Work Text:
scaramouche writes 505 with mona megistus on his mind.
apartment number 505, a mahogany door with numbers plated gold. the paint of the door chips off every time someone brushes their fingers against the surface, and the lock only opens exactly after three twists of the key. he hates this neighborhood, the stench of cigarettes and cheap perfume always seem to loiter about in the corridors, and every once in awhile the muted shouting of the family downstairs pierces through the night without consideration. even with his mask and gloves on he can’t help but feel the itch crawling up his skin, just waiting to tear into him and feast on his paranoia.
he hates this neighborhood, but he continues to stay here because of the secrets that lie in apartment number 505.
open it: the door of the shoe rack is left slightly ajar, a black and white film plays in the background (“darling, you can’t let everything seem so dark blue”), books with cracked spines and yellowed pages are stacked on the coffee table, dog-eared. the final piece of this puzzle, a glass of whiskey on rocks, sits precariously on the railing of the tiny balcony as its owner stands beside it, smoking a cigarette.
there, the devil stands, with her piercing eyes searching for scaramouche, small smile starting to form on her pink lips.
“you’re home,” she speaks, her voice a sultry lull. she makes no move to stray from her place at the balcony, and instead watches the dark-haired man at the doorstep intently, silently beckoning for him to come back home into her embrace.
what a delightful voice, scaramouche can almost hear the sirens crying out in envy. it makes him forget about how the place smells no better than the corridors he was walking along previously, that every step towards mona takes him further away from salvation (for she is no saintly little thing, with her hungry and wicked green eyes).
he really should not. not when the scent of booze is starting to entwine with the fiber of his shirt, and stray cigarette ashes dust his skin grey.
the itch finds its way up his spine again, twirling up up up up to the pads of his fingers and making them twitch. it’s irritating, he thinks as he reaches for mona and the latter curls up into him almost immediately, cigarette still between her fingers. he needs get rid of it, but mona has already settled in the space between his arms, and scaramouche doesn’t want to get rid of her.
“hey.” i missed you.
she peers up at him through lashes woven out of angel wings, the smile still clearly etched on her face.
“this feels nice,” she tells him, her shoulder shifting beneath his arm as she brings her cigarette up to her lips to take a puff from it. the slow drag of her hand away from her face is a mesmerizing one, the cigarette balancing delicately between her fingers artful in its poise. he thinks he could watch her like this forever, frame her up in the louvre (or maybe not for she is his, and only his to admire).
she blows her smoke at his face playfully, clouding his senses with grey—grey, the color of her thoughts; grey, the flavor of her lips against his—and he resists the urge to cough from the second-hand smoke, no matter how much it burns the back of his throat. he’s used to moments like this, and though he has nothing against showing signs of weakness, he finds that he just can’t let himself slip up.
it’s odd. this thing that they have between them, is this what love feels like?
scaramouche—hellish, possessive, destructive—with too many flaws and too many lies kept under lock and key. mona, with nothing to her but the stars she studies, who resides in apartment number 505 and finds home not in the physical spaces encased by white walls but in scaramouche’s strong hold—
what do these people, with their aimless lives and undeserving souls, know about love?
he brushes a stray strand of dark blue hair to the back of her ear and stares into her overwhelming eyes that seemed to hold the uncharted skies. saying nothing, he leans in and buries his face into the crook of her neck, breathing her in. somehow, she smells like home.
(the woman in the movie speaks, her voice somber: “darling, why is it that you look so cruel in the dark?”)
it haunts him, the fact that he no longer lives in 505, can’t go home to 505; can’t hear his lover’s sweet, tobacco-laced drawl calling out for him (to come home to her arms). he finds his hands trembling with ache for the grey dust that settles on his skin—light yet suffocating—so he locks himself up in the studio for four days straight, writing and writing and writing:
about apartment number 505, and the ex-lover who lays on her side waiting with her hands between her thighs and a smile; about wanting to go home regardless of home being a seven-hour flight or a forty-five-minute drive away; about calloused hands around a thin, pale neck and being in love.
(“darling, darling, darling,” he finds himself whispering to no one after writing out the last line. “why is it that you look so cruel in the dark?”)
he flies out of the recording studio in a flurry. on the way, he bumps into signora who immediately halts him in his tracks with an expression of exasperation and annoyance.
“did you even eat?” she asks him, but he knows that she knows the answer already. the heavy bags under his eyes and the hollow of his cheeks tell her all she needs to know.
a proper meal? no. he’s been smoking the packs of ld blue that mona loved so much to stave off the hunger and exhaustion he experienced in the past few days. it makes him wonder when he has resorted to becoming so pitiful, trying to weave the idea of her into his being by going against his own morals. signora’s mouth is already setting into the disapproving scowl she reserves solely for him and tartaglia when they’re acting like bloody idiots, but he doesn’t have it in him today to even make an attempt to get her off his back.
“speak now and forever hold your peace,” he sighs tiredly. and then as a final measure he adds a tiny ‘please’, hoping it’ll make her say less.
“you’re a fucking idiot.”
“is that all?” scaramouche eyes her warily. usually, she has so much more things to yap about into his ears. dottore tells him it’s because she cares about him and she’s just worried about how he lives his life knowing damn well he’s a ticking time bomb just yearning to explode. scaramouche pretends he’s not right.
“i passed her a ticket to our upcoming gig. can you please just pull yourself together, and do something for yourself this once?”
he stiffens at the words that leave la signora’s mouth. ah, so it’s like that.
there are a thousand and one thoughts that cross his mind: how is she? is she doing well? is she taking care of herself? has she asked signora about him? did she mention him at all? does she miss him?
“i didn’t know you guys were close,” is what he manages to bring himself to say instead, all the emotions that run rampant in him preventing him from further pressing signora for more information about mona’s wellbeing. it’s not his place to care anymore, there is nothing but the past that holds them together. and it’s not like dwelling on said past will help any of them move forward in life.
perhaps, it is also his undeflatable ego that puts a stop to the concern he wants to express. afterall, why would she not be fine when she was the one who suggested that they should break up?
(“this isn’t working out.” her voice is strained as she says this, laying on the black leather couch of the apartment, smoking a cigarette. he’s standing right beside her, staring down at her with what he knows is a blank expression because he can feel it: the emptiness that fills him up as he hears her say those very words.
he wants to ask her why; he just has to ask her why. after he finds out why, they’ll be able to fill in the cracks in their relationship. maybe it’s his fault, maybe he isn’t doing enough for the both of them, maybe he’s been neglecting her. he’s new to this thing he knows as love, he knows he should cradle it gently in his arms, and that’s what he wants to do for the both of them. all he has to do is ask why. talking to her is easy, leaving her is not.
it’s as simple as that.
“okay then, fine,” he bites harshly, eyes narrowing at her with so much anger and hatred, it lights an inextinguishable fire in the both of them.
and then, she is up on her feet, lit cigarette no longer dangling by the corner of her lips and in between her fingers instead. this time, he isn’t holding her and watching her as if she were his whole world. they are in each other’s faces faster than he can count to one, spewing venom in their words when they spit them. his blood rushes, roaring in his ears as she pushes him away from her, screaming about how much she hates him and how he’s never tried. the words, the twisted pain that graces her beautiful features: it makes him fucking sick.
don’t.
but it’s too late. it’s a cycle for the weak and vulnerable—he loves and he loves without even knowing what it’s like to love someone. his love is violent like the stormy oceans, and does violence even have a place in the heart of someone in love?
he can only watch as the rage takes control of the both of them, and sends his whole world crumbling apart.
they sound like broken records replaying the same song, and he’s so tired of leaving rome-ruins in the wake of their destruction. he thinks maybe this is what happens when a tornado meets a volcano. there is no escaping the burn, the hurt and the tears.
but he loves her, and he is so blinded by it, he has grown afraid of her leaving him. he didn’t mean to say all those things. in that moment, he let his fear and anger consume him that he forgot to be gentle with her heart spun out of glass thread. this is not what he wanted to happen, not when his mind envisioned gentle hands and a soothing voice: hush, my darling love, we’ll find a way out of this together.
it’s a cycle for the weak and vulnerable—he loves and he loves without even knowing what it’s like to love someone. he loves her so fucking much, he can barely breath—this revolting love fills his lungs like cigarette smoke and ash, choking him until he tears up and scratched at his neck, begging in his head for it to stop.
“get out!”
no no no nononono.
“i’m sorry, baby. please, it’s my fault.”
“get. out.”
“i told you it’s my fault!”
“i don’t fucking care! i don’t ever want to see you again.”)
he’s outside of the building when the rain begins to fall, merciless in its coming. of course, he would have left his umbrella in the studio. nonetheless, the rain is as welcoming as it is familiar, clouding his senses with grey—grey, the color of her thoughts; grey, the flavor of her lips against his. he thinks of apartment 505, and mona megistus, and the meaning of love.
a soft exhale, a shiver. tonight is so cold and lonely.
it feels like there’s a steel knife in his windpipe, suffocating him until his face is blue and his life is slipping away from his fingertips. he sinks into that sensation, afraid of letting it go like a drowning fool, for it reminds him of how it’s like to love mona megistus. it is sweet as it is bitter, but he loves it: the pain, the burn, the cold.
scaramouche closes his eyes, counts to ten, and wishes for better days.
scaramouche rarely dreams, but on the occasions that he does, they’re always vivid and tangible.
he’s back to 505 again, and there’s a glossy guitar case slung over his shoulder. his hair is a tousled mess of inky strands, and he can already feel mona’s hand running itself through them. the husband and wife living one floor down has already started their screaming; the corridors are flooded with floral-tinted chemicals; the itch beneath his skin never fades away even as he turns the doorknob of apartment number 505 and enters.
“mona?” scaramouche calls out as he shuts the mahogany door behind him in the hopes of keeping the uneasiness out. he sets his guitar case down by their slightly opened shoe rack to the sound of silence. the black and white romance film had been replaced by a black screen, and the usual call of ‘you’re home’ was missing from the balcony. it’s almost as if the place was void of any existence without any signs of life from its usually overly-exuberant owner.
it’s clean, he notes as he stares oddly at the empty coffee table almost like the destructive drinking had to continue to make everything seem like it the perfect scene to come home to.
it’s empty, the voice in his head quietly echoes.
and then: this is it.
he sucks in a sharp breath at that thought, gloved hands reaching out to clasp over his chest in horrid shock. it can’t be, he tells himself, not yet. not here.
(not when this place keeps so many of his precious memories of her, the feelings he’d experienced when he was together with her, the ones she had enabled with her maniacal love for him in the form of harsh words and vicious hands.)
everything about this feels off, and he doesn’t want to come face to face with the consequences of his decision. he can’t bear the weight of rejection and abandonment, not when it’s all his fault because he didn’t try to become better, and resigned to remaining the same as always. what’s the point in trying to stay unbreakable when the need for it drives you to the breaking point?
“mona!” he calls again, this time much louder, holding his breath as he waits for her to say something, anything. to wake him from this living nightmare, to take away his pain and his troubles and—
“i’m here!”
he heaves out a sigh of relief, immediately setting off for the room at the end of the corridor. when he reaches their bedroom, he finds her seated against the headboard, astrology book in hand. she peeks up from the contents of her book and shifts to put it away.
“you’re home,” she says, her hands between her thighs and a grin that stretches across her face like one of a cheshire cat. then, with outstretched hands, she tells him: “come here.”
he doesn’t hesitate, stripping himself of his mask and his gloves before diving into her familiar embrace like a man starved. to some extent, this is true, but he doesn’t dwell on it. not when he’s in the arms of his beloved once more, and such intangible things are never everlasting; not when she looks at him with her jade eyes like all she wants is him and nothing else. how could he ever deny her the simple pleasure of having him—body, heart and soul—when it is the only thing he has of himself to offer her?
“hey.”
(darling, the stars don’t fall for you.)
“i missed you.”
(but for you, i’ll tear the skies down and catch them all.)
“scaramouche!”
he jolts awake at the urgent pitch in signora’s voice, almost slipping off his chair. there’s a bout of choked laughter that follows after, to which scaramouche blocks out by trying his best to refocus on the dimness of the lone lightbulb that hangs above his head. childe can be so goddamned annoying and childish sometimes, the screech in his voice makes scaramouche’s head throb with the need to annihilate his band mate.
“we’re up in ten minutes,” dottore tells him quietly. there’s a firm squeeze to scaramouche’s shoulder that follows after, and he acknowledges it with a nod, silently thankful that there are still people within their group who are perfectly sane and not out seeking animosity and death.
when he feels dottore gain some distance between them, he finds himself letting out a small sigh he wasn’t aware he had held within him for the longest time. his shoulders are starting to ache from being so tensed. from the get go, it had been a weird dream, and had him on edge the whole time till the last moment. he couldn’t understand why it was happening now or how it was even occurring to him, especially since he hasn’t had such dreams (or perhaps none at all) for the past few months.
before he can further sink into aimless thought, however, signora comes to stand before him, hands on her hips as she stares him down with all the advantageous height she has over a seated him.
“you look nervous.”
that must be it.
“ah, yea,” he utters. there it is again, that inability to answer signora properly. he wonders when was it that he began to get apprehensive around this woman, his bandmate of nearly a decade and one of his closest friends. it hadn’t been like this before, so why—
“scaramouche,” she starts, crouching down to his height. she takes both his hands in hers, and scaramouche has to force himself to shove away the flinch he anticipated.
“what is it?” he asks her. his voice is a tired one, and it only makes signora’s already present scowl intensify. scaramouche doesn’t appreciate the further furrow of her brows, doesn’t like that she still has to worry about him when they’re both grown adults now, and that he is certain he has left behind the scared, abandoned child from the countryside. yet, some things never seem to change: signora, scaramouche, and his deep-seated fear of being abandoned.
“you’re going to be okay,” she says, the tone of her voice akin to a mother that he has no memory of. in his mind, his mother is but a silhouette. she has no face, and no sound. she is a shadow, all black and bleak.
she is someone he does not want to know of, someone he wants to forget.
“we’re here.”
but who is ‘we’?
when scaramouche closes his eyes, he sees the young signora, childe and dottore standing in the old band room they used to rent for 1000 yen to practice in, smiling back at him. they’re already on standby, just waiting for scaramouche to fill in the gaps in their little group with his dark blue bass which strings he snaps every few weeks. he wants to reach out to them, wants to take a step, and raise his hand out to them to let them know he is here and he needs them. but he can’t move. his feet are glued to the ground and there is no strength in his body to do anything except watch as they smile at him, the look in their eyes getting emptier and more distant. like they’re floating away from him and he can do nothing but watch them slip away into a thing of the past.
no! he screams and he screams for them to come back. yet, they do not hear him.
nobody does.
he can only tremble, sinking into the ground on his knees as he cries.
shh, darling. there’s a cold hand sliding up the small of his back slowly, and the scent of cigarette ashes and whiskey. strands of midnight blue hair brush against his shoulders as the person inches closer to the side of his face which are still hidden in the palm of his hands. he knows who this is, can feel her hand moving up to wrap around the back of his neck. as always, he wants to reach out to her, but this time he doesn’t.
it’s not that he can’t, he doesn’t.
she doesn’t belong to him anymore. there is no point in her lingering in his mind when they no longer have a future together, when he was the one who pushed her away, when he failed to try and break out of old cycles.
still, she stays.
(because he is only human, and he is a weak one at that.)
it’s okay, i’m here.
scaramouche…
“scaramouche—!”
“dude, are you okay? you were crying.”
“should we ask to push back our schedule?”
“what’s going on, are you sick?”
“talk to us, scaramouche. stop keeping things to yourself when you’re clearly suffering.”
he winces at that last statement.
“i’m not,” he responds, giving signora’s wrists a squeeze in the hopes to ground himself. it’s all he can bring himself to say as the rest of his bandmates crowd before him, similar expressions of concern plastered on their faces. he can’t let his internal conflict mess with their schedule right now, not when every gig they get to play in is important to their band’s steady climb to fame. scaramouche has watched his friends put everything important in their lives at stake to chase after a dream they had shared when they were young, and there’s just no way in hell he is sabotaging this for them.
not when they are still here for him.
(he can’t lose them too.)
“you guys are up in a minute,” a backstage crew informs them, and they all seem to snap out of whatever trance they were in previously. scaramouche watches as signora heads to grab her red guitar (the one she’s kept since they were 16, and the one she has played on as they rose up from being nobodies to performing on a proper stage), before reaching for his bass. she turns to look at him, eyes blue, smile small, the hand that has his bass stretched out towards him:
“let’s play like old times, scaramouche.”
he stands and takes his bass out of her hand. he thinks of being sixteen all over again; he thinks of playing his bass till he has blisters on his fingers and writing songs at three in the morning and singing till his throat is sore; he thinks of a life before mona.
“let’s.”
there’s a whole other world out there, he tells himself.
one where mona megistus doesn’t exist in.
“BUT I CRUMBLE COMPLETELY WHEN YOU CRY—”
their eyes lock as soon as his voice blares through the microphone, and he feels his knees nearly give in to the intensity of her stare. there she is at the back of the room, with her eyes dark and an impassive look on her face, in the little black dress that scaramouche remembers gifting to her for christmas. she is leaning against the wall, and watching him, and him only. the crowd, the noise—everything fades into the background, and all that’s left is him and her. he wonders what this could mean, wonders why he can’t tear his eyes off her even if all he sees will only break his heart more.
why does it feel like he’s going to crumple onto the ground despite her not shedding a single tear?
“IT SEEMS LIKE ONCE AGAIN YOU’VE HAD TO GREET ME WITH GOODBYE.”
he can barely focus, only the familiarity of his strings and the rawness of the lyrics carries him on. he has so many things to say, he wants to scream them into the microphone. but will they matter? why does he want to fix something that’s broken beyond repair? why’d he break her in the first place if she was precious to him?
she looks at him—with the eyes that used to hold so much love and want for him—like he is nothing, and he realizes that it is pointless. to her, he is as good as dead. he can crush every little hope he once had that she might perhaps take him back after this. they have no more future from here on. her presence today was only to give him the jarring closure he needed to move on and let her go.
they no longer exist. he is him, and she is her.
let go. let go. the voice in his head nearly screams.
“I’M ALWAYS JUST ABOUT TO GO AND SPOIL THE SURPRISE. TAKE MY HANDS OFF OF YOUR EYES TOO SOON.”
but he is a fool, and he is human. hope is a dangerous thing for a man like him, but hope is what he has, and hope is all that he has. he will cling to it, because he is a drowning fool, and the sensation reminds him of how it’s like to love mona megistus. she gives him what no one else can: destructive passion, crude satisfaction in life, and the hunger for nothing else other than her.
“I’M GOING BACK TO 505, IF IT’S A 7 HOUR FLIGHT OR A 45 MINUTE DRIVE.”
he thinks of apartment 505, with its mahogany doors, chipped paint and rusty numbers painted gold. he thinks of the devil who wears black, smokes ld blue and drinks jack daniel’s religiously. he thinks of a woman whose life revolves around the study of the stars, who has pale green eyes and smiles like a fox who has caught its prey.
he thinks of mona megistus, the color grey, and the meaning of love.
(the constellations spell out their fate, they map out the stars in the dark skies. he wonders what is the point of devoting one’s whole life to the studies of stars, if all they’ll ever tell her is how she is not meant to be loved. afterall, the stars never lie, and she can never deny its truth.)
“IN MY IMAGINATION, YOU’RE WAITING LYING ON YOUR SIDE, WITH YOUR HANDS BETWEEN YOUR THIGHS AND A SMILE.”
it’s the last few notes. when the song ends, his hands are shaking. sweat drips down his face and streaks his cheeks, imitating the single tear that falls from the corner of her wet eyes. he blinks, the world still hazy around him as signora makes her closing speech, and the only thing he can comprehend is her standing in the shadows despite the blinding spotlights over the stage. everything about her draws him in.
she turns to run away.
and just like that, mona is gone.
“hello?”
“i want to see you, come here now.”
he doesn’t know what to expect when he twists the key in their (is it still right to call it theirs?) lock three times. maybe it’s silence, and maybe it’s a scene that fondly reminds him of home no matter how ugly it may actually be in reality. with her, nothing is ever predictable, no matter how much of it is a routine he has familiarized himself with. sometimes, he wonders if apartment 505 and all the secrets it held within were just one big hallucination his depraved self has managed to come up with. perhaps it is not real, and neither is mona, and neither are his current circumstances.
but he pushes the door open anyways. like all fools, he chases after nirvana.
and nirvana takes the form of a woman with dark blue hair, cigarette between her fingers as she stands on the tiny balcony of the apartment, looking out at the dying streets. there are no ‘you’re home’s said, and he doesn’t hold her in his arms like he used to. instead, they are a clash of chapped lips and white teeth—a bitter fight for dominance taking place in a love that is so wrongly sweet. grey is the flavor of her lips against his, just a shade darker than usual, but he trails after its addicting smokey undertones anyways.
he swipes his seeking tongue against her lips, coaxing them apart so he can dive further into the wet heat of her mouth. he drinks in her soft moans the flavor of cheap wine, nips at her bottom lip as a warning when her tongue shies away from his. there are no signs of backing away coming from him, and she feels as if she’s about to faint, giddy from how aggressive he is acting. this is how he imprints himself onto her, for if he cannot have her no one else can. in response she brings both hands up to run her fingers through his hair, grip firm as she jerks his head back away from her.
she gasps for air at the opening while he growls in response, though he makes no move to press their lips together again in their fervent tango.
instead, he looks down at her—gaze untellable—and asks:
“why are you doing this?” he watches as she winces at his tone and drops her hold on him, a smug sort of satisfaction bubbling at the back of his throat, threatening to appear in the form of a cruel smirk. the sadist he kept in him under lock and key leers, waiting for the right time to force its way out to hurt her once again and make her vulnerable in the palm of his hands. however, that exposed expression of hers is gone as quickly as it came. and oh, what a shame, scaramouche thinks as he meets her straight on, holding her displeased stare with his deep blue eyes. the late-night devil in him has barely even satisfied himself with that brief moment of her fragility.
“can i be any more obvious, scaramouche? or have you gone dull after getting your heart broken?”
“perhaps i have, mona,” he sneers in her face, inching closer to her even as her back is almost hitting the railings of the balcony she loves so much. it earns him a hardened glare; one he must admit he’s all too familiar with. but despite that, he continues to rile her up anyways, reluctant to lose this constant war they have going on between them, tells her: “why don’t you be a dear, and entertain my dullness by telling me what you want.”
and she does what he wants. she swallows her pride like it is toxic waste.
“fuck me, scaramouche.”
he revels in her downfall. he is reminded that once again, this is what loving mona is like.
“gladly.”
this time, his gleaming blue eyes are all-telling as they promise her a night full of ruin.
one hand moves up to wipe off the tears staining her cheeks.
“crying doesn’t suit your pretty face,” he says, voice almost a whisper in her ears, drowned out by the sensation of his cock dragging between her walls hotly. her fingers curl into the blades of his shoulders as he fills her to the hilt, and she shudders at just how full she feels. “what are you even crying for?”
she doesn’t answer him, and he feels a tinge of annoyance at her obstinacy to not speak. why is it so hard for her to just answer his damn question? why is she forcing this distance in between them when they are so physically close? what is the goddamned point of playing games like this? he wants to know, he wants the answer to spill from her pretty red lips like blood would if he were to stab her in her stomach with a sharpened knife. the same one she drives into him every time she lets her hatred take over her, and projects it upon him, knowing he’ll take it like the weak bitch that he is.
but instead, she curses at him. like he is an open book, and his thoughts are never his own, but theirs. the one who is sent to burn is always him, and never her. so why is she crying?
“tell me, mona!” he snaps, the hand that has previously been softly stroking her cheek flying down to grab her neck tightly. what right does she have to cry when he is the one always getting hurt? he ignores the choked sob she lets out as he slams his hips harshly against her, driving his cock deep inside her and punching the air out of her lungs. “TELL ME!”
“s—shut up. you,” she seethes, jaw clenching as her eyes harden with abomination. “you’re pathetic.”
it feels like someone’s forced acid down his throat, and the more he swallows the harsher the sting is. perhaps, it’s not all that wrong to compare her words to acid. both kill him equally, the only thing that separates the two is how he keeps coming back to let her hit him with her poison. no matter how much it hurts, it’s not enough to scare him into never coming back. her love is a drug—kaleidoscope eyes and phantom touches—and he is an addicted fool.
he is drowning, and what does she do?
she watches as he drowns by her own ruthless hands.
her nails are sharp as they run down the expanse of his back. they dig deep into his skin when they rest around the wrist of his hand that is around her neck, imprinting rough red crescents into the pale canvas of his wrist. he yelps when the pain explodes sharply, snatching his hand back and halting the rhythmic thrust of his hips. he glowers, anger rushing through his veins like shots of adrenaline.
he hates her. he fucking hates her. hates the smugness displayed on her face even if the tears mess it up and makes it seem as if she is a matryoshka with cracks running all over her body; hates that she always has the upper hand, that she’s always the one pulling his strings without care; hates that he is everything and nothing in her eyes.
“do you know why i cry?” she starts, moving to sit up with the space she has gained from her earlier actions. his dick slides out of her, and he struggles between trying to shove down the whine bubbling at the back of his throat from the loss of her tight heat, and wanting to just push her back down onto the bed and fuck her stupid. he doesn’t want to hear what she has to say with her wretched mouth now. or ever even.
but she doesn’t stop. it’s almost like she knows.
(of course, she does. scaramouche, what are you to her but an open book? with all your pretty pages to crease and to tear and to piece together again, you are open, and you are exposed. she will read you and use what she knows against you. and what else can you do but take what she throws at you?
you are weak.
you are weak.)
when she is finally hovering above him, palms pressing onto his chest while staring down at him with this demeaning look in her eyes as she sits herself down onto his throbbing cock, she smiles. it’s so diabolical, the need to reach out for her neck and suffocate the life out of her eyes rushes through his veins like molten lava. so hot and urgent, like if he doesn’t do it to ease its searing heat, he’ll be scorched to death.
“it’s because i hate you, scaramouche,” she tells him, voice pitched as she grinds down against him languidly. the way her smile never breaks off even as the tears start pouring out of her pale green eyes is sinister in every right. “i hate you so much that i’m willing to kill you if it’d mean something in me would stop hurting.”
“but i can’t. i can’t live with it, can’t live knowing i’m the one who destroyed you, can’t live without you. it drives me insane when i think about you. i have to ask myself every night, why you and not someone else? someone else who would never treat me like you would, someone else who would stay, someone else who would try to save what we have.”
“why must it be you?” she asks. her hands trail up his chest and over his shoulders to rest around his neck.
ah, so it’s like that. isn’t it always like that?
“why do i love you, scaramouche?”
the grasp around his neck grows tighter by the second. however, he does not fight the woman who is stealing his air away from him, even if it makes him dizzy and his lungs feel like folding in on themselves. he takes it, he takes what she gives him and more, only watching her through his own ocean eyes and waiting for everything to end. he tells himself that this is what he deserves for causing her so much agony, for her hatred has not once been misplaced. she is right, no one should ever be burdened by his tumultuous love, and he, he has no right to love her at all. his hands find purchase on her hips as they guide her through the rolling storm. once again, they catch her when she has gone exhausted from her fury, laying her to rest on his chest and allowing the steady beat of his heart soothe her to sleep. all this time, he does not shed a single tear, convinced that he is undeserving of the right to cry in front of her.
he does not apologize either. only runs his fingers through her hair, silently staring up at the ceiling he was once so familiar with.
so, this is apartment number 505.
somehow, along the way, he has stopped wanting to come home to apartment 505.
the night is cold when he stands outside the apartment complex, looking into the window of apartment 505 as he smokes a ld blue. one hand is shoved into his jean pocket while the other is preoccupied with the cigarette between his lips. his guitar case is slung over his right shoulder, and his hair is a tousled mess of inky strands all thanks to his earlier illicit affairs with mona. suddenly, the phone in his pocket buzzes with a new notification.
he pulls it out, and there’s a text from signora.
where r u
received 05:47
505.
read 05:48
and then, radio silence. he supposes he can’t blame signora for not having a response to something like this. which idiot goes around meeting his ex after they’ve had a messy breakup anyways? honestly, to call their breakup and its aftermath messy would be a great understatement. but he doesn’t care for labels anymore, not when it doesn’t help to change anything between the both of them.
he doesn’t think he can care about anything after this. after all, what is the point in everything?
numb, that’s what he feels within him growing, eating away at his heart. he wanders into the night anyways, empty within, simply waiting for the thorns that were planted from his love for mona to grow in the space where his heart used to be. it’s painful, yet he can do nothing about it, for he has left his heart in the arms of the only woman he will ever love. it does not matter if his love is in all shades of wrong, and kills them both softly but surely. he is selfish and he is a fool. he wants to leave his marks everywhere, even if she hates him, even if she loves him—
even if she cannot decide what it is she feels for him.
as he gazes up at the skies, sleepless, he thinks about how dawn will still break. their once connected hands have separated for good, and the seasons he has lived in with her have passed long ago, becoming increasingly distant each time the sun rises. still, dawn will continue to break. it never stops to console him, only rushes forward without a care in the world, tugging him by the sleeves to walk forward as well and leave behind all that is holding him back in 505.
maybe if he closes his eyes, he can pretend that with things changing and things beginning once again, he can let go. it’s sad for him, but he can live without mona megistus. even if he loses his way with each step he takes into a future without her, even if he cries and screams for her, eventually all these will stop, and he can live without her.
(the truth is, however, even if he is to no longer be loved by mona megistus, he’d still miss her like how the moon yearns for the stars. it’s not just about the pain or the burn or the cold, it’s about her holding the galaxy in her jade eyes, and her warmth as they press their bodies together. it’s about feeling lonely, and having that void in your heart filled up by a humane presence.)
dawn is nearly breaking. soon, he’ll be able to see the light at the end of this long night. perhaps if fate is kind to them, their separated hands will connect again one day. so then, even if he is scared, he can keep on living, and when the sun rises, he will start walking again.
he turns to look up to apartment 505 one last time.
dawn is breaking, it’s coming soon.
he tells himself:
“i’ll be okay.”