1| Silver & Gold [Pietro M.] ✔

07. A Stark Party

Now that I can rest assured that Tony won't be surprised to see Murk later in the morning, I head back to my room. I barely make it in the door before sleep comes for me.

Saturday morning goes as expected. Woken up at around 5:30 in the morning by a fitful Murk complaining in front of the mirror about his freshly cut hair for two hours. Next, a half-hour of off-the-wall ramblings. Strange things ranging from how deep-fried pickles are disgusting to whether he could rock a skirt in a ballroom dance competition. Then he complains about being hungry as he tries everything in his power to get me up from a half-sleep. At one point he even gets the hairdryer from the bathroom and sets it to high...right in my face. When that and anything else he concocts, from setting strands of hair on fire to tickling the bottom of my feet with a feather, he comes to realize I could sleep through a bombing and be none the wiser. No, at that point he finally gives in to brute strength to get what he wants. And let's be real here. That man could lift a full bus when he's hungry, okay? So what's to stop him from lifting me over his shoulder as I weakly protest in a haze? Absolutely nothing. The man has his mind set and not even my sleep will get in his way.

Once I'm trapped in the elevator, he kindly sets me on my feet, assured I can't escape. At this point, I realize it'd take too much effort to fight him. So I give up. My fingers ghost over the buttons before finding the one corresponding to the kitchen. By the time we reach the, and I quote, "God blessed food haven" the tower is still mostly dark and eerily silent. You know, save Murk's loud scrambling to shove anything remotely edible into his mouth like a five-year-old who's tasted candy for the first time in their life. While he combs through the cabinets and fridge, I take a seat at the kitchen bar and rest my forehead on the counter.
After a few more minutes of listening to his scavenging, in a surprising turn of events, he actually slides me a bowl of cereal. Tells me to pick my head up and eat something. No doubt because he wants me awake to give him a grand tour of a building I've spent maybe half a day in. Nevertheless, it's the thought that counts right? So I prop myself up with one elbow and shovel one spoonful into my mouth before letting the food fall back into the bowl. "Murk...did you substitute milk for vodka?"

"'m offended you s'pected differently." Damn was he right. Who am I? To think this man-child had the capacity to think like an adult and not get piss-drunk before 10 am? Although in his defense, last we were together this was all we did to dull our senses to the pain and abuse. Up before the sun, dazed before noon. All to drown out our sorrows. I swirl the spoon around the bowl with a distant look. For him to still carry that same habit from years ago, it's an indicator that in our time apart not much has changed for him. That or he's reaching for some normalcy we once shared long ago. "You good, Iris?"

"Are you?" My voice could barely be considered a whisper, so soft it could easily be missed. The change in his posture, the way he becomes more rigid, eyes more guarded, jaw tenser, it's enough for me to know he still catches the words.

"Can't tell if 'm hallucinatin'."

"You're not."

"That's what you always say." I drop the spoon into the bowl and cover my mouth with the back of my hand. I guide my eyes away from his face to the outside world.

"They told you to shoot a kid. If you didn't, they'd do it and gun down another too. One death by your hands, or two by theirs."

"I never told you that."

"You pulled the trigger and clipped the kid's shoulder... but they still proceeded to shoot the second right in front of you anyway. You were shouting, screaming, spitting mad. They put you in isolation for a week because they said you were too weak. Too scared to end a life." I tear my attention away from the fog slowly lifting from the tops of the buildings outside. "When I saw you next, you told me that they'd sent you out for the first time. Your first mission. You didn't want me to know what you'd done, what you couldn't do, what they'd done." Silence befalls us. "But I was there." His eyebrows pull together tightly, his eyes scrunch at the edges, and he leans forward. I pull the collar of my shirt aside to reveal the light discoloration of an old bullet wound which ripples across my shoulder joint. "It was me. They wanted to know if you were cold enough to end a life. Wanted to show me that you were, but their little social experiment failed." The fallout of my revelation is as expected. The quake of his shoulders as they fold inward, how he reaches out and grips the edge of the sink to ground himself, the shudder of his chest as he breathes.