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that's how it started for me, too. just thinking about it. what'd you do instead?

Let him think I wanted it. Then I married his best friend, exchanged marriage and sex for money to take me out of Iran, and started a new life in Paris. The end. What about you?

i stopped thinking about it.

( kneejerk, typed and sent before he can think too hard about it, as natural as blinking or breathing. that's not all he did, of course. killing has always been the climax, the final period at the end of a lengthy paragraph full of horror. he wants to tell her more, in explicit detail — not because it feels good to be honest, but because gnawing at skinny ankles to see who flinches first is another kneejerk habit stamped into his dna.

no one here knows what he is except his family. and louis, too. armand, maybe. luci, certainly, in shades. parisa? a little bit. probably more than she lets on. he craves revulsion like a good orgasm. )

first person i ever killed, actually. i was seventeen, fresh out of juvie.

Was it kill or be killed?

( a very adolescent desire, to root around rocks in the high altitude hills of appalachia and think you actually have a chance at finding a fossil. just because she didn't kill her brother, doesn't mean parisa hasn't killed. it doesn't mean she's vehemently against killing, when she's seen the greasy inner workings of minds that would do the world a favor if they just shut up forever.

still, she thinks about callum's soft, empathetic voice convincing military ops to kindly turn their guns on themselves, the point of it buried in the futility of living at all. he did the same thing to parisa, who jumped off a building — she worries danny would do the same thing to her, and she might not make it out a second time. mentally speaking. )

Did they deserve it?

nah, though i used to wonder if that would've made it better. like, more right than not.

( more moral, more acceptable, had danny's father been awake instead of asleep the morning that danny decided to kill him. idle thoughts for a tiny seventeen-year-old brain, more child than man, self-appointed orphan missing his daddy the very second he stopped fucking breathing. )

but he deserved it.

Was it memorable?

( telepathic curiosities — she can't go anywhere in danny's mind without rushing through a mesh strainer into darkness. she'd think he didn't have a memory, or was diseased by something flesh eating and thought stealing, if she wasn't talking to him now. )

( danny buries a damp sigh into the naked slope of jem's shoulder, and then his spit-sloppy dick into her warm cunt, past his thumb pinning the soggy microscopic strip of lacy fabric that passes for her panties taut against her thigh, stark white like a bridal garter. )

sometimes when i really need to cum and can't for whatever reason, i think about his blood in my mouth and it rocks my shit every time.

have you ever killed anyone, parisa?

Yes. It's not the question you should be asking.

( she thinks about the exact amount of pressure it took to stab her jimmy choo heel through the cheek of a man who tried to kill her. parisa is not a fighter, really — not interested in an excessive amount of gore or violence. but. the sick moment of penetration, the compulsory and almost childish pop of someone's cheek giving way under 1k of designer heel, that second of satisfaction, of standing over someone and taking their life away because they had the audacity to think they could take yours —

well, parisa is addicted to the drug of power. she is five feet nothing of minuscule strength and little talent for violence, but she's always fought in her small, unimpressive ways to be free, safe, and strong. it's easy to say she killed someone, that they would've killed her first, that she was justified, that they had it coming.

what's more important: did you suck on his blood and cum to the memory of his pathetic death later? did you like it? )

( multitasking isn't exactly difficult for danny, who is convinced his dick could find jem's cunt in pitch black, through a hundred million bodies, like a heat-seeking missile. he respositions them anyway: danny rolled halfway onto his back, jem cushioned on top of him, her throat caught in the lean v of his arm until he snags her bottom lip with his thumb, tucks inside to give her something to suck on as he fucks her, unhurried, lazy.

across the twin peaks of her firm little titties, he rests his wrist and the phone, screen glowing white, and blows her hair out of his face. a phone call would be a thousand times easier. he holds off. )

did it make you hot? did it turn you on? ( the real real question: ) do you hate that it turns you on?

Yes.

( three questions all sharing the same answer, unfortunate as it might be. she wants to be better — she exist living in an air of unearned superiority, simply because it's what people expect from her. the truth is that she's worse, she doesn't morn her enemies, she doesn't feel empathy for devils, she isn't so disgusted by a murderer fucking his sister to not text him back. )

But we aren't the same.

god forbid.

( a long lapse while he's distracted, texting fingers put to better use, lower between jem's wet thighs. after a while: )

but just 'cause you ain't me don't mean you ain't fucked up, too.

( what if we just changed the subject! )

Why is your brain like a black hole? Did something happen to you?

ain't heard that little number in a minute.

( not since kovacs, probably, drilling john about his special little boy. )

maybe it's 'cause my daddy used to beat my ass raw. or maybe it's 'cause i was taken by some fuckin' eldritch spider god and skull-fucked into submission until my brain turned into swiss cheese.

alternately, cutting the bullshit: i'm just special. (:

Hmmm.

( she has a little experience — not with spider gods or abusive fathers, but with the action of breaking a mind down into little component parts in order to hide something, making your own little patchwork design of a human neural network. who knows if that's what's wrong with danny? parisa is inclined to believe he came predamaged, a little genetic fumble. )

Usually thoughts reach out towards me, but yours are more like a suction — a whirlpool, or something. It seems like a really bad idea to go shuffling through your thoughts.

( And Yet. she still poked at dalton's, who also turned out to be a murderer, or something close to it. at least danny's upfront with being terrible. it makes him more likable. )

( that sounds about right. )

jem always thought my head was really quiet.

( her safe space whenever she didn't want to be alone with her own noise. danny never understood it because his head has never been quiet for him. fat grey matter cranium full of wind tunnel shrapnel, screaming freight train, never shuts up, never shuts off except when he's too fucked up on coke and bottom shelf whiskey to think. how many times is he going to play russian roulette and lose to his own fucking brain? )

but it only seems fair. ( he can't get out of his head, so why should anyone else? fuck 'em. nothing escapes the event horizon. can't fight physics. ) misery loves company and all that.

you kind of make it sound like you wanna shuffle through my thoughts, parisa.

I'm good at bad ideas.

( said with the same textured inflection as a hapless shrug — apologetic, almost. parisa likes a project. danny has holes in his head that perfectly fit the diameter and length of her fingers. 1 + 1 = 2. )

If you were going to kill me, how would you do it?

( been a minute since he's heard that, too. it feels right.

danny's settled in jem, no more idle fucking but idling for the sake of idling, swollen dick gloved in her insides as he stares into the dark at parisa's last text. he maneuvers them again — back onto their sides, coiled snakelike around her, with his thumb still occupying her sleep-pouty mouth. no more texting. now he calls, waits for parisa to pick up. )

You ain't my normal M.O., but I'd take my time with you. ( this late, danny's all grit and rasp; his voice scratches like a needle over a record into the line, vibrating through jem's spine. he noses into her shoulder, teeth clipping the collar of her t-shirt. his t-shirt, several times too big on her. ) Figure out your patterns, your habits. Wait 'til you're alone, then take you somewhere.

( she shuffles embry over on his side, but the gin drunk sleep is enough that he only murmurs something with the vague inflection of a swear as parisa separates from him, a perfect dichotomy of actual platonic interest from danny's relationship with his sister. when she swipes to answer his call, it's after she's lifted embry's shirt up and over her shoulders, padding into the bathroom and checking out her naked body in the mirror's reflection. discerning, one twist of the hips from the next. in the low light of midnight, she can't see the gray hair in her hairline, but she still knows it's there. old age is a physical disease. )

I see.

( for someone who generally lives life scraping and clawing and lying her way towards the next day, it seems a pretty shitty question to ask. she still feels that very real pang of fear in her gut, white hot and bottoming out, a blade already in her stomach. still, it's nice to know the method, the thought process. it's nice to imagine dying again, after being killed by callum. )

Methodical, with intention. ( isn't danny just a little boy scout? parisa smiles, skirts her hand down her stomach, into her panties. she's disappointed by not surprised to find herself wet. ) I'm glad I wouldn't be a rush job, though there is something a little romantic about a crime of passion. What next? I'm in your scary white van, I'm locked in your cage. The stalking is slow, but what about the death? Quick, painless? Would you enjoy it?

I always enjoy it.

( that goes without saying. he's silent for a second, straining to hear her through the phone, little scuffling footsteps, a door creaking traitorously. is she on the move? )

How I kill you depends on if you would enjoy it, too. Are you touching yourself?

( her hand moves back up, abruptly called out, scraping her lower teeth across the pad of her middle finger, tasting the guilty essence of herself. )

I thought about it. I thought ... ( she twists in the mirror's reflection again, watching herself at all angles. theoretically pretending like she isn't imagining danny playing with his sister's unconscious body. there's a psychological fact that your mind will sexualize its biggest traumas on something like a survival instinct — parisa imagines that's what it is, imagining a brother fucking a sister, a real thing of nightmares. ) I thought I'd walk into the bathroom and watch myself listening to this, and maybe I'd find something disgusted in my expression. Or at least something normal.

( thoughtful pause. then, ) I've already been killed twice. Want to hear about it?

Sure. ( it sounds like a bedtime story, even. the time parisa was the little lamb with her little lamb neck on the altar, twice. ) Twice ain't nothing to cough at. Was it here or before here?

Before. ( rustling sounds as she moves from the bathroom to her room, voice instinctively dropping lower even if embry's out cold. there's a balcony she lets herself out on, next to naked and freezing in the night wind. ) I jumped off the roof.

( it doesn't exactly sound like a murder attempt, but it was. empaths know the way to make you do anything, even trick you into thinking you want it — callum was nothing if not thorough. parisa steps up on the stone railing now, the soles of her feet conforming to the curve. one foot lifts, painted toes moving en pointe, and she forces herself to balance, or die mid phone sex/murder. it's too humiliating of a death to allow. )

And, my ex-boyfriend stabbed me with a corkscrew. In the gut. You can imagine, the twisted metal. You seem more the latter than the former, Danny. Do you have a favorite?

( that just leaves him with more questions, like: how did she come back the first time? did she come back the second time? but when a lady asks you a question, you answer. danny's mama lived long enough to teach him that much, at least, before she choked on her own vomit in a gas station bathroom off i-80. )

I like it slow.

( romantic. indulgent. danny sighs into jem's sweaty nape and rocks his hips once, leisurely. )

Last place I was at — before this place, I mean — I killed my boyfriend. Pretended to be something I wasn't for six months, then took him out into the woods one early morning and Old Yellered him. He cried.

( danny cried, too, in the aftermath. dug him a grave and laid with him, humped his fucking corpse until he came in his trousers. )

That's probably the most fucked up thing I've ever done, and I did it 'cause I loved him.

Loved him so much you didn't want to lie to him?

( most people would probably argue danny isn't capable of love. it seems the general consensus on sociopaths.

regardless, it's a for purely egotistical reasons that parisa is more or less at ease with that admission. things she knows: it's easy to kill, would probably be easy to keep finding bodies if that was a particular itch you needed to scratch, a deadly void you needed filled. death could mean absolutely nothing, in the grand scheme — but at least danny makes it a point to make it special, when he loves someone enough, when it counts. letting out an oof sound, parisa takes a seat on the stone banister, back pressed against the wall, one leg dangling above 18th century stone, the other above foggy, misted oblivion. her hand goes back in her panties, fingers pressed up against her cunt. )

Is the mask because you're ashamed? ( her fingerpads rub in light, gentle circles around her clit. she pants into the phone's speaker, unsubtle. ) Or is it purely tactical?

Edited 2024-08-15 14:00 (UTC)

Nah, the lying is the easiest bit.

( it was the sharing, which danny couldn't tolerate. it was the knowing quentin would never want or love him as he was, because he couldn't, because why would he, why would anyone, and most importantly why had that mattered at all when it hadn't mattered for the twenty-four, twenty-five years danny lived and breathed without quentin smith possessing one whole half of his mind. fuck, he hates him. fuck, he loves him more than he hates him, still, still, and he cried the day that he killed him but it wasn't because he was sorry, then, now, or ever. he's only sorry he didn't get to kill him twice, really nail the point home.

fuck, he misses him.

no time for that. no room for it, either, between jem throbbing warm and velvet on his dick and parisa panting warm and velvet in his ear. danny's a hateful fucking whore before he's a romantic. speaking of, breezily bald-faced: )

I really like attention. Like, a lot of attention. Must be the childhood trauma. ( he's not just any prolific serial killer; he's a serial killer with a narrative, the most insufferable kind of serial killer. he drops his phone into the crook of his shoulder and tucks it tight against his ear, freeing up his hand to skate under jem's t-shirt. ) 'sides, the mask is kind of hot, right? You looked good in it.

( though danny suspects she'd look good in absolutely anything, and just as prepared to let you know it. )

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