l u f t m e n s c h
one with their head in the clouds
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ARCHIE'S HOUSE WAS UNUSUALLY QUIET. Nervousness from the last time I had been here wafted up around me, and I found my hand curling around Ayden's wrist, nails digging in until he yelped in pain, for support.
Even though he jerked off my blood-drawing touch a moment later, the creaking of his footsteps and the heavy fall of his breath was a continual reminder I wasn't facing this alone―whatever this was.
A thousand clocks ticked, an offbeat chorus, each stripped echo dragging a jagged blade through my nerves. This time, when I latched my hand to Ayden's, it was his fingers crushing mine in a desperate handhold; begging, pleading, that everything would be okay.
"Ayden," I whispered, my tongue darting out to touch my lips. They were dry and chapped, worried to shreds by a pummelling sense of fear. "It's not your fault. Whatever happens."
He glanced back at me. The smile on his lips was forced and ingenuine, but the air between us remained still and silent, unmoved by the soft rushes of his breath.
Despite Ayden talking the lead, I was the first to set foot on the landing, and notice the dim strip of light flooding onto the carpet from Archie's bedroom door, left ajar. The realisation swept a flush of red across my cheeks, and I jabbed Ayden's arm.
"His bedroom," I hissed. He frowned down at me, before following the line of my outstretched finger.
"You check it out," He said. Ayden's voice was small and hoarse, weighed down by gravity. Offering an understanding nod and smile, I slipped in front of him and crept down the hallway. "I'll wait here."
"Okay."
Archie's bedroom was empty. I knew it before I'd even poked my head through the door.
The silence permeating our shallowed breaths was unmistakable, after all.
I glanced back to Ayden. His eyes were glued to mine, and the small nod he gave me was encouraging. I nodded back, the grimmest ghost of a smile on my lips, as I turned the handle to confirm what I already knew.
The bedsheets were crumpled, the room havoc, and the ethereal, torching presence of Archie nowhere to be found.
"He's not in there," I whispered, bringing my lips into my mouth. My eyes scanned the dark hallway―in our haste, we did nothing to remedy the pressuring blackness―and realised I was speaking to an audience of one.
Ayden wasn't there―he hadn't waited for me like he'd said, and I felt my pulse begin to race.
"Ayden?" I raised my voice, just scratching the surface of a normal speaking voice, but it felt unnatural, taboo almost, to leave behind the safe recesses of a dull whisper. "Ayden, where are you?"
He didn't respond immediately, and the hairs rose on the back of my neck. Letting out a low whimper and gripping myself tightly, I crept back up the hallway; skin prickling, and breaths suddenly jarring in their volume, without another pair to match them.
An abrupt shatter mutilated my senses.
It was the splintering crash of glass as it fell to tile, and detonated into a million jagged shards, invisible to the eye.
I bolted to the sound, and my socks skidded on laminated wood. Razor pants ripped through my throat, through the air, and I all but crashed into the bathroom door, causing it to fling open under my sudden weight.
The acrid taste of metal bombarded my senses, and I collapsed to the doorframe, clutching my hand over my nose.
Ayden was on his knees, clutching his phone in a vice-like grip with blood-slicked hands. He blurred, in a sea of regret, sparkling tears that cascaded down my cheeks and washed the blood from where it pooled on the bathroom floor.
Archie's alabaster skin was streaked with scarlet.
"Oh god." My hands were clamped to the floor. I slid to the floor, into an unending redness, that was everything that was Archie. "Oh god, Ayden―,"
I choked on a sob. Thick, blood-heavy air corrupted my lungs, laced with the frost of heart-wrenching tears.
In the distance, I could hear an ambulance, but it wasn't coming fast enough.
I repeated his name, between desperate hands swiping at my eyes, ridding them of rivers that continued to flood from my tear-ducts. And he remained silent, achingly silent, lips pursed and expression void of emotion.
Until he spoke.
"He said he didn't want to do this anymore." Ayden's voice was hoarse and withered. I nodded, curling my fingers around the hem of my dress. "I pushed him to it."
"You didn't." My voice cracked down the middle. My throat seized, and his name locked in my throat, unwilling to leave. "He did."
"No." Ayden suddenly snapped, and a crimson-washed phone was thrust into my trembling hands. "Look at the texts, Kat. Goddamn look at them."
A heaving red blurred the screen, but I obeyed regardless. My quivering thumbs skidded on the glass, and I stabbed his messages icon three times before they cropped up on the screen and glowed through the sickening blanket of red.
His impossible eyes had found mine, and were relentless in their hard, broken stare.
Following his piercing, unwavering gaze, I thumbed my own name in his contacts.
The screen came to life, in a series of texts sent over a course of nights, each more desperate than the last. Where did you get this photo?, that's impossible, what the fuck, and who the fuck is this―are you threatening me? and you outed them for god's sake, and this doesn't affect me like it does them.
Multitudes of them, every word that I wanted to protect him from, every word that I was protecting him with―but how could you protect someone from themself?
Flames simmered in my throat, and I forgot the sensation of calm as fury blinded my glassy eyes.
"You have no idea," I whispered, and this time, the drag of it was like coals through a roaring inferno, lighting ablaze in the smoky, regretful air. "You have no idea what it's been like, do you?" My voice rose with each word, and by the end, my shouts were splitting the air. "You―you―,"
"I get it!" He threw his hands up, crashing back against the bath. "I get it. I just wanted you. I didn't appreciate what I could have had until it was too late, and I wanted to fix that."
"But you don't." I leapt to my feet, swiping the blood from my legs. My arm flung out, to exhibit the devastation to my side. "Because you would have known this wasn't the way to do it!"
"Well, then, what the hell do I do?" He spat. "Because you seemed to be pretty fucking cosy with Caspian and Henry!"
I cursed, and it took every ounce of self-restraint in me not to leap at him. We were boiling, simmering in heat, but still bathed in Archie's blood, and his scent still lingered in the air.
He was still in limbo, so we couldn't afford to be any longer.
"You can leave me alone," I whispered, separating myself from him, from his touch, from his lingering desperation and betrayal. "And you can stay with Archie, because even now, it's you he'll want to see when he wakes up."
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I rinsed myself a thousand times over, but I swore there was still blood on my hands.
The party was continuing around me, but it was hotter and more suffocating than before; the pressurising atmosphere crushed my lungs, and slowly obliterated my ability to breathe.
I wasn't sure what I was still doing here, and every part of my body screamed for me to leave, but returning to my house meant returning to my mother, and letting her glimpse my sallow face and haunted eyes, and conclude that she was right all along. The pretty boy outside did what he wanted with me, and he hurt someone else's life in the process.
The terrifying images continued to slaughter me; soulless dark eyes, and withered, parted lips, and pale white skin, forever etched in stone. Archie's limp body burned brighter in the darkness, blazed behind closed eyes, so I focused on swimming crowds and the lump in my throat; cast my eyes for a familiar face that didn't tie weights to my ankles and leave me to drown.
Frozen fingers curled around the table edge―the only thing keeping me upright―and I steadied my shaking, cumbersome breaths; sickness-laced heaves that pressed down on my shoulders.
If I fell, who the fuck was going to catch me?
Involuntarily, my eyes fluttered closed, and god, no matter how I tried to push the images out of my head, they resurfaced, like vicious monsters rearing their ugly heads, with bloodstained talons and dripped teeth, pinning me to the void.
My knees buckled. I must have looked a sight, crouched on the ground, hair just shadowing my face, and my arms around myself. Like a child. A tantrum-throwing, misunderstood child, who knew nothing of the world.
Flushed cheeks outshone washed-out hair, and I probably looked like a mess, when earlier tonight, I'd actually thought I looked beautiful.
"Tia?" Caspian crouched to my level, and his hands immediately latched to my shoulders. It was hard to look at him, not while I was like this, not after all the thoughts swimming through my head, and I couldn't talk to him, not with every word in the dictionary getting lodged in my throat. "Shit, are you having a panic attack?"
"No." I swatted him away with a sudden fit of force.
"Okay, okay." He caught one of my hands, and held it in his with all his usual tenderness, despite everything. "So, what is the matter?"
"Nothing." I forced a smile on my lips. "Just trying to enjoy the party."
Caspian quirked up a blond eyebrow. "There are better ways to do it than being crouched on the floor, and hiding away from everybody. How's anyone supposed to enjoy this party when they can't see how beautiful you look tonight?" His voice was soft, and his lips pursed, holding the gentlest of smiles.
I glanced up at him, then let him help me to my feet. "Because it's deceiving. The worst people inside are always the prettiest on the outside."
Ayden Williams, classic pretty boy and heartbreaker.
His soft smile broke, into an immeasurably cheeky grin that made my heart hurt.
"Then I was wondering if I could have both, under the mistletoe." His finger extended, pointing to a sprig of green leaves that made me want to shrivel up. Any other night, any other time...but not tonight, and not now, not when all I could think about was how Archie's last kiss could have been stolen by a stranger―because an Ayden that didn't love him was an Ayden that he didn't deserve to know at all. "As friends, of course."
"Caspian." I wet my lips, digging my nails into my palms. "I―I would, honestly, and it's nothing personal, but..."
But I'm a liar,
and he's a fake,
and everything has gone so goddamn wrong.
No kiss can fix that.
His eyes softened a fraction, with a simmering touch of realisation. "That was so insensitive of me, I'm sorry. Do you want to, uh, talk outside? Instead?"
I nodded, though slimy knives of guilt chafed at me, mutilating my insides. As if sensing my hesitation, Casp's smile was encouraging, and his hand was wrapping around mine, guiding me outside.
The bitter chill sliced at me with the first few steps into the velvet darkness, but Caspian led his way to a porch swing, and I followed, curling into myself in an attempt to retain warmth.
Henry's jacket had long since disappeared―hopefully back to its rightful owner―and the glaciality chipping away at me was a distraction from my nerves. I shivered, clutching at myself. Noticing this, Caspian shed his jacket and tossed it to me.
I wrapped myself in it. We sat in silence.
Beneath the austere moonlight and arrogant stars, we slowly began to swing.
"You have blood on you." His voice was a rough whisper, shining eyes half-dipped in concern. "What happened when you and Ayden disappeared from the party?"
"Why do you assume something happened?" I laughed humourlessly, bitterly, even though there was no denying.
Alabaster white.
Blood red.
Traitor's blue.
Forget me,
forever.
Love him,
and never know the truth.
"Because you couldn't look at me before." His voice became tighter, but I pretended not to notice, burying myself in the folds of his jacket. "And now you'd look at anything to distract yourself."
"If you saw what I saw, you'd be distracting yourself too." I ducked my head, and realised the familiar warmth of his jacket was the only thing keeping me from snapping, even when the person it belonged to was exerting force in all the right places. "There's nothing beautiful," I dragged out the word, throwing it back in his face, as if he was as poisonous as the boy I once believed was the epitome of it. "about death."
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[prettyveins] is typing...
I've decided to continue with the weekly updates, while I continue to plough through the series, and other upcoming works. There's not a lot I have ready to post, outside of Heartbreakers, so I'd like to have something outside of the series, whether on here, or on meanderingatoms where I will start posting different genres. . . when I have different genres to post.
Anyway, the GIF is of Sean O'Donnell as Ayden, who plays a much smaller part from this point on. Who guessed it was him?
Thank you for reading, I really hope you enjoyed xx
P.S - I recently updated Crimson after over a month of silence, so check it out if you're interested!