⠀⠀⠀⠀

/ about time...

⠀⠀ *⠀:/  ) ᴿ͟₃，⠀ Haha.   [the attempt to emulate his laugh in an echo is funny at best and feeble at worst. she kicks heels, a knee–buckling pair of six inches, into their mounted place so routine the carpeted ground could’ve molded shape into their worn bottoms.]   My face usually does not bruise.   [****’s stuck on it. eye-line lingers on cup of water she’s opted out of gulping to instead detect who might be staring back at her through it.]   Okay.   [no blink.]   I am fine with okay.               @prodiqal

i...    um.    cocaine,    *    he answers,    a dry attempt at adding humor to an otherwise depressing question.    rummaging through the drawer,    oz eventually returns with the kit,    sitting down across from ****.    *    ruined?    i—    nah.    you'll just get a bruise.    my,    um,    /my/    face is...    okay.    n'    i've um,    i've gotten punched more than...    more than once.    you'll be okay.

⠀⠀ *⠀:/  ) ᴿ͟₃，⠀ At the drawer of the third cabinet by the kitchen door. I do not know how you do it, Oz. This does not usually happen to   ——   me. Is my face ruined? Forever?               @prodiqal

⠀⠀ *⠀:/  ) ᴿ͟₃，⠀ [his tenor cries into the hole of nothingness that’s opened in the rift between the kitchen counter and her white, bygone mattress do not illicit a response. not at first anyway. **** instead opting to holding pillow over banging head, authentication of humanness in biology strange and dutifully unwelcome.]   No.   [she instead offers,]   I did not. There were two when I emptied out the bag.   [and rolls to her side to look at oz then, no evident creasing able to be detected on face — no matter how much brows seemed to ache at the mention of the name earlier — to face him.]   You seem upset.               @prodiqal

i f—    i fuckin'    /know/,    mate!    are you—    /fuck/!    *    perhaps their late afternoon could have been spent elsewhere,    completely differently,    with no raised voices or trembling fists or withdrawals that made his throat close up    &    his mouth grow dry.    pale skin beneath black ink itches,    &    oz tears at his flesh,    attempting to rip the goosebumps from his already unfamiliar body.    *    i n—    i don't have enough m-money for any more this week,    i...    i c—    i need the...    (    ...    )    did—    did you put it um.    put it somewhere?

⠀⠀ *⠀:/  ) ᴿ͟₃，⠀ [the bones in body fizzle like white noise as each minuscule slope on her spine hits the stabbing mattress and its toying springs.]   You are counting two because there are only two.   [spare pillow’s mounted in top of head, muffling out his noise and garnering residue of makeup clogging sweating pores.]   There were two when I emptied out the bag. You are shouting.               @prodiqal

[ and she's so kind. she's so kind to him, and he doesn't deserve this. she's so innocent, and brandon is not. the boy's eyes gloss with hot, stinging tears as he gazes to her, lower lip subtly trembling. he nods at her words, taking the shirt calmly. his voice is hushed; almost a whisper. ] thank you. i appreciate you. 

RE⠀*⠀:⠀ That is okay, Brandon. Do not apologize.   [she’s partially oblivious to the strain in his small voice, attention pivoted towards the plain clothes in her plainer closet. there, two hands maneuver a big, white tee out with great mind to creasing.]   I will clean it up. You might still feel sick. You must rest when you are sick.   [knees crutch to half the her towering figure to meet him face to face, offering him the shirt.]   You are very polite, Brandon. Nice and very polite. But you cannot be nice and very polite if you are sick. Because then you would just be— sick.               @ilokind

um, okay. ( a weak, shaky voice. he's embarrassed. everything hurts. anxiety pools in his stomach despite knowing fully well he was not going to be scolded by her. ) i'm sorry. i can clean it up. 

...    yeah,    he—    um.    he probably would.    *    oz inhales through his nose,    quick    &    sharp,    clearing away coke that isn't there—    that he wishes he remembered to buy.    *    yeah,    that's...    true.    um.    (    ...    )    y'know,    when i—    when i lived in,    um,    london?    i was engaged.    t'    this girl.    um.    her name's...    lorena.    n'    we were—    gonna get married n',    um,    move away.    from everything.    but she broke—    she broke it off.    uh.

RE⠀*⠀:⠀ [an affirming nod and not much else, with quiet assurance that there wasn’t any need for more in any case,]   It does. Oscar Quinton sounds like he would throw a fifty at the valet’s face and tell him to get out of his sight.   (…)   Being married does not mean much. Or at all. You get a ring out of it. That must be nice. Not practical, but expensive.               @prodiqal

heh,    yeah...    yeah,    it—    it does.    um.    (    ...    )    monica's s'posed to um,    get married soon.    i dunno when but—    yeah.    um.    gonna be the,    the first t'    get...    married.

——        ...          RE⠀*⠀:⠀ [his shaky inhale vacuums what was left of in the stuffy room to begin with and he says something, in stuttering apology, a faithful slave to sentiment. the little dress she wears smalls in comparison to the patches of red and purple scrawled across her body the way a child would toy across pristine walls with a crayon to make a scene of color, passion, a parent’s eyesore— and **** *** feels more naked in the faux flesh caging her in than she ever did in her whole life. the morning sun peaks through the curtains she bought with last month’s tight budgeting, but none of the light seems to land on their crawling persons.]   But you did not do anything.               @prodiqal

'm not—    'm not joking.    'm serious.    i got...    you got wrapped up in,    um,    all this    'cause of me.    you can't keep—    i can't keep puttin'    you in...    in danger.

[   7:06 ⁽ ᴬᴹ ⁾   ]          ——        ...          RE⠀*⠀:⠀ I am hardly good. Or Love. Or someone to apologize to. You are just as funny as the day we first met.                @prodiqal

[ silence. yes, he liked the movie with the dogs very much. he can't argue there. he can only hold onto her, and rest his form against hers. ] okay. i like that movie.

——        ...          RE⠀*⠀:⠀ Do not be sorry. I want to stay today. Tomorrow too. We will watch the movie with the dogs that you like. I cannot miss out on the movie with the dogs that you like.               @ilokind

sorry. i won't make you stay tomorrow. i'm really sorry. you don't have to stay now if you don't want to, even. it's up to you. 

——        ...          RE⠀*⠀:⠀ Oscar Altieri.   [she knew a couple of oscars: one from the dry cleaners she tried to make conversation with not once but twice, about two she met briefly on her way home on february 9th after a briefly seeing mister crawford and another by the end of seventeenth street who occasionally occupied a piss–pooled corner to make a few cents to their name by doing just about anything. there were plenty of oscars in her life. would be, too, even after meeting oz. but none of the defining factors of binding knowledge of other oscars across the city seemed to distract **** from the fact that knowing oz, as oscar, or whatever else his name could have been, made everything surrounding them at that very moment make a little more sense than they did just seconds before.]   My name is Love. Legally, Love Mok.   (…)   I do not know much else. How much I weighed when I was born. Why my parents named me Love. My parents.   [to make something out of nothing required so much of the hundred and fifteen dollars worth of savings and a literal handful of coupons she had to her name. but it was somehow enough. love’d make it enough.]   But I am Love. That, I am sure of.                @prodiqal

*    what could have been a poor attempt at a smile falls hard,    falls fast,    once he realises the question burning his throat has actually escaped.    glassy eyes grow wide,    stare at his friend for a moment too long,    &    he's convinced she stares back at him like he is responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocent people.    back hits the brick wall behind him as he shifts his weight from one leg to the other,    his crouched position preventing the ends of his coat from collecting the dirt    &    grime off of the street.    *    yeah,    i didn't...    um.    think i—    (    ...    )    d'you know    /my/    name?    did i—    tell you?    *    he can't remember anymore.    he can barely remember the last week,    let alone months ago.    *    i...    's—    's oz.    oscar,    um,    legally.    (    ...    )    oscar altieri.

[   1:47 ⁽ ᴬᴹ ⁾   ]          ——        ...          RE⠀*⠀:⠀ [evening respite is dimly lit by artificial glow of skyline windows, each harboring anonymous debauchery. little perversions and ill–intent swept behind locked doors and drawn curtains to grow grow bloated with avarice, the lewd stench seeping into backstreets to cling to the the fabric of passerby like a bad tobacco habit and looms to create a cartoonishly grey cloud over their two unsuspecting forms hunched over asphalt. hunched over like unsuspecting incests unaligned with any idyllic literary meaning, small enough to see only one another as the only people – things – to see when the rest of the world is too big, too intimidating. her cheeks feel a little less hollow when **** mutters:]   You never asked until now.              @prodiqal

⟢    |  stinka!

/    slay

* / bae

——        ...          RE⠀*⠀:⠀ [   oz speaks as he usually does; in a cacophony of stammering which eventually shimmies out into glaring white noise the longer it takes him to lose the enthusiasm to begrudgingly entertain the thought that they may even be spared even a moment’s notice of significance. and static once more. her eyes do not leave him, or the similar stutter in his hands as they rummage through dirtied sheets, before landing on the sole brown box by the intersection of two walls.   ]   It is by the pillow.   [   her own set of essentials, coincidentally filling up the entirety of one generous cardboard box all the same, sit in ****’s cold embrace. a second passes. she closes the door and thinks it best she make herself comfortable. **** sits the espresso machine that costed more than half of her life savings and the sepia tinted box down, and joins them to the left– legs crossed and comfortable. or as comfortable as they could get by the hardwood of the nth floor. but still, comfortable.   ]               @prodiqal

robbed—?    no,    i just.    don't...    — d'you need...    there's a um.    a box in the corner,    you can...    if you need it.    your can have it.    for—    um.    your clothes.    *    the air for talking escapes his lungs after his elongated offer,    &    oz sits on the mattress,    rummaging through piles of dirty clothes.    *    the fuck is my...    my lighter—?

*   Heeeeeeeey………