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This was it.
Emma Perkins was going to die in Hatchetfield.
At least she’d be with Paul, right? Not with that bastard she heard him talking to about her… Although she found it cute they had their own little joke. Whatever “Hotte Latte” was. She didn’t get it, but she remembers stifling a chuckle.
Her hands shook as she felt the apotheosis infect her blood stream. She was ripped apart, but she felt her body connecting again. Her memories coming back to her. Emma’s nose felt full and empty at the same time. Her lungs breathing clearly with the filter of a singer. She was ready to sing. To let it out.
However Ted’s process was much different. The soldiers infected him, and as soon as he saw Paul and Emma in his sight, he did everything he could to fight the infection, but it was no use. He was holding them, but not how he wanted to. He held Paul’s arm. He smelled as nice as he remembers and he looks at Emma with a stone face.
He sees her fear. The look as if they were - as he was about to take Paul from her. He wasn’t hers… He was at least going to be with him right?
Then a gun fired. Emma shot the man holding Paul.
Not Ted, but for some reason, he was a little sad she didn’t miss and hit Paul instead. That he would be with him. Forever.
—————————————————————
Paul stood “backstage” as they called it. They were simply inside his house. Everyone else had gone home to their separate little musicals in their personal lives, but somehow when they met up, they always tied in a note or lyric to whoever they spoke to.
Paul brushed his teeth. Staring in the mirror, blue shit dripped from his brush. Not toothpaste, blue shit. His eyes glowed the same color too. Paul didn’t realize it, but he was humming.
“Hm hm hm-hm.” Lah dee dah dah…
He spit and cleaned up. His pajamas were not blue, but in his eyes they were. He liked it that way now. He liked a lot of things now.
Paul spun and leaped back into his bedroom. Not that he knew ballet, but it’d be better if he complied with whatever his guts were telling him. The ripped, torn, and stitched back together guts. The guts he remembered that tingled whenever he walked in and out the CCRP building in hopes one of his crushes would talk to him.
Paul laid on his bed.
His toes wiggling in a pattern that was now normal for him ever since his eyes started glowing that unsettling shade of blue.
Paul turned to turn off his lamp like always.
His fingers reached. They tapped something.
“Hmmm…?”
“Lights down, my dear.”
“Must it be the eleventh hour already?”
Paul smiled, his eyes adjusting to the dark, and a smaller arm from behind him snakes around his waist.
“Listen to the director.” Emma hummed.
Ted squinted and put his phone down on the nightstand as he also switched the lamp off.
—————————————————————
It all came back to a regular schedule.
Emma stayed at Beanies, Ted and Paul still worked in their cubicles. The world still had to turn after all, but now it simply came with a melody that no one could quite get rid of.
Paul couldn’t quite pin down what exactly he wanted nowadays, but he was sure it was in his reach… a small voice in his head said to listen to his heart… in-fact, the voice might’ve came from his heart.
It was one day as the three were heading to the same vehicle. All three brain-dead. All mute of their voice, rather their lyrics. All three hearts beating on the same tempo.
Paul got out and opened the door for his lovers in the backseat. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he was leading them somewhere… this wasn’t on schedule. They had to get ready for bed. Reread the news, and maybe a midnight snack would be pushing it, but this?
Oakley Park. Why were they at Oakley Park?
“Paul?” Ted sang.
“What do you want?” Emma sung softly, like she were cradling a kitten. Ever since she had started singing, the men fell in love with her voice. The notes she could hit, and how softly she could sing. The moments where she could overpower the others. Paul regretted not listening to her voice earlier…
Before he knew it, before he was pulled from his thoughts, Paul had pulled the other two to sit on a bench. He got himself down on a knee, and as he took out two pieces of jewelry from his pocket- he could feel his heart beat again after a long… long time.
“Now. I never expected to find some…ones, like you.
I don’t know anything but you’re giving me a clue!
I can see past the surface, finding the worth that is hiding beneath your life.
And- pur-pose! And all of a sudden I feel like I’ve run into something that no one has seen…”
Ted and Emma smile. Uncanny, but it still warmed his blue-stained heart, so Paul stood and held two rings in front of him. Unknowing of it’s true color, as his eyes still painted his world quite a different blue.
“I never cared for stories… Until you entered mine.
and now my only wish is that our plots may intertwine…”
He dances up and down the street. As long as the two could see him. He knew they could hear him. Somehow.
“A thousand and one nights with you, is not enough to spend! So let’s make ours a story…
If the universe is infinite… then it’s definite! There’s an alternate reality, where we’re now a family!”
His mask cracks.
“Cause I’ve already lost it once… What I… What-“
But he knows betters.
“What I want… is you.”
He smiles back. That odd, heartwarming, loving, most tender smile. One that is met with Emma and Ted bringing him in for a big hug. The two wear the rings, and they take turns exchanging kisses.
It was all Paul could remember until they were on their honeymoon.
It was when their waitress had an only blue lei around her neck that Paul knew.
When he looked at the loves of his life.
That this was no life. Not without the color of Ted’s mustache looking back at him in the mirror as they got ready for bed. Not without Emma’s pink lips against his own pink lips as they kissed each other goodnight. Not without their argument between which creamer to use in their coffee. Emma always loved oat, while Ted wanted chai with cinnamon.
Ted wanted chai with cinnamon.
At least they both knew which coffee they wanted, because Paul wouldn’t. He couldn’t see it.
All he saw was blue.