On Love and Desire | ✔

1 | oh, mercy

CHAPTER ONE - oh, mercy

And... yes, yes she did. She followed him into the bedroom. As expected. Great! Awesome! Cool!

Note the sarcasm. Please do.

FUCK!

"DD," she oh-so-merrily hummed with the widest, toothiest smile a (respectfully) big-ass bald head like hers could host. "I'm so, so proud of you."

Desmond's only audible response from his mama's words was the meek ghost of a "meh." And... fine, sure, he'll be completely honest for once── a sigh as well.

Visible response? Just a half-hearted shrug, because as much as he wanted to roll his eyes along with that shrug, he didn't want to fuck around and find out how his mama would interpret that. He wanted her to leave him alone as soon as possible, and being an honest bitch wouldn't help him with that. It's not like he could even summon the honest bitch out of himself anyway, now that he really thought about it, actually, because he didn't have the guts to do so for anyone. Even if he knew it was for the best at times. Which includes Mercy, as he had quickly come to learn. Unfortunately.

He let out another sigh.

"I love you so, so much, DD, my baby gem," his mama continued to hum. This time, to his surprise, she wiped her swollen eyes with the back of her calloused hands. The makeup she had worked so hard to put on in the morning was long gone by then, but there were some stray specks of it here and there that couldn't hold on to her skin anymore after that (hopefully) final wipe of the day. Just how many fucking gallons of salty water did she have stored up in there? "I can't put into words just how proud I feel, you've gone so far. After everything you've been through. All that struggle and sacrifice. All of that back-breaking effort. It was worth it, all of it. You're all grown up now. I'm so happy. You're a special one, you know? You deserve all the success coming your way baby."

A sudden wince from somewhere in his throat almost escaped him, but he managed to trap and drag it back down to his heart just in time. At that point, he had trained himself to anticipate it in some shape or form when his mama got to that part of her speech of sorts, though it wasn't perfect in practice.

There was a certain something in her words that rubbed him the wrong way, and he didn't want her to know. Every time she repeated herself, there was a notable enough chance of it coming out. She needed to leave as soon as possible for more than one reason. Not just because it annoyed him.

Would a short reply make her catch the drift; make her finally chill out and leave? "Okay, mama."

"I worked hard every day for this moment, too. Yup, just like you. Every second of every day, even when I wasn't feeling up for it, I hauled my Black ass to the post office and walked miles to deliver all the mail to people's homes. Hot days, cold days, stormy days, all to help you get to this very moment. That college fund wasn't going to fund itself, you know."

He swallowed a heavy stone of ambiguous mushy feelings. "I know. Thank you." That must have been the third time he'd said that in the five-second trip between the front door of the house and his bedroom. It didn't include all the other times he'd said that for the day.

"DD, I'm so, so proud of you." Yup, there she went, like a broken record. On loop.

Look, listen here. Hear him out. It was justified. He meant no disrespect to his mama, but she had been repeating those words all god fucking day long, over and over and over again── from the moment she found him in the asscrack of dawn with his mouth full of overcooked oatmeal, to the entrance of the stadium (where he almost lost his cap and tassel), to the fancy restaurant his family and Mercy's had gone to after the ceremony, and back to the house. The entire drive home. Then the front door, the hallway, the kitchen. Then his bedroom. She was riding the high of his college graduation down to the last bit, and Desmond was already over it long before he'd even woken up that morning. The fact that there were now other things to focus on (with Mercy in particular) made that feeling all the more distant.