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Alcohol doesn’t look good on her, he decides, eyes flicking over her ruddy cheeks and heavy eyelids, lips lifted into a perpetual grin. Even when she stumbles and nearly faceplants onto the cement, she’s smiling like she’s won the goddamn lottery. She hangs uselessly off his arm as he catches her, her own hands dangling limply in the air, two pendulums swaying in every direction.
She’s so hilariously clueless like this; he’s not sure if he wants to bite back a laugh or a sigh. Either way, he’s definitely going to be holding this over her head tomorrow. He’s about to mention that sobering fact to her, but she looks at him with that dopey smile and suddenly the words are lost in his throat.
“I’d die for you, you know,” she says then, and any rational thought he might’ve had fizzes over like champagne. He can only stare at her, with her mouth so wide she can fit the crescent moon in her smile and the gleam in her eyes and her rosy cheeks and strands of hair falling in her face—
Jesus Christ, alcohol is really not a good look on her.
When they get home, he gets her settled into bed, tucks her hair behind her ear before he retreats to his beanbag chair. Nothing unusual between friends, he reasons, but even to himself it’s a strikingly hollow excuse. There’s a new, unwelcome ache in his chest, burning softly underneath his skin.
He sits quietly until the sun rises.
She gets back home late from her date with Jericho, but he’s fairly certain that the only reason her cheeks are bright pink is because of the biting cold outside. Still, he feels nauseous, like someone’s chained him to a church pillar and left him there to rot for a few days.
Some newly archaic side of him feels a need for retribution, regardless of the fact that the only thing that creepy-faced shitstain has done wrong is want to be close to Natalie. Has been alone with Natalie. Has maybe tried some things. With Natalie.
His hands clench automatically, his mind briefly entertaining the thought of crushing that asshole’s feeble arm between his fingers.
For a moment, he’s tempted. He’s done plenty worse for lesser crimes.
“It’s freezing out there,” she says, unwinding her scarf. “We should make cocoa or something.”
They do, and then do it again because Natalie manages to swap the sugar for salt the first time. She puts on a movie and they drink their hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and caramel and he manages to force the thought of her and Jericho to the back of his mind.
He doesn’t even know why it bothers him so much.
At first, he doesn’t realize what’s happening.
Blood blooms out from a hole in his stomach, and he looks down at the wound in confusion, the amber of his eyes reflecting sickeningly in the dark liquid. He feels it soaking the back of his sweatshirt. Natalie, he realizes numbly. It must be Natalie’s wound. His hands come up to touch his neck, and they’re wet and smell like iron and he feels his stomach clench, more blood spilling out of it as his muscles contract.
He needs to go. He needs to go right now.
He's there before the blood can even drip to the carpet.
“That hurt, you asshole,” he snarls at the man, slamming his elbow into his face.
There’s a hurricane swirling underneath his skin, ready to burst through the seams of his flesh and unleash itself on this man, this piece of shit that’s saying that he’s the new Satan, Jesus, right now there’s nobody in this world that he wants to kill more—
“I’m gonna rip you apart,” he says, fists clenched.
“Lucifer!”
He’s not used to his brother being the voice of reason, but he looks over and sees him leaning over Natalie, who’s in tears. In pain.
He feels his rage drain out of him like rainwater.
“You’re late.”
The words are flashing through his mind again and again and again, an unforgiving reckoning scratched into his arm. The cuts are pretty deep. She might have scars. His head pounds harder in his skull.
Her face keeps bubbling up in his mind. Her rosy cheeks, her tipsy smile. Her laugh at his hot cocoa mustache and the light feeling in his chest. Her face, rain-soaked and contorted with pain.
“I’d die for you,” she had said.
He grits his teeth, hitting the wall of the building with enough force to crack it.
He’ll burn this place down, if only to see her smile again.