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PARISA

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( it makes her smile a little, through her paled face and bloody lips, to imagine a world in which that was true — or truer, maybe. everyone hates parisa a little, which she's used to and knows to expect, but she has it on good authority embry has a marshmallow core where peaches usually have stones, a natural inkling towards affection, usually covered up by his own shitty behaviors. case in point: people who hate you don't usually mop up the vile crusts of your hands, stained with bird-blood and sick-blood, like it's not a bother. reina wouldn't do it. alina wouldn't do it. that's not the self-loathing speaking — that's fact. embry, despite contrary measures, is a sweetheart.

so, the marriage isn't surprising. she luckily never taught embry how to disguise his thoughts, so it's all blatant in the forefront of his mind, the wind wisps of his voice following the salty sea air, i don't know how to make anyone happy. she sits up with a warbling groan, knocking into him with her knees, jutting out her chin in a silent request for him to clean up her face, too. a ring on his finger — it's very sweet. but his mind is as frosty pacific northwest as ever, and parisa is more aware than your average whore that marriages came be fleeting, temporary little pit stops. embry's never struck her as a one-man kind of guy, but then, she could be imposing the bias of herself on the person most similar to her. familiarity but association does not a pattern make.

still, she's polite enough to offer, ) Congratulations. ( and sound sincere about it, hand weakly squeezing his knee.

ever more interesting that the prison of commitment, parisa's eyes focus as best they can to his words, eyebrows pulling together. something happened to embry and she didn't know about it? well, parisa, that's what happens when you shut people out. externally, she's completely unbothered, even casual in her neutral mocking expression, not holding the same gravitas as usual considering how sickly she looks. internally, she's punching embry in the nose — if she didn't know aggression from women was a wildly inefficient way of getting what she wants, she might consider it, noodle limbs slapping against a war studied american soldier. )

Interesting. ( her tongue clicks in thought. ) Different, sure. We'll go with that. You've seen my predicament — what happened to you?

[ his face pulls into an exaggerated expression of grotesque horror as he carefully begins wiping away the smears of red from her perfect lips. he came here for a reason and that reason feels incredibly ill-timed now — who knows when parisa might start hurling blood again, which seems to be her punishment for cheating death. he's starting to theorize, and it's all very shitty and bleak, a classic faulkner he would've blitzed through and complained about the entire time.

plus, she has him stuck in the bathroom now, and their bar cart might as well be miles away. ]

If you're gonna puke again, turn that way.

I've been losing time, and I hoped that maybe you could find it.

[ maybe she can stop it, but that feels too optimistic, after the things that've happened. the first time, with hawk — it feels so much like abilene it makes him sick, and it makes him feel guilty that now hawk feels responsible for something as stupid as fucking him without knowing if he wanted it or not (of course he wanted it. right?), and embry doesn't want to have to think about that on top of how he doesn't remember even going to hawk's room, or taking his clothes off, or getting in his bed. he doesn't remember anything but waking up. ]

It happened again, after that. [ he knows she heard all that, and it's fucking humiliating to talk about hawkins fuller right now. ] I ended up in Danny Johnson's room. Don't — don't ask. Don't ask what happened. [ far more humiliating than hawk is the violence that took place there that he's assigning to that terrible, rabid person he becomes when he wants someone bound and begging beneath him. ] The problem is that I got there at all. I don't remember going. By the time I realized what was happening... I was way in his shit. I'm going places and I'm doing things that I'm not — it's not me.

[ and yet. all those decisions he doesn't remember making are very him, if he pushed. he drops the towel, sliding her hair over her shoulder as his eyes flicker down to her throat, at the beginning of scar tissue that disappears into her collar. ]

I don't know. You can think about it when you're better. You need to wash your hands, you look fucking disgusting. [ he takes her hand despite this, passably clean if not for her nails. ] How did this get here?

( right. that's the worst thing about embry, about men, about men like embry — once you get comfortable, they show off how shitty they are. not that embry has taken any particular efforts to disguise how shitty he is, and not that parisa is exactly choosing to be comfortable right now, but she is vulnerable. someone decent would probably be inclined towards pity, except decent people don't exist, and parisa hasn't forgotten her philosophy on the empty goodness of men just because she wanted some empathy, for once. far be it from her to expect anything other than what she's always been given — embry is the rule, not any exception. well, he's not fucking her, so at least there's that, if you want to say it's a positive.

asking for her help with his proffered side of insults. she shoves him off, pathetically weak, stumbling up to her feet and clumsily making her way to the sink on her side, ramming her stomach into the hard edge of the counter when she manages to steady her dizzy mind. luckily, she lost the heels on entering the bathroom, so she's fine enough to work on meditative breathing, the ins and outs of being calm, of not throwing up. she turns on the water and scrubs her hands, her face, viciously. she can't think about danny without imagining him stuffing his fat dick in her cunt, letting her see the images of embry's desecrated corpse in the chapel, pushing them into her, like his cock, over and over and over. good time to be sick, however, it's in her favor that embry just massively pissed her off and reminded her of all the reasons why she shouldn't care — she doesn't care, not what embry does, not what danny does, not any decision any of them made. they're all just as awful as each other — that is the plight of mankind. )

I ate a bird. Raw, from the sky. ( hand shoveling water into her mouth, spitting it back out ) Last month it was a raw chicken breast. I imagine it'll keep getting worse until I eventually kill and eat a person, so you might want to lock your door at night.

( moving on, like she didn't say anything at all, )

Time was part of my dissertation. I know you don't care, before you start grumbling. ( turning around, she leans back against the sink, crossing her arms over her chest. ignoring the silver hair she saw in her widow's peak, because embry is not the person to have a freak out in front of right now, clearly. ) Actually it was the central focus— namely, that time is an illusion. It's flexible to thought or emotion, largely centralized on the intelligence of the person experiencing the time. ( her head inclined towards him, as if to say but you're a dumb bitch. ) The time is still happening, you're not losing it. You're just waking up between two points. People have blackouts all the time and regain memories from it — because the body is conscious, even if the mind isn't. ( she makes a gesture to her head ) Imagine your brain like a variety of different rooms. Most of the shallow doors are wide open, like how I'm actively reading your mind right now. The deeper ones are closed, but openable. Lost memories, or actively concealed thoughts, are like locked doors, closed until you have a key. Luckily, you're in the presence of the most talented telepath in the world. If you want to regain those memories, I can do that, easily.

( after a thoughtful second, ) I doubt I can stop the blackouts entirely, though. I can be with you, in your mind permanently, and see when it goes offline — but that's asking a lot from me, and you did just call me disgusting, so I'm not rushing to help you.

[ from years — a lifetime — of experience, it is incredibly obvious when someone is mad at him. the issue gets bumped down when she starts talking about eating birds, and the novel gets bleaker by the second. ]

Stop. [ he holds up a hand as if she's paying any attention to what he's doing, exchanging a glance with the toilet and wondering if he should take a turn throwing up his guts after what she just said. ] It was raw? Like, you hunted a bird just to eat it? Did it taste good?

[ this is bullshit, and he won't do this anymore without a drink. he pushes to his feet and leaves her in the bathroom, busying himself with pouring them two glasses of whatever the staff has restocked them with — bourbon today, because parisa's favorite red just doesn't seem strong enough right now.

he returns not just with the drink, but also holding one of his silky pajama tops, dark blue fabric rippling like water, because her present outfit is wrinkly and wet and has little flecks of blood scattered across it. ]

Do you want help changing? [ he hangs the shirt on a golden hook and hands her the drink. ] People have blackouts all the time. Point to them, please. I'm not getting my memories back, either. I tried to, with Hawk. I made him... I made him recreate exactly what we did, hoping that it would jog my memory, and all that happened was I figured out he's fucked up, too. In a different, irrelevant to this conversation way.

It's like you and your — bird. So far it hasn't been that bad. I haven't done anything I can't come back from. But eventually, I could hurt someone. Eventually, you could eat someone. What if you do eat me? What if you wake up and I'm trying to gut you? Is anyone going to point out that none of us should be alive?

[ then — ] You can't permanently be in my mind. That's humiliating. What about when I'm fantasizing about Martha Stewart?

( her eye twitches, very subtly. in return ) Did it feel good when Hawk fucked you?

( answer: probably. embry doesn't remember, parisa doesn't exactly remember either, though she wasn't blacked out at the time. she remembers every second of the bird's suffering song when she snapped its neck — horrifying to her now, but better it than her, she figures. it wasn't the taste that drew her in, but the compulsion towards violence, towards gorging herself. a little like a wolf, eating to a distended belly (that is, less than an ounce of organ meat) when meat is readily available. throwing it up to comfortably continue on (almost her entire water weight in blood, seemingly from absolutely nowhere).

she thinks about it, but does turn her back towards embry, gathering her hair over one shoulder. ) Unzip me. ( bourbon and the lingering taste of blood in her mouth is a surprisingly good cocktail, actually.

undone, she steps out of her dress, not bothering to be coy about being naked in front of embry. facing him, she is very purposely looking to see any repulsion at the sight of her scar. )

People with mental health disorders have black outs. Dissociative identity comes to mind — it's a common side effect of ADHD, too. Dissociative amnesia, depersonalization-derealization disorder, even kinds of autism can lead to time blindness. If you want me to stand here and list every person with a mental health problem in the house, we'll be here all day. Just assume everyone, you'll be right more often than not.

( she is, despite herself, very grateful for the offering of his pajamas. personally, she would've stolen his cashmere sweater, but she'll just do that during the next blackout, she supposes. shouldering into it, she slowly does up the buttons, irately clicking her tongue. )

I'll take a Martha Stewart fantasy over some of the things I read any day. She's hot and rich. Anyway — why focus on "should"? We're alive, that's the fact. Yours, at least, has easy preventative measures. We just lock you up somewhere until the blackout is over — is there a time of day it's likely to happen? If it's only happened twice, that means it's monthly, like mine. Is there a reason you went after those two? Was your behavior different while you were under? Did anything else change, but your consciousness? The more we know about it, the better.

Edited 2025-01-02 04:43 (UTC)

[ it should be an easy answer. yes. sure. probably. of course it did, because it always does. but the truth is he doesn't know. the truth is he had no plans to fuck hawkins fuller that night, because he hadn't fucked him since coming back from the dead — until then — because hawk fucked danny and then got himself murdered what apparently was seconds later, and embry is having a pathetically awful time getting over anything that's ever happened in the last several months.

the second time was worse. so much worse, because he thinks he forced hawk into it, his demented reenactment of the first time, and now? now he's not talking to hawk at all.

did it feel good? he looks at parisa with a vacant expression that only barely covers the depth of his mistakes behind one simple question. ]

I'm swearing off gay men.

[ much more compelling is unzipping parisa from her dress, letting it fall to the bathroom floor and then being faced with the sight of her. why she's standing there, unmoving, watching him in the nude, is a mystery for another day; he doesn't think about that. he is presently occupied with thoughts of how fucking hot she is, which is a thing technically impossible to forget when he's around her, and yet it's not always at the forefront of his mind. parisa has become a household staple, like a cat, like a sister, and so when he remembers that she's actually mind-numbingly gorgeous, it's like christmas all over again.

the scar is only the third or fourth thing he sees. there are, literally, so many more interesting things to look at. he doesn't hate parisa's scar like she does, because he has one of his own, and embry loves nothing more than someone else sharing in his misery. he hates being alone in anything, after all. ]

We'll ignore that you just diagnosed me, a perfectly stable and healthy young man, with ten different disorders. [ why focus on "should"? because they should. ] If you want to tie me up, Parisa, you can do that any time of the day. But for the record, you can't tie me up every single night. If once a month is the pattern, I still don't know what day of the month.

[ he scoffs. a reason he went after hawk and danny. as if he's fucking obsessed with them, or something. shut up. ]

It happens at night, after I fall asleep. I'm pretty sure I'm sleepwalking. Hawk said he didn't notice me acting any different, really. I was just quieter than usual, but I was responding. That's the fucked up part. People won't know that it's not me. [ he gestures toward her with his glass. ] And what about you? When you get the urge to go all cannibal again, are you gonna call me?

( parisa nods, an over-exaggerated motion for her, mouthing the word oh-kay. she is very abruptly reminded of callum insisting he was going to kill tristan, because neither embry nor callum are in particularly good communication with their hearts, and because fruity men apparently don't know how to love something without wanting to kill it, a little. honestly. she's giving up gay men too, but not gideon. or louis.

luckily he passes her artificial test of loyalty. not really to parisa, but at least to her beauty, which he is passably entranced by. at least embry is also reliable in that direction — he'll always go for the low (or in this case, high) hanging fruit. )

Really? That seems exactly like the kind of thing you'd be into, my perfectly stable and healthy young man. ( there's a wave of her hand, like shuffling embry's worries under the fridge with all the other crumbs you don't feel like dealing with. she slams the rest of her whiskey down like a shot, head rolling on her shoulders as she shudders through the hot waves of liquor hitting her system. ) I'd know it wasn't you, from your brain. One month, you let me lock you in your room every night, but I keep the doors between our suites opened so you have no choice but to come to me. I'll know more about it once I see it.

( that's the easy solution. as for her problem — parisa casts her gaze to the side, glaring at a stained glass window in their bathroom, shaking her head. )

I can argue with the urge for awhile. So I just fight it until I get to the forest, or somewhere I can catch little Bambis or something. ( a shrug ) I could ask for a supply of livestock, but I don't want to take care of them.

[ a sexy concept, made less so by the idea of his forced captivity (although there's something sexy in that, too). it's not enough to keep him from sinking into a sour mood as he considers all the ways this could go very wrong. he could pick up a vase and crack parisa's skull open. he could have mind-blowing sex that he'll never remember having. both of these options are devastating. ]

I'll do it if you can put safety measures in place. [ he is not stumbling upon any more corpses of anyone he cares about. he no longer has the constitution for the amount of death the house demands, and he wonders how he ever did during the war. ] Neither of us can predict what I might do, so something in that big brain of yours has to be able to stop me.

[ he grimaces at the thought of parisa sinking her perfect white teeth into bambi's throat, but then finds the thought of her traipsing into the woods to catch her furry, wiggling dinner ludicrous at best. he considers offering to do the dirty work for her, but hunting rabbits feels equally ludicrous for himself. ]

Ash wanted to live in the country and raise animals. I could probably convince him to take care of your livestock collection. [ a purse of his lips. ] Well, if he knew you were just gonna kill them in the freakiest way possible, he might not want to do it.

The ducks and rabbits are pretty easy to feed, if you need something to come quick.

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