Take My Body + Nino

[chelsey]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] "BUT IF YOU LOVED ME, WHY'D YOU LEAVE ME?"

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ursula libertine

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"TAKE MY BODY, TAKE MY BODY."

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: cccccc; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] IF IT WERE POSSIBLE TO DROWN in a sea of people, then dancing was my lifeline. I was never fond of dancing, my limbs are stiff from years of erecting deals and my movements are as languid as icicles, but, tonight, the thought of synchronizing my steps to the lyrics of a song I don't know inflated some sort of purpose within my lungs that I haven't tasted in centuries. The music was loud enough to make the glass in the shop vibrate, but I wanted it to be louder. I craved to hear a melody so sweet I could taste it on my tongue, I craved to smile so wide that my mask would crack into pieces smaller than my heart, I craved to dance with the stars so long that their fluorescent light would burn the parts that touched me. The only stars that were present tonight, however, were in the sky, and I figured out a long time ago that I could never reach them, no matter how hard I tried. But, the next best thing I had to a dance with iridescence was a dance with Nino, and that burned me more than any stars could have. The day we last looked each other in the eye was the day Learna died, and every day since then felt like he was shoveling in another pile of dirt upon my buried coffin. I used to imagine dying, and how he might dance over my grave. Although, maybe tonight, I wouldn't mind dancing with him. Hurricanes have torn down upon me since then - it pried my petals open and forced my roots to soak in the flood of water. Sometimes I visit their graves, sometimes I sit on their old beds, sometimes I just don't think about them. It gets easier to ignore certain scars, after a while, but they don't go away, and they don't hurt less. The last deal I made was with myself, "To never make another deal again," but, oh, Ursula, you surely know yourself enough by now to realize that deals were made to be broken. And, we are. Stupid, foolish, broken things dancing on cracked pavements and make shift dance floors, using music and rigid movements to shake out the story of two girls who died. Apologies and burdens fumble in my mouth (it fills the gaps between my teeth and tongue, with words that feel like the pearls adorning my mask) but the heavy truth that weighs within them all is what keeps my lips as silent as Penelope's or Learna's. I find Nino easily through the foliage of entwined limbs and sounds, but how is it possible that seeing him makes me feel like I'm sailing and anchored at the same time? Yes, we're all quite broken, but the masks are here to hide these things for a reason. Before he can see my pearled mask or black gown, I clasp his pale hand in my own and pull him through the sea of people with me, mapping our way to the dance floor. If it's the pulse of the music or the pulse of his heart, I'm not sure, but I feel a rhythm beat against my hand, and, for once, it synchronizes with my own. "Teach me how to dance, Ripley." If I'm going to drown, I want him to be my lifeline.

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table influenced by tattletale

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[L△LIA]

[bg=FBFAF8][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,400,true][atrb=style,width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/33kbzfk.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; padding-top:40px; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius-topright: 25px; border-radius-topright: 25px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 25px; border-radius-topleft: 25px;opacity: 1;] Over a year has passed since Ursula and I last acknowledged each other. Noah died, Jude tried to kill himself, I spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not this was the way the world would end, and Ursula wasn't there for any of it. A long string of months passed where we avoided eye contact or small talk when I walked into her family's pawn shop at the wrong time. Since then, any time is the wrong time, but it's still easier when she's not the one I'm hocking wedding rings and secondhand shoes to. When the second of my brothers was murdered, we didn't run through the streets, stumbling into each other in a desperate collision of wanting and hatred the way we did after watching Learna die. That need for each other's understanding and presence died a little that day — if there was even that much left in us that was living back then, that is. There must have been though, otherwise I wouldn't have hurt so much after losing Noah... and Jude. Honestly, at this point, I don't really believe I have anyone left. They're all dead or so gone inside that it's just about the same thing. There was this one day — after Jude ran off from the hospital and I was sure the next time I saw him that he'd have have been more successful in his suicidal endeavors — that I went to find her. Last time Ursula and I spat cruelty at each other, she'd spoken of pity and I hoped that maybe she'd have just a little left for me. It might be a rotten scrap that I'd have to dig up from six feet underground, but I wanted it so badly that I'd have made any deal she wanted in exchange for it. The idea that someone might still exist who could force themselves to give a damn about me for even half a moment was too much for me to deny, so I went to her, huddled in the shadows of the back alleyway behind the pawnshop, throwing bits of gravel at her bedroom window between hyperventilating gasps for oxygen. Each dull thunk of stone against glass shook the fragile world around me. I don't know if she didn't hear it or if she chose to ignore the sound of my desperate breakdown, but she didn't come to save me. Turns out Jude didn't kill himself and that feeling of being more orphaned than I'd ever known before lasted just for that one night, instead of the forever I'd feared. Whether my brother gave up trying or if he's just not as cut out for killing as Fitz and Noah turned out to be, well, I don't know that either. Most days I think that's the kind of truth I'd rather keep lying to myself about. Afterward, however, I didn't feel so nervous when I'd bring our stolen goods into the Libertine's store. Whether or not Ursula was there didn't matter as much as it had. Whatever last ditch fragment of hope I'd hidden away in that deceptively pretty face of hers wasn't mine to reclaim any longer and I'd finally come to terms with that. I was okay. Devastated, but okay. Or at least that's what I've been telling myself every day between then and now, because I don't think I have it in me to try and escape like Jude did. That's why, when I show up to the Libertine's party — shamelessly wearing a suit I stole off the body of a dead man — I'm empty of expectations. There's a perpetual numbness within my expression, half-hidden by a simple black mask, and I weave through the crowd not really looking for anything... or anyone in particular. It's easy to think that this state of feeling is all there will ever be for me, until Ursula's hand reaches out for mine. The gesture is several months too late, but my fingers still can't stop themselves from weaving into hers. It's automatic, impulsive, and necessary. Against the sudden warmth of her skin, I'm as helpless as I was the night I waited beneath her window, hoping to become something less than abandoned. "Teach me how to dance, Ripley." If there's a voice within me telling me to push her away, I don't hear it. Instead my eyes flicker shut as I memorize the gaps between her fingers and the way I fit into them. I catch myself leaning into her voice, trying to remember if it always sounded this way or if something has changed over the course of our silence, but it's hard to tell over the music and the undeniable thumping of my pulse. This girl, I should hate her. Maybe I even do, but right now that's not reason enough to keep my other hand from moving to her waist. Despite the way we left off and the awkward cast molded around my broken wrist, I don't hesitate. Instead my fingers settle in, absently plucking at the fabric of the dress where it skims above her hipbones, and I meet her eyes for the first time since I decided to try pretending she doesn't mean anything to me. "How'd you know it was me?" The question pops out of my mouth before I've even thought about what I should say. Only half a beat of time passes before the obvious answer sets in as I glance down at my cast and sputter with a bout of bumbling laughter in response to evidence for the obvious. That much plaster and bulk on my lower arm isn't any more subtle than the way I look up at the sky in a split second of embarrassment afterward, blatantly attempting to redirect attention. With more confidence than I know how to put into my failing words, I take the lead in our dance and find myself thankful that I remember how to do at least this one thing right. "My mother taught me how to dance —" Spinning with her around our kitchen, even though I was still so tiny and young, she told me that dancing was important. Each step of her favorite waltz would come to haunt my memory after she died, but I never tried to forget. Time and again I've thought of how she would tell me that all men should know how to dance, her voice dreamy as she smiled over at our father with the kind of love I've come to miss. "— she used to tell me that someday it'd be the reason someone would fall in love with me." I can't look at Ursula as I talk, but my hand tightens around hers ever so slightly as I watch the stars above us turn in matched time. "Your other hand," the wicked one that hit me right in the heart that day and every day since, "it belongs here." With my casted hand, I awkwardly tap at my own shoulder, wondering if she regrets reaching out to me and why I only regret that she couldn't have done so sooner. leave me in the rain wait until my clothes cling to my frame wipe away your tear stains thought you said you didn't feel pain

[chelsey]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] "BUT IF YOU LOVED ME, WHY'D YOU LEAVE ME?"

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ursula libertine

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"TAKE MY BODY, TAKE MY BODY."

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: cccccc; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] IT'S BEEN A WHILE since I could look Nino in the eyes. We've kept a distance from each other since that last day we collided on the street - a chasm, twice as deep as the spaces he digs up coffins in - was built between us as a reminder of what losses we've cut and how no amount of ruined soil or shattered deals can fill in the gaps, again. (Oh, but we can sure as hell try.) Awkward glances exchanged between the counter - bartering between our worth, an unspoken deal, and a couple of coins whose weight feels lighter than it used to be - and words swelling like a suppressed flood in my throat, rising like a wave to the tip of my tongue until the ocean recedes back into the chasm again, leaving the shore dry and waiting for more. His absence, I convinced myself, made me want closure. Made me want to sew in stitches where I'd severed limbs, made me want to drain the oceans out of my lungs so I could breathe again in his presence without a heartbeat that rivaled the pulse of an earthquake. I wanted to see Penelope's ocean without feeling the familiar salty waves rise in my own eyes, I wanted to hear a ghost story without my trembling lips suppressing the story of a girl I knew who was an actual vessel for ghosts. When I walked down the street, the clang of metal of a construction project down the road made my mind flicker to four familiar brothers, whose dust encrusted hands held badly hidden spades and shovels that used to regularly thump against the woodwork of a cracked coffin. My life for this past year has been a never ending burial - just one more throw of dirt over my coffin over another. Except, the bright lights and the bad dancing and the loud music and Nino's hand resting right above my waist, that, for some reason, keeps my tongue stumbling over words no matter how many times I tell myself to ignore his touch remind me I'm not another corpse in another coffin. My feet refuse to collapse no matter how many times I've tried to fracture them; my bones are too strong of a structure, with ligaments built from years of sticky deals, to demolish. I'm not dead, yet, and maybe by the time I am, I want to actually be something worth digging up. "How'd you know it was me?" He asks, before his mouth contorts to an embarrassed smile and he flickers his gaze between his cast (truthfully, I didn't even notice it) and the stars to the point where I'm sure that if I raised his mask, I'd find a blush spreading his features. My lips curl up in what must be a smile (I don't remember it ever feeling this sweet), finding it silly that he would think I wouldn't be able to recognize him any either way. I know the beat of his footsteps like how writers can recite their favorite poem - the way he erects his spine, or how he turns his neck, or the rhythm of his steps when he walks into the pawnshop (in order to successfully avoid something, you must familiarize yourself with it first). The question brings me back to the night he threw rocks at my window (it sounded like rain, but I wish he'd brought hurricanes instead of drizzle). At first, I thought it was Learna's ghost, but then I saw him hiding in the shadows through the window, his chest heaving unevenly with distorted and panicked breaths between each throw. Maybe hurricanes could pacify the guilt that paralyzed my hands and body for not unlatching the window and letting him in. Maybe it'd numb the wounds that opened at the disappointment of seeing Nino instead of my sister's phantom. In the end, it never really mattered, because I already knew what he wanted, but I wasn't made for kissing away anyone's scars, especially not when I could hardly even look at my own. I went to bed with a pillow tightly pressed against my ears in a sick attempt to muffle his hyperventilated breaths that seeped in through the cracks of my bedroom walls. I don't remember falling asleep, but I must have, because I woke up with the traces of a deal lingering on my lips and an ache in my chest I was only sure he could fill. It was an equation, always a formula defining the mathematic relationship between us, that if I let him in, and he kept it a secret, we would have a deal. I woke up when the sun rose, my foot steps as silent as I was last night, sure that once I swung open the back door his body would be there, shivering, curled up, and asleep on the steps - like so many times I've seen him do before. He'd be there, waiting for me, he always was. "I didn't. I just knew I was missing something." I raise my gaze to his eyes less fearfully this time, a burning sensation running through every part of my body that he touches. We whirl into the street, and into the chasm that's divided us for so long. My head dizzies from the white lights pouring into my vision, and from the intoxication of having him so close to me after a year, where even brushing the ends of my fingers against his palm to exchange stolen goods for coins, hurt. It still does hurt, now, but at the same time, I feel even if we were pressed so close together that our lungs would collapse from the pressure, we still wouldn't be close enough, and maybe I'm just beginning to realize why that is so. "My mother taught me how to dance, she used to tell me that someday it'd be the reason someone would fall in love with me." His gaze droops at the words, but his grip around me tightens, and that fire that began to stir within me from the beginning of this party starts to evaporate the seas of salty water in my lungs, until it's almost necessary to gasp for air at his touch. Almost. "Your other hand," he starts again, "it belongs here." He points to his shoulder with the hand in the cast, and, gently, I place my palm on the directed spot. I'm aware of every atom or molecule where our touch meets - on his shoulder, on my waist, in the electric static gaps between our eyes and our lips. It's been a while since I could look myself in the eye, and what I'm beginning to find is that, even though I want to hate Nino Ripley for not being there, asleep on my porch, on that morning, I'm still glad he could be here tonight. "So, you're teaching me how to dance, tonight, Ripley. Do you think it'll help in any case of love in my life?"

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table influenced by tattletale

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[L△LIA]

[bg=FBFAF8][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,400,true][atrb=style,width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/33kbzfk.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; padding-top:40px; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius-topright: 25px; border-radius-topright: 25px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 25px; border-radius-topleft: 25px;opacity: 1;] Ursula Libertine has always been prettier than anyone should be allowed, the kind of girl that makes the word gorgeous skip through your mind with little more than a flick of her eyes. Before you know it, you're wondering what it'd feel like if she smiled at you, how her laugh sounds, what she'd look like in a wedding dress. A face like that will haunt a man for a lifetime if he's not careful. The slope of her small nose, the length of her eyelashes, the way her hair falls loose just seconds after she tucks it behind her ear — it's enough to ruin the thought of other women. No one can match up to the perfection of that kind of daydream. When she takes my hand, it occurs to me that I might be sleeping. A voice like this is not real. Anything that makes a heart race so easily is not to be trusted and so I have to stop, hold my breath, force myself to look her in the eye, and remember: Ursula Libertine is as cruel as she is devastatingly beautiful. "So, you're teaching me how to dance, tonight, Ripley. Do you think it'll help in any case of love in my life?" After Noah was killed, I punched a brick wall so hard my knuckles slammed into my wrist, the thin bones of my hand buckling against the weight of my helpless rage. The crack and shatter of my own body didn't hurt like her words do now. Coy and toying, Ursula has always been better at playing mind games than anyone else — manipulating her words into contracts far less breakable than my hand — while learning how to turn souls into something that could be owned. Not a single syllable from her heartkiller mouth has ever been accidental. Mine couldn't have been the first confession of her life. With a face that surely flared a thousand first loves, it's impossible that — I'd dig up your grave — was the only time someone had looked into the deadly seawater of her eyes and made a bid for her heart. Whoever kissed her for the first time, barefoot on the beach or hidden behind the oak trees in the park, it wasn't me. She has inevitably heard sweeter professions than mine, but did any of them know her treacherous nature before they spoke? Secreted away behind that pale vision of innocence, could they see the devil's more brutal truths? I bet they didn't. Idiot me, I knew exactly what I was saying and who I was saying it to. Awful girl, even when you're dead, I won't be over you. When my mother taught me to dance, she couldn't have been hoping for her son to grow up to turn circles with a girl like this. She must have had sweeter dreams for me, and when I was younger, I did too — of honest smiles and white dresses without irony. Now, I'm a fool, but not for myself. Just because I can see beneath her pearled mask, it doesn't mean I can stop myself from going to her grave... even when she brazenly asks me if this dance will help someone to fall in love with her, knowing damn well that I already have. For a moment longer than necessary, I look at her and I don't lie. Mine is a wounded gaze, judgmental of her word games, but unsurprised. I should drop her hand and walk away in remembrance of my pride or self-worth, but I've already whiled away too much of my youth in her honor to wake myself up from the daydream of her now. "If it's possible for men to fall for the same girl twice, I wouldn't be surprised if it were for you." My voice aspires to match hers — elusive and careless, yet the opposite of accidental. Two can feign forgetfulness. With her hand upon my shoulder, mine slips back around her waist, pulling her close enough for me to whisper in her ear. "Back, two, three —" The antiquated box pattern of our feet turns us between less graceful couples as I count, men without rhythm and girls stepping on their partners toes. "— forward, two, three." A lifetime of practiced confidence guides us into the heart of the crowd and despite the undeniable cruelty lacing Ursula's touch, I can't help being reminded of my mother's hands: Don't let go, my little Ripple! "Careful —" Spinning her out of harm's way, we narrowly avoid a collision with a girl possessing more curls than coordination. My good arm arcs up as my partner twirls beneath and I tug her back to me, a cocky grin spreading across my lips as I tuck a lock of hair behind her ear before returning my hand to the home of her hips. "Don't let go, my little Libertine. One —" Her hair falls loose as quick as always and I hate myself for noticing, for the way gorgeous slips through my mind. "— two, three." throw me in the landfill don't think about the c o n s e q u e n c e s throw me in the dirt pit don't think about the choices that you make

[chelsey]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] "BUT IF YOU LOVED ME, WHY'D YOU LEAVE ME?"

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ursula libertine

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"TAKE MY BODY, TAKE MY BODY."

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: cccccc; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] I WOULD BE LYING if I said I never wished for someone to kiss away the scars on my arms. For the past two years, my mind has been diluted of its better judgment from the spilled ichor of my two sisters, and I'd wake up with scars indented on my wrists the same way drunks wake up in a stranger's bed, not remembering how they got there. But, lips don't heal any better than blades do, and anyone kissing my raw scars would just bloody themselves in the process. I've grown fragmented, and the veins in my rest withered like the roots of a dead tree. At first, I was sure the scars were a way to substitute guilt for a self-inflicted punishment - the iron graze against my virgin skin became my own personal jail, and I was just doing time. But then, the scars started to sting a little less, the guilt evaporated from my skin a little more, and even my flesh became numb to the purgatory I condemned it, and myself, to. I was scratching at a hollow body, that felt nothing, thought nothing, saw nothing - until the carvings on my wrist weren't even enough to fuel the storm, and I might as well belonged six feet under between Pen and Learna. I was more dead than they were. My life has been as dry as their graves, without substance or fervor, and the absence of Nino's hurricanes only left me in a drought. Since the last time we held each other this close to today, I sought futile ways to tug at the strings in my core to conjure up what storm might be left inside of me. But, my wrists lost its violent pulse years ago, and sometimes, I wonder if I even had one to begin with. The hurricane boils again tonight, though, leaving my insides whirling with every spin and graze of Nino's fingertips against the light chiffon fabric around my waist. We dance like our footsteps are blue printed - a cautious outline, just in case we trespass a territory leading us back to tight lipped silence and wavering eyes seeing anything but each other. Those borders loom over our heads, almost as close to us as are bodies are to each other. The faded, pale pigments of leftover scars on my wrist pulsate with a rhythm too fast for even our calculated footsteps to keep up with, and if I knew I could recapture this flood within me just by leveling my hands on Nino Ripley's shoulders, I probably would've kissed him months ago. I would make any deal just to have the tsunami sweep me away, again, from the numbing outline of the shore. I've been buoying in a blank atmosphere for so long now, that who knew how much a pair of air-dried lungs could miss the sweet burn of seawater flooding it? "If it's possible for men to fall for the same girl twice," Nino says, with a look in his eye that makes the hurricane between us churn even more, "I wouldn't be surprised if it were for you." He says twice as if there has ever been a first, and maybe there has been, because - even though I don't remember feeling this storm whirl inside my stomach just at the touch of his hand - it sure as hell feels familiar. If, however, men were ever so fortunate to fall in love with me the first time, I'd like to know what kind of deal I conjured up with him to make me fall in love a second. I've witnessed this myth firsthand, the way my father reaches out for the comfort of any woman other than his wife, and how my mother strokes the frame of a mirror more than she does her own children. Love kills you, slowly and painfully, and any fool who decides to fall into its trap a second time deserves his own death. I've never been stupid enough to fall in love, no matter how many kisses I've seized from lips whose eyes I can't remember, but as Nino slips his hands back around my waist, and presses his own lips against the shell of my ear - "Back, two, three, forward, two, three," - I feel I'm coming dangerously close to it. "Careful," he warns me, until only my fingertips are grasping his, and I twirl out before him, before he reels me back in, a smile on his lips as he tucks a strand of my stray hair back behind my ears. "Don't let go my little Libertine. One, two, three." When his hand returns to my hips, I hear an undeniable earthquake roar in my ears, but the dance floor is still intact as we seamlessly glide over it. I'm out of my element (I'm not used to having sweaty palms or faltering voices or butterflied stomachs), and no one, not even Nino Ripley, is allowed to beat me at my own game. "Your little Libertine?" I ask him, an eyebrow raised and a smile mirroring his. We dance through the sea of entangled limbs and masked faces, parting through it as a captain commands his ship (only, we're both struggling for that position of captain). In a voice laced with mock hurt, I raise my right hand from his shoulder to skim the back of my fingers from the corner of his lips to the edge of his mask, slowly and painfully, and say, "Why, Nino, did you already forget that tonight is a night of pretend?" I let my hand linger for a second longer beneath the end of his mask, my eyes gleaming behind my own pearled one, before returning it back to his shoulder. That storm inside my stomach and the earthquake in my ears thunder even louder than before, and, if tonight was a tsunami, then I willingly allow this dance to carry me away into its waters. "Nothing about me is little." I lower my voice into a whisper, as if what I was about to say was a secret, and I could trust him to take my words to the grave. "Tonight, we are giants." What fools we both are for playing in such treacherous waters as these. After all, any fool who falls for love deserves his own death.

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table influenced by tattletale

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[L△LIA]

[bg=FBFAF8][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,400,true][atrb=style,width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/33kbzfk.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; padding-top:40px; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius-topright: 25px; border-radius-topright: 25px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 25px; border-radius-topleft: 25px;opacity: 1;] Giants she says and she's not wrong. We are. Here dance the biggest of fools — living monuments for a particular kind of idiocy of the heart. The two of us have gotten to know loss so well that we live it passionately, allowing it to consume us to the point of forgetting that there might be other ways, actively choosing the paths that will continue to whittle us down until we are a breath away from nonexistence. We'd both be lying if we tried to say these things weren't true. The pale scars across her wrists that she doesn't bother to hide and the cast I wear like a brutal weapon are proof enough that ours are not bodies to be cared for, but heavy burdens for a pair of souls that aren't sure they can handle the weight of their own skin for much longer. These words we're trading back and forth in the dizzying whirl of the dance floor aren't the same kinds of sweet nothings other couples are whispering into the softened lull of the music. Like a pair of carnivorous plants grown too close and turned territorial, we are setting traps for one another, throwing our tongues out like lures with intent to twist our jaws shut once the other missteps into a pitfall of teeth and sugared promises. "Don't worry —" Even as I lean into her touch, her fingerprints burning something permanent into my skin, I remind myself that the deceptively sweet scent of her is not worth the sacrifice. Maybe I can't help wanting her or the way I find myself memorizing details as insignificant as the cadence of her pulse through her fingertips as they pass over my cheek, but that doesn't mean I have to throw myself at her feet in response. "— I haven't forgotten for even a single second that tonight is pretend." It's a slow burn that singes my words, a bitter confession to knowing that the place she holds within my arms is no home for her. For now we can move as if she will always be within reach like this, but I have spent years becoming aware that she won't stay, because a girl so volatile can't be kept with such quiet intentions. Too often I've felt her absence; too recently I've attempted to give her my desperation and been left to abandonment. "That's why we can be giants, just because you say so." The biggest of fools; the giants of folly. Despite it all, my stubborn hands won't let her go, holding tight and refusing to give up this small moment, even though I know the future will only leave me holding onto the most persistent kind of nothing. "It's also why I can say mine, although we both know that isn't true." Aching with my mother's memory and the way I've turned the sincerity of her words into a teasing jab, I wish I could still be the boy I was then. Don't let go, my little Ripple! These circles I turn now, holding onto hands that don't possess the same concern for me as hers once did, I miss the way she would worry that I might fall before I'd even begun tumbling to the ground. If she were still here for me, I don't think I'd break myself like I do now. Maybe then it'd be easy to walk away instead of throwing my bones into bricks or my fists into fights that weren't ever supposed to know my name. I want to be worried for again. I miss being caught up in the momentum of hoping everything will be alright. "If tonight is a night of pretend, then impossible things like that are allowed to happen. So —" — my not-so-little Libertine — my idiot heart — my giant of folly — my fool for one night — my downfall "— Ursula, be impossible with me." There is a part of me that wants to stop spinning, realizing that these circles the two of us turn in will never stop if I don't make them, but can't remember how. I am snapping, bitter teeth and the inevitable weapon of my own demise, yet I still taste sugar every time I look at her. "I'll be your giant," that deadly sweetness coats my teeth as I lay down my trap of words, twisting each one with careful double-intent, "if you'll be mine." throw me in the water don't think about the splash i will create leave me at the altar knowing all the things you just e s c a p e d

[chelsey]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] "BUT IF YOU LOVED ME, WHY'D YOU LEAVE ME?"

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ursula libertine

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"TAKE MY BODY, TAKE MY BODY."

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: cccccc; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] OUR DANCE WAS DRIFTING into an endless existence, a transient play on smiles and sharp words that cut deeper than the blades that cut scars on my wrist. We cannon truths coated in smiles against each other, over an ocean blackened by the blood of our lost ones, but our ships are made of steel, and it doesn't seem like either of us will be sinking anytime soon. Everything Ripley says either makes me want to slap him or kiss him - "Don't worry, I haven't forgotten for even a single second that tonight is pretend," - as if he spoke like he was trying to shed my layers of skin to reveal something about me I didn't know before. As if I never saw the caution dance in his eyes when he met mine, as if I never noticed the hesitance in his smiles when I directed one towards him. I am a deceptive, manipulative, and damned bastard, and if he for even a single second tries to make me realize something I already praised and hated myself for, then, like this dance, his words were drifting into nonexistence. He's as stubborn as a storm with his words, but so am I. And maybe that's why our bodies mold together so easily like the withered and entwined hands of an old couple. And maybe that's also why I want to untangle my jungle of limbs away from his, and pull myself closer all the same. I'm grasping at nothing but a boy who'll see me as nothing more than a deconstructed brick wall of deals, but, tonight, I'm not quite done with the reconstruction of that faltering building. "That's why we can be giants," he continues, "just because you say so." It's so easy to flit my eyes across a dance floor of uncoordinated bodies and see them as something miniscule, something to easily dismiss, when at the touch of Nino's hand, my body swells larger into something that can't possibly ever belong to me. "It's also why I can say mine, although we both know that isn't true." His words plaster against my own mind, leaving a sticky imprint that won't wash out with boiled water or bars of soap. Being owned, physically or even abstractly, was something I've never been good at, a deal I hardly ever wanted to shake on, and Nino's claim on me creates an involuntary reflex that puts another of the thousand barriers between us, even though our chests are still pressed against each other and I can feel the flutter of his heartbeat against my own. But, even then, the rush of blood in my cheeks and slight crinkle of my eye make me wonder what it would feel like to hold him in my arms everyday, and not just for a fleeting night. "If tonight is a night of pretend, then impossible things like that are allowed to happen." He almost sounds like me, and I already know how bitter the next words on his tongue will taste, and yet my ears are still eager to recognize the familiar formula escape his lips. "So Ursula, be impossible with me." (Maybe not as impossible as you think, Ripley, because tonight, I am teeter-tottering over the precipice of my own wanton desire for independence and self-righteousness between my wistful desire to be held in arms that might even be more scarred than mine.) "I'll be your giant, if you'll be mine." (Foolish Ripley, an amateur in the art of deal making. Shouldn't he know that a deal like that will inevitably lead to me being his downfall, and him mine? And yet -) "That's a deal I can't refuse, Ripley," I say, my lips curling into a venomous and all too familiar smile it hadn't felt in years, "But, only on one condition." It should scare me how much he's beginning to sound like me, how much faith he's lost in redeeming the girl of his idealistic infatuation that he doesn't even bother to wash her hands away of their sins anymore, how much I'm even dipping them back into their bloody origins instead of holy water, how much I smile in this dance even though I've grown to recognize the beats of hesitance before his, and how much I'm beginning to feel like he does - or used to - about me. "If I pretend to love you, you'll pretend to love me." But, the scariest of all is how much I don't care about any of that, as long as this dance keeps drifting.

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table influenced by tattletale

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[L△LIA]

[bg=FBFAF8][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,400,true][atrb=style,width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/33kbzfk.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; padding-top:40px; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius-topright: 25px; border-radius-topright: 25px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 25px; border-radius-topleft: 25px;opacity: 1;] I could punch the moon out of the sky. With one swift hit, my fist could arc up into the infinite night and knock the god of the stars from his watchful home in the dark above us. That old man would tumble down and away, the craters of his bright face blurring into little more than the reflection of a ghost across the ocean waves until he's swallowed up by a whale and the night belongs to me instead. In just the same way, I could murder the sun in her sleep before she has the chance to rise again and no one will ever be the wiser. My knuckles might be burnt raw from the flames and bruised useless by the rock, but if daylight never finds me, I might remember how to be a happy man. "That's a deal I can't refuse, Ripley, but only on one condition." If my hand is already too broken to take on the gods of the sky, then maybe I could just pick her up and make a run for the west. If we don't stop, then the sun will never find us — the night would be endless and I won't have to accept the awful truths she's teasing me with. I can just lie to myself, over and over again, until I forget that this deal of ours was always meant to have an end point. "If I pretend to love you, you'll pretend to love me." For the rest of our lives, she could live her lies as truth and I could live my truths as lies and by being the opposite of what we are now, we could be together. Ursula Libertine does not love me. These words slipping from her mouth are just a game, but I'll be damned if I don't want to play. Despite being aware that the real deal here is — I'll pretend to love you tonight, in exchange for what little is left of your pathetic soul — I'm all in. She can take whatever she wants from me, because I don't have much left beyond the desperate little flare of hope that guts me each time I look at her. If I'm being honest about more than just her own lies, then the real truth of it is that no matter the setup, I'm bound to lose more by walking away than I am if I stay and accept her deal. "That's the way, Libertine —" Maybe I'm measuring a difference so insignificant as to be nearly incalculable, but these small things feel so much bigger when they're all you have left. "— now you're talking impossible." These days, this is what it takes for someone to love me. It takes a lie. Somewhere nearby, Jude is hand-in-hand with Nessie; this same moon is lighting up the headstones of my other two brothers and our parents, their four graves all neatly tucked into the night, side by side by side by side; a girl from my math class is chatting with a guy from the school year below and none of us would know each others names any better without our masks than we do now. None of these people are thinking about me and I don't really blame them for that, but for at least right now, I've got one. There's one person on this entire planet in this moment who remembers that I exist and so I don't care what the reason is, because goddamn it... yes, I want her to look me in the eyes and lie that she loves me. There's a chance I'll hate her for it after — or that part of me already does — but I'll deal with that then... and I'll deal with this now. "What's the penalty if one of us doesn't follow through?" One, two, three. Our feet keep moving, but I'm not paying attention to the music any longer. Each step is as automatic as my memory — of my mother; of the way Ursula's hair falls — and I know these sharp little words are worth far more than our waltz. A single dance might be able to define a few minutes in the past, but this one conversation will dictate our future. "How about your real heart. If you can't keep up with pretending, then I get to keep it." Suddenly I'm brazen, convinced I've trapped her more than she has me — a catch twenty-two of sorts. Be it truth or lie, she's damned to love me, so I lift our intertwined hands to my lips and quietly kiss the underside her wrist. Against white scars and the ugliest of histories, my eyes flicker shut and I throw myself into the burn. Kissing her perfect, razor-ravaged skin feels like punching the sun and when I look back at her, all I see is the dark. The night, her lie, my foolishly sincere intentions — it blacks out everything else until I'm blinded. "That's the price you pay." I forget to ask: What's the price I pay if I'm not pretending? you took my heart and you held it in your mouth and with the word, all my love came rushing out and every whisper, it's the worst emptied out by a single word there is a hollow in me now

[chelsey]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] "BUT IF YOU LOVED ME, WHY'D YOU LEAVE ME?"

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ursula libertine

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"TAKE MY BODY, TAKE MY BODY."

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[/td][/tr][/table]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: cccccc; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border-left: 30px solid cccccc; border-right: 30px solid cccccc; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 365px;] EARTHQUAKES USUALLY DON'T LAST for longer than a minute, but I swear, this one's been shaking for hours. The last time the ground beneath our feet trembled so violently was the day Learna died, but my scars have fooled themselves into healing since then. But, saying there's an earthquake is just an optimistic way of me naming the recklessly spongy feeling in my knees when Nino's voice brushes the shell of my ears - "That's the way Libertine, now you're talking impossible." - or those goose bumps that weigh me down like mountains when he cradles me close to glide across the dance floor. (It's an earthquake, it's an earthquake, it's an earthquake - ) I'll say it to myself backwards and forwards if it meant I could convince myself that, too, and it probably wouldn't even take that much convincing. Earthquakes and disasters, I've never known anything otherwise. After a while, it's hard to differentiate between the two. "What's the penalty if one of us doesn't follow through? How about your real heart." I'm almost sure I don't have one, anymore, other than a withered organ crumpled between my water logged lungs. But, this earthquake somehow made it flutter again, even if for just one beat. For a second, I'm almost scared Nino can feel it rasp for oxygen from my chest against his own, but then I remember that he stopped feeling things a long time ago, too. Maybe that's why our dance resonates in the friction of two colliding continents, struggling for dominance over the other in a tragedy masked by a foolish game of words. The earthquake only lasts as long as the pent up tension floods between us, but, if that were the case, I'm not sure it'll ever stop. "If you can't keep up with pretending, then I get to keep it." His words are silly, almost like he forgot who he was talking to - I always make good on my deals - but what's even sillier is the kisses he presses onto my wrists, as if his lips were a vaccine for pain, and not just a drug that fueled my addiction to things that hurt (like him)

[/s]. Maybe I wasn't even surprised that he knew they were there, that he kissed my scars like they were coordinates on a map guiding him on the crumbling roads of my compassion. I wish I could tell him those roads just led to a dead end.

His lips were just as good as the blades I drew across the almost transparent border between my veins, but that didn't make me want his lips any less. I learned a long time ago that I was better at lying than healing, but Ripley's right, because, for once, I just might not be lying.

I've paid worst costs, before, anyway - look at my sisters' graves if you need proof - and my heart is hardly worth a trifle to me anymore.

"That's the price you pay." Nino says, his lips still hovering close to our raised wrists.

A smile settles onto my lips, again. "You've always been good at stealing things, haven't you?"

I'm not really sure what I want anymore, because I want this earthquake to stop but I also want him, and I also know you cannot have one without the other. "And, if you start to forget about our game of pretend," - and maybe that's why I can't stop dancing with Nino Ripley, even when I know I should, even when I know this dance will create a chasm between us a hundred times wider than the graves of our siblings - "I'll get to rob your grave." - and maybe the reason why is because I've always been attracted to destruction.

But, the earthquake isn't what I'm afraid of. It's the disaster that comes after.


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table influenced by tattletale

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[L△LIA]

[bg=FBFAF8][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,400,true][atrb=style,width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/33kbzfk.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; padding-top:40px; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius-topright: 25px; border-radius-topright: 25px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 25px; border-radius-topleft: 25px;opacity: 1;] Victory isn't something to be gained easily. Holding her in my hands feels an awful lot like it, however, and so I start to forget that this is not a moment for the winning of anything — crowns or hearts or happiness. Right now, I want to believe there's something real between us so badly that her reminder that — oh, there's something real alright — hits me unguarded with the full violence of reality. "You've always been good at stealing things, haven't you?" She's smiling as if this were a small thing to tease me about, but I ache with a hollow sort of emptiness after her words hit me, as though I've just had a close encounter with the Ferry Man himself. Gaze dropping to study our shoes, the fleeting arrogance that held my shoulders as I kissed her wrist slips away and our intertwined hands find their way back to a more acceptable space than the nearness of my lips. The last time we spoke of my talents for theft, we wounded the fragile remnants of each others lives so badly that I was beginning to think the two of us wouldn't recover. Walking corpses, we were almost convincing when it came to showing the other that living was still something we knew how to do, but then she reached out to me tonight and those lies became more difficult. I don't know how to pretend that my pathetic excuse for a heart beats just fine without her when the only time it remembers how to race is when she looks at me. Yet, I'm still vulnerable against her jab. Even if her tone is not so wildly venomous and hateful as it was before, my memory can't help superimposing our history into the present. I'd dig up your grave, I said to her, not know that even then, I already was. Before my brothers and I sneak into the secrecy of night to rob a grave, one of us always attends the funeral of the deceased. "And, if you start to forget about our game of pretend —" I'm better at pretending than Ursula knows to give me credit for, because she hasn't seen me make casual conversation with the families of our victims, remaking myself into a friend or neighbor with little more than a few sparse words of false grief. Before we press our shovels into the earth, it's important to know there's treasure waiting for us. Once we've offered our condolences, we check for cuff links, pocket watches, and wedding bands, making a mental to-do list for later on. Then again, it's only in the terrible depths of the graveyard that our hands reach out for the worst of it and truly earn the malice of the words that haunt me, trespassing into mouths with pliers to crack teeth apart in search of gold fillings. When we take, we take everything. Even the worst things imaginable. "— I'll get to rob your grave." Head jerking up to stare at her in shock, my reaction is too immediate to hide. She already knows exactly where to dig into me to find her way past what buries my secrets and I am an open casket for her. Whatever she wants, she is free to take — even my mouth hangs open, just wide enough for a pair of pliers to push into. Words from Ursula Libertine are never a mistake. She knows exactly what she has said, just the same as she knows I'm already a dead man to the world. "You already know there isn't anything good left of me," I struggle to fool myself once more into believing I'm not completely at her mercy, forcing a tight smile as if I'm replying in jest, mocking her choice instead of confessing honestly, "you'll just end up with the worst of what I have." Each word is measured, a strained wisp of uncertain sound over teeth that already feel broken. "Besides," my breath regains its rhythm and I inhale, as if that's not such a difficult thing at the moment, "it's not robbery if I give it to you. Go ahead. Take my grave, it's yours." It's harder to pretend I'm lying — to pretend I'm pretending — when looking at her, so I allow my eyes to wander off into the crowd. I have the same habit when attending funerals and speaking to the mothers of children who died too young or husbands who had always secretly hoped their beloved wives would outlive them, so they'd never have to remember what an emptier life was like. "Whatever you want from me, my little Libertine, tonight —" My thumb slowly skims the side of her hand, back and forth from knuckle to wrist as I pause. It's obvious that tonight is more of a reminder to myself than to her, but I don't care. "— tonight, it's yours." It's alright if this is not a victory, because she's worth losing myself to. two hands digging in each others w o u n d s cold smoke seeping out of colder throats d a r k n e s s f a l l i n g leaves nowhere to move

[chelsey]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-image:url('http://i813.photobucket.com/albums/zz58/peanutsaredelish/2_ursula.jpg'); border: 0; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 450px;]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: ffffff; border: 0; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; width: 450px;] U R S U L A L I B E R T I N E

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-image:url('http://i813.photobucket.com/albums/zz58/peanutsaredelish/2_0ursula.jpg'); border: 0; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; width: 450px;]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: bbbbbb; border: 0; padding: 10 10 10 10 px; border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; width: 450px;] " B U T I F Y O U L O V E D M E W H Y ' D Y O U L E A V E M E ? T A K E M Y B O D Y "

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,450,true][bg=ffffff] It's true that when babies are born, a garden of untamed flowers spurt from their scalp - stems and petals growing along their hair lines. Grown ups are supposed to cultivate those gardens, sow the seeds of their curiosity and figments of their imagination. Those petals and stems represent truth, but the world is an ignorant place, and without hesitation, we destroy what we make. As we grow, the soil no longer harbors the strength to maintain curiosity or imagination, and, in turn, we grow fragile and withered to the bone, and break at any ounce of truth that weighs down upon us. Nino Ripley's skeleton is breaking before me, and his teeth clatters with the pain of pronouncing sharp truths that cut wounds upon the surfaces of his lips and tongue. I've kissed lips of boys whose mouths never uttered such sweet sorrows like Nino's does, and I never worried about handling their words with care, before, in the same way I struggle between grasping at every syllable Nino pronounces or letting their meaning disintegrate before me. When other boys whispered breathless "I love you"'s, it was easy to kiss them because I knew they weren't telling the truth - because, that way, we were both just a pair of fools with flowerless heads. But the cracks in Nino's skull harvests dozens upon dozens of flowers, no matter how many times I try to dig them out. "You already know there isn't anything good left of me, you'll just end up with the worst of what I have." The truth weighs down upon us both, because even if what he said was true, I can't help but feel that I might still want what he has to offer anyway. "Besides, it's not robbery if I give it to you. Go ahead. Take my grave, it's yours." It's weird to think there was once a time where the theft of graves was not used as a topic to bypass small talk - in a time where my words were harmless and the Ripleys were whole and our families were not as broken as the deals I'm making today. Back then, truth was never supposed to be something to fear, it was supposed to be embraced. Since when did "Penelope, I love you," and "Learna, you look like a princess today," stop becoming a regular part of my vocabulary? Since when did the truth become trickier, since when did the truth elude my grasp? I wished words could come as easily as it did then, so I could say, "It's not really robbery if what I take is already mine, either." But, I've never been good with the truth, and why bother mentioning something Nino already knows? "Whatever you want from me, my little Libertine, tonight - tonight, it's yours." At his words, I rest the palm of my hand over the spot where I can feel his heart beating. I leave it there and count his pulse, wanting to know if it's racing fast enough to jump right out of his ribcage and run the hell away from me before I can touch it - because, if what he says is true and I already know it is

[/s], then the chances are I already know what I want, and we'd both suffer a lot less if his heart abandoned him once I finally reap from his promises.

"You mean that?" I reply, my voice hardly loud enough so he can hear me over the music. His face is inched so close to my own, but I inch closer, until our lips would touch if one of us even dared to sway further. I could kiss him if I wanted to, and I'm almost sure I do, but instead, I breathlessly murmur, "Then, we've got a deal," and pull myself away so my face is left cold with the absence of his own.

Flowerless souls are void of imagination or playing pretend, but I haven't entirely lost all of my roots. As we continue to whirl through the street, words unconsciously leave my lips - "So, do pretend lovers usually spend an entire night just dancing?" - and I'm forced to remember that this deal probably isn't entirely made of pretend.
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[L△LIA]

[bg=FBFAF8][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,400,true][atrb=style,width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/33kbzfk.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; padding-top:40px; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius-topright: 25px; border-radius-topright: 25px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 25px; border-radius-topleft: 25px;opacity: 1;] Throughout it all, I don't think she's understood a word I've said — not in the past few minutes; not in our entire lives. When I told her to take my grave, I wasn't speaking of literally putting a shovel to the earth someday (although she's welcome to) and there is a part of me desperate for her to know that. Until, that is, her hand comes to rest against my heart and my whirling mind falls absolutely still, cut short and focused completely on the way her touch sears through the fabric of my shirt. This doesn't feel anything like the last time she reached out for my chest with her fists and in this all-too-fleeting moment I become a believer. Maybe this is a silent confession of understanding. "You mean that?" My eyes burn into her as I nod — you know I do — and a hint of a perpetually guilty smile crooks my lips. You know I do. "Then, we've got a deal." I flinch as her follow-up words strike a bitter blow and she pulls away sharply, as if there were no reason for her to stay so close. I wasn't bargaining. The moment is lost and I know it won't be found again. I am not fast enough to follow and I bristle with resentment over the way she plays with me, over the way I allow her to. "So, do pretend lovers usually spend an entire night just dancing?" Pretend. I agreed to this, but after her last stunt, my jaw clenches involuntarily. There is a hushed voice inside me whispering to let it go, fearful that history will repeat itself and hurl us into an infinite loop of destruction and another year of silence. This is almost something, don't throw it away, my subconscious attempts to placate me, but the fact that almost is still nothing twists into my gut with a near physical violence that brings me to an abrupt halt. Stepping back, I shed her like snakeskin. Something dark and rusted winds my voice tightly, coiling it within my throat. "I —" My next inhalation feels serrated as it cuts into my lungs as though attempting to free me from my bindings to her, willing me to walk away. I almost think I could, but almost still isn't enough. "I can't do this." Viciously frustrated, I make a move to run a hand through my hair and release some of the tension, but my arm jerks to a stop as I realize my traitorous hand hasn't let her go. Out intertwined hands are stretched out between us like a lifeline or a noose, still intertwined. Squeezing my eyes shut tightly enough to see sparks crackle across the closed veil of my vision, I force the air from my lungs in a brutal rush, emptying myself of her deceptively sweet scent as I plead with my own fingers to release her, to let me break free and leave. Instead, they hold on even more tightly and I tear the impassive black mask from my face with my clumsier hand, throwing it to the ground at her feet. Frustrating doesn't even begin to cover it. People are beginning to stare as I tug her away from the crowd and into the pawn shop, my footsteps heavily weighted as though my shoes were soled in lead, but that's not why I feel the need to abandon the dance floor. If I can't get away from her, maybe I can at least get away from the battleground of her manipulative words. I was lying when I convinced myself I could be fake about any of this — no matter how badly I want to, I can't — and I'd punch myself in the face right now for being such an idiot if I could manage it. Instead, I drag her along with me to the winding, narrow stairwell in the back of the shop, my grasp on her too insistent to be optional. Leaving the party a little further behind with each step we take toward the upper levels, I start to think I can hear my own thoughts a little more clearly, even if they're ultimately still jumbled into impulsive incoherence. The stairs curl in on themselves and I find myself occasionally glancing back at her, as though checking to make sure she's still there despite my hold on her and that this is still real life. Each time I meet her eyes, something in my face reflexively softens, despite how wound up I am. With the next turn of the steps, I can't take it anymore and double back to face her. Cornered between the wall and the cage of my wounded chest, I reach out and free the pearled mask from her face, dropping it to our feet with a clatter that sounds louder than it ought to within these close quarters. "I need you —" I can't help the betrayal of desperation in my voice as I stare at her like a haunted man, leaning in as though begging her. "I need you to listen for a minute, because you just —" Something within me collapses in surrender and I have to steady myself, pinning her to the wall as my hands greedily come to rest on her waist once more, my forehead pressing against her temple as I hiss into her ear. "You make me miserable, you know." Swearing under my breath, I turn around and continue out onto the flat, industrial roof, muttering as I go. "But I'm worse without you." Riled up again, I burst through the door and into the cool night air, sucking a lungful in through my teeth in hopes that it might help to calm me. I don't look back to see if she's followed me the rest of the way here, because I can sense her presence, the way she has gravity over me. Pacing in an attempt to keep myself from falling into her limitless pull again, my shoes scrape against the concrete until the sound rattles within me. "All I do anymore is fight. I go out looking for guys to throw their fists in my face, to break my bones." I'm not confessing a secret to her as I hold up my broken hand as proof, the cast feeling massive as I raise it high between us. Ever since Noah, I've been throwing my fists around without care for where they might land, aiming only to destroy whatever I can manage to touch. "One of them busted my nose a few months back — did you know?" I glance at her, daring her to search openly for the evidence or to admit she might have been paying enough attention to remember without a reminder. For all the times my brawler brother busted his own face up, I've gotten pretty good at fixing that kind of damage. The only thing crooked about my face now is the look in my eyes. "I just wanted somebody to touch me. Even though I know they're nothing like my mom or my dad or Fitz or Noah —" This, however, is a confession and my voice steadily shrinks as I make way through the list of people I've lost, one by one. "— or Jude." I'm raw by the time I trip over his name, absently kicking at a stray hunk of concrete to distract myself. At this point, I've lost him just as much as I have everyone else. It's easier to talk to the gravestones of my other brother's than it is to confront him face to face, our bond damaged, frayed, and undone by a mutual lack of copping skills. "It felt kind of nice in a really fucked up way, to have somebody reach out to me, even if it was just to beat the crap out of me. But I figure," hesitance finds me again and for a long minute I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to say the words that follow, "if I'm going to fight with someone — if I'm going to let anyone ruin me — shouldn't it be you?" I don't look at her, I can't. Whatever her expression is now, I already know it's dangerous, more likely to break me than not. "Don't say anything —" Cutting her off before she even has the chance to contemplate speaking, I let my head fall back to search the sky as I nervously bounce on the balls of my feet, practically twitching from everything that's still bottled up unspoken within me. All these years I've held it in, telling myself the moment was wrong. It's still wrong and certainly none of this is the right thing to be saying, but I don't care anymore. Now that I've started talking, I don't think I'll be able to stop, sensing that this is all or nothing... and I'm pretty damned sick and tired of nothing. "I know you're not a nice girl, Ursula." Falling still, I drop my eyes back to the ground and something sad and more than slightly regretful writhes between the syllables of my words. I think that realization was the end of my innocence, the day I began to grow up and admit to myself that life is less than a daydream. It would be a lie to say I wasn't disappointed by my discovery of reality, but that certainly wasn't enough to put an end to my infatuation, not when her becoming real also suddenly transformed her into the idea of something possible. "For a long time I didn't and I thought your soul must be as gorgeous as your face, but it turns out you're a pretty ugly person." It's funny that I could experience the death of my parents and a thief's life in the belly of a graveyard and still retain my adolescence, that she was what broke it, but I'd always acknowledged everything else simply as how things had to be... Ursula Libertine, on the other hand, had represented an idea of how I'd wanted life to be. A foul, sarcastic beat of laughter infects me, dirtying the air. "You're mean and sometimes I really fucking hate you for it." Each word is a barbed staccato, ruthlessly genuine and I finally look up at her, even though it might still be enough to break me, just in the cruel hope that it might also be enough to break her. This is the same tone I've so often used since the Sixty-Third Games to badger those who would otherwise have nothing to do with me, into duking it out for no particular reason at all. "I haven't done much else for the past," a sigh of exasperation breezes out of me, "I-don't-even-know-how-many-months, except hate your guts." Hands clenching into fists, my posture goes rigid as my shoulders pull back and spine straightens. "After a while it was easy to pretend that was all there was —" Realization jerks me back as it settles in that I'm in my fighting stance, even though there are at least two or three strides of safe distance between us. I rake a hand through my hair, eyebrows furrowing in self-loathing as I turn away and reel all my damaged, misdirected anger back in. "— but I couldn't hate you like that if you didn't mean so damned much to me." I ache with the admission, swallowing my accusations of hatred back just like that. Everything falls loose around me, my muscles unraveling themselves from my bones until I wonder how I'm still standing. It's a strange sensation, coming apart in this way. "I was pretending then," I whisper breathlessly, "but I'm not pretending anything tonight." Our deal has been as much a mask as the ones we wore to conceal our faces and I throw it away just as easily as the others were discarded. I don't need to hide behind a contract for this anymore. "Don't get me wrong. Someday when you die, I'm going to spit on your grave..." Trailing off, I swallow and try to leave it at that, struck by reluctance. If nothing else, I know that the two of us can recover from spiteful words, if only for a single dance, but I have no idea if we'll be able to find coexistence in the wake of the absolute honesty I'm unleashing. "But then I'll dig it up and cry over your bones. I'll miss the bruises you gave me and the way you smell. How you sound cruel every time you say my name, even when you're trying to play nice." It's a torrent and I'm helpless to stop it, closing the distance between us slowly, until I'm only inches away and staring down at her with that same unshakable reverence from my adolescence. "Your hair when it falls loose." Tucking a few wayward strands behind her ear, I hold my breath as my outstretched hand hovers for a few scattered seconds — long enough for the breeze to toss her hair free again, sending the escaped tendrils fluttering against my open palm, right on cue. I can't help the way my ensuing smile is just as predictable, hitching up until the corners of my eyes crinkle with it. "Your footsteps when you walk away, getting quieter and quieter, but never really falling silent," not silent like the last time I heard Fitz or Noah walk away, "just far." My voice has changed, shifting into the distance and rewinding into the past. Despite everything, I can't unsee her as being beautiful and I have to put forth a conscious effort to stop myself from allowing my hand to settle on the edge of her jaw. Fingers stretching and clenching briefly to chase away the impulse to touch her, I shove my hands into my pockets before I continue, knowing my next acknowledgment is unavoidable. "I'm not a nice guy either." Backing off just far enough to remember how to breathe properly, I can't bring myself to be any further. "In fact, I'm kind of a spectacular asshole these days, but I love you anyway and you're a goddamned liar whenever you pretend not to know it." It's her gravity that won't allow my to stay that far apart and before I know it, I'm leaning in again, a breath away and nothing more. "I wish you wouldn't do that." I'm wound up in the plea, practically begging her not to shut me out anymore. At this point, I don't even care if she loves me back, just so long as she stops trying to convince herself that I'm something less than sincere. "I know I'm pathetic, useless, and criminal scum," the sound of her accusatory voice when we fought after Learna's murder haunts me, as if I were the worst thing the world had to offer, even after what we'd just witnessed happen to her sister, "but you make me want to change. You make me ashamed of who I am — and thank you for that — because I don't want to live like this forever." This is where I know I should stop, but since I'm laying it all out, I decide to throw everything at her. Even before I've said it, it's already too much, but what I've just said is the truth. There's hope for me in the shame she makes me feel over my sins and so I don't regret setting myself up for the imminent look of repulsion that's surely about to cross her face. "I don't enjoy cracking gold teeth out of the mouths of corpses with a pair of pliers or hawking the wedding rings of somebody's dead grandparents just so I can scrape enough cash together to feed my brothers." Stuttering, I bite my tongue at the habit of that word being plural and withdraw into a whisper. "My brother, I mean." The quiet grows and gradually fades to a beat of silence as I toe the ground, unwilling to witness the aftereffects of what I've just said, even though it surely took more courage to give a voice to it than it would to simply tilt my head up. Grave robbing is more complicated than she knows. I don't know where the things I've done fall in the realm of black and white failed humanity versus a gray area of unknown factors for acceptability, but it's not the terrible things I've done in the dark with a shovel that are the hardest to deal with. Memories of my parents flare within me, colored with thoughts of newly dug soil and carefully worded reassurances. "Our father taught me the family trade, you know. He wasn't around long enough to teach me a whole lot, but I got that much from him." I sound like a child when I talk about him, unable to suppress how small I still feel whenever he comes to mind. "It's hard to give that up." Over the years, it has become progressively more difficult to remember the details of my parents. The laugh lines around their eyes and lips have smoothed out and grown blurry, the lilt and timbre of their voices crackling like badly tuned radio static. Sometimes the shovel I inherited feels like the only thing that remains and it's bizarrely comforting to hold it in my hands. "It's messed up and awful, you were right about that, but it's all I've got left of him." My voice breaks and cracks, vocal chords tangling into knots as I raise my eyes up and allow myself to look openly at Ursula, despite all the shame and worry. "That," I breathe carefully, "and the memories of how much he loved my mother. I think that's why, sometimes when I look at you, I remember him better than I ever had the chance to know him." "I look at you —" and I'm still staring at her, wondering if history could repeat itself in a kinder way this time around, simply mirroring my eyes to his instead of sending the girl before me into a fit of terrible rage over my admiration "— and I think I really must be my father's son, I really must have grown up to look just like him." The way his eyes sought out my mother's smile is the same way I watch this horrible girl, waiting in hope for those scattered moments of addictive sweetness to turn in my direction. Right now, I can feel how alike my father and I are, even if I'll never have any proof for it beyond this incoherent need for her to meet my gaze. Ursula Libertine, I'm in fucking love with you, so deal with it. I don't break the intensity of my eye contact as I begin walking up to her one last time — efficiently, purposefully, breathlessly. Each step is more like falling into her than traversing a measure of distance and momentum becomes a powerful, unstoppable thing between us. "I'm going to shut up and kiss you now, okay?" By the time the words finish leaving my mouth, I'm already there, my palms cradling the corners of her jaw and fingers splayed possessively down both sides of her neck. It's not actually a question, but an effort to spur on my own fragile courage. "Okay." Our mouths brush as that one final, decisive answer leaves me, concrete and determined. This is not how nice boys kiss nice girls, but we're neither. After everything, I can't remember how to be gentle, I only remember how to mean it. These days my sincerity is a brutal beast and the weight of everything we've been through crashes through me and straight into her, until we're stumbling backwards. All of my momentum is directed at her and I don't know how to stop anymore. It's the roof's protective ledge that catches us, bricks pressing into the backs of her legs and the hidden hollows of her knees through her dress, asking if we really intend to topple over the edge of the pawn shop and back into the street in this way. I have no intention of letting her slip away from me that easily. Kissing her makes me feel like dying, which reminds me exactly how alive I still am right now, and so I pull her back into me before we can tip over like the giant fools we are. Forehead to forehead with my hands still holding her face in my palms, her breath is in my lungs and my breath is in hers. Back and forth we trade the air between us and I surrender, finally having laid everything out for her. Panic careens down my spine until I squeeze my eyes shut so tightly that the muscles start to hurt with the fear that when I open them again, she might not still be there. Somehow I will find the air before me vacant and empty, the only evidence that she might ever have been there a ghost of her sneer lingering in her absence. Stubbornly, I hold onto her as though I'm still a believer, with faith in our ability to understand each other, and it's enough to bring a smile of conviction all the way back to my eyes when I open them. "Someday I'm going to marry you and there won't be anything pretend about it." g o d d a m n but i love her anyway i love her a n y w a y

[chelsey]

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,450,true][bg=ffffff] The paradox of life is that we are both living and dying at the same time. Every ironic breath our lungs dare to inhale is just another shoveled pile of earth that we unconsciously dig for our own graves. Our mesh of cells that weave over our skeletons are decaying in the process - an atlas of endless stars and supernovas spurring into uncapped black holes. I don't know if I believe in God, but what kind of asshole would sentence an eternity of souls into fully knowing the damnation that awaits them in 100 years time, or less? Considering our circumstances, Nino and I might as well be dancing corpses tonight, because his tortured look reminds me of how much more dead than the graves of our siblings we both are. He tears away his mask as if he could tear away the deal we just sealed, and stubbornly hauls me through the crowd, toward the back staircase in the pawnshop. Half of me wants to resist the sudden upheaval of emotion that's begun to drive him away and toward me at the same time, somehow, yet I allow myself to be pulled higher and higher until he abruptly stops. When he tells me he needs me to listen, I do. Time doesn't freeze, but I swear I hear the hands of a clock stir backwards in their mechanical bonds. Slowly, I can hear the edges of my fingertips graze the baby-haired fibers of his shirt, the static electricity itching between us as I let him hold me so close against the wall that my lungs forget how to inhale, the way his breath hitches when his lips make contact with the skin of my temple, the pulse of the music outside as it vibrates through the cold plastered wall my bare shoulders are rammed against, the rippling clatter of my mask as it falls against the ground without any of us giving it a second thought - I hear it all, I listen until my ears are imploded with the universe and the rasp of his breath. "You make me miserable, you know." Involuntarily, I shudder as he retracts himself away from me, the warmth leaving my body with him, and he walks away without me onto the rooftop of the pawnshop. His last words - "But I'm worse without you." - leave a metallic aftertaste in the air, almost as if I tasted iron blood, and I might as well have been. I already knew it since we first started dancing, tonight, that Nino Ripley was bleeding because of me. The benefits of knowing you will die one day is realizing that no one will care how many hearts you broke once your coffin is nothing but filled with the dust of your marrow and bones. The benefits of knowing is that there are no benefits - and I can end up breaking more hearts than deals, and justify others' tears with the comforting knowledge of knowing they won't be able to cry in their graves. A lethal dose of adrenaline and anger mixes within my veins, and with heavy footsteps and clenched fists, I follow him out into the night, where cold zephyrs and dull music drift as close to me as Nino has just done in the hallway or on the street - closer than he is to me now, anyway. I don't even know why I'm angry, maybe because the lack of distance between us makes me want something that I'm not sure Nino can give (and I'm not entirely used to not getting what I want), but I stopped needing a reason to be angry a long time ago. "All I do anymore is fight," I glance at his hand bound in a cast, which he holds up as evidence, and imagine the boy I just danced with regularly covered in scars and bruises. I wonder how many of them were because of me. "I go out looking for guys to throw their fists in my face, to break my bones. One of them busted my nose a few months back — did you know?" He asks questions as if I had answers, but my mouth grows vacant of words, and it's almost as if I've already died and he's already groveling at my grave. "I just wanted somebody to touch me. Even though I know they're nothing like my mom or my dad or Fitz or Noah or Jude," he says, until my overdue and suppressed guilt slowly unravels my core, and I'm almost shaking as hard as he is. I know loneliness like an old friend, but he lives in it as a storm, and it's only so long until he can weather it any more. "It felt kind of nice in a really fucked up way, to have somebody reach out to me, even if it was just to beat the crap out of me. But I figure, if I'm going to fight with someone - if I'm going to let anyone ruin me - shouldn't it be you?" A tumorous silence sears before us, and I almost threaten the sanctity of his confession by poisoning it with my own. He couldn't find refuge in me even if I had any, not when I'm fighting battles, too. But, when I open my mouth, he cuts off my almost-threat to another year condemned of awkward looks and loud silences by saying, "Don't say anything." My immediate obedience silences me, but keeps my fists between a constant and agitated state of clenching and unclenching. When he tells me to listen, I do, and all the matter and atoms and weight in the universe fill my ears with such a sweet melancholy that it makes his next words sting just a little bit less than they should. "I know you're not a nice girl, Ursula. For a long time I didn't and I thought your soul must be as gorgeous as your face, but it turns out you're a pretty ugly person." The laughter that elicits from his lips claw at my core, shattering me as much as every syllable I ever even pronounced to him, before, shattered him. His words broke that esteemed mirror he carried my adored reflection in - his innocent infatuation finally corrupted by the damned realization that I'll always take more than I'll give - and maybe the shards of it could form the true sea monster beneath. "You're mean and sometimes I really fucking hate you for it." Every goddamn word is a missile toward my defenseless boundaries. The smile that gently tugs on my face is as insincere as his words are sincere, and, again, I'm torn between hating this boy for knowing such awful truths or loving him for speaking them. I guess Nino Ripley, above all else, would know best about simultaneously hating and loving someone, though, wouldn't he? "I haven't done much else for the past I-don't-even-know-how-many-months, except hate your guts." Finally, he stares at me as if I have just murdered him, when, actually, I've done much worse. I raise my chin in a wobbly defiance, preparing for the worst. "After a while it was easy to pretend that was all there was, but I couldn't hate you like that if you didn't mean so damned much to me." My jaw clenches and I'm scared I might start crying, but, instead, I back away a few miniscule steps, desperately aching for time to make myself stop shivering at the cold looks he's giving me. (I'm not used to not getting what I want, I'm not used to not getting what I want, I'm not used to -) "Don't get me wrong. Someday when you die, I'm going to spit on your grave . . . But then I'll dig it up and cry over your bones. I'll miss the bruises you gave me and the way you smell. How you sound cruel every time you say my name, even when you're trying to play nice. Your hair when it falls loose." He steps closer toward me, the sound of his footfall echoing in my ears like a hurricane. His fingertips ghost the side of my face as he tucks a few strands of hair behind my ear, and he lets his hand linger there for a moment before smiling. I don't return it, but my gut wrenches with a feeling I'm scared I won't be able to loose. "Your footsteps when you walk away," he continues gently, "getting quieter and quieter, but never really falling silent, just far." He steps away from me, and I begin to realize that our roles of five minutes ago have reversed. As if he were a wave, he pulls in close to me only to recede further and further away, leaving me empty handed and wanting more every time. I'm awful for thinking it, but I'm not even sure if I want him to love me, again, in the way I don't know if I could ever reciprocate, but I do know I want him to stay, even after I break him time and time again. "I'm not a nice guy either. In fact, I'm kind of a spectacular asshole these days, but I love you anyway and you're a goddamned liar whenever you pretend not to know it." When he says this, I bite my lip to hold back a small smile (because, at this point, only an asshole like Nino Ripley who's as messed up as I can make me waver between crying and smiling in the space of only 20 goddamn seconds), but he sways toward me again and leans in a breath away, "I wish you wouldn't do that." I wish he'd let me speak, pause long enough for me to decide between holding him or walking away - which, in any case, both would cause the same amount of damage in the end. But, he continues unfiltered, without warning, and my tongue is as good as gone. "I know I'm pathetic, useless, and criminal scum, but you make me want to change. You make me ashamed of who I am — and thank you for that — because I don't want to live like this forever. I don't enjoy cracking gold teeth out of the mouths of corpses with a pair of pliers or hawking the wedding rings of somebody's dead grandparents just so I can scrape enough cash together to feed my brothers." The pause that ensues after his words are accidental. "My brother, I mean." The Ripley brothers and Penelope and Learna flash through my mind like a thunderstorm, and Nino and I are living, walking proof of the damage it left in its wake. But, right now, I want anything more than I want to remember my family, or my responsibilities, or my regret, or my guilt - not when I'm already not sure if what I really want is standing right before me, bleeding out words as if he couldn't say them fast enough. He averts the subject in a much safer direction, toward the buried memories of his parents. Apparently, he inherited his grave robbing tendencies from his father, and digging into freshly turned earth reminds him of a time before the Ripley's parents died. It is awful, but at least he has somewhat of a justification behind his cruelty, whereas I have none. Broken pearls don't really amount to much in the end. I've made more deals than the number of treasures the Ripley brothers stole from the dead, and even Nino knows my pretty face can't hide how rotten I've become. I'm as unfortunate as the souls I seal deals with; I'm a flowerless child with no hope for growing out of this state of constant corruption. Even Nino, no matter how many times he confesses his love for me, can agree I'm not truly worth anything. Everything he loves about me can be fragilely crushed or physically destroyed that I wonder if I was ever worth him loving to begin with. "It's all I've got left of him," Nino continues. "That and the memories of how much he loved my mother. I think that's why, sometimes when I look at you, I remember him better than I ever had the chance to know him. I look at you and I think I really must be my father's son, I really must have grown up to look just like him." I shake my head, an immediate dislike for being compared to a sweet motherly figure when I am anything but. I relish in the destruction of others, including my own, and that's probably the reason why I let Nino inch forward, even when I know I shouldn't. His hands cradle my face, and he leans in so breathlessly close that I can feel his heartbeat against my own, and the pulse drumming against the veins in his wrist tremor against my cheek. "I'm going to shut up and kiss you now, okay?" Our lips are already touching when he murmurs one last, "Okay." Greed consumes every jumping atom within me as I place one hand on his cheek and hook the other around his neck, bringing him closer to me than he already is. In his arms, convicted of an armistice with our lips pressed against the other's, it's impossible for me to deny any longer that I don't want him, when the wrenching feeling in my gut says otherwise. The paradox of life is that we are both living and dying at the same time, and, even though we know we'll all end up returning to stardust in the end, we still struggle to grasp moments as fleeting as these in our short lifetimes. We both almost fall over the ledge of the rooftop, and although Nino reels me back in toward him, I'm sure free falling and kissing him feels no different than the other. When I open my eyes again, a peaceful quiet settles between us that makes me wish we could've spent the entirety of last year in this kind of silence, instead. Nino smiles, and says, "Someday I'm going to marry you and there won't be anything pretend about it." If this were still some sort of deal, if we were still playing some sort of game, I'd disentangle my limbs from his with a sly smirk and clever words and walk away. I'm addicted to that sort of pain a girl inflicts upon herself, the same way she runs silver blades over her wrists or how a boy runs purposefully into dark alleyways searching for fights - to remind myself that, no matter how broken I am, I could still be more broken. It's an optimistic way of looking at the darkest things, but the game is over, and there are no winners, and the odds are still not in our favor. His confession begs me to be merciful, to spare him the truth, and I'd like to hope that maybe I'm not that merciless. If anyone deserves the truth, however, it would be Nino. I don't return a smile, instead, I run my hand over the spot where his heart beats, again. It almost feels whole. "I don't want to break your heart -" what happens if I already have? "- but I've always been pretty selfish, haven't I?" I raise my gaze from my hand resting on his ribcage to his own eyes and resist the temptation to kiss him again. I don't really love him, not in the way he expects me to, yet, anyhow. But, I want him to know, even if just for tonight, that either way, "I'd rob your grave, even if you had nothing worth robbing." We're both a pretty ridiculous pair of fools, and I'd be damned if we didn't destroy each other by the time we walk out of this roof. Even while I speak, I'm still listening for a sign that Nino Ripley won't be the end of me. "I'd still take all of it."

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[L△LIA]

[bg=93938C][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,400,true][atrb=style,width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/33kbzfk.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; padding-top:40px; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius-topright: 25px; border-radius-topright: 25px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 25px; border-radius-topleft: 25px;opacity: 1;] Oh, god. Everything stops, swallowed into the wide and silent mouth of my instantaneous regret. What have I done? The earth does not spin; the tide no longer ebbs or flows; the moon flickers on and off like a loose light bulb behind the drifting clouds above. For my part, I am a stutter-stop wind-up boy with failed mechanics, blinking much too slowly while my malfunctioning jaw hangs loose on its hinges. As my eyes lock onto hers in the wake of everything I've just said and done, realization begins setting in and it's enough to massacre me from the inside out. The one person I sort-of had left in my life is about to leave me. I broke the rules — threw away our deals — and now I won't even be able to pretend to keep her. As I inhale, slow and terrified, my breath shakes. In such a short span of time, I have destroyed the balance the two of us have spent nearly two decades establishing. There are some things in life people are simply unworthy of and surely this is one of them. The ache in my chest from finally kissing her after all these years, excruciating in the most beautifully addictive of ways, feels like I'm cheating the system for an experience I was never meant to have. This is a girl who gives little without ulterior motives and here I've just gone and... I don't even know what I've just done. Oh, god. Oh, fuck. Oh, mother of all things unholy. Transfixed, I wait, because that's all there is left for me to do. I don't cross my fingers that I will live on in life, looking back with conviction that this one moment of unabashed honesty and greed will have been worth what I've just sacrificed to get it. Movement is forbidden. Instead I focus in on the way my fingers are still splayed down her neck like the rungs of a ladder or the track marks of a train or junkie, marking a measure of distance I had always dreamed of traveling. Biting my lip, I tell myself to focus on remembering they way she feels against my hands or to reassure myself that my fingerprints won't disappear so easily from her skin now, but I'm preoccupied with my efforts to recall the details of my own actions. At best it's a blur, my mind nearly blank, until: "I don't want to break your heart —" So don't. "— but I've always been pretty selfish, haven't I?" Belatedly, I realize that her hand is on my chest again. That makes twice and twice makes — A new rule. One. Two. That's enough to create balance and suddenly I remember how to blink, my eyes flickering beneath her gaze with disbelief as it all begins to dawn on me in slow motion. "I'd rob your grave, even if you had nothing worth robbing." It's not my heart that's broken, but reality. Logic. The way of the world has obviously been turned upside down and inside out. Right now, I'd swear on anything that the sky is the ground. You'll just end up with the worst of what I have, I could say, repeating my earlier words, except she beats me to the punch. "I'd still take all of it." So I don't say anything (and at this point, haven't I already said too much?). Instead, I throw my head back and whoop at the sky. Sound spills out of me in an ecstatic burst and when I drop my face back down, I'm crackling with giddy laughter. My chest is thumping, my lungs are burning, and I wrap my arms around her in the biggest bear hug I can manage before lifting her up and spinning. Latched on to her, I whirl her round and round, my voice echoing off the rooftops as the night blurs into an untouchable distance. "I'll lend you my shovel!" I yell out over the roar of my own booming heart and the music below, barely able to hear myself above the frantic cadence. Dizziness sets in, but it doesn't feel like much in comparison to the way my head has already been reeling over her. However, my feet seem to disagree and before I can regain my former sense of balance, we're already falling. Holding her tightly so it's my body that takes the brunt of the small crash and not hers, I'm surprised by how comfortable a collision with the ground feels when I'm sprawled out with her head against my chest. An idiot-grin finds me and bears my teeth at the moon, daring it to be brighter. Go ahead and try, old man, you've got nothing on me. Tugging at her hand, I place it over my heart for a third time — for charm — while toying absentmindedly with her fingers, tapping my way along each row of knuckles in her fingers. "I don't think you broke it." With my would-be regrets forgotten, it's easy to be a smartass with my sincerity. "Feels more like you fixed it." and the only way to last and the only way to live it is to hold on when you get love and let go when you give it g i v e i t