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He would fight. That's what he was: a fighter. All his life, he would bare his teeth and growl, ears flattened against his head and tail lashing. When a microphone was placed into his hand, he would bite, bark out his words and dare the world to take him at full force—screaming from his lungs until they gave out about shitty parents, shitty society, shitty life. An angry dog, backed into a corner.
She would love. That's what she was: a lover. She would scrunch her face up in the sun with a smile, flail along to her favourite music, pour her heart into poems about music and melons and, is it weird if I kind of have a crush on you? All her life, she would use her love to hide from the ugly words sneaking into her mind at all times; ones that snickered at the way she did this, the way she did that, hiding from the whispers of freak, loser, retard. A bashful caterpillar, waiting for her transformation.
And then, they met.
An angry dog and a bashful caterpillar. Like a watermelon slammed into a driveway, messy and unexpected—yet simultaneously exciting and sweet-tasting. At first, he chided her, an insult here and a teasing there. I'm just fucking with you, was his immediate line afterwards. She took it. Hell, she didn’t even understand half of what he was saying, or why he was saying it—why the hell did he try to push her buttons so bad?—but she stayed. Anyway, she stayed.
The caterpillar gushed about the dog's band, the way his barks would get stuck in her mind on repeat, the way his fangs would look so beautiful when he was on stage. She gushed about this certain dog, one she had no clue was wagging its tail right in front of her, and how she only got a peek of her vibrant wings when she was crafting a poem for him. The dog growled at her then, attempted to run away, but he was backed into a corner, as always. On-the-lam, the dog had no choice but to stay with the caterpiller, watching her wriggle in her cocoon with his tail dragging between his legs.
It happened quick and it happened fast.
The dog was falling, he had never been so appreciated before; not by his friends, not by his family. The caterpillar was falling, too, admiring the way the dog always challenged her—took her to new extremes, protected her. And when they were foraging, the dog cleaned his coat and licked his paws, and he kissed her.
It wasn’t long until the dog was caught. A muzzle fitted tightly around his harsh jaw, dragged into the back of the abuser's car. The caterpillar's cocoon was cracking now, she could bat her wings against the window and plea for the dog's freedom—he didn’t do anything! And the dog bared his teeth and growled, how fucking un-punk it is, his whole foundation crumbling underneath his very paws.
It was a long time before the caterpillar and the dog saw each other again. Too long. Too many changes. The dog had gotten bigger, angrier, stuck behind the bars of his kennel. And the caterpillar, she had changed, too. Her cocoon had gotten too itchy, too suffocating, and so she broke out. Shedding her skin, the caterpillar flapped her new butterfly wings, red and pink and blue and green; of course, green, it was the dog's colour. She bloomed.
He made her bloom.