it won't survive me

[scubatankfilledwithfarts]

She had not lost parts of herself up in the stars, in the cold, frigid void of unconsciousness and time. If there was anything left that Faye hadn’t built from the ground up it was gone before jade eyes ever opened to a cracked ceiling [to nothing but lies she’d wear like a veil].

These days she loses parts of herself around the apartment. She will come to after sitting for hours staring at a certain video on repeat until the static fuzzes over the screen. Rainy days, thickness of cotton in the air she can hardly draw fresh air into her lungs, can’t get the oxygen in her bloodstream. When’s her birthday? Her bra is itchy and tight and no help in letting her breathe, but Faye can’t bring herself to take it off, lazily fastened on one hook as it is.

She had about 2 handfuls of chips hours ago then promptly abandoned the bag, opened, crumbs scattered about the floor for the ants to march to-and-fro to deliver to their home. Their little purpose in life.

[what’s hers? She is the same person as that girl in the video, that girl with the big 3-poster princess bed and the happy friends Where did she go, in this lonely place? What did she want to be when she grew up?]

Faye should at the very least kick the crumbs under the rug but she’s never felt less motivated for anything in her life. The urgency to not be nagged at is nonexistent. Her desert-dry eyelids call to her, flicker closed over bloodshot eyes.

Badou steps through the door and for a second he pauses. With a wide array of expressions and screams, Faye has picked at least two of them that are possibilities.

His lips thinned with concern, the little space between his brows a crevasse at this point. She knows, too, that he’s worried he’ll get wrinkles and if his hair starts thinning, his already big (cute) forehead will be awful.

In another second he decides: going through his routine of keys, whatever crap is in his pockets, counting his leftover cig packs. Then, through the fan of her lashes his long legs come into view, boot kicking the crumbs beneath the couch. He bends to grab the chip bag, crumples it like he’s crumpling her life in his hands, and sets it on the coffee table.

This is not quite the Faye he left this morning. But it’s still her, still his.

He’s crumpled her life in his hands and tossed it aside and, as if hearing her thoughts, as if he’s got an antenna straight to the electrons in her brain that aren’t firing off at full cylinder right now, he’s frowning at her. Looking at all of her, through the very core of her with that lone blue eye. Badou inhales sharply, towers before her.

Faye tilts her head up in a semblance of curiosity, expectant, the ghost of it. She can already feel a kink in her neck from lying like that. Badou grabs her hand, gives it a tug. Her head spins as she sits properly, mind swimming through fog and hell and graveyards all.

Tomorrow will be fine. Better. Brighter. Today will be just a dream among stardust.

Badou continues to hold her hand as he guides her to the bathroom. Salt and grease cling to her fingers. His scarred hand rubs against hers. They’re stuck together, aren’t they? Her spit has become a millstone in her throat. It bobs, like she does, in this sea of fog.

He sits her on the edge of the tub while running the bath, snags his t-shirt over her head without preamble, without noise aside from the roaring faucet. The bra, too, goes, and where normally he’d make a joke about how easy that was with so much practice, Badou’s hand is steady in hers.

The boxers that are definitely Jet’s and that they will absolutely have to talk about because he also has that man’s underwear are off, and the redhead guides her again, always, into the water with careful, steady hands before turning to shed his own clothing. His gaze doesn’t linger. Hers doesn’t focus. The water is warm, and comfortable, and she feels like she’ll sink right to the bottom if he doesn’t stay.

One skinny leg comes into view, and then he’s carefully [he can when he wants to be, when he has to be] squeezing into the tub beside her. The water sloshes. She wriggles her toes—she still has them, yes, that’s right.

Faye’s arms curl around his waist. Badou lathers up a washcloth and starts on one of her pale shoulders with their pitiful little soap bar, and all she can do is wonder, wonder, wonder where the rest of her resides.

“Where did I go?” She asks as she had last time, and the time before that, and before. “Will she come back?”

Badou doesn’t answer. He has no answer for her but the consistent glide of soap over her skin, of his gaze settled on hers.

And only then, then, then does the dam break, does his mouth curl into a jagged line, arms drawing around her in turn, pressed to her forehead, and—

“Tomorrow’s another day.”

And the stars are so far off, and alone, and she, whoever she is, is not. And that’s all, really.