On Love and Desire | ✔

2 | so we're dating...

CHAPTER TWO - so we're dating...

Desmond whipped his head back in the direction of the voice and met face-to-face with over a dozen dark freckles on rich autumn-bronze skin, accompanied by a gap-toothed lopsided grin. Mercy, of course.

To his surprise, a teeny tiny smile tugged at each end of his full lips. He was happy to see her in spite of the implications of her presence in that specific moment.

Oof! How bitter's the sweet?

Mercy leaned her elbows on the windowsill and clumsily poked her head into Desmond's room (she just barely managed to avoid a smack against the windowpane), past his personal space. Had she leaned any bit closer, he would've seen the dried super glue she had struggled to put on the broken rim of her glasses last week. "And I must let you know," she continued to sing. "My love for you was pretend."

"Pretend love," he replied with a similar tone. It was the start of the song's chorus. The only part he had memorized so far. For a half-second he considered singing the rest of it, but a sudden thought pushed that to the side. "Wait, hold on. How do you already know the lyrics?"

Mercy blinked her way out of the fixed gaze she totally had on his face and shrugged. "It's a catchy song. An earworm or whatever." She then pulled her head back from the window with a sigh. "Sucks that it's such a bummer. The whole-ass movie, actually. And it didn't have to be that way. She was clearly in love with him! Why couldn't they just stay together and make it work? I know for sure they would've been happy together!"

A bummer?!

"I don't know," Desmond heard himself blurt out. "I don't know about all that."

Mercy's thick eyebrows, illuminated by both the dying lamp in the far corner of Desmond's room and the far-too-bright streetlights from outside, furrowed. Her long acrylic nails were quick to match the mood and tip and tap away on the crusty surface of the windowsill. "What do you mean?"

On any other occasion, Desmond wouldn't have taken another look at her actions. She always did the same exact thing when she was deep in thought or in cloud nine or quite simply existing or vibing. Her eyebrows would come together and the ends of her nails always made some form of noise when they stomped their own unique way through a flat space. And every now and then, she wrinkled her button nose as well. It was her go-to stimming behavior. Sure, at times, people would misunderstand it all as a scowl and he'd help her clear that up with others, but it had never come across to him that such a normal behavior of hers would ever come across as a threat to his own peace of mind.

Heat creeped its way up to his cheeks and ears as he cursed his entire being for its unfortunate ability to speak. Out of any single moment in the entire day, or even his whole entire fucking life, why did he have to go ahead and say what he was thinking right then and there? There were no words that could have left him and explained his stance on the movie. Not yet.

He fumbled around in his smooth brain for words."It's... relatable. To me. So it's good! To me, that is."

He glanced at Mercy and immediately regretted it, so he looked straight ahead in the hopes that she didn't notice, past the wide open window of her own bedroom. Her butterscotch-yellow curtains dared themselves to escape with the wind rather than slow-dance like his own, given the fact that they were out of their usual confines. Mercy must have rushed herself out of her window to meet up with him for that to happen. She had lost many curtains due to windy days. One of the many perks of being next-door neighbors for sure. It was funny to watch and not point out. Could that be considered a guilty pleasure?

" ...Relatable?"

Ah, shit. That's right. Back to reality. Desmond grabbed the back of his neck and squeezed. Hard. "It's universal! What she feels. The... not-feeling... the hollow... no, no, the uh, uncertainty of the search? For a passionately, er, beloved life partner── soulmate! But she'll find all that love and romance stuff someday! Definitely. I believe in her. Ximena, that is."