𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 & 𝐒𝐍𝐎𝐖 | eustass kid

SUN DUST ON MILKY SKIN

      WHAT YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT your lover is minimal.

      He's an enigma — it's really the politest thing you can say. Tufts of crimson red and pale pink scars that stretch across flesh, muscles bulging underneath form fitting fabrics and corpse white dermis stretching over his pearly bones, amber eyes like melted pools of copper, fierce and burning from dusk to dawn. He's dramatically tall, much taller than yourself, and has to bend his neck awkwardly to make his way into your small apartment every evening. It's endearing. You remember every mole and freckle on his body and where they rest. Of course you can — you've seen him nude more times than you can count, but you've never touched his soul or looked any deeper into him. He won't let you.

     He's an enigma, but you're so infatuated with all his mystery that you don't even realise you don't know him at all.

Your first year anniversary is yet to come up but he's already claimed the right side of your bed as his side; it doesn't bother you in the slightest, you sleep easier when Eustass Kid holds you to his chest like you're some spectacular treasure rather than a twenty-two year old emotional wreck with pipe dreams and social anxiety. Your lack of interaction with humanity has made you entirely dependent on your riddle lover of ten months, but the nimble pacing of your relationship didn't seem to bother him much.

He doesn't seem to mind your clinginess too much either. The redhead is almost as isolated as you are, keeping to a small circle for reasons different to your own. Trust issues or something like that. You, on the other hand, are too shy and often overbearingly regretful in your words and have socially isolated yourself to keep yourself from remembering awkward moments in life as you lay your head down to rest at night.

High school has not been kind to you, but you try to combat your aloof persona and love for your own company by spam adding just about anyone who looked cool or friendly enough to interact with you. It's just enough to make you believe you're not so lonely in this big world. Most of these people aren't local—you think—but it's a step in the direction of a good change. Your parents would lecture you on the importance of stranger danger as a child but you're an adult, capable of making important decisions and being safe. You're hopelessly wrong when you think you're good with decisions—you should've listened to your parents.

Alas when you and your lover decide that it's finally time to make things official, posting the update that marks Eustass Kid as your boyfriend, your day is filled with ecstasy as you revel in likes and comments of pure support, wishing you both merry times together. Your internet friends are kind people, it seems.

But, it's a short lived euphoria. In the late hours of the evening as you wait for your boyfriend to come in for dinner you hear your phone ping. Checking the notification you're surprised to see that it's a message—not from your boyfriend, or his friends. What should be the bubbling warmth of socialising turns quickly. The animosity and obscure feel the message holds doesn't make you feel good. At all.

TRAFALGAR LAW: do u rly know eustass kid??
17:34 PM

* * *

"They call it the New World. It's an establishment for all sorts—drugs, prostitution, drink, all that forbidden shit. And it's spiked in popularity in recent years, garnering the attention of all the wrong people. You probably won't have heard much about it."

The New World isn't an establishment, but a large area built on establishments to cater to the darker parts of society and whet the appetite of those who indulge in the more illegal parts of life. You could tell exactly when you'd entered the New World—if it wasn't the stench of alcohol and weed, it was the tags of graffiti and the chants, all which gave the New World its unlawful feel, you'd guessed. Goosebumps ripple across your [skin tone] derma. In the shadows of abandoned laws, you don't feel safe.