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New Low (nihilistia x Verse)

Carmen rested her temple against the window of the car as it drove. A black car in the Yareli night couldn't mean anything good. But at least if life was happening to her, she didn't have to think about her next move. It was easy, being a leaf carried by a current. Meant she wasn't to blame for the things that happened to her. She wasn't wanted anywhere, so a man wanting to take her somewhere was more welcoming than it would be for any sane person. But if she got drugs out of it, it couldn't be so bad.

The ride ended at a place that was bad news. But Carmen was feeling apathetic. The guy didn't even have to drag her off. She went willingly. At this point, she was curious what was on the other side of the doors. What was the worst that could happen? It's not like there was anything anyone could take from her that she hadn't already lost. She'd compromised herself. Never felt good during, but things worked out for her, probably more than she deserved, and it felt pretty good after.

She hadn't expected Shun to be inside. How many days had it been? They'd been a blur. Four, maybe five. These days she didn't even keep track of what day of the week it was, she certainly didn't know the date. The ink was new and Carmen's full lips pursed about it as she stepped closer. Must have slowed down too much for the liking of the man guiding her. He gave her a shove and she was all bones these days, so she tumbled. She didn't get up, just shifted so she sat on one hip.

"I'm in enough fucking trouble without adding murder accomplice to the list," Carmen reasoned. She hadn't heard any emotion behind his voice. "I just went home, but I.... I couldn't stay there. I wasn't trying to go nowhere where you couldn't find me, Shun. Theres just no place for me to be. Dad doesn't want me back in Yareli. And Tina definitely didn't want me to stay with you." Besides, he had found her, hadn't he?

A man she didn't recognize came out. Not a great first impression. Carmen scowled at his words and didn't think before throwing a middle finger his way. She had a few remarks ready to go, but held them back. She was already in trouble. "Your new friends seem nice." Her eyes hung on the new ink as he scolded her. Owed him? Carmen scoffed. "Then why dont ya kill me like you should?" She asked in a flat tone that suggested she didn't think she much left to live for, anyway. He didn't mean it. "You know I ain't got no money for you. So how we making it even?" If that's what this was about. If he was smart, he wouldn't trust her with a job or anything. Junkies are fuck ups. He'd already had her pussy, and it had been underwhelming except for the anticipation what else was there?

If she hadn't had such a shitty couple days, and wasn't rationing the last few pills in her pocket, this conversation might have looked different. Those days she used to raise hell with Shun were the best of her life. But she wasn't that girl anymore, just the shell of her. They had a lot of fun, but her days were pretty miserable lately. Shun wasn't the same either. He was worse.

"Is Tina okay?" Carmen asked when there was a lull in conversation. She didn't know her, and Tina hated who she was, but she'd felt bad leaving the girl behind in all that mess, and she didn't even know how bad it really was. It was the most genuine thing she'd said yet. It was a bit of a blur, but she was pretty sure his sleeve hadn't been there before. Things were headed in a bad direction and Carmen wanted no part of it. She hoped Tina did, for her sake.
 
Credit: Verse

She was the girl who'd fed him popcorn with her last money, like that's what all her worldly possessions were for. They used to be them; above all of this, getting by on their stupidity and good health. Standing here in some aftermath bleeding into what could only a calamity, he of course wanted that back. Those memories and the hope of stitching together at least one of those promises or dreams was everything that kept him together. Wouldn't be much, just like finding microbes ain't much, but it also becomes EVERYTHING. But he wasn't doing it to be kind. He was out of practice even when he had to have it. He was this being, digging for it in her tar-drowned heart with his skin covered in teeth. He wanted kinship from her when they brought her in, what was left of her. No way she'd be the sun-framed girl he knew, but whatever was left of her, in her, could be his harbor, couldn't it? He'd been getting so much lately that it was all getting heavy. He needed something solid. And there she was, brought by Kuruto.

He squatted down to look at her as she went on. Even her sit was so fucking lazy. He wrapped his arms around his head but still had springs between his forearms to see her when she told her story. FUCK did she look JUST like one of the druggie whores he saw in those brick and wood districts where even the hero cops wouldn't go. His fingers dug into his scalp. He was going to be okay with it, because he had worse, and since they'd found her, they could build her up to be the Carmen he needed. He just wanted ONE moment of fucking clarity from her. Hadn't she come back for something? Her family? She must have known there'd be a component of him, too, when she reentered Yareli. Breaking fucking news, girl on chemicals breaks a dumb heart. He couldn't stand that he was this person to her. She was his liability. He needed to find something that could anchor her. It'd be good with something she just liked to pretend to care about. But she was empty if she wasn't high. Still, he stood up and looked down. She was wasting away but there were still all her prettiness underneath it all. He recognized her. He wanted that girl back. The one who had the bones to run beside him. Not from him.

He was ready to take some shit for it to, they others saw it in his eyes and how he relaxed, away from the fighting set of his shoulders even if he hadn't raised his guard for it. Kind of overkill for her, anyway. They were trying to give him space like they didn't care. Not the first time someone with a gun had a bad mood in this place. The light shuddered and then it stabilized. Like he had. This aura of pulverized, coagulated blood. But not for her. Not when they'd gone through the trouble of finding and bringing her. Usually you could tell your importance by the effort put into you. And she wasn't going to be an example, so this wasn't about killing her spectacularly. No lesson to learn because no one was attending. Druggies dying isn't exactly a headline. His guys were invested because they hadn't seem him like this. Everyone had a hang-up. Mostly it was family but they knew she wasn't. Not in that sense. Kuruto had already sat Hoya on a couch. He was amped enough that he was crawling and rolling on the cushions.

And then she asked about Tina and all the rage behind the motifs on Shun's arm came to a boil. "What about fucking Tina?" he asked. He saw his girlfriend's face when he fucked her to completion, and what emotions she had put in there; the echoes of loving affirmations he had forced out of her. Those were the things he needed to RUN from. What Carmen was supposed to help him with. Kuruto shifted where he sat on the arm of the couch beside Hoya who was losing it, jumping up and down on his knees. But neither of them stopped it when Shun reached with his new arm, and took her by her hair. He pulled her up. She really was all bones. He wouldn't have minded. He liked decay. He thought her fall from grace looked good on her. But she still needed to have some left for him. Sure as fuck wasn't asking about Tina. He twisted around and tossed her at a mattress. He missed so she'd be getting mostly floor. Stomped over to her again, unless she had some tricks he didn't know about, but he'd been murdering lately, don't think she had anything to put up against that. Kuruto stood, but when Hoya did too, Kuruto pushed him down on his ass again.

"This is how Tina is." Shun said and backhanded her onto the dirty mattress at last. "She's fucking great." he said and had her by her neck. He dunked her head back but it was okay because the softness caught most of it. Louder thuds then you thought possible given the padding. Meant he was really giving it to her, swinging her skull hard. "All the time, just this." he said between his teeth. He was on his knees beside her, but now he climbed ontop, one knee on each side but he scooted high on her stomach so she couldn't use her legs against him. She'd be feeling the hard bulge but he'd forgotten. He was honestly just livid about her audacity. There was some catharsis in hurting her like this too. "What? You gonna save her, Carry?" he asked and there was definitely spit coming out now, with his mouth basically around her eye. "You can't even be a good friend to me but you're going to be besties with my girlfriend?" He hammered the mattress beside her head with his free hand a couple of times before he finally let go, arms up in the air when Kuruto finally grabbed him by the shoulder. "I'm good. I'm fucking fine!" he shouted.
 
He didn't like what she had to say. She still remembered the subtleties in his expressions and that peculiar affect. His face had harder lines now, none of that lingering boyishness from when she'd left. He seemed to have aged more than he should have in that amount of time. Carmen probably had too. But it made her realize she didn't know what she'd missed. It must have been something. Really something to earn his marks. Nevermind a whole sleeve. It was still fresh. Not that she wouldn't have remembered it when they reunited a week ago. It didn't sit well with Carmen.

She didn't speak, just took careful breaths as he rose. Her eyes didn't follow him, they looked down at his shoes. She shouldn't have asked about Tina, but she felt bad about the situation she left her in, after she'd been tolerant about hosting Shun's love lost. It was a sudden whine that broke the silence when she was pulled up by her braids. "Shun! Shit!" Carmen's hands flew up towards his as she stumbled along with his long strides. She caught up just before being thrown down. She hit the floor hard with nothing to soften the collision. She pushed herself away from him, but barely got herself up before a blow to the face knocked her back down.

Carmen touched her cheek and looked at him like she was watching that image she'd held onto of him shattering, like the glass in a picture frame. They weren't the smiling kids, captured by the Polaroid her mom gave her that was made in 2014. Others had faded into those frames, born to leave, but never Shun. She could never forget the curve of his smile or the life in his dark eyes. Brown eyes get a bad rap. His were endless. He was there in front of her, in the flesh and larger than life, or at least compared to how she remembered him. They got into their trouble, but he was a good kid. But maybe that was the rosy shade she filtered the past through. Everything was better than it was now.

Carmen was searching for words to answer him, ones that wouldn't dig her a bigger hole. But she didn't get anything out before his hand was around her neck. Not choking, but not how she was used to him being. "Shun!" She objected once more as he shook her and dribbled her head against the old mattress. She was caught somewhere between fighting back and apologies. He deserved to be mad, she'd give him that, but this was a side of him she didn't know. Maybe this was what he wanted when he'd had her in an alley, it had just been the wrong time.

Her eyes said it all. Who are you?

He made sure she couldn't fight back, but she never intended to. She could be a punching bag, if that's what he needed. Sure, he had Tina, and Carmen didn't doubt she knew his many masks, but Tina wasn't the one who hurt him. That didn't make her believe he didn't touch the little blonde. She just wasn't enough to sate his anger.

She took it, for a few moments, before her hands were shoving against his chest once it had scrambled her brain. She hadn't expected anyone to step in, but a man she didn't recognize intercepted. It only made Shun more volatile, but it gave her a moment to breath. "She was fucking scared, Shun!" Carmen said about Tina, even though she knew she shouldnt be talking about Tina. "She was scared and I left her. So yeah, want to know that she's okay. She was kind to me, and I left her. She distracted that prick so that he'd leave me alone. But she wasn't scared of him, she was scared of you!" she said breathlessly, like she knew every word would make things worse. But it was the truth.

"I'm sorry, Shun. I'm sorry I left the first time, and I'm sorry I hurt you getting out of there. There was nothing but trouble for me there, and all I'm good for is running." Maybe Carmen was no good for that either, now. Not in a literal sense, anyway. But she was running from her problems and responsibilities, from doing the right thing, what her family asked of her. So she could run right back to her addiction. "I get it. When you got the biggest dick in the room, you gotta swing that shit." And she knew from last time that it was probably the truth. "But you think some tattoos make you important? You're just a glorified Yakuza dog, playing like the big boys." It might anger him again, but it was her truth as she saw it. Some ink didn't make him a big fish in Yareli waters. "So what the hell do you want from me?"
 
Credit: Verse

All manner of things went through him when she called out at having her hair pulled. Should have been something playful between them, or something adult, but still dear. But this wasn't. He still felt jolts of nostalgia electrify the offending hand that grabbed her. If he wanted, he could stop, it was so powerful. But that was a person who hadn't killed Aska. That was before all of this was rolling. He was hurried along with teeth, like centipede legs. He had bought his new little kingdom with violence, and he would have to pay homage through it forever. It made him happy, he was a fucking scholar and ready to learn more, but he didn't want to apply it to the last sweet thing he had. But that made it even more scrumptious, too, didn't it? Lovely little woman, who used to be his girl. He got to watch her fall further. He got to throw her. Here I am, Carmen. Every little jagged shard.

She felt different than other girls. Different than Tina. He was still learning the delights and plummeting guilt of beating on Carmen. But he could see it now. She was a good one. She was going to be fun and he was ready to hate himself for it, but the blood moved inside him. It was killing him, a little bit. None of the others gave him that. She was the stone slab he'd die on. He was just depositing parts of him now. And on the mattress, he wanted other things. Her head was heavy but her neck was firm and pliable at the same time. Her spine scraped at his fingers, holding on. He was new to her now, wasn't he? He liked when she didn't know him. Let him be someone other than the filth he'd grown up as. And junkies wake the fuck up when their dealers get chokey. She should have been good about it sooner. And to him, good was frightened and obedient. That's all he wanted. That's why he was nice, some times. So it'd end up like this. But it was going to taste different with Carmen. He was going to mold her into something else. If she was going to be destroyed, he'd make it glorious. He'd make it a monument to his badness. It's all she could ever have been, coming back here.

Kuruto got in the fucking way and that let Carmen recover a bit. He felt like an animal who'd had his slab of meat pulled away. She got to talking and it got worse. She would see it in the way his face wrinkled up. It tasted like iron and salt. He was familiar with that, the real stuff, but not when it became ghosts over his tongue. He shook his head like Shut the fuck up, but she didn't. Carmen used to see into his heart, and steer him away. Like she knew. But back then she cared, or maybe there had been a soul to spare from the body. But not now, huh? Now she could just spew what she wanted. Maybe he'd forced her to do it, because there was nothing else. Behind Shun's shoulders, rising and falling with his lungs, she'd see Kuruto, shaking his head at her speech.

Shun could barely breathe. This was a lot. This was more than he wanted. Couldn't she just have been a dumb junkie bitch? But it made his mouth water too, and it wasn't just that lubricant before puking. Because if this was the real her, then there'd be

something real to destroy.

"You know, a dog is better than the human I used to be." he said with dry humor, but it was packaged in a sigh that was kind of given up. His naked hand brushed against the toothed arm, right where a Doberman's chompers were. "It's alright Kuru. I want this." he said calmly, and Hoya fucking lost it.

"He's gonna be like a hyena." Hoya liked the nature programs, late at night. Didn't really explain the fineries of why he was shouting now, and running around. It made for exactly the kind of ambiance Shun wanted, though.

"I just want you, Carmen. I always only wanted you." and that was something anemic in him dying, though there was new, blackened life at the last syllable, like something else had eaten it and taken its place. There was a couch adjacent to the mattress. When he took her, he turned her and sat her on her knees in the mattress and slammed her face into the cushions of the couch. Not the best bounce in the leather, but at least it wasn't the hard floor. He started taring at her clothes. Damn fucking right, he was going to get what he wanted. Kuruto's turn to throw his arms up. A good friend knows when to give up, too. Eventually all that clawing and pulling would bare her ass. She had asked what Shun wanted, right? Hoya tossed a half-full clear plastic bottle and it slid on the floor and then flipped onto the mattress. Lube. What fucking else?

"We're going to do it like dogs do it, Carry." Shun muttered as he pressed down on her spine to make her arch, keep her in place. He slapped her ass once, hard enough that even Hoya jumped. Shun had fantasized about this angle of her. Maybe he wanted it to be unkempt. "I don't think you'll ever be human again." he said, but it was with condolences. And a promise.
 
She never had been good at stopping her loud mouth. They stole and trespassed and vandalized as kids, but it was always her mouth that got her into trouble. Carmen was a daddy's girl, once. White parents tolerate too damn much from their kids. It was her mom who used to put soap in her mouth. Hot sauce, for when that stopped working as a threat. She had been a good student. It was her words that landed her in detention. Usually because of the unwanted advances of their schoolmates. Boys are crass and she was the token black girl. She had some choice words for them. Her parents wanted to raise her to be confident, but didn't like the consequences of that. Davina was meek by comparison. Her father's child.

She'd done it again. She could see it in his friend's gesture. It looked almost disappointed. He'd interjected, but he wasn't there to save her. So why were they there? To intimidate her? To dispose of her body? The other one, the guy on the couch seemed a little unhinged. But Shun was scarier than any stranger. Especially when he dismissed the man over his shoulder and the third got all feral about it.

Carmen wasn't sure what Shun wanted to hear. Years had led up to their reunion. That was a lot of time to think of what they'd once been, what they could be. But nothing could make them step back in time. They were here, in the present. But his words made even her druggie heart bleed for him. "Shun," She began and there was something real in there. "I'm sorry. I–" Carmen continued, but already knew she should have started with apologies when she walked in. Hadn't thought that shit through.

But before she could finish, she was being guided by a rough hand in her braids again. She didn't want to think about all the things that probably went down on that couch as her face was smashed against the unyielding cushion. She didn't try to lift her head up, even as his hand left to rid her of her bottoms. Carmen struggled, for a moment, because that's what instinct does. But she settled quickly, having convinced herself that she deserved this. She'd asked for it, hadn't she? Calling him a dog when this was what he'd always aspired to be, even when they were kids. As a girl, it seemed a lot more glamorous.

Funny thing is, she would have given him what he wanted without him having to take it. But it was too late and she grimaced as got her out of her pants. Braids fell in Carmen's face and cut through her vision as she tried to watch him. It made her jump when the bottle of lube bounced against her calf. She didn't like what it implied. But it was his words sent a chill down her spine.

"Uhn!" She gasped when his hand landed hard on her ass, catching her by surprise with her narrow range of vision. It didn't provide a lot of cushion. She'd always been long and thin, but she was especially skinny these days. Carmen had pissed off a lot of shorted drug dealers, but Shun hit harder. "You gon' keep me locked up here like a bird?" She spoke barely loud enough to hear her own words. The very thing Aska had died for. She understood why he had his friends with him then. To humiliate her in front of them. She kept her face turned away from them, moving only enough to pull her braids over one shoulder. She studied Shun as she waited, taking shallow breaths. God, was she a fool to think he'd moved on with Tina. He was angry and stuck on her and neither looked good for Carmen. It was about the time people started bargaining, trying to escape the situation. But not her. Instead it was apologies dripping from her lips, without even the intention of getting away. She really was remorseful. "I'm sorry, Shun. I never meant to hurt you. I just couldn't be here, anymore," she said about leaving the first time. She was tired of everyone looking at her and seeing her mother. The raw emotion, not dulled by drugs, was tainted by panic. "I felt like some homewrecker when you brought me home with you. She didn't want me there. Must really love you to protect me from... whoever that was." Apologizing for leaving a second time. "But I'm so tired of being what everyone wants me to be. I think you're the only person who doesn't want something from me." And by that, of course she only meant rehabilitation.

Shun wanted her ass, but so did every other man. It was a small price to pay to die living the life she'd fallen into. She owed him, like he said. He'd always wanted her. And that was more than she could say about anyone else. He brought her home when he had to know that was going to piss Tina off. He'd hunted her back down. She'd always wanted Shun, so romantic gestures had never looked like roses or jewelry. They were just older now, and it was different. He brought her back to him. Wanted her when it would cause drama with his girlfriend. And there were probably more pills in it for her, if she acted right. So yeah, she wouldn't protest about the other men in the room. Carmen went on apologizing until he made her words stop working. She wasn't used to good dick. It was a lot of quickies in cars and bathrooms for her usually. And if she'd ever had anal, she couldn't remember it.
 
Credit: Verse

He was in gear now, ready to run over anything she said, and anything he'd put in his own way. It had become a good skill of his. It was like rolling down hill. Step on the gas, and it makes more sense. Tumbling like that is a lot like flying, if flying is being shot out of something. You have to let it take you, or you can't conquer it. He had taken this. Reached right out and pulled it to him, and it had stuck to him like ink that imitated glossy enamel, climbing past his elbow and stopped diffusely by his shoulder. Already he was getting all of it. What else was there? But she said something that made it all hitch. Something heartfelt, like it was there to remind him. He remembered, sure, but what's nostalgia got to do with a redlined freight train? And-- the way Carmen looked these days she was perfect to be dragged and tossed around. Didn't want to say it, because the boy he'd been near the girl she'd been would have hated him for it, but it was in her skin. So pretty. He'd looked for it. But girls like Carmen, unless they were Angel Guerrera, were girls on these dirty couches. Their syndicates were upstarts and rarely established enough. And if you don't have crime, you don't have nothing in Yareli.

Her ass was smaller than he'd dreamt, but the neglect and the reminder that she could still run, still made his mouth water. Not so much fat to eat when you're putting it all on magic and dust. He knew the type. The type kept him in business. He was about to feed his own proclivities. When she corrected her braids it looked like she wanted this. It made him hard because it was wrong. And then it made him harder when she said all her Sorrys. Not the effect she wanted, not him either, but this was who he was, all teeth and instincts. It was all that could keep you alive, if you had any ambition on these streets. But he was blaming something that had raised him. It had been there all along. But this Carmen hadn't. He didn't want her apologies, he wanted his own excuses. And running away with someone else's drugs was good enough for now. His gang had gathered around the mattress. Kuruto was done being a good guy. He wasn't about to mess up their friendliness so that Shun could love himself in the morning. They were vice followers and peddlers. They'd be hypocrites if they didn't break their own hearts at every chance.

He noted her lack of a fight, and flipped the lid off the bottle. Its nozzle was short but it was good. He pushed the already slippery thing in between her cheeks and squeezed, to moisturize the way he'd be taking soon. Pulling it out, it continued to spew. Aint no guy out there that doesn't like the look. The groans around them, and the pitched inhales from Hoya corroborated that fact. "You don't mind, do you?" the madman asked and Shun shrugged, knowing exactly what he meant when Hoya got a pocket knife out. Shun didn't let her linger in the uncertainty for long, before he cut up her top and the crotch of her bottoms. She was naked but for her shoes. Shun had always had a thing for that.

Shun gathered up her hair in a sloppy tail at the back of her skull, maybe to see her, maybe for control. His other hand did other things, but by the approving, excited breaths of the audience, it was getting his dick out. When it tapped against the red mark on her slapped asscheek it had to be so. He aligned it where he wanted it, and pulled harder at the braids. He slipped and missed the first time, which pushed his balls against her cunt. He wasn't deterred, and managed to find a path where he could put pressure on her decimal without letting out to the side. Grabbing his cock near the head helped, thumb high to make sure the bulb of his dick was aimed perfectly as he pushed with his hips. He coughed when it finally lodged into place. "You gotta push back like you're taking as shit." he said but didn't wait for her to take the seasoned advice. His fingers were a ring around it, kissing her ring muscle as it had to expand for his cock. He grunted like it hurt, but he loved this feeling. He breathed through his teeth and was twisting her bundle of braids for his own comfort.

He started fucking her asshole when he was half in, shallow pushes to make sure the lubricant spread everywhere he needed. For once, Carmen was gonna play along, and not be such a bitch about things. "Hey, remember when you said you'd never do this?" he said, sullen but excited. Like he was turning mad. This was so fucked up. And it made him so fucking rock hard. His motions became longer, and he let go of his cock to let it navigate her insides by itself. That hand afforded her another thunderclap to the same asscheek. "Hnng... You're always lying, Carm." he muttered, entranced by seeing his cock slide in and out of her. So this was how she felt like.

That's all he wanted from her, right now. "Yeah?" he asked. "You gonna stay with me, then?" If he wanted her so earnestly as she said. He felt sick at the idea of keeping her locked up. His beautiful, long-legged Carmen who ran like a rainbow. But that was the allure of it too, to take it from her; he wanted to fuck her and she wanted his chemicals. They could decay together even though it'd be at her cost.
 
They felt like vultures, closing in around her. What did that make her, something already dead or dying? Carmen took measured breaths as she felt Shun behind her. The sound of the lid made her squirm, but she was surrounded, and she didn't trust that he'd tolerate her leaving a third time, even if she could get away. And she couldn't. Anyway, this was the only apology he cared about. A junkie's words are hallow. Even when they do mean them, there's always a motive behind it. She wouldn't be apologizing if there wasn't something she wanted from him. Right now she wasn't sure what she wanted more, pills or just a little mercy.

The contents of the bottle were cold and it made her clench her teeth hard. She didn't like where he put the lube, but didn't even try to stop him. What was the fucking point? This was her fault, she'd let herself get this far to where she was only something to be used. Carmen thought it worked well, when they gave her drugs first and came for her body after. A fair transaction. But there, with Shun, she was terribly sober and it didn't feel like he wanted her body, just her dignity.

"Hey!" Carmen interjected, not because she was scared of the knife but because she only had the clothes in her bag and the ones on her back. It tore through her favorite band t-shirt, The Cranberries. She'd had it since their school days, got it after she'd had that last growth spurt, grew up tall and fast, a couple years before the boys caught up. It was faded and the print was peeling. He left her naked in front of all their eyes. She only made one move to try to stop Shun, but ended up with his hand rough on her hair, pulling her head back until she was useless. It would have hurt a lot more if it weren't for her braids.

Carmen already knew what he wanted. Tina had warned her of this, while they were getting high on Shun's couch. Told her that if she wanted to stick around, she was going to have to learn how to take it up the ass. "You don't got to worry about doing it pretty, though. He likes it ugly," the blonde told her, smoke like a halo around her platinum hair. She really was an angel, saving Carmen from that night, like she was saving her now from the disappointment of meeting this new Shun, who was nothing like she remembered. This one liked the taste of her despair.

Against her better judgment, she was tense as she felt the head of his cock slipping against her virgin hole, but she couldn't help it. Tears stung the outer corners of Carmen's eyes as he filled her. It burned, but she swallowed back every noise that tried to creep up her throat. But her breaths came faster and more ragged. Her sides heaved with each one, all spine and ribs protruding from her dark skin under the shitty lighting. His instruction made her scowl. It really only made it sound worse, dirtier than she already considered it. But she didn't know any better, and heeded his words as though he actually meant them as help. Bearing down as he instructed felt filthy and the blush hardly showed on her skin tone, it heated her face and chest.

He summoned a memory. The same one that conversation with Tina reminded her of. When they were just a couple of kids making jokes of a dirty magazine that she'd found in the garage when they'd been sneaking around to smoke some weed. Her innocence hadn't lasted nearly as long as a parent would hope for their daughter, but this had been before it was totally gone, when pot was the only drug she cared about. She'd been appalled when they came across a page about safe anal play, douching and toys for order. She had said that, that she didn't understand why a pussy and a mouth wouldn't be enough.

Maybe he'd taken something else away from that experience.

The slap came suddenly, too fast for her to keep back the yelp that lurched off of her tongue. For a moment, the distraction was actually, but the sting dulled and it was just him fucking her again. Carmen nodded eagerly at his question, like it might buy the kindness she missed from him. But he wasn't done, and it wouldn't be over until he was. The tears finally spilled down her cheeks as she sucked breaths in through her teeth. Her upper lip was curled, but she didn't have any fight left in her. She was compliant, complaisant, trying to push back against him, like he'd said. Even through the humiliation when she was reminded of the other two, watching. Hoping that somehow she could learn to like it like this. Suffering the worst of it, as she was, that seemed impossible. She'd be scared of it, next time. Maybe another next time too, before it was routine, at the very least. The body adapts and he had the only two things in the world she wanted. And there was no where left to go.
 
Credit: Verse

He didn't even try to compartmentalize. Sometimes the evil he did thrived in the blindness he applied on it. He still wanted to be a hero, deep down, but he didn't get this kind of satisfaction from that. He had broken so many things that he had to break himself against them to keep going. Through every wall. If he stopped all the debris of the bridges he'd burnt would catch up, like a whirling, stabbing storm. He was here, at the end of all his choices. Maybe he wanted to regret it more than he did. This was Carmen. This was his supposed line in the sand. But if all of that had lead him to his beautiful friend, eaten away by her addiction, but also helping him control her by it, was it so bad? The girl who ran, stopped at last, made his pet, in fact. Maybe this was worth it. Men spend their whole lives chasing after beautiful creatures, their own obsessions. Here his was, ass up and so gorgeously helpless. It spoke to all the hunter parts in him. He was going to show her his newest favorite thing to do.

She tensed up about the bottle, and the nozzle inside her. He'd done this before. He knew what he needed to do to make it comfortable. For him. And if she wanted to test her clenching against him, that was part of it, too. Didn't care much what she did to stop him, as long as he got to know her by taking her temperature. He was glad that she was this person now. Because the feral, beautiful thing she was, would have to be entirely restrained, thrashing. Or maybe not. That was their entire crux; emotions there, no matter what was said. They didn't know they weren't a thing when she left him. He wondered for years after, didn't he, when he got familiar with the asphalt and brick walls and dumpsters and how they retained and rusted from blood. Built like this gargoyle of New City for her to return to. Maybe he thought he'd be that boy, too, when she came to see him again. Like that version of him had stayed the same in her heart, ready to reform him upon their reunion. What the fuck would that be good for, anyway? He had only been scrappy, but that just meant you could make do until you learned how to actually fight.

Yeah. All he'd been when she left was the seed and potential of the man he was now. It had always only been this, between them. They might have played with happiness in the beginning, until they needed to live. And you can't live off adventures and dreams. You needed real stuff. Hard stuff; flesh stuff. You needed to keep you childhood crush down once she grew up into a worthless junkie, and you needed to lube up her asshole and pull at her fucking braided hair. That's how you got hormones flowing through your ribs and swirling in your stomach. If only he'd known then, that all he had to do was take her. All the polite shit. Kissing, smiling, pretending it was funny when nothing happened. Could he just have held her down? Girls always develop a taste for that, if they have it enough. It would have been so fun to teach her, too; shown her the Import Houses. But that Carmen wasn't his. Not beginning Carmen. He got the finished thing. And he'd make it his business to mold her into what he wanted. She had already started by choosing which method he should use. It was both a punishment and a reward.

He was happy to peel the shirt off her. It had looked perfect and now it had fulfilled its purpose. It looked like the kind of garment that would always end up shredded on a dirty mattress. When he entered her, his cock quaked in excitement. How long had he wanted this? How much had he already cum in her ass, when she wasn't there to point out he'd only borrowed her face on those other girls. His cock went in and out nicely. Just looking at it almost made him cum. But he refused. He sucked in a breath and tensed up until that first wave was thwarted. Didn't owe her much, but this he was going to make sure she had. He groaned when he realized on her reactions; "Fuck. Really?" he breathed. How was it even possible she hadn't done this? She didn't say it, but her body did. There was some talent there because she wasn't screaming her tongue off, but it sure as fuck was no experience. It made him sentimental, and it made his thrusts longer and slower. For a moment. He built back to his selfish pace, testing the yield of her elasticity. He laughed darkly when she did as she was told, and he had that smootheness on the way out when she helped with her push.

He wrinkled his nose when she said she'd stay, wordlessly. Made him feel ten feet tall, but also bitter because it had taken this. She was tamed, not swept off her feet. To think his brain had conceived that she may be seduced by his rough play. He went on for a while longer, sure to make her anus pliable. He had the luxury of plunging in fully, until his pubes were tickling her tailbone in his slight forward lean over her. He fucked her faster and the others cheered on manically. Hoya was jumping around the mattress like he couldn't wait for his turn. Shun left one hand in her hair to keep her there while the other started spanking her again. She'd kinda liked that, right? He showed her exactly how he liked it, tried to carve the roof of her intestine with the head of his cock. And then whatever purpose he'd had with his rhythm devolved. He was closer to pleasure now, closer to primal. He was going to hurt her for it. So he let everything go, and took her arms, hands sliding onto her wrists so he could pull back like reins. Bend her back real nice. His hips didn't relent, almost frantic as he fed her thick cock at vibrating velocity, using her new asshole.

When he came he stabbed violently into her, and went on for a while to ride out the painful pleasure ripping through his rod and his lower body. He grunted and hissed about it, head lowered like it was a punishment. And then he slowly pulled out, and let go of her wrists at the same time. Realization hit of what he'd done when his cock popped free out of her shitter, and he felt like a king and marauder. In the aftermath, there was some sullen. But he knew how to combat that. Sat down with her on the mattress, back leaned against the edge of the couch. She didn't want to be with him, surely, but he had a bag in his hand with some pills for her, like she was a puppy or something. He even petted her head when she came for it and he could put his arm around her while she went into the pills.
 
The moments stretched on endlessly. Just Carmen, her pain and her humiliation. She wasn't the praying type, wasn't even sure who she was taking to while she asked for it to be over. God certainly didn't answer. It was Shun she was supposed to be pleading with, he was the only one who could make it end. But she was still holding on to the last shreds of her pride. That was the dam that kept the whimpers behind her clenched teeth. But it was chipping, cracking, crumbling with every second. He sounded impressed or maybe just excited. It made her cough out a sob, just one, because she could hear in his voice that this was just the first of many times she found herself in this situation. And who knows what else. He'd started off strong with murder on their first date. That was the closest thing to a date she'd probably ever get out of him. Tina probably didn't even get those. This Shun did whatever made him feel good.

His creepy friends got too close for comfort. Carmen turned her face away as much as the grip on her hair permitted, kept pulling even when it hurt. It was far from the worst pain she was suffering. Unnecessary, but his excitable little friend made her nervous. This would have been mortifying enough without a fucking audience.

He spanked her again and she was already tender from the first two. The more that landed, the bigger the reaction got. It would only serve as positive reinforcement, she knew that, but couldn't stop it. Carmen was flinching before the blows even came down. She gasped and whimpered despite all efforts to be stoic about it. Yeah, maybe she would have liked it, but not when it was flavored like this. She could taste his malice at her leaving, at everything they hadn't done because she was off, trying to find better for herself, just to end up here anyway. As the strikes kept coming, she could almost convince herself that she'd deserved it.

Suddenly the grip on her hair was gone. Carmen was left gasping as her head fell forward. She folded her arm against the musty couch and rested her forehead against it. It was the closest she could get to hiding. But it lasted only moments before he was taking her arms. It was worse, somehow. No hands to brace herself on, no room to escape him. Her skinny ass only clapped harder against him with each painfully deep stroke. Shun had all the power. Her head hung forward and braids fell around her face. Her teeth were bared and clenched.

Then he was done and she was freed. Carmen fell forward before catching herself. Suddenly the room felt cool, in the absence of him. With him gone, it felt even more filthy than before. She understood better now why the mattress was always so dirty in rooms like these, just not why it was always bare. What do pervs have against bedsheets? She hurt, but still pushed herself away from Shun, backing up against the couch and drawing up her knees to cover her nakedness. Dark eyes briefly scanned over his friends, but the sound of plastic quickly drew Carmen's attention. It was practically a reflex. She didn't reach for it right away. But not taking it was never an option. He knew that. Knew that as long as he had one little thing, she'd be his puppet, do and be whatever it was he wanted.

Her restraint slowly gave way to her addiction. Carmen literally crawled up to him and reached for the bag like she was dying of thirst and he was offering the whole oasis. There was a sense of relief just having the bag in her hand. She was immediately counting them, judging how long they would last her. In an instant it made it so his touch no longer elicited fear. When he touched her on the head, it felt almost familiar. So much that she sat beside him instead of retreating, or maybe that was the lesson learned here. Carmen rested her hip again because the other hip and thigh were covered with red welts from holding a lighter to her skin. It wasn't new, started in her early teens, but if Shun knew about it, he'd never brought it up. She didn't need anyone to punish her for the things she'd done, she'd taken that into her own hands years ago. There were a few cigarette burns among the marks. Every once in a while she'd pick up a carton of the kind they used to steal. It was ritual the way she'd smoke it and press the cherry against her thigh. There was one such mark that couldn't be more than a day old.

His arm around her was nostalgic. His breathing hadn't recovered. It lowered her defenses. Carmen let one of the pills tumble into her palm. She looked at it a moment before tossing it into her mouth. She swallowed it dry and leaned back into Shun's side. She felt frozen to the spot, her bag too far away to even try and retrieve clothes. Soon she wouldn't even care about being naked. Carmen's head tipped to rest against his shoulder. She started ahead blankly at nothing in particular. "What now that I don't have anything left to sell you?" She asked him flatly. "I don't want to stay here," she added in an even softer voice, but she wouldn't even fight for the thing that had killed Aska.
 
Credit: Verse

Used to be impossible to get to her. She was strong, back then. Long limbs and bright smile. Like she was one of them. Like she had a cock tucked into her shorts. That's how much he'd believed in her. He had eaten all that bullshit because she was pretty and she smelled good even when she had been baking in the sun all day, running around with him. The oils in her hair and her breath. He leaned in to hear her talk just so he could be closer to it. Something else, that's what he'd thought. Like being close to her was enough. That kind of warped shit. But he knew now, when he was fucking her like this, and keeping her in place by her hair, that she was just another girl, only he'd given something of himself to her. Nothing out of the ordinary but their memories. And everyone has sun-glazed moments they can put up against the best of them. Seemed tattered now, those left-hemisphere polaroids, like images on tile over time, when he looked down at her skinny ass and all the red he smacked into it. She tried not to make sounds and that made them sweeter. How many extra precum ropes had he laid in her stomach for her failing fighting spirit?

There was such good sorrow in her sobs, and he loved her when she expressed the pain. He just fucked her harder for it. Here are my hips, Carmen - do you like them? How's the cock you never got to try, back then? He only thought she sounded different, that her ass squeezed him different. That this triumph over her flesh and spirit was worth more. But it was all worth the same. That's why he couldn't reconcile the tingle through his cock and the electricity in his sternum when he was ass-fucking his best friend. When he took her wrists like reins she let him. It changed her stomach around his cock and he celebrated that by fucking her harder, digging deeper with his cockhead. She looked like she was suffering and he loved that he was doing that to her with his dick. It was a perfect contrast to how he'd imagined her; glorious, flighty goddess. What did that make him, when he'd plucked her out of her downward trajectory, and ushered her the rest of the way?

Ended the same. He fathered her stomach from the wrong side and it was the rapture he had always had, older than anything else he could remember. Made him a king for an instant, which meant he owned her, in his heart. A short lived triumph but the ownership didn't go away. They were on the couch soon, and he was coming down too. His drug was more expensive. It had taken him all this to reach that satisfaction. In comparison she was innocent. Her bad things were part in getting what she wanted. He wanted the bad things. He felt forgiven, not just by her, but by whatever organ spoke to the grander court of morals, when she came to him, leaned into him. That's the thing, now, he could always buy her love. He'd laughed at the bosses who had a girl in a brothel, but he understood now. You can't pick who you love, but you can pick how you acquire them. Sometimes you get to pick the life they get, too. He wasn't no wyvern atop a mountain, but he sure as fuck could own a drugged out colored girl, couldn't he? He stroked the braids he'd pulled.

He savored their togetherness. His evil had been fed so it slept in his chest. He held her closer and kissed the sweaty skin between her braids. He tucked his nose in there. His hand slid down her body and palmed the red parts of her hips, squeezed sadistically, absently. She wouldn't care in a moment. In these minutes, Carmen would become his confessional. He looked around at the others and thought about the thing that she was fearful of. If he made a decision about their cocks and her body, he didn't show it. "You still got stuff left." he said. Her heart. He would dig it out of her. He wanted to eat it. He'd shove anything into her bloodstream to get it. He smiled coldly to himself. "And did you want to get fucked in the ass?" he asked and petted her red marks. "Did you wanna be brought here?" He crushed his cheek against her forehead and sighed like her stupidity was tragically charming. "You're staying here, Carmen. And you're not going to hate it, most of the time." He had enough to keep her stupid and listless forever. He just had to figure himself out, about her.

Maybe he hoped something of the former girl would show itself in her. But it was a huge ask since the pill was coming. She'd feel better soon. And then it didn't matter much where she was. All the things he had kept away from her had now opened up. This was his Carmen. This was a proxy. A way to desecrate her memory. A living funeral. It go him excited enough that his cock wouldn't go down fully. "I was kinda hoping you'd work with me." he muttered and picked at one of her braids. "That's not gonna happen now. I can't rely on you for shit." like they were sweet little nothings. Smiled at himself, at how stupid he'd been. "But I'm gonna keep you here so we can work things out." To the old Carmen, it would have been a death sentence. Can't run well when you're chained to concrete. It probably just meant he got to fuck her whenever he wanted, but also that she'd have all the pills and syringes she wanted.
 
She hated it, but he still felt like home. Even after the way he'd been since she came back to Yareli. Once upon a time, she'd meant more to him than a quickie in an alley. They were bad kids, but Carmen never thought she'd see him end lives. Like it was fucking nothing to him. How many had it been? Four? Five? She didn't feel like she could call it rape, she'd already let so many creeps take advantage, but he definitely didn't have her enthusiastic consent. But she had submitted thoughtlessly. Because she wasn't that girl you wanted to take home to your parents, anymore. This was exactly who she was. Nasty ass mattress and everything. She was lucky he gave a shit at all.

That space against his side was familiar. It might have even been comforting except she was waiting to learn her fate. Carmen didn't believe that she could change her fate anymore. She'd tried and tried and failed every time, even when there had been people to support her. She always ended up on the floor, in one manner or another. Like now. It wasn't ever the same place, but it was always the same. She'd given up trying to change her life but the hole she was in kept getting deeper, darker, but still loved Shun enough to hope that he could. Hoped that he wanted to. So much that what he said and what she heard became a bit twisted. She wanted him to care. Wanted him to want to fix her, even when, at the end of the day, she didn't want fixing. Carmen only truly loved her addiction. But hobbies were nice, and Shun looked real good when he had presents for her.

His lips and the weight of his cheek on the crown of her head made Carmen's eyelids droop. Even when what he was saying was bad news for her. This was her pep talk. She did have stuff left! Just... forget the rest of what he said. She did. She shrank up against his side, as small as someone who was all legs could get. His words sounded final, like a bad ruling, a prison sentence. But where else was she gonna go? Back to shelter? To rehab? How many times would that make it? No. Fuck no.

He said she wouldn't hate it and Carmen wondered what that met. She didn't know this Shun. She doubted his generosity ran very deep. He was giving her pills now, but that didn't mean anything anything when the days turned to weeks and weeks became months. He felt angry enough when he was fucking her that she thought it was more likely he'd cut her off, keep her captive like a butterfly in a jar he meant to shake like a cocktail. And when he said he couldn't trust her, that only struck her as more plausible. Like the way he prodded at her painful parts. She let him. She'd put them there for the hurt.

"You can," Carmen told him even though she knew that was bullshit. It didn't matter how much she wanted it, it didn't make it true. When she thought of home longingly, those years she was away, it was always the memory of raising hell with Shun. College being the best years of her life was utter bullshit. He was her good ol' times. "I can help you," she insisted, not even knowing what that truly meant. They'd grown up. They weren't kids stealing 40s and peanut M&Ms from the gas station . He was moving guns now, and Carmen got the sense that that was only the tip of the iceberg. But this version of her didn't have the reason to know working with him was trouble.

She was pretty level headed until the time came for him to leave. The pill had started to work his magic, making Carmen heavier against his side. But when he was going it was all clawing at his clothes and begging him to stay. She didn't like being left alone with just her thoughts. She was her own worst enemy, like so many, except she was the self destructive type these days. The pills slowed her thoughts, but only for so long. She'd take another. A third, maybe a fourth. That's where the slope turns slippery. It was hard for her to describe the rabbit hole without inviting others to follow her down. She didn't want to die, even if she loved the thing that was killing her. Here, she didn't have any other outlet.

Arms latched around his waist like it would stop him going or he'd decide to just take her along. She'd rather face Tina than her own demons. Carmen would cry about how Davina was about to graduate and she needed to be there because their mother wouldn't be. When that didn't work she was begging just for little things. A notebook for the writing she'd left Yareli to study. A lighter and cigarettes. Didn't even think to ask about sheets or a pillow, guess that shit want so important.
 
Credit: Verse

This was what he wanted. Peace of mind and an outlet. He had been a bleeding idiot for thinking he'd get it from some kind of talkie-huggy therapy from his old friend. This kind of solace only came from exactly what he'd done. A unkind fucking to get it all out, and now this, a lingering that he didn't mind. Wasn't many he could stomach like this, though he always tried. Shun tested all his girls like this, at least once. Some of them waited out their exhaustion, or tears, with him, but he usually ended up not liking their bodies against him after. Tina was good. She knew how to play Madonna and cradle him. He'd taught her. He'd even posed her around him when he was drunk and feeling pitiful, with his lip cut and no prospects, all of a sudden. This wasn't that. With Carmen it was commiserating. He was her better place, and there was a heft of memories to draw from. Yeah, staying in the aftermath with her was worth something. Even if he did need to feed her pills to make it work. He didn't get a lot of these moments, anymore, as could be evident by the creatures lurking around them now.

He held her to him real tight when she curled up. He got her, at least now. All the testosterone he spent inside her made him almost human. He petted the hair he'd been pulling. She smelled right, unwash, her skin, and ass. He could stay like this for a while, until the hectic stuff got back into his blood and he had the be the real person he'd become, with bruise-colored ambitions and a taste for the finer things earned by the ugliest means. Be someone in the Yareli night. New City kid with all that concrete in his teeth, and plans to rule this city right out into its sea. It was hued in another light, sober, after he had gotten off in his favorite way. He thought a few fantastical thoughts about a motorbike, a backpack, and Carmen on it, because the road went all over, didn't it, not just Yareli? He smiled to himself but with teeth digging into his lower lip. Playful. Kinda smile he showed people in debt that were actually paying. Not without affection, but it sure as fuck wasn't a good expression. Yeah, those kind of dreams were obsolete. Older than a lot of his nostalgia. Guess Carmen brought it out of him.

But then he had to think about all the deeds too. He sighed and through his teeth it was shrill, like the beat of his heart when he went over the ledger in his head. Aska was fresh, the way she'd talked. Hah. He was a fucking monster. Felt so good in the dark. But it was wrong, wasn't it? Bosses would shoot him for this, if they could see into his skull. Bet Lenaka could have. Put a bullet in to stop it. Shun continued to pet her head and then he laughed dryly at her reassurances. She couldn't help shit. She couldn't help herself, but that was alright, there were people that were shit to themselves and they were still worth something to someone. But he didn't need her dead, so she couldn't really do grunt work for him. "You're gonna help me." he said, like he was giving in, and kissed her between her braids again, rubbing her shoulder like he meant it. He did, but only like this. Her ass had helped. Getting to hold her helped. But her loyalties ran as deep as the bag he'd given her, and not even to the bottom of it, just whatever depth the pills started.

And he liked when she held on to him when he was going. Where had this Carmen been when he shot Tina's friend? Couldn't trust it, but he could indulge. He pretended to leave a few times just so he could feel it. Like she really needed him here. She gave it good too. More heartfelt than the whores. That face and those eyes. He liked that she did it naked too. Honestly he could have just been there all night with her. He would probably be a significant way to the boy he'd been when she left. That wouldn't be therapy. That'd be putting a bullseye on his back. He held her cheeks and kissed her and promised he'd be back. He had practiced saying that in his heart since he had to suffer this city without her. Kinda romantic, finally. Too bad he didn't get it for free. He nodded to Kuruto and Kuruto told Denya and Hoya. She was a guest, but they knew she was only kind of a guest. Not some soft-skinned squeeze of a higher up. She wasn't free to leave. When Shun had played the lover's struggle a few times and finally vacated this dirty headquarters, she'd have a change of clothes and food. Hoya even gave her a notebook and a handful of ballpoints with restaurant and other small business logos on them. Eventually Denya would be gone, but Kuruto watched the big ass television mounted on a shit wall with water damage, and Hoya tried to get her attention a lot, but somehow managed to stay at at least arm's length at all times.

-

In the day, one day after, after his share of the nightly dirt, there was a Japanese kid in a rolled sleeved shirt, a lot unbuttoned, sitting on a bench on the side of the sidewalk. His suit jacket hung over the back of it. He was sitting high on the edge, too, with his polished shoes on the actual seat. The shirt was rolled so high his shoulders were showing, most notably the arm with all the well-shadowed mouths and teeth. Black cigarette in his mouth. Didn't know exactly why he was here. He couldn't do much good for Carmen. Not to her face. Not when she had all that solace locked up inside her and he could only get it out with his cock. But maybe he could do something for her, when she wasn't here.

This was the way Davina Evans had to take when she came home from school. He remembered her as a large eyed tail when he and Carmen was anywhere near their home. She'd grown up when he saw her. Even if she didn't recognize him, she would be looking at the obvious syndicate boy, eyeing her. He got up and swiped his jacket. He'd made sure none of the other guys were here. "Heard you're graduating soon." he said and matched her pace and ashed in their wake. Either she'd been sheltered dumb, or she was a normal Yarelian and knew he was Yakuza now, on his getup. "Congrats."

But this was gonna be about her sister. And they both knew that.
 
Nothing she did made Shun stay, even though his kiss felt for a moment like he might. His friends did, however. Even after she was dressed. She didn't speak to or even acknowledge them for a while. She had pills and that was all the entertainment she needed for a bit. But then the effects came and went and they were still there. The weird little one had one of the things she'd asked for and Carmen wasn't rude. She thanked him as she thumbed through the blank pages. She sat with it and stared at the paper, tapping the pen against her leg as the TV played in the background. But the words didn't come so she'd look past the notebook to Shun's 'friends.' Maybe he really did think of them in those terms, but they hadn't been a part of his life before she was gone.

She was on her back and let the book lower to lay against her stomach. Her knees were pointed at the ceiling and her head laid to one side to look at the men. "What are your names?" She seemed to know she'd be seeing quite a bit of them. "How do you know Shun?" Carmen asked, but that wasn't really what she wanted to know, so it was quickly followed with another question. "How bad is the trouble he's wrapped up in?" Pretty bad, based on his ink and the shit she'd already seen. It wasn't what she'd hoped for Shun. Maybe she'd always expected it, though.

Later, she wouldn't be able to sleep. Not even after a pill, and she was wary of being wasteful with them. The harsh lighting stayed on and that didn't help. Carmen laid on her stomach on the edge of the mattress, watching the puddle a few feet in front of it. It was fed by a slow drip, but never seemed to grow at all as the hours passed. In it she saw the exposed overhead plumbing and lights reflected on the surface. The TV was still on and she was watching it, inverted in the water. It was the first time in a long time she found anything worth writing down, guess Shun gave her something to write about.

May something, 2025​
The In-Between
When there's nowhere left to go,
nothing left to see,
I look for where I'm free
and find the in-between
We don't know how the place works
But I do know that it's here,
the door that opens into there.
This is the space that crosses in between
The things we think we have,
and the things we haven't seen.
When you go to that place
the world will turn around.
There, foxes fly, water is dry
and the trees are upside down.
The worms are in the sky
and the sky is on the ground.
So I must keep on exploring here
until the day I doubt
That the way into the nightmare
is the only way out.
–C.M.E.​




Davina had really grown up since her sister left. She was a woman now and had been barely pubescent the last time she'd seen Shun. She'd turned eighteen around the time Carmen returned to Yareli, part of the reason she'd come home. Unfortunate timing for Davina, but very good for the sake of the story. Shun was a lot of terrible things, but not a pedo. She'd felt bad for him when her sister left. He and Carmen were closer than friends. As a kid, she'd looked up to them in that way younger siblings do. She wanted to go everywhere with them, do the things they did. Davina even had an innocent little crush on Shun, though he turned out not to be her type as she aged. Like, at all. But back then, she thought he was cool and she was just the dorky band kid.

But she wasn't a kid anymore. Their dad had always been right about Shun. As the years passed her memories of him shifted to a less favorable perspective. Davina hadn't seen him since that day but she had heard about him. He did what everyone expected. Mom used to come to his defense, but her faith in him hadn't been enough. Perhaps it died with her. Then Carmen wasn't there to anchor him any longer.

She wasn't expecting to see him, it wasn't really a pleasant surprise, so out of the blue. But it wasn't out of the blue, was it? Carmen was back in Yareli. It would be impossible for her not to recognize him. As anyone else in the city would, she scanned his arm, and then his clothes. "Um, yeah, next week," Davina answered, hooking her thumbs through the straps of her backpack. "Thanks, Shun." She wasn't quite as tall as her sister. She had slightly farer skin and lighter hair, her hair hung with looser curls that actually obeyed gravity. She was walking with two other girls who looked at her when she stopped. She raised a hand in a wave and they went on their way, but one of them looked back a couple times. Davina wasn't scared of him.

"I guess that means she found you," she said as she continued to walk. "Better make it fast. If dad sees you he's gonna call the police," Davina warned him, but she was being friendly. Their dad liked to have something else to blame for the way Carmen was. It was easy to accuse Shun. Davina could admit, he probably didn't help, wasn't a great example, but Carmen was who she was and there was no one else to blame for that. As far as she was concerned, they were on the same team. Didn't they both just want Carmen to get better? "Shun, I know you love her. I do, too. She's done rehab before. She tell you that? She needs more help than you or I can give her and I don't think being around you is going to be good for her," Davina said, looking at her feet as they walked. Then she lifted her head to look at him. "It has nothing to do with how much you love her. I just, I think you attract the wrong crowd and that's not going to help her, you know?" She asked and touched his elbow. "So... why are you here?"
 
Credit: Verse

Kuruto liked her. He liked anyone Shun fucked in the ass. He didn't feel sorry, not really, but he liked to stay around that sensation, at least. Kept him human, just like Shun's pretend with this girl did. They all needed limits - he'd talked to Shun about that. Kuruto had thick forearms, a telling of the stock he hailed from. Had a lot of strength, he knew that, and then it kind of became his whole personality. He was a bit self-conscious about it, too. Been looking up some courses on his phone at Yareli U. Thought he'd try some with the money they were making. Be more than just the guy to could put his fists to bone and win. But he was still just a guy, underneath it all. And he'd seen Carmen take it in the ass rather well, and cuddle up with her tits out and cum rolling from between her asscheeks. So he kinda liked her. Made him more inclined to answer. If Shun liked her, then maybe she was different from the rest. "Hakuto." he said and nodded to another, who was playing a shooter on a rickety rig, with headphones on. "Denya. Crazy, productive." he then pointed at a squatted guy in the corner, crushing the barrel of his handgun against a dead mouse's belly. "Hoya. Just crazy." he said.

"He did a big job. Kinda." he continued. "And then the bosses said we should work together, prove ourselves." That's how they knew each other. "We gotta kill some russians and we're good at it. We're going to do more stuff like that, but better." his smile was sleepy but his eyes weren't when he looked her over. "You're his old girlfriend. You left." he continued. "But you love the drugs now, so you came back." He had a square head under the short, black hair. Work-line, Japanese. He leaned in closer. There was a clarity in him that contradicted his dumb meter. "Hey, you think you guys work better now because he kills people?" He asked, excited about the answer, like it would unlock something for him. Was the tank of this crew roundabout asking her for dating advice?

He thought she looked like one of those artsy chicks on the net when she laid on the mattress with her note book. He only ever saw girls dressed up like that, before the paywall. He sat beside it. Like he wasn't allowed on it, like there was a barrier that Shun had magicked into place. He wrapped his arms around his legs. "So like. Are you gonna stay, you think?" It was almost sweet until. "Or do you think he's going to tire of you like Amara?" he asked. His tone of voice was chipper, but if she took the situation under consideration, and maybe the blackness behind his eyes with that dead kind of thrill, she may gather things hadn't worked out well for Amara. "Nah. You're better. Right?"

-

It was surreal seeing her. Not that she looked that much like Carmen, even the way she'd been. She just looked like a piece of Carmen's life that had gone on. Didn't have anything to do with it, but, it was strange and it gave him hope. She was cleaner cut. Like she was the person Carmen had mistaken herself as, when she thought she could take on the world. If he was a returning sister, that would have grated. But he knew that's not how the two were with each other. The only thing Carmen didn't like with Davina was herself, if she really thought about it. Felt strange being beholden to a new adult's acceptance. All his bosses were his seniors by many years. He was also looking at his shoes when they were walking. And then hers. She had known what his ink meant.

"Mhm." she found him alright. She had triggered all this. Now he was asking the little sister too, to help, just like Carmen had on her doorstep. To bring out a miracle when all he could provide was the opposite. He wore it grim on his face when she told him the situation from her point of view. He took the cigarette out out of reflex when she stopped him. Looked her in the eye and even blew to the side because she shouldn't be breathing any of that. She was around the same age as Carmen when she left. Things would go better for Davina. His nostrils flared about that. Because she hadn't had him to mess with her. That was the difference, wasn't it? It made him sad and it made him angry. Davina was clean. But not enough to clean any of them.

"I guess I'm here because you wanna solve a problem at its source." he said. "Carmen was you, once. I don't know." She already assured him he was the bad element. Not what he'd hoped to find. It was sobering. It had been easier assfucking Carmen when he thought she'd done it to herself. Taking advantage is somehow better than reaping. "You're smart now, right?" he asked and dropped the cigg and killed it. He saw himself in his shoes, deformed and blackened. "And she's your sister. What should I do to help? I don't think I should stay away." He couldn't even not lock Carmen up so she'd be a warm body for him when he wanted her. Yeah. He'd come here for a miracle. Or maybe when Carmen was in town, you just went back to her house. It just seemed like he'd gone back in time with all the toxins of the future to mess it up again. Once upon a time he'd been afraid of her dad. Now he was asking the little sister for something to feed Carmen, while she was imprisoned. He was asking for ways to soothe himself so he could do all the bad things he wanted. "I mean, it's not like you haven't tried everything, right? But you gotta have something you didn't do because you couldn't. But I'm... I don't have to hold back." he shrugged. Not every problem could be crushed. There was a reason they didn't put him on political assignments. He started rolling his sleeves down so he could put the jacket on. "But I get it if you don't. I guess I couldn't quit her, either." but she wasn't addicted to him. And he knew he'd make it like that, instead, if he could.
 
She thought maybe he wouldn't respond. They didn't owe Carmen any answers and she wasn't sure what Shun had told them. But the one closest to her did. Hakuto, Denya, Hoya. Easy enough. She wasn't some white girl who needed to dumb down their names into something she could fit on her tongue. Hakuto was the least intimidating and she huffed at the way he described the others, she shot them a side-eye. "Yeah, I picked up on that," Carmen responded about Hoya, who was at least leaving her alone. But now that she was talking, that probably wouldn't last too long. Tina liked him, she thought he was fun, but she liked crazy.

Carmen looked at the buzzing lights overhead as he talked about Shun and their aspirations as a group. She scoffed about proving themselves and let her head roll to the side again to look at him. "So what, you guys finna be the new golden four?" She asked with perhaps a bit too much sarcasm. She didn't know who the Angel Katosh spoke of was, but Keijin Lenaka had still been a force of nature when she'd just been a girl under the Yareli moon. With she and Shun attached at the hip, there was no way she wasn't familiar with the wyvern curled around the top of the shadow mountain. "That one's gonna hold y'all back," Carmen said, nodding towards Hoya, only barely joking. She rolled onto her side and propped her head up in her palm. Her body and her ass hurt, especially when she moved. "You boys gonna be happy when Shun is the new Lenaka and y'all are just his lackeys, with names ain't nobody gonna remember?" It was needlessly mean. Being locked up didn't put her in a good mood. Neither did rationing pills. And she really did believe that Shun would be their leader. He already acted like one and she'd seen the way they responded to that energy. She was talking about him that way Tina did, like he was infallible, and unstoppable like a rolling ball of butcher knives. Go ahead, you try stepping in front of that. "I mean, ain't that why he's out right now while you on babysitting duty?"

But Carmen wasn't the only one with hard hitting questions. She wanted to correct him, Shun had never called her his girlfriend back then. He was her best friend and that had meant so much more. But that wasn't really the fucking point and she wasn't going to argue about semantics. His question made her scowl. "I don't know. Might work out in my favor. I been better off dead for a while now" she said in a joking tone but was no longer meeting his eye. She'd always deflected with humor. She picked up her notebook again, just for something to do with her eyes and hands. She shifted as he came closer, but there was an invisible barrier he didn't cross. Case in point about Shun. It was a stupid fucking question. They didn't work. Wanting it didn't make it so. They'd missed each other but she didn't mistake longing for love. The only thing his killing changed was her opinion of him. Was she supposed to be scared into making things 'work'?

"Does it look like I can just get up and leave?" She answered his question with a question. She didn't know any Amara but his smile was sinister. She didn't have to wonder for too long what happened to the faceless girl. She knew this place was haunted, and understood she hadn't answered his actual question. She didn't know the Shun that played cat and mouse with girls until he found them boring. Apparently she hadn't reached that point, she still had some novelty. He surely saw that realization as it played across her face while she tried to be brave. "Better?" She echoed and smiled for a moment. "Nah, I'm just a junkie bitch. He better off without me. Shun's smart, I think he already knows it. I give it a few weeks, tops, before I'm worn in and he gets that I'm more trouble than I'm worth," the way Carmen said it, it was almost like she'd heard it before. The world isn't kind to girls like her. "But Shun wouldn't kill me." She really did believe that. Just not as much as she did before. He could laugh in her face about it, but she'd believe it.

But all of it made her insides crumble. Carmen pushed just barely closer to him. "Can I have a cigarette?" She asked. You could get a lot, being pretty and friendly. But she wasn't so pretty these days, so she smiled and inched closer. One of them had to have one, even if it was Hoya. She could have taken a pill. Instead, she methodically smoked it. She wasn't really a smoker. She liked weed, but not so much cigarettes. But she burned it down, hot, and pulled up the leg of her short shorts to kiss the cherry to her hip. Carmen's nose wrinkled and she sucked in a breath, but it stayed pressed into her skin, in line with other carefully placed burns. Shockingly, none of them stopped her. Didn't think they'd stop giving her cigarettes, either. They were probably all holding their breaths to hear the way it sizzled against her skin.

-

Her words scalded him. Davina was a straight talker and it sometimes had that effect. "I think she would have been this way without you," she said like it was some consolation. She knew where Carmen first got the pills. She'd known, but didn't think to put an end to it. She was a kid, but it still weighed heavy on her conscience. It had been a relief whenever their mom didn't want to take them. The pills piled up and then poisoned their family. But Shun hadn't brought them to her mouth. "But I see what you've been up to," she said and glanced sideways again at a thousand teeth. "I don't care what you do, I just don't think it's a good environment for an addict," Davina said, shrugging. But really, what did she know about anything?

"Hah," she said humorlessly when he compared her to her sister. "I used to worry I was going to end up just like her," she admitted, and wasn't sure why, maybe to prove his point. "Not smart enough," Davina answered somberly, wishing she knew what to tell him. She was just glad there was someone who cared about Carmen. Lately it felt like even dad didn't. He was tired of the constant heartache. She understood that, but couldn't get behind it. There was a silence while she kept waking slowly, to prolong the time before they reached her neighborhood, watching their shadows stretched out far ahead of them. When he spoke again it drew her eyes, brows knit together at the middle before a brief shake of her head. Her mouth was open a few moments before the words came out. "I really don't want you to elaborate on what that means, Shun," she said, looking at him. In this light, he didn't look like he'd changed much, except for his get up. He was still the boy she and her sister had grown up beside. But he sounded so lovesick.

"Sure, I wondered if she'd be scared straight if she overdosed just once time. Far as I know, she never has. But short of a lobotomy or locking her up in a room to detox, I don't know if there is a right thing to do. The relapse statistics are fucking depressing," Davina admitted. She wished she'd never looked them up. "It's not some rotten part of her you can just cut out." That would be too easy. "I know she feels abandoned by us. Dad doesn't want her coming around. I think it's good she has someone around to support her. She's the same Carmen, her head's just not on right," she said and bumped her arm against his.

"Could I come see her?" Davina asked. Every encounter she'd had with her sister had been closely proctored in recent years. "I want her to know I'm on her team too," she said, kicking a rock off the sidewalk. She'd give him her phone number, hopeful. "You should go. Racist neighbors," she said, rolling her eyes. It was a white suburb, where she only got by because of their dad. She didn't want any of them telling him she walked home with a Yakuza boy. He'd understand. "Don't get shot up, or whatever. And Shun? Withdrawal is ugly. Don't take it personally." Carmen had said some nasty shit to their family members in the past. Their Carmen wasn't mean, but this one could be.
 
Credit: Verse

Hakuto liked looking at her, liked figuring out why she was special, because they'd already established that she was. He just needed to educate himself on what special was. Certainly he liked her contrasts to the others available to him. The people under a Chief were fewer. Wasn't even an organized thing. Suppose she could be cartel for her blood too. The way the world was going, and several generations of mixing biology, maybe unclean people were the new norm. It had made it harder to push people to the higher places in any syndicate, these days. Shun was a modern man. If he went this route, maybe it was the right one? Hakuto looked at Hoya. She was right about him. "I was gonna die a couple of times, no chance." he said, it was monotone. His accent got thicker. "I'm not going to be golden four. I'm just going to be better and better than dead." Shun's part it in interested him, though. "Lenaka-sama gets to think. In the beginning he was all violence too." Hakuto shrugged. "Right now we're just killers. Just Shun gets a suit, and teeth."

He frowned with concentration as he listened. Hakuto was a thinker, but it was anyone's guess if those thoughts got him anywhere. He liked the way she talked. It sounded realistic and also a bit pretty. He understood why she needed that notebook now. He also liked the way the mention of Amara affected her. "So you get some drugs. He gets to fuck you in the ass. And then when it's over, he just says goodbye and sends you off?" It was obviously not in sync with the Shun Hakuto had come to know. He was making a point with the question. She was defenseless against the logic of her situation, a prisoner playing the floor is lava. But Hakuto should like to see into her head about it, so he didn't devolve into mockery. And he did like the way she looked when she wanted something. As he was thinking about it, Hoya called out, somehow gone from his corner and the rodent, and produced a half used package of smokes, thin arm crossing over the mattress, but knees steady at the edge, not touching. If there was childlike rules about it, Hoya was a ringer for both understanding and adhering to it. The manic eyes on the other end of that limb was eager for her to take it. Hakuta had avoided doing the same exactly because who those smokes belonged to. Even Denya looked over his shoulder to see the travesty in the making. But he turned back to the screen when she took one roll.

Which meant he missed what Hakuto got to see. She certainly did the manic pixie stuff right. He inhaled her burnt skin. He knew how it'd smell. Even nodded, like thank you mam. Eventually, Hakuto thought he had deciphered her allure. She wore something on her sleeve, and if you knew her from the way she was before, then her downfall would be worth more. She was pretty in her decay. It made him feel smart.

Not too long before he came back with sandwiches. She got the one with chicken. Hoya ate his, kneeling by Denya's chair, looking at the blinking lights on the screen. Hakuto was sucking one down while two others waited by his side. "So," he started, roast beef filling up his cheek. He rolled a soda can onto the mattress for her. He tossed napkins like they were bills, paying for her earnest answer. "You're all that to him." Junkie bitch, easy fuck, more trouble than she was worth. "What is he to you?" he asked and swallowed loudly, not even waiting for her answer before he stuffed the rest of it into his mouth. "Just pills, right?" he tried, the words heavily muffled.

-

She was pretty sober about things. Clear head. She didn't let her emotions control her. It was almost scary. He rode his own. Carmen was just a vat of heart, spilling over real bad everywhere. Trust little sister to be the fucking voice of reason. He thought he might have known. He had tried everything else, right, why not try the smart thing, too? She was being nice though. He didn't believe her fully. Of course he'd had something to do with the way Carmen ended up. He was always okay with the drugs. He didn't depend on them. They didn't give him anything that fucking the absolute brains out of a girl did. The drugs were just part of it, for him. But he'd imparted something else on Carmen, a little seed of it, and then let her run off where he wasn't. Drunk on life was such bullshit. "Not giving her up." he still muttered. He was never going to be her good environment, anyway.

She laid out a lot of reasons for him to believe she'd gone down similar paths as him, trying to dream up something for Carmen. He breathed long when she mentioned the overdoze. Wouldn't that be the best? if there was a quickfix. There was shit from the Korean girl that he could try. "Guess she'd have to do that on her own." and his voice was more thoughtful than joking. If he shoved it down her throat, that wouldn't matter much. She should have to see what she could do to herself. Davina was right. Who the fuck gets sober in drug-laced Wonderland? He stopped when she wanted him to. It was the same with the mattress. Racist neighbors or not, he didn't belong here. Of course he took her number, and when he put it in, he knew he shouldn't. There shouldn't be a thread between him and someone who looked liked the love of his life, when she was still good. He felt predatory about it when he waved at her, standing like a demon on a threshold. She was smart. But she trusted him. He was trying hard not to make it her weakness. She hadn't even mattered before Carmen came back.

"I'll text you next time she's presentable." he said with some bitter lightness. And then he laughed. "You know me, Davina. Everything's personal." He turned away, and he knew that was a favor to her.

-

He met up with for some courier talk. This was the business part of the job. He had to behave. Nothing much exchanged except for information. He was new to this, but he wore a suit, had the ink, so he had to shake the hands and make the connections too. Lenaka had been serious about making him into something, if only so that his actions carried weight when he killed someone for them. Hakuto was right about that, even Keijin had started running bloody errands. But then, after he'd choked down all the numbers and the new streets and the names for the new wares, he held his hand out to the chemist, and asked for something special. Something specific. A little black box, like it would include a really expensive pen. He put it in his inner jacket pocket, and it fit like it was made for it.
 
Both Carmen and Davina had go grow up fast, in their teen years. It was just different. Carmen stepped up to take care of their mom when she was sick. Dad worked more than ever to pay her medical bills. She was old enough to get mom to her appointments, make sure that Davina was fed, her hair done. Like a lot of black moms, that was important to Faith. Really important. She'd never let her girls out nappy, and their white dad never learned how to do any of that shit. It was time consuming and she had three heads to tend to, but she did it. Mom always felt better when she was dressed and done up. She'd say I don't want to look like those sick cancer ladies at Dr. Burns office, while putting on her lipstick for her chemo appointment. But she would, in the end. Carmen did her best, braiding her hair to cover the bald spots, but she could only keep that up for so long, before mom got skinny and sallow. All while she got her little sister to and from school, and there was laundry and dishes and all those things mom used to do. Time went on and the list of responsibilities got longer. She still went out late to party with Shun, just to get a fucking break.

It was hard on Davina, too. Mom died and only a few months later, Carmen left as well. Barely a teenager, she was the new woman of the house. Dad was depressed. He drank too much (and still wonders where Carmen got it from). He went to work and mowed the lawn but didn't play the fatherly role very well. Davina leaned into her schoolwork. She got into good schools, better than Carmen's options, but she'd end up at Yareli University because dad needed her still. And maybe it was a bit because she really was scared of being like her sister and didn't want to do anything the same way Carmen had.

Davina watched their dad mourn his wife, and then his daughter. They were both slow deaths, agonizing to watch. He was powerless to stop the fall, and she understood why he was depressed about it, it was fucking depressing. She probably would be, too, except she had a house to take care of, schoolwork to finish, she still needed to practice her clarinet for the spring concert and make time for her volleyball games too. She was too busy to be depressed.

So yeah, the little sister was dull about it. She'd had a lot of time to process Carmen's ruin. It was easier to just detach from it. In the beginning, of course she believed her sister would recover. But she'd watched her try and fail, and try and fail. She was tired of the disappointment and the deep sadness that provoked. When she stopped hoping, she stopped feeling that disappointment. It was a survival mechanism. Sometimes Davina felt guilty about how numb she was towards Carmen's suffering, like there was something missing inside of her that she could stop caring about her own sister. Enough that she wasn't going to stop him from doing anything, despite how fucking sketchy it sounded. She preferred to stay ignorant about it.

Shun was still in the middle of it. She felt bad for him. If it weren't for his new threads and ink, she might have even hugged him because of it. But Davina did pause to give him a thin lipped smile and briefly squeeze his fingers before they parted ways. Despite her apparent emotionlessness, she did want to get that text. She just didn't expect she'd ever actually get it.

-

Carmen didn't appreciate the tone to his question. "Of course not. He leaves Tina for me and we ride off into the sunset on white horses and live happily ever after, somewhere where the air is clean," she answered Hakuto's question flatly. Tina hadn't done anything wrong, but she still hated her. Shun had to love some part of Tina to live with her, she couldn't just be a live-in whore, and it looked like she took good care of him. She was petite and white and all these things Carmen wasn't. She could take drugs and have fun and not fall slave to them. Tina had come to her defense, with Katosh, and she hated her for it. For all of it.

Just crazy rushed up with cigarettes. Carmen didn't understand the looks she was getting from the other two and took from the pack regardless. "You're fucking weird. Does that work for you? You get bitches with your whole—" she gestured at Hoya, "—thing?" She was just bored and wanted to see how strong Shun's powers actually were if she kept prodding. He was definitely more volatile than Hakuto. And she was genuinely curious. Hakuto could keep his mockery, she had plenty.

It wasn't a show. But they could watch, she didn't care. It was ritual as much as sitting still for a tattoo needle. She thought they could see that. Well, probably not Hoya. And definitely not Denya. Carmen set the cigarette butt on the cement floor after, and laid with her back turned to the room. Quiet, but not asleep or even high.

She did come back alive for food though. She sat up with legs crossed in front of her. She tore pieces of the sandwich to eat it. She clearly hadn't prioritized eating lately, so just a sandwich tasted gourmet. Barely half in and Carmen felt stuffed. Funny how that is when you don't eat in a while. She kept nibbling on it though. When Hakuto gave her his next question she didn't look at him, but shook her head. "No. No, I love Shun, I always have. Not as well as I shoulda, I wasn't a good friend when I left. But we were, like, childhood sweethearts, I guess," she said and barely smiled as she cracked open the coke can. "We were seven, I think, when we met. I moved schools in the middle of the year when my family came to Yareli. My first day, I wanted to play soccer with some boys at recess. One kid told me that girls couldn't play sports with boys so I pushed him down and hit him. And while all these other boys were yelling or running to tattle on me, Shun just bust up laughing. I got in trouble, of course. But after school got out, Shun stopped me leaving, threw me a basketball and we played one on one until my mom got there. I can't throw for shit, terrible aim, but we were best friends after that, didn't need nobody else. I left 'cause I thought I needed to. My dad—" Carmen said but paused. It sounded bad. He was a good dad, some fathers are capable of truly heinous shit. She'd just been a victim of his grief. "It didn't work out like I hoped. There wasn't ever a time I didn't love him, though. I wish he woulda gone with me. Then maybe things would be different for both of us. I hoped for better for him than this." But she looked at him and shrugged like, no offense. "I was stupid to think I could be somethin' more." Carmen said, even though at that time she'd only been at the beginning of a long plummet and had no idea how bad it would get. Everyone believe they aren't addicted until things get ugly. "Shun's like family. My own blood don't even want me here. And I prolly don't deserve his forgiveness, but I'm not leaving again." Unless it was in a body bag.

Carmen didn't move from the mattress until Shun's return, even though she really needed to pee. She was bladder shy. She took enough of the pills so she didn't feel like she was dying, she was drowsy, but not fucked up. She threw herself against him with the force to sway him. Like a goddamn rescue dog with separation anxiety. When she finally pried herself away, it was to straighten his suit jacket. She didn't love what it meant, but he looked good all clean cut. She was already conditioned to expect him to produce gifts for her from his pockets so Carmen smiled when she felt the box.
 
Credit: Verse

Hoya was a lot of impulses, but they were strung together with biological inclinations, a red thread through it all. He was present, he just liked other things than other people. He smiled widely when she took the smokes. Being beaten didn't teach Hoya much, but Shun sure could make an impact, the way he'd go about it. Don't take my cigarettes. Because that used to be the only thing a little Japanese kid could afford. Had them more as a signature than anything else. Haukto noticed when Shun could go days without them, when he was on something else, like the importance of a mission or something. It all ended the same, with Hoya getting to hand the princess in their ground bound tower the cigs.

"Bitches like fun times." Hoya said, and his shoulders dropped about it, not deflated, but like he was being earnest. He ran his index knuckle under his nose and sniffed, more of a tick than a cold. He looked her over. "You like it too." he said and gestured a corner of the mattress, where they all knew she kept her pills. "Pretty girls don't usually care if its me or Shun when they're having fun." his eyes crossed and his mouth opened wide to simulate some kind of high. And then he clapped his hands real loud. "So why don't you take all of them at once." he called out. Behind him, Hakuto was rolling his eyes.

Hakuto was glued to her when she told the story. His face turned from grim to amused at some part, but would have an average set of stern, ingesting the information and living it somewhere else than on his face. He only took another bite when she was done. He nodded while he chewed. It was easy to see why Shun liked her. She had more contents than most people who found themselves stranded on mattresses. She was a real creature, among all the blow-up dolls that survived off the next adrenaline tide. You can wax romantic about the person who's currently giving you all you need, though, and girls like Carmen only needed one thing. The story had to be true, and some of what Shun had told them confirmed it. Sometimes he got the question how he could fight like that, and Shun would say he was into sports when they weren't organized. Leave it to him to chalk it up to childhood games to make him good at murder.

"Shun would like that." to know she wasn't leaving. Though she hadn't really said it like it was a good thing. But people like to be loyal to their misery. Hakuto was sure she'd make a run for it if she could, but he guessed it was good she didn't intend to leave Yareli. Made her easier to find. "You can be the thing that holds him back." he said. Plenty of those girls around, that didn't deserve it. Great men with great deathtolls and syndicates under them had these tit and ass weights on them. He smiled at her like it was a good thing. Shun had said something to that effect, too, like she was some kind of line in the sand. Haukto didn't get it entirely, but they all knew that completely unhinged didn't last long in the higher echelon of Yareli's storied underworld.

Hakuto thought it was quite the turnaround, when she acted like some lonely housewife upon Shun's return.

Shun lifter her a bit when she came into his arms. He liked seeing her where he left her. Even kissed her on her temple. Now this was the kind of behavior he wanted from her. He had tried to teach Tina to be the same. Too bad he had to lock Carmen up to get it, but he was done pretending there was something else here. Touched her cheek and looked her in the face. Didn't have to crane his neck as much as with the other girls, as with Tina. Even if it wasn't more real than the synth shit in the vial in his jacket pocket, he'd still have to engage his heart to make it worth it to himself, didn't he? She was still beautiful. No. She was more beautiful than when she left. He realized that after having seen Davina. Carmen looked good in all the things she dragged around. Her fate made her part free and part dead, all the time. It was this paradox that made up his childhood friend. She hadn't been complete before - he'd fallen inlove with the idea of the perfect girl, and she had fooled herself with all her potential. It had taken her away from him. Maybe that's why he thought it didn't make sense that she should be successful all those miles away. He was scorn because she left, sure, but he had been fundamentally shaken at the idea of a happy ending for her. It was an insult to who he felt she was.

But this creature, wound around him and smiling at him despite him having raped and imprisoned her - she was correct, she was as she should be. She was lovely. Put a kiss on her lips and then he sat down in the couch and waved her over. His jacket was over the back. He was fairly sure that she might have felt what he was bringing. But instead of pulling out the box, he just tapped his leg for her to sit. He knew she wanted it, and he liked that she needed him. He loved her because she could run, had such pretty memories of it, but he hated when she ran from him. He'd kiss her cheek when she came to him again. He was almost giddy to be in control like this. Soon he'd have her begging.

"These bastards treat you ok?" he asked her. Hoya made some excited noises and Hakuto waved for him to be quiet.
 
Maybe she laid it on a little thick. But Shun was receptive to it. Carmen didn't want to stay in this cinder block box so she wasn't above kissing up to him. She liked what he brought in his pockets for her, but mostly it was about being on lockdown. If it was between this and Tina, she'd take Tina. She'd fucked that up the first time. She wasn't foolish enough to think he'd give her that much freedom anytime soon, though. He liked her under lock and key. It could be worse, she knew that, but there wasn't so much as a window, and it was still a cage. A cell, that was being guarded. Carmen didn't understand why she needed a babysitter, let alone three. She felt like a princess who didn't know she was a princess yet, guarded by the trolls three. Except a princess wouldn't be on a blood and shitstained mattress. But at least her prince came back for her.

She didn't mind the trolls. Gave her someone to talk to. She'd go mad all alone. Hoya was still crazy but wasn't so terrible afterall, when his energy wasn't so scary. Maybe he'd grow on her. "Then ya girls are cheap," she responded to him about believing he could get the same kind of girl as Shun. But she probably wasn't the bitch to talk trash like that. But her smile flew wide and wild and she leaned closer to him. "D'ya dare me?" She asked about the pills. But she wasn't Tina, cutting into perfectly good parts because she liked a challenge. Carmen broke that touch barrier to give Hoya a shove back to only one shoulder. Thanks for the cigarette now you can fuck right off.

Carmen did take a pill. Just one and laid down. She wondered what it meant to hold him back. She hadn't held him back enough to keep him from getting tangled in this life. He'd done fine without her, or at least he'd done what he wanted. But that wasn't what Hakuto meant. She didn't understand how it could be a good thing to hold him back. Just something that Shun would come to resent her for. You can resent someone and love them too.

She kept writing. Mostly it was two to four lines that never amounted to much. Carmen was never as good as she wanted to be. Shun had encouraged her once to keep trying, told her it was too early for her to give up. He was probably just being nice. Maybe if he hadn't been, she never would have tried to go to college and become someone. She could have just been an okay writer, that's all she was anyway. All those classes and student loans and she was still sitting on a bare mattress, writing a stupid love letter.

?/?/2025​
Mind the Mess
My father never moved on,
and it turned him into a drinker.
I was embarrassed of who he is.
It's easier than the shame of who I am,
but I was always weaker.
I want to take better care of myself.
But I end up feeding my own demons,
doesnt matter how I try.
They like Oxy and vodka, Skyy.
They're not picky and prefer the quiet rest.
Don't try to offer them the doctor's Quetiapine,
They won't accept it as any piece offering.
"mind the mess,"
angrily they'll say.
But the mess is mine,
And my someone loves me anyway.
–C.M.E​

He came and that door opened. Seeing a bit of daylight woke her right up. A piece of it cut through the room towards her and projected a line on the wall behind her. It grew narrow and narrower until it disappeared and they were left in the artificial light. The click of the door shutting behind him made her anxious, worse with each time, like mold growing in this damp place, especially when it was Shun leaving her. It made his return that much better. So yeah, she threw herself at him.

And Shun invited her in. Pulled her up against him and she shook with a quiet sob, fingers digging into the fabric over his shoulders. She was pretty sure she'd go crazy in this place if it wasn't for him. He even kissed her and Carmen held his face. She faced him as he moved past her and came when she was summoned. She sat sideways across the tops of his thighs. She wasn't little Tina who could curl up against his shoulder. She didn't weigh much more, if at all, but Carmen was just above his eye level like this. She leaned her forehead against his temple. She'd even forgotten about whatever lay concealed inside his jacket. She liked the proximity. He smelled the way he did now, which was quickly becoming familiar to her. Her forehead stayed anchored against him, head turning side to side to nuzzle her nose against his cheekbone.

"Yeah, they're alright," Carmen allowed, about his new friends. She liked Hakuto, it was good to have a friend or something at least resembling one. Hoya wasn't so bad. His crazy wasn't as scary anymore. "That one ever talk?" She asked, nodding towards Denya, asking none of them in particular. He hadn't shown the slightest interest in her. Perhaps she should be glad about that. His laser focus on his game was impressive, or something. Her index finger hooked between two of the buttons on his shirt. "I don't get why they all here, though." Why she needed three grown men to watch her. "How much longer do I got to stay here?" Carmen asked, but voice low like it was meant only for him. It still sounded desperate and she pulled harder on the front of his shirt.
 
Credit: Verse

Shun did a lot of things that were thought through, but not in the foreground of his mind. He had some information, sure, but he didn't know where it was stored or where it came from. Mostly, he was an animal reacting, but the reason he could exist at this level under Kageyama at all, was because there had to be some data processing center somewhere in him. Like a treasure trove. Fighting successfully required intelligence, sure, but not the add-up-the-grams kind. You can't really be doing all those advanced calculations about chemicals and the human state, while you're being stomped to the concrete or returning the favor. He was happy if his inner eye produced a flash of chess moves about his opponent, while in the fray. And maybe it was the same kind of thinking in both cunning and reactive thoughts, applied on different wealths of information. But he wasn't aware of it. Cerebral thing does cerebral things.

So he knew, somewhere, that he left Carmen here because he'd like her more if he did. Because she'd like him more back. He hated when she ran from him. And while she liked to be an escape artist, his best men on the job had a fighting chance. It was a simple conjuring of Stockholm Syndrome, as easy as he could make it. His proclivities, served up by some of his experiences with similar girls. Yeah, so maybe some of the tanned girls he liked to fuck had long legs too. Maybe he liked those legs raised when he was inside. He didn't think long on it when she came to him like a pet, and Hakuto raised his brow at the contrast. Good look, though - standoffish bitch with everyone else, and a kitten for her master. A lot of the guys out there wanted this exact dynamic. Usually a bitch was just a bitch, and you had to want that. But Tina was also leaning this bipolar flavor, so.

Shun was a ready seat for her. On occasion, when they were testing boundaries, they'd been like this, back when she had the freedom to leave. Ah, maybe that was why it never really happened between them then. Some kind of hot and cold? He thought it was exciting, and stewed in the maybe, and that relationship they actually had. He used to be content with little, once. Now he wanted everything from someone. And Carmen was being conditioned to give it. He stroked her back and relieved some of the weight of his head against hers. He was affectionate with her, and looked for another kiss while their skulls were making friction sparks.

"Denya can get to talking, sure." he said and flipped the guy off without any reaction in return. "But he likes his distractions too." he said. Hoya laughed loudly at that but stopped so abruptly Hakuto had to check whether he was dead. He wasn't. Had the large friend chuckle dismissively. Shun got his hand under her shirt to pet all the way up her shoulderblade. Hakuto was fleetingly interested in the skin of her back that ended up being revealed. But he reclined eventually.

"You wanna know why they're here, Carry?" he asked her lips. His hand came up through the back of her neckline and grabbed her hair at the back of her skull so he could pull her back just a little, and look her over. "Or you wanna welcome me home for real?" He had thought so many tender things about her, how she was his Carmen, not the Carmen Davina represented. How her fall from grace was glorious and tragic and something out of old epics. That even if she was low in other's eyes they'd all just be footnotes in her grand story, that didn't have to be successful to be beautiful.

But now when he looked at her and smelled her and felt her, he could only think of how much he adored that decay on her. The loss she showed and the memory of a girl she wore. A graveyard of potential. He used to hate her dreams when they were possible, now he loved them, their shards all over her person and spirit. How dearly he wanted to defile her further, and celebrate her for her descent.

He liked the person he became in her absence, a shadow of his old, shining self. But really, he was this animal, wasn't he, looking at Carmen and wanting to wave drugs in her face so he could fuck her in the ass for having thought she was good enough without him, all those years ago.

He kissed her like he owned her. Gave her his tongue and expected her worship of it. And then his fingers let go so he could look at her in the eye. "Do you wanna leave and be free, or do you want to stay here, get me off, and party?" And it was clear in his dismissive but loving look which would happen, no matter if she'd be the slut he wanted, or a crying childhood friend bent in ways she didn't choose, with his cock in places she hadn't invited him to.

The familiarity and friendliness in him was a bit out of place in the expression of an owner to an object. He felt bad for the good he was going to feel at her cost.
 
It was enough to break down any girl. Any human being, really. No one's meant to be kept in a cage. Carmen felt like one of those animals in the zoo that pace a path into the ground, in front of the fence where it could just taste the outside, unstimulated and stressed to the point of stereotypy. The only difference was that instead of walking in circles, she was scribbling in a notebook. Anything she could think of. She'd already filled a good portion of it. Ruts in paper from the anxious pressure of a pen, not from feet against the earth. There was nowhere to go to escape the eyes. There was even Hoya there to tap on the glass. On top of it all, she put on a show, whenever her keeper felt like it. All her best parts on display, performing tricks.

Shun felt like a little escape, when he came. Not because of whatever he kept in his pockets—though that was nice, too—but because of the hope each time that she might be leaving with him. It was a recipe for anxious attachment. So yeah, Carmen curled up real friendly in his lap. She even smiled when the others teased Denya, who had yet to speak a word to her, but he looked at her much the same. When Shun stroked her spine it felt nostalgic in its innocence. But the way he kissed her felt more like he was trying to consume her. Carmen was so hungry for it that she only leaned in, holding him around his shoulders and lifting a hand to his face. She wanted to trace every line to him. Same as she had in her girlhood, laying next to him, panting in the grass when they'd played too hard. They'd always pushed each other back then. When the very first things she really noticed about him that made him different from the other boys was the rise and fall of his chest, the shape of his Adam's apple, the hair stuck to his face with sweat and the way the sun shone down on him. The contrast of their skintones when their hands touched and her head rolled to touch his. Lighter than now. That soft affection was dead.

His question made Carmen take a look back at the rest of the room. Two other sets of eyes on her and then the boring one. Before she could answer, his hand was in her hair, regaining her attention. "I don't know. So they can have front row seats to watch you fuck me?" She answered with her usual dose of sarcasm, but her voice sounded more wary than comical. It was the partial truth, at the very least. She imagined they all pictured a turn with her. She'd bet they'd already shared girls before. Carmen liked to believe that made her special, that none of them had touched her. She'd beg for it to stay that way.

The next inquiry made her shift a bit, on top of his things. They felt different than the last time they'd been arranged like this, not all bones. Not on him, at least. Shun wasn't just running and kicking balls around anymore. "This don't count as welcoming you home," Carmen said cautiously. "This ain't home. This could never be home. Tina welcomes you home," she said before regretting mentioning his other live in fuck bunny. They were one in the same except that Tina had a longer leash and was nicer to Shun's friends. "Ask Hakuto, I told him I'm not going nowhere. But here, Shun? There ain't even a shower. I don't need prison guards," she promised him. Though their past indicated otherwise. She liked to believe she was reformed. She was tired of the loneliness now that she had to reap what she'd sown over the last several years.

Carmen was silenced by a kiss. She resisted at first, leaning her weight away from him. But he made her weaker than even her new lifestyle. She could taste his last cigarette on his greedy tongue. He wasn't shitty at kissing like when it was new to the both of them, now it had none of that hesitation. Even in this shit situation she was in, it made her melt against him. Her hand slid around the back of his neck, fingers barely in his hair. Nothing could erase her childhood affection. Not even the way he treated her since her homecoming. She'd still say that Asian guys weren't really her type. She liked brothers. But to her, he'd always be Shun and that transcended stupid things like race. He was a piece of art. The kind she couldn't capture. But he was here, under her hands.

There was a pause as she considered how to respond. But she smiled at him and her hand stroked down from the back of his neck, tracing slowly down his chest. "I don't need to be in here to get you off," Carmen said, moving her lips closer to his ear as her hand continued lower, until her own body got in the way. She didn't actually speak low enough to keep the others from hearing. She didn't give a shit about them. They'd already seen all of her and she was there for entertainment purposes, wasn't she?

She moved suddenly. Not away, but to swing her leg over so she was straddling him. Like this, Carmen was a little above his eye level, even when she sat back. Her arm hung around his shoulders and she twisted a strand of hair around her finger. She kissed the corner of his mouth, then the edge of his jaw, brushing the bridge of her nose against it. "I don't want to party. I just want you," she said. She gripped his hair tighter and stretched taller so she was over him, smiling. Her hips barely rolled against his. "I mean sure, we can party. But I do want to welcome you home. I want to pour you a drink and cook you real food," Carmen said with a soft chuckle. Tina's cooking had been okay, very edible. But she knew about Shun's preferences for food. He'd liked her mom's cooking, when she'd invite him to stay for dinner. She'd been the one doing the cooking, in the end. "I want to lay in bed with you. I want to walk to midtown and go that place with the bad health department ratings but the really good warabi mochi," Carmen said, smiling at the memory of sharing a toothpick with him to eat it. It was one of her favorites and one of the few things they actually paid for. "I want to go have fun with you like we used to. I want to ruin all the other girls for you." She liked to believe she could, but a nagging voice in the back of her head told her that wasn't possible.
 
Credit: Verse

There was that thing he wanted, seeping off her. He used to get it out of her clothes, even the ones straight out of the dryer. Her panties, sure, why not, but not like that. All of her things. Like an aerosolized soul that was so abundant it attached to her things like powdered chalk. Didn't wash away. He could wring out of memories, back then, because his contact with her had been so fresh, always. Now it was nowhere to be seen. Like the light had changed because pollution colored it differently. A world that was gone but it was the world you grew up in. That filter on his childhood. That was here. Maybe it was her hope? Maybe it that's what he could get out of her now. Just a little. But it had gone bad. He could only taste the consequence of it, when she came to him and smelled like beautiful unwash and with heavy, deep notes of the mattress. His sins. Like all other things you dig up after you've dreamed good, unreasonable dreams about them. It's still that old thing that you wanted, but the ingredients don't exist anymore. So what he got when she saddled up was heartbreak.

Good thing his palled had mature too. He was more than happy to eat this. Her soft body, looking for it because he'd starved it of everything else. It wasn't no way to live, but he also knew it was too useful for him to ever stop. He had been hurt when she ran away, because then he had to categorize her as one of his junkies forever. Like he thought he was any different from his position of power, he had wanted dearly for her to rise beyond who she was, for him. Because if she wasn't, then what was the point of her? His dreams would have been misplaced, and then he would become the bad things he did. And you can't take away from bad men that they may be heroes, and special, somewhere in their hearts or somewhere down the road. So of course the pretty girl with the thin limbs had to suffer for it. She had come here ready to, hadn't she? Not like anyone with half a mind would cross Yareli's borders and think there'd be some kind of wonderland here. At least not someone without a capital of violence to spend.

He salvaged what he could in their moment of something that felt like domestic bliss. He liked her mere weight and he held her to him, to make it more, increase the pressure. He laughed quietly at her sarcasm and Hakuto and Hoya shifted like they would, at the aspect of trying out the lure that had been thrown into their liar. She wouldn't be wrong. Their first real bonding had been girls. They picked out singles or pairs and went all out. It was one of the things that cemented him as the leader, too. Imagine following that cock. But Denya and Haku doubling up got the job done pretty good, actually. Shun rolled his eyes when she complained about her living situation. She may think and be correct about it being the kind of face Tina saw, regularly. Though his blonde fun times girl knew to keep the complaints to a minimum, or at least mutter them around his cock. There's just certain ways of communicating that works better on savages. She had a point, and the defeated frown would tell her that, too. If it wasn't too accusatory, he would listen. She was about feeling good. You don't want the things you're exploiting to show signs of sentience. But if he could smother that bad feeling in either of them, he would.

She just wanted a prison with a shower, right?

Her mouth tasted good. It wasn't full of chemicals. Just her. Pills don't linger. He liked that she tried but couldn't stop it. That's all he ever liked, wasn't it?

And then came that magic. Like he'd been hunting and sat down for luke warm coffee off a thermos, and a fucking deer just stood there, accusatory, asking him with big fat eyes why he'd put down his rifle. He looked at her when the feeling intruded. His eyes were wide when she corrected her weight and then swung her leg. He moved deeper into the shit cushions of the couch, like he was trying to get away, just slightly, from what was happening. Like it'd be too much. He wanted it too much. Her sweetness was strange, other, but she sewed it pretty well with her current amicability. A little boy again, who didn't know what he'd do when he got what he'd been running after. Beautiful mirage, finally firm to the touch.

He held her to him when she leaned in close, tugged at a strand of hair, too. These kind of schemes had been tried on him before, but he wasn't immune to them when Carmen did them. He stroked her spine again, soft, like she'd burst from this mood if he was too harsh about it. His chest inflated to fill in the spaces between them. He wanted to make them one solid body. The surface of his half-closed eyes stung. He could survive years of this feeling, because he thought this kind of Carmen was extinct. His throat made a sound like a lid in there popped. He held her closer so her brow touched the angle of his jaw and she could feel it tensing up, real hard. "They're giving me a place." he said. Of course it had to go to Tina. She was his. And the others knew her as well. Heck, Tina had been part of what had made that night so glorious. She'd put her life on the line too. She deserved a better apartment, where Aska hadn't been.

But nostalgia isn't loyal to new arrangements. Denya finally stirred. The creak of his chair was aggressive. The words their fearless leader had spoken obviously upset him. Didn't look at them as he got up, and took a larger caliber handgun off the table he'd been playing on, along with a pack of his own smokes. Higher end brand, but still convenience store bought. Strode out. Maybe she'd feel Shun roll his eyes about that, too.

"I've been looking at some rides, too." he continued, dismissively at the moody soldier who'd excused himself. He nuzzled her temple to make her look at him. "You wanna play my girl?" he asked. He had to remember all this stuff was entirely without any promise of more contra. She just wanted him. Or at least that was the game, right now. He leaned in and licked both her lips in one, slow stroke. "I got this city now." It was perhaps true in a very vague meaning.

And if she wanted, he'd take her. But when they waited for the cab, outside, Denya would have a new cigarette lit up. He was tall, too, but not filled out. His frame was better made hunched over screens. He had that gray-yellow tan you get from LED, too. Beanie on over bleached hair. Puffed when he looked them over just as they'd be getting into the rusted cab.

"Revolving doors and no guards on a literal wild animal, just because she bats her eyes, eh?" Denya said. First she'd heard his voice? It was deep but soft on the syllables. Went well with his bones. She'd feel Shun tense up about it, like real angry, but didn't even look back at what was likely the scathing voice of reason of the group. They were going to indulge in this dream, even if it was a pipe one.
 
He didn't call Tina out by name, but everyone in the room thought of her pretty, bottle blonde head when Shun mentioned his new housing. Carmen, too. She didn't hate the girl for filling in the hole she'd left behind. Maybe she could have, once, but she saw how Tina was with him. How she cared about him, how she tried to turn that shitty apartment into a home with pictures over the holes in the drywall, and treated Carmen like was a guest, even though she'd be the subject of one of their arguments later. Tina deserved the perks that came with Shun climbing the ladder. And Carmen never would have dreamed of stealing another girl's man. But he had been hers first, and she would choose having beef with a little white girl over staying in that place for a minute longer in a heartbeat.

The one guy finally moved. He'd been sitting there so long, so still he might as well have been made of stone. It was startling to Carmen when he suddenly came to life. She wasn't used to being around guns and the sound of his scraping against wood was unsettling. She gripped Shun's shoulders a little tighter. He'd been so boring and disinterested in her that she almost forgot what Hakuto had told her his name was. Denya? Yeah. Well, maybe. No, better wait for someone to say it again. Shit.

Did he become animated over Tina? Shun's change in station? She couldn't tell.

Shun pulled her attention. Carmen nodded. She'd tell him anything he wanted to hear, and it was mostly the truth. She was his girl, or at least she would be again. He could treat it like a joke all he wanted. He could love Tina, they couldn't have what he and Carmen had. Nothing overwrote that. His sweetness felt out of place, like it was soon to sour into vinegar.

She didn't think he'd actually let her leave with him. Carmen was quick to gather her shit before he could change his mind. It didn't take long. Her whole world fit in a bag. She'd been clutching an empty pill bottle particularly tight. Nothing that fed her addiction, something actually prescribed by a doctor. Her moods swung between depressed and manic. Being medicated helped. But she was the type to stop taking it as soon as she felt better. Now was not one of those times. She felt strung out. Her symptoms made her more prone to self medicated for a quick fix that made her hate herself more after.

Carmen looked towards Hakuto and Hoya and shrugged, taking steps backwards to follow Shun. "No sloppy seconds tonight. Sorry, boys," she said before pivoting around and chasing after her keeper.

Carmen had never loved cool night air so much before. She stayed leaned into Shun like it was enough to prove that she could behave. He was warm and her clothes were lacking. She didn't pay Denya much attention until he spoke. His words made her bristle even more than the purl of the breeze. Carmen wasn't against Shun anymore. "Who the hell you calling animal?" She asked, offended. She could ignore a lot, but it felt racist enough to ignite some anger in her. "I ain't the one out here killing people, not knowing what the word 'literal' means." Of course that was the sort of thing that would annoy a writer. She looked at Shun to defend her, but the car pulled up. Instead, she pushed him towards it and crawled in close behind him. The door slammed a little too hard behind her, before she even settled into the backseat.

For some reason, now she didn't think Hoya was going to be the one causing her trouble.
 
Credit: Verse

When she held on to Shun about Denya, she would feel some tension in him, too. It wasn't the drawn sinew kind that suggested fear, but there were shadows under his brow that meant he was unamused by the actions and the cadence of the other man. But they still produced themselves outside. Not like he didn't know she would jump at the chance of getting out of here. Part of the function of this place was to make her feel fenced in. Maybe he was still punishing her for leaving in the first place, when he thought they could be something pretty, and something that lasted. He put a lot on a girl who had just been growing up, and hoping for the best. He was living his most developed life, himself, wasn't he? Coming up in the Yakuza was his degree. If they were honest, he was doing much better at it than her. Not a pusher or provider, she was a user. The backbone of this industry, whether it be Johns or junkies. But of course, the lowest after the product itself, whenever the product was people. He'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy that fact. Everything she'd lost, he won.

Maybe she would feel the clawing intentions of the two males left behind when she was allowed to go. In many alternate realities, Carmen was a messy thing on the mattress from their attention. Their eyes were black like bereft predators left in their burrow when they watched her leave. To think they had been civil with her all this time. She was looking back at a fate that would have gladly swallowed her up, if not for a few circumstances. But then again, Carmen was built out of other stuff than girls who'd feel completely defeated by being used. Maybe she could have been resilient enough to take it. Maybe it would have helped her pass the time.

Shun was steady for her. And dead quiet when Denya laid in. Shun still had his hand around her arm when she pushed her face against Denya. He tilted his head as she said her bit, and even though she knew he could be rather collected, there was something bustling in the snarl that kept on being resurrected from the dead on his face. His usual composure pulled it back. The cigarette lit it up, now and then as he listened to her. He didn't answer. But the way he looked at her before she closed the taxi door let her know it was definitely racist, and that the racism was definitely not all of it.

Shun had his arm around her fully. He knew she didn't have much on. He liked keeping her warm. He even kissed her head. "You stay away from Denya when you can." saying he was dangerous. Saying there'd be times when she couldn't stay away even if she meant to. There were a lot of black holes in her future that she could fill with all kinds of dark wonders. He stroked her shoulder as he watched the road in their short trip. He was generous to the driver and got out. Even helped her carry some of her stuff.

The new place was posh. Bachelor pad of some young boy's wet dreams. It had been vacated but not cleaned up. Things were happening fast for Shun Kinoku. There was a couch left, and wires were a television should be. Still some trash on the floor too, and a single rug where convenient store food was piled up. Someone without the magic touch had made sure to leave something for the new renter. Big windows and a big bathroom. Exposed lightbulbs but at least they could see. He put her bag down on the ground. Arms out as he walked around. One of those arms with teeth on it, she knew. Her boy was so proud of this. Not just the uncleaned space, but how he'd gotten it.

"You gotta love it, right?" he asked and got out of his jacket. Tanktop, what else. Were the teeth spreading to his chest? In the unflattering lighting he made many shadows on the floor. Like he was the absent ceiling fan. He waved at her. "I TOLD you I was gonna make it." he said, chipper for a grave digger and pranced around all the way to the window, locking his hands behind his back like some aristocrat in a movie, looking out. It was an expensive address.
 
Carmen blew out a sigh as she sunk into the backseat. The way Shun held her let her know that her assumption was correct. She looked at him, all bathed in moving shadow when the cab pulled away from the place she hoped to never see again, and nodded slowly at his warning. She knew how the world was, she'd been black her whole life, her best friend another minority in Yareli too, guess she expected more from his friend. She expected more from Shun, too, but he hadn't said shit. They weren't really friends, Hakuto said they'd been paired together. But that didn't matter, he was supposed to defend her. That kept her quiet in the car, looking away from him, out the window. But he was warm, so she did stay against his side as she watched the outside pass by. Yareli hadn't changed a bit. Only they had. Davina was grown up, but mom was still dead. No one really made it there, only thought they would. Like Daniel Davis did, when he'd gotten that job offer from YPD. Look where that had landed him. Sometimes there was the illusion of having made it, but it was just those at the top, wasn't it? They sat up there like idols while the rest suffered the disparity.

His new place was nice, though. Way better than the place he had with Tina. A world away from the box she had just been pulled from. Made her stop dwelling on the hypocrisy of his coworker with the shitty bleach job. Shame they weren't friends, he could really use Tina's help. It was hard not to smile at Shun when he was like this, like someone she actually recognized. So proud to show her what his work had amounted to. Carmen dropped her things by the door and trailed after him, looking around.

She nodded at his question. "It has a lot of promise. Needs a woman's touch," she teased. "A nice dining table here. Some plants in that windows. Some art on the walls, maybe a coat of paint. Everything in here is so white," Carmen critiqued. White walls, white cabinets, white marble. Fancy, but not homey. Probably white linens, too. Too nice for them, that was for sure. Shun must have really impressed someone. She didn't like to think on it much. "When we used to talk about buying our dreams, this isn't really how I pictured it," she admitted in a careful voice she didn't recognize. Carmen never really tried to make herself smaller to fit into the expectations people had of her. This Shun had a softer side, or she liked to believe he did, but she didnt know how to recognize it anymore, and it seemed smaller than she remembered.

"Tina helped you get here," she said matter-of-factly. Even if it was just by nurturing him after Carmen had left. Behind all her jealousy, she appreciated Tina for that. "I don't wanna compete with her, but I ain't gon' make you choose, either. She was there for you, when I wasn't. She don't wanna share, though." That had been crystal clear. Maybe Tina would suffer his transgressions quietly, but not when it actually meant something to him.

But she was here, not Tina, and that had Carmen foolishly giddy. She snatched up one of the candies on the floor and ripped into it. Peanut and chewy caramel goodness. She wasn't used to being well fed anymore, it was going to be strange seeing her body with meat on its bones again. Maybe she wouldn't hate her reflection so much, like her sickly mom looking back at her. She still had the chocolate and its crinkly wrapper in her hand when she jumped at Shun, while he stood in front of the tall windows. On his back, arms and legs around him. It was the first time they'd actually been alone together, except for the alley. It was childish, she knew, and probably looked ridiculous with her long, bony limbs. But it felt like the childhood she remembered, the one she wanted to go back to before everything turned to shit. Where she used to build him up, like she was trying now, as she craned her head around to plant kiss after kiss, wet on his cheek. "You did, you did it," Carmen answered and squeezed him tighter before slinking back down to her feet.

She didn't get far. She stayed against him, chin on his shoulder to look down on Yareli at night. At this angle it didn't look like such a shithole. His happiness was contagious, even if she didn't like what it was about. She wanted him happy, even if it meant a career she didn't approve of and juggling girls. It wasn't so hard for Carmen to convince herself that she wasn't enough for him, now that his world had gotten bigger. But she wanted to believe otherwise. Which was probably why she reached around him to pull at his belt and the button on his pants. Why she wanted to fuck him in front of that city that he thought was his.
 
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