toying with them it’s been so long
(some beginning of chapter 2 probably)
Things always ended up like this—Graves knew. He’d accepted long ago that he was a weak man, where Dove was concerned, and perhaps in general. He’d made this whole show of it; puffed out his chest and glared Dove down like he was a rodeo horse seeing red but—
“Why don’t we take this conversation somewhere more private?”
That was all it took for him to become ensnared in his old friend’s web again.
The barmaid that usually took care of Graves was still shaken, only nodding, jittery, when Graves stormed back to his previous stool and told her he’d pay the tab in the morning. He’d had an open tab for a few nights now, but clearly, if Dove was here, it was high time to move on. Down the barrel of the bar, he watched Dove set a few coins of silver on the table for their one drink, and then those green magnets settled onto Graves again as if they belonged there. Without a word, Graves started for the stairs. He didn’t have to look to know Dove was following him.
The door’s click behind them was like a death sentence.
Graves whirled on him. “Why the fuck are you here?”
“I was taking a walk down memory lane.” Dove’s voice was still light and airy, like it was downstairs at the bar—but something about it had changed. The Dove he knew before The Rome always spoke with a fluttering crystalline lightness; warm and saccharine, and dazzling like a gem in the sun’s rays. It was beguiling, seductive—could entrance a man out of his wallet, his pants, or his dignity, whichever toy Dove decided he wanted first; powers only amplifying what was already there. But this airiness was too cold; clinical and crisp. It would’ve left Graves gasping—if glimpsing their eyes glowing menacingly in the dark already hadn’t.
“What’s left of my memory always leads me to you.” Dove’s whisper was so frigid that Graves’s heart arrested in his chest, then galloped; beating double time as some sort of sickness clambered up the vines in his lungs and he couldn’t breathe; not faced with those eyes, not faced with the flashing images of the memories he himself drank so desperately to forget.
“You’re supposed to be dead.” Graves finally choked out, the way his voice hitched being a giveaway more than any other tell he had. “I watched you die with my own fucking eyes. How—no, why the fuck are you here? To haunt me?”
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god fushi is so fucking funny sometimes like he’s tasked with deleting photos off a computer. cannot for the life of him figure out how, so what’s the next logical conclusion he comes to? throw the computer into the ocean. does not even consider for one second that maybe he could ask someone for help
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