Chapter Text
“I heard you, y’know.”
Susie wheels around and they’re standing there. Slouched, hand on the side of their house like they’re about to fall over. Tired, corner of the mouth smirk on their face.
Their voice is different, like Noelle was saying. It doesn’t have that stereo crawl under it. It’s a little sad, a little higher than lower, kinda scratchy. How Noelle had described their ‘normal voice.’
But something is strange. Their face.
Why do they look so sad?
They don’t even know about the prophecy. Burden shared is a burden halved, or whatever, but looking at their face, she feels fucking sick even thinking about telling them. Something in her, it’s angry, it’s desperate, it’s got shaking hands and all they want to do is hold Kris against her, take every stumble, every bullet, every blow. She’d tear the world apart. She’d kill anyone that got in the way of her and them and Ralsei, too.
Fuck. It hurts. In her throat, in her chest, in her eyes.
She steps closer to them, raises an eyebrow. “Heard what?”
They fumble on the side of their house as they try to step forward, tripping, and she, on instinct, reaches out to grab them.
“You told Noelle you wanted flirting lessons?” They say, laugh crackly, but stumble as they do, and lean heavy into her. “Shit.”
“Woah, dude, are you alright?”
She tugs an arm around their shoulders to hold them up. It makes her electric, touching them like that. She wants them forever. That’s not something she’d ever wanted before. Not forever of anything. Usually she wanted the end. But now tomorrow, it constricts like a fist around her heart, knowing what could happen to them. So all she wants is now. This. Them and her and her and them and Ralsei and their castle town and that room they’re sharing, now, forever. This moment. Again and again and again. Their face. That sweet eyed look they gave her at the diner, in the mirror in their house, when they handed her the knife.
You’re the only one who’ll do. She can feel that when they look at her, feel the weight of them thinking that. The only one.
She feels manic. She is going to do something she shouldn’t. She left their house and walked away cause she was gonna do something she shouldn’t. But Kris is here, now. And it doesn’t feel like they’re doing what they should either. This feels dangerous. This is not what is written in the stars, this is not in a prophecy, this is not in a hymn. This is torn out of nothing, this is bloody, this is wrong, this is right, this is it.
“Thought you were gonna go to bed?” she says, one last out.
They shake their head, wince like they’ve been hit and clutch her. “Got anywhere else to go?”
No. You are here. There is nowhere else to be.
She tightens her arm around them. Wants. Just wants. Wants to be so close nothing can ever get between them. Wants to tear the cruel ugly world apart.
Before, the prophecy had been a dream, but now it creeps in the back of her mind like a nightmare waiting to suffocate her in darkness.
Nothing bad is ever going to happen to them. She repeats it in her head. Ralsei, Kris, her, they’re gonna be okay. Since when has she ever played by the rules. Since when did anyone tell her what to do.
“My place is shit,” she says. “But it’s got a bed. We need a fuckin rest after today.”
They nod, not explaining the stumbling. She doesn’t ask. There is the weight of things too dark and too large to look at on both of them. But fuck this shit. Fuck this bullshit. Fuck the prophecy and fuck the Knight. Fuck everything that’s always telling her, telling Kris what to do.
The stumbling gets too bad halfway there. She picks them up, tucks them against her and she feels a little better. Their breath flutters against her throat. Alive. You’re alive, now, right now, you’re alive.
Fuck what comes later. Fuck festival dates and locked bunkers and stupid fucking prophecies.
She climbs into her window and sits on the tattered mattress, Kris in her lap, her arms still tight around them, shaking. And then they’re kissing. It does not surprise her.