bc like. why give bad stuff the time of day. not necessarily always a positive coping mechanism (if u bottle up bad feelings n thoughts they leak thru one way or another aka his overwhelming anxiety) but like.... i think there’s a lot of bravery in that n i respect him for it i won’t lie. he cld have become very bitter bt instead he’s like that quote that’s like 'the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it'. suddenly slaps his little anxious rump (supportive) (affectionate)

marigold :   is your muse prone to jealousy ?  how might they handle envious feelings ?  

it’s hard to say w ziggy............... i feel like he doesn’t want to think he’s prone to jealousy bc he’s like i’m literally a god wdym i simply wld never give a fk bc i know i’m above all else................. but like. do u actually believe that ziggy. do u. FKGJHKSJGHFGSHFGKSHGKFHG. he’s good at convincing himself at least........... has me fooled too most of the time. bt. thinks abt this.............. i feel like he doesn’t tend to get jealous over ppl he hooks up w a lot of the time bt there’s definitely a few select ppl he might.......... n then he doesn’t rly know what that feeling is bc he’s so unused to feeling it so he’s like wtf why am i so fking pissed off over the thought of this person fking that person? like literally doesn’t even. connect the dots n make the logical conclusion bc it jst seems so bizarre n nonsensical to him. rly is awful at working out his own feelings like. he cld just suddenly explode one day n have to smash a bunch of shit in a junkyard n after his chest is heaving n he has all this broken stuff around him n he’s just like yo wtf was that man forreal lmfaoooooooooo..... like he just doesn’t even get how his own emotions work it’s tragic n it’s men for u. w anxious feelings he represses them a lot he doesn’t rly understand what they r or know how to recognise them........... i honestly feel like he has a lot of anxiety surrounding his mum esp w her dating n like some of the guys they’ve both had to deal w that she’s dated in the past.......... i doubt he processes that healthily or expresses it healthily either..... probably contributes to the tensions between him n his mum they hv a lot of underlying issues that come out in the form of bickering n petty disagreements...... probably a huge contributor to him acting out so terribly in high skl was just all this pent up worried energy with no means of making sense of itself or like. place to go. like shaking a coke bottle over n over n finally having to crack the lid n let it fizz on something. i also think he probably swallowed a lot of jealousy growing up whenever other kids had gd relationships w their fathers or parents in general probably ws kind of like lmfaooooo yo why don’t mine love me like that. in his head...... so ya. i think he copes w anxious feelings by acting out n also fucking if we’re being honest......... it helps him let off steam <3 king of clapping cheeks ig....

chrysanthemum :   how does your muse express romantic love ?  how do they feel about love as a concept ?  

bradley is kind of hard to read romantically like from an outside perspective but slides on my thin rimmed spectacles n picks up my scalpel to delve right in to the nitty gritty of her brain... omg... that sounded... kind of scary actually but. it’s ok. basically settles in. bradley struggles to verbalise her feelings in this regard but also in a general sense honestly.... like she’s spent a lifetime having any vulnerable or negative feeling shut down....... her dad’s the type of personality where it’s like... u can’t win. even tho he’s narcissistic n thinks he’s a god if u compliment him or express affection he’ll act pleased but there’ll also be this register in his eyes where he thinks less of u for it. so this rly had a domino effect in bradley’s emotional expression in all grounds of life...... romance is probably the most frivolous concept to tony so bradley definitely internalised some of these views n wld feel stupid for ever taking anything seriously in that regard or rly investing herself..... she also just. idk. love has only ever left bite marks in bradley’s world so she’d kind of like ‘why wld i ever expose my tender spots n open myself up to someone just so they can sink their teeth in’. i will say tho that like. despite that she can in rare instances develop those feelings n it’s always like..... quite a struggle for her when she does. she doesn’t rly understand it or how to deal w it. she finds talking about it hard n she feels childish or weak in the eyes of whoever knows how she’s feeling. it takes a long time n a lot of work to earn it bt bradley in love is like. ur the only person on the planet who knows how gentle she can b. she’d literally like. touch the face of this one guy i wrote her being in love w when he was sad so gently it was shocking it ws like a love tht deep unlocked a whole other part of her she didn’t know existed. sex is a big part of her love expression jst like. a lot of it. so much. JHGSFKHGSFGKHFKGSHG let’s get it.......... she’s a ride or die n doesn’t do anything in halves. she has a nasty habit of pushing good things away n also wld probably do this to protect the other person bc her world is a never ending shit show with her father’s presence in every room even when he isn’t physically there. she wldn’t wna subject someone she loved to the danger of that bc she hates it enough herself so. idk. smiles w hand on hip. love isn’t something bradley thinks is on the menu fr her bc she’s only ever known it to be hard or mean n why bother trying when that’s the case. it feels like there’s always small print attached tht will hurt her in the end n nothing is free or genuine. very doomed outlook on love in general tbh.

belladonna :   how does your muse respond to silence ?   do they take comfort in soundlessness ,   or seek to fill the void with noise ?  

nyla honestly doesn’t mind silence at all........ they always wake up rly early in the morning no matter what time they went to bed. it’s like someone programmed an oven timer into their brain n often when they wake up at 6am or something they’ll go on walks around irving tottering in their own little world which is quite a quiet experience in itself when the rest of the world’s asleep........... always off on impromptu adventures they came up w on the spot.......... sometimes they get lost in their own train of thought too so they just randomly fall silent bc they’re having a whole conversation w themselves inside their head or like. writing a whole children’s story abt an iguana in a trench coat floating in a hot air balloon smoking a little vintage pipe all the way to peru. honestly for every 1 thing nyla says there’s about 4987295749572592745 things they don’t say tht are x100 times stranger n more nonsensical they sort of let it all drift thru their head like an open sieve for the most part. having said tht i think in order to sleep at night they probably need some sort of white noise or smthn................. it’s handy living in a beach house bc they just leave the window open to let the ocean gush bt sometimes if they’ve snuck into like. mido’s bed fr the night or someone’s bed idk the sound of them breathing works too................. they used to always sleep w bob ross playing on loop n that was rly comforting to them esp bc he reminds them a lot of their dad w his calming voice n energy.............. sometimes they’d have taken smthn n they’d literally hallucinate it as their dad instead of bob ross n this happened so many times in a row fr a period of time tht when they finally watched it sober they were like wtf since when did they recast my dad in this show...... KJHFGSHFGKSHFKGH but also. frowns... bit sad considering. 

[reversecreek]

🏆🎧💔 - for any muses hehe

🏆 my muse would listen to on repeat

cocaine jesus by rainbow kitten surprise for magda.... she luvs rainbow kitten surprise a lot they’re probably top 3 musicians fr her n then like. some of the lyrics feel personal to her as well.... i shan’t elaborate.

🎧 would make my muse cry

slight night shiver by m83 wld definitely make cricket cry n probably has when he discovered it fr the first time... there literally aren’t even any words bt the crickets chirping in the background n the general sounds wld put him right back to living in lilac ridge at night n be very overwhelming for him.... i don’t think he can listen to this song most of the time bt sometimes when everything’s bubbling up to the surface more than usual he might slip his earphones in and listen to it in bed with his eyes closed. looks away.

💔 my muse would listen to after a breakup

nyla would listen to these boots are made for walkin by nancy sinatra.... can’t even explain their thought process in choosing this as their breakup song bt when they “broke up” (if u can call it that bc he always kept nyla secret) w a guy from their past called aj rather than succumb to the overwhelming shame of the fact he spread nasty rumours abt them they got impossibly high n danced around w this song blasting in their sugar daddy’s empty penthouse <3 it’s called coping...

[reversecreek]

📖 ( nyla abt h*ward … )

📖 for what my muse would write about yours in their diary.

lots of doodles on this page. a girl with one eye wearing a flower wreath w no body except a pair of wings. a duck with a fallen off beak. a fish with a blue crayon scribbled right the way thru like they weren’t even trying to keep inside the lines. a scribbled out daisy. ‘cats playing violins’ written without explanation. then two hearts with just the slightest bit of border overlapping. one has a smiley face and one has a frown. in the happy heart they’ve written nearly every name they’ve ever known. crammed and spilling over. marching the page like an army of ants in search of biscuit crumbs. ‘HOODIE’ is there n nyla’s even dotted the o’s and drawn a smile beneath them, too. the other heart (the sad one) is practically empty compared. but there’s still ‘AJ’ and ‘RAYA’ and ‘JOHN’ and ‘PAMELA’ and ‘GEORGE’ and ‘NYLA’ smallest of all. at the bottom of the page, the last thing you see before you turn it, in spindly writing like a spider’s legs, there’s ‘zip tied to a sink in the bad heart’s bathroom’. 

[reversecreek]

📖 nyla & mido bc i chose violence, ur honor.

📖 for what my muse would write about yours in their diary.

nyla doesn’t often keep photos tht have her in them or if she does she puts a sticker over her face to cover her eyes bc she doesn’t wna risk them moving on their own. she drapes mirrors for the same reason. the bandmates r always whipping down blankets tht she’s covered mirrors w or opening the blinds after she’s drawn them at 2 in the afternoon bc “reflections aren’t [her] friends”. despite this there’s a page in her diary with a photo of her and mido stuck in from barcelona that summer n it looks sun scorched and crumpled (almost as if someone’s tried to grab it off her one time to no avail) with lots of creases spidering thru like veins. nyla’s face is covered by a holographic dog sticker w it’s tongue out n around mido she’s drawn little lines like a child might border the sun. there’s a small chunk of text besides it and each letter has multiple overlapping lines like she kept forgetting where she’d began midway thru writing it. it says ‘sometimes people see inside me and they see right inside my brain and they see right inside everything and they dont even blink not even a little when u hear a bang ur meant to blink but mido kept his eyes open’. there’s various nonsensical doodles on the rest of the page. lots of ugly n butchered stars. the most noticeable is a daffodil n it’s the neatest drawing of all of them. u can tell she actually took her time with it. up the stem in her tiniest handwriting, bordering on microscopic, probably unintelligible to anyone else, it says ‘IF WE WERE SMALL WE COULD SIT UNDER DAFFODILS’. 

[reversecreek]

🤝 44 leo nyla growls n smirks

send me a 🤝 + a 44  for your muse to touch mine out of lust.

Somehow, at a crowded party, Leo had ended up accompanying Nyla on a trip to the bathroom, which then became an amateur sleuth investigation into their cabinets and, in turn, lead to the discovery of a shower mount dildo fit with a suction cup. Mass delirium struck when Leo slapped it to his forehead and couldn’t get it off, but Nyla kept insisting that it really made him look quite handsome, because if the narwhals were doing it, why couldn’t everyone else? “Think about it. Like, everyone will either love it, or they literally won’t even notice, ‘cause everyone’s just out for themselves. We live in a society,” she told him, eyes drifting up and over the ceiling tiles, rising like smoke as they tended to, sometimes, leaving everyone wondering if her listening was dawdling with it -- sometimes, it did, physically there but mentally chasing sunbeams at the bottom of a swimming pool, wondering if any ghosts had gobbled the cubes of cheese she’d left last Thursday on top of gravestones. Doorknob rattling, the toe of a hard boot kicked the wood for good measure. “If you’re fucking in there I’ll be so pissed. I need to go. I. Need. To. GO!” someone shrieked, grounding Nyla in the room, enough that she erupted with a grin that almost looked like baring teeth, showcasing pearly whites to a very invasive dentist. Genuine, though -- obvious, from the tissue paper crinkle of her eyes at the edges. “Lemme think. Think, think, think... Think like a butterfly, yummy like a pea,” she completely butchered Muhammed Ali’s mantra, briefly losing herself in an “MMMM!” because she really did like peas, especially arranging words with them, before suddenly she was standing to attention. “’kay, c’mere. I’ve got the magic touch. Some guy licked my shoulder on the subway, once. It, like, gave me powers -- seriously.” Hiking a leg, Nyla bolstered a foot against the edge of the bathtub, leaning into the resistance of the trapped shower curtain. She grasped onto the dildo that way, Leo crooked as a bull about to charge, countdown seeing her yank with all of her might. Rather than fixing the situation, it somehow made everything that much worse, world glittering like a tossed up snow globe, far too many limbs flailing as they hurtled full force into another dimension -- or, well, right into the bathtub. An elbow must’ve clunked a faucet, though -- hers, his, theirs -- because suddenly her eyelashes were laden with beads, blinks heavy, lips spluttering against an endless gush of water. Oddly tangled in his lap, a human pretzel she wanted to take a bite from, Nyla craned her neck with a breathless laugh, panting in disbelief as the door shook. “Oh, she’s gone. Where’s she gone? I miss her,” Nyla realised, wriggling to get a better look at his forehead, hands extending like a child itching to glide fingers along the spotted back of a stingray at an open tanked aquarium -- or the ocean, more like, because Leo wasn’t a spirit who could be contained by an enclosure, Nyla thought, and her hand silently paid thanks for this fact as it traced the angry circle. “Hey, looks like there used to be a horn. Like what happened to Hellboy. Someone chopped it off. Which is kinda...” trailed off as her eyes caught his, sad right there on the tip of her tongue, starting to dissolve -- she swallowed it, instead, outline of each letter visible in it’s hard descent of her throat, only realising, then, how glossy his freckles had gone in the shower, how much she’d hate it if they ever washed down the drain. Rather than say anything, she pressed a kiss to the red mark on his head -- chaste, if anything -- before her chin slunk lower, levelling them both, lips parting again without anything else to say. Water trickled down the back of her neck, collected in her collar bones, soaked white lace and made it cling -- touching everything before it ever reached him, touching her everywhere -- but rather than acknowledge how close their lips were, Nyla just blinked. Watched him up close, curious as a lightly tranquillised owl, eyes half lidded yet more aware than ever. “You look pretty underwater,” she whispered, voice syrupy with Georgia like he’d taste it in her mouth, too -- she wanted him to, she realised, bad as the ache of a fresh bruise. Before she could do anything about it, thumb delicately etching his chin, the door burst in and their intruder erupted, forcing her face to jolt. “Are you fucking KIDDING me?! You broke my fucking shower curtain?!”