Archive of Our Own

When the reporter flips - with such a sudden flourish of his wrist - the mic’s spider-wired head to your lips, you blank. “When did you first meet the Largos, Mx. Y/n?” 

Which version of them? He probably wants the time where the paparazzi was Rotti Largo’s tiny Sony camera, you think, tongue running across your bottom line of teeth. Yes, that works as the beginning of the infamous Largo siblings.

    “Well, I met the Largo siblings when I was six month young. I grew up with them. My parents often babysat Pavi and Luigi, so they were kinda in my life since the beginning. I don’t really have a concrete memory of our meeting.”

You do though, only the memory is an unsteady noise. You hear Luigi’s inhaler, a pump of stored air bent over your crib. Your parents said the sound made you cry. If you heard it now, you think you would cry anew.

    It is hard to label the origin of a relationship. To you, it seems impossible as the Largos were resolute constant as the sun is to everyone. You spend finite time, exchanging a shared memory of events with them, same as you have done with the canary eye in the sky since the beginning. 

There has to be a concrete moment when friends shift to best friends, others argue. Others have not grown up with Largos. You can never really point a thumb-tack at a specific flicker of change - no matter how you try. Largos glissade like vinegar through life. 

Yet with reluctance, you figure the game of Repo-men Vs Delinquents in the summer made you best friends. Days when creeks existed, your seventh birthday was arriving, and you saw your knee through tacky oceans of blood. Those days defined your friendship. 

⸸

    Two armed Repo-men stand on the horizon of a desolate creek, stains against the blazing hue of the red sun. GeneCo has deployed them to scan for signs of life. They are deployed to kill. However, the creek is not barren - it hides ready-to-defend 90 day delinquents in the shrubbery and woods. 

    The Repo-men stalk. Vigilant to snappable branches and too-crunchy leaves, weapons face the nebulous forestry outside their narrow path. The tallest of them takes the front, eyes shifting to all suspicious angles. Pressed against their back, the smaller one is defending their flank with an aggressive pout. Prepared for everything and nothing.

Then, a snap. The smallest one looks down at the now two branches under their feet and winches. “Camerla, are you shitting kidding me,” the pique voice behind her hisses. 

A shuffle of motion is heard from the left. Cocking guns twist their twin mouths at the source, the lower one wobbling. “If we lose this round, I’m going to throw you in the creek, Camerla, I swear.” Luigi shakes his head, studying the comatose pillars of birch. Before he can continue his complaints, the tinier Repo-man turns her firearm to her teammate’s chest. “Camerla, what are you doing?”

“Y/n! Pavi! Now!”

The Repo-man (Luigi) jumps in panic after the outburst, turning his gun left to defend himself. Four water balloons hit and detonate on his back. There is an uproar of pink giggling, victorious cries, and wrathful shouts. He violently pivots, smoldering eyes locking with Pavi and yourself. Arcs of wet hair fall over features and a jet of water pierces in his nose. His face cringes. Camerla - in shock from the accidental shot - gasps behind her gun. Six more bombs explode on his hunched form as he snorts out creek water.

“I’m gonna murder you!” He starts his chase after Pavi and you. Huddling up the remaining ammo, you two sprint away with eminent yells. Life narrows down to three objects - as it does with adrenaline; the floundering cold weight in your arms, the long strides of running legs, and the nearing vengeful screams. “Once I get my hands on you!”

Rabbiting over wet lichen, carbon erupts from you in hot and short spurts. Pavi is nimble - legs jumping over spicule roots with ease. He pitches an arm and Luigi yells in enmity. Bitter air burns against your face. Mud splatters up from each drum-beat of your sneakers. Even with the growth of heavy legs, there is liberation in a chase. A cramp of mirth twists in your chest, a laugh bubbles out. Pavi follows along. 

You risk a glimpse of him - cute widow’s peak dishelvel in his mid-sprint and emerald eyes agleam - and smile. He returns it. Then, sudden damp brown-leaves and mucous mud rush to greet you. “Shit!”

First, you see and feel red. The texture of vermillion manifests in the chagrin that mounts to your cheeks; the sight is unearth in the blood speckles across waterlog dirt and a coarse rock. A pain ignites in your chin, tiny violin strings of muscle burning  in acid. Sitting up, a groan slither outs a busted lip. After a blink, the red matches with the white. Cut enough to open the top of your knee cap like a snow mountain, you think delirious.

With a flinch, your chin turns away. You clamp a muddy hand to your knee, magma dripping between the slits of fingers. The world fuzzes around the edges like a damaged camera but you recognize the widow’s peak. A slow smile rises to your cracked lips. “Hey Pavi.”

“Y/n, amore! You took-a tumble; are you okay?” Pavi’s eyes drop like a suicidal jump to your hands. “Y-Your knee! Fuck, wa-was that a bone?” Sickness pigments his cheek, the accent withering to reveal his stutter. He recoils as Luigi glides down the tiny incline. From the streaks made his elephantine boots, he kneels down beside you.

“Y/n,” Luigi gulps between his lungs spasms “, you...okay?” 

Concern immediately switches from you to his cavernous gasps. Worry crosses your face, lifting one lacerated hand where blood mixes with mud to cup his cheek. “Luigi, your asthma.” He blinks, then furiously wrestles with his coat to find the cursed tool. 

After a pump, you relax and say to the brothers “, my knee is fine.” It is not. “The rock cut real deep but I don’t think it hit anything. I’ll need stitches. Just don’t let Camerla see it. I don’t want her to be worried - this isn’t something for a five year old to look at.”

“Guys, what happened?” Camerla stands at the top of the petite slope - you haven’t even realize you had fallen from a steep until now. Pink water gun against her chest, she gazes down at all the commotion. Her eyes widen comically. “Oh no, Y/n, you’re hurt. Don’t worry, Daddy can get you a new leg! He would be happy to. Oh, it would be so nice.”

Quailing from the mention of surgery, you murmur “, no, no, Camerla. I’m okay, it’s just a nick.” Luigi has taken to turning his ascot to a toruqinent, Pavi grumbling in stutters and trying to neaten his brother’s work. Knee bandaged, you hoist yourself and catch Camerla’s distraught look. “Hey, we’ll come back later to play Repo-men Vs Delinquents another time. The creek will always be here. Plus, you did an excellent job at tricking Mia, you little angel.” 

Camerla glows with the compliment. “I did, didn’t I? Take that Mia!” She teases her older brother with malice. The sibling skirmish begins again and you smile tiredly.

⸸

    Reclined, you shovel popcorn from Luigi’s bowl - yours already eaten - into your mouth. He flicks you, as is the routine. White flashes, you settle back in a fleece cocoon. “You son of a bitch! You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies didn’t you? You son of a bitch, you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones! Lies! Lies!” Shouts the speaker at you and Luigi. 

The movie - Poltergeist, the circular fossil of metal is called - is from a raid of Rotti Largo’s storage closet. Whenever Rotti is occupied, which seems to be always, you and the siblings search the mountains of boxes hidden there. Buried deep, multiple cases of thin, oily circles laid are unearth. After figuring out the circles’ purpose, you and the siblings argued stubbornly on which of these D-V-Ds to watch before Pavi and Amber were escorted to some appointment. Luigi and you find the ghost movie agreeable.

    With the begrimed items, the two of you work to hook up the disc player to his television. Enjoying the gentle hush of toiling over the forgotten circle that casts tiny rainbows into the seasick shag, the two of you insert it into the system’s mouth that waits

It becomes kalopsia, sitting with him in fleece cocoons. In low voices, you two whisper little jokes/remarks with content smiles. Your knees, one stitched, tilt towards his thighs to gather warmth. His shoulders, none stitched, lean towards your torso to gather warmth. Just for warmth, and it is too nice to continue.

    “We’re home!” Carmela strides in, beaming. An exhibit of bags dangle from each outstretched arm. Ah, it was a mall appointment. “And we brought presents!” She lets the designer-labeled bags plummet from her hold for the guards with nebulous glasses to collect, leaving one in her grasp. The seven year old thrusts it in your direction.

    A deep blink jerks your lips into a surprise expression. You twist out of the butterfly cloak to gingerly accept the gift. “Carmela, you didn’t have to; thank you.” 

It is a petite pinkish-orange bag that you take, the size not once dimming your gratitude. From ivory wrapping-paper, you untangle a necklace that ends in diamond sunken in a gold rose. “Oh my. Carmela, it is gorgeous. Sweetie, I can’t accept this!” You quickly thrust it back to your daughter of your parents’ boss. She keeps obstinate arms behind her spine. “Oh please, Carmela, I can never afford to pay you back!”

“That’s why it is a present, silly,” she grins, making your nine year old heart deflate. With chasmic scepticism, you stare down at the jewelry that shimmers under the poor lighting of eldritch hauntings found television pixels. Maybe, you can start a bank account to repay her. As you grapple with finances, Pavi enters.

“Look.” He bolts past the statue guards. “What.” He slaps his hands down on the armrest. “I fucking got!” With a sudden rotation of his head, Pavi’s left profile faces you along with two tiny glittering hoops pierced in his ear. You compliment them, calling them beautiful, and he is fluorescent with energy. The subtle monochrome gleam against his raven hair works. As he straightens, the twin hooks swing dreamily like handing vertebrates. 

“Next, I’m piercing these!” He had his hands over the black turtleneck that covers his pectorals. You laugh. He still has his hands there when Luigi argues that their father will never let him get nipple piercings, idiot.

“Actually you-a are wrong, fratello. Father said the Pavi can pierced them on his-a thirteen birthday. He said to me-” Pavi tries his work-shopping impression of their absent father, the haunting voice of the GeneCo founder coming from the adolescent’s mouth. “Son, you are the architect of your body. I run this company so people can better themselves with surgerys. If I were to deny my own child of such artistic expression, it would be hypocritical! Of course, you can have those piercings!” 

Pavi smiles at the applauds, bowing a little. Swiftly after, he jumps on the armrest, squeezes between you and Luigi, and announces his upcoming body alteration. “Next, the Pavi is asking for a tattoo.”

⸸

    Today, Camerla wears stilettos so starkly vertically that her bent toes darken violet with pain. 

You know this because Camerla jumps on the glass countertop. The straps (that curl like trenchant mambas up her thighs and will leave red marks) block your vision for a moment. The game of poker you and Luigi were once engaged in skatters. As cards flutter, you mentally thank her as you were sourly losing before.

    “Camerla, what the fuck? I was winning, you dolt,” Luigi seethes. As you pick up the fallen aces and murmur that is negotiable, his callous gray eyes glare at you between his sister’s salient heels.

    “Oh, save me your tears! I have an announcement to make.” Sieving one hand through flowing black hair, Camerla poses for invisible, soon-to-be-real parazzi. A shade of matte peach gloss outlines her freshly installed teeth. “I am no longer Camerla Largo; you may now address me as Amber Sweet!”

    Her outburst is unique enough that Pavi looks over the rim on his phone for the first time - well, the first time that does not involve shy glances at you. A snort rattles Luigi’s frame; unimpressed, he resumes the act of shuffling his cards. However, you are intrigued by the nine year old’s new title. “So Miss. Sweet, why the new name?”

    “All performers need a stage name! Like Prism and Mindy South, or even that old lady named Katy Perry. I already know I'm going to be a very famous singer when I grow up, Dad says so. So, I need a stage name. It’s Amber Sweet! Plus our last name is sooo boring.” 

A pang of gloom hooks into you, deep. Oh how you can almost understand that. You remember how much you hated your last name, a strand of letters insidiously mimicking the texture and security of identity. Somewhere in the house you will crawl back to,  in the abyssal sock drawer, there is a list written out with your first name followed by various last names hidden. The idea of writing the surname grounded upon an unloving nuclear family gnaws.

With a waned smile, you jump up and seize Camerla, no Amber, by her waist. “Well, I think that works out perfectly because you are the sweetest.” You beam, spinning her around in little circles. For a second, her honeyed laugh fills the room pink. 

“Hey, don’t forget you’re in the middle of losing to me.” Well, the identity crisis can wait as you glare across playing cards at Luigi’s smug face.

⸸

    Pavi has a pimple on his nose. 

It is noxious news to him. He laments under the pomegranate lighting of his vanity mirror, knowing puberty is a gift of thirteen candles. Over gradual time, Amber’s beauty products migrate. Face soaps are snatched from the main bathroom. His thumb digs under the whitish-red bump coated in piquant cosmetics. For two days, he screams at anyone who tries to enter his door. 

Even now, he shouts dramatically behind the metal door “oh, just-a leave without the Pavi! He is too-a ugly to face the world like-a this. Please, leave me to my-a mourning.”

“You heard him, let’s go.” Luigi says back at you and his sister - who are stubbornly not going to leave Pavi alone. Hands merrily pressing on his waist, he smiles a big crescent of white. “No fucking point staying here.”

A scowl unfolds on Amber’s face, pushing her brother aside to address the silver monolith. “Pavi, it’s Amber. You better come out right now because Press will be coming up. And I refuse to be late due to a dumb pimple. And you took all my perfume! I need that!”

It is true that in an hour, flashing cameras and paparazzi will be crawling through GeneCo with expectations to see the Largo children; and Pavi took all of Amber perfume too. When the forthcoming news was given, their father (with grim dictation craving in his pale face, ominous hands folded as he delivered the news as if a loved one was dead) told all three of you to fetch his second son. His vulturous eyes had stared you down, given his master keycard to you if persuasion failed. 

Standing before the metal slab with the idea that you needed to prove yourself to your parents’ boss, you growl out. “Pavi, come out. Your father wants us in his office.”

“Oh, Y/n, I am too gross to leave my-a room! Just-a let me rot.” The voice beyond the metal is meek yet keeps his Italian accented facade. It aches to hear him so dolorous. Since birth, he has a conscious seed ingrain that all media imperfections are volatile - to him and his father’s company. The ideal look hangs above the Largo siblings heads’ like a gavel. 

With a quiet wince, you lean on the slick surface and erode your lips in thought. “Pavi.” Lips seal again, checking that all your ideas are organized before speaking. You reflect on all the mirrors indefinitely lay within his reach since birth, since his mother disappeared on his third birthday. “Pavi, listen to me, not to your head. And I will repeat it, over and over if need be. 

“You are not supposed to be a Barbie. You’re supposed to be human!” Amber’s intrigue goes to the carpet, black bangs concealing indigo eyes. “You’re suppose to have that stupid pimple, goddamnit. Faults are not evil, they are human. Do you know how proud your father would be to see you right now, pimple and all? He would be so proud of his only son.” Luigi follows Amber’s intrigue. “The son who is able to rise above vanity to love his humanity, he would be proud of. You should be too. Now, you better get your none-Barbie-ass out here because I do have your dad’s keycard.”

You don’t have to use the keycard after all.

⸸

Amber wants a new face for Christmas.

If not for the eon you all have grown up in, it would be the most outlandish request Santa has gotten. However, you live in 2035 and every little girl wants one. More specifically, all little girls want “47 diamond, silicone. Kendrick” which is newly advertise in November by GeneCo. 

As wintery weather begins, she laments over the width of her jaw and forehead. In front of numerous mirrors, she depresses her fingers into pliable real flesh, pushes and pulls. Amber prods cheeks in an attempt of dimples and squeezes irritably at any skin that dares to swell in her nails. Something in her eyes makes you think she wants to peel off her face like citrus skin. 

There is really no surprise when she catapults the glossy magazine article on his desk. There is surprise when her father cooly answers yes as if it is not a life-changing request. There is less surprise and more nausea in you when Amber excitedly shows you her present. On the twenty-fifth day of December, she hands you the slab of siloxane packaged in a pink-bordered box, a mass-produced facsimile of a dead actress, that is to be stitched on her. 

“Do you like it? I love it. Doesn’t it look beautiful? It is so so pretty! Do you think it will look beautiful on me? Do you think I will look beautiful?” 

You try to smile, you really do. You try to smile through all the not-dormant bile in your throat. All you manage is an alien imitation of a smile and a nod.

On the twenty-sixth day of December, you find yourself in the Largos’ Ward with the same wet yellow-orange odium scorching the back of your throat. Hospitals have never sat easily with you. Though, you cannot really call the Largo Ward a hospital when it is treating only one patient. Long ago, Rotti Largo installed a medical center for his children’s private use. It ensures his kin receive elite surgery. You sit in the wing, the day after Christmas, and try not to vomit.

There are three rooms in the Largos’ Ward, two across from their brother and one at the end of the corridor. Amber is installed at the end. You and her family wait for it to open. It does - two valets exit, standing side by side and carrying a coffin, on which lies the fourteen year old who will unawarely be the true heir of GeneCo in her future.

Her valets, dressed in suits with nebulous glasses and a hue of blood lipstick, stop just short of the waiting chairs. Gently, they deposit the tomb and from it she emerges. Up from the sarcophagus casket, she rises like a vampiric queen.

The youngest Largo adores (always will) theatrics so you anticipate her florid and exorbitant attire. A bridal veil conceals her new features, a vaporous shield of mesh. A single tier of lace flows behind her additionally, makes the hospice floor look like a frozen web of ivory flowers. Even as she steps off her coffin, it remains creaseless in a perfect arcing crescent. On her head idles a glossy black crown.

A tiny snicker escapes from Luigi, quickly elbowed away by you. One of her valets raiss her veil, falls wordlessly behind her like a statue. Under the veil is no longer Carmela Largo but rather Amber Sweet. There is a gasp. For a second, you think it is Luigi and you almost move to hit him again when your muscles catch up with your head. You pinch your lips back together.

“How do I look?”

For a moment, you think she is talking to her father who will most likely congratulate her on her first surgery or her older brothers who will mock her indefinitely. You wait, even spare a glare at the family, for someone to say anything. Suddenly, you realize with a quick check - yes, her eyes are solely on you - she is looking at you to answer. 

The vomit is draining from you, the burn eases like a dying ember. Genuine love pulls at your lips. “You look beautiful, Amber. You really do.” 

⸸

    The mirrors in Luigi’s room are covered. 

This surprises you - quiet glances are stolen, flicking between the white sheets to Luigi who conducts a livid search for his missing helicopter control - because GeneCo is prided upon vanity. You have read pages upon pages about how Largo's skin is as white and unblemished as flowing candle wax or milky crystals. This is false, you happily know: Amber has mole on her cheek, Pavi has a constellation of freckles on his right shoulder, Luigi has a cafe brown birthmark on his ankle. Proven by Rotti’ Largo’s family photo album - ones taken by his late wives before they disappear on their child’s third birthday. 

    In his fit of uprooting his room, Luigi notices you timidly standing at the threshold. “You can come in, idiot,” spoken with an odious growl. He resumes his army crawl under his bed. 

You sit on top his mattress with fruitless entwined fingers. Too cautious to disperse the neat area yet too anxious to ignore orders, you settle upon the decision of neutrality. 

It works for a while - you counting the number of pencils lodged in the ceiling, he emptying out his clothing drawer with grumbles of pique - in an intimate clockwork. Even as he grumbles about Amber touching his stuff, she’s always sneaking into my goddamn room, that dolt, it is nice. 

    “Mia, why are your mirrors covered?” A knock is heard as Luigi’s skull bonks into his bed frame. He returned for a second look. Some shuffling later, Luigi pokes out his head in a mess of ebony curls, framed between your socks. He has beautiful eyes. The lustrous gray hues swirl with waves of midnight’s dark ocean and incalculable skies. You only notice this now as they look away from you. “Can’t you just take them out of your room?”

    Dread pinches his contours. Brows furrowed, he looks at the eidolon ripples of hanging sheets. He has two mirrors, a circular one mounted above his dresser and another propped in a corner. Both lakes of reflections are blocked out, sheets wrapped tight against them with duct-tape. “I can’t take them out, my father would have a fit. I’m not as vain as my younger siblings.” Voice still sour, you hear him murmur as he ducks under the bed again “, and I can’t stand to look at myself either.”

You consider this. Old kitchen conversations between Rotti Largo and your parents tell you that appearances are everything , the essential vein of a company. Here you learn the oldest heir of GeneCo’s reflection nauseates him. You ache for him, knowing it cannot be easy with pops of cameras shoved in front of him. The soft noise of sniffles reach you, crawling up in wisps from the mattress. 

Eyes drawn down to seasick green shag, you plead “ Mia, please come out. I adore looking at you. Mia?”

It is stagnant for a moment like the walkened world is caught in some glitch. His smothered sobs seep from his lips, for a moment only being flakes of misery until loosening to cries. Under his bed, forgetting about the helicopter and wanting to be left alone, Luigi weeps. One of his boots hits the wall in his gloom. Almost immediately after his lips crack open like a mirror, you are laying down with him in the dust bunnies under a sky of foam rubber. You grab onto Luigi as if his sorrows will be the last you hear from him.

“Now now, my tereso, it is alright. Steady. I’m here for you; I am here. You have to steady yourself, Mia, for our sake.” Plenty of saccharine words slip off your lips, but it is your hold that calms him. His body is a cocoon of carbonation and anguish which bristles under his skin in firework tics. 

He attempts belly breaths, a tactic some GENtern taught him. If they do not work, neither will her jaw after (he crawls from the slit of the bed and floor). His nostrils flare and he is oh so scared that he is not really breathing from his gut. Oxygen seems to have crawled out its spindly arms from his lungs. Biting down his lips, he practices those stupid tactics that only anger him further. He wonders where he last put his inhaler, he wonders where his helicopter control is, he wonders why you haven’t left him to find both missing objects.

When Luigi feels the coarse touch of lips on his forehead, he realizes you’re trying to find him. The epiphany gives him a rush of oxygen. 

Smoldering skin depresses on your heart. He tries to follow along to the pacific beckons of your chest that he is curled into. “There there, tereso. Match my breaths now; feel the oxygen in your stomach. It is becoming easier, yes?” After a handful of simple shivers, he is breathing normally. 

You no longer know what to do with your hold, it impromptuly rests on his stiff arm. A persisting fear wonders if he is going to yell at you, spit out verbal knives. Little circles are drawn into his shoulder. It occurs to you with a gentle traverse, in a pocket of darkness within a sprawling world belonging to just the two of you, your breaths are in sync.

“Do you need me to get your inhaler? I just thought, I,” you try to explain. You just couldn’t pull yourself from him, too anxious and too cautious to move inches. You felt a stony incumbent to stay. “I can leave if-”

“Stay.” You decide that is for the best, so you do.

There is something so intimate with being under a bed with someone, sharing wafer-thin air and huddled close under no stars nor strange lights passing overhead. Until the elevator dings for you to return home, you spend finite time with Luigi. He explains the mirrors and you tell him that tomorrow his mirrors will house an aquarium of painted blooming fishes. At the end of the day, you never knew a Mia.

⸸

    Rotti Largo installs a pool; more correctly, his GENterns build a swimming pool as Rotti Largo requests. 

Summer has fallen upon them like a magma wave. The Largo siblings, ranging from fifteen to thirteen to ten, have spent an aromatic season loitering in their father’s office, waving fans of construction paper and bitching in seats or the throw-couch (usually reversed for Amber). Outside the pillar of black glass is no longer safe, creek dried and the subway full of odious hands. There is nothing better to do, until the announcement that dear Father is merging two bureaus to make space for a ‘recreational site’.

Luigi is ecstatic at the news. It is peculiar to see him cavort in the elevator, stoic nature gone. As they descend, he narrates forgein memories of ponds and creeks, descriptions patchy yet authentic. Doors opened, he bounds out - white shirt thrown up midst his sprint - and cannonballs in.

Laughter exits the elevator along with you, Pavi, and Amber. In less of a rush than the older heir, the pair inspect the new construction, the warm chlorine odor and the electric-blue water moving in vital lines. The scintillas of an office bureau are unrecognizable. 

Toes padding on the ceramic tiles, the younger siblings deposit themselves on the edge of the pool. You start to seperate the right belongings from the beach bag and drape towels over four lawn chairs. Amber, in her hydrangea swimsuit, stands captious on the pool’s edge. To her resurfacing brother, she asks “how cold is it?”

“I don’t know, you tell me!” There is a sudden scream and splash. Amber’s head bobs up from the water, ebony hair dangling off her red cheeks, and the screaming continues. You go to scold Luigi to be careful but laughter drowns it out. From the tiles, you shake your head as Luigi ducks out of the path of Amber’s manicured fist. 

A snicker billows from your left so you turn. Paviche has his arms X-ed on his chest, watching Luigi heft up the screeching thirteen year old by her waist to fling her about three feet away. A content smile settles on his face as if he is on the summit of sleep. You gaze over him, for no guilty reason of course. Your gaze stops at his shoulder, squints with a tilted head. 

He turns suddenly, startling you. A smirk engulfs the smile and a new fever attacks your face. “Ah, don’t-a be embarrassed, bambola. No one can-a resist the Pavi.” At the accusation, you stifle a laugh even when your cheeks hold the same heat as zippers fresh from the dryer. There is still a scar on your pinkie. “Come now, we should-a be joining them.”

As he scales down the steps and dives in, you wonder if freckles fade out with lack of sun exposure. 

⸸

    Twin lights tear through the fog like nebulous yellow eyes in an ink sea. Headlights, you recognize. They slide over his ceiling as you and him decay on seasick shag to surf punk/pop indie. Often, Luigi pokes fun at reverb electric guitars - yet never has energy to continue his complaining when the chorus pulls in and yells “Now I, I hate my mom and dad!” Often, you hear his voice sing along over the contours of a pale button-up and trenchcoat. 

    “Hey.” Laid on the carpet like burnt up starfishes, he has his feet by your head and your feet by his head. When he doesn’t answer, you kick his cheek. “Penis, someone is home.” 

Over his pointed nose, his eyes leaden with ire and a bit of cannabis stare down at you. “So what,” he asks your socks. You tell him you want to know the time, shit-for-brains. He groans, recoiling from the green stink of your vexed feet, and checks his wrist. “Quarter to nine.”

    Skull bonking on fake grass, the cogs in your head begin to churn. That doesn’t make any sense. Elevator set to pick you up tomorrow morning, the only other notion is Pavi. His prom is not done until eleven. You watch the headlights contort, extensive arms of sandy luster bent. With a breath, they disappear round the corner.

Not until eleven, he said. You swallow a roach of worry and settle back into fake grass. It does nothing as the roach just crawls back up your cobweb-lined throat with needle legs. The roach comes out your lips and says “Didn’t Pavi said he wouldn’t be back until eleven?”

“Did he? Didn’t notice.” There is a snicker before a sock pokes him. “Hey! Stop it, your feet stink.” He promptly flicks at your face with his own toe.

“He did ,” you argue stonely. Eyes traveling up to the tenebrous ceiling, unease squirms in your stomach like a bowl of roaches - insects of emotion. “And Pavi isn’t one to pass up prom so easily either.”

He does not respond so silence settles in, music fills it. Pink eyes dangle and observe you from punctured plaster. Dread creaks round you, refusing to be quieted by refrains. You remember obvious excitement, his suit of scarlet and ebon, and the timid question of if his older brother could help his nervous fingers do the tie. It is quarter to nine and the garage door below them rumbles open.

“I wonder why he’s home.”

Luigi spits words between his teeth. “Why do you care so much about him anyway? It’s just prom. I didn’t even go to mine.” It is true, Luigi’s prom night was spent with you, old cassettes that need a cough drop, and impromptu giggles on the same (always the same) carpet. You never bother to ask why. You should bother at some point.

“I just do. I care about all of you, individually and together.” When he does not respond to that either, you sit up. He looks away, his eyes as two flames of bluish-gray oil. He always looks so handsome when eluding you; you wonder if there is symbolism in that. “Luigi, do you think I don’t care about you?”

There is a sound beyond the carpet. Recognizing it as the mechanics of the elevator, you look away as he looks at you. A meteor shower of leaden feet storms out of the elevator. You hear what might be sniffling and stand in alarm.

“It doesn’t even matter anymore,” he says to regain your attention because that matters. “I don’t even care if you do care or not.”

“No, it does. Luigi, why would you even think I didn’t care? I always have. I always try to be there for-” The storm grows closer and you hear sniffling. Without heed, Pavi bolts past the opening of Luigi’s door. He is wrestling with his tie. “We’re continuing this later. Okay?”

It takes nine years to resume the conversation. You rush to watch the contours of his suit slither behind a closing door. Then, devastatingly, you dash after Pavi to try to save him. Alone on the carpet, Luigi looks at the fake grass where you laid. A bed of your shape is left for him. An ache beats on his chest as you beat on Pavi’s door.

“Pavi? Pavi, can I come in?” You really hope Pavi will listen to you. His Largo-inherited stubbornness often emerges during moments, makes him harder to talk to. As soon as the chatterbox is sealed, it takes a crowbar to make it open. “Pavi, please.”

The doors open like a lizard’s lazy blink. Your eyes search through his mess: whitish-green bottles of Sprite drank in various volumes, eleven types of combs, a pyramid of magazines, and numerous cosmetics projects making his ground a vibrant mosaic. On the floor, Pavi sits with his fingers tucked between the knot of cloth and his neck, arms yanking and teeth grinding. 

Two hours ago, the room was full of idyllic laughs, the occasional slam of drawers as Amber raided the place in search of a single pair of black socks, and Luigi complaints that Pavi needed to learn how to do his tie because I refuse to do this anymore, you’re fucking eighteen, it’s just a fucking tie, fag. Now, the room is full only by sniffles and Pavi’s grunts as he struggles with the same article of clothing. “I hate this-a fucking thing. Pi-Piece of shitty cloth-a. I h-hate ties!” The tie-related endeavors resemble the memory in a way.

Timid, you set over Bobbie Brown lipstick and nudge away an elephant stuffie. Over the labyrinth, tiptoes make a trek to him and kneel down in the discord. He is still wrestling with the tie when you two are nose to nose; you wonder if that makes it easier for him. 

“Here.” You sweep away his useless fingers to allow yourself space. With teetering motions, you slowly pull down the knot in a little boat sway. “You have to take it off slowly. The way you were doing it only strains the thread.”

With little care, the useless snake of red cloth is tossed into the mess never to be seen again. You will plan to buy him bowties for his birthday. He still avoids you, not by finding another task to wrestle from his neck, just by his inscrutable eyes. His eyes look full of sand and stuffing, vacant. Looking into them is like trying to find emotion in a toy.

“Guessing pretty boy was a no show?” Pavi twitches but does not respond. “You know, if he stood you up, Luigi and I would hunt his sorry ass down. He might not have any toes to dance on after.” You wait for the following snicker or tiny snort but only receive the sound of a sleeve running across a cheek. Enamels attack your bottom lip.

You don’t know what to do. Pavi is always bursting with words - a crayon box of different emotions pulled easily like taffy on his tongue. His mouth, once a firework show, lies snuffed. Typically, you only bring a shovel with you to dissect only Luigi’s, sometimes Amber’s, insecurities. You wonder if you need a pickax to unearth such concrete silence. With the sight of his taut lips, you do not anticipate any further answers. Quietly, you slide your hands to caress his hands. Pumpkin pie lacquer coats his nails. You want to tell him you think the hue is beautiful so you ease your thumb over the smooth polish. Where words fail, humane touches make good conversation. 

For a moment, an unnamed emotion burns on your sternum. It is familiar, often repeating during taciturn moments when you are hyper-aware of places your skin falls on and time slows. You never really experienced it with the middle Largo sibling. During the moments when you apply lipstick to Amber’s lips when she is perfectly able, yes. During the moments when you pull at vomit shag as Luigi talks of being king, yes. Never with Pavi.

You enjoy it for a long as you feel appropriate. However, this moment is dictated by Pavi who could yank his hands away anytime without a noise of protest from you. Endless GeneCos pass between you two in complete serenity. You break the quietude.

“Pavi, would you go to prom with me?” He blinks, Expecting surprise, a small grin rises on your lips. You try to explain yourself but end up tripping on words. “Not at our high school, of course. I mean here, would you like to go to prom with me here? I can fetch a radio. I don’t really have any clothes for it, but I thought it would be nice. Having a prom at home. Just you and I. Bu-But, we could invite Amber and Luigi if you want-”

“Yes. Yes, I would love to go to prom with you.” It feels like a horse kicked you in the chest when the L-word idles from his mouth. Free of an accent and stutter, the clarity of it makes you ache. “I could,” he stops, takes out his Iphone 15 and begins to thumb the screen.

You recognize the melody before the first lyrics even slither in. A secret smile is shared between the two of you and you laugh because fuck, Pavi is predictable at times. He always had a love for learning as many languages as possible, saying it made him more desirable.

Rising, you watch his dominant hand extend. A playful kiss is planted just above the ebony snake ring on his middle finger and you finally get to hear him laugh. Red rims his green irises yet there is genuine mirth in them. Fake accent returning, he sings along . “J'attendrai, le jour et la nuit. J'attendrai, toujours ton retour. J'attendrai, car l'oiseau qui s'enfuit” 

Eventually, the little giggles wither and the ambience of the dance turns serious. Somewhere in the song, you press your head on his ebony jacket. You close your eyes, wanting only to remember the iron twist in your right lung. There is no way to envision yourself picking off the gray felt of a hospital chair tomorrow. 

⸸

    The nebulous hallway (Largos’ Ward) is familiar and odious at whatever-forlorn-hour in the morning. In your chest lies a pain that twists, happy memories clash with the design of your visit. From your perforicals, you watch the volcanic rise of Luigi Largo’s shoulders as you massage comfort in Amber Sweet’s knuckles. Your left hand is swallowed by her nails and hands like a venus trap.

    Both of them daunt you at this moment. Neither speak a word about the incident that leads you here, clutched in iron pincers. Each insectual tick of shoes makes you desperate. However, you refuse to pry. Having seen red petroleum fall like tiny creeks between Pavi’s fingers, horribly not nail polish, before a surGEN pushes you away and out, you know it is for the best to allow them to tell you what happened when they are ready.

    With a timid thumb, you rub little hearts into Amber’s fake flesh. You like to think this relaxes her, as her ebony ringlets drape over your shoulder, bangs pressed to your neck. She is wearing her favorite hair, you think absentmindedly.  

    You doubt anyone has been tracking time, maybe Luigi bent over his stone hands, but you have no knowledge of the sand trickle of minutes. There is a memory of flashing crimson bent into two, three, and eight, falling in that increasing order. The numbers had blinked down upon you as you were woken by a scream. It could be hours from then. It is hours from then.

    You sit in tacky lounge chairs, ones you toy wordlessly with the seams falling apart into white fluffy mouths. You sit for hours. Each of you slips in and out of consciousness. Each of you jolt awake when a wave of frigid anxiety splashes over you. Somewhere in the formula, Luigi grasps for your hand.

    Shoes click to and fro, doctors entering and exiting the most active operation room. Numerous surGEN fall into this oscillation pattern. They mutter to themselves. A nurse breaks the pattern to approach the remaining siblings and you.

Luigi snaps his neck up. “Can we see him,” Luigi blurts before the surGEN even opens her glossy lips. “Is he alive ?”

    “Well in a variation of the word, yes. You can see him. His vitals are stable and he has responded well to treatment. He will not be able to verbally respond. However, the doctors have set him up with a keyboard to.” The poor woman barely finishes before Luigi releases your hand. He is running down the hall; Amber follows. After watching them disappear, you gaze down at all the red crescents engraved in your skin. The surGEN is left staring at you.

    “Do you happen to have the time?”

    “It’s six AM, Mx. L/n.” 

    “Thank you.”

You shuffle pajamaed feet for a moment. A piece of you agonzies over having to ask. In the cubbyhole of you, you smell what is horribly not nail polish and smoke. You didn’t even have time to yell out a word before a surGEN sends you toppling away and his siblings block your vision. All of this saddens you and you know nothing of why you are here.  “Can you.” An accordion of fear foils in your mouth. Swallowing it down, you continue “, Can you tell me what happened to him?”

    She blinks, surprised. It must be weird to think the siblings’ constant visitor knows nothing. You want to tell her there is a lot the Largos do not tell you. “M-Mx. L/n, Pavi Largo was seen trying to burn his face off by his younger sister. He almost killed himself.”

⸸

    The house becomes different in Pavi’s absence. 

You refuse to leave the pillar of business that makes up Largo's house since prom, parents apathetic about your delay. Stay , they say - it is not spoken like Luigi’s faraway voice - but you decide it is for the best. Without you, someone else would have to gather all the pens tumbling from Rotti Largo’s hand. A repression of joint pain, he explains. You also feel joint pain. You feel many things, listening to the austere steps of the GENterns who walk the halls as if part of a funeral march.

 Luigi starts sleeping on the floor of confetti and nail polish stains. Keeping all Pavi’s items in comatose, he does not allow anyone to disturb the anomalous nature of his little brother. At noon, a GENtern flees Pavi’s room with hands pressed over a hemorrhaging face from the extension of her mouth. The GENtern had been caught trying to unkink the mess of sheets that is Pavi’s bed. She is virgin to Luigi’s temper so her surgery is paid for. Yet it becomes evident that no one is allowed to enter that room. On the floor of confetti and nail polish stains, Luigi starts brewing like a mug of electric stabs and mournful clouds, a mug of storms.

Amber too does not allow visitors, nor sunlight, to pass her threshold. Door bolted, she has not left once for breakfasts, lunches, or dinners. No more requests for surgery are filed under the name of Amber Sweet; her throw-couch gathers unorthodox dust. Her silence screams louder than Luigi’s shouts. You interrupt her quiet with timorous hands that pat her door ever so softly. 

“Amber? Amber, can I come in?” Bubbles crack in the joints you squeeze tight to the iron weight in your chest. Strangling your fingers, you wait for an answer. The hallway is scrubbed by your twisting sneakers. After sixty seconds, you tap your knuckles on the door again. “Amber? Please, I just want to come in. We don’t even have to talk.”

Another sixty seconds pass, your heart squeezing. What if she’s in there, red ribbons falling from her wrists, head slumped against the wall, ink falling from her moonlight cheek? The thought almost brings tears to your eyes. It surprises even you as your fist bombs on her door, rapid. “Amber. Amber, please. Let me in. Amber. Amber!”

The metal door glides open, feeling like a portal to the deepest depth of a whale’s stomach. The first smell of the stomach reminds you of seasick carpets and those surgical concerts where someone is cut apart to ‘Lamb of God’ or ‘Behemoth’. Maijuarana, you know. Across ribs of smoke, you meet those modifying eyes which cannot stay the same hues for a month.

“Hey.” 

Tentacles of smoke curl out of her mouth and fold over her face. Even though they are not her organic ones, the green spider eggs that sit in her skull reflect the gross feeling plaguing them both. The metal door glides close. After a beat, you return her greeting in a sedate voice then place yourself to her. You feel a Washington crinkle under you as you enter the bed.

“Do you want to talk about it? I know I said we don’t have to talk - and we don’t. I just thought maybe it would help to, you know, and um.”

A bag of weed is placed on your lap. “Want some?” 

You deny the offer with a hand wave. She takes another breath. “Those are Luigi’s, right?” It worries you that she might have her own supply.

“Yeah.” You wait for her to say more. “He’s never in his room anymore so it was kinda easy. He’s all holed up in Pavi’s room. I hear him freak the fuck out at GENterns through the walls, won’t even let anyone touch his stuff. It’s like he’s waiting for Pavi to make some kind comeback tour.”

“He will return though. You know that. Are you worried that he isn’t going to be returning - Pavi, I mean. Pavi will return, Amber.”

A look crosses her white face, fingers pausing just below her neck. You worry that you open up a dread Amber had yet to consider. Plans to pretend to be some therapist foil, you ball your fists. Mouth opening to speak, her voice interrupts nothing. “I think I’d be happier if I never saw him again.”

The stillness between you is a coarse static. A stone crestfallen texture tilts your head down. Avoiding eyes glance at the mossy pods in a crude plastic Ziplock. You want to tell her she really didn’t mean that.

“Of course, I love Pavi. You know I do, Y/n. He’s my older brother! But, I couldn’t bear to see him. When I looked at him in those fucking white sheets, all hooked up to machines, I hated him. That version of my brother - I don’t want to look at again. Does that make me an awful person, Y/n?” 

She is crying. Melting wax from her eyeliner stains the moonlight surface of her face, even when crying she looks gorgeous. Had she practiced crying, you think; sitting forward to her vanity, she might have modified herself to shell all the world’s misery in the zoo exhibit of her ebony pupils. She looks alien, shedding such ornamental tears.

“I think it makes you human, Amber.” You smile, though it is a motion full of despair. “I think it proves how hurt you are and proves that you are grieving. It is human to feel that way.”

She is kissing you. The fact is in the taste of peach lips. Her smoldering joint smashes into her bedside nightstand, leaving a tiny nickel of ash and burnt wood. You fall asleep when her hands skim up to your cheeks. Delicate, she tilts you in the whale’s stomach. 

Your hands mimic the motion. Flawless skin bears down on scabrous fingers as you scrub tears dry. Then, you and her are making-out, hands on cheeks and lips on lips. You wake up when her peach lips go to your neck, leaving your lips with the bittersweet goodbye of a soft sigh. Reality presses down, finding yourself in the stomach, in a spiderweb, in a portal of death. Recoiling, you stutter. “C-Carmela.”

“Amber,” she corrects, leaning forward to kiss you again.

“I can’t.” Lips still incline. “I can’t,” you repeat, sterner. 

Her eyes open this time, emerald portals, and her lips decline from their puckered state. Reality seems to press down on her too, realizing she is swallowing you like a fly or fish. Amber - timorous with guilt - looks down at her brother’s bag of weed. She looks ready to cry again, a flicker of lamp-light moving over her eyes like oil in water. “Sorry.”

“I just,” you bite your tongue. “I just don’t want to take any sort of advantage over you in this state. You didn’t really mean that.”

Yes I did, Amber wants to say; instead she repeats “Sorry.”

⸸

    One foot out the elevator, you are redirected to Rotti Largo’s office. You blink up at the guards. Nebulous glasses and moue sapphire lips glare down, making you feel like a rabbit in a fox mouth. Both mechanical voices instruct you to head his office. Delays will be met with repressions. 

    In the metal coffin, you press the button for his office. Anxiety pounds on your chest. It is more prominent than when your reflection gulps at you from the ebon slots of two armed women. Sandwiched between metal jaws, his guards disappear and you rise. Feeling faint, you attempt to figure out the reason why Rottisimo Largo would want to see you. You taste peach and feel expensive cloth on your cheek. The scintillas worsen your anxiety so you delete them mentally and decide to accept faith. 

    Pale blue diamonds slide underfoot as you exit. No greetings are spoken. Your rabbit pulse restarts upon the sight of bare chairs and throw-couch. You slide into the waiting chair as not to waste time. With polite eye contact, you hope fear does not linger in your eyes. 

    You know he will find fear, though. Like a blood-sniffing shark, Largos have a way of unrooting the things you attempt so vigilantly to efface from the sandy shore of your face.

    His eyes are an ebon hue that unsettles you. Rotti Largo resembles a blend of each stereotypical, black and white mafia boss you’ve seen in movies. Luster - from the screen behind him - turns the contour of him white and darkens his center features. He almost appears to like a slippery oil painting, insidious and unctuous. When he speaks, you have to hold yourself from jumping.

    “Have you ever had surgery from GeneCo, Y/n?” 

Under the marauding glance, you are hyper aware of the scar faded into your skin like a venomous imprint, the only evidence of your surgery from GeneCo, and pull the end of your shorts over it. “No, Mr. Largo, I have never had surgery from your company. I had stitches done here. I don’t really consider it the same surgery.”

“You are correct.” He nods, sympathetic in a way that reminds you of the chasten, contorted finger that greets you every time you return home. “Your old stitches are not what I was talking about. I’m talking about what my son, Pavi, calls artistic expression.”

You visibly flinch at the mention of his name. In the past week, it has almost been a crime to say his name.  “He says you call tattoos and piercings artistic expressions. Artistic expression has never implied,” you choke as if the odious word is tangible “, GeneCo’s surgery.”

“Actually, Y/n, artistic expression has always meant my sons’ and daughter’s surgery. They excused their body modifications as inspired art. Society now thinks the body is a slashable canvas. My company, built on aesthetics, is to blame”

You imagine him on a throne of dead bodies, flyblown skin weaving his velvet seat and decaying bones nailed as armrests. Heavy is the crown, you remember the line well. The weight of marrowbone and tendons fashion in a crown must eventually ache.

“But this .” In his hand, amber scotch is empty from his cup and you watch the bones in his neck bob like an uneasy boat. “The mutilation of limbs that we savagely address as poetic, I never wanted. I wanted to see my son breathe correctly; wanted to see my Pavi and Carmela love themselves. I ruined them.”

Eyes seethe down to piqued daggers. With a stone glare, a vicious barbed rope of animus waits to fall from your mouth. You want to scream that yes, by sitting here with me and lamenting, by not being in that hospital, by never once visiting Pavi with his bandaged face, Luigi with his anarchic fists, Amber with her tear-stained cheeks, those pyramiding factors ruin them. Here he sits, angering you. All you say is “her name is Amber, sir.”

Rotti half-smiles at you, like hearing the stage-name was like hearing an old friend’s voice. “Yes, Amber - forgive me, my memory isn’t so sharp.” His smile directs itself now at the clear glass. “What I’m trying to approach is that my children are not turning out for the better. They worsen each birthday. With my memory fading and my age increasing, I’ve been thinking more of death.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Ah, so we are on a similar page.” You don’t bother to mention your thoughts of mortality are concerned with Pavi, not yourself. You let him talk, knuckles pressed over bony knees. “In that regard, I have decided today that I will start writing my will. Luigi is twenty-one. I figure that now is a good time. 

“What I truly meant to ask you upon your arrival was this; Y/n, would you accept being the sole inheritor of GeneCo?”

You blank - not because you are hesitant to answer, you can feel refusal already in your dusty throat, but because you never thought this would be a question asked with your birth name attached to it. (In boiling silence, a memory pinches your skin with taut nails. Not vivid, rather a spotty echo of Luigi sitting in Rotti’s office chair and jumping a mile when you enter the room, cheeks aglow. He still talks about that chair, how he will one day sit in it again.) You grimace at the heavy, none glowing face before you. “No. No, I would not accept. Not when it rightfully belongs to Luigi, Pavi, and Amber.”

He seems to anticipate this, the belittling half crescent of teeth refusing to leave his face. He pours amber into the once empty glass. “Y/n, you are turning eighteen soon. You should not emotion cloud what will benefit you so gratefully in the future. I ask you to reconsider.”

You mimic his mouth. “No. I’m sorry, Mr. Largo. I will never take over GeneCo.” As you stand, you horribly feel shorts drift up to expose spider threads impaled in your knee. There is pride in those sinuate lines. You realize it is safe to assume you and Rotti Largo are the only ones in the building virgin to GeneCo surgery. It sickens you.

“Find some starry-eyed bitch to do your work if you’re too disgusted by the rightful heirs and by the company you built over the dead. You can move the headstones but the bodies are always there. I’ll always be here for Luigi, for Pavi, for Amber. I love them.” When the confession crawls out, you mask your own surprise well. Rotti Largo, on the other hand, has an obvious startle in his face.

“So be it.” He sips his amber, dutifully. “I hope you come to sense that it will not last long for them. But, there is always room for one more.” His eyes travel to your knee. Angered, you storm out. Underfoot, you can barely make out the pale diamond pattern as you race to the elevator. 

Inside the coffin, you stare back at untainted flesh and blood who saved the globe by tainting everyone. You give him a terrible, sycophantish smile. Finger finds the down button. “If you ever want to talk about surgery, talk to the boy who burnt his face off because his self-esteem plummeted a fortnight ago.” Metal jaws close together and eat Rotti Largo.

⸸

    Pavi is getting released from the Ward. The new arrives on your doorstep coated in slick ebon machinery, two Largos hopping out the limousine to attack your parents’ doorbell. You are not hesitant to rush in with them. An hour later, you are standing in the Ward.

    To one side stand GenCo heirs and to the other stands GeneCo king. You stand a peasant, here because your parents serve the king. Alienated is the best word to describe you. Twiddling thumbs and thoughts, you let your mind wander to the last time you had been here. The distant memory resurfaces and resurrects to ease you.

Wheels squeaking, Luig is rolled out the Ward’s door one day. He reaches out for your wrist, a taut wince pulling his face into a wink. Doctors advise him not to move, as to not disturb the healing skin in his torso, yet he does to hold your wrist. He brings your hand up to his white unzipped hoodie (dressed so casually that it almost alarms you), a dull heartbeat under you, no more mounds of awful flesh, and speaks with the happiest smiles. “Tit gone.” You laugh so hard you cry, caving down to hug him.

No laughter stirs in your stomach now. Any emotions from that happy time are an entire universe of duality away from your current emotions. Standing in front of the Ward’s door, you feel what must be a longing for death. It holds no mirth.

Pavi Antinoi Largo is rolled out in the same wheelchair because his left toes were burnt off in impromptu fire. You anticipate a veil of some kind - he has been hiding his burnt face with a towel when you visit, a silk balaclava as it heals - but he emerges with a face. It is beautiful and going to rot in a month, fall off like the body of a butterfly with crucified wings, to reveal charred tissue. 

    The new face does not matter. Your care is not to obsess over with his willowy nose or delicate chin; your care is in examining him to find those orphic eyes that have been hidden for three horrible weeks. He takes a single glance up. Shame is written on his body as if insults already mark him. 

You recognize those green hues and are liberated in a way. A deep sigh circles through you, dumps out all the sewage of death from tiny nostrils. You watch as the GENtern guides the cowering eighteen year old in front of you and his family.

“Hello-a, father.” Pavi does not look up. He is sunken like a raisin, remorse reeking from fake pores, horselike sweat. “How-a have you been?” His fake accent does not even hold the same irksome perkness to it.

Over his shoulder, the GENtern rubs her manicured nails on his neck, tiny waist depress on the chair. You wish to send her away with a stone glare but she remains, a shadow, not adding or subtracting, and you wonder how she does it. If you ever outgrow your hormonal hate for her, as in all GENterns, you will ask. 

“Drop the accent.”

“Of co-course, father.” Glancing, you surmise Rotti is trying to open up all the hidden lockers of insecurity in his son. It seems cruel enough for him. Like slicing an insectual abdomen with a minimal nail. “S-sorry.” Rotti would hurt a fly. 

“I am very glad to see you healthy, Paviche. Your siblings were worried for you.” He drops his voice volumes, timid. “There will be a camera shot in a month for a summer catalogue, you will be joining it.”

“Do th-they,” he starts, bringing up an angular finger to point at new flesh. “Is i-i-i-it public knowledge th-that my face.” He is stopped.

“It has been controlled. No one needs to know.” 

There is a small sentiment in his course of action, a small disgust in the ways his heels turn to leave. His henchgirls follow, acute stomps causing Pavi to flinch. You hear the GENtern whisper how that is such good good good news. You briefly catch his green eyes again as he takes notice of you and his siblings.

“Ah hello-a, fratello and sorella! And amore, hello-a!” You know he isn’t addressing the GENtern as he only calls them bambola, amore is for you. “What do you think of the Pavi’s new face?” Always trust Pavi to brush off an intense situation with impressions. Always trust Pavi to be concerned over his face, too.

“ You fucking .” Luigi starts, fists already balling up like a timelapse of a blooming flower in reverse. He pauses, thinks about the aftermath of a broken nose and blood on hospice tiles, and vents his anger with a sharp sigh. Then, he grabs the male he often refers to as a cock-sniffing pig off the wheelchair and pulls him into a hug. “Do anything like that again and you’ll wish it was me holding the match.”

Amber Sweet, who is holding back tears, bursts like a vein. With loud sobs, she throws herself at her brothers.

“Oh Pavi! I was so so scared! I couldn’t sleep for days, you asshole! I hate you; I hate you! I hate you so fucking much!” She bruises her wettening face into Pavi’s shoulder, cradling both the taller figures, not appearing to harbor any hate in her.

On the sidelines, you are still twiddling your thoughts and thumbs. You watch them and feel - what you finally admit - is love twisting your right lung with iron claws. You are content with the role of the peasant until Amber’s hazel eye peek from her bright copper hair. She suddenly grabs out, yanking you in the caress. Lung almost short-circuiting, you welcome the arms that cradle you and return it.

“From now on, we are going to embrace our flaws. Tomorrow, I’ll help Pavi with his fucking makeup ad I’ll stop making fun of Amber’s new looks and I’ll listen to Pop more and I’ll try to control all my rage, hell I won’t even hit a GENtern if she fucks up. We are going to be fucking human again. We are going to be flawed .”

The promise of flaws rings true; humanity is a sobering no. Yet, you believe Luigi’s words. How deeply and darkly foolish, stupid stupid stupid.

⸸

    When the elevator opens, you thank the sixth sense that laid a breadcrumb trail in your mind up to Rottisimo Largo’s office. Luigi never said where he was leaving to, through his anguish smile as he exits his own birthday party, but a part of you knew. It is almost a symbolism that he ends up here. 

    Stepping onto the blue triangles, you reflect on how things have been shitty. Since the “incident” - it is labelled that in newspapers which gift Rotti his first inkling of family shame - the Largo siblings drown and encrust their fingers in ebonish-red oilslips. They start to murder, you idle. You start to worry that you were not going to make it wish Luigi this momentous birthday number, but here he turns to you. Stepping on blue triangles, you reflect on how things have been shitty but you still emerge human.

    “Happy thirtieth birthday.” There is a moment of genuine love, tweaking bitten lips. Sealed away, the moment is yellow and blissful. “Fuck, you’re like a grandpa now.” - you add as an afterthought.

    “So immature. You’re legit fucking twenty-six, how does that make me old?” He is smiling as he says it, setting down his father’s fountain pen. “But thank you, I guess.”

“When you said you were going to get fresh air, that usually involves being outside.”

“Hm, well, I’ve never really been an outside person.” You want to correct him, tell him to remember the creek but you aren’t even sure if the memory is real to him. There is a scar as proof but does that really count. It seems as fruitless as reminding him of all those trashed inhalers. “Why aren't you enjoying the party?”

“It isn’t really a party if the birthday boy isn’t there. Shouldn't you be enjoying your own party? I don’t think Amber would appreciate breaking one of her acrylic nails only for you to run up here.”

“She was the one who wanted the party, not me.” 

Luigi catches your frown from his perforicals, realizing that you and his sister had planned this party for him. “It's still a nice party. I’m just not very good with crowds, you know.” He plops himself down in his father’s chair, all six feet of him. His lanky, pin-striped legs cross and a flicker of light bounces from his varnish shoes. “Besides, I prefer the life of a lone wolf in my throne.”

    “Luigi Ignacio Largo, you better get your butt out of that chair before the henchgirls come in. I caught you last time but it could have easily been them too. Up, you tall idiot. Luigi, I mean it.” He starts laughing. “You call me immature, how dare you offend me so! Luigi .”

    Luigi - who has not moved a single square inch of his bum from the chair - takes the hand you left idling on the desk in obduracy. He twirls you. There is a flicker of confusion. A noise of fun and bristling escapes. Spinning panels and stun heels are replaced by a firm bone that gives you a ground of stability. In the midst of convulsive laughs, you take too many seconds to realize you are sitting on his lap.

    “Um.” Eyes glance down to your tangible seat, a branding-iron hits your lungs, so eyes move to his ascot. It is a pattern of rectangles, reminding you of De Stiijl’s art. Every birthday, you buy Luigi a new ascot - he nevers bothers to mention when or if you buy him a repeat one. 

You wonder when he is not to push you from his lap, fuck, why hasn’t he pushed you off, and neither of you make a brisk movement to disrupt the taut places you lay in an odious universe. Nefariously corporeal bones depressing on your bum, you risk a gaze at his eyes.

No one has or will look at you like this, the epiphany bites tender wounds. Smoky hues drip from his pupil like oil and sand, so lustrous and sebaceous. Amber melts in a dusty blue, rims into a pure gray. It is peering at Saturn from auditoriums, watching tints blend into each other. A thought races to you, how his eyes still look gorgeous - even when he is not avoiding your gaze. He looks at you like he is trying to search for you as if you have been lost to him.

“Luigi.” You don’t feel well, tiny tears spidering at the side of your vision. Pain is flaring in your right lung. His hand touches the left side of your face.

“Do you care about me?” Luigi asks.

You already know the answer, just like you once-upon-a-time knew the answer to Rotti’s question when he had answered you to operate GeneCo after his death. For a moment, you judge Luigi silly for asking a question with such a salient answer. His eyes pinch away that thought. “Yes. I care about you.”

“I love you,” Luigi says. 

Bile enters your throat in a frog bubble. Almost catatonic, your only motions are the twitch of fingertips. Your thoughts race; for a moment, you feel the pressure of pinkish-yellow lip gloss from his sister, feel the soft sigh in her mouth. Please be a lie. Please be a lie. “Do you feel the same?”

    You swallow, a glutinous weight of (not really but close enough) guilt. Oh fuck, you are still on his lap. The feeling in your chest has shards and you want to lament in cavernous cries because you do , you really do love him. “Luigi, I can’t.” 

    The sound of the elevator opening sobers you. Tiny fear in the back of your mind opens and thoughts race to blue lips and the word ‘henchgirls’. With a sudden jerk, you turn and look Pavi dead in the eyes. You see half-a-dozen metal clamps and sleepy ivory pulled over anger red like you are looking through cotton. Sandwiched between two extreme emotions, you blank. 

    “O-Oh, I’m in-interrupting so-so-something, aren’t I? I’ll go-a. Um, Amber says it’s-a time to cut the cake. So.”

    As he goes to press the button, you jump with an ache of palpable bones. “No, no, you aren’t interrupting anything. We’re coming.” There is a volatile hate germinating in his eyes, defusing ardor, and his shoulders tremble. He is avoiding. You press your hand down to mold over the (most likely) not-natural bone in his modern Frankestein flesh. “Come on, we can’t leave the cake waiting. Luigi?”

    Luigi breaks his glare at Pavi for his split second, glances up at you. He murmurs something, maybe about cake, maybe about love. With a sigh, he moves from a throne that will not belong to him even when monarchic rules would suggest so. “Better be cheesecake.”

    You huddle into the metal coffin, separating the brothers who harbor a sea of murderous thoughts. Inside it, you truly wish you were dead and buried.

⸸

    You should be at the Opera, you know this tacit rule within. However, laying across the chaise longue, laptop open, you find no courage to attend. How could you face them now?

In past years, distance has grown like tides under a waxing moon between you and the Largo siblings. Shamefully, you know you have been doing it consciously. When your eyes land upon metal clasps or Amber’s chameleon hues (blue, red-violet, teal-green, deep-pink, white), you no longer can handle them for more than an hour. When you find you watch a GENtern ‘fall’ from Luigi’s window, you avoid them actively. 

Amber invites you two weeks before the Opera to the Opera. She says, orbiting a nervous finger through new hair, she is going to be performing a song, Blame Not my Cheeks . Her invitation is genuine, no hint of bragging about how it will put Blind Mag to shame. You want to be there to support her. But.

You look down at the laptop screen, excel spreadsheet staring back. Since your twenty-second birthday, you are given the job of managing the insurance for GENterns. You have filed so many insurance claims for funerals rather than dental. It is an insipid job but allows you freedom from your parents and a ‘special employment’ suite in the GeneCo company. 

Saying your job cannot allow you to go to the Opera, you try to ignore the guilt. You click on some keys, hit the backspace button the same amount of times, and close the laptop. You depress your head into clammy hands. All the sewage emotions vent from you with a groan.

Nobody can source when Luigi’s outbursts turn turbulent and he oscillates a blade at a GENtern’s chest; when Pavi starts to slicing faces off women and explore the mystery between girls’ legs; when Carmela pumps herself like a balloon of Zydrate and changes herself so much that her fingerprint-scanners do not function. Some of these events have dates, others none. The fearsome part is how some appear, the events disconnect from reality. It happens so suddenly that you fruitlessly hope you can reverse it, hope extinguishes some days. 

Swallowing bile, you collapse into a pillow and feel a rising fever attack your cheeks. From the corner of raccoons dancing on white fleece, you peek over the blanket to see the Opera will be starting in a quarter hour. Dread hits you like a freight train, right in your nauseated stomach too.

Regrettably, there is a reserved seat waiting for you. You wish you did not know this but Pavi had happily splattered it out on one of his visits to your office. The nectar of a gifted donut chased away the guilt then. Now, you have a stomach full of one apple bite and tea. You can say illness kept you from the Opera, it is partially true.

The suite door opens as you are tracing the cheeks of a raccoon wearing a witch hat. You do not stir, ears shelled in your headphones again, I Get Around by The Beach Boys playing. In your inner lamenting, you jump as a finger taps your clothed clavicle. 

Back turning, you look up in confusion to recognize the invader as Amber Sweet. Well, recognize is a stretch but you just know her, even when her physical features are vastly different from your last glance of her. Taking off your headphones, you smile. “Amber, shouldn’t you be at the Opera? It’s all the way downtown and you have fifteen minutes until it starts.”

She smiles back, lips a shade of watermelon. Chestnut brown ringlets string up like a wild beehive from her skull. It resembles those centuries-old wigs - a look of Marie Antoniette. Under thick eyelashes, artic blue eyes shimmer the same pigment as the eggs of jewelry on her spindly fingers. Despite her virgin beauty, she looks wary. Black fingernails press at her temple, probably wiping sweat. 

“Oh well, I wanted to see if you were still feeling up to going to the Opera. I know you said you had a sick stomach, but we can have someone replace,” she stops herself, knowing how the mention of surgery often makes you sicker. She always testifies how GeneCo would go through hundreds of stomachs if you ever fall ill to the common cold. 

“Nevermind me. I just wanted to check on you one last time - so did my idiot brothers.” She mumbles that, remembering how Pavi had yelled over the phone to make sure Y/n knew they still had their seat available even if they wanted to show up late, on the sidelines Luigi had murmured some agreement. “If you’re feeling up to it, we can ride downtown in the limo. Hell, I can have my valvets carry you too. That is if you’re feeling up to it. Are you?”

There was a credulous gleam in her eyes. Her unnatural blues look ready to rupture into rivers if she receives a negative response. Even her peach lips are pulled into that timid smile earmark for you. Viewing all her vulnerability reminds you so much of Carmela Largo, the girl with the big Italian nose who plays dress-up without changing from suits of flesh.  

    Your own lips are pulled into a subtle frown. A black nail smears at her forehead, depressing falling skin. Red glistens off her thumbprint, a dime of liquid, but it burns your stomach. “Am-Amber, I would love to go. You know I really would but I just feel so sick. I’m sorry. I just won’t be able to make it.”

    Her face falls - not literally as that will happen later when she’s singing. Lips wither to a tearful frown and her gleam is extinguished. She blinks too many times, swabbing at her brow. “Oh, th-that’s fine. I can- I should probably get back to the Opera. Like you said, it starts in fifteen minutes.”

    She turns sharply to hide the tears from you. Part of her crying comes from having been spoiled so long that any negativity takes a toil on her; the other part is from the inkling that she knows can never make you proud, like her father, brothers. Taking her insecurity out with her, Amber makes a buzzline for the exit.

    “Amber, wait! Maybe we can have our own personal Opera after this, in the living room. You could sing for me. You know how much I love your voice, Amber. Please.”

    “I have to go, Y/n. It’s starting.”

    “Amber, please. Let me make it up to you! Amber!”

She is already descending the elevator as you jolt up from the chaise longue. Your stomach tilts on an axis, making heat rush to your cheeks. Nausea pushes you back down. You bury your face in your wrist and yearn to die. 

When all is said and done, Amber is happy you did not attend the Opera. She reflects, thinking she would kill herself if she saw your face in the crowd while her own laid bloodied on the stage.

⸸

You have to face facts, eventual and with great dread. The headstone reading Rottissimo Largo is enough concrete evidence. He died at the Opera - one thing you regret missing. 

A week after the funeral, you are redirected to Rotti - no - Amber Sweet’s office. Blinking up the henchgirls, you feel nostalgia stir as your eyes scan down their sapphire lips. You know delays will be repercussions, backpedaling into the elevator you had been exiting. Yet, you find yourself pressing a handful of buttons ahead of Level 18.

Your mind effaces itself. The concept of time sieves like sand from your ears. Each moment the elevator opens, proceeding to her office, you stand blankly. This whole ordeal is insidious to you - you have not spoken to them since the funeral but you still lived under the same roof of them. Pavi does not visit you anymore during breaks. Will they loathe you for your behavior? Drowning yourself in work the last weeks, you are left to wonder when the pink-slip will tell you to ship your ass out. They must loathe you.

The metal jaws open like the maw of a whale. You are startled to see Pavi and Luigi, standing besides their sister who idles at the desk. Seeing her sit in the chair Luigi yearns over breaks your heart. ‘Always the favorite’ you think bitterly, still fond of her. 

You remember the will reading. Gathering  in the same office, yourself invited for an unknown reason. Sat with your head down the entire time. His adenoidal voice told you Carmela Largo is in possession of GeneCo. You dissociate soon enough to miss Luigi’s outburst at the nasally voice with dandruff on his black suit and the butterfly knife that impales the snowy shoulder.

All of this has a surreal texture. Inside, you knew time was trickling down to when one of the Largos would officially harness all of GeneCo but you had never really migrated away from hope that creeks and water-guns would refill. Your stomach is a burlap sack of sand, weighing down. You glance from each sibling, stare down at the diamonds, and walk until you are in front of the desk. 

“You can take a seat.” Amber speaks to you as if you are a client or a Repo-man, not her childhood friend. Long sylphlike nails gesture at the choice of seating: the decorative golden chair, Pavi’s; the baby-white with black lace throw couch, Amber’s; the slick, austere ebon chair with no embroidery, Luigi’s. You think, whatever seat you take, you will not win. 

“I’ll just stand, thanks.” She repeats the sentence, this time commanding. Twin clicks make you shudder, the henchgirls’ shotguns turning off the safety. Blinking, you dare an arrow gaze at her new eyes (hue color; viola pedata - 12). “Amber?”

“Please, we really know to talk. And, as I said before,” she turns, ebony hair swishing like oil. “There was no need for that. I swear, I’m going to replace you both with my valvets. Learn some respect.” Turning back to you, she shares a tired look with you as you sit down on her throw couch. “Now, about you.”

Under the gaze, you only have one question - why? Why go through all this work to fire you? You had seen GENterns disappear without an ounce of public uproar; any uproar was a mousy whisper met with the (Repo-man) cat. There should be a pink-slip, a cardboard box for your desk supplies, and a pitying look - surely, that would be easiest. 

Besides, Largos do not keep things from their past. You were the past humanized.

“Me,” you agree.

    “Y/n, I know we haven’t spoken much since the funeral. My brothers and I both know we are to blame; and we hate that we had to call you up to this office to finally have a conversation. But, we all want to apologize for doing this to you,” Amber starts and sincerity coats her tongue. But you have no idea what she is possibly apologizing for. She opens her peach lips again until Pavi interrupts at the open moment.

    “Look, I (I mean, we) feel-a terrible about it. And I’m-a really sorry that the Pavi hasn’t been attending our-a usual lunchtime meet-ups. It’s just that-a we felt so awful about how we were-a treating you. We don’t want-a keep up this, us-a treating you like a pawn.”

    You blink at Pavi, bemused by his words. Like a pawn? That is something you never felt - hell, you had stayed here out of your hope to aid the ones in front of you. Though you are not acting like it recently, you will always be their friend. You try to keep their interest in your hearts. Slowly, your mouth peels open. Luigi shocks you into silence.

    “We love you, Y/n. The genuine romantic love, not in a family way. All of us have realized this and come to the decision that it isn’t our choice in any shape or form. We just wanted to let you know. And we wanted to apologize for how our behavior has repelled you.” 

    That isn’t what I want you to apologize for.

You laugh. Originally, a reaction like this would have never exit your mouth but shit is different. Everything is far from normalcy. So you laugh, a rancorous sound that convulses your shoulders. The laughter has thorns and cuts even as it travels out your throat. There are tears; they stream down your face in little beads of malice. You figure (sitting on the ivory throw couch) if they weren’t so stupid, maybe you could have loved them. A hand comes up, brushing away tears. You take them in, individually and together.

Luigi: who always had to find a way to impress you or Rotti with the seven non-stop pull-ups until he needed his inhaler, who never was ashamed of displaying his transitioning scars at beach parties, who would lay on algae carpet with you to scream about how having parents was an awful experience to the sound of guitar waves, and who you wished you kissed in the pocket of night under his bed. 

Pavi: who did impressions so spot-on that you snorted a chocolate shake from your nose on Rotti’s new car floor, who always said cheese when a camera - no matter if recording or not - was pointed in his general direction, who had burnt flesh on a curling iron when trying to use it as a microphone to continue his ballad of Poker Face , and who you wished you kissed during your DIY prom. 

Amber, rather Camerla: who made you sit through all her tea parties with Benji the Elephant and hit you with a wand when forgetting to hold up your pinkie, who could tie the stem of a cherry into a spindly knot with her tongue in a prostituting manner, who held a private concert for you and her brothers in a pink boa - memorizing lyrics for the occasion, and who you could never quite regret kissing between cannabis clouds.

But that is all fade, numerous scintillas of hope and memories. They are no longer those people. You hate yourself for viewing them through Rottismio’s eyes but the word ‘vultures’ oils into your mind anyways. 

“I quit.” 

Confusion rises on the siblings’ faces. Your quaint job as an insurance manager, they rationalize upon. Still, wary of your volatile emotion, Luigi wants to be on a clear page. The clear page he had thought you were on before. “You quit what?”

“Being your friend!   You think I’m upset about being fought over? I’m upset that I have to keep up a boat that refuses to acknowledge that it’s drowning! All you’ve three ever done has turned yourselves into monsters. I can’t even look at you guys anymore. I love you and seeing you like this hurts. I swear, I swear , I’ve been trying to help and trying to return back to normal but none of you have been trying back. 

“Fuck, last week, Amber, your valvets found you in another alley! Luigi, I have never heard you go a day without shouting! Pavi, I have filled out six insurance claims for dead GENterns in the last week! I’m tired and upset over that! Your love isn’t repelling me, it’s you. I want us back to normal.”

Though you evermore despise yourself for it, you watch with an enigmatic sense of pleasure as chagrin rises to their faces. Amber subconsciously pulls at her dress shirt to hide the marks of Zydrate needles. Black bangs waterfall over her fake hues. Pavi and Luigi both recoil, casting their eyes in a different direction. 

The sensation of more tears prick you. You want to say more, say you are still going to help, but you look at them with their heads down. How many times can you give the lecture until they listen? You bite those wants to stay and those pains in your right lung, fuck, your heart. You can’t stay, you know that now. With rabbit steps, you rush out; it will be the last time you see blue diamonds underfoot for a long, long time. 

Inside the metal coffin, the down button is pushed back roughly by your balling palm. From the closing jaws of a spider, whale, and fox, you shout at them. “You know what? Figure your own shit out.”

⸸

The reporter asks another question. “You grow up with them, then! Can you tell us anything about what their childhood was like? How close were you with the three siblings?” 

You bite your lip. The bulbous head of a spider nest is thrusted towards you. Groceries and apartment rent are too expensive, you think. “I was close.”

Once handshakes are exchanged and photos taken, you will walk down the parking-lot with sharp clicks of discount stilettos and fall upon your steering wheel in loud dismal sobs. A betrayal will rise like a bubble in your chest, remembering without remembering, crying without knowing why, and you will tell yourself you were no good friend to Luigi, Paviche, and Camerla.

 “Close as any childhood friend could be.” You smile through torn lips and anxious enamels.