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rel124c41 · 8 months ago

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NARC. floyd leech

It’s a chance to prove yourself again … and to ignore this godforsaken craving for a burger.

tags: mafia au, blood and injury, mild sexual content, organized crime, emotionally repressed, food issues, nonconsensual kissing, & post-betrayal

word count: 9436

You pluck a glass of red wine from a tray. Shoulders gliding past a humanoid Cthulhu, you pour the blood-hued liquid down your snorkel and sample the taste of dry wine. It is a Pinot. Gratefully for this, you take care to pour a bit more in your snorkel. Though, just as you duck under the wayward stretch of a shark’s gesturing, cigar-holding hand, – smoke from a White Russian cigar furling out of his rubber lips like crisp, morning fog that a ship must part through – Jesus asks, scandalized, in your ears, “Are you drinking on the job?”

The wine halts its descent down your throat. Holding (almost choking on) the liquid in your mouth, your eyes momentarily widen in surprise. You throw your head back and down what is left in your snorkel, because it is necessary to communicate with an empty mouth. “I thought you said you didn’t have any eyes in here.”

No one can really blame you for how your own eyes start to flutter around the room, like tracking an energetic butterfly.

“I took the precaution of sending Rook to plant S.T.Y.X. cameras in the ballroom. I, however, did not know I would have to take any precaution against one of my spudlings being inebriated,” Jesus chastises.

Caught red-handed, you feel heat crawl up your face. “ …It’s just one drink, boss.” Even though it is soft, you can still clearly hear that admonishing huff of breath come through your ear-piece while your personal Jesus – your boss, Schoenheit – breathes with affront. You decide that you will hold the cordial glass for the rest of the night as decoration rather than drinking it.

“One too many.” The words are so cold that you feel a shell of frostbite coat your earlobe. “I expect your greatest performance, Potato. The audience is very bilious tonight.”

Bilious, as in bad-tempered. For a moment, it feels the weight of the world socks you in the ear. That you know too well. Whether they are actually watching through the S.T.Y.X. footage back home or are simply holding up an ear to tomorrow’s whispering grapevine, the audience is upset with you.

If tonight’s performance does not go well, there will be no more stage for you. The next time you appear to the audience, it will be on your curtain call. You imagine Rook (under Schoenheit’s instructions) taking a knife to your throat with all the poise of a violinist playing its instrument, the red notes splattered across the leather seats.

The thought makes you yearn to down the rest of the Pinot.

Instead, you find an appetizer table to stand by inconspicuously. And though you have already been stricken by the sight (which caused you to even grab a drink!) you glare upwards with a furrowed brow, through the polycarbonate sheets of your swim-goggles, towards the second floor.

Above the ballroom is a circular platform walkway, connected to the ground by two spiral staircases. Leaning on the golden railing that twists like interlocking peppermint canes, the left hand man of Ashengrotto fiddles with a single drumstick. It propels through his hand like a miniature helicopter blade, spinning effortlessly. Sullen and bored, his eyes flicker all across the ballroom to find a crumb of entertainment. In Floyd’s right ear, Ashengrotto is talking – yet most likely being ignored too.

His outfit is … juvenile. (the sneer blooming on your face is natural) Unlike the other attendants, the eel-mer is simply dressed in a graphic tee – your HUF graphic tee with Spider-man and Venom on it – and sweats. There is a ketchup or tomato soup or blood stain on your shirt’s collar. A pair of Monty Python bunny slippers peek out from the pooling, gray fabric around his ankles. The ears flop as he squirms back and forth on his feet.

Ashengrotto is dressed much better – an expensive, freshly pressed notch lapel suit of cobalt and swirling violet – but it is still very different from the fool’s play that is happening below them. You survey the crowd wearing rubber fish masks, diving equipment that conceals their faces, and any other variation of deep sea disguises. The ocean tonight is full of sycophants..

Most people think an Ashengrotto masquerade is the zenith of high society. Tabloids have waxed poetry about the ‘nocturnal beauty of a deep sea labyrinth where desires are found in nebulous waves’ and how the masks give ‘a thrilling sense that we are all drowned, wayward souls brought together in harmony under his glorious might’. You know better. That flowery poesy is a mere facade in a game of facades. Ashengrotto likes to throw these masquerades so often because he likes to laugh at others who unquestionably follow his every whim or will.

Schoenheit has informed you that Ashengrotto is a schadenfreude. Not too fluent in German, you asked for the translation. The two jigsaw puzzle words of schaden, which is damage, and fruede, which is joy, connect to make schadenfreude. It means Ashengrotto experiences emotional pleasure at the sight of others misfortune.

‘There is no better sight to Ashengrotto than the sight of some poor, unfortunate soul begging on their knees at his doorstep. You would do well to remember that, Potato.’

Remember it you shall and you have. One drink is not enough to send you to your knees or make you beg. However, to Schoenheit, sipping a drop of wine tilts the scale in favor of the one-out-of-ten chance of you walking up there, blowing your cover, and smashing the empty glass in Floyd’s face.

Instead of doing that, you ask conversationally, “When was a covenant struck with the Shrouds?” You wish Schoenheit would have more trust in you, but you are well aware you lost that trust. Waiting for an answer, your eyes search the environment for those mentioned cameras.

“When you were out of commission.”

All of your limbs flinch at that, as if you have just taken a bite of the world’s sourest lemon. “Ah.”

How altruistic of Schoenheit to remind you.

Being out of commission was very unlike you. For five years, you have known Schoenheit; for four, you have worked for him. In that time, sick days were once-in-a-lifetime events. You pride yourself on how effectively you worked because, for three years, you have known Schoenheit’s face and for two years, you had been in the upgraded position from canon-fodder to information recon.

Then, for one whole year, you had … well, you rather not say. Speaking it would be like swallowing a bouquet of roses but without the petals and solely the thorns. At the very least, you inform Schoenheit on new information, just in case he has not seen it on the cameras, “He’s here, boss.”

“Ah.” At least both of you are dealing with this in stride. After that faint whisper, the earpiece fixated tightly on your snorkel is quiet for a few moments. In that time, you stumble into a memory.

As the kunai slams into the wall by the door’s opening entrance, emitting a sharp warning bang, you announce to your uninvited guests, “If it’s the mailman, you can leave the package by the grocery bags like normal. If you’re here to stop my heart, someone’s already beat ya to the kill.” With that said, you let your deceased arm drop and fall limp on your mattress.

“And if it’s your boss?”

Wincing, you respond, “ … ah, I supposed you’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” Schoenheit says primly as you hear your apartment door close.

Though he says nothing, you can hear Schoenheit’s eyes flickering across each item of a break-up vomited across your single room apartment. Ah, where to even start? The snow white vivisection of the beheaded bear that he made for you at Build-A-Bear? How about the dart board where a handful of porcupine quill darts stick out of a five-tiered photo of you and him squeezed tight in an arcade’s photobooth? Yet, who could neglect to look at the real ruins of the relationship which is you, spread out like a starfish on your bed, eyes raccoon-ed with running mascara and insomnia?

After scrutinizing over the heartbreak hurricane that has torn through the room, Schoenheit starts to make his way over to you. It only takes a second to recognize that he did not come alone. You hear a second pair of shoes. “Oh, mon cher,” Rook says sullenly.

At least you don’t have to turn your head to see who it is. Body comatose in dolor, you cannot be bothered to move an atom of yourself besides the hand that feeds yourself and your bunny a bowl of carrots.

You hear one of your two superiors seat themselves at your bar as Oswald nibbles an orange stalk from your fingers. “How long do you think you have been here?”

“Must be more than a couple days, three?” You put a carrot in your mouth as you wait for the reveal.

“A week and a day,” Schoenheit supplies the answer. Then, he repeats chastising, “A full eight days.”

“Hm,” you hum, just as acknowledgement to let him know that you heard him. Eight days seems so insignificant. You press another carrot to Oswald’s lips as he takes it in his chattering teeth. As the ebon Havana whittles the vegetable down to nothing, you depress your fingers down onto his fur, feeling the vibrations of his nibbling on your chest.

Eight days? If you had the energy to scoff, you would be up in Schoenheit’s face with the loudest, most scornful scoff he has ever heard in his life, a scoff that would have the academy sending you home with a performing arts award.

Eight days is nothing!

Your apartment goes quiet for a beat. Unsure which one has previously sat down at the bar countertop, you listen to the single pair of footsteps that walks around the wreckage. Crunching glass murmurs in the air. Again, you are unsure on whether one of your two superiors has picked up a photograph frame you bludgeon to bits or has accidentally stepped on the skeleton remains of a ceramic plate you two painted downtown at some rickety pottery studio.

You bloodlet a year worth of your time for him. He left. So, you broke everything that could be a reminder of stolen seconds, minutes, and hours – even though it does not reverse the clock at all – to cement the finiteness.

No going back: that is what you wanted your destruction to symbolize. You know that is not where your feelings lie. Reversing time is all you want to do. All your love and longing is strapped to you like a huge hiking bag, and you cannot find it in yourself to shoulder off that paralysis-esque weight. Thus, it crushes you, much like how Oswald crushes down on your sternum when he starts to make biscuits.

“Do you plan to make it nine?”

That rouses you enough where you stop looking at the ceiling and drop your cheek on the right side of the bed. Schoenheit is the one sitting at your bar. Plucked straight from a vogue magazine, your boss looks like Jesus himself with his shoulder-length hair. His halo is the light shining in your set of a dozen, upside down cordial glasses. Like sleeping bats, they hang from your iron mounted, wine glass rack and cover him in evangelical sunshine. Your personal Jesus who came to console you after a break-up.

“I don’t know,” you verbalize. Moodiness makes you brave. “Why don’t you stay for the next twenty-four hours and find out?” You put another carrot in your mouth, intending to turn back to staring at the ceiling when, “Ew, bunny hair.” You flick your tongue up and down, trying to dislodge the stray black hair.

Chuckling with a dangerous undertow, Schoenheit says, “I wish I could but I have much better things to do with my time than watch you eat your pet’s hair. Time should not be wasted. I know, Potato, that you can use your time more wisely than this.”

Oswald’s hair finally out of your mouth, you bite back, “No, I’m quite content doing this forever.” This time you take care to brush your fingers on the edge of your shirt to rub off pet fur before you reach back into the bowl.

“Well, I tried to be gentle about it.”

Oswald is plucked off your lap. You give a noise of protest when the rabbit is handed to Rook. That noise is effectively silenced when a disposable syringe tip is placed on the skin folding over your carotid artery. Not yet pressing it, just a small apply of pressure to remind you of its existence.

Your slow blink is confronted by the blink of awe that rinses over Schoenheit’s face, thoroughly shocked at your lack of reaction. In the grand scheme of things, eight days truly is nothing. And, in the grand scheme of things, death really is nothing. “I loved him, Schoenheit.” You have no idea what could possibly be in the syringe. Poison made by your boss has made men weighing two hundred plus pounds drop in seconds and has made others dissolve into a bubbling puddle of red.

Thus, you continue on, bitter and thoroughly hurt, “I loved him like a garden loves the sun and rain. I loved him like a guitar loves making music. I loved him like … oh, I don’t know. More than anything really.”

“The sustenance from a kiss is a fertilizer like no other! From each replenishing embrace, a flower grows in the garth of our hearts! What a beautiful seraphim love is! A free spirited angel of our making! Some might even say finding love is like finding Heaven on Earth! Que c'est beau!”

“You’re not helping.”

“Ah, je suis désolé,” Rook apologizes, switching his energy outlet from an impromptu poetry slam to brushing Oswald’s fur in neat sections.

Schoenheit’s eyes are testy as they regard you. Two rich pools of orchid violet dissect you from the top layer of epidermis down to your bone. You are very curious to what those keen eyes could be seeing in the decrepit, disgraceful state you are in. Is there anything left to salvage from you or are you a lost cause (a potted plant, too withered to revive)?

You flinch when the syringe goes in. It feels like pinching skin between metal. As mysterious fluid flows through your carotid artery, you listen to Schoenheit’s lecture, “He has stolen from me something that was in your possession. Something that I trusted you to keep safe. That I cannot forgive.”

When the syringe is pulled out, you offer nothing more than a wince. You want to be a smartass and ask, no bandage?, but you continue to listen on. “Diligence. Excellence. Relentlessness. Those three values are what Pomefiore is founded upon.” The cap clips over the empty needle of the syringe. “I have full confidence in you that those are memorized in your mind. Yes?” Those orchid lakes seem to grow bottomless and nebulous. Which of the Greek Gods must you never look in the eyes?

Jesus pulls back from your coffin-bed. Oswald is put back on your chest like a bundle of flowers.

“The heart is flexible. There is always a place to make new love.”

You have no idea what is in the syringe but you sit up in bed, feeling refreshed like one does after a long shower or long nap.

After they leave, on your countertop and under the hanging wine glasses is a ticket to Ashengrotto’s upcoming masquerade along with three vials of swirling colors that move like tiny lava lamps of blue, red, and yellow.

“Remind him, Potato.”

So caught up in memory-lane, you startle because who are you supposed to remind? And remind them of what? Jesus (the actual Jesus, not your boss), did a week out of commission really have you in such disarray?

Yet, you know each intricate circumstance that leaves your nerves so shot. Just like you know exactly where freckle is on his back, the exact hues that blend together to make up the color of his contrasting, gazing eyes, and just like you know the print his teeth leave behind when he bites down. All that information is left in high, extensive detail in the files of your mind.

Luckily, Schoenheit was only beginning his sentence with Remind him, Potato. You listen to the rest of his words and commit them to memory. “That he is not the only one on the stage. You are there too. On the same stage.”

You inhale a tiny planet of air. Steeling yourself, you take one last glance up to the second floor. The only person who could recognize your face from the casting call of tonight’s performance stands up there, picking his nose with his pinkie like a child. Tonight is just: him, you, and this wire.

The objective of tonight – in order to proceed to the main objective – is to find someone to inject with a syringe.

You have exactly three. Blue, red, and yellow. Three plastic vials that are hidden in a pocket professionally stitched inside the inner wrist of your suit. Nestled together like newborn bunnies nursing, they lie in that pocket and await the moment you take out the needle from your boutonnière.

It is an impossible task to bypass security into an Ashengrotto masquerade. Without fail, guests are scanned down for metal lingering on their bodies. Thus, creative liberties need to be taken to complete Schoenheit’s wish. Underneath the rose pinned on your suit are three needles. They blend together with the metal found in a boutonnière, and that disguise allows you to perform on stage.

A brief [Aside], they also do not check shoes here with their metal scanners.

Each vial has a different job for tonight. Blue, red, and yellow. All your primaries gathered together underneath the veins on your non-dominant wrist.

If injected, blue will cause a seizure unlike the likes anyone has seen before, causing bones to climb into directions thought impossible of anatomy as the victim crawls upward for heavenly salvation. If injected, red will cause the punctured spot to dissolve, flesh dripping away to reveal bone that falls away like a melted jar of sugar. If injected, yellow will cause any wounds to heal, reversing all damage no matter how grotesque or twisted out of proportion.

The best thing about them is there is no need for a syringe. As soon as the needle pierces something, the liquid is pulled out of the plastic by its own fate. Right now, you look around for a masked individual (anyone besides Ashengrotto and Floyd) to empty the blue one into.

It has to be a distraction of magnetic caliber. Everyone’s focus needs to be pulled, even those of the most insignificant waiter to Ashengrotto himself. No matter what, it has to be compelling and spellbinding.

Which is why you chose a man wearing a diver’s helmet. So when his Herculean head inevitably falls, it will cause a loud clank! that is heard all the way from the second floor.

It is why your conspiracy starts off delicate; the femme/homme fatale simply spreading out their influence in subtle ways. You only know you had him ensnared in your web when the arm you are running a hand upon relaxes, his previous flinch and tension melting like a peppermint in the mouth. You flutter your eyelashes at him from behind your goggles.

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you; I was simply hoping to get the hors d'oeuvre in front of you.” You retract your hand but not without giving his elbow a teasing squeeze.

It is difficult to deduct any sort of thought from the impenetrability of his costume. Sealed away by blue-rusted brown copper, his ‘face’ is a tenebrous ebony with the words Anchor Engineering, 1913 as his temple and then as his chin. Unperturbed, you stare lovingly into the cold, lifeless circle.

He side-steps but does not leave. That’s good. As you masterfully pluck a shrimp square off the lazy susan, you make sure to turn your victim. Act uninterested in the food. Look at him as if he is your next meal.

“They always serve such extravagant, authentic seafood here. It feels as if I am truly dipping my hand into the Coral Sea and reeling in my meal from those very waters. Don’t you agree?”

The helmet sways up and down in a slow nod. His body underneath is like a statue.

You take half a bite of the shrimp square. It is an explosion of flavor; the bread, sauce, and meat combines into one sophisticated umami that excites your tastebuds. When you finish chewing, actually genuinely pleased with your bite, you hum out, “köstlich!”

And whatever fleeting interest this stranger has with you is amplified, if only by a slim margin. That flat black circle that reminds you of a bottomless fishing hole in northern ice tilts, curious at your words. A smile graces your face.

“Do you speak any German?” The helmet goes back and forth in a negative response. “I’ve picked up a bit of German in my teens. A beautiful language. Köslitch, a pretty word, no?”

His body language is poised with interest. Thank Jesus, he must think you are something exotic and seductive. That intrigue will solidify his fate. “In German, it has a double meaning.”

You finish your shrimp then continue, “It means both funny and delicious. You would call a certain snack köslitch in the same way you would call someone that makes you laugh köslitch. I think,” — Here, you grab his hand. It is ungloved and a bit coarse. Meaty in your slim hand. Gingerly, you pull his hand up towards your mouth, making sure your breath hits across each of his knuckles — “, that you could fit both meanings.”

Then, mimicking a centipede with sharp pincers, you bite hard upon his index finger. And, with both hands cradling his single hand, you slip the needle piercing the blue vial into his exposed wrist. A crescent mark of teeth lingers on the top notch of his finger.

“I’ve always had this secret yen for funny guys.” The black hole leans forward, intense. “Meet me in the bathroom on the second floor in ten minutes.”

Yet, walking away, you know the diver only has five minutes of oxygen left in his tank.

“Ya never had a burger?”

Even though, yes, you did just previously confirm that, Floyd’s awestruck words leave you wide-eyed. You are in disbelief over how … in disbelief he sounds! Lips on his cheek, lipstick-staining activity halting momentarily, you ask, “Is it really that hard to believe?”

“It’s almost impossible to believe!”

You chuckle with a dumb grin. Used to his dime-flipping moods, you lean in to continue peppering his face with kisses. Arms already around his neck, you pull him just a few more centimeters down so you speak into his ear. “Well, we just gonna have to order one after we fuuuck.”

Despite the chuffing link you have with your arms around his neck and with your legs around his waist – your crotch rubbing eagerly and teasingly up against his! – Floyd pulls back from you. It is almost comedical the look of sheer devastation of his lipstick polka-dotted face; would be too if you were not so astronomically horny. “Never? Like never never?”

Oh God, this is going to be a whole thing. “I don’t know. Maybe as a kid? Come here.” You tighten your legs around his waist when he tries to pull himself up from your apartment’s bed. Doubling down, you fasten your pace a bit when grinding down upon his crotch, feeling the familiar shape of his penis in his sweats moving against you so nicely. “Forget burgers. I want a different kind of meat.”

“I can’t just forget something like that! Who the hell grows up without eatin’ a burger!”

How you desperately wish to reverse time when his steadyfast words reach your ears. There is a determined fixation in his voice. You let your arms fall by your head as Floyd’s hands squeeze your ass; he’s now no longer reciprocating in your grinding. Putting on your best pouting face like a young actor desperate for the role, you whine, “If I knew you were going to be like this, I would have said yes.”

“But seriously, how have ya not?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t something my parents made and now I’m on this caloric diet that has me eating whole foods.”

“A hamburger is a whole food. It’s a whole cow.”

“Ugh, I don’t know! Can we please have sex!”

You throw your head back in exasperation. Legs fall down by your side. Floyd had the munchies after coming back from your bowling date, so you thought it would be nice to brainstorm aftercare options for dinner together — ping-ponging between the idea of ordering takeout or going somewhere. Curse you and your big, dumb mouth.

“Nope! We’re goin’ out again!”

Just like that, he is skirting around your apartment to pick up the graphic tee he shucked off. His Neckface dunks are already hooked on the edge of his fingers when you sit up, readjusting your wrinkled shirt. You need to fix your cosmetics. However, when your hand falls around the oyster-shell of your compact mirror, your other hand is grabbed.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Floyd cheers, half-dragging you to the door. He is ignorant to your distress as the compact-mirror slips from your grip, soap-esque. “Me and my brother used to go to this place all the time. They do this whole burger of the week thing; it’s like pun-based burgers. My brother kept going back for the jokes, but I just think the grub’s good. You’ll love them! The owner’s super nice and I met his wife and kids –!”

“Floyd.” Your feet digging into the carpet finally grabs his attention. His face is equivalent to a giant question mark. “I need to check my face.”

The blank look on his face is wiped by him moving his dual-colored eyes up and down, surveying the area. His reply is genuine. “Looks fine to me, babe.” A mischievous gleam comes to his irises as he chuckles, “It’s a real sexy face. Even sexier when it’s moanin’ my name.”

Hope flares up in you. Maybe, just maybe, you can drag him back to the bed.

“Yeah, baby?” You slur huskily before pulling him into a deep kiss.

Floyd always kisses well. Somewhere in the middle of it, he spins you. Towards the bed? Hope is dashed when you hear the click of your apartment door, realizing you two are on the opposite side of it. Your boyfriend giggles the entire way down to the lobby, having successfully duped you.

The burger joint is built like a tiny house or a big shed, depending on how you view its humble spot in the universe. With the sun starting to set, the owners have powered on the string of lights crawling like a march of ants across the tiny house’s soffit. The unique footprint of Floyd’s car engine is already recognized before you enter. And, when you are seated, the waitress already knows not to ask for Floyd’s order (“He won’t order anythin’. Just trusts the slobs in the back to bring him something good.”) and the waiter claps him so hard on the shoulder you are afraid Floyd’s thin frame would break (“Haven’t seen you in a whole month! Where you been?” – here, the waiter stops and looks at you – “… and you are trying to hide things from us now?”). The energy is so light that you cannot stop yourself from leaning over your shared appetizer, waffle fries.

“You failed to mention you're a local celebrity here, you know? Warn a girl/boy before you bring them to somewhere where they’re rolling out the proverbial red carpet for them” you say, fishing a fry out of the greasy basket. You really should have done your face.

“What,” unlike you, Floyd talks with his mouth half full of words and the other half full of food, “everyone here is super lowkey.”

“I think the entire world is lowkey from your perspective.” You dot your sentence by dipping the waffle fry in the shared ketchup. “I feel like everyone is dissecting me.”

Floyd looks back again at the bar where everyone seems to be oblivious to your conversation, so deep and entangled in their own. “Nah, I don’t feel it.” And before you can refute, Floyd reaches over and bumps your chin with his finger, causing you to miss your bite. Your worry is forgotten as you dabbing your face with a napkin, laughing threats about taking the entire basket if he plays dirty with his food anymore.

At an appropriate time, your food arrives from the kitchen. It is set down on the table and this time, instead of Floyd’s shoulder being clapped, his hair is ruffled. Juice spills over the edge of the lower bun, soaking into the yeast. The bun seems to radiate its own heat as you pick up your burger – Knife to Meet You Burger (comes with thinly sliced beets) – and bring it towards your mouth.

“You eat with your pinkies up?”

Lower jaw still hanging open, you glance at Floyd. He has already taken two large bites of his burger, a ketchup mustache decorating his face. My, he really does not care about his appearance. “Hmmm?” You look down to see that your pinkies are in fact raised like two little horns.

A laugh comes out of your mouth. It has been ages since you’ve eaten finger food other than fries or maybe some whole wheat crackers. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

Floyd smiles, fond. “Cute.”

The clang as metal helmet meets ground sends a shockwave through the masquerade. A woman shrieks; when a man starts to yell out if anyone shrouded in mysterious masks might just be a doctor by chance, you make your way up the stairs.

It won’t take you long to decipher the code. The potion Schoenheit gave you yesterday heightened your senses. Hearing each click of a correct turn on the safe’s dial will be easy. Like how elevated your sight and smell are, there is a certain air about you.

Despite the entire prologue, you feel good. Heartbreak might be the costume cemented upon you in this masquerading parade but you are still capable. Pomefiore’s disciples always seek to be their best.

As you slip into Ashengrotto’s bedroom like a breeze, removing your snorkel, you forget in your joy of elevated sensations how your own heavy scent carries on the wind.

Just as the safe opens, the door to Ashengrotto’s bedroom opens.

It is a bit hard to shoulder your apartment door open with arms full of groceries, five ringlets of plastic hanging on for dear life on each of your forearms, but you still manage to do it.

Today, the click of the door seems a smidgen louder than normal. It is probably because of how you need to use your spine and hip to push open the wooden slab. Blissfully unaware your key did not manage to unlock the door on the first try like you thought, you rotate yourself so you walk into your small apartment chest first.

You would have flicked on the lights if you did not spot movement in a place that is definitely not where your bunny cage is. Five grocery bags sliding off your right arm, you hold out your second kunai, pinched in your hand.

The first kunai you throw lands a few centimeters from the man who is crouching down by your slide-open closet door, piercing the birch wood.

You take care to put down the groceries bags on your left arm. You have lettuce, eggs, and bananas in those. Hand still aimed, the point of the kunai trained straight at the spot where the intruder is, you take your non-dominant hand and turn on the lights.

“Floyd?”

Standing up – the files detailing Schoenheit’s jury tampering where two of Kingscholar’s men were killed by Schoenheit’s men and then the failed narcotics conspiracy sentence to imprison one of Ashengrotto’s men (files that could get Schoenheit arrested in the wrong hands (his) and files that could get Ashengrotto arrested in the right hands (your boss’s)) in his dominant left hand – Floyd gives you a fleeting once over. He looks as if all of your time spent together was erased from his memory. As if he has successfully forgotten it.

“It’s nothing personal, Shrimpy. Just business.”

The door of Ashengrotto’s bedroom fully opens and knocks you back into the present.

He looks handsome.

To be fair, his face has always looked handsome. He has looked handsome curling into your blankets, hair unbrushed and laughing. He has looked handsome picking you up in his car, cheek soft and squished on his steering wheel. He has looked handsome eating a burger with you, face dotted with a melange of sauce and crumbs. He looks handsome, staring down at you now.

Shock – in the terms of upsetting events that surprise you like a deer in highlights – is something Schoenheit has trained out of your system. The only man who does not act is a dead man. So, when you launch yourself to your feet, you fully anticipate getting the first punch in.

Only to be caught so off guard when your ex-boyfriend cuffs both your wrists in one large hand and sends your face reeling back in whiplash due to the connecting embrace his other hand delivers.

It feels like a spider blooming. That animal is all you can use to describe the sensation of being punched. The egg-shaped body of the arthropod is the spot where the nose lands – directly on your nose – and the spreading flame of pain is like a thousand legs stretching over your face.

A teardrop trails down the heated surface of your face as you gather your bearings. Or is it blood from a nostril? You cannot check the color of the watery drop because Floyd still has your two wrists prisoner in his single hand. With a grimace and hateful eyes, you turn so you may face him. Gaze upon his handsome face and deem it ugly.

“Shit. I didn’t mean ta hit ya that hard.” The whiplash you are receiving tonight is like a rollercoaster! Full of so many ups and downs, just like you would expect of Floyd. Still, you cannot help the look of pure dumb shock that paints itself over your face as you are suddenly fussed over.

When the hand that punched you tenderly touches your broken nose, you reel back with a growl.

“Get your hands off me!”

The files are still in your hand when you pull back. Like a magnetized magnet, Floyd follows in your desperate attempt to escape the bind he has upon you. You waste no time in clicking your heels, gaining an extra inch under your left sole. If that idiot won’t let go, you’ll force it. Left soles now sprouting a field of spikes, you bring your foot up and kick him hard in the abdomen.

Floyd falls back. The papers rustle. The click of your heels is like the tongue of a dragon sparking up a breath of fire. As his footing stumbles, you kick up and cut a long slash across his cheek and down to his lips with the knife sticking out the top of your right sole.

“Shit,” Floyd shouts as his body collides and closes the door.

When you pull your fingertips back from your face, you see that the drop from earlier was certainly blood.

Then, for a moment, you and Floyd observe each other. Intensely, both of your eyes take to tracking over the features previously known so intimately. Your eyes squint with so much vitriol that Floyd almost blurs in your vision. But, you are eating up the gourmet image of him, blood curling down the left side of his face much like the black strand curls down his right.

He smiles that familiar smile. “Hi, Shrimpy-baby.”

“...”

“Ya know, I never told ya this, but I always had this secret yen for the feisty ones.”

“Don’t spew that shit at me, you asshole.”

What a wicked game he played with you. To burrow into your life like a plump, devouring mite that took to digging deeper into the soil of your garden. A year of love is too convoluted of a scheme for a man of his ever-changing disposition to do, yet he did it. In doing so, he has destroyed your belief in the very concept of love.

This time around, you are much more unsure if the drop falling down your face is a tear or blood.

“Ya … You smell the same.” Confusion flickers over your face, so Floyd continues, “Didn’t think you’d be wearin’ the same perfume. Was almost positive I wouldn’t smell it again. Shit stinks.”

My, what a compliment. Like a practiced magician, you go to pull a syringe out from underneath your cufflink when surprise paralyzes you. Cheekbones burns as Floyd perfectly recites the French name – you distantly him saying how much he hated that language – of your perfume.

“Comme Des Garçons Avignon.” Then he names the top notes. “Smells like Roman chamomile, elemi, and incense.” Then he finishes off with, “Ya spray like twelve puffs on yourself. And ya always make sure to get in on your inner wrist before rubbin’ it into your neck.”

“There’s something evil in you.” Disgust coats your tongue as you shake your head back and forth. Why can’t he just vanish off the face of the earth? Or at least walk back into the masquerade so you can finish your job.

You cannot face the ugly truth that you still love him.

Floyd’s eyes flicker down to the ground … or perhaps only to analyze the files in your hand. All the same, a shadow falls over his features. It reminds you of each time his body shut down when emotions got too big, resemblant of powering off electronics. His next words are less confident than how he described your habits and perfume in detail. Whispering, he insists, “You should be in my life.”

What is he talking about? Your head continues shaking, almost stuck in that action. You were in his life. Both of you were so intimately entangled with one another’s life. That sentiment is now completely unrealistic; this cavern between you will never heal.

“I hate you,” you whisper, just before closing the distance.

There is a foreign sentiment you know pretty well despite the language gap. Bilingual because of Schoenheit and his right hand man, you pick up French and German much like how a child picks up alluring shells on the shoreline. You carry them in the pail of your brain. Naturally, you cannot stop one from floating to the surface as pallid plaster coats your knuckles.

Qui aime bien, châtie bien. Who loves well, punishes well.

In its original meaning, it relates to the idea that as your love grows older, you become well versed in teasing. More comfortable in your aging relationship, certain barriers fall away from the heart. The nautilus shell falls away to reveal the soft, vulnerable body of slime. Teasing happens. Tough love is natural. Right now though, as your hand clenched around a syringe falls in a diagonal arch, you use the proverb in a much more literal way.

The popcorn wall dissolves under administration of the liquid. Red churns in the tube before magical magnetism pulls into the area of injection. Floyd ducks out of way just in time and makes a grab for the hand holding the files.

TITLE: THE TEXT MESSAGE ‘IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU’

INT. ASHENGROTTO’S BEDROOM

OPEN on two people fighting. One holds a stack of papers large enough to be a dictionary. The other is trying half-heartedly to steal those files back, but is mostly fixated on avoiding the onslaught of punches falling in his direction. The shuffle is a violent dance. Punches are thrown and dodged. Some connect and others miss. The only sound is the huff of measured breaths, exhaling when either FLOYD or YOU attack on offense.

The room is full of three main objects; a safe, a bed, and a dresser underneath a large mirror.

FLOYD.

(exuberantly)

You’ve been holdin’ back on me. I didn’t know you could fight like this.

YOU.

…

FLOYD.

C’mon, Shrimpy, don’t be like that. Woah!

YOU

Do you ever shut up?

FLOYD.

I’d like it if you made me. Aren’t little spiders supposed to neutralize their prey with venom?

YOU.

Aren’t little eels supposed to bite their prey with teeth? … Did it feel good? Building me up to tear me down?

FLOYD.

It was just business. It had nothing ta do with us.

A punch connects with the side of FLOYD’s face. As he stumbles, a swinging leg sends his torso falling onto the dresser. It rattles like a hundred bones in a coffin shakened like a child’s birthday present.

YOU.

(voice raising)

Don’t lie again. I’m sick of being lied to by you!

FLOYD.

I never lied to you. I haven’t been lyin’ about a thing. It’s not fair that Vil gets to have ya.

YOU keep throwing punches, ignoring his words.

FLOYD, growing increasingly aggravated, abandons his position of defense. He pulls YOU in by the lapels of your suit, hoisting them up by sheer strength and slams them into the mirror above the dresser. Papers fall like autumn leaves and glass falls like snowflakes. Seen subtly behind them, a trail of blood coming from their pierced shoulders, rolling down the dresser’s side like one stretching snake of sanguine.

YOU twist yet are unable to escape the grasp.

FLOYD narrows his gold and olive brown eyes.

FLOYD. (CONT.)

I know everything about ya. I know ya can’t blow a bubble with gum. I know each mole and freckle on ya. And I know no matter how hard you try, your pinkies always go up when you eat a burger! So, you shouldn’t be with a lover who doesn’t know ya. Give him up. I can put in a good word with Azul; we could be back to how we used to be. It’s not fair that Vil gets to have you! I should have ya!

YOU

(shaking their head and laughing, haggard)

You don’t get to have me. – No-Not after what you did.

FLOYD

(angry)

You should be in my space! You should be in my life!

THE fight continues. A sharp sound much like a tongue clicking inside a mouth startles the audience. YOU press the left sole of their shoe into FLOYD’s abdomen and push back as hard as they can. A pained shout bleeds out his mouth. YOU, stumbling from the glass that managed to sink through their suit and into skin, goes to punch yet is blocked.

WITH a rough tug on YOU’s biceps, FLOYD pushes them both down to the ground. Pain flares across their back like one crashing wave. EXIT SCENE.

“Kiss me. Kiss me,” he pleads, his fingers digging so harshly into your skin that bruises will be there tomorrow. His voice is turbulent with so many emotions. “Just one. Just kiss me again.”

Fist enclosed on his shirt’s sternum, you push against him and try to rebuild the distance between you two. “Get off! Get off me, you psycho!” Each time he attempts to close the gap, you violently twist your lips away. Your body squirms like a desperate fly caught in a web. His lips collide with the corner of your lip and chin. You push back as hard as you can. “Get off me right – fucking! Floyd!”

The hands that left tomorrow’s bruises on your upper arms move to grip your writhing, wrinkled in anger face. He holds you still with tremendous strength, eye to eye. Each atom of your skull shakes with frustration. Gritted teeth almost seem to vibrate in your mouth. Despite your desperation to tear away and flee, Floyd keeps you pinned.

“I love you so much,” he confesses, dual-colored eyes brimming over. Emotion crinkles his voice. You want to scoff at his well-improvised act.

The scoff lands in Floyd’s mouth as he pulls you into a perilous kiss. Teeth act like iron gates. Closing him off from your love, you try to use each component of yourself to escape. Knees and fists curl up and push him away with fruitless strength. Nose wrinkles as if you smelt something horrid. When he tries to French-kiss you, you take the hand shoving at his chest to wrap your hand around his throat. A thumb presses hard in his trachea.

Floyd pulls back immediately, hacking and his spit flying through the air. There, you think, is your opening for freedom.

Your body rolls onto its side. You only get a shuffling inch or so away from him before he is laughing jubilantly, teeth gleaming in his mouth – Like he used to laugh at comedy shows, playing on your shitbox CRT, or like he used to laugh when breaking out into an impromptu dance, playing music and heartstrings in your kitchen. – “That’s my Shrimpy. Oh, I love you!”

Your fruitless escape is squashed as Floyd pulls you back into another kiss. This time he manages to slip his mouth past those iron gates.

According to songs, sparks fly when a kiss happens. In this moment, you feel like those sparks are not from joyous, amorous fireworks but a hundred plane engines blowing their transmission. Screaming into his mouth, you pull back so hard that your head splinters a crack into the wooden dresser behind you.

Floyd’s hands protectively cradle the back of your head after that. He rotates his body so his weight smothers. Your rotated body is once more flatten like a pancake. Lying by the dresser, you kiss – well, he kisses you. You are actively still fighting against it.

Curses and potions, you know them well. They are frequently used in your work. It is not unheard of to utilize ancient, outdated methods of magic to gain an upper hand in this dangerous tango of organized crime. Just like the Shrouds excel in technology, the Schoenheits excel in potions and curses. No matter how many charms cloaked over objects or potions brewed inside bubbling cauldrons, you have never been under a curse or tasted a potion more dangerous than love. It is the most potent, poisonous curse.

A wet drop falling from Floyd’s face falls on your cheek; tear or blood, who can tell? The next motion you make, you blame it upon the brain damage you sustained when knocking your head into the dresser’s bottom leg.

As you grab his hair and open those iron gates, you think, ‘Sorry Schoenheit.’

Slobbering into his mouth, like you are trying to fuse together, you explore the cave. Finding the familiar stalagmites of teeth and the moss spot where his canker sore from too many bedtime sodas or snacks laced with salt and vinegar. Teal hair is pulled at the root and your embrace feels more like a hook than a hand, yet Floyd still launches into the kiss with relief and excitement.

He is an everlasting object of motion. Unstoppable and breaking laws of psychics. He pushes his tongue further in, entwines it with yours. Each pressure point of contact is seductively bewitching. Floyd lets out a long, stretching groan like a widow mourning. The sound reverbs in the grottos of your interlocked mouths.

Hands flurry about in wild motion. You open up your legs and hold him pelvis to pelvis. His hands do not stop running up and down frantically from shoulders to waist. It is only because of this endless stream of movement that Floyd does not notice when you draw a Z across the back of his skull.

Pulling back from the kiss, you say a single word with closed eyes, “Somnum.”

Floyd’s own eyes fall shut and his body goes limp.

Like pushing away fallen rumble, you discard Floyd’s body to the side and bring yourself up to sitting on your knees. A shaky groan exits you. Fingers trembling from adrenaline, you smooth the pads of them over your nose – it is definitely broken – over your back – the material is wet with blood – and over your bottom lip – it radiates a soft heat. Ducking your head, you sigh.

Bewitched Sleep is one of the least complex curses. Just a simple swish of a finger writing a Z and a single Latin word, the chosen victim will fall under a temporary spell of sleep. Those guarded enough will be able to resist it though; casting a glance over at Floyd’s slumbering body, you reflect upon the notion that his iron gates must have been open the entire fight.

A glare passes over your face. It melts. Then, it comes back again stronger than before. “Such an asshole.” You bite at the air and push yourself up to your feet. One last time, you knock your heels together and the spikes underneath your left sole disappear. “You’re the most convincing actor of all, Floyd.”

It takes a while to gather up the mess of papers, shaking the glass off certain pages. Still, you pile them all back into the folder and check that none had swooped underneath the bed or dresser. As you go about collecting all the pages, you also pick up the snorkel you left by the safe. Holding it up to your ear, you say, “Have Epel send the car around to the back.”

It takes a while to receive an answer and, even when you do, the snorkel is held in your hand rather than by your ear so it is a very muffled answer. “Good work, Potato.” The praise feels empty as you stare down at Floyd’s body sleeping in a bed of glass.

He is not your problem anymore. He is not yours. Yet, it was only nine days ago that he meant everything to you and he had been yours. Just because it is over, that doesn’t mean it didn’t mean anything.

Like a sinking stone, your acid-coated heart makes itself a little elevator ride down to your stomach.

“Fuck,” you whisper before fastening your snorkel back on your face. “I’m ridiculous.”

So, ridiculously, you find yourself hooking your hands under Floyd’s armpits. Dead-esque, his head slumps forward on a limp neck. It reminds you of those nights, coming home to the apartment from the bar, each of you shouldering the other’s weight. Experienced with it, it is a fluid effort and getting Floyd on Ashengrotto’s bed is no trouble.

You shake the files in your hand. You stomp your feet to make sure each blade is inside the sole. Then, you go to leave?

Ridiculously, you find that your feet are hesitating. Shuffling indecisively on the carpet. Heavy as if cement has been poured in them. The window is only a matter of a dozen steps away yet you might as well be trying to trudge through glutinous quicksand towards a whole other planet.

Once more, your intelligent mentor’s voice rains down from the Heavens with his oh so introspective words of wisdom (this time imaginary). “Honey, ditch that loser,” Jesus-Schoenheit says.

‘Oh I wish I could. I really wish I could,’ you bemoan to the fake voice of your boss, face pinched in a grimace. As you turn around, you start to dig around in your slacks pockets.

‘I should have that pen somewhere.’ Shoving the files under your armpit, fingers flutter through the snow fields of lint at the bottom of each pocket. Where is that stupid pen? You know you were carrying a permanent tattoo marker. If you had to make a run for it after getting the codes but before opening the safe, you brought along the writing utensil so you could mark down the numbers on the length of your arm … that is, if you can find it.

A breath of relief escapes you. Uncapping the pen, you take a short moment to observe comatose Floyd. Even with his clothes elongated and stretched from your hateful hands and his skin drenched in sweat and sanguine, he rivals the very concept of beauty. Individuals favored by Aphrodite, actors or actresses with faces that belong immortalized in marble, and a blond Queen who seduces men and women with a poisonous potency: these are the type of people you surround yourself with daily. Yet, all of them look hideous in comparison to Floyd who sleeps with a slightly parted mouth and tacky blood streaming down his face. How has he warped your vision so grandly?

Upset, you force your eyes to fall away from his mesmeric features and move down to his waistline. Most of your graphic tee is untucked like normal so you have little problem with wrestling his shirt above his belly button. On his navel, above the dusting of black hair, you place the tip of the marker.

In quick yet eligible swirls, you write down your new phone number across Floyd’s V-line. A twisty six forms, an eight loops side to side, a soldier-straight one is born. You punctuate it all with a sharp dot, imagining that your very innocent pen is a dangerous knife. The stab of ink hits him so hard that he coughs in his sleep, pained.

God, you want to make him feel so much more pain than that.

Capping your marker, you pull down his shirt and pull the files from the crook of your armpit. Rereading the document’s identification, you feel just a tiny spritz of your frustration dissolve inside of you. The job is complete. Despite everyone back home thinking you would be a loose canon and fail tremendously, you manage to succeed.

Yes, your nose will have to be snapped back into place. And, you doubt Rook (under Schoenheit’s instructions) will be gentle with the whole procedure. But, at least you did not run into Ashengrotto which you consider a huge, jackpot-esque win of a night full of many ups and downs, and much lack of faith from homebase.

The door clicks open just as you reach up to your ear. Startled, your fingers depress down on the still intact communication device, sending your desolate “fucking shit” out on radio waves back to that beloved homebase.

“(Name)? (Name), what’s wrong?” Schoenheit’s voice worries in your ear as you and Ashengrotto lock eyes across his wrecked, demolished bedroom. The absolute puzzlement in those blue eyes would be amusing if only you did not know the octopus’s exact next move.

“How close is Epel?”

“He’s only one block away from your location.”

“Yeah, I got enough time.”

“Potato?”

“I’m jumping out the window,” you inform your boss just as Ashengrotto unclips the gun from his belt. Confusion has long since drained from those blueberry hues; just as hesitation has vanished magically from your feet. “Tell Epel, proceed as planned, meet me at the spot.”

“Potato! Don’t you dare jump through a window! (Name)? (Name)!”

You have a nagging suspicion that Rook (under Schoenheit’s instructions) will not be gentle when taking the glass out of your skin. It matters very little to you as the wall by your head coughs out a dusting of white plaster. A decorative new eye in Ashengrotto’s bedroom wall is just another damage left behind in the mess you have made. Something else matters much more.

There has been a dormant craving in you for disgustingly greasy food for days.

That said, you need to keep your calories in check so you could definitely use some company to reach over the sticky table and paw at your share of food. The burger of the week at yours and Floyd’s self-established ‘joint’ is Poutine on the Ritz Burger. Comes with poutine fries. Probably will put a yellow, waxy clot of cholesterol in your veins. As you leap from the window, you can already picture it perfectly.

Floyd, sitting across the table from you, licking gravy from his fingers, his shark maw gnashing back and forth noisily as he grinds down cheese curds and potatoes from your fries, looking as irresistible as a hung Da Vinci portrait.

#twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland #floyd leech x reader #floyd leech #twst floyd

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